I'll be honest this book just felt super disjointed and sadly fits in with all the other clunky writer influencer books. Having to try and piece together the half baked world building, stock side characters, and overly verbose dialogue made this a painful read. We'd ocellate from dry ramblings on made up philosophy to insanely melodramatic scenes about Roy's trauma. I understand what the author was trying to do, but having the evil brother character carve the word history into of MMC's chest is bonkers. It's just far too on the nose and feels like its trying to be edgy in a way that reads as comedic. The nail in the coffin for me was the baffling relationship between Roy and Percival. The immediate animosity from Percival towards Roy just feels so out of the blue and nonsensical. I think it would have worked better if the characters were rival scholars with some relationship baggage, however the author backed themselves into a corner with the whole scholarship being illegal thing. Sadly I think this book just works better as concepts in an Instagram carousel.

However, if you like The Atlas Six by Olive Blake I think you could enjoy this. That book does some similar hemming and hawing about made up scholarly concepts, so I don't think that aspect will get on your nerves like it did for me.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review

What if we were both passionate about labor organizing and then we fell in love 🥰. I just haven’t had too many reads that hit it out of the park this year so it was nice to read just a really solid contemporary romance. Also the representation of sapphic identities is really great, we get a butch lesbian and a bisexual trans woman as our leads. I really loved how important Isabelle’s butchness was to her experience with the world, her desire to care for others and be chivalrous was so sweet but also played well into her flaw of being overbearing. If you hate the third act breakup then this’ll be the book for you. I’m excited to see what this author gets up to next!

CW: past death of a sibling in a car accident

🌟2.5 Stars🌟 The pacing of this book was just a mess. Usually a serial killer mystery is high tension with twists and turns everywhere. I think part of the problem here was just the number of murders, they frankly started to feel mundane. The random cuts to the World's Fair in 1900 were also just a baffling choice structurally. I understand White was trying to plant seeds for the climax, but instead it ruined the pacing and at times didn't feel necessary to the execution of the story. Frankly the most interesting part of the story was the middle 20% where we got to learn about the vampire/supernatural lore. If you're wanting to pick up one of White's books I'd recommend Lucy Undying over this because the structure is a lot tighter and it gets kind of bonkers in the best way at the end.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a free e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Oooo boy has there been discourse about this book, frankly I think a lot of it is quite overblown. I will agree that the description of the book doesn't make it super clear what the vibe of this book is. I would comp this to something like A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones, House of Dragons, or the Magic of the Lost series. There is some straight up horrifying and grim stuff in here, so if you have any triggers I'll be honest this book is not for you. All of these things serve a purpose to showcase the horror of a society rooted in the subjugation of women, but that doesn't mean it isn't an unpleasant read.

I will say I have some issues with how some themes were explored, for example there's a lot of fatphobia present in the character of the King. In my analysis he's there to reflect themes of the consumption of women's bodies and the hunger for destruction inherent to colonialism, however he's the only fat character. The King basically serves as our primary antagonist, representing the negative views of this society. He's glutinous, lewd, and orchestrates the rape of multiple characters. I don't think this was intentional on Reid's part, but I've heard this is an issue in some of their other books so I think this may just be an implicit bias they have. Hopefully they can engage more with the work of fat scholars and this wont be an issue in other books.

If you enjoy a character driven low-magic fantasy exploring themes of bodily autonomy, love, and misogyny then I think this will work for you. I also think that if you're intrigued by the weird relationship between Corona and Ianthe in the Locked Tomb that whatever's happening between Agnes and Marozia will appeal to you.

CW: gore, rape including that of an implied lesbian, cannibalism, infanticide, sexual assault, misogyny, implied CSA, traumatic birth, murder, ableism, fatphobia, necrophilia

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

If Heated Rivalry shows that lust to love can make for a fun and compelling romance then this book demonstrates the opposite. A bleh amorphous plot connected by sex scenes that all bleed together is truly a painful read. The audiobook makes it even worse, I do not need a foghorn leghorn accent being used during gay sex scenes. What makes this book feel like a whole lot of nothing is the lack of impactful internal or external conflicts. Anytime a problem arises it is almost immediately resolved and the boys barely do any angsting. If you want a friends to lovers hockey romance with really great tension just read Ari Baran’s Delay of Game.