clovetra's reviews
226 reviews

I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea

dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

monkey covering eyes emoji 🙈

i’m actually so sad i didn’t like this more. this was one of my most looked forward to reads. i’ve been hanging to read this since 2023, and to not like it…. :(

i’m going to be honest — i had a lot of issues whilst reading this. i reserve 1-star ratings for books i positively despise, but honestly i can’t say what has bumped this up to 2-stars. i can’t think really of a single thing i liked. i guess i enjoyed the “female rage” type of aspect to laure? the fact she’s not a perfect MC was nice. the fact she wasn’t a shoe-in Y/N who was perfect at everything was nice to see, and the fact she didn’t really make apologies for getting what she wanted, however she did so, was also fun.

now… onto my list of grievances.

laure is so flat. she is not interesting. her only personality traits are her talking about the ballet, talking about being evil, and talking about getting revenge. she has no deeper substance. only really in the last chapters did she face any real character development.
the other characters are somehow even more flat than the MC. andor is probably the best written, but even then he feels generic. josephine, ciro, everyone at the ballet, etc…. nobody was giving me anything
the pacing was so off for most of the book. like why was the climax of the story finished with 30% left, then ANOTHER conflict arises and is dealt with in like two chapters, then the ending showing how the characters have changed was rushed. like why does one major conflict end with laure waking up. and then the rising action built up in said conflict just fizzles away as it doesnt automatically continue from when laure wakes up ! what is going on
there is no plot. the plot is for laure to do x at the ballet. and then she does. and then that is repeated like 4 times with almost verbatim dialogue, inner thoughts, resolution, etc. and then outside of that with acheron, the story has laure fucking about, then something happens, and then she fucks around a bit more, and then the resolution to all her questions is handed to her on a silver platter. like what???? why was the villain the one to tell laure their plan(s). the story focused so much on laure working out this “murder mystery”, and she did a terrible job!
everyone’s motivations in this were stupid. everyone in this story minus laure felt like they were going about the story with earplugs in and a blindfold. i get that ur characters need to be to some degree dumb, or else the plot would be over too soon, but my god, the decisions being made in this book were…. bad. unrealistic.
because the plot was unrealistic, the dialogue felt unrealistic. i could not get immersed in this at all, because i was constantly reminded of the multitude of issues plaguing this book.

sigh. i really would rather not have to point out all the issues i have with a book. i’d much rather sit here and be annoying and gush over the smallest things. but not even my immense want to love this book, i could not.

i cannot give you a good reason why i continued this. and also i cannot explain why i will read the next book. honestly i can’t even say im invested in what happens to laure. maybe its because i have hope the second book will be better? who knows. certainly i dont.

damn im annoyed i didn’t like this

Content Warnings

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

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emotional reflective 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? It's complicated

5.0

so. what if i just. Yeah.
im so not good at writing reviews for books i actually adored. because Holy Shit. i knew storygraph's algorithm wouldnt let me down with this one /lh (i am crying over the ending Oh my God).
the opening chapters of this book were hard to understand. the worldbuilding is confusing to begin with, and honestly i had no idea what the fuck was happening. but once i worked it out.. baby it was smooth sailing. well not the actual book just the experience. the plot was fucking choppy waters for the characters but hey.
staxxx and thunwar... my baby girls. my sweetie pies. fuck. i love sapphics. i loved doomed sapphics. i am going to eat my own hand i already miss them.
also shout out to sai for being the trans nonbinary rep i didnt know i needed but i am so happy i got.
singer and craft... fuck. the sapphic story was for seeing the "positives" of the CAPE system, how bonds can grow and people can be redeemed in one way or another. but singer and craft's story? that was fucking brutal. poor craft. i know dude is a

rapist

so i dont have as much empathy for him as i did singer, but still.. holy fuck. Yeah.
the allusions to modern day prisons in america... the use of research only to fund the torture of the system... those who are innocent of their crimes in the CAPE program... the singer prison itself... influencers. all the references to modern-day america were bone chilling. especially the footnotes. my god. i especially loved the little tributes in the footnotes when a character died. wow.
i dont want to compare books, but this is the 2020's the hunger games. or squid games in novel form. because yet again it reminds us of how sick capitalism truly is, how sick the entertainment industry is, how sick the prison industrial system in america is, how sick racism is, how sick poverty is, how sick.
i dont think i'll be able to get this book out of my head for a while. not only was this amazingly written solely from a novel standpoint - where the characters were loveable, there were stakes, the writing was delectable, the plot was phenomenal - but it was amazingly written as a reflection of the real world.
just truly amazing. claps all around. god damn.

