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citronella_seance's reviews
327 reviews
The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper
5.0
The Happiness of an Unending Universe
A Review of The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
When I was ten I wanted to be an astronaut. More specifically a ballerina, astronaut, janitor who was also a photographer. Unlike Calvin Lewis Jr’s dad, who collected Life magazines about the space craze of the 60s, I collected National Geographics. I clipped and taped images I liked all over my room and whenever I was feeling overwhelmed or like my dreams of being a ballerina, astronaut, janitor were unattainable, I would look at all of those pictures and it would make everything seem right.
I’m, sadly, not a ballerina, or an astronaut, or a janitor, but this book definitely transported me back to that time. It gave me an intense feeling of nostalgia, not only for my childhood, but also for my teenage years, when I was an aspiring journalist dealing with my own questions about my sexual orientation. Cal and I are SO similar, it’s almost a little scary. Perhaps that’s why I really enjoyed this novel as well, but, at its core, it’s a loving book about all the endless kinds of love there are.
When Calvin, Cal for short, learns that his dad has been selected to be part of a major space mission with NASA his life is uprooted completely. Literally and figuratively. He moves with his family from Brooklyn all the way down to Texas, where he knows his whole life will be on display as he becomes a part of media circus surrounding the mission. What he doesn’t expect, though, is to love it so much. Not just Texas, but the people, the story, and the heart, that surrounds everyone who plays a part in this mission.
Reading this book was like the equivalent of curling up on a couch on a rainy, spring day with a cup of hot tea and an old friend. The story felt so familiar to me and yet so exciting and new. I could see so much of myself reflected in Cal, with his Earth sign tendencies to always want to plan; plan for himself, for other people, for the country. I was also, however, getting an exciting look into Phil Stamper’s take on what a modern day “space craze” would look like.
This book is heartwarming and fun, but it’s also an exploration of us as a society, and our insatiable desire to always know what’s coming next. It also takes such a refreshing look at tough to tackle themes like mental illness, relationship conflict, and more.
I may not have become a ballerina, astronaut, janitor and I may not still know what I want to be when I grow up, but it’s okay not to know the ending sometimes. It’s okay not to plan for every little eventuality. It also okay to be “breezy”, as Cal would say. It’s okay to fall in love. I fell in love with this story and with Cal and Leon’s sense of wholeness as characters, and I know whatever path they choose from their endless options, they’re going to be happy together for a long while.
Thank you to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for providing me with a free eBook version for the purpose of this review.
The Gravity of Us is out today, February 4! Click here to purchase.
A Review of The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
When I was ten I wanted to be an astronaut. More specifically a ballerina, astronaut, janitor who was also a photographer. Unlike Calvin Lewis Jr’s dad, who collected Life magazines about the space craze of the 60s, I collected National Geographics. I clipped and taped images I liked all over my room and whenever I was feeling overwhelmed or like my dreams of being a ballerina, astronaut, janitor were unattainable, I would look at all of those pictures and it would make everything seem right.
I’m, sadly, not a ballerina, or an astronaut, or a janitor, but this book definitely transported me back to that time. It gave me an intense feeling of nostalgia, not only for my childhood, but also for my teenage years, when I was an aspiring journalist dealing with my own questions about my sexual orientation. Cal and I are SO similar, it’s almost a little scary. Perhaps that’s why I really enjoyed this novel as well, but, at its core, it’s a loving book about all the endless kinds of love there are.
When Calvin, Cal for short, learns that his dad has been selected to be part of a major space mission with NASA his life is uprooted completely. Literally and figuratively. He moves with his family from Brooklyn all the way down to Texas, where he knows his whole life will be on display as he becomes a part of media circus surrounding the mission. What he doesn’t expect, though, is to love it so much. Not just Texas, but the people, the story, and the heart, that surrounds everyone who plays a part in this mission.
