beforeviolets's reviews
431 reviews

The Tamer Tamed by John Fletcher

I can’t believe Fletcher A Doll’s House Part 2’d Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

sorry will, I do NOT like this one

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

 

This is a book I’ve mostly been familiar with through its descendants, so it’s been an interesting journey to trace those steps back and examine the source. I was definitely nervous to read this book, with how incredible polarizing it is, and honestly because I did NOT like The Goldfinch. But I was really truly pleasantly surprised, and found myself really appreciating this book more than I thought I would. 

 

It’s definitely incredibly long and exhaustive and, if I had the opportunity to edit this, I would be slashing whole paragraphs at times, but the writing is stunning. Tartt has such a tact in gracefully threading interpersonal dynamics throughout the background of this narrative. The characters are constantly malleable to the volatile and fragile relationships of their friend group, on and off-page, Tartt forcing the readers to do some leg work in examining the nuances to find the implications folded into the moments between the lines. 

 

The scaffolding of the Greek Tragedy within the story took a while for me to spot, as well as the help of a Reddit thread about big cats, but once it became clear, the relationship between this work and its roots really shone. 

 

I don’t think this will be a favorite book of mine. But it’s honestly one that impressed me more than I expected it to. (And it’s great having read it so that I can now argue that no, those books that people say are rip-offs of this book are NOT rip-offs of this book. This book is absolutely a springboard for successive staples in dark academia, but those books’ structures, techniques, and elements absolutely cover different ground and take on original shape untethered by Tartt’s work despite their clear genre ties and homages.) 

 

Also, as an early modernist, I was kinda jump scared by Richard’s pivot to early modern literature. 

 

CW: suicide, gun violence, drug use, animal death, character death, death, violence, blood & gore, alcohol, alcoholism, hospitalization, incest 

Wings of Starlight by Allison Saft

Currently drying my tears as I write this.
Pixie Hollow has lived firmly in my heart for as long as I can remember, and it's been so healing and wonderful to revisit this world in my adulthood through the words of one of my favorite authors.

I can't say how this book will resonate for folks who didn't grow up on Disney Fairies, but for me, it was so perfectly full of nostalgia and magic, warming my heart utterly. The atmosphere was just right, I loved getting to visualize the whimsy and wonder of fairy life. Saft's writing is the perfect companion to a setting so lush and atmospheric, as her ability to craft such vivid environments and sensory experiences is what I truly love most about her writing. Her words gorgeously guide the reader through this abundantly imaginative world.

I didn't expect to cry so much at the romance, but yeah, wow, I did. My eyes were stinging as I tried to read the final pages. I knew what was to come, having seen the movies, but Saft brilliantly brought new life and emotion to the star-crossed tragedy of it all. The aching and yearning and mourning, the blurring of hope and loss, it all was so eloquently and painfully done. Seriously, ow.

This was a really wonderfully bittersweet (and again, painful, ow!) return to Neverland and Pixie Hollow. I hate to leave this world behind again, as Neverland is always a difficult place to turn away from, but this book is appropriately about using the love of the past as hope and strength for the future, so I guess I'll take my cues from Clarion and keep looking onward as I close the pages on a land I feel most at home.

Also, thank you Allison for writing lesbians into Pixie Hollow (and specifically a butch knight lesbian!!!!! OH MY GOD!?!?!). You're my absolute hero. 🫡

Thank you to the author for sending me an ARC! This is my honest review.

CW: violence, blood, medical content, injury detail, grief

Made Glorious by Lindsay Eagar

 

I like to think of myself as a little bit of a Shakespeare retelling connoisseur, and was so geeked to find out about this YA retelling of Richard III, which is a deeply underrepresented source text in the realm of Shakespearean reimaginings. 

 

And scrolling through some of these reviews, it seems that very few readers approached this book from an interest in this book’s relationship to the original play, so this will be fun for me to talk about!! 

