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Norcliff by K.A. Connolly
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.75
Norcliff is a romantasy with deep roots in the classic, swords and sorcery fantasy tradition. It follows Erin, the inheritor and heir apparent of the duchy of Norcliff, who finds herself ensnared in a plot of political intrigue after her wedding is interrupted by the targeted assassination of her fiancé by the man who wants Erin and her lands for himself. After losing face in court, Erin needs to find allies in alternate places to save her parents and protect her people, only to discover that the political situation is worse than it appears. And amidst all of this toil and tribulation, she finds new love along the way. While nothing about this premise is particularly groundbreaking, Norcliff promised to be a familiar, comforting type of tale, so that’s what I hoped for going in.
Unfortunately, despite the premise being the sort of thing I like, the execution is where Norcliff falls short for me. While reading, I felt as though I was being told a story secondhand, or reading a sparknotes summary of the book, more than reading a complete story in itself. The plot relies on telling over showing, making the pace breakneck throughout but without earning any emotional payoff. This lead to scenes of battle, the romantic leads wooing, travel, and training all lack any tonal differentiation and left me with an overall one-note experience while reading. There was also a seeming avoidance of building up conflict in service of getting the story to move more quickly. Erin arrives at the palace, is immediately welcomed by the nobles (no court intrigue or hidden intentions from the other courtiers?), then is assaulted by the prince and everyone’s opinion turns on a dime (again, no sympathies or anyone else knowing the prince is a predator?) in the course of, like, four pages. There’s no time for any of those events to sink in before they’re each brought to some sort of resolution and all the potential tension is dissipated, leaving the characters to be whisked to the next series of un-nuanced, cause-and-effect-but-no-feelings-or-complications plot events.
The speed also didn’t allow for differentiation between characters. Most everyone shares the same mannerisms of speech regardless of social class or geographic difference, and information and skill are granted to or withheld from characters seemingly at random. There’s scenes where Erin, purportedly the heir of Norcliff and thus raised to be at least aware of her surrounding duchies, has to be told about the politics and customs of her neighbors. Erin is also trained enough at swordplay and strategy that she can hold her own in a battle or scale castle battlements undetected but inexplicably has soft lady’s hands. Inconsistencies like this further broke my immersion in the story, and kept me guessing as to what the actual traits, fears, wants, and feelings of the characters actually were.
And since this is a romantasy, where the central relationship between Erin and Hugo should be at the heart of most of what’s going on, it’s imperative that I know at least about what makes the two of them tick. I found myself feeling like their relationship was instalove-y and bland to the point where I didn’t even mind the instalove, because to mind it would meant I cared about it at all.
However, while it didn’t work for me, I think Norcliff could still very much fill the comfort-read romantasy niches for people who want quick, uncomplicated reads with all their favorite fantasy tropes making an appearance. The writer clearly knows and cares for their genres. Their scenes of riding horses on a journey, chivalrous courtship practices between the romantic leads, character tropes like the poisoneer madame and turncoat advisor, and a badass Princess female lead kept me reading instead of DNFing outright. With just some more fleshing out, showing to balance out the telling, I think Norcliff could’ve been quite good. I would be interested in seeing more from this author and seeing whether that element of their writing style evolves.
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
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? Yes
4.5
What a stunning, warm book. Perfect to transition into cozier/Autumnal reading. I really admire Osman's facility with character voice--Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron, Ibrahim, Bogdan, and the rest were each individually and collectively lovely to follow and so distinguishable from one another. Not a one of them was perfect, but they were all so full of heart and complexity, and were impossible not to sympathize with even when they did rude or buckwild things in service of their wants and goals. This was a deeply british book in its sensibilities and preoccupations in a way that felt deeply appropriate for the genre, but never in a caricature-y way. If I have any complaints, it's that some of the resolutions to certain mysteries felt less foreshadowed than I typically like, but for a mystery book, I was far less into it for the plot than I was simply to follow the Club, the officers they were working with, and the various other folks they had in the periphery of the whodunnit. I will be reading the rest of this series for sure.
Swordcrossed by Freya Marske
adventurous
funny
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Sword Crossed is what the romantasy genre has been waiting for. Its romance-centric plot in no way eclipses the logical, evocative world building. Quite the contrary, from religion to economics to factionalism to food and dress, every element of the world serves to shape the way characters walk through it. Gone are the days of handwaving (or worse, infodumping) how things work in service of getting the protagonists to kiss; AUTHOR’s world is woven seamlessly into and expanded upon organically as the story progresses, standing out like a deftly woven bolt of fabric in a genre lately made up of hastily bundled tufts of yarn. Huna smile.
