solarmatrixcobra's reviews
11 reviews

hopeful inspiring tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I was torn between giving this book a 3 or a 4, but I have decided to go for 3 because there are simply two large things (and some smaller ones) I think lessened the enjoyment of the story for me in too significant of a way for me to ignore.

The first and third acts were pretty well-paced and tense and engaging in their own ways. They were quite well done. However, I also felt like the first act was too long, but maybe that was just my imagination due to a much more prevalent issue, which was:

The second act was way too weak. This book doesn't have a saggy middle, not really, but compared to all that happens in acts I and III, act II was so painfully mid (no pun intended). While there was clear progression of plot and there wasn't really any fluff or padding, the events that transpired were just boring and uninspired, and felt like they should have been a small part of it rather than the entire journey for the main characters. While I don't expect every fantasy to be epic, I expect the middle part of each book, that's supposed to be the longest, to have a lot more stuff going for it that what we got here. The character's journey from act I to act III was felt like barely anything happened outside of one or two major things (

meeting the "fairy godmother" and raising the corpse of Cinderella, which, by the way, felt completely pointless in the grand scheme of things as she just told them to find her journal and that's it. The journal didn't even tell us what we didn't already know. Total waste, especially since her name is literally in the title and she is mythicised in their kingdom. That's like raising Cleopatra and all she has to say is "you have to stop him! you're in danger!" Much info. Very helpful.

)

The second biggest issue with this story might just be from the fact that this book is YA, and it reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally shows. I don't know if younger readers aren't able to understand nuance and character complexity, but much like a lot of other YA books that mock teenages' intelligence, the way the theme is presented is painfully black and white. Every single character is either good or downright evil. The theme is all about oppression of women and patriarchy dialed up to a hundred, and I don't wanna say that people can't get super abusive and evil given enough power and freedom to do so, but it just made for a less interesting story (to me) when it's just a very classic struggle of good vs evil instead of something more interesting and mature like exploring patriarchy in all the various benevolent and malevolent ways it can manifest in people's lives. But the author wanted to present this theme in a simpler manner, which is a choice, but I feel like even for a YA audience, it could have have used at least a couple more shades of gray. The closest thing we get to it is a short discussion between the MC and a

gay

boy about how

even men who don't conform in this kingdom have it easier than women who refuse to conform to the rules and societal expectations set by them by their one-dimensional evil king

. Heck, men and people of other genders suffer under patriarchy, too, and could have been interesting to explore. But we just get a very one-note, black and white story about how men oppress women. I'm a (cis) woman myself by the way if by any chance you might think my opinion to not hold the same value if I were a man or something. And don't get me wrong, I love feminist stories like this that are all about "down with the patriarchy." I just think that it's not just lazy but potentially harmful to just show the worst of the worst men who overtly abuse women as the only offenders when it only goes to confirm the incorrect notion that someone can only be doing something bad if it's as horrible as physical abuse or murder or something. But since most guys are probably not gonna read this, I guess it doesn't matter that much, which is a shame because I think when we speak about societal issues like the patriarchy, even young people should be taught that there are certain nuances to it. Kids aren't dumb, they just don't have the vocabulary and experience to draw from like their older counterparts to understand certain concepts that require prior knowledge of something. Kids need to be challenged. Pure black and white theming like this is not good enough, in my opinion.

All in all, I'm really sad at how disappointing this book was for me when the cover and the title and even the premise of a story taking place in the same universe as a fairy tale but some time after it were so damn intriguing. But sadly even the details around the fairy tales that were used and/or changed wasn't done as creatively or in as interesting of a way as I had hoped, especially the "true" story of Cinderella. It was basically just

"Cinderella and the stepsisters and the stepmother didn't hate each other actually, they loved each other. Insert that 'everbody so creative' meme."

And like I said, I love stories that are about dunking on the patriarchy. I feel like this book could have been so much more if the second act had more things happen and was more fleshed out, and the characters and theme wasn't so oversimplified to just a battle between good and evil. And although I don't feel like it was foreshadowed well enough, I do like the twist that

the fairy godmother/witch is actually the king's mother, as my own mother is also the kind of person who gives preferential treatment to the child of the opposite sex at the expense of girls and women, including her own daughter

.

I say it's worth a read as it just feels to me like a very cultural book that almost everyone should read, but just don't expect too much depth or creativity/entertainment from it.

Content Warnings

House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

I really liked the atmosphere and the creepiness of the final third of the book, and I wish the rest of the book was more like that.

