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sestout's review against another edition
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Homophobia, Misogyny, Sexism, and Lesbophobia
Moderate: Sexual content, Vomit, Grief, and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Infidelity, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Forced institutionalization, Abortion, Pregnancy, and Injury/Injury detail
kendrashea's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Homophobia, Suicide, Car accident, Death of parent, and Lesbophobia
nickoliver's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I’m usually not good at picking up bigger books, so I’m quite proud of myself for finally having done it with this one. Overall, I enjoyed it, but it also had some parts that really annoyed me.
The atmosphere in this book was honestly great. Especially the scenes that were supposed to be creepy really were. Not necessarily in an ‘I am going to have nightmares about this’ way, but I will definitely not be able to look at wasps the same way anymore. (Not that I’d liked those aggressive fuckers before, but now even less so.) I was also grossed out a few times, but it wasn’t gratuitous or just there to gross you out.
While the book didn’t put me in a reading slump - which part of me was worried about just based on its sheer size -, it was rather slow-moving and sometimes didn’t have a pay-off. You would wait like 300 pages just for the movie to start being shot, and then you didn’t even get to experience it up close and personal. It was a bit frustrating how much on the outside you were kept sometimes - especially when it came to the movie, because the build-up to it was so detailed and loving that it made it all the more frustrating how we only got glimpses afterward.
It didn’t help that the cast of characters didn’t completely work for me. Basically, there were two different timelines: the present, where they shot the movie about Brookhants and its curse, told from the perspective of three women (Audrey and Harper who were in the movie, and Merritt who wrote the book the movie was an adaptation of). And the past, set in 1902, which told the story of what exactly had happened. Those chapters had two POVs: Libbie, who was the principal of the school, and her lover Alex, with whom she lived with and who also worked at the school.
For the most part, I preferred the past chapters just based on the fact that it felt like there was more happening there and some scenes in the present just didn’t interest me. But also, I really didn’t like Merritt. She was very judgmental, jealous, and just overall unpleasant - she felt like a 80-year-old woman stuck in the body of a 21-year-old with the way she dismissed people immediately based on completely unfounded grounds. And while I was supposed to believe that she changed and, more importantly, became friends and lovers with Audrey (who she’d hated at first sight for no discernible reason), I didn’t get to see that. All of a sudden, she and Audrey liked each other, without there being a believable build-up (or any build-up at all, really). While not every chapter was obviously told from her perspective, she was always there, and that just sullied the present chapters for me at times.
What made Merritt even more unbearable was the writing in her chapters. It was so cringey that it made me feel embarrassed. It’s possible that that was on purpose to emphasise Merritt’s personality, but it just felt like the writing of an edgy teenager trying to be cool and unfazed. Outside of Merritt’s chapters, the writing was sometimes awkward and cringey too, but it just went really off the rails in her chapters.
All main characters, by the way, were sapphic - Harper and Alex were lesbians, Audrey and Libbie were bisexual, and Merritt I wasn't sure about (she was only shown being interested in Harper and Audrey) -, and the relationships were very focal in the story. Though, again, they weren't developed much on-page, at least when it comes to the chapters set in the present. That was disappointing. But Libbie and Alex's relationship was explored a lot, and I was generally just thrilled to read a book that was so distinctly about queer women and put the men on the sidelines a little bit.
The side characters were okay. They weren’t incredibly fleshed-out, but they had just enough meat on their bones that you could call them characters. However - and I don’t know if that was because there were simply too many characters or if it was because they weren’t developed enough -, there were a few people I kept mixing up with each other. Specifically ones in Harper and Audrey’s lives. I kept forgetting the relationships they each had with their mothers - I think that was also because it was kind of a similar one? Harper and Audrey both also had a queer male best friend, and I could not keep those two apart in my brain to save my life. I would be in Harper’s perspective waiting for Noel to show up just for Eric to make an appearance, because he was her best friend and not Noel. It didn’t help that they were very similar in personality (pushovers with kind of a bad influence and zero empathy) and had a seemingly identical relationship with their respective friend.
The story itself was intriguing, yet also confusing at times - especially in the latter half of the book. I was suddenly confronted with plot twists and reveals that I wasn’t even aware I was supposed to expect (for example, everything involving Hanna and Madame Verrett caught me way too off-guard to have made any lasting impact on me), and there were some characters whose importance and place in the story I didn’t really realise until way later when Danforth literally spelt it out for me. Maybe I am just stupid, or maybe I was expected to see some sort of mystery, but none of those things had the intended effect on me - I was mainly just confused and couldn’t keep up.