 

Richard III is recast as Rory King (yes, an unbelievably silly renaming) in this weird, intense thriller about what it feels to be an outsider in the cutthroat world of high school theatre. Instead of climbing to be king, in this adaptation, Rory is scheming to reach the greatest height one can achieve in high school: the lead in the musical. 

 

Now, I was a bit skeptical going into a Richard III retelling without a disabled MC. Richard’s disability, of course, is at the forefront of his experiences. The current culture we see today around performances of Richard III (appropriately) insists on casting disabled actors in the roles. But I think that Eagar made a decent choice in translating Richard’s experience with disability to Rory’s experiences as being poor and fat. These experiences are not seen as equal or comparable, but serve similar functions in the story, to cast the main character as other. And in this, I think that choice was successful, if not slightly underutilized. 

 

I think the thing that makes this book so successful as a Richard III retelling is its narration, which is handled in several different tactics. For anyone unfamiliar with the source text, Richard III is a classic Machievel archetype, but one that asks for sympathy and understanding. A properly performed Richard will make you both love and hate him, laugh with him and at him, and maybe even root for him. And the way that Eagar takes on this challenge is through inconsistent and malleable narrative. The text switches from first person to third person to second person or regular prose to scripted scenes as needed, as Rory provides the audience with an “objective view” or a monologue to connect with as needed to garner sympathy and support. I love a book that plays with form. 

 

Beyond Rory, the other character parallels were ones that I wasn’t quite as clear on, but that may be a fault of my own. The ones that were clear worked so interestingly, especially Margaret, cast as Rory’s concerned English teacher. 

 

There were plenty of really cool allusions to the original source material in here, such as the scene before Richard’s death with the ghosts, the Tower TM, and even the seasonal metaphors. I was yearning for a little bit more in terms of textual parallels at times, or at least more longevity of the ones featured (I kind of wanted more allusions to the Tower, or for it to have some more physical presence, but I also understand that we were in Rory’s hands and she didn’t really want us thinking about it) but the ones that were there were really cool. 

 

I think my favorite part of this book is the brief snippets of Rory’s papers that were featured between the Acts. Of course, these gave us some insight into the mind of the character herself, which allowed us to see her incredible writing skills and ability to engage with complex ideologies, giving us context for her scheming capacities both mentally and physically. But those papers also created brilliant context for the retelling itself, offering ideas about Machiavellian beliefs, Shakespearean tragedies, and dramatic form. It perfectly wove in pieces of information for the readers to engage with that provided more character depth and tools with which to appreciate and interrogate the story. Especially considering this is a YA story, its audience might not already be familiar with Machiavelli or these other ideas that are molding the choices made for the form of the story at large as well as the actions made by the characters within it, so these little pieces carried a lot of weight by offering pivotal moments to reflect and think amidst the drama and the action. 

 

I think my only real critique is the ambiguity with which Rory’s complaints about the theatre culture lands. It felt very much like it was left up to the audience whether Rory is right and that high school theatre directors are manipulative and create toxic environments, or whether she is wrong and she wasn’t driven to those lengths. I felt like there wasn’t quite room for the critique (which is very real and accurate) to fit and hold truth while we were so worried about whether Rory’s behavior was warranted. But that’s mostly because I liked that critique and just wanted it to hold more space in the story. 

 

Overall, definitely a really successful book and retelling in my eyes. Thank you to my friend Bailey for telling me about this one and getting a copy!! 

 

CW: suicide, fatphobia, mental illness, car accident, bullying, sexual content (minor) 

Metal from Heaven by August Clarke

Arcane meets Upright Women Wanted for fans of Gideon the Ninth in this bloody, ferocious sapphic fantasy.

Y’all. I’m absolutely obsessed. This is d*ke required reading.

This book is so hard to describe. I’ve been sitting here starting sentences and deleting them, struggling to properly encapsulate my excitement for all the brilliance of its storytelling. There’s so much happening here that is just so easy to praise from its gripping action scenes to its brilliant reveals to its malleability of style.

