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briar_fawn's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Death of parent, and Religious bigotry
Moderate: Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Child death, Murder, and Infidelity
Minor: Terminal illness
maeverose's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
2.75
I had to edit this review because my feelings changed a lot in hindsight.
TL;DR: Loved the beginning, meh towards the end. Love the atmosphere, the secret garden vibes. This is new adult not YA. The romance was highly problematic.
The first half of this book was an easy 5 stars, but the second half was more of a 3 at best. (And in hindsight, the problematic romance just kinda tainted the whole book…)
🖤 🖤 🖤
The thing I loved the most was the atmosphere and writing. The descriptions in this book are so vivid and atmospheric I could clearly picture everything in my mind. I want to be in this world. I love immersive writing, especially in a gothic book, it’s one of the number one things I look for and this definitely delivers on that.
I loved the secret garden vibes. I don’t know if it was intentional but this definitely feels like a gothic retelling almost of the secret garden. Lots of similarities.
💔 💔 💔
I’m very picky with mortal x immortal pairings because they often feel icky. This one did. Without spoilers, Death met her as a two month old baby and kept an eye on her from then until she was 19, when the book takes place. and he knew from a vision that he had when she was a baby that they would get together when she was an adult…. Yeah. That aside, my original thoughts on the romance before realizing how messed up it was: it feels very much like what you’d expect from YA in that Signa is very quick to catch feelings despite the fact she hated the love interest in the beginning. I didn’t feel their chemistry because Signa didn’t really get to know Death or spend much time with him. Her attraction to him was really only physical.
Signa is so focused on men the entire book when she’s supposed to be focused on saving someone’s life, something that’s incredibly urgent. There was a love triangle that while reading I felt was entirely unnecessary and just took up space in the book that should’ve focused on the actual plot.
Another thing about the romance is that it gets a bit steamier than I would say is appropriate for YA. There’s an on page sex scene that’s somewhat explicit, and besides that Signa is just very horny throughout the book. I would categorize this as new adult, not young adult. I feel like authors forget that the target age range of YA is 12-17. I would not give this to anyone younger than 16, personally.
Signa is very obsessed with being a ‘proper lady’ throughout most of the book and I found those parts to be very annoying. If she had grown out of that mindset earlier I wouldn’t have minded it so much because it does make sense given the time period and her high class status that she’d care about that, but it was overdone imo.
While I loved the writing in the first half, after that it started to feel overwritten and like it was trying too hard to be poetic at certain parts. It started to drag on a bit as well and was a bit repetitive at times. Kinda felt like the author wrote the book in order and got burnt out towards the end.
About the end reveal of who did it: I didn’t understand why Percy continued to poison Lillian when it didn’t kill her the first time… if it was an accident and she survived he could’ve just waited for it to leave her system… It didn’t make sense to me.
A very subjective issue: I just don’t like YA. Even though this has more adult themes it’s still written like YA. The main character is very naive (understandably so, but still), she’s so focused on boys instead of the very pressing situation going on, and there’s unnecessary petty drama with some of the other girls her age. I feel like these are common tropes in YA. Maybe it’s just because I’m an adult and don’t like those things but I remember disliking those things when I was a teenager as well so… I just would’ve preferred if this had been written as adult and the characters were more mature and less easily distracted by cute men.
TL;DR: Loved the beginning, meh towards the end. Love the atmosphere, the secret garden vibes. This is new adult not YA. The romance was highly problematic.
The first half of this book was an easy 5 stars, but the second half was more of a 3 at best. (And in hindsight, the problematic romance just kinda tainted the whole book…)
🖤 🖤 🖤
The thing I loved the most was the atmosphere and writing. The descriptions in this book are so vivid and atmospheric I could clearly picture everything in my mind. I want to be in this world. I love immersive writing, especially in a gothic book, it’s one of the number one things I look for and this definitely delivers on that.
I loved the secret garden vibes. I don’t know if it was intentional but this definitely feels like a gothic retelling almost of the secret garden. Lots of similarities.
💔 💔 💔
I’m very picky with mortal x immortal pairings because they often feel icky. This one did. Without spoilers, Death met her as a two month old baby and kept an eye on her from then until she was 19, when the book takes place.
Signa is so focused on men the entire book when she’s supposed to be focused on saving someone’s life, something that’s incredibly urgent. There was a love triangle that while reading I felt was entirely unnecessary and just took up space in the book that should’ve focused on the actual plot.
Another thing about the romance is that it gets a bit steamier than I would say is appropriate for YA. There’s an on page sex scene that’s somewhat explicit, and besides that Signa is just very horny throughout the book. I would categorize this as new adult, not young adult. I feel like authors forget that the target age range of YA is 12-17. I would not give this to anyone younger than 16, personally.
Signa is very obsessed with being a ‘proper lady’ throughout most of the book and I found those parts to be very annoying. If she had grown out of that mindset earlier I wouldn’t have minded it so much because it does make sense given the time period and her high class status that she’d care about that, but it was overdone imo.
While I loved the writing in the first half, after that it started to feel overwritten and like it was trying too hard to be poetic at certain parts. It started to drag on a bit as well and was a bit repetitive at times. Kinda felt like the author wrote the book in order and got burnt out towards the end.
About the end reveal of who did it:
A very subjective issue: I just don’t like YA. Even though this has more adult themes it’s still written like YA. The main character is very naive (understandably so, but still), she’s so focused on boys instead of the very pressing situation going on, and there’s unnecessary petty drama with some of the other girls her age. I feel like these are common tropes in YA. Maybe it’s just because I’m an adult and don’t like those things but I remember disliking those things when I was a teenager as well so… I just would’ve preferred if this had been written as adult and the characters were more mature and less easily distracted by cute men.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Murder, and Grief
Moderate: Blood, Child abuse, Eating disorder, Sexual content, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Animal death, Body horror, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Self harm, Terminal illness, and Vomit
Minor: Suicide attempt and Religious bigotry
Graphic: poisoning Moderate: description of a broken neck Minor: an implication that having a lot of sexual partners leads to ‘diseases’
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