Reading this book was like the equivalent of curling up on a couch on a rainy, spring day with a cup of hot tea and an old friend. The story felt so familiar to me and yet so exciting and new. I could see so much of myself reflected in Cal, with his Earth sign tendencies to always want to plan; plan for himself, for other people, for the country. I was also, however, getting an exciting look into Phil Stamper’s take on what a modern day “space craze” would look like.
This book is heartwarming and fun, but it’s also an exploration of us as a society, and our insatiable desire to always know what’s coming next. It also takes such a refreshing look at tough to tackle themes like mental illness, relationship conflict, and more.
I may not have become a ballerina, astronaut, janitor and I may not still know what I want to be when I grow up, but it’s okay not to know the ending sometimes. It’s okay not to plan for every little eventuality. It also okay to be “breezy”, as Cal would say. It’s okay to fall in love. I fell in love with this story and with Cal and Leon’s sense of wholeness as characters, and I know whatever path they choose from their endless options, they’re going to be happy together for a long while.
Thank you to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for providing me with a free eBook version for the purpose of this review.
The Gravity of Us is out today, February 4! Click here to purchase.
Testament by Jose Nateras
4.0
It's not often that a book terrifies me, but wow did this one. Not to mention, as a queer woman, it was terrifying on two fronts, the paranormal activity and the thought that past evils of privileged groups of people can have lingering effects on a place, on a society. Honestly, that thought scares me more than the paranormal activity. The thought that, despite all of the advances we have made as a society, our dark past can never be undone, and it will never stop haunting those people still affected by it.
Gabe Espinosa is back at work after a suicide attempt, and although neither he nor anyone else at the Rosebriar Room, a fancy restaurant in an upscale hotel that was converted from an old Gentleman's Club, thinks he's quite ready to be back yet, Gabe is trying his best to return to some sort of normalcy. That is, until a man hurls a three hundred pound table at him and tries to kill him. From there, it only gets scarier.
This book heavily reminded me of the indie horror film, It Follows. Not just because of the way both the movie and the book involve possessed people just off in the peripheral working their way ever so closer and closer to you, but also in the meaning behind it. It Follows is a metaphor for an STI, the main girl goes on a date with a man she barely knows and she gets tied up and told that this "thing" walking towards her is going to follow her now, until she passes it on to someone else. In the same vein, Gabe's following is tied to his idea that he cannot be worthy of love. In It Follows, the main character decides that she could never live with herself if she gave it to someone else, so she spends her whole life walking away from It. Gabe realizes he needs to move on, love himself, and find worth in himself to get the haunting to stop.
I loved this spooky, atmospheric, dark-themed read!
{This review will be published as a blog to the link below. It will also be posted, in a shortened version, to my Instagram @citronella_seance)
Gabe Espinosa is back at work after a suicide attempt, and although neither he nor anyone else at the Rosebriar Room, a fancy restaurant in an upscale hotel that was converted from an old Gentleman's Club, thinks he's quite ready to be back yet, Gabe is trying his best to return to some sort of normalcy. That is, until a man hurls a three hundred pound table at him and tries to kill him. From there, it only gets scarier.
This book heavily reminded me of the indie horror film, It Follows. Not just because of the way both the movie and the book involve possessed people just off in the peripheral working their way ever so closer and closer to you, but also in the meaning behind it. It Follows is a metaphor for an STI, the main girl goes on a date with a man she barely knows and she gets tied up and told that this "thing" walking towards her is going to follow her now, until she passes it on to someone else. In the same vein, Gabe's following is tied to his idea that he cannot be worthy of love. In It Follows, the main character decides that she could never live with herself if she gave it to someone else, so she spends her whole life walking away from It. Gabe realizes he needs to move on, love himself, and find worth in himself to get the haunting to stop.
I loved this spooky, atmospheric, dark-themed read!
{This review will be published as a blog to the link below. It will also be posted, in a shortened version, to my Instagram @citronella_seance)
Prosper's Demon by K.J. Parker
5.0
A Bloody, Philosophical Extravaganza
A Review of Prosper’s Demon by K.J. Parker
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Prosper’s Demon begins with a murder, a murder that is very easily overlooked once the dark, twisting tale actually starts to wind its way down to Hell. A murder that, in the grand scheme of things, really isn’t so bad, is it?