Now, let me go back to the writing again. The book had an interesting format - it was told from a narrator after the fact, and you were very much made aware that what you were essentially reading was a book. As in, the narrator was the actual author of the story, and they inserted themselves into it frequently. They often addressed the readers and made certain quips about themselves, the latter of which honestly didn’t land that often. For example, when the narrator promised something, why should that have mattered to me? I didn’t know who they were in relation to me or the story. I didn’t know their personality or how likely it was that they would keep or break a promise. So I didn’t like those parts. I honestly think it would’ve been more interesting if the narrator had hinted throughout the book who they were, exactly - not necessarily with a reveal at the end, but just little hints to keep it interesting. I also wasn’t a fan of how the narrator kept telling me how I was supposed to feel. For example, at one point, Merritt and Harper went on a date, and beforehand, the narrator said, ‘I bet you’re exciting to see the date and what happened there!’, except it happened right after I spent an entire chapter reading about Merritt being judgmental and nasty to Audrey, so why should I have wanted to read more about her? And that happened several times, where the narrator told me to feel or act a certain way about something, and it almost never lined up with what I actually felt. And that made it just annoying.
What I did like about the writing, though, were the footnotes. I’m generally a big fan of footnotes, and the ones in here were often very entertaining. Admittedly, there were a few that were so random and unnecessary that I laughed more out of disbelief than actual amusement, but overall, they made the story more entertaining. The only part I mildly disliked was how tiny the asterisks were that led to the footnotes - I often didn’t realise there was a footnote at all until I was at the end of the page, and then I had to spend several seconds just hunting for the asterisk to figure out what the narrator was commenting on.
So, overall, I liked the story. It didn’t completely use all its potential - the writing could’ve been better at times, some of the characters could’ve been fleshed-out more, and parts of the story were too confusing to be enjoyable. The narrator also didn’t let us up and close as much as I would’ve liked, especially in the present chapters. But it kept my intrigue and didn’t put me into a reading slump, which bigger books nowadays often do, and the creepy scenes were done really well. Wasps definitely feel even scarier now.
The atmosphere in this book was honestly great. Especially the scenes that were supposed to be creepy really were. Not necessarily in an ‘I am going to have nightmares about this’ way, but I will definitely not be able to look at wasps the same way anymore. (Not that I’d liked those aggressive fuckers before, but now even less so.) I was also grossed out a few times, but it wasn’t gratuitous or just there to gross you out.
While the book didn’t put me in a reading slump - which part of me was worried about just based on its sheer size -, it was rather slow-moving and sometimes didn’t have a pay-off. You would wait like 300 pages just for the movie to start being shot, and then you didn’t even get to experience it up close and personal. It was a bit frustrating how much on the outside you were kept sometimes - especially when it came to the movie, because the build-up to it was so detailed and loving that it made it all the more frustrating how we only got glimpses afterward.
It didn’t help that the cast of characters didn’t completely work for me. Basically, there were two different timelines: the present, where they shot the movie about Brookhants and its curse, told from the perspective of three women (Audrey and Harper who were in the movie, and Merritt who wrote the book the movie was an adaptation of). And the past, set in 1902, which told the story of what exactly had happened. Those chapters had two POVs: Libbie, who was the principal of the school, and her lover Alex, with whom she lived with and who also worked at the school.
For the most part, I preferred the past chapters just based on the fact that it felt like there was more happening there and some scenes in the present just didn’t interest me. But also, I really didn’t like Merritt. She was very judgmental, jealous, and just overall unpleasant - she felt like a 80-year-old woman stuck in the body of a 21-year-old with the way she dismissed people immediately based on completely unfounded grounds. And while I was supposed to believe that she changed and, more importantly, became friends and lovers with Audrey (who she’d hated at first sight for no discernible reason), I didn’t get to see that. All of a sudden, she and Audrey liked each other, without there being a believable build-up (or any build-up at all, really). While not every chapter was obviously told from her perspective, she was always there, and that just sullied the present chapters for me at times.
What made Merritt even more unbearable was the writing in her chapters. It was so cringey that it made me feel embarrassed. It’s possible that that was on purpose to emphasise Merritt’s personality, but it just felt like the writing of an edgy teenager trying to be cool and unfazed. Outside of Merritt’s chapters, the writing was sometimes awkward and cringey too, but it just went really off the rails in her chapters.