I think the thing that’s really sticking with me though is that this book feels like an underdog. It’s not the cleanest or tightest book I’ve read in terms of prose or pacing, in fact, I struggled through the book quite a bit with its pacing. (Scenes that were short should have been long, scenes that were long should have been short, and once I put the book down, it was tough to get back into the world.)

But its flaws provide a delicious texture that adds to the utter camp of it all. This book was nothing if not unbelievably ambitious and the difficult work of climbing to those heights shines through its pages. And, honestly, I kind of love that you can see Clarke’s blood, sweat, and tears in building this beast of a narrative leaking through. If it was too seamless or if it looked too easy, it would lose so much of its charm. It’s not so much a hidden gem, but an undiscovered labyrinth, sprawling and gritty and formidable.

I guess the best way to review this book is really to pitch it! So if you like:
-badass butch book girlfriends
-fighting capitalism
-large casts of characters
-complex world building
-The Locked Tomb series
-nonlinear storytelling
-experimental prose
-messy lesbian relationships
-hopeful narratives
then you should read Metal From Heaven.

(I also want to shout out my friend Bailey who encouraged me to request an ARC–and by encouraged I mean screamed at me every chance she could–and who wrote a really lovely and better worded review of this book that you all should go read!)

And THANK YOU to Erewhon for shipping me an ARC of this book across seas (even when I hadn't finished my other ARC from them) in exchange for an honest review.

CW: violence, blood & gore, sexual content, homophobia, death of parents, death of siblings, grief, loss of loved one, character death, gun violence, police brutality

Fable for the End of the World by Ava Reid

"But that's the same reason pretty much anyone kills anything. So they can survive. If it's all survival, who am I to judge what someone does? We're all the same, deep down."

Crier’s War meets The Hunger Games in this tender and hopeful dystopian.

I am not a dystopian guy, and unfortunately even Ava Reid can’t seem to change that immutable fact about me, which kept this book from really blowing me away. It also keeps me from being able to speak too much to the success of the story. But if you are a dystopian fan and are interested in a close-dystopian with a sapphic enemies-to-lovers romance driving the characters’ arcs (Ava is so goddamn good at making a romance integral to character development and narrative when they write enemies-to-lovers, it’s unreal), definitely pick this one up.

CW: violence, animal death, death of child, adult/minor relationship, sexual harassment, blood & gore, injury detail, dead body, abusive parent, medical content, gun violence, fire/fire injury, drug use, alcoholism (past), emesis

Thank you to the publisher in exchange for an honest review!

An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson

damn okay that was stressful but also so good

CW: hallucinations, mental illness, panic attacks, drug use, emesis, mind control, murder, blood & gore, suicidal thoughts, dead body, infidelity, animal death, alcohol, kidnapping, hospitalization, drowning, adult/minor relationship (past), tooth horror (minor), death of loved one, grief, death of sibling (past), cancer (mention)

Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us about Our Past and Future by James Shapiro

the perfect book to help me cope with the odd cognitive dissonance of getting a shakespeare degree amidst the political climate of the past week. reminded me that my passions matter even if they don’t feel important enough sometimes, and that america is always in times of turmoil and struggle but there’s always times ahead. there’s something comforting about building community through history right now.

The Princess Knight by Cait Jacobs

adventurous emotional funny inspiring

Celtic mythology meets Legally Blonde by way of a military fantasy adventure, with a unique balance of heart, grit, and camp in this lovable debut by Cait Jacobs.

I had the privilege of reading an  early draft of this book back in 2022, and it captured my heart. This book holds combines a fascinating collection of ideas (Legally Blonde but make it a gritty military romantasy with knights, and also make it kind of a retelling of Celtic folklore?) that you wouldn't expect to go together, but Cait has poured so much care into the conversation of all of these elements from the silly musical references to the complex disability representation, and it really pays off in this heartfelt adventurous tale.

If you like diverse casts, fantasy adventures, women with swords (who also wear gorgeous dresses), found family, court politics, gritty action scenes, feet-kicking romance, and Legally Blonde (of course), I think you'll adore this book as much as I did.