quillnqueer's reviews
381 reviews

Alara's life is rigidly controlled, her emotions dulled and she experiences no pain. After a gaming tournament sees her disqualified, she finds herself given a mission - infiltrate the world hidden below her glowing city and report back. But what happens when she finds herself falling in love with the community and people she finds there?

This started off with a bit of a Ready Player One, Ender's Game vibe but really found it's feet when Alara travelled to the world of London Below. I really started enjoying the story and the characters from this point, and shared Alara's excitement for all the new experiences and food she tried. The sense of community was really strong.

While the worlds of Estrella and London  Below  were well described, I did feel that I needed a little more world building, and combined with the ending that left me wanting more, I really feel this story needs a sequel to flesh out the world further and continue Alara's story. But this is a positive note - I really enjoyed this story and the characters and I want to spend more time there.

I didn't realise just how much I needed this book. Or how much the post apocalyptic, travelling through the US genre needed two queer boys navigating a new and uncertain world, while grappling with their feelings for each other and trying to find their place in the new world.

The best moments in this story were the early quiet ones. When Andrew and Jami hunkered down for a few weeks in Jami's house, Andrew telling him the plots of entire movies to pass the time. I could have spent hours with these two. However, the later introduction of Cora was much needed, and I'm hoping she's also in the sequel.

This does use the post apocalyptic tropes we know, like the creepy cults, but it didn't linger, and never felt boring - helped by the fact that they both clocked that something was wrong quickly, and chose to leave as soon as possible. The last scenes were harrowing, but I was so glad that the ending left on a hopeful note.

Hitting the home stretch of this series with my childhood fave, this was almost as strong but didn't quite hold up as well - I read a lot more high fantasy these days though, I just think if this book had been a ood chunk longer it would have been so good.

Somehow, this book managed to be both interesting and incredibly boring at the same time. The plot is unique, but comes up with so many ideas for the sole sake of filling plot holes that it often feels slightly ridiculous, but I did enjoy the feminist aspect of it and the strong, complex bond between Devon and her son.

I think that blending together the story of Devon's past with her run across the UK with her son worked quite well, as it gave us a insight into why she made the decisions she did, and kept the story interesting. Following her childhood closeted away until she can be parceled off to produce children, the decisions she makes as a child has a ripple effect on her future.

At 320 pages, I was expecting this to be a quicker read, until I opened it and realised the print is incredibly small, much like Legendborn. This is a trend I really dislike as it feels like so much more of a slog to get through even 10 pages. Although this did mean that unlike other readers, I wasn't dissatisfied with the ending, I was perfectly happy to leave.

This is said to be for fans of Piranesi and The Midnight Library, two books this is truly not alike at all. This is actually a character driven novel about a train travelling across a fae wilderness, and the mystery hidden by the owners of the train company. As they travel, the passengers and crew start to descend into madness and chaos.

Weiwei was the heart of the story, and the strongest character of the multiple POVs. Born on the train, and now part of the crew, she struggles with how she's been raised and the new questions she has when she finds Wilderness creature Elena hiding in the train. I also liked Marya, who is on the train to investigate her father's mysterious death.

The ending of this story is pretty wild, but I was greatful the story finally picked up some speed, as the rest of the story is fairly slow paced. While this uses real world locations, it uses them fairly loosely, similar to Oxford in The Golden Compass. It did get so chaotic it was almost difficult to keep up with, but I did feel it had a fitting ending.

This is such a fun, but emotional, scavenger hunt story told in a dual POV as we follow singer Decklee Cassel on her path to fame and struggles with her Queer identity, and Darren Purchase, who, years later, is on a scavenger hunt to find Decklee's lost songs, and lost lover, after Decklee passes away.

I love a scavenger hunt story and this one is so unique. Combining it with Queer culture and a Bisexual girl struggling to find her way out of her small town made this story so interesting, and I flew through the pages each time I picked it up. Although I usually dislike not being able to work out the clues for myself, I didn't mind with this story, and was happy to follow Darren.

There's so much hurt, and grief tied into this book that pushes it to a five star read for me. Decklee is shown to be a pretty terrible person, and Mickenlee has to decide if to continue being dragged along on Decklee's obsession with fame, or to break ties with her forever. Mickenlee is a strong, memorable character that I really grew attached to.

This is truly one of those books that you get, or you don't, and luckily for me I'm mentally ill. Eileen is an interestingly insane character, with a very unique perspective on life, and a tendency to hyperfocus on people until she moves onto the next one. There's also discussions of her eating disorder, drug taking and child sexual assault, so this is a pretty heavy book.

Throughout the story Eileen will suddenly have thoughts that are so out there my only option was to bark laugh that someone had even written it on paper. She strongly reminded me of Pearl, while she was easy to dismiss as just some small town girl, there were so many layers under the surface and a history of child abuse that made her who she is.

I did think the ending was a little abrupt, and I found myself wishing, after we had been told throughout that she was leaving town, that we could have joined her. I would have loved to hear her thoughts on the next environment she finds herself in, and the experiences she has there. We do have a glimpse of her future from her older self, but it wasn't quite enough.

If you know me well, seeing this book on my shelves must come as a bit of a shock, because I (almost) never read adult romance. However, I love Schmigadoon. And this story of a woman who finds herself in the romantic town of Eloraton, the setting of her favourite romance series, sounded like such a cute idea.

I found the main character of this story very, very confusing. She never seemed to actively look for clues about if the town was real, or if she'd crashed her car and was suffering from a head injury. She never seemed to question if the man she was falling in love with was a real person. And at the end, she never seemed to experience any emotion about the decision she made.

I found the cast of characters interesting, but lacking much depth, and it would have been nice for the story to choose the path of, you may see them as characters, but here's what's under the surface. The romance felt way too easy and while the ending was pretty solid, I was left wondering what Anders plans for the future were.

The blurb made this sound like such a cute romance, tied in with a really emotional story of two teens who disappeared many years ago which should have made this story stronger. But I felt that the story was poorly written, and it almost felt like the author didn't care too much about the lost lovers in the end.

There's an odd, almost juvenile feeling to the writing style of this, the immediate enemies meet cute where they fight over a study room, the way Ravi struggled with his peers felt like high school drama he should have left behind. So I was pretty thrown when we got to the pretty descriptive, open door sex scenes, I'm not gonna lie.

While we did finally get answers between all of Ravi and Jessi's annoying and unnecessary angst, I didn't find them satsfactory, especially as they were wedged into a few rushed last chapters. I didn't cheer them on as a couple, because I found them to be incredibly immature and I couldn't really see them as a couple in the future.

I have absolutely no idea what the point of this book was, but the art is very pretty.