simonlorden's reviews
1280 reviews

This could have been very good. I liked the original set-up: Spencer wants to take revenge on Miss Primrose for what she did to his brother, but Beatrice also had a very good reason to take revenge on Spencer's brother, which Spencer doesn't seem to know. Would have loved to see the reveal on that.

I like Beatrice as a character. Her motivations are interesting, and even though she became a domina for revenge, she's clearly good at her job and knows the "rules" of BDSM.

I think what killed this book for me was Spencer's anti-BDSM attitude. He's horrified that this woman humiliated his brother, when like, his brother is an adult man who went to a domina and paid her money on purpose. He reacts with disgusts to basic BDSM-submissive things, like calling a submissive "my pet". It felt annoying and kind of hypocritical. Also kind of weird to keep and reread detailed descriptions of your brother's sexual activities!

This is also part 1 of a part 4 story, so it feels kind of unfinished. I might get the others later, but I would have preferred it to be 1-2 books instead of having to buy 4.

Cute, cozy, short story. Gwen is a 11-feet tall drider (spider centaur) who decides to open a café in a city mostly inhabited by monsterfolk. I found Gwen pretty naive to be honest, especially re: the advertising her shop - it didn't seem like she really planned for this or had realistic expectations. But the side characters were pretty great, especially the traumatized disabled teenager who gradually opens up, I would love to read more about her.

There is no main romance in this, but there's several LGBT side characters, including same-sex marriages and nonbinary guests.

I received an ARC through NetGalley and this is my honest and voluntary review.

A very Gothic and claustrophobic story told in two POVs. We start with Marguerite, Cécile's daughter named after a French princess, but we also see a lot of Cécile's POV later on in the story, which makes this a story in two timelines.

Marguerite is trapped in the attic, sent her by her mother, who wishes her to prepare for being a good wife before Cécile allows her to marry. And Marguerite is eager to be finished with her education and get out, daydreaming about a life she will live with her kind older husband, and with her lover while her husband is at work. Her only company in the attic is a crow that has moved in through a hole in the roof.

Cécile is trapped in a different way. The daughter of a rich businessman, trapped in an arranged marriage to a member of the aristocracy, among people who see her as an outsider. Trapped by her three children and her husband's increasing disrespect and antics. There are horrors and cruelty in Cécile's POV that almost shocked me more than Marguerite's, because they felt more real - things like Cécile's mother always being in bed because she's either pregnant or recovering, or how the whole thing ends with her husband's family.

There is a lot of focus on food and eating, which is also mixed up with bodily functions and body horror as Marguerite slowly loses the plot in the attic. It's very slow-paced and inward-focused, which wasn't really my style, but it fits the genre and the story. There is sooo much focus on eating and the proper way to prepare meals, which of course ties into the proper way to be a wife. I would like to try a turtle soup once, though.

I have to admit, at the end I was left asking WHY. I read all of Cécile's POV, but I still didn't /fully/ understand why she would do this to her eldest daughter and not the others, and how it would go on for so long. But that very drastic overreaction is the whole premise of the story, so I won't question it too much.

tldr; Overall a bit slow for me personally sometimes, but I love how it unfolds. Marguerite's daydreams about the life she will live once she's out of the attic with Alouette were my favorite parts.

A gardener who can see ghosts, and his ghost buddies. And ghost boyfriend. I really like the aesthetic and all the green and plants. The story is pretty short, but i liked the one-year-later parts the most, fun ghost-hunting shenanigans.

Get your cannibalism, pedophilia, witches, folk tales, monsters, and ballet dancers here!

Love folk tale retellings that really go into the horror and bizarreness of the original. I didn't know the Juniper Tree before, but I read a summary, and I think the main parts definitely stayed in this book. I love how some things are only implied in the beginning as Marlinchen prefers to ignore them too, then she just can't hide from the truth anymore.

Nem nyert meg magának teljesen a versek műfaja, de azért még próbálkozok. Volt benne néhány nagyon jó. 

Szerintem néha az a bajom a versekkel, hogy annyira személyesek, vagy annyira egy bizonyos emléket, pillanatot írnak le, hogy úgy érzem a költőn kívül tényleg nem is érti senki, hogy miről van szó.

I've been meaning to read this anthology for a while. 19 short stories and poems. Some of them have explicitly aromantic protagonists, others don't really mention the romantic orientation but focus on platonic relationships. Most of them are fantasy, although there's a couple that are more sci-fi.

As all anthologies, some stories hit me better than others, but I'd say that the average enjoyment was pretty high. I haven't read anything by any of the authors before, so it was an especially nice surprise. (I'm more familiar with the editors, but they didn't actually have their own works in the book sadly.)

Some of my favorites:
 – Jennifer Lee Rossman: Cinder - Disabled Cinderella, fairytale retellings, princesses saving princesses, an app to find a magical prince to rescue you.
 – A.Z. Louise: Dracanmōt Council of Human Study Report Compiled by Usander Greystart - An outsider studying human customs.
 – Jeff Reynolds: Fishing Over the Bones of the Dragon - A story about family, kidnapping fae, and also about generational trauma tbh.
 – Polenth Blake: Busy Little Bees: Cloned siblings! Love them. I would have loved to continue reading this one.

I was a bit intimidated by the low rating on Storygraph, but looking at the reviews, most of them are from people who apparently weren't aware (like it's not clear from the blurb?) that it's a dark romance book. Oh, there's dubcon and "romanticizing prostitution"? Cool, do you go on horror books to complain about gore?

That being said, despite the dubcon, it's surprisingly romantic. The power dynamics are fucked, but Finn still treats Lily gently and attentively, and Lily genuinely wants their encounters (although she doesn't really have the option to say no, hence the dubcon). The sex scenes and Finn also mostly focus on the woman's pleasure, which was nice.

I have two issues, one of them is the lowkey racist vibe that frames the story. Two white men walk into a brothel in Hongkong, and they're both immediately concerned when they find a young white woman there, because she must be there against her will. But all these Asian women must be there for fun, right? So that double standard was a bit weird. I can suspend morality to accept male characters in fiction who are okay with prostitution, but this came off badly.

The other thing is that I would have appreciated just a biiit less sex and more plot. The whole story ends on a cliffhanger, but we don't really get to know that much about the kidnapping and such, because they're too busy having sex. Which is yes, the point of the book, but the endless sex scenes got a bit boring for me by the end.

A very good book about magical books, a secret library, and time travel. Great characters, beautiful friendships, satisfying twists. Kind of gore-y and bleak sometimes, but mostly when the Woman is around. I liked it a lot.