I enjoyed the first 50% or so of this book and felt like it had some good tension. But oh boy then the melodrama started going off the charts and everything devolved into chapter after chapter of pointing knives at each other's throats. That could very well be standard for the mafia genre, but my experience with it is pretty limited to what Katee Robert gets up to. I'll be super honest this somehow felt weaker than Katee Robert books as far as character development goes. I find that Robert's characters generally have simplistic motivations that result in logical decisions, where as the characters here had alright motivations but I felt like I wasn't following their choices. I just needed more development character wise to make all of the carnage at the end feel impactful. I also will say I was quite disappointed at how unhorny this book was. This is labeled as a dark romance on goodreads and that has certain genre expectations that weren't met by the single sex scene like 80% into the book. Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a free e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

To start off my review I want to give a major content warning for this book since I know friends from high school follow me. The main character of this book lost her sister due to a mass shooting and is dealing with a great deal of survivors guilt resulting in suicidal ideation because she was present during the shooting. There are on page scenes describing the shooting, her experience hiding during the shooting, the aftermath, and leaving the scene. Mass casualty events are something that triggers me but this book handled it in a respectful way. However, for the folks were at Pilchuck and especially those who were in the cafeteria I could see this book bringing up some unwelcome emotions. This book was a really resonant musing on the grief of losing a loved one before their time. I didn't lose a family member in the school shooting that I experienced but this is the first piece of media that I've engaged with that captures the mixture of grief and palpable anger that you experience in the aftermath. I've had over a decade to process everything but in that first year I remember feeling a lot of anger towards the shooter. At it's core this is a book about how grief manifests, how we engage with loss, and what it means to be alive. The concept of a book that explores grief and the afterlife through a fantastical lens is nothing new but I really enjoyed the lore Dawson created. A lot of this book celebrates Judaism and it's rituals surrounding death. If you feel like other afterlife books are far too Christian then I think you'll enjoy the way that this story deviates. What kept this from being a 5 star read for me was probably Nera's naivety. It's just an aspect of a character's personality that I don't generally love. Overall though, I really enjoyed this and would highly recommend the audiobook because it has a solid musical element. Also I must gas up the wonderful Mara Wilson who does impeccable work on this audiobook. Please publishers hire Mara to read 1000 more sapphic audiobooks. Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a free audio-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The only way I can describe this book is as confused and messy. I think that the author had some unique ideas for a setting and magic concept but didn't fully map out the world or think of the broader implications. For example we have this really interesting ideas of hunters who document and capture memories to be stored in museums and a religious sect that is devoted to the idea of ancestors and their memory. However, these two groups are separate entities and there seems to be animosity between them. When you think of their shared goals that just doesn't make much sense. The concept of the school for Hunters and Guardians also made very little sense. Do these people only get jobs working for the museums? How many museums are there? How large are the graduating classes? A specialized school for magical museum curators/archeologists can't really be that sustainable in a post apocalyptic climate change ravaged world. Also what the hell was going on with the fungus? They're using it for dives/religious services but also it's infecting Key's mom. The concept wasn't really foreshadowed so it just came out of nowhere and I'm still unsure if it's supposed to be the same type of fungus. Finally the romance was baffling to me. Jing was introduced as Vale's boyfriend only for him to basically do nothing for the majority of the book. He could have not existed and it would have had no impact on the tension within the romance between Key and Vale. The description of this book made it feel like we'd get a forbidden bodyguard romance and instead I got a lack of communication and nonsensical worldbuilding. Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a free e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The perfect mix of quirky, tender, and sweet. I’ve never read Good Omens and am not planning to for obvious reasons, but from watching the TV show I think if you’re a fan of it you’ll enjoy this. I’ve read a lot of Jewish fantasy in the past year and every time the mixture of faith and mysticism is executed wonderfully. In this book I loved the mischievousness of our demon and angel characters. The idea of their non human characteristics such as bird feet and hooves was a great touch. If you’re looking for a heartwarming historical fantasy with roots in Judaism I think you’ll really enjoy this.