I joke a little, but only because this is exactly what I’ve been looking for in the sub genre of romantasy since the term was coined. I’ve fallen absolutely in love with Luca and Matti, both individually and as a pair. I had a great time with the way Markse wove in moments of physical proximity to further push Matti and Luca to the edge with each other, from sword lessons and drinking together to breaking and entering/corporate espionage.
They complement one another’s personalities and push each other’s buttons, and are forced to grow together. The intimacy built isn’t just romantic and sexual/physical, but deeply caring too. They’re a bit of an odd couple at first glance, with Matti’s honorable, naive dutifulness contrasted against Luca’s restless, roguish charm, but at their hearts they are the same: young men who are so hungry with something to prove. It’s that shared trait, and each one’s ability to recognize the way it manifests in the other, that both pushes the plot along and builds their chemistry to a breaking point. Each has a knowledge of what the other needs, and while the build of trust (intellectually) is slow, they instinctively work together well from jump. I believed them falling in love, and I had a great time watching it. Truly you can’t ask for anything more.
But deliver more Markse did, starting with the excellent support cast and the interpersonal conflicts they caused and helped sort out. Matti’s family and Sofia are welcome allies in a story where neither protagonist can catch a damn break, and the villains, while vile, make sensical choices (if you look through their POVs); our protags are just in the way of their goals, you see! I was stressed out enough for both M and L and Jay house’s fortunes in turns that I had to set the book down and take a lap more than once. The stakes aren’t as high as all out war or apocalyptic disaster, but the interpersonal and cultural problems felt true and tied to characters I cared for and were, thus, important.
And maybe that’s the most important element to making a romantasy feel quality and not a romance thrown on top of a slapdash setting to make it different from a contemporary rom-com. Making the world feel lived in and like its rules matter. The world of Glassport and the city-states surrounding it feels that way. Glassport especially is so cosmopolitan; it’s peopled with folks of all walks, religion and holy days are part of how commerce happens and are important to day to day life (but also have been watered down from the bloody, intense things they used to be) (but not in a way that makes the ritual and community building of it all weaker). Ditto the factionalism of the guilds and local government. It all slots together in ways neat enough to make sense and messy enough to feel human, just as our real world slots together around us.
And that’s the exact right recipe for me. I would recommend Swordcrossed to anyone who would listen to me gush about it, but especially to readers who don’t want to have to suspend their disbelief to indulge in the escapism of fantasy, who prefer a love story to build organically from attraction to affection, and who like books that feel like putting on a comfortable favorite sweater even upon first read. An easy five stars.
Everything the Darkness Eats by Eric LaRocca
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Gothtober 2024 Prompt: ominous/threatening title
This was a complicated little book. On one hand, I found the literary-leaning prose to be a great anchor point for a horror story less about One Big Horror and more about exploring/tying together the tribulations of several flawed characters. On the other hand, I found it to get in the way of the tension that the more horror-grounding scenes when they came up. Nor did I appreciate the handling of the gang-rape on page, both from a content perspective and from a prose perspective. And calling a little blind girl a monster because of her disability left a terrible taste in my mouth.
And still, I’ve yet to meet someone queer, disabled, or otherwise marginalized who hasn’t been told or made to feel that their existence is somehow monstrous, even when we’ve repeatedly been shown to be the most vulnerable links in society. LaRocca’s narrative seems to be trying to interrogate that idea, of recognizing the vulnerability of marginalized people (and feeding the darkness with it), but it didn’t quite work for me, particularly with the deus ex machina feeing ending that claims to have “stopped the evil forever” when the homophobia and ableism and racism of the people (which presumably fed the dark until this big culmination?) is still very much alive.
Over all, I think I enjoyed the premise more than the execution. Possibly in part because the execution was so short that it couldn’t answer all the questions it asked, but definitely also because the writing style didn’t fit that which the story needed it to be.
This was a complicated little book. On one hand, I found the literary-leaning prose to be a great anchor point for a horror story less about One Big Horror and more about exploring/tying together the tribulations of several flawed characters. On the other hand, I found it to get in the way of the tension that the more horror-grounding scenes when they came up. Nor did I appreciate the handling of the gang-rape on page, both from a content perspective and from a prose perspective. And calling a little blind girl a monster because of her disability left a terrible taste in my mouth.
And still, I’ve yet to meet someone queer, disabled, or otherwise marginalized who hasn’t been told or made to feel that their existence is somehow monstrous, even when we’ve repeatedly been shown to be the most vulnerable links in society. LaRocca’s narrative seems to be trying to interrogate that idea, of recognizing the vulnerability of marginalized people (and feeding the darkness with it), but it didn’t quite work for me, particularly with the deus ex machina feeing ending that claims to have “stopped the evil forever” when the homophobia and ableism and racism of the people (which presumably fed the dark until this big culmination?) is still very much alive.