Content Warnings

Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials by Marion Gibson

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dark informative sad slow-paced

2.0

um. this was. not a great reading experience for me.

i don’t really know what i was expecting. but i was quite bored.

the analyses felt quite surface level, the commentary on each “witch trial” became repetitive, there were numerous times where random tangents occurred such as the process of churning butter. what are we doing here.

i didn’t really enjoy the first part, as it was almost the same commentary repeated six times but slightly different. the second part was quite interesting, but idk something about the way this was written almost made everything boring.

the final part was the most interesting. hearing about modern day witchcraft in africa was incredibly fascinating yet horrifying. easily the best chapter. the final chapter talking about trump felt…… odd. the entire tone of the book changed for the final chapter and it felt completely random.

this wasn’t bad. obv it was insanely researched, and it was interesting getting to peak into the victim’s stories beyond “that’s a witch”. but this wasn’t a fun

Content Warnings

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

and the crowd is overwhelmingly confused!!!!!!

ok i wrote that the minute i finished the book. i’ve let it sit, looked at some video essays (im not good at text analysis without some direction) & realised….. holy shit. Yeah. this was good. i can feel the hyperfixation brewing.

it’s been a while since a book has gripped me this much. it did take me a good while to get into this, simply because i was going into this that every word was important, that i should know what everything meant, that i should try and solve what everything meant then and there. after a while i realised “im not going to get this on my first go.” and after that i just. read. and after that point did i have a good time. i think for the first 20% of this book i had the mindset that i had to try and create theories and find patterns, etc. but after a while i realised that wasn’t happening… and ugh the experience became so much better. i think if i kept having that mindset i would’ve fuckjng hated my first read of this. i became addicted. before i would fall asleep i would think where the story had gone to, where the story could go, everything about every layer. not even trying to solve shit i was just recalling the plot as i snoozed. after a bit i fully felt like i was Consumed by this story. it’s all i could think about. i HAD to know what happened next. honestly after a while i felt like truant. (random lore dump but i promise it’ll make sense) but in 2022 i had short-term psychosis spurned from stress. i’m so serious when i say reading this book felt like i was back at that point mentally. not that i was hallucinating or paranoid in my daily life, but whilst reading the story, i felt like my emotions were mirroring truant’s descent, and honestly a book that can affect me THAT much???? props.

i adore books that play with formatting. books with mixed medias or books that really do anything out of the norm have my heart. but this? yeah this takes “playing with formatting” to a new level. to begin with i was super confused as to *why* for instance, i had to put the book up to a fucking mirror, or turn it upside down, but once i realised the formatting is mirroring what’s going on in the hallway….. same as the aircraft footnotes…. CHEFS KISS!!!!! i felt like i was a fucking genius simply reading through danielewski’s genius book. holy shit.

as you probably know because i mention it all the fucking time, but i am autistic. and holy shit is this book like crack to an autistic. it is prime for overanalysis. it is prime for conducting theories. it is prime for obsessing over to find patterns. it is prime for looking at the text for the umpteenth time and somehow finding something new every single time. i mean hell the fact there isn’t even a solid answer to the “true” fate/identity of zampano, truant, etc. is crazy to me!!! (in a good way). the ways to analyse this book are endless, and seriously that makes me so excited to read this again in the future. i’ve never been this excited to have the possibility of rereading a book. THAYS how good this book was.

i don’t think i can properly articulate just how fucking fantastic this book is. not only is the play with ergodic aspects so good, but even just the story following the navidson record is brilliant. the analyses in this book itself are brilliant. truant’s slow sanity slippage is brilliant. this book is brilliant.

i have no final comment because i don’t think i can ever have a final thought on this. there’s too many things in this book. holy shit go read this please

Content Warnings

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

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funny lighthearted mysterious 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? It's complicated

4.0

crazy i’m saying this about a book im giving a 4-star review but. i’m really surprised i didn’t like this more. i am super surprised it wasn’t a knockout for me. i think this won book of 2024 at my local bookstore. so tbf i had insanely high expectations. and most were delivered on!

i’ve gotta say the highlight(s) of this book are the expats. holy shit gore. i love gore. not only is he funny, but he is rugged and, get this, funny. he earns double funny because i love him. he is my pookie. so what he’s like 300 years older than me????? and margaret. oh my god pookie pie. someone bring this baddie to 2025 PLEASE

LET ME LEZ OUT WITH HER!!!!!