Our unnamed narrator is, for lack of a better term (and I really mean that), an exorcist. His (and I only use He/Him here because, similar to our narrator’s demon, “this one particular, unique, individual specimen was definitely, in my mind, a He.”) job is to remove immortal, evil, entities from people when they’ve found a home inside of one. The process is brutal, bloody, and painful for both the entity and the human, making many of the encounters with these entities a zero sum game. However, it’s a game our narrator has been playing since he was very young and, luckily, he’s very good at it.
This novella is equal parts witty and gritty and takes you down dark, and even darker still, philosophical paths until you’re questioning who’s really in the right. Our narrator isn’t a “good” person, he makes that abundantly clear. Then again, he’s not an evil person either. He’s simply the person with the skills necessary for the job and the one that just happens to be around at the time to do it.
When our narrator encounters one of these evil entities hidden inside one of the brightest minds of the century, Prosper of Schanz, he is faced with a dilemma. To remove the demon would surely end the man’s life, thus ending a life of pure genius. However, allowing the demon to stay means playing alongside that which he has vowed, and come to, hate. Like I said, it’s usually a zero sum game.
The gory, blood-splattered, bone-splintering ending was, really, both a complete surprise and completely inevitable. What surprised me the most was that I still ended the novella rooting for our unscrupulous narrator. He’s going to die eventually, but damn is he going to raise Hell in the meantime.
Thank you to Tor.com publishing and NetGalley for providing me with free access to the digital version of this book prior to its publication.
Prosper’s Demon will be available for purchase on Tuesday, January 28!
{This review will be published to my blog on January 15, 2020 and can be found at that time at www.csreads.home.blog along with a corresponding Instagram post @citronella_seance}
A Review of Prosper’s Demon by K.J. Parker
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Prosper’s Demon begins with a murder, a murder that is very easily overlooked once the dark, twisting tale actually starts to wind its way down to Hell. A murder that, in the grand scheme of things, really isn’t so bad, is it?
Our unnamed narrator is, for lack of a better term (and I really mean that), an exorcist. His (and I only use He/Him here because, similar to our narrator’s demon, “this one particular, unique, individual specimen was definitely, in my mind, a He.”) job is to remove immortal, evil, entities from people when they’ve found a home inside of one. The process is brutal, bloody, and painful for both the entity and the human, making many of the encounters with these entities a zero sum game. However, it’s a game our narrator has been playing since he was very young and, luckily, he’s very good at it.
This novella is equal parts witty and gritty and takes you down dark, and even darker still, philosophical paths until you’re questioning who’s really in the right. Our narrator isn’t a “good” person, he makes that abundantly clear. Then again, he’s not an evil person either. He’s simply the person with the skills necessary for the job and the one that just happens to be around at the time to do it.
When our narrator encounters one of these evil entities hidden inside one of the brightest minds of the century, Prosper of Schanz, he is faced with a dilemma. To remove the demon would surely end the man’s life, thus ending a life of pure genius. However, allowing the demon to stay means playing alongside that which he has vowed, and come to, hate. Like I said, it’s usually a zero sum game.
The gory, blood-splattered, bone-splintering ending was, really, both a complete surprise and completely inevitable. What surprised me the most was that I still ended the novella rooting for our unscrupulous narrator. He’s going to die eventually, but damn is he going to raise Hell in the meantime.
Thank you to Tor.com publishing and NetGalley for providing me with free access to the digital version of this book prior to its publication.
Prosper’s Demon will be available for purchase on Tuesday, January 28!