Over all, I think I enjoyed the premise more than the execution. Possibly in part because the execution was so short that it couldn’t answer all the questions it asked, but definitely also because the writing style didn’t fit that which the story needed it to be.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Homophobia, Sexual violence, Torture, and Violence
Moderate: Rape
Perfect Girl by Tracy Banghart
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
Perfect Girl is a fast-paced YA thriller great for readers who want to see an inversion of the Final Girl trope. In addition, the narrative is an exploration of femininity and the societal expectations placed on young girls, and the way those expectations fail girls when things get dangerous: what happens when a girl socialized to be docile and demure is put into a situation where survival depends on her fighting? Perfect Girl combines classic YA themes of discovering one's own identity and puts it on a clock, which our protagonist Jessa can't afford to let run out.
I really enjoyed Perfect Girl's atmosphere. The environment around Jessa and her friends acted as threat and impediment as the story went on, but also set a tense, frightening emotional mood. I found the storm to be a useful tool to remove the modern day crutch of cell phones as an avenue for communication. The way it was introduced was clever and didn't feel like authorial hand so much as natural consequence to the actions set forth by the plot prior, actions which would've been innocent and harmless under different circumstances. I also loved the themes brought up by Perfect Girl; the entitlement of patriarchy is one of my favorite threats to explore in a story. In classic thriller fashion, I found it to strike the exact balance of over-the-top but technically believable/possible, which is always fun and helps keep the pages turning. I also like what Banghart did in terms of grounding the story in a specific time; the COVID19 pandemic is real and it happened and it's interesting to see the way the anxieties around illness and memories of masking were tackled in a story about kids whose educations and senses of safety were interrupted by this global phenomenon.
My main problem with Perfect Girl is this: there was one girl too many in the main narrative. I understand Banghart's desire to depict multiple avenues of girlhood and the ways that societal pressures manifest differently in each. However, in the attempt to do this, each girl ended up feeling unidimensional and underexplored: Alexis the Closeted Queer Athlete, Kellan the Outspoken Social Media Queen, Tiny the Troubled One, and Jessa the Quiet Academic. The greatest downfall of this choice is that the narrative didn't get to explore the ways that varying pressures often intersect. I found myself thinking about how much more nuanced and interesting each girl's personal arc would be if they just blended some of their characteristics. What if Jessa had been a closeted lesbian? David's desire to possess her and disregard for her autonomy would have gained additional dimension by intersecting Jessa's femaleness with her disinterest in existing as an object of male desire. And what if Kellan, the former star of a family social media page, was also a woman of color? Her pushback against both her mother's and her audience's expectations of her existence as a product rather than a person would have been more interesting to explore, I think.
In terms of just moving the plot along, I found that one of the quartet of best friends was often missing from the narrative altogether, and in such a way as though she took no action outside of the scene on page (or even worse, while she was on page). When her best friends were all kidnapped, I'm expected to believe Kellan would be making out with an annoying boy? And Alexis's role in also being in the creepy dollhouse basement seemed mainly to be making it physically harder to get all the girls out of there (not necessary given Jessa's missing glasses presenting impediment enough); she was an afterthought in the climax, where David had to physically leave Jessa's living room to go back and get an unconscious Alexis in the middle of his mother's monologue. Trimming the four down to three would clean up those logistical problems, and leave room for expanding upon the remaining girls' characterization in a way I feel the narrative needed to increase my personal engagement.
My secondary problem was my overall inability to suspend my disbelief at times when the narrative demanded it if I wanted to stay immersed in the story. The most glaring example of this comes in the form of Johnny, Tiny's boyfriend. I could, perhaps, have gotten over his anachronistic name (hello, 80s!) if his overall description didn't also feel very much out of touch with modernity, and if his role in the story had felt more grounded. After his introduction where he appeared at Jessa's house with a knife, beat up the boys, and acted erratically to demonstrate that Tiny is In Trouble with him, but then was summarily frogmarched back out again by Alexis and Kellan, I expected Johnny to come back into the story as more than a name mentioned in passing. I figured he would come back at the end and be crucial for stopping David and his mom, perhaps getting hurt in the process himself, but he just... stopped existing after the dramatic reveal that Tiny was being abused. .
