January Reading Wrapup

I want to start off by saying that this is not a book I would have picked for myself (I got it in a blind date with a fantasy book… this book is a middle book in a series of stand alone books and is alternate universe paranormal romance) and there were many points where I considered DNFing this.

That said I actually had some fun some reading this so here’s a breakdown.

The first chapter is a wild jumping off point and was kinda too much for someone who is unfamiliar with the series. However, once the book settles into the proceeding chapters, the author does a pretty good job of making sure a new reader isn’t completely lost. Unfortunately, this does make things feel a bit explosiony, especially towards the beginning.

Weirdly, given how wild the first chapter is, the story is kinda slow to pick up, imo, there’s a lot of establishing, but once it got going I was having a pretty good time. Except for one thing…

If the characters are not talking the author thinks, either the reader lives under a rock (ex. she gave the definition for VIP), or that they have read all her other books and know what she’s talking about (I could not give you more than a vague description of a dust bunny; six legs, four eyes (two are retractable???), sometimes fluffy, and a “pickupable” size).

Oh! Also, while the MMC is obviously smitten with the FMC, any time the FMC has romantic or lustful feelings they feel like they were added in when the book was mostly done after someone realized the romance had nothing on the FMCs side.

I would recommend this book to people who like, light fake dating, spy adjacent stories, worlds that kinda sound like our time but also the future and the past?

Overall, this was pretty good, and I only have one major complaint. Basically, once the villain was revealed (it was kinda obvious but in a way that the MC might not have seen) the motivations stopped making sense. The villain became almost cartoonishly evil, which is unfortunate.

That said I think a lot of people could enjoy this book if they like, mysteries, traumatized characters, lesbians, and they don’t mind that the MC has no backbone for most of the book.

I can’t really talk much about this without spoiling it… It’s really good; if you like a MC you can yell at then you might like this.

This was my first Stephan Graham Jones, and I will be reading more of his work in the future. You might not like this if you don’t like a character who is afraid you’ll think they’re not a threat. Also, the ending made me cry.

I might need to up my rating on this. I came across this randomly (probably because of it being republished) and immediately had to read it (I was in the middle The Handmaids Tale at the time). T. Kingfisher described this as a middle grade novel but kinda for adults (this is pretty gory), I need more of that. If you are the type of person who still occasionally rereads, The Tale of Despereaux, even after that terrible movie, you will like this book. If you loved this and haven’t read The Tale of Despereaus, give it a try, it’s one of my ATFs.

Reading this “right after”, I was a Teenage Slasher, was an interesting experience, because while these stories are very different they also are oddly similar. I would describe this book as a slow quiet horror, beyond that I think I would have an easier time painting a picture of what this novel is than describe it.