. the other expats were alright i guess… arthur had a small role but was still baby girl, and other than those three i didn’t care about any other expat. sue me. sorry i love gore and margaret too much to allow any other room in my heart.

the writing style of this book is fucking delectable. magnificent. beautiful. i truly cannot describe just how good this book is written linguistic-wise unless you’ve picked up this book. i don’t know what enamoured me but god damn did i love it!!!!

now on to what i didn’t really live laugh love…. the plot. now i don’t know what i was expecting after reading the blurb of this, but it certainly wasn’t what i read. ok sure yes i knew at some point MC and gore would be dating the blurb literally tells you that. but idk i expected more scifi!!!! this is tagged first and foremost scifi and there’s barely any. most of the focus is on the romance.

which is ok like i said gore can get it. but mannnn don’t mislead me!!! i was hoping for some more interesting things related to the time travelling! and ok yes i get the in-text reason is that MC isn’t a scientist and doesn’t understand the technical aspects but like!!!! your mc doesn’t have to get it!!!! you just have to have other characters be annoying about the physics and then have mc be lost in the convo or something like that. i mean at the very least the concepts related to their time travelling e.g. can they appear on CCTV, what happens if they catch a sickness from the modern world. like those parts were great!!!! the story just needed more of them. and not only more moments, but a better pacing with the actual plot. up until 60% of this book it fully felt like i was just reading a slice-of-live novel with hints of Something going on. and then all the action is crammed into the last 15% of the book and im annoyed because it seemed interesting!!! but it wasn’t given enough time to develop, so instead i had explanations of what was going on in the background whilst the mc was being a horndog thrown at me and then wow ok its over. like what were we doing the rest of the time????? not only was the plot non-existent, but the pacing of when The Plot was actually introduced was so random. i can imagine if someone is not able to simp over gore or project onto the mc they would hate this because nothing happens except “gore finds out about something that has happened after the 1850s and so he has to be given an explanation on it” but like. repeated 70 times. it’s cute ill admit, but without anything other than the romance or the comedy tying me to the story, i was left slightly disappointed. slightly.

because look, i had a good time. i had fun. i was invested. kind of. really i was only invested in the romance if im honest. but i think this concept has such potential!!!!! i just think the scifi aspect of this book was a letdown & the pacing of the main plot felt erratic.

in other news i wanted to let you all know even though gore is depicted as a young guy i could not stop picturing him as charles from the walking dead s1 game. was very jarring to my stubborn brain every time his Not Grey Hair was described.

that is all.

Content Warnings

Such Lovely Skin by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne

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challenging tense fast-paced

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

3.0

sigh. i really really really was looking forward to this. alas, this was a tad disappointing.

i mean this in the least mean way possible but usually i don’t have many expectations for YA. i kinda just go with it and don’t think too much deeper. but at times there felt like there were points i couldn’t overlook.

i will say i did enjoy some parts of this story. for one, the slow reveal of what happened to riley was nice, especially since i thought it was going to go in a different direction. i wasn’t unsatisfied — i thought it was written well. i also enjoy how vivian was kinda unlikeable? somehow i have a feeling she was written to be sympathetic, but honestly i didn’t like her and i was fine with that. i simultaneously was rooting for her to beat the “demon” but also hoping she gets her shit rocked for all the stupid, callous and selfish things she’s done. i love with every situation she’s both in the wrong and in the right. idk i found that very realistic for a teen MC but also entertaining.

the side characters were a bit meh. i mean everyone other than ash barely had more than one personality trait, and ash at most had two. i found them quite uninteresting and flat, but i did enjoy the direction all the characters went in.