Another example is the flashback scenes featuring a different group of girls. Once the conceit of the story became clear and the twist became known to the reader, I thought these scenes would reveal that David was secretly way older than he pretended to be, because it feels insane that a teenage boy would mastermind the whole kidnapping Jessa operation, and his emotional control over his mother would make more sense that way too. Plus, it would make more sense that he'd have had practice kidnapping other girls, and it would be far more chilling to me if Jessa was just the latest in a long line of false perfect girls who'd "disappointed" him once he realized they had personality and dimension outside of his weird fantasies about them. . This proved not to be the case, and the flashback scenes thus felt 1. less realistic and 2. less deserving of the page space they got. I would rather the space dedicated to them have been used for character work for the main narrative, where the information presented in the flashbacks could have been summarized on the news/in conversations between people/etc.
Finally in terms of susupension of disbelief, I'm supposed to believe there were no fatalities? Really? A group of less than capable teenagers gets themselves into this situation and none of them are permanently injured at least? I found the ending to be too happy, and closed off too cleanly for my liking. I wanted Jessa's backbone to grow sharp, and for her to stand up to her mom by the end.
Overall, a fast read with just enough chillingness to the plot that you can handwave any tropiness of the characters. While it wasn't for me personally, I'd recommend it to readers of Holly Jackson looking for a new voice in YA thrillers to spend a few hours with this spooky season.
I really enjoyed Perfect Girl's atmosphere. The environment around Jessa and her friends acted as threat and impediment as the story went on, but also set a tense, frightening emotional mood. I found the storm to be a useful tool to remove the modern day crutch of cell phones as an avenue for communication. The way it was introduced was clever and didn't feel like authorial hand so much as natural consequence to the actions set forth by the plot prior, actions which would've been innocent and harmless under different circumstances. I also loved the themes brought up by Perfect Girl; the entitlement of patriarchy is one of my favorite threats to explore in a story. In classic thriller fashion, I found it to strike the exact balance of over-the-top but technically believable/possible, which is always fun and helps keep the pages turning. I also like what Banghart did in terms of grounding the story in a specific time; the COVID19 pandemic is real and it happened and it's interesting to see the way the anxieties around illness and memories of masking were tackled in a story about kids whose educations and senses of safety were interrupted by this global phenomenon.
My main problem with Perfect Girl is this: there was one girl too many in the main narrative. I understand Banghart's desire to depict multiple avenues of girlhood and the ways that societal pressures manifest differently in each. However, in the attempt to do this, each girl ended up feeling unidimensional and underexplored: Alexis the Closeted Queer Athlete, Kellan the Outspoken Social Media Queen, Tiny the Troubled One, and Jessa the Quiet Academic. The greatest downfall of this choice is that the narrative didn't get to explore the ways that varying pressures often intersect. I found myself thinking about how much more nuanced and interesting each girl's personal arc would be if they just blended some of their characteristics. What if Jessa had been a closeted lesbian?
In terms of just moving the plot along, I found that one of the quartet of best friends was often missing from the narrative altogether, and in such a way as though she took no action outside of the scene on page (or even worse, while she was on page). When her best friends were all
My secondary problem was my overall inability to suspend my disbelief at times when the narrative demanded it if I wanted to stay immersed in the story. The most glaring example of this comes in the form of Johnny, Tiny's boyfriend. I could, perhaps, have gotten over his anachronistic name (hello, 80s!) if his overall description didn't also feel very much out of touch with modernity, and if his role in the story had felt more grounded. After his introduction where he appeared at Jessa's house
Another example is the flashback scenes featuring a different group of girls. Once the conceit of the story became clear and the twist became known to the reader, I thought these scenes would reveal that
Finally in terms of susupension of disbelief, I'm supposed to believe there were
Overall, a fast read with just enough chillingness to the plot that you can handwave any tropiness of the characters. While it wasn't for me personally, I'd recommend it to readers of Holly Jackson looking for a new voice in YA thrillers to spend a few hours with this spooky season.
A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher
dark
emotional
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
A Sorceress Comes to Call is a supernatural thriller written in the style of a regency romance. The result of the genre blend is a cocktail of dry witted characters with complex relationships, steadily growing suspense, and whatever it is about folklore that makes it feel true without having to bother with logical explanations for strange happenings. The elements made room for one another’s best features; scenes following Hester were all delighted laughter and romantic pining, where Cordelia’s sections encouraged the feeling of being an animal caught in a snare plucking up the courage to chew off its own limb. I don’t know how T Kingfisher makes all the tones and moods work together, but she does.
I’m a little more confident on the why of my next statement, which is that T Kingfisher is a master of the twisted fairy tale. I’m a big fan of subverting a traditional form to ask questions that preoccupy a modern audience. in particular, I found ASCTC challenges the oft-featured virtues of beauty, obedience, and the sanctity and security of blood-family from fairy tales in a particularly adept way, not by offering answers via counterexample, but by using said examples to ask questions:
What if the most beautiful woman in the room was considered to be so for her wit and warmth and the way she is true to herself (and indeed, she is not the Most Fair Bar None; if you ask Richard, nobody holds a candle to Hester), rather than for being the youngest with clearest skin and purest virtue?
