A review by transcendent
The Scratch Daughters by August Clarke

5.0

medium to strong 5 stars
god I love this series so much

I honestly don't know where to start because my heart is so full from reading such an explicitly queer girl gang and their little ink dude demon (who is keeping one of them alive) hex gross men to oblivion.
I adore Daisy, Jing, Lila, Sideways and new addition Shiloh- who's growth in such a short time made my little nonbinary heart so happy- and their various shenanigans, but having a huge arc within this book be about them fighting may have almost killed me.

Clarke's use of run on sentences alongside Sideways general way of thought and particularly when the point of view would blur from Sideways' to Madeline's, changing before I often recognised it was a whole other person had me oftentimes reeling and dissecting every interaction that they have trying to understand if it's "real" in any sense of the word, or if it's Sideways' lack of reality furthering their own plot against themselves, which was fun(?) if not worrying.

seeing the sheer amount of growth within all of the characters within such a short period of time and witnessing Boris and Julian come into their own as multifaceted people within Sideways' life made my heart so full of gay love for all of these people.

maybe this is just my bread and butter in a book, maybe my need to see others like me shields my eyes from looking at this series critically, but what I know for certain is that Clarke creates magic with their words and it should be further shared with the world.
please, if you're on the fence about reading this, do read it, show it the love and care that it shows its readers threefold.

also stan mr scratch I love that guy AND they/them sideways truthers stay winning