marimoose's reviews
1423 reviews

What. How. Sabaa HOW do you expect me to review this book after the bomb drops at the end of this book?! HOW?

Also, all my therapy bills are headed your way. My gawd, the emotional damage I have been left with after what has happened to my favorite characters.

That said, it took me much longer to get through this book because I literally needed to stop reading every time Helene's chapters ended. This poor girl experienced SO MUCH and I was in tears--of anguish and rage--every time. I thought her POV was the most compelling and filled with a lot of turmoil, and hands down she was my favorite character to follow throughout. Elias' POV remains consistently the most interesting, so that kind of leaves Laia's, which was...a little on the meh side? I think a lot of that comes from the minor subplot of this weird love triangle Laia found herself in, and honestly, if there was gonna be some romance, I was actually hoping it'd come from Helene and Harper. Just saying.

I think Ember was a better read, but Torch is definitely setting things up onto an epic plot scale, now that the Nightbringer is finally in play. And omg, I cannot wait.

Not going to lie, chapter 54 still destroys me emotionally. And then, of course, the pieces of myself on the floor gets put back together the next chapter after. Because of course.

Still hands down my favorite of the series.

Dude. When have I not loved any of the contemporary Aliverse books so far? Because it doesn't stop today. If anything, I only wished this novella was an actual full-length novel about two video game designers spending a majority of the time fighting and fucking over their love of this fictional video game story. I always maintain that Ali's strength for me is her fleshing out her characters' manicness and the men who are DOWN BAD for all the unhinged miscommunication between them.

Which is probably why Two Can Play was marginally better than her previous novellas; in book form, it probably runs about 200 pages tops, which gives just enough time for the characters to marinate on the page long enough to get to know them. The background setup of a "company retreat" was actually clever, too (that forced proximity trope at large!!!) but even so, there's still hints that the characters lived and somewhat interacted with each other even outside the scope of the story. 

Needless to say, I enjoyed this book. The tropes signature to Ali are still there, and I will continue to eat them up (like Jesse Andrews TEEHEE) and at the end of the day, I will still hold out my bowl in supplication to my romance goddess queen ans ask, "Please, madam, may I have some more?"

I did wish this wasn't just on audiobook format. My enjoyment of Ali Hazelwood has always been in book form. It gets too awkward listening to the narration sometimes. Hopefully there will be a paperback released later on.

Sometimes you just need to read a cozy little fantasy to make you smile and kick your feet. The Spellshop was exactly that for me!

To be fair, if I hadn't been in the mood for a slower-paced, low-risk fantasy, I'd probably be thinking differently about this book and giving it a lesser rating. That said, I saw this book as a brief vacation from the usual fantasies I tend to gravitate towards, and Kiela being the character she is helped as well. I mean, hermit librarian saving crates of books and holes up in a small island with just a spider plant and no plans of ever interacting with people? Sounds like my idea of a good time.

I enjoyed reading about the characters in Caltrey. I thought Kelia's meet cute with nosey neighbor Larran was adorable, and their relationship--albeit not spicy--was still something that made me smile every time.

That said, this book was fairly slow-going, even as a cozy fantasy, and it was difficult to gauge the passage of time between scenes. At times it felt like days had gone by, and others it seemed like the day just kept going. I wasn't sure how some of the relationships got cultivated between characters, and when there was meaningful exchange happening, it often got interrupted by blatant use of plot device. It was also a much longer story than I'd anticipated from a cozy fantasy, and I felt like this could have been much shorter and delivered the same atmosphere and message.

Anyway, I still enjoyed this, and I hope we get to see more of this world in some capacity. I'd be sad if I didn't get to see the merhorses or winged cats again!

Also, Caz and Meep need to be protected at all costs. AT ALL COSTS.

Not going to lie, I was ready to DNF this book at about the halfway point, especially with the most irrelevant scene coming in hot at that point. IYKYK. But I also owed it to this book to read past that point because I really liked how this book began. And let me tell you, it was well worth trudging through the middle to get to the end. That end was absolutely bonkers. I'm still reeling over it. And I love the fact that the Fairyloot edition had bonus content, and boy, that was WILD.

That all said, I couldn't very well find it in my amused heart of hearts to bring this up to four stars just for the beginning and end. A lot of what I loved at the beginning--which included the quirky and philosophical zingers, as well as the main character's irreverent attitude to being the villain in an isekai--started becoming grating to me by the middle. I felt like a lot of this book hinged on the need to insert humor to remind us that this world is surreal, and oftentimes it just felt jarring to me. Rae came in to the fantasy world with a lot of insights about story, and obviously she had her own thoughts about the characters and the plot. But more and more, I started to feel like she was just all about her platitudes, and it literally took to the very end for her to realize the error in her thinking. I also wanted her to really get into the mindset of being a villain, but I felt like she wasn't really pulling the weight of her character, if that makes sense.