What is obedience, really, when taken to an extreme, and how much agency can one truly be said to have when they’re being obedient?
What if it is your blood that presents the greatest danger to you and others? Where must your loyalty lie?
At no point did I feel preached at, or like I was reading an essay about fairytale, like old favorite tales with their obedient and lovely and youthful heroines were being looked down upon in the reading of ASCTC. I was just reading a gruesome, lovely story, that happened to be in conversation with ones that came before.
Any contention I have with the pace at which information about the central conflict was revealed—eg. Penelope’s introduction as a ghost, when no mention of ghosts was made up to that point—only serves to make the story feel more in keeping with fairy tale tradition. The headless horse digs itself up, erupts into demon form, and disappears after being flapped at by a goose? Solid! Doesn’t even break the top 10 most non-sequiter moments of the folktales I’ve read. The fantastical felt true enough for story and rooted it all more in the genre.
As counterbalance to—or rather, a technique used in tandem with—the use of the fantastical in ASCTC, the realism of the story’s character work helped further root the story in believability beyond the sort you need for a fairy tale. This was true for all the characters, but especially so for Hester and Cordelia, and even Evangeline. Reading Cordelia was heart wrenching in that her POV ran me through an emotional gauntlet; the exhausting, ambivalent feelings landscape of an abused child are difficult to read. She balances a hatred of her abuser, fear, and a desire under it all that Evangeline will stop and love her the way she’s claiming she has been the whole time, all the way through. It is a triumph and a relief when Cordelia realizes that the only way she will ever be free is if she stops hoping for change on Evangeline’s part and instead takes matters into her own hands. For Hester’s part, her anxieties around her chronic pain and aging into oblivion hit as true today as they would in the Regency period. I was delighted to see an “older” woman take up space (both diegetically and as a POV character) and be desired; she’s not taking the usual roles of an older woman in fairy tale (1. Jealous villain, 2. Infallibly wise mentor, or 3. Dead virtuous Saint). The two of these characters in tandem carry the story’s emotional landscape, and I will be thinking about the both of them long after the book’s closed and this review is posted.
I recommend A Sorceress Comes to Call for readers who love fallible characters doing their best against stacked odds, and anyone disappointed by the toothlessness of the Grimm Brothers fairytales.
The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose
Did not finish book.
Did not finish book.
The prose is so wooden as to be unreadable. No thank you!
Twelfth Knight by Alexene Farol Follmuth
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Twelfth Knight is an homage to the 2000s’ Shakespeare retelling movies, keeping the rom-com camp and familiarity of story but updating the world to be more reflective of real life. Vi Reyes, Jack Orsino, and the rest of the students in Messaline High were unapologetically queer, brown, and infused with modern sensibilities and concerns, which informed and added depth to their character arcs while still being rooted in the (cishet and white, yes, but no less profoundly/relatably human) Shakespeare source material. Not that adding representation of other sexualities/races/etc has to “have a reason behind it” (is it not reason enough that our world is diverse?) but Follmuth’s cast of characters all make more sense and are enriched by their backgrounds being taken into account when looking at them. Viola’s identity as a woman of color in nerd spaces informed so much of how prickly she is outwardly and how deeply aware she is of the myriad micro-aggressions coming her way, and Jack’s “don’t get mad where people can see” lifestyle is so much more meaningful when you consider that he is a Black boy. It’s a personal boon for me, but Vi’s femme-person-in-nerd-spaces (and I’m general) woes hit very close to home. Her anger and hurt read very realistically, and anger/who is allowed to feel it was a throughline I thoroughly enjoyed exploring in this story.
The characterization of all the primary and secondary characters was pretty top notch. God, its so refreshing that Olivia is nice and smart actually. It’s such a tired and (in my experience) untrue stereotype that The Cheerleader/Pretty Girl is a bitch and dumb and etc. She’s quite sweet and despite knowing Shakespeare’s version of this story I even believed that she and Vi could end up Having A Thing (they bantered just as naturally as V and J! Especially when she and V were making her ConQuest character sheet! Alas, I am no stranger to non-canon ships). And the complexity of Antonia and Viola’s relationship hit me in the heart as well. It’s very emblematic of how teenage girl friendships can go.