All main characters, by the way, were sapphic - Harper and Alex were lesbians, Audrey and Libbie were bisexual, and Merritt I wasn't sure about (she was only shown being interested in Harper and Audrey) -, and the relationships were very focal in the story. Though, again, they weren't developed much on-page, at least when it comes to the chapters set in the present. That was disappointing. But Libbie and Alex's relationship was explored a lot, and I was generally just thrilled to read a book that was so distinctly about queer women and put the men on the sidelines a little bit.
The side characters were okay. They weren’t incredibly fleshed-out, but they had just enough meat on their bones that you could call them characters. However - and I don’t know if that was because there were simply too many characters or if it was because they weren’t developed enough -, there were a few people I kept mixing up with each other. Specifically ones in Harper and Audrey’s lives. I kept forgetting the relationships they each had with their mothers - I think that was also because it was kind of a similar one? Harper and Audrey both also had a queer male best friend, and I could not keep those two apart in my brain to save my life. I would be in Harper’s perspective waiting for Noel to show up just for Eric to make an appearance, because he was her best friend and not Noel. It didn’t help that they were very similar in personality (pushovers with kind of a bad influence and zero empathy) and had a seemingly identical relationship with their respective friend.
The story itself was intriguing, yet also confusing at times - especially in the latter half of the book. I was suddenly confronted with plot twists and reveals that I wasn’t even aware I was supposed to expect (for example, everything involving
Now, let me go back to the writing again. The book had an interesting format - it was told from a narrator after the fact, and you were very much made aware that what you were essentially reading was a book. As in, the narrator was the actual author of the story, and they inserted themselves into it frequently. They often addressed the readers and made certain quips about themselves, the latter of which honestly didn’t land that often. For example, when the narrator promised something, why should that have mattered to me? I didn’t know who they were in relation to me or the story. I didn’t know their personality or how likely it was that they would keep or break a promise. So I didn’t like those parts. I honestly think it would’ve been more interesting if the narrator had hinted throughout the book who they were, exactly - not necessarily with a reveal at the end, but just little hints to keep it interesting. I also wasn’t a fan of how the narrator kept telling me how I was supposed to feel. For example, at one point, Merritt and Harper went on a date, and beforehand, the narrator said, ‘I bet you’re exciting to see the date and what happened there!’, except it happened right after I spent an entire chapter reading about Merritt being judgmental and nasty to Audrey, so why should I have wanted to read more about her? And that happened several times, where the narrator told me to feel or act a certain way about something, and it almost never lined up with what I actually felt. And that made it just annoying.
What I did like about the writing, though, were the footnotes. I’m generally a big fan of footnotes, and the ones in here were often very entertaining. Admittedly, there were a few that were so random and unnecessary that I laughed more out of disbelief than actual amusement, but overall, they made the story more entertaining. The only part I mildly disliked was how tiny the asterisks were that led to the footnotes - I often didn’t realise there was a footnote at all until I was at the end of the page, and then I had to spend several seconds just hunting for the asterisk to figure out what the narrator was commenting on.
So, overall, I liked the story. It didn’t completely use all its potential - the writing could’ve been better at times, some of the characters could’ve been fleshed-out more, and parts of the story were too confusing to be enjoyable. The narrator also didn’t let us up and close as much as I would’ve liked, especially in the present chapters. But it kept my intrigue and didn’t put me into a reading slump, which bigger books nowadays often do, and the creepy scenes were done really well. Wasps definitely feel even scarier now.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Homophobia, Infidelity, Misogyny, and Sexism
Moderate: Addiction and Alcoholism
Minor: Car accident and Lesbophobia
savvy999's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
Immensely readable, definitely worth the effort of wading through the layers of meta text and false document. I think that this book is most effective when seen as a beautifully executed and layered project, if you attempt to place the standard of horror novels on to this will not ring true. It builds and builds but instead of true climax it continues to sprawl towards the bitter secret at the heart of the story, tragedy satisfyingly buried and revealed. The characters all feel lived in and complicated, replicating themselves over the narrative, in some kind of reincarnation. It’s fascinating to experience a story in this fashion. Not scary per se, but unnerving and insidious. Definitely both effective satire and effective gothic.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Misogyny, Lesbophobia, and Classism
Minor: Fatphobia and Pregnancy
culpeppper's review against another edition
This is gonna be negative, you've been warned.
