garrettcz's reviews
362 reviews

Dating & Dismemberment by A.L. Brody

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing 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? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Death, Violence, Murder, Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Gore, Physical abuse, Blood, Grief, Pregnancy

Minor: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Gore, Sexual content, Torture, Grief, Cannibalism, Stalking, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail

To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted relaxing 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? No

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Bullying, Racism, Colonisation, Classism

Moderate: Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Classism

Minor: Animal death, Biphobia, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Lesbophobia, Cultural appropriation, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, Classism

Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia by Jason Pargin

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective sad tense 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

Sweep in Peace by Ilona Andrews

adventurous emotional funny inspiring lighthearted mysterious tense fast-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? No

5.0

The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin

adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious sad tense slow-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

4.0

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

No spoilers:

I struggled with this book. I really liked the occult and mysticism elements. I really liked the history tie-ins and details. I liked some of the details about the film industry. 

I really disliked the characters. It felt like the author was going out of her way to make them unlikable and really awful to each other. 

I felt the story spent way too much time on really boring, mundane things and far too little time on the cool things like mysticism, occultism, and the horror elements. The story would sometimes dip into horror but the scenes felt way too fast so the atmosphere didn’t build up enough to where I really felt anything from them. I couldn’t get immersed in the spooky/horror scenes to really care and I didn’t care about the characters enough to really be engaged by the action scenes, so there never really felt like there was enough tension. 

Spoilers:

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I REALLY hated the romance ending thing. I saw it coming and was really hoping this wouldn’t happen. These characters felt like they really disliked each other and if romantic chemistry could be approximated with temperature theirs would be somewhere in the ballpark of absolute zero. Yuck. 

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Murder, Toxic friendship

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Cancer, Drug abuse, Drug use, Violence, Alcohol

Minor: Suicide, Terminal illness, Suicide attempt, Injury/Injury detail

Clean Sweep by Ilona Andrews

adventurous dark funny lighthearted tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This book was so much fun! I was really surprised with how cool and new the worldbuilding was!

Lots of great characters with very natural dialogue and interactions. Some romance elements, which I really enjoyed! Will definitely be reading more of this. 

Malice by Keigo Higashino

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Will of the Many by James Islington

adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I really enjoyed this book, but I struggled with some of the author’s choices at times. 

It is very obvious that Red Rising was a huge influence on this book, and that’s fine, all books and stories are influenced and inspired by other books and stories. However, sometimes the choices made by the author felt more than just “inspired by”. 

Not to say that this book is a Red Rising clone or something, because it isn’t. Sometimes it just really felt like the author really wanted to be writing Red Rising and to me it felt like some of that frustration made its way into the story. 

I also felt like the author didn’t think through some of the elements of the worldbuilding/story as well as he should have, especially in relation to how the class rankings work. I had to hand wave a few things about it, but they kept coming up and so it kept bugging me. 

The story premise is similar to Red Rising, but fantasy instead of sci-fi, but with way more political intrigue and less action, which I really enjoyed. The characters feel very lifelike and believable, and the character interactions feel organic. The author is great at that. The backstory and motivations of the main character are really good as well. The stakes and conflict are high points and make it a real page turner. The author does so many things really well and I’ll definitely be checking out more of his books. 

I really enjoyed reading and will snatch up the sequel the day of release. I just wish a few things had been different about it, which is the only thing holding this back from being one of my absolute favorites. 

4.5/5

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I never thought I’d be enraptured by a story told nearly entirely through love letters but here we are. 

So beautiful.