I want to preface this review by saying that I've been a casual viewer of Cindy's YouTube channel for at least a couples of years. I didn't necessarily have higher expectations than average going in, but I definitely was looking forward to The Secret World of Briar Rose more than to your average ARC. Although the concept didn't hook me 100 %, I thought exploring hypersomnia as suicidal ideation through a retelling of Sleeping Beauty was an interesting idea. Well well well.

This book is marketed as YA, so I'm not mad that it features a fairly standard adventure plot. My problem is that the pacing is completely at odds with what I think the book wants to be, and that is partly - if not primarily - because of overwriting. There are endless flowery descriptions of the environment that didn't make me understand how anything really looked. There is no sense of place despite so many words being devoted to describing it - and saying that's because the dreamworld is in flux is a bad copout. I think the problem is that half of the descriptions of the dreamworld are actually imagery to show the characters' emotions because their subconscious directly shapes the environment - which is fine in theory, but I think this would only work if readers had something to which to anchor themselves first before becoming unmoored and disoriented along with the characters. Disorientation and confusion is the default state of The Secret World of Briar Rose, which made it pretty much impossible for me to get invested in the world or the characters. There was nothing palpable to hold onto.

While the writing was overly flowery - not "objectively" but for this narrative specifically imo -, it was at the same time incredibly basic and repetitive on a sentence structure level. Short sentences with the exact same rhythm are strung together one after the other, rendering the reading experience extremely tedious. I wish more care had been put into this aspect of writing rather than trying to cram in the prettiest sounding words and metaphors - some of which made only very little sense to me ("Darkness took her like the bite of teeth." (as opposed to the bite of ???); "His voice spoke, a low sound made of lilting ink that seeped into her core." (his VOICE spoke? Is it its own entity?); "Drafts of wind cooled down the fires like a whisper." (the infamous cooling whispers I guess)). The writing sounds pretty but, overall, feels hollow. Literally style over substance.

The same is true for the characters. The book tells me that they have all these very big feelings, but it doesn't make me actually feel them. I'm sure this worked better for other people, but the emotional weight was seriously lacking for me due to how the characters were written and introduced. Corin and Elly's relationship was supposed to be the emotional core, but I found both of them so incredibly boring that there was nothing for me to relate to. Corin is angry and jaded and kind of an asshole to her sister, Elly is 12 (I think) and likes fairy tales. That's all you need to know to know EVERYTHING about their dynamic, which just isn't very compelling to me personally cause I've seen it explored the exact same way about 1000 times before. The other central relationship - the one between Amelia and Corin - comes completely out of nowhere and is almost laughable? They're suddenly kind of in love because ???? They do interact with each other, but it feels like they exist on different planets for some reason. Basically, I found it impossible to root for anyone or care about anyone's journey because no one was compelling in the slightest.

The last thing I want to mention is the worldbuilding, or rather the lack thereof. Gyldan is overrun by soldiers, but we never learn why they are in the country. Corin is from a family of refugees, but we never learn why they had to flee. A group of people plan a rebellion against "the soldiers", but we never learn whose and why. We don't really know what anyone's wearing either, except for super generic descriptions of "gowns". Everything is kept so incredibly vague, maybe to keep up the fantasy veneer? Even so, it's incredibly frustrating. What completely baffled me was that bulldozers and PLASTIC exist in the world. How?? I saw a review mention that it's incredible that bulldozers and warplanes exist but no radio, and that's pretty much sums up the level of care put into the worldbuilding as a whole. Amelia's segments read Medieval-inspired, while Corin's timeline is set 100 years later - wtf happened in-between? The dreamworld is also super uninspired. It's ordered according to the seasons. Really? You could've done ANYTHING, and you pick "Summerland" and "Autumnland" as forms of your literal limitless dream realm? Boring.

Boring is the key word to describe this book to be quite frank - and that's one of its biggest sins in my opinion. I wanted to dnf so bad at 20 % because The Secret World of Briar Rose was such a slogfest, and I only managed to finish it because I quick-read and partially skimmed the rest. The repetitive writing that, at the same time, is too much for what is being described, unengaging characters and pacing that is simply too slow for what this book is was a deadly combination. Add to that that some things literally repeat (Corin almost drowns a good five times because we cannot think of another metaphor I guess) and I'm out. The flow between chapters is pretty abysmal as well; we switch timelines each chapter and the book tries to do a Tauben im Gras thing where chapter/section transitions flow into each other - only that The Secret World of Briar Rose absolutely cannot do that capably because it basically only repeats the last line from the previous chapter at the beginning of the new one, which doesn't make for a good transition at all.

I won't even get into the amount of line edits that still need to happen before this gets published, but I'm sure that's already been taken care of by now. Though I would miss sentences like, "The more the horns grew, the more Malicine grew." - as if the horns actually cause her growth lmao Honestly, The Secret World of Briar Rose might be fine if you're 13. I'm not sure because I'm not 13 anymore, but I think 13-year-old me might've liked this book okay. Still, I can't give it a pass only because it was written for a younger audience - my criticisms stand and I want young readers to have fun, cool, interesting, and compelling stories - which this simply was not. 1.5 stars.

Edit: I forgot the time travel stuff, which was incredibly convoluted and stupid. Generally, a lot of plot points were simply overengineered and overcomplicated. Kill your darlings is not always bad advice.

- ARC provided by NetGalley -

Reviewing a short story collection is often a bit harder because the stories tend to vary in quality a little. Here, they basically alternate between Reddit-level absolute garbage and okay/decent. I thought the second half was MUCH stronger than the first, but because I Know A Place is pretty much impossible to review as a collection because it's all over the place thematically, I'll briefly talk about each story on its own.

