Paper Valentine started off promisingly, an intriguing cross-genre YA story that explores loss and the fine line between challenging and enabling your personal demons. Hannah Wagnor is an almost uncomfortably silent protagonist, whose mind is always going a thousand miles a minute but who lets precious little of those thoughts slip through her lips. Part of that is self preservation — she’s (actually) haunted by the ghost of her recently deceased best friend, Lillian, and she isn’t in a hurry to make that fact known […]
Don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for
I forgot that I finished this book. I’d been dragging my way through it, reading it only because the library was going to take it back, but then The Raven King came out and then my request for Eligible came in and I started and stopped The Glass Sword so many times that I briefly considered just not picking it back up. But I hate that. So I guess I finished it? But I had to read some spoilery reviews on Goodreads to remind myself […]
A safe space for spoilers
Just throwing this out there right off the bat… this review is gonna have spoilers in it. They will be unavoidable, and the entire review is going to assume that you have also read this book, because I need a safe space to discuss the ending and what that means retroactively about the series and for my feelings in general. If you’re looking for a general sense of how much I recommend this book, I point you toward my four star rating and encourage you […]
Help Me Save Myself
Brazen is the final book in the Gilded series. It combines Korean mythology, fantasy, and thriller. I thought the third book had some horror thrown in too. The heroine, Jae Hwa, does some really smart things, does some really stupid things, and in general handles her very difficult circumstances very well. At the start of the story, she has placed herself in the hands of Kud, the god of darkness, in order to protect her loved ones. Her situation looks pretty bleak, and she needs […]
Something different, something familiar, something magical.
With the fourth and final book in Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle coming in April, I finally gave myself permission to read the series I’ve heard so many good things about over the years. I must say, the first three books managed to exceed my expectations, and now I’m afraid I’m going to be very impatient for the remaining weeks until I get my grubby fingers on the last book. One of the less obvious advantages of waiting as long as I did to read this […]
Why spend a 5-star review explaining why I like the book, when I can chide heartbroken shippers instead?
Beware shippers, you guys. Sigh. I ruined this review before it ever began, because right after I finished Ruin and Rising, I ran (internet-ran) to the reviews on Goodreads, excitedly, to hit the “like” button a bunch of times on said reviews, and instead, I was confronted with a bunch of one- and two-star reviews from people who were devastated that their favorite series would end this way. Some of them made valid points, that I nonetheless disagree with, but I understand their interpretations. But […]