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ravensandpages's reviews
562 reviews
You've Reached Sam by Dustin Thao
3.0
I received an ARC forever ago in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley and Wednesday Books!
YOU'VE REACHED SAM is a bittersweet contemporary YA that follows Julie, whose carefully planned future violently derails when her boyfriend dies in a car crash on the way to her. Her grief turns her avoidant, trying her best to forget Sam until she dials his number—and he picks up.
I'm not normally a contemporary enjoyer (especially not one set during high school), but I do like a contemporary with magical elements, and I like how the connection and phone call elements scaffolded the themes of grief and dealing with loss. I actually really liked the theme and main message a lot and it really spoke to me as someone who has dealt with this sort of grief before. Julie's arc is easily my favorite part of the book.
I think I lacked an emotional connection to it that lay in how unfleshed out many of the characters were. I felt like Julie's mom wholesale disappeared for a lot of the book (unless there was some reasoning for it my ears skipped over, which is entirely possible? She sounded so cool and then was barely relevant), and as much as I did like the other classmates' grief turning them angry and vindictive toward Julie, it ultimately felt like just a way for her to be bullied instead of showing more complex realities of grief. The beginning hooked me but as things went on, it felt just a bit too long and drawn out.
I am also not one to need an explanation for magic or strange occurrences in stories, but there were a lot of hints made that cause me to think a bigger reveal was coming that never landed. I think the epilogue was very touching, and I liked how Julie learned to balance letting go and still remembering Sam and honoring his memory. I liked the end of the end chapter, but it started out sounding like an epilogue so much that I was caught off guard. This is just getting nitpicky though, so I think overall, there was just some element that caused the rest to fail to make a true impact on me.
HOWEVER! As mentioned before, I am not a huge lover of YA contemporary and it needs to be astounding to break through that for me, so I would still recommend giving this a chance if you think you'll like it. I'm interested to see where Thao goes with his writing and I may pick up When Haru Was Here was well.
YOU'VE REACHED SAM is a bittersweet contemporary YA that follows Julie, whose carefully planned future violently derails when her boyfriend dies in a car crash on the way to her. Her grief turns her avoidant, trying her best to forget Sam until she dials his number—and he picks up.
I'm not normally a contemporary enjoyer (especially not one set during high school), but I do like a contemporary with magical elements, and I like how the connection and phone call elements scaffolded the themes of grief and dealing with loss. I actually really liked the theme and main message a lot and it really spoke to me as someone who has dealt with this sort of grief before. Julie's arc is easily my favorite part of the book.
I think I lacked an emotional connection to it that lay in how unfleshed out many of the characters were. I felt like Julie's mom wholesale disappeared for a lot of the book (unless there was some reasoning for it my ears skipped over, which is entirely possible? She sounded so cool and then was barely relevant), and as much as I did like the other classmates' grief turning them angry and vindictive toward Julie, it ultimately felt like just a way for her to be bullied instead of showing more complex realities of grief. The beginning hooked me but as things went on, it felt just a bit too long and drawn out.
I am also not one to need an explanation for magic or strange occurrences in stories, but there were a lot of hints made that cause me to think a bigger reveal was coming that never landed. I think the epilogue was very touching, and I liked how Julie learned to balance letting go and still remembering Sam and honoring his memory. I liked the end of the end chapter, but it started out sounding like an epilogue so much that I was caught off guard. This is just getting nitpicky though, so I think overall, there was just some element that caused the rest to fail to make a true impact on me.
HOWEVER! As mentioned before, I am not a huge lover of YA contemporary and it needs to be astounding to break through that for me, so I would still recommend giving this a chance if you think you'll like it. I'm interested to see where Thao goes with his writing and I may pick up When Haru Was Here was well.
Mistress of Lies by K.M. Enright
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
1.5
I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Orbit and NetGalley.
MISTRESS OF LIES has been one of my most anticipated reads this year since it was announced. A vampire fantasy with a poly romance, a trans love interest, and a murder mystery checked off so many of my boxes! This book follows Shan, who opens the book by assassinating her father in order to drag her disgraced family name back from ruin and exact her revenge, and Samuel, a bastard hiding a terrible power that gets pulled into the dark world of nobility when finding a body reveals his nature to Shan's web of spies. Tangled between them is Isaac, the Royal Bloodworker and Shan's ex-friend and lover, who becomes drawn and redrawn to Samuel and Shan as they're tasked by the Eternal King to uncover who is leaving a trail of mutilated bodies in their city.
As I mentioned, this book has a strong start. The murder and Shan's plotting are front and center and set off the expected tone for the book: bloodshed and cleverness, glittering with jewels. On the other side, Samuel lives a destitute life and struggles to get by without losing control of the influencing power that terrifies and disgusts him. However, the writing seems to lose itself fairly quickly. I think I have become picky when it comes the voice in high fantasy, so that is a point against it to me; the dialogue seemed to lack consistency in whether it leaned toward the historically-aligned setting - not that there's a specific time that I could feel, I'm pretty sure there's a better word for that I'm forgetting - and whether it leaned toward a more modern cadence. I completely recognize that it's a super petty opinion I've unfortunately adopted, but it stuck out to me first and made the other issues I found more obvious.