{This review will be published to my blog on January 15, 2020 and can be found at that time at www.csreads.home.blog along with a corresponding Instagram post @citronella_seance}
Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth
5.0
I absolutely loved this book. Maybe it was because I've never read the Divergent series (it's on my list, it was just trending during a time when I wasn't reading as much) and got to go into this blind that I ended up loving it so much. It completely exceeded my expectations and was nothing like I thought it would be, in a good way. From the description and what I knew about the book, I thought this was going to be a story purely about chosen ones going through their quarter life crisis in the wake of having fulfilled their purpose, but I ended up getting parallel universes and magic and amazing villains. It was so much more than I could have asked for.
Shielded by KayLynn Flanders
4.0
I really enjoyed this book. I think it was a very solid opening to a series and I got involved in all of the characters, especially Enzo. Sorry, he's just too damn cute. The world was very easy to slide into and feel comfortable in. I even enjoyed the magic system, although I feel like all we got to see in this first one was the very tip of the magic iceberg. Jennesara is a solid protagonist. She is quite literally put through the ringer in this book and I remember asking myself several times how much more this poor girl was going to have to endure. Through it all, though, she never loses sight of who she is as a person, which I thought was refreshing to see in a YA novel with a female protagonist. Too often, female leads fall into a troupe of having no sense of self and the plot points of the book help them find it. I felt like Jennesara was already extremely comfortable in who she is as a person, she just needs help figuring out a few things. It's kind of like putting the horse before the cart.
My only qualm with the book is the little one or two page intermissions between the chapters. I found it hard to track where those little snippets fell on the timeline and give them a frame of reference to the rest of the plot. There's one in particular that involves a character that shouldn't be able to be in that snippet by that point of the book but there's no mention of if this little snippet takes place before the reason they should no longer be in that snippet has happened. If that makes sense while keeping it spoiler free. They helped move the plot along, but sometimes they left me a little bit more confused about where I was in the timeline or if I was missing a bigger plot reveal because I couldn't figure out when in the timeline something was happening.
That's the only reason I knocked this solid fantasy staple from a five to a four. I felt, at times, that I was missing something, but the action and characterization in the actual chapters more than made up for it. I can't wait to read the second one and see what other adventures Jenna, Ren, and Enzo can get up to.
Full Review on Blog!
My only qualm with the book is the little one or two page intermissions between the chapters. I found it hard to track where those little snippets fell on the timeline and give them a frame of reference to the rest of the plot. There's one in particular that involves a character that shouldn't be able to be in that snippet by that point of the book but there's no mention of if this little snippet takes place before the reason they should no longer be in that snippet has happened. If that makes sense while keeping it spoiler free. They helped move the plot along, but sometimes they left me a little bit more confused about where I was in the timeline or if I was missing a bigger plot reveal because I couldn't figure out when in the timeline something was happening.
That's the only reason I knocked this solid fantasy staple from a five to a four. I felt, at times, that I was missing something, but the action and characterization in the actual chapters more than made up for it. I can't wait to read the second one and see what other adventures Jenna, Ren, and Enzo can get up to.
Full Review on Blog!
A Peculiar Peril by Jeff VanderMeer
3.0
This book would have been five stars if it had been 200 pages shorter.
The Friend Scheme by Cale Dietrich
3.0
I want to preface this review by saying that this book wasn’t for me, and that’s okay. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I will never find a good enough reason to think an LGBTQ+ YA book shouldn’t exist. I grew up reading authors like Meg Cabot and Ann Brashares, because they were some of the only books I felt I could relate to. If you had told 13 year old me that 15 years in the future LGBTQ+ books for people my age were a thing, and not just a thing, but prevalent, I would have looked at you so funny. I’m very happy this book exists and that some young adult might pick it up and find what they need in it. However, I had a few problems with this.
Nick Miller is just that, a Miller. A son of the one most infamous crime bosses in Florida and part of a family that has been committing crime and running the underground for decades. He’s never quite fit in, though, and he’s pretty convinced a life of crime isn’t for him. He’s not like his brother, Luke, who picked up the ropes so naturally and even seems to enjoy everything their father teaches them and encourages them to do.
