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howlinglibraries's Reviews (1.89k)
emotional
hopeful
sad
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
I haven't been in the mood for contemporary romances lately (much less sports ones!) and I never pick up books in the middle of a series first, but I saw someone post a review for this on instagram and something about it sounded like exactly what I needed as a palette cleanser right now, and it was!
Blurred Lines is a really sweet, angsty romance featuring long-time best friends hiding secret loves for one another, which is a combination of so many of my favorite tropes rolled into one. It wasn't anything ground-breaking and some plot moments seemed silly or over-the-top, but I don't mind that in a swoony romance. What mattered most was that the chemistry between these characters was absolutely there and I found myself rooting for their romance so easily!
Also, Brendan is clearly neurodivergent-coded and I saw myself so much in that depiction and the pain he carried about being told he was too much, too needy, too loud, etc. I think just about everyone who grows up neurodivergent knows what it's like to need to mask your truest self to please the people around you so they don't leave, and oof, it was tough to read his inner thoughts at times but I definitely related. 💔
I recommend this to anyone looking for a sweet queer sports romance, as long as you don't mind some tough topics (check my trigger warnings below if you need to!).
✨ Representation: both MMCs are bi/pan, multiple queer side characters, Brendan is implied to be neurodivergent
Blurred Lines is a really sweet, angsty romance featuring long-time best friends hiding secret loves for one another, which is a combination of so many of my favorite tropes rolled into one. It wasn't anything ground-breaking and some plot moments seemed silly or over-the-top, but I don't mind that in a swoony romance. What mattered most was that the chemistry between these characters was absolutely there and I found myself rooting for their romance so easily!
Also, Brendan is clearly neurodivergent-coded and I saw myself so much in that depiction and the pain he carried about being told he was too much, too needy, too loud, etc. I think just about everyone who grows up neurodivergent knows what it's like to need to mask your truest self to please the people around you so they don't leave, and oof, it was tough to read his inner thoughts at times but I definitely related. 💔
I recommend this to anyone looking for a sweet queer sports romance, as long as you don't mind some tough topics (check my trigger warnings below if you need to!).
✨ Representation: both MMCs are bi/pan, multiple queer side characters, Brendan is implied to be neurodivergent
Content Warnings
Moderate: Bullying, Rape, Sexual assault, Violence, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Outing, Alcohol, Sexual harassment
Minor: Homophobia, Stalking
lighthearted
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
This wasn't a new favorite, but it was fun! I loved the premise of the story, but the writing left me a little confused at times. Maybe it was just difficult for me to imagine some of the things the author was describing (and to be fair, I do have covid brain fog right now, so that could be on me). All I know is that I thought this was a pretty alright Christmas horror story and I'm looking forward to reading more from this author soon!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief
Moderate: Child death
Minor: Violence
I'll try my best to do this book justice with a review, but it isn't every day that you find a new favorite zombie book of all time.
Every day has its destiny. The cracking icicle that's almost ready to fall. A branch weighed by too much snow, soon to break. Clouds that try and try to hold in their water, only to fail, and in doing so fulfill their meaning in the world. An architecture of inevitability, that this was fated to be. The destiny of this day: Bloodshed. It would begin with a single drop.
Where the Dead Go to Die is a fresh take on the zombie apocalypse that I've never seen before. In a future where the zombie infection takes months, sometimes even years to change a person into the inevitable, government agencies set up hospice centers to allow the would-be walking dead a safe place to be taken care of while they live out their final days in some semblance of dignity and calm.
The book follows a young mother named Emily who's starting her new job as a nurse at one of these hospice centers, and throughout it, we get the chance to grow attached not only to her and her daughter Lucette, but also a wide panel of side characters who are human, flawed, and impossible not to empathize with. Dries and Gunnells are masters at developing these characters until they feel like they could walk right off the pages, which means it hurts that much more whenever any terrible fate befalls one of them.
Where the Dead Go to Die is perhaps the first piece of zombie media of any form to break my heart so thoroughly; if you need proof, I'm fighting tears just typing this review, thinking about some of the characters and how much better they deserved. I adore horror stories that can cut to the heart of me and this one didn't let me down. I feel like I'm going to mourn this story for a long time, and for me, that's a mark of a genuinely memorable read.
I can't wait to read more by both of these authors and I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It takes place around the holidays, but you could easily read it at any time of year. Whether you typically enjoy zombie tales or not, I highly suggest picking this up if you like emotional horror stories with a lot of heart. 5 stars, easy. Thanks for the heartache, Dries and Gunnells. 💔
✨ Representation: one Black side character, one queer side character
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This town worships the dead, but it has no respect for the living.
What an incredibly thought-provoking, tragic tale.