Instead, the first two thirds of it is honestly pretty uninspired as we mostly just follow two of the three main characters looking for their missing sister and being followed by a weird guy with a cow skull on his head. It feels like the author had a cool idea for a premise and then sort of didn't know how exactly to make a whole 300-page story out of it. Why was the whole book about these two girls looking around modern-day England for their sister. Even when one or two weird things happened, they just weren't interesting enough. Why are authors so uninspired? I can't seem to find a single book that has more than one interesting and engaging idea. It's almost always like a super good filling surrounded by a mountain of kind of bland dough, and I don't know how much more bread I can eat through to get to a little dollop of the good stuff. I wish I could ask the author whether or not she genuinely thought that characters looking around town for someone was interesting. How can it be interesting to anyone, especially in a novel that has fantasy/speculative elements as well? It's like writing a cool world and lore and monsters into a story, and then focus on the characters (mostly) normal lives 90% of the time with barely any of the fantastical elements, or at least ones that weren't just repeating the same event over and over:

white flowers blooming out of wounds and rotting corpses

. Seriously, couldn't you have thought of something else to happen for a change?

Not gonna lie, though, I did not expect that

the skull guy was actually the father

, and it was foreshadowed really well to the point that some other people even saw it coming. I don't know why I didn't, but the rest of the twist, while not too cliche, wasn't that hard to figure out, and I suspected as what the twist pretty early on, which was a bit disappointing:

that the girls are actually imposters and not the real daughters that disappeared.

However, sadly, it's horribly explained, and when I mean horribly, I mean barely. IDK if the autor was too lazy to explain stuff in more detail or she thought going into the science and bilogy of things would demistify it, but I really didn't like that

we never found anything out about the girls' past identities other than the fact that they were already dead, and while it's explained how you can skin someone and put their skin on yourself to look like them on the outside, we got answers for why they ate a lot, but nothing in terms of why everyone was so obsessed with them and how they were able to seduce and control people by touching them or letting them taste them. You can't just give characters weirdly specific powers like that and never explain why they have them, especially when you had no problem explaining why they had endless appetites and such. Not cool.

Anyway, I guess I recommend the story if you like some gothic-ish atmosphere and such, but be warned that the first two thirds of the story are pretty non-magical for the most part and don't expect a whole lot of sense regarding the worldbuilding. Again, this book felt more like the author had one cool image/idea in her head, then tried to write a story around that, and sady, it didn't quite work. As a write myself, this happens to me all too often, but I know how to spot it and scrap the story unless I can make the narrative sensible and compelling and have shit happen that's not just characters going on a mild contemporary goose chase in a novel that promised supernatural stuff.

Content Warnings

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring 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

4.0

Though the plot would get boring at certain points and two of the three main monsters weren't really all that creepy, I love how the theme is pulled through the story and how we get to see the inspiration for each of the main character's horror stories and his traumatic past. I absolutely loved the chapter titled Killjoy near the end and the message it sends from a thematic standpoint. Unfortunately, I don't feel like I can give it 5 stars as, once again, I felt like some parts were not as gripping or interesting enough, specifically the scenes with the two monsters Mrs. Why and the Black Lamb, and since they did make up a decent chunk of the story combined, I just don't feel like this was a 5-star read for me. I also found the best friend, Tara, really annoying at times. Though she's not a gay best friend stereotype you see in a lot of rom-coms, she's still a "zany and weird best friend" archetype. Though this character does things throughout the book and has plot and theme relevance towards the end, I hate it when authors write in best friend characters who are nothing but supportive and feel more like narrative tools than actual characters and protagonists of their own subplots/stories, and both the best friend and the main character's boyfriend are kind of like this. But all in all, this was mostly an enjoyable read compared to a lot of the other stuff I've sadly reach recently. Will definitely be checking out some of the author's other horror books in the future.

Content Warnings

A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon

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adventurous inspiring reflective fast-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? Yes

4.0

Love how the writing made me imagine this as an aeni or an anime. I wish western books had such an engaging writing style as opposed to stretching out uninspired scenes with tons of useless words and cliche dialogues where barely anything happens.

I just feel like the profoundness of this book fell short compared to a very similar premise like Madoka Magicka, combining magical girls with existential dread and darker themes.

It also would have beneffited from being longer to flesh out all the characters more.

But overall really relatable for young people struggling under capitalism and an enjoyable read compared to a lot of western authors I've read recently.

Content Warnings

Raising the Horseman by Serena Valentino

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mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I am so sad I did not DNF this book. I feel like it was a waste of my time. Boring, barely any chemistry between the romantic leads other than they have similar interests. It was character-driven, so little to no actual plot, just us following Kat as she reads the diary of the former Katrina, her namesake. It's not even explained why they name every daughter in the family after this one chick from the past. The world-building is absolute ass, style over substance. I give it two stars because of an interesting twist on one of the characters and how the antagonists were three-dimensional, but that's about it. Everything else is just boring and bland. The cover of this book is overselling it. Not worth it. I'm sad such an amazing cover didn't go to a better, more interesting book.