• The collection starts with "Rest Stop", as far as I know a novella that had previously been published; this novella is what I call deeply okay. Guy is trapped in bathroom and fights for survival, sure. Very Stephen King in being shallow but entertaining. The whole killer with a God complex, which I think is supposed to telegraph that the story explores religion even though it really doesn't, is cheesy, but whatever. I had an okay time.
• We then move on to "Meet-Cute #1: The Unluckiest Girl" and get icky with it. It's a shitty two-sentence horror where the shocking thing is that the guy was Ted Bundy the whole time. Seriously, I tried to get it into the two-sentence format and it works: "Giggling, the young woman made her way out of the bar with her new acquaintance, excited for an evening of adult fun at his place, when she thought to ask his name. "That's a fun name - Ted Bundy!'" Scene. That's literally all there is to the story and I hate when people use real killers for nothing but shock value; it's cheap and boring. Next.
• "Generations" is one of the better stories for sure. The concept - all pregnant women for some reason seem to carry alien creatures instead of human fetuses - is incredibly cool and eerie and opens up discussions about posthumanism that could be interesting. If Cassidy had been more interested in exploring the conceptual level more, I think this could've been a great layered examination of anthropocentrism, bodies and identity, what "human" means, etc. The way it is, it only makes you think, "Damn, would've been nice if someone with a modicum of interest in the experiences of women had written this."
• "Nice" is embarrassing. I guess it's supposed to be a horror comedy and bravely asks, "What if a kid was told to be naughty for Christmas but that kid is actually a killer?? And the Christmas tree is hanged with organs instead of ornaments??? Omg, that'd be so TWISTED, right??" It was cringe rather than fun(ny), sadly.
• "The Art of What You Want" is BY FAR the worst story of the bunch. It's disgustingly misogynistic. The punchline is gender violence (yes, not gendered, you read that right), rape, horrifically detailed violence against a woman - it's vile. And no, I don't dislike horror or graphic content whatsoever; I just want it to have a purpose and, maybe, even have something to say. This was awful garbage.
• "The Lunar Eclipse" is kind of a love story and has my favorite lines and one of my favorite sentiments (the Definition, aka a perfect concept/memory, vs the Embodiment, the real thing that ultimately won out but will never be able to be the Definition). Though I liked the more poetry-adjacent style and format, it felt weirdly out of place in this collection and kinda took away from any possible cohesion a bit. On its own, it's not the greatest story ever, but I genuinely enjoyed it and found it emotionally compelling.
• "Laughlines" is fun and okay. It was the only one of the stories that managed to creep me out a little, even though I was lukewarm about the whole epistolary format. Not the most creative concept ("What if a king laughed...AT EVIL STUFF?") but very fun (haha) monster feature nonetheless.
• I'm genuinely not sure who "Run For Your Life" is for, but it's not me. Another deeply okay story that sees a failed musician travel back in time and become The Beatles as a solo act and that touches on interesting topics such as the link between creativity and originality, megalomania, how art is neither created in a vacuum nor in isolation - but sadly, Cassidy barely scratches the surface and the story itself is, maybe because I don't know shit about the Beatles, only fine to me personally.
• "Jubilee Juncture" is another story that made me roll my eyes. There are some seeds of a critique of organized religion and child abuse as well as the instrumentalization of religion to mitigate one's guilt, but it's all very freddy fazbore in the end. The twist can be seen from a mile away and is more for shock value than anything else. Didn't do anything for me.
• "Come" is, I think, my favorite story of the whole collection. The idea of a cursed "sex tape" - which in this case isn't a consensual sex tape but instead video material of a student having sex with her teacher, a student who later committed suicide when that tape made the rounds - that kills everyone who watches it the next time they orgasm is so so so good. I liked how the pov character - an asexual girl - and the teenage boys around her were set up to show how even the "nice boys" don't balk at watching a sexual assault that ended in death, at continuing to perpetrate that violence through the act of watching. It also engages with questions of pornography in general, the sexualization of female bodies, and I love that it essentially gives a victim of sexual assault the power to exact revenge against a bigger system that continues to violate her after death. "Come" was a real stand-out and pleasantly surprised me. Best of the bunch by a mile.
• "Into the Life of Things" is a cool cosmic horror short story that is at least a little creepy. It wasn't the most amazing thing I've ever read, but it has a fun premise - weird cult yoga meditation retreat where one of the characters basically meditates too hard - and is okayishly done. I don't have much to say about this one - I liked it well enough.
• "Meet-Cute #2" is also fine. I'm not sure whether it was supposed to be fear-inducing rather than a little bit weird tbh - of course the idea of your date having stalked you online before contacting you is terrifying, but it didn't seem like the story wanted that to be the main takeaway or emotional core, so what exactly it wanted to do to me, I have no idea. It was okay though.
• The last story, "A Fruiting Body", is so cool. I'm so glad Nat Cassidy decided to include this more experimental piece of interactive fiction where you're supposed to read it out loud with a bunch of friends to basically mimic a hivemind. I wish I'd had someone to do that with me, but I didn't want to wait and just read it to myself in different voices like a maniac, which was still kinda cool. Fungal hiveminds are almost always fun for me, and although I thought the story could've gone MUCH harder, I appreciate the idea.

So, all in all, this was very so-so. Some stories ("Come", "A Fruiting Body", "The Lunar Eclipse") are creative, cool, and interesting; others ("Meet-Cute #1", "Nice", "The Art of What You Want", "Jubilee Juncture") are utter trash; and most of them are just meh. I Know A Place definitely ends on a high note, but I don't think I will pick up another book by Nat Cassidy to be completely honest.

- ARC provided by NetGalley -