The premise was fine, but the length of this book is absurd considering the absolute nothing that happens. I cannot stand the shifting perspective of the story. It makes it clunky instead of intriguing, and I really think it could have been a shorter, better story if it had been told from only one perspective. But we have four; Audrey, Harper Harper, Merritt, and an omniscient narrator that refuses to identify themselves (but I suspect is Merritt, based only on the fact we are reading a story about a book and one of the characters is the author of said book.)The modern storylines are boring (the three heroines don't even meet face to face until 200 pages into the story) and tedious to get through. The characters are either flat, bland, or just plain unenjoyable. They do a whole lot of nothing for twenty pages, then cut to another whole lot of nothing but this time, there's /wasps/ and shadows.
Audrey is fine, and if I had to choose one perspective to keep out of the three main characters, she's the easy pick. She's got an interesting enough backstory that could probably be better explored, a lot of characters in her personal life that we know a little bit about, and her personality is one that makes you want to root for her. Harper Harper's character is basically rich young hot "celesbian" with some deeper stuff under the surface but even 200 pages in you don't really care about her anyway. She reads like a caricature. Merritt seemingly has no redeeming characteristics that Danforth decides to show us to off-set the general callousness she shows everyone and everything around her, with a dash of self-confidence issues that excuse it all, that makes her the queer not-like-other-girls-girl. We're supposed to be inspired and surprised that she, as a mere 16 year old infant, was able to write a story and it was good. Because of that everything else about her is special, so she can be selfish and not care about others. I'm not saying that all characters can and should be likable, but in a nearly 700 page book, surely you could do without some of that.
The horror/suspense elements don't work, because I didn't care about these characters and the atmospheric storytelling is lacking. The historical timeline would have probably gotten tedious too but that was the only part of the book that had me thinking it would turn around.
Eventually, though, the whole audition scene was what did me in. I felt 0 chemistry between the characters once they were on page, and I genuinely didn't think it was worth pushing through if that was all there was ahead.
Audrey is fine, and if I had to choose one perspective to keep out of the three main characters, she's the easy pick. She's got an interesting enough backstory that could probably be better explored, a lot of characters in her personal life that we know a little bit about, and her personality is one that makes you want to root for her. Harper Harper's character is basically rich young hot "celesbian" with some deeper stuff under the surface but even 200 pages in you don't really care about her anyway. She reads like a caricature. Merritt seemingly has no redeeming characteristics that Danforth decides to show us to off-set the general callousness she shows everyone and everything around her, with a dash of self-confidence issues that excuse it all, that makes her the queer not-like-other-girls-girl. We're supposed to be inspired and surprised that she, as a mere 16 year old infant, was able to write a story and it was good. Because of that everything else about her is special, so she can be selfish and not care about others. I'm not saying that all characters can and should be likable, but in a nearly 700 page book, surely you could do without some of that.
The horror/suspense elements don't work, because I didn't care about these characters and the atmospheric storytelling is lacking. The historical timeline would have probably gotten tedious too but that was the only part of the book that had me thinking it would turn around.
Eventually, though, the whole audition scene was what did me in. I felt 0 chemistry between the characters once they were on page, and I genuinely didn't think it was worth pushing through if that was all there was ahead.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Lesbophobia, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Biphobia, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Suicide, and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Outing
Lots of wasps, dead and alive.rgrgrg's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Homophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Sexual content, Lesbophobia, and Injury/Injury detail
quiet_reader's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Drug use, Toxic relationship, Vomit, and Toxic friendship
Moderate: Homophobia, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Forced institutionalization, and Lesbophobia
haleysversion's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Biphobia, Body horror, Child death, Death, Drug use, Hate crime, Homophobia, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicide, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Lesbophobia, Fire/Fire injury, Outing, and Classism
beccaand's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Grief, and Murder
Moderate: Drug use, Homophobia, Sexual assault, Suicide, Vomit, and Lesbophobia
Minor: Fatphobia, Forced institutionalization, and Pregnancy
clarkg's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Reading this book felt like being under a spell. There were so many delicious threads to unravel that I could not stop picking at it until I reached the end. My two main critiques are that 1.) The present-day narrative is noticeably less captivating than the historical narrative and 2.) I feel like there were missed opportunities to subvert established tropes. That said, it avoided being predictable and had some genuinely unsettling moments. Reader, I loved it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Sexual content, Grief, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Homophobia, Sexual violence, Suicide, Murder, Pregnancy, Lesbophobia, and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Cursing