mooshake's reviews
245 reviews

Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang

challenging dark tense fast-paced

4.0

1. ily moira quirk 
2. this book’s main sin is veering into the rf kuang school of clubbing the reader over the head with The Point™️ instead of letting them come to their own conclusions naturally, as well as a few small things like thomil and sciona’s romantic subplot making me internally raise several eyebrows and an attempted sexual assault scene that was handled quite gracelessly imo. but god damn was it compulsively readable (listenable? lol) and the ending did ultimately, in an emotional sense, catch me slippin. 

A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft
Did not finish book. Stopped at 26%.

in theory this has a lot of elements i love. in practice the worldbuilding is clumsy, i keep getting the characters mixed up because they’re so boring, and the romance is the definition of “i love the lack of energy she brings, go girl give us nothing!” 

idk if i don’t care that i missed an entire dialogue exchange while trying to wrangle my christmas tree into standing up straight, it’s probably a sign i should stop.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden

dark emotional sad medium-paced

4.5

i don't know how this went from me almost dnf'ing at the 20% mark to struggling with whether to give it a 4.5 or a 5. katherine arden is a word magician.

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Did not finish book. Stopped at 10%.

idk if its the book itself or the fact that the audiobook sounds like it was recorded underwater but every time i press play my mind wanders so i'm just going to have to admit that i don't care :^) 

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 by David Petersen

adventurous dark medium-paced

3.0

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

dark emotional tense medium-paced

5.0

the five star drought that i’ve had since february is over!!!!!! thank god 🫠

i was worried that because i’m admittedly not a shakespeare girlie this would be a flop for me; but i was so blown away (i felt physically sick reading the climax lol) that i’m now realising that i just had bad english teachers all my life and shakespeare fucks, actually. wow wow wow

An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson

dark mysterious medium-paced

1.0

i really liked alexis henderson’s other works, but this is perplexingly bad. that passage that describes the main characters having sex and the only sound that can be heard is the thump of the headboard haunts my nightmares.

Wonders of the Invisible World by Patricia A. McKillip

adventurous mysterious

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler
Did not finish book. Stopped at 2%.

written by a man (derogatory)

Rouge by Mona Awad

dark emotional slow-paced

4.0

listen…should this have been a 250-300 page book at most? yes. was the detective subplot unnecessary? yes. was the tom cruise thing, even though i understand the significance of it, silly as fuck? yes.

and yet! i made it to the climax and my brain finally started picking up what mona awad was putting down. maybe it's because i love explorations of grief and complicated parent relationships, as well as being a whore for anything fairytale adjacent- but the ending really touched me AND i had a ball pondering the symbolism afterwards in a way that i have not done with most of the books i’ve read this year. i don’t know how exactly but i came away really appreciating what this book did with its themes.

if i had read rouge before bunny i might’ve rated it higher, bunny is the better-crafted novel hands down. but i still have a soft spot for rouge in spite of myself. never underestimate the power of something tapping into your own damage i guess lol.

i do wish mona awad picked any other celebrity tho 😭