Far From Neverland by River Hale

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 8%.

I thought this was going to be fantasy and that we were going to be in Neverland. With sex being thrown in with a random pirate early on in the story, I feel like this is just going to be another fairy tale retelling that's basically smut with just enough plot to move things along and have a mostly contemporary setting as opposed to fantasy (

and after reading another review, it turns out my guess was correct

) similar to Neon Gods, which I don't like, so I'm cutting my losses early, especially since I'm really not vibing with Hook as a character. He's way too unlikable and not fun enough for me. I think I've seriously started to grow out of my dark romance phase.

Content Warnings

Death at Morning House by Maureen Johnson

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mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I had high hopes for this story and was looking forward to an enticing mystery. Right off the bat, I was already suspecting I was going to be disappointed due to how simple the setup was, predicting and assuming that there were little to no opportunities for a good twist with the premise of the story to begin with. Still, I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. Needless to say, I was suprirsed, not by the twist so much as just how boring and mind-numbing this book would be. P.S. Feel free to read on, I will cover up all the spoilers so you don't have to be afraid of reading this review and having the twist spoiled for you.

The book roughly takes place in the present 60-75% of the time. The rest of the book takes place in the past, around the time of the murders that we are made aware of at the very start of the book. The entirety of the present-day portion of the book (after the inciting incident) just straight up has no plot. At all. The character just goes to work on the island where Morning House is as a tour guide, and that's it. The author is literally describing her just going around and meeting new people. Now, there are portions of the present-day mystery drip fed to us every so often, but aside from that, literally nothing is happening. The only actually interesting parts are the chapters that take place in the past that actually have a half-decent plot structure as some weird stuff starts happening with the family (weirder than usual), and certain members of the household try to deal with the situation and actually have goals and motivation and opposition. The present-day has none of that. No story goal. Marlowe is just there to do her job. There is nothing to strive for. Even after the halfway point when

we find out a guy was murdered on the other island and now the supervisor has gone missing and is presumed dead

, the characters still don't get a story goal. One of the characters ropes the protagonist into searching a room, but that's it.

And sadly, as superior the past chapters were to the present ones, they weren't anything that special either, just like I was worried about when I learned of the setup at the start of the book.

But aside from over half of the book just straight up having no plot, the second biggest sin this book commits is poorly executing its mystery/twist. We do not get sufficient information to put the puzzle pieces together on our own until it's time to reveal the twist. There is some foreshadowing, but all supurfluous info that doesn't really allow us to deduce what happened until the author wants us to. Why even write a mystery at all then? Because the premise is so simple and not really creative, I feel like the author was afraid to give us too many clues because we'd be able to figure it out too early, which is true, but it's not an excuse for a poorly written mystery. Either the premise should be so creative you can dangle the culprit in our faces and we wouldn't be able to put the pieces together ourselves, or you need to give us so many pieces to think about so we don't see the ones that obviously fit together until it's time for the big reveal.

The author does a good job of leading us towards the conclusion that one of the kids, Clara, killed her brother, Max, then fell off the roof either as attempted suicide or by accident. However, without little to no warning or foreshadowing, she then reveals near the end it was actually Unity, a different sister, who killed her, and only then gave us all the information about her character that frankly should have been given to us much earlier. Like I said, the author decided to withold any relevant information until it was time to reveal the culprit. You would not have been able to make an educated guess with the information she did decide to provide prior to the murder. They were just weird seemingly random things that happened because we did not get to see much of the goals or motives of any other character outside of Clara, the red herring.

The book keeps mentioning the theme of things hiding in plain sight, yet the author doesn't practice what she preaches with her own story, making important clues downright invisible or non-existent at worst. I personally hate it when mysteries are written like that because they don't feel like mysteries at all. It's like the author is asking you to solve a puzzle blindfolded and then telling you it was a good puzzle because you couldn't solve it.

Honestly, I regret forcing myself to finish this book. I wish I had DNFed it and just looked up what the twists were. I didn't partly because sometimes twists just don't hit the same outside of context. Again, I'm sad I wasted my time with a very poor excuse of a mystery book. This is a YA book, and a lot of people will say that they need to have simpler mysteries for a younger audience, but this isn't wasn't even Scooby Doo level difficulty. Again, there was no difficulty to judge because the author didn't even want to give us a chance to do any problem solving of our own before she decided it was time for us to learn the truth.