Linghun follows a high schooler name Wenqi and her family as they move into their new house in the HOME community: Homecoming of Missing Entities. The community is known for its spiritual activity, and when a family is lucky enough to buy a place to live therein, they do so with a near-guarantee that they'll be able to summon the spirit of a lost loved one into their new residence. Wenqi's family lost her older brother when he was a child, and her parents have never recovered, so they set right to work trying to bring his spirit into their world.
The idea of a family grieving a lost child is sad enough, but Linghun also dwells upon what that grief does to the living who are left behind, especially in an instance like this, where Wenqi feels neglected to the point that she tells us upfront she fully believes her mother would trade her for her dead brother in an instant. It's heartbreaking to watch the pain that she goes through, but it's hard at times to hate her mother when you see how broken this woman is, too.
HOME is such an interesting premise and I would eagerly read more stories set in this community because I'm just so fascinated by the idea of an entire neighborhood of haunted houses, especially ones like this where being haunted is the goal everyone aspires toward and not something to fear. The writing in this story was beautiful and I can certainly see why so many of my friends raved about this novella to me. It's a piece that will certainly be sticking with me for a long time and I'm excited to read more from Ai Jiang!
✨ Representation: Wenqi and her family, as well as numerous side characters, are Chinese; one side character uses they/them pronouns
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief
Moderate: Cancer, Child death, Death, Terminal illness, Violence
Minor: Infidelity
fast-paced
I love a collection of Christmas horror stories and I had high hopes for this one, especially with the way it kicked off. The first story, 'The Fourth Emergency Service' by Lex H. Jones, was an instant favorite for me. It follows a woman who works at a very unique call center and, while it was predictable, it was in a good way — one of those stories that leaves you eagerly flipping the pages to see if you're right and to watch it all play out.
Unfortunately, after the first story, the rest were a bit of a letdown. I mostly enjoyed 'Ho Ho Howard' by RJ Roles and thought the writing in 'Lords of the Sleigh' by Gage Greenwood was beautifully written, but none of the remaining pieces stuck out to me and I even found myself skim-reading the endings of a couple because I couldn't seem to get interested in them.
Collected Christmas Horror Shorts III has some good pieces and is worth picking up if you're an avid lover of holiday horror short stories like I am, but it won't go down in my "best of" list this year, sadly.
Thank you to the publisher for the review copy! All thoughts are honest and my own.
Unfortunately, after the first story, the rest were a bit of a letdown. I mostly enjoyed 'Ho Ho Howard' by RJ Roles and thought the writing in 'Lords of the Sleigh' by Gage Greenwood was beautifully written, but none of the remaining pieces stuck out to me and I even found myself skim-reading the endings of a couple because I couldn't seem to get interested in them.
Collected Christmas Horror Shorts III has some good pieces and is worth picking up if you're an avid lover of holiday horror short stories like I am, but it won't go down in my "best of" list this year, sadly.
Thank you to the publisher for the review copy! All thoughts are honest and my own.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Animal death, Child death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Murder, Alcohol
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Fresh snow fell, erasing all evidence of her pain and injury, and it left the land unblemished, ready for new hurts to be layered on top like a fantastic, hopeless sort of sediment beneath the white powder of broken dreams.
I love a good Christmas horror story, and while my tastes for holiday frights usually leans more into the fantastical or blood-splattered sort, there's nothing like a classic gothic tale to creep into your bones and settle there on a winter night.
I've loved Gemma Amor's work ever since I was introduced to it by the NoSleep Podcast years ago, and I was so excited to receive a review copy of Christmas at Wheeldale Inn. This is an eerie historical novella of a couple who gets lost out on a desolate moor in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve and finds themselves at Wheeldale Inn, where they believe they've found salvation despite the somewhat unusual nature of the inn's occupants.
Wheeldale is a difficult read at times, as it features heavy themes of grief and domestic abuse in a marriage gone sour, but there's also an underlying element of magic in the way Mrs. Wilcox views the inn and its innkeeper that I was mesmerized by. I loved to hate Mr. Wilcox and found myself desperately flipping the pages in hopes of seeing him get his comeuppance, and while I won't spoil a thing for you, I'll say that I was both surprised and delighted by the final twist in this story.
If you want a cozy, quiet horror story to keep you company for the holidays, I highly recommend this one!
Thank you to the publisher for the review copy! All thoughts are honest and my own.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief
Moderate: Animal death, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Misogyny, Toxic relationship
This one definitely wasn't for me. I appreciated the idea behind it, but something about both of these characters felt so cringe-inducing to me. I think I might have enjoyed this a lot more when I was in my early 20s and I'd say someone who is in the mood for "edgy" characters might like this more than I did.
✨ Representation: lesbian/questioning MC, trans MC
✨ Representation: lesbian/questioning MC, trans MC
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Sexual content, Violence, Vomit, Death of parent