The opening lays the ground for a very intriguing world, but the actual building of it as time went on was lacking. The characters and their relationships form a core to the story at the detriment of many other elements, including plot, which I think would have been more forgivable if there was more chemistry. Maybe I'm just too aroace, but I think the suddenness and intensity of the attraction Samuel felt to Shan and Isaac was at odds with his other concerns, and there was a distinct lack of build and sensuality (especially for a vampire book?) that would have made it a bit easier to invest in the forming bonds. I'm not quite skilled enough to put my finger on exactly why, but the writing did not seem to lend itself to the romances at all despite the pacing and prioritization being primarily concerned with it. (To the point where they forgot about the murder! And I love murder investigations!!) I think this also impacted the characterization quite a bit. I got a sense of who the characters wanted to be and who the story was trying to convince me they were. I of course believe in the thousand-year-old Eternal King outwitting Shan, but she didn't seem to be overly clever as opposed to being someone who can think a little bit ahead (and not very far, with how surprisingly often she almost gets discovered and does get recognized), and none of the characters felt strongly developed from their first introductions. They seemed to be whatever was convenient for that moment without being more fleshed out.
I did appreciate the rep in this, especially the on-page sex scene with a trans character. I am not poly myself, so I can't comment on that representation in terms of being problematic or not - and I doubt it was. However, I think promoting the book on it is a little interesting considering what happens, which I won't go into details on, and it also felt like a very underdeveloped part of the story. Isaac, Shan, and Samuel are very rarely in the same place together and Isaac being, for good reason, the only one of the triad without a POV meant he was as undeveloped as everything else, and he felt like a very weak part of the love triangle. It robbed enough of the expected impact from the last quarter for me to knock my rating down a star.
Overall, I had a lot of high hopes for this book, but it was a letdown for me. I think a bit more editing and time to flesh out the elements of the book would have turned a killer concept into a killer story. I will not be reading the sequels. However, a lot of other people have seemed to like it. I wouldn't recommend it personally, but I don't think it'd be a waste of time to see if you might like this more than I did.
MISTRESS OF LIES has been one of my most anticipated reads this year since it was announced. A vampire fantasy with a poly romance, a trans love interest, and a murder mystery checked off so many of my boxes! This book follows Shan, who opens the book by assassinating her father in order to drag her disgraced family name back from ruin and exact her revenge, and Samuel, a bastard hiding a terrible power that gets pulled into the dark world of nobility when finding a body reveals his nature to Shan's web of spies. Tangled between them is Isaac, the Royal Bloodworker and Shan's ex-friend and lover, who becomes drawn and redrawn to Samuel and Shan as they're tasked by the Eternal King to uncover who is leaving a trail of mutilated bodies in their city.
As I mentioned, this book has a strong start. The murder and Shan's plotting are front and center and set off the expected tone for the book: bloodshed and cleverness, glittering with jewels. On the other side, Samuel lives a destitute life and struggles to get by without losing control of the influencing power that terrifies and disgusts him. However, the writing seems to lose itself fairly quickly. I think I have become picky when it comes the voice in high fantasy, so that is a point against it to me; the dialogue seemed to lack consistency in whether it leaned toward the historically-aligned setting - not that there's a specific time that I could feel, I'm pretty sure there's a better word for that I'm forgetting - and whether it leaned toward a more modern cadence. I completely recognize that it's a super petty opinion I've unfortunately adopted, but it stuck out to me first and made the other issues I found more obvious.
The opening lays the ground for a very intriguing world, but the actual building of it as time went on was lacking. The characters and their relationships form a core to the story at the detriment of many other elements, including plot, which I think would have been more forgivable if there was more chemistry. Maybe I'm just too aroace, but I think the suddenness and intensity of the attraction Samuel felt to Shan and Isaac was at odds with his other concerns, and there was a distinct lack of build and sensuality (especially for a vampire book?) that would have made it a bit easier to invest in the forming bonds. I'm not quite skilled enough to put my finger on exactly why, but the writing did not seem to lend itself to the romances at all despite the pacing and prioritization being primarily concerned with it. (To the point where they forgot about the murder! And I love murder investigations!!) I think this also impacted the characterization quite a bit. I got a sense of who the characters wanted to be and who the story was trying to convince me they were. I of course believe in the thousand-year-old Eternal King outwitting Shan, but she didn't seem to be overly clever as opposed to being someone who can think a little bit ahead (and not very far, with how surprisingly often she almost gets discovered and does get recognized), and none of the characters felt strongly developed from their first introductions. They seemed to be whatever was convenient for that moment without being more fleshed out.
I did appreciate the rep in this, especially the on-page sex scene with a trans character. I am not poly myself, so I can't comment on that representation in terms of being problematic or not - and I doubt it was. However, I think promoting the book on it is a little interesting considering what happens, which I won't go into details on, and it also felt like a very underdeveloped part of the story. Isaac, Shan, and Samuel are very rarely in the same place together and Isaac being, for good reason, the only one of the triad without a POV meant he was as undeveloped as everything else, and he felt like a very weak part of the love triangle. It robbed enough of the expected impact from the last quarter for me to knock my rating down a star.
Overall, I had a lot of high hopes for this book, but it was a letdown for me. I think a bit more editing and time to flesh out the elements of the book would have turned a killer concept into a killer story. I will not be reading the sequels. However, a lot of other people have seemed to like it. I wouldn't recommend it personally, but I don't think it'd be a waste of time to see if you might like this more than I did.