i have mixed feelings on the plot. on one hand i think it is a unique twist on the “demon” trope, making it more modern and adding a new layer to its horror. there was tension, which i always need, but idk i felt like i could almost predict what was going to happen? and everyone’s reactions? and honestly as the story starting climbing in tension, i kept caring less and less about victoria. maybe i kind of wanted her to lose? maybe because i thought she made exclusively stupid decisions she should lose? idk, but at some point i stopped caring because i almost could predict where this was going.

the dialogue was a bit cringe at times, especially when certain games were name dropped. it felt like when u watch a movie and u can clearly tell there’s a sponsorship because the coke label on the can is always facing the screen, or they include a shot of the apple logo on a laptop. that really kept throwing me out of the story and breaking my immersion. plus as i mentioned earlier, everything victoria said or did lowkey made me dislike her, and her inner dialogue did not help that 💀💀. sometimes what she said almost felt cartoonishly dumb and/or rotted. i do like that over the text she learns to be a better person, but i think because she sucked for 80% of the book, i didn’t care about the 20% where she was a sane person.

i’ll be honest tho and say as much as i just dunked on the book, i had fun! i am always a gaming girlie at heart, and i did enjoy the moments where vivian was almost cosplaying as a twitch streamer with her speech 💀💀 i found that very funny because it was so goofy. i did enjoy the themes of grief and guilt, im always a sucker for someone working through losing someone they care about, and i also like the resolution. i did enjoy the ending as well, it felt deserved and the ending nicely allows room for a sequel or something similar with a different MC. the actions of the “demon” also felt significant, i liked that they couldn’t just be washed away and fixed, instead the consequences lingered. the last thing the “demon” does did feel a bit cartoonish, random and silly, but everything else was great so im not too hung up on that.

i did wish this book wasn’t as clichéd as it ended up being. a lot of the story was predictable, and before a character realised something, i’d had realised that 50 pages ago, so i was stuck just reading this like “oh my god YALL ARE FUCKING DUMB!!!!!” but you know what? sometimes people are dumb. especially teenagers. and that’s ok.

in other news i am now going to pretend i am a twitch streamer like vivian does at times and narrate me eating shit in cookie run ovenbreak. godspeed.

Content Warnings

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

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adventurous informative mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

well, well, well. what can i say. i love me a main character who is so very clearly autistic coded. shout out emily wilde you and i are kindred spirits (re: autism).

ummm this book was. fine? like i didn’t hate it. but i didn’t love it. i think this book is extremely overhyped for what it is, which is:

fetch quest A, talk to villager B, fuck around with some fae C, fetch quest D, etc. like my girl is really doing the same shit over and over and over again. idk there wasn’t too much interest for me.

another reason i was bored was because of wendell. oh brother. his presence made it so any dangerous situation emily was in became practically null and void because

he could pull a fae spell out of his ass and save her. like ok maybe we could’ve mentioned the fact he can slightly time travel or fucking shapeshift before he, you know, does it at the umpteenth hour before emily is completely fucked???? i honestly think the “twist reveal” (which anyone could’ve guessed was going to happen by the not to subtle hinting from emily) came way too early and almost made emily AND bambleby invincible. like that showdown with the ice king or whatever the fuck he was called??? yeah i literally was not worried at all. any possible tension in the book evaporated the minute wendell being not only a fae, but a fucking fae KING, was revealed.

also complete side note but what kind of fucking name is wendell bambleby. i don’t care about the in text reasons that is a hideous name oh my god. please lord hear my prayers and make fawcett change his name for the next book 🙏🙏🙏 (i am delusional).

i also found the dynamic between emily and bambleby to not only be predictable, but incredibly stale as well. i’m not too mad at the ending (the book is tagged romance so i can’t dunk on the book for their relationship being predictable), but their back and forth became very formulaic very quickly for me, and honestly, i didn’t buy the chemistry! sue me! regardless of emily’s notes, the tone i perceived was that she can’t fuckjng stand this guy up until like the last two chapters where emily feels like she does a full 180 on her opinion of him.

also. emily. fucking emily. i beg of you. tell me why the fuck you are so dumb. ok yes i get sometimes characters need to do reckless shit in a story to have things happen. ok. but yet again, the story constantly repeats this formula: dumb thing emily can do related to the fae appears, she tells her journal she knows it’s a dumb thing to do, she knows she’ll completely fuck herself over if she does said thing, and then she does said thing. like cmon you can’t say you’re this world renowned drydologist or whatever the fuck they call it and then pull half of the stunts she does in this book. and mind you she only gets out of said sticky situations all but one time due to hail mary’s. i’ll give her credit for the festival, she did eat there. claps for emily wilde. but the rest? it felt contrived, it felt forced, it felt like it lacked reason, and it felt like she only did said stupid shit because said stupid shit would move the plot along.

