A review by pixieauthoress
Carniepunk: The Three Lives of Lydia by Delilah S. Dawson

4.0

Right after I finished [b:Wicked as They Come|12381722|Wicked as They Come (Blud, #1)|Delilah S. Dawson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1324921586s/12381722.jpg|17362398], Twitter informed me that this book was free on XOXO After Dark until the end of the month. It's a super short story (all of 39 pages), and although it's technically the prequel to the first Blud book, I'm not sure much it would be appreciated if you weren't already invested in the series? As with WATC, the world-building is fantastic and lyrical, and you really feel like you're there, at the carnival. The romance is pretty unexciting, since Lydia and Charlie fall for each other immediately. There's a fair bit of action, and Lydia experiences a lot of violence for such a short story, but I did appreciate the continuity with the details in WATC, like explaining why the wolfman was no longer part of the carnival when Tish arrived, etc. I was going to rate this book 3*, until the twist at the end. It's incredibly dark and unexpected, but I loved it. I'm generally not a big fan of short stories, unless they do something surprising like that, so this is getting bumped up to a 4* purely because of the ending.