Overall this was a very teenage story: the texts actually read like teenager texts, the idea that communication would be harder than keeping up a catfishing ruse feels like very pre-frontal-lobe-development thinking, and the slow build of emotions that just overflow between Vi and Jack were such a delight. The book reads fast, and hits all the important beats of two separate coming of age stories that twine together into a really sweet, healthy romance.
I think Follmuth’s use of multiple POVs was a great way to transition from play to book, using the novel form to allow for a greater internality of characters and allowing her to make them her own/put her own twist on things. It also allowed for easier differentiation between characters. If I stopped reading in the middle of a section and forgot whose POV I was in, I could figure it out within a sentence or so very early on. Both Jack and Vi are powerhouses. The love and passion that each has for their respective hobby (and later, their shared ones) is great, and described in enough detail that a reader unfamiliar with them can still follow what’s going on. I am not a Football Person, but I cared about it when in Jack’s POV because his passion carried over. This capacity for deep feeling translates to their feelings about one another, too (because jocks and nerds really are two sides of the same coin); when they hate each other, it’s vitriolic, and when those feelings begin to shift… well. It’s very sweet. I rooted for them the whole way through (even if Vilivia still holds my heart).
In terms of some stylistic choices, I thought the climax-to-resolution pipeline was a little fast. It was in keeping with 2000s Shakespeare rom coms, and I’m satisfied with the overall ending, but for me personally, that sort of speedy resolution works better in film than in print. Similarly, I wasn’t big on the parenthetical asides to the reader, though they are in keeping with fourth-wall breaking in Shakespeare plays.
The nits I’m picking really are tiny, though, because there’s very little to critique in this book. Twelfth Knight does exactly what it sets out to do, and in a satisfying way. It’s lighthearted without sacrificing emotional depth, romantic while also satisfying individual character arcs, and an absolute love letter to people who love things passionately. I’d recommend this book to anyone who’s ever felt like a geek about something (but especially Shakespeare, sports, or nerd culture) and lovers of films a la She’s All That.
The characterization of all the primary and secondary characters was pretty top notch. God, its so refreshing that Olivia is nice and smart actually. It’s such a tired and (in my experience) untrue stereotype that The Cheerleader/Pretty Girl is a bitch and dumb and etc. She’s quite sweet and despite knowing Shakespeare’s version of this story I even believed that she and Vi could end up Having A Thing (they bantered just as naturally as V and J! Especially when she and V were making her ConQuest character sheet! Alas, I am no stranger to non-canon ships). And the complexity of Antonia and Viola’s relationship hit me in the heart as well. It’s very emblematic of how teenage girl friendships can go.
Overall this was a very teenage story: the texts actually read like teenager texts, the idea that communication would be harder than keeping up a catfishing ruse feels like very pre-frontal-lobe-development thinking, and the slow build of emotions that just overflow between Vi and Jack were such a delight. The book reads fast, and hits all the important beats of two separate coming of age stories that twine together into a really sweet, healthy romance.
I think Follmuth’s use of multiple POVs was a great way to transition from play to book, using the novel form to allow for a greater internality of characters and allowing her to make them her own/put her own twist on things. It also allowed for easier differentiation between characters. If I stopped reading in the middle of a section and forgot whose POV I was in, I could figure it out within a sentence or so very early on. Both Jack and Vi are powerhouses. The love and passion that each has for their respective hobby (and later, their shared ones) is great, and described in enough detail that a reader unfamiliar with them can still follow what’s going on. I am not a Football Person, but I cared about it when in Jack’s POV because his passion carried over. This capacity for deep feeling translates to their feelings about one another, too (because jocks and nerds really are two sides of the same coin); when they hate each other, it’s vitriolic, and when those feelings begin to shift… well. It’s very sweet. I rooted for them the whole way through (even if Vilivia still holds my heart).
In terms of some stylistic choices, I thought the climax-to-resolution pipeline was a little fast. It was in keeping with 2000s Shakespeare rom coms, and I’m satisfied with the overall ending, but for me personally, that sort of speedy resolution works better in film than in print. Similarly, I wasn’t big on the parenthetical asides to the reader, though they are in keeping with fourth-wall breaking in Shakespeare plays.
The nits I’m picking really are tiny, though, because there’s very little to critique in this book. Twelfth Knight does exactly what it sets out to do, and in a satisfying way. It’s lighthearted without sacrificing emotional depth, romantic while also satisfying individual character arcs, and an absolute love letter to people who love things passionately. I’d recommend this book to anyone who’s ever felt like a geek about something (but especially Shakespeare, sports, or nerd culture) and lovers of films a la She’s All That.