It wasn't the worst thing I've ever written, hence the 2-star rating, but I would not recommend it to mystery lovers. And for those of you who have decided by now this book is not worth your time but want to know the twist, here it comes. I must reiterate that you only read the following sections if you've decided 100% you do not want to read or finish this book, otherwise this will spoil the whole thing for you. You've been warned. Sadly, it will probably not make sense to you, again, because the author hardly gives us any clues for us to be able to figure it out on our own until the very end, but here it is:

Past: The dad says he adopted six kids, but they are actually his biological kids he had with different women he was sleeping with because he was obsessed with eugenics, and almost no one knew this--they thought Max, the youngest, was his only biological child. Max has serious mental health problems and started hurting people. Clara did some investigating and found this out, but, plot twist, it was actually Unity who killed him, not Clara. It turns out she was obsessed with her dad and his philosphies, and it's speculated whether she was jealous of the attention Max was getting or because Max's mental health issues were proof that her father was wrong about everything he was spewing regarding eugenics. She later kind of killed Clara because Clara found out Unity was the murderer, and hit her with a chair twice, after which Clara fell off the balcony. She told her dad, the aunt overheard them, and they tried to keep it a secret until the aunt decided she could not let Unity live after murdering her brother and sister, so she took her out to a frozen lake and drowned them both under the ice.

Present: Marlowe meets a group of kids who are childhood friends and works with them as a tour guide on the island. A douchebag named Chris died some time ago so Marlowe was his replacement. Then, while Marlowe is there, a senior member researching the history of the island is later killed. Turns out April, the readhead girl, pushed Chris off the cliff before, and then thought the senior professor was looking into his murder, so she pushed her off the balcony of Morning House and hid her body, then tried burning the house down to destroy the evidence and possibly get rid of some of the other kids looking into her disappearence. We het even less foreshadowing and clues for her being the killer if that's even possible. Again, there is no way for you to make an educated guess on who the killers were until the author reveals them, which I hate.

So, there you have it. Like I said, it's not satisfying because the twists come out of nowhere and you will have had no way of even suspecting anything. 2 stars. Would not recommend.

P.S. That was a very weird choice to have Marlowe end up with

the girl from the first act instead of Riki, with whom we've spent more time and got attached to as readers.

Content Warnings

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar

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challenging mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Really refreshing story after having DNFed a whole bunch of romantasy books and MF romances and having realized too many of them are the boring same old thing. I did not particularly like the lyrical prose in this one though--it was just incredibly confusing to read most of the time. The only scene/chapter that I didn't get a headache from while reading was the one where Red talks to her commander, and if the entire book was written mostly in that style instead, I would have given this 5 stars for sure. I love cool and fresh ideas and stories in books, but I just enjoy myself the most when the writing and pacing is closer to what you'd typically find in YA, but sadly, a lot of YA book also happen to be really poorly written plotting-wise and unoriginal, which is why it's so rare for me to rate a book 5 stars.

I also found it strange when I read a few reviews saying they didn't understand why the characters fell in love, which is weird because I definitely felt like I shipped the characters (I forgot it was a romance) and was then pleasantly surprised when they started confessing their feelings and I relized oh yeah that was actually advertised to happen! I say I was surprised at how much I shipped the characters early on because I have read many (MF) romances in the past and I felt like most of them the characters had no reasons to like each other other than because they found each other hot, and the relationships were all just very shallow with more sex than any deeper connection really. But I guess that's why maybe I only stumbled upon one or two of such reviews, because I genuinely feel like the romance was developed very subtly and very well. For th frist time in a long time, I actually wanted to see these two characters get together, and that's not something that happens a lot for me. IDK if it's just the nature of MF books because so many of them these days are regurgitated slop where the characters have 0 chemistry outside of finding each other hot, but this was definitely what I would expect from romance. I've all but given up on MF romance now and am embracing my identity as a WLW reader now. The stories just seem to have more variety and don't feel like I'm reading the same book over and over again, even if my star rating may vary.

Content Warnings

Horror Hotel by Faith McClaren, Victoria Fulton

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adventurous 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? No

3.5

The twist villain was super predictable, you will guess it's them almost immediately after they first appear. Still really enjoyed this book! The story had great structure, pacing, and great horror scenes! One of the rare reads for me this year I could hardly put down, but I wish the scenes that were more character-centric were shorter or more engaging.

Content Warnings

An Education in Malice by S.T. Gibson

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Was very disappointed. Synopsis on the back is a bunch of lies. The character dynamic feels weird with reversed dom-sub dynamic. Only similarities to Carmilla is that there are vampires and the names. We get a watered-down semblance of a plot only halfway through the book. The straight random background character sex scenes last longer than the ones between our MCs in this sapphic romance for some reason. The only good thing about this is the setting and descriptions and how well the mood is set. Prime example of style over substance.

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solarmatrixcobra's reviews 11 reviews

solarmatrixcobra's reviews
11 reviews