wait hold up. what fucking plot. yeah. this entire book is just emily and bambleby puttering around until emily does aforementioned dumb fuck things. there was no tension. i was only reading to see if she’d stop being a dumb fuck. the answer was a resounding no.

why oh why am i being so mean to this book? BECAUSE IT HAD SUCH GOOD POTENTIAL. the lore about the fae world? amazing. emily’s cunning to work with the fae (when the story allows her instead of making her be a damsel in distress)? magnificent. the footnotes that immersed me more into the story? superb. every other character minus the two main dickheads? ate. everything i dunked on had the potential to be perfect!!!!!! but i have no idea what the fuck happened.

i’m actually a bit mad. because i can smell how this could be amazing. more natural dialogue. more time with bambleby before Things Happen™️. more times where emily saves herself. more stakes. MORE. i can see why people love this. god i am still trying to find ways in which i did love this. because i did. i did have fun. emily is so silly at times i love her because she’s so socially inept it’s fun. bambleby is an agent of chaos and his whimsy was very entertaining. but idk, them together, mixed with The Thing™️, turned two beautiful seperate characters into poopoo sludge for me.

wow was i angry at this. anyways yes i will be continuing this series. i am hoping i am just irrationally angry at a book that probably does not deserve it but hey, how can i declare myself a hater if i do not occasionally spew vitriol in my reviews.

this review quickly got away from me holy shit am i ok? idk i think this entire review is so mean because i wanted to love this so much more. i liked it a lot actually. but i can’t lie and say these things didn’t piss me tf off. also sometimes getting heated in reviews for no reason is kinda fun.
can’t wait for the sequel 😜

Content Warnings

Dear Mothman by Robin Gow

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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? It's complicated

3.0

this was soo pookie pie. so cute. so touching.

i liked seeing the progression of how noah deals with his grief, and lewis almost being personified into mothman.

super sweet as well to see noah’s commentary on being trans. idk something about seeing tweens accept themselves the way they are was refreshing to read.

i liked as well that by the end of the story, noah doesn’t just move on from his friendship with lewis, but it grows & evolves.

also ofc i have to shout of the fact that there was t4t in this book. automatically bonus points in my mind.

i did find this book to be juvenile and its commentary was surface-level, but i mean i can’t be too mad at that considering it’s audience is middle graders. i just can’t rate it highly because i am learning that is not my style. but like i said anything gay automatically is a banger book.

shout out mothman for being the queer icon we didn’t know we needed.

Content Warnings

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

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challenging emotional tense 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? It's complicated

4.0

oh ok. guess i’ll just die then.

this book is. so sad yet so thrilling. depressing yet hopeful. and also incredibly gay. i love gay people.

the writing in this book is positively superb, especially when describing lily’s inner thoughts. i truly felt so immersed in lily’s character, so much so i almost felt like i was actually there with her. the writing about her inner turmoil being gay, these new feelings she has, the juggling of her life with the chinese american community versus her place in the queer community…. beautiful. reading about the intersectionality between being asian and queer, whilst also sprinkling some historical context and tensions in the background? chefs kiss.

can i just say again how much i loved lily. god she was so well written. i really loved seeing her character development, and she was incredibly likeable and relatable. the other characters were ok… i mean ofc i loved my girl kath & everyone at the telegraph club, but nobody else seemed to pop. shirley kind of did i guess? but everyone else kind of felt a bit one-dimensional. defo not flat! but idk i could tell they were side characters. i dont know if that makes sense.

another thing with this book is because its a bit long, sometimes it felt a bit repetitive. and honestly i only had this issue in regard to lily coming to terms with her sexuality. not even the conflict between being asian & queer, just her accepting she was queer in the first place was repeated a bit too many times. honestly that’s the only circumstance it annoyed me in, but i mean i can’t lie and say after the halfway point of this book i was lowkey kind of sick of it. lily ruminate on something new regarding being a lesbian!!!!! maybe let’s start instead ruminating on if you are into butches or femmes!!! idk give me some variety my girl!!!!