Nick feels trapped, and with no real friends (because of the whole mafia thing) he’s exceedingly lonely. Until, one night, when he meets Jason, a mystery boy he’s never seen around his family’s bar before who takes an immediate interest in him. They start hanging out and getting to know each other, but they both immediately realize that what they thought was a friendship could be so much more. That is, until Nick learns of a rival family plot to infiltrate the Miller ranks as new friends or lovers to try and capture some of the family secrets or weaknesses. Nick immediately knows Jason is a Donovan (the rival family), but could the truth actually be so much more?
I, sadly, had a few issues with this book but I think the biggest one was the ending. It felt a little like Dietrich was ready to be done by the end so he just kind of wrapped it all up with a nice bow even if the package inside didn’t make total sense. There’s a major twist at the end that I won’t talk about because, spoilers, but it happens so fast towards the very end, I barely had time to ruminate in it. Not even 10-15 pages later it’s the end of the book and there’s somehow…closure, but I can’t imagine how because it feels like nothing was done to earn it. I also still have so many questions. There were huge plot points of the book left out of the ending. Like, does Nick ever come out to his dad and the Miller family? Does he ever tell Luke who Jason really is? How do Jason and Nick reconnect and how does Nick even get to being comfortable with that emotionally and mentally? It all just felt a tad rushed in the last 50 or so pages.
Having said that, though, I really enjoyed Nick and Jason’s relationship. Despite the backdrop of crime, they’re still just two boys trying to figure themselves out while not being a total dolt in front of the other. Which, I can relate to immensely as I spent a huge portion of my middle and high school years being an utterly awkward clutz.
I think if this book had been just a little bit longer and given me more time to sit in the angst or showed me Jason or Nick actually fighting or working to be around the other one again, I would have given this a higher rating. But, I just felt a little cheated by the end.
Nick Miller is just that, a Miller. A son of the one most infamous crime bosses in Florida and part of a family that has been committing crime and running the underground for decades. He’s never quite fit in, though, and he’s pretty convinced a life of crime isn’t for him. He’s not like his brother, Luke, who picked up the ropes so naturally and even seems to enjoy everything their father teaches them and encourages them to do.
Nick feels trapped, and with no real friends (because of the whole mafia thing) he’s exceedingly lonely. Until, one night, when he meets Jason, a mystery boy he’s never seen around his family’s bar before who takes an immediate interest in him. They start hanging out and getting to know each other, but they both immediately realize that what they thought was a friendship could be so much more. That is, until Nick learns of a rival family plot to infiltrate the Miller ranks as new friends or lovers to try and capture some of the family secrets or weaknesses. Nick immediately knows Jason is a Donovan (the rival family), but could the truth actually be so much more?
I, sadly, had a few issues with this book but I think the biggest one was the ending. It felt a little like Dietrich was ready to be done by the end so he just kind of wrapped it all up with a nice bow even if the package inside didn’t make total sense. There’s a major twist at the end that I won’t talk about because, spoilers, but it happens so fast towards the very end, I barely had time to ruminate in it. Not even 10-15 pages later it’s the end of the book and there’s somehow…closure, but I can’t imagine how because it feels like nothing was done to earn it. I also still have so many questions. There were huge plot points of the book left out of the ending. Like, does Nick ever come out to his dad and the Miller family? Does he ever tell Luke who Jason really is? How do Jason and Nick reconnect and how does Nick even get to being comfortable with that emotionally and mentally? It all just felt a tad rushed in the last 50 or so pages.
Having said that, though, I really enjoyed Nick and Jason’s relationship. Despite the backdrop of crime, they’re still just two boys trying to figure themselves out while not being a total dolt in front of the other. Which, I can relate to immensely as I spent a huge portion of my middle and high school years being an utterly awkward clutz.
I think if this book had been just a little bit longer and given me more time to sit in the angst or showed me Jason or Nick actually fighting or working to be around the other one again, I would have given this a higher rating. But, I just felt a little cheated by the end.