As for the other characters, I found a number of them interesting, and a few of them mostly had me rolling my eyes. I don't know. Maybe I'm just not all about that isekai life, because by the end, the two characters I kind of stopped caring about were the ones who came from the modern world. Despite me loving the development between Marius and one of said characters.

I will definitely still read the next book, because as I said, that ending alone pretty much saved this book for me.

I debated with my rating because I actually enjoyed the last third of this book. But that was the problem. I shouldn't have had to wait to read something decent at the end of the book, and after all the trudging I had to go through just to get to that spot, the return should not have been just DECENT.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the beginning of the book, especially with an opener as savage as the first few sentences. Alessandra struck me as a woman who knew exactly what she wanted, and was willing to do whatever she needed to do to get it. If that included trying to seduce the Shadow King, and then to kill him after to take power, then so be it! And if the Shadow King was resistant to her game, spiking up the flirtation and danger of trying to differentiate what's real and not real in the seduction, then even better! 

Unfortunately, the book didn't seem to want to focus on this game up until the halfway point. Kallias as a character was practically a non-entity for the first third of the book, finally starts becoming more active in his own story in the second third, and the third part is practically when he shines. However, he was severely underutilized as a king who can manipulate shadows at his command. Because for all intents and purposes, the power was a bit underwhelming and more of a parlor trick than anything else. I actually wish this was a dual POV because the sacrifices Kallias made didn't have as much impact, considering what he chooses to give up at the end versus what he could have kept.

And as for Alessandra, I could have done without every chapter in the first half of the book starting with a description of what she's wearing. I felt like I was reading into the mind of a girl who only thought about dresses and getting rid of the men in her life. The latter was called for, considering the slights she had faced, especially with her father and her first lover, but it just made her look vapid for most of this book. I also hated the way siblings were depicted in this story, and as competitive as she and her sister are, the real deadbeat was their father. I felt the anger and pettiness between them stemmed from the same guy, and it actually irritated me more than it should have with how the two of them communicate with each other. Unfortunately, that wasn't even the only example of sibling rivalry, and each time just left me a bad taste in my mouth.

And don't get me started with Alessandra's friends. Between the frivolity and that darn ranking system, I would have screamed if the plot had gone absolutely nowhere. Thankfully it didn't get to that point.

But yeah, the last bit wasn't bad, and when we finally did get some romance, it was good! Not stellar, but still good.

The book was fine, I guess? I felt that The Girl with No Reflection read like two different stories mishmashed into one. And that left a bit of a mess and too much going on in the general scheme of things. I had a feeling that this book was meant to be a duology (which was confirmed in an author interview), but it didn't pan out and so the author had to shove everything in one book.

Which is such a shame, because the premise of this book was so good, and the beginning of the story built it up in such a creepy way that I was hoping the mystery had a bit more development to it. I actually liked how the mirror characters got introduced, and I felt like if this book had been split into two, the first book could have been spent solely on Ying's experience in the mirror world. There would have been more character build up, character tension, and it would definitely have made more impact on Ying after certain revelations. Then the second book could have built on that lore, as well as the romance and the dealings of the court and a coming war. Honestly, there was just so much happening in this book. It was a lot to take in, and breaking the story up into two books to focus on different issues would have elevated this story.

Alas.

Honestly, this book was much darker than what I had expected it to be. I was here for the alchemy school/competition ride, and the historically based Chinese backdrop made sense because of the goal that was connected to alchemical works in Asia. Not so much turning lead into gold like its ancient Western counterpart, but that of longevity and immortality. I absolutely loved the way the magic system worked here, and the use of minerals to power up and transmute metals was actually pretty neat. Also, COME ON. The book already had me at the way this played out like a season of Fullmetal Alchemist. And even though the anime held with it a lot of dark themes, I did not expect this book to take a turn in the same direction. This is a good thing!

Cuz man, this book GETS DARK. I don't know why this is a surprise, considering Zilan's alchemical skill is literally bringing people back from the dead. There is a reason she becomes called the Scarlet Alchemist, and booy, this book delivers in all the right ways, alchemically speaking.

I did have some quibbles with Zilan as a character, as sometimes her unhinged behavior goes a bit too far, but i did have to remind myself that she's practically still a child and is already living her worst life. So yeah, some of her decisions make sense in that way, especially because there is a development in her character as the story went on. I really did enjoy Zilan's interactions with her siblings. They were my favorite scenes in this book, and normally that isn't the case because I tend to enjoy romantic subplots more. I wished there was just as much progression with the romance to make the stakes and sacrifices in the end even higher (cuz damn, that ending was WILD), but I feel like that's not really the point in Zilan's story.

In any case, if Durian is harmed in any way going forward, I. Will. RIOT.

Once again Murderbot does not fail to entertain. I really liked the premise for this one, because it was shrouded in mystery. It also was utterly well done, considering the mystery was laid out from the getgo, and we still got the process of Murderbot trying to solve the case--reluctantly, of course--and then actually getting into the action to resolve everything. All in a good day's work in a SecUnit's life!