Don't Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
~ received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for honest review ~
Don’t Let the Forest In is great as a piece of speculative horror fiction. Drews’s writing brings together the visceral agony of anxiety so emblematic of being a teenager and feeling like the heart of you is antithetical to fitting in (AND that your otherness is visible to everyone else, too) with the dark atmosphere of the haunted forest. They don’t let the reader look away from scenes of body horror, from the monsters tearing apart two young boys determined to protect each other, but who are wildly outmatched by their foes. I felt lasting and immediate concern for both Andrew and Thomas’s wellbeing while reading, and that tension carries through both in the forest and out of it/in the school setting. I found the monsters themselves very imaginative, both those that drew upon existing fairytale mythos and those fully of Drews’s own design. Tying them to the creative work of the protagonists was lovely—they literally have a hand in their own destruction, and are tied directly to the horror of it all.
Where I struggled with DLTFI is in the character work. I found a lot of the dialogue to feel very stilted/scripted, especially between A and T, which was a shame because that made it harder to root for them as a couple, because I couldn’t feel their chemistry together. It’s doubly a shame, because there were moments of it (chapters 4 and 5 stand out especially, because they show the relationship as it was in the past and contrast it to now, as opposed to just saying outright that A would do anything for T and vice versa) so I knew while reading that Drews COULD do character work, and just didn’t in some scenes.
And then, very often, characters just DONT talk to each other, seemingly for the purpose of building tension. They just keep burying secrets and not saying them. The lack of communication means there’s not enough info to be intriguing, it’s just repetitive and gets tiring, and there’s not even drama between the characters as a consolation prize. I especially felt the absence of Andrew and Dove’s relationship in the story. I feel like a lot of A’s feelings about her and T (the romantic jealousy and worry about their friendship outside of A) could be fixed with a few Dove scenes (eg. A actually asking T to bring D in on monster hunting instead of just thinking about it and T saying no vehemently. A assumes T wants to keep her from the monsters and keep her safe and jealousy ensues! Or Dove trying to join them here and there while they’re both being all secretive before stubbornly going “who needs y’all” and avoiding them back instead of just not being around from the jump) As it is now, she feels like a convenient way for Andrew not to notice Thomas has feelings for him, another thing we’re told rather than being allowed to feel naturally.
The “telling” also slowed down the pacing of the plot, especially in the first half. I found myself tiring of the lampshading of “the thing that happened last year” without being given an explication which would allow closer readers to infer more about how that past ties into the main plot of this book.
I also found myself frustrated with the confused/changeable characterization of the protagonists. It felt like their personalities and closeness to one another and etc switched depending on what the plot needed in that moment. Eg. At one point I. The narrative Thomas, who until that point had been described as an effective protector for Andrew, is described as one who “bites people only for attention”. It feels that a lot of those inconsistencies are done to make the prose lovely, but the pretty phrasing gets in the way of clarity of characterization, and in the way of continuity (chapter 12: “Andrew would’ve noticed the lack of charcoal smudged sleeves and paint in [Thomas’s] hair”, but only a few pages earlier, Andrew DID notice even from a distance.)
I really do enjoy the prose though, and I feel it’s a good match for Andrew’s anxious, sharp, surprisingly tough character. The asides to his stories he wrote were lovely and I liked tying them to the supernatural elements that come later on in the book. They feel like special hints of what’s to come and I found them especially lovely. It’s impractical, but I do wish we got T’s illustrations to accompany them too.
I know I mentioned the dynamics being stilted earlier, but Drew’s did a great job seeding the obsession between Andrew and Thomas. Their dynamic is entrenched (ch 4), and I loved the internal tension of Andrew’s shame at his dependence at first, and how that changes and develops. His devotion is what he gravitates toward: Being Thomas’s.
I did like how Andrew changed as the stoey progressed. Taking the agency to go after Thomas and take up monster hunting of his own volition was great to see.
Overall, I think DLTFI is a story that has so many lovely elements, from the supernatural/fantasy horror to the teen drama to the exploration of queer identity, and I think that for another reader, they could come together to perfection. It just wasn’t quite right for me. I would recommend it to teen readers with an interest in queer narratives that don’t completely center on queerness, and fans of fairy tales with haunted forests.
Don’t Let the Forest In is great as a piece of speculative horror fiction. Drews’s writing brings together the visceral agony of anxiety so emblematic of being a teenager and feeling like the heart of you is antithetical to fitting in (AND that your otherness is visible to everyone else, too) with the dark atmosphere of the haunted forest. They don’t let the reader look away from scenes of body horror, from the monsters tearing apart two young boys determined to protect each other, but who are wildly outmatched by their foes. I felt lasting and immediate concern for both Andrew and Thomas’s wellbeing while reading, and that tension carries through both in the forest and out of it/in the school setting. I found the monsters themselves very imaginative, both those that drew upon existing fairytale mythos and those fully of Drews’s own design. Tying them to the creative work of the protagonists was lovely—they literally have a hand in their own destruction, and are tied directly to the horror of it all.
