The Graveyard Watch is an urban fantasy set in metropolitan London with heavy “noir” film vibes and a fun found family element.

It follows Jocasta, a pathologist that has recently been transferred to the Graveyard Watch – a police segment dedicated to supernatural cases. While Jocasta is human, everyone around her is not, and we follow her as she adapts to her new strange – if not eccentric – colleagues and unravels a supernatural mystery.

The book is pitched as an urban fantasy romance, but I personally found that the romance took a backburner to the mystery elements of the plot. This is because, aside from Jocasta’s POV as she falls for the handsome captain, we also get a lot of chapters from the POV of Domingo, the department chief.

They are very different people with very different quests. This So, though their stories intermingle in regard to the mystery, they barely interact in each other’s POVs. This kind of created a disconnect to me as it felt like I was reading a different book every time we switched between the POVs. And we switch POVs a lot.

In a single chapter, we can go from Jocasta to Domingo to some random, nameless passer by in the scene, back to Domingo, back to Jocasta. This makes for a confusing experience, especially in the last third of the book where it was the most common. I remember a chapter where we had 3 paragraphs from Jocasta, maybe 5 from Domingo, then back to Jocasta suddenly.

Eason also likes to write chapters from the POV of nameless, external characters that are witnessing events of the plot. Oftentimes, these scenes are of little importance to the actual story, which adds to my disorientation. However, in Eason’s defense, I actually liked these segments and found them fun. The author explores different members of the world they built that fit funny archetypes or show interesting perspectives. You can definitely sense the love, and care, put into the book during these scenes.

Otherwise, the descriptions are well-done, and the characters are fun to read about, if not a bit tropey. The dialogue especially flowed amazingly, and never got awkward. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get fully invested in it, but I can see this book becoming someone else’s safe space, so it’s definitely worth a try.

Thank you to NETGalley and R.J. Eason for providing me with an eArc copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Where the Dark Stands Still by A.B. Poranek

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

4.0

HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE FANS UNITE. This book is the movie if it were set in a creepy enchanted manor. It’s also one of my most conflicting reads of the years of far.

Let me explain.

To start, Where the Dark Stands Still is a beautiful book.

The prose is vivid and captivating and just such a delight to read. Poranek has a great way of describing movements and evoking emotion in not only in the action scenes but also in the quiet, intimate moments, which happen more often in this book than others in the genre. So yes, it is a little slower paced, but I personally loved that.

Liska was great and The Litszy was an incredibly well-written, compelling character. I loved the fact that the reader got to uncover the layers to him alongside the main character.

Their romance is a bit of a slow-burn, but sooo well done (on a chemistry front) and perfectly paced in my option. However, something about it just.. doesn’t sit right with me.

I found out only after finishing this book that Liska is SEVENTEEN during this story… the Litszy is SEVEN HUNDRED years old. I know that everyone has their takes on this trope, but I can generally get over it when the character is:

a) of age (early twenties is my bare min.)
b) the age difference doesn’t show

Aside from the fact that Liska is a minor , the age difference really shows in this book. There were a couple of points that, though sweet, felt almost fatherly? Liska’s age is very apparent in her attitude, but that of the Litszy switches between being an annoying teenage boy to incredibly wise and mature. He’s 700 so it’s a given, but it kind of icked me out at certain points.

The fantasy aspect was generally decent, but a little confusing to me? Some things are established as limits, then broken down and revealed to not be limits, only to be propped up as limits again. Then again, I’m kind of slow when it comes to understanding these things so you can take this with a grain of salt

Otherwise, I really enjoyed unraveling the magical woods of the Diadra and exploring the sentient manor. This element was so well done, along with the little found family composed of Jaga and Maksio.

Now as for the ending… it was beautiful. Devastating, but beautiful nonetheless. I want to make that clear though because I feel like too many people are giving this the “fun romantasy” tag when it’s not quite that, and even so much more.

Of course it’s a gothic, so the aesthetic surrounding it is darker, but so are the themes. I personally found that the topics related especially to death and mourning were pretty well handled. However, it is again not that fun cosy book, it’s more of an upper YA to me.

Nevertheless, I had a generally positive experience, so I can’t bring myself to give this book anything less than a 4. Just wished the age situation for Liska was not what it is bc.. yikes.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon&Schuster for providing me with an eArc copy in exchange for my honest review.

Happily Ever Witch by Cassandra Gannon

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adventurous challenging funny lighthearted mysterious 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? It's complicated

5.0

Cassandra Gannon, the woman you are.

Hot Blooded by Heather Guerre

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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

3.0

Cover Story by Rachel Lacey

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emotional lighthearted 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

2.0

Cover Story is a sweet charming story about an actress falling in love with a bodyguard posing as her girlfriend.

The story puts a lot of time into developing the actress’ character — Natalie — and the way that she deals with the trauma of having been kidnapped by a stalker 10 years ago. This paid off, as I found that it did a great job of handling her problems in a sensitive way while critiquing the invasive nature of Hollywood.

As for Taylor, I loved the perspective put on her love for her family and facing recovery from her back injury.

I was initially interested in how both of these characters would come together and overcome their internal battles. But unfortunately, I couldn’t get invested because I felt that this book fell short for me in terms of conflict and tension.

This is partly due to the fact that I personally found the writing style stilted and disconnected. There is a lot of “this” then “that” then “this” to it. I previously mentioned that we see a lot about the characters’ internal conflicts, but we don’t really see it but are rather told it outright, if that makes sense.

Rather than being described a scene, or the way that a character truly feels, it just skips to “A” is feeling “this”, and “B” notices because it’s obvious. In that exact sentence format. There is little difference in it no matter the POV, which made it hard at some points to identify whether we were in Natalie or Taylor’s POV.

Similarly, there are a lot of time jumps where we miss out on scenes where the characters are meant to be bonding. A lot of it just happened off-page.

Due to this, I struggled to believe that they were truly falling in love with one another. I couldn’t pinpoint any romantic chemistry between them beyond them initially finding each other physically attractive.

Aside from the lack of romantic tension, I also felt that there wasn’t much tension in terms of the whole “forbidden fake dating” aspect.

The whole situation about what Taylor did to get the job is barely relevant. Them dating is not forbidden by Taylor’s company and never becomes a conflict. In fact, a bunch of characters are told of the fake dating situation outright, with barely any reaction to it, which made it lose even more tension.

In summary, though this book featured interesting perspectives, I failed to find myself invested in the characters or the romance.

Still, I am grateful to NetGalley for providing me with this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

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theverysleepygirl's reviews 232 reviews

theverysleepygirl's reviews
232 reviews