i will say tho . fuck i loved this. i cried at the ending. i cried at the epilogue. and what about it. as much as i can bitch about minor little things in this book, the ending got to me. i just starred at my wall for a while coming to terms with this book. i think it hit even harder for me imo because although this book is fiction, for many people it was their reality. especially after reading the authors’ notes i just sat and went “Fuck”. because like yeah holy shit if i think being a lesbian is hard in 2025….. a lot of people found it 10x harder seventy years ago. it sounds stupid that i ‘realised’ that fact reading this book, but it’s more so that it really sunk in for me. something something autism makes it harder for me to put myself in someone else’s shoes until i literally live the experience myself so by reading about lily’s life i felt like i was truly watching this happen to her and it fully cemented to me how privileged i am by being queer in modern society something something. especially with seeing online everyone slowly moving towards being right-wing…. idk this book just hit me like a tonne of bricks. i probably sound incredibly naive here but hey i am owning it.

thank you malinda lo for the many book recs at the end you best believe this book has inspired me to take an interest in queer history 🙏🙏🙏 and thank you for the tears

Content Warnings

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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adventurous funny mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

another day, another tamsyn muir book where once i finish it i have to read the wiki and multiple explanations to understand what in the hell i just read.

tamsyn muir u are the only author i can tolerate confusing me that much with ur books.

now nona… what can i say about nona. she’s so fucking spunky. i loved her. i kept calling her stupid when han asked me my thoughts on this whilst i was reading it and u know what i stand by it. nona is a fucking dumbass. but she’s MY dumbass. i love her and her idiocy. she is the spiritual embodiment of a child trapped in an adult’s body and it was very fun. i will say the whole “mc is a dumbass therefore the reader doesn’t know wtf is going on because the mc is left in the dark therefore the reader is” schtick in this series twice was not my favourite! with gideon i think it defo worked because it wasn’t that she was dumb, she just didn’t give a shit. but it’s almost like nona purposefully didn’t want to learn about anything going on, which was infuriating because!!!!! hey I WANT TO KNOW WHATS GOING ON!!!!! and especially because nona has the intelligence of an earthworm when she IS interested in what the fuck is going on, nobody explains shit to her because she is too dumb to grasp shit!!!! meaning IM STILL IN THE DARK!!!!!!!!! just because i am used to being lost in a first read through of muir’s novels doesn’t make it any less annoying for me.

i did enjoy all the other characters as well. ofc i will always go fucking insane for my babies palamedes and camilla. i am so happy i got 480 more pages of those two. and HELLOOOOOO i love the concept of how pyrrha came to exist. i love the unique spin on her character being trans. iykyk.

the plot itself was….. meh? like don’t get me wrong i adored the school chapters (hot sauce you have my heart), but everything else was weirdly paced and lowkey not that interesting? i did oddly enough really like the john chapters, but the plot behind-the-scenes with blood of eden was not interesting to me. finding out who nona truly was wasn’t interesting to me. what WAS more interesting to me honestly was nona’s day to day life. idk i oddly enough really liked the domestic chapters LMAO. which is rare for me. but once the plot picked up it was a bit… boring. because lowkey i knew everything would work out. i mean how could it not. half the fucking cast at this point is immortal, so there felt like there were no stakes therefore i kinda didn’t care. and because there was so much shit going on, as well as the fact NONE OF THE SHIT WAS EXPLAINED, i just kinda sat there being like “ok when’s something fun gonna happen again”. and im not even saying there wasn’t fun shit past day four, i’m just saying i like to complain.

at times this book lowkey almost felt like fan service, and as much as i did love kiriona, crown, paul, etc. it felt cheap almost to me. it felt like i did not Deserve it. nothing happens and then suddenly i feel like im reading a fanfic written by a teen who got excited and added every possible cool thing they wanted to happen to the story. that sounds so mean but its how it felt LMAO . i liked it but it did not feel fair.

like always i will adore my love tamsyn muir. i did have a lot of fun with this. and i eagerly await alecto the ninth. but idk this book felt like it was a bit all over the place. can’t lie and say i didn’t have a good ol time tho!!!!

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clovetra's reviews 226 reviews

clovetra's reviews
226 reviews