Where I struggled with DLTFI is in the character work. I found a lot of the dialogue to feel very stilted/scripted, especially between A and T, which was a shame because that made it harder to root for them as a couple, because I couldn’t feel their chemistry together. It’s doubly a shame, because there were moments of it (chapters 4 and 5 stand out especially, because they show the relationship as it was in the past and contrast it to now, as opposed to just saying outright that A would do anything for T and vice versa) so I knew while reading that Drews COULD do character work, and just didn’t in some scenes.
And then, very often, characters just DONT talk to each other, seemingly for the purpose of building tension. They just keep burying secrets and not saying them. The lack of communication means there’s not enough info to be intriguing, it’s just repetitive and gets tiring, and there’s not even drama between the characters as a consolation prize. I especially felt the absence of Andrew and Dove’s relationship in the story. I feel like a lot of A’s feelings about her and T (the romantic jealousy and worry about their friendship outside of A) could be fixed with a few Dove scenes (eg. A actually asking T to bring D in on monster hunting instead of just thinking about it and T saying no vehemently. A assumes T wants to keep her from the monsters and keep her safe and jealousy ensues! Or Dove trying to join them here and there while they’re both being all secretive before stubbornly going “who needs y’all” and avoiding them back instead of just not being around from the jump) As it is now, she feels like a convenient way for Andrew not to notice Thomas has feelings for him, another thing we’re told rather than being allowed to feel naturally.
The “telling” also slowed down the pacing of the plot, especially in the first half. I found myself tiring of the lampshading of “the thing that happened last year” without being given an explication which would allow closer readers to infer more about how that past ties into the main plot of this book.
I also found myself frustrated with the confused/changeable characterization of the protagonists. It felt like their personalities and closeness to one another and etc switched depending on what the plot needed in that moment. Eg. At one point I. The narrative Thomas, who until that point had been described as an effective protector for Andrew, is described as one who “bites people only for attention”. It feels that a lot of those inconsistencies are done to make the prose lovely, but the pretty phrasing gets in the way of clarity of characterization, and in the way of continuity (chapter 12: “Andrew would’ve noticed the lack of charcoal smudged sleeves and paint in [Thomas’s] hair”, but only a few pages earlier, Andrew DID notice even from a distance.)
I really do enjoy the prose though, and I feel it’s a good match for Andrew’s anxious, sharp, surprisingly tough character. The asides to his stories he wrote were lovely and I liked tying them to the supernatural elements that come later on in the book. They feel like special hints of what’s to come and I found them especially lovely. It’s impractical, but I do wish we got T’s illustrations to accompany them too.
I know I mentioned the dynamics being stilted earlier, but Drew’s did a great job seeding the obsession between Andrew and Thomas. Their dynamic is entrenched (ch 4), and I loved the internal tension of Andrew’s shame at his dependence at first, and how that changes and develops. His devotion is what he gravitates toward: Being Thomas’s.
I did like how Andrew changed as the stoey progressed. Taking the agency to go after Thomas and take up monster hunting of his own volition was great to see.
Overall, I think DLTFI is a story that has so many lovely elements, from the supernatural/fantasy horror to the teen drama to the exploration of queer identity, and I think that for another reader, they could come together to perfection. It just wasn’t quite right for me. I would recommend it to teen readers with an interest in queer narratives that don’t completely center on queerness, and fans of fairy tales with haunted forests.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder, Homophobia, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Toxic relationship, and Violence
Minor: Child abuse
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers
emotional
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
- good and helpful that Mosscap is the one in crisis now, but Dex is still not 100% healing is neither linear nor a thing with a fixed end goal
- idea of commerce in a post-capitalist world really cool, ditto reactions to disability
- awareness is good, but doesn't necessarily help with the self care
- expansion of world, not just seeing new people and new settlements, but watching them, those established things, react to something new
- good that we're in Dex's POV--we're like them--but it's Mosscap's story, M's growth, M's reckoning with itself
- sometimes there are no answers except that you love someone else and the two of you get to exist joyfully even when things are hard
- idea of commerce in a post-capitalist world really cool, ditto reactions to disability
- awareness is good, but doesn't necessarily help with the self care
- expansion of world, not just seeing new people and new settlements, but watching them, those established things, react to something new
- good that we're in Dex's POV--we're like them--but it's Mosscap's story, M's growth, M's reckoning with itself
- sometimes there are no answers except that you love someone else and the two of you get to exist joyfully even when things are hard