So Many Stars gathers essays from elder bipoc queer people to share their story and their journey as a queer person, going through the hardships they had to face but also the happy moments they found in their life and their community.

This was an incredibly emotional read because of how personal it was. By having these people be the ones to tell their own story, you get to understand more intimately how they felt through different moments in their lives, how the people around them affected them negatively but also how others helped them in the most positive way and became their beacon of light.

It brought me a little to tears how so many of these people felt different, how the people around them looked at them differently and felt the need to assign them to a specific gender or label, when most times they didn’t even have words to express how they felt, only that they just wanted to be themselves - “and I don’t even remember secretly feeling like I wanted to be a boy. I just felt like I wanted to be who I am.”

It broke my heart when they mentioned how they got beat up, were called slurs and put in prison only to say after “That was how it was back then.”, that this was their normal and what queer people had to face on a daily without being able to do much about it, otherwise they could face even worse consequences.

But it also brought me so much joy reading more positive perspectives with how some had accepting families, were able to find people they could trust in and belong to a community that made them happy where they felt accepted and seen and where they were able to find joy in being queer. As important as it is to learn about the prejudice queer people had and still have to face today, it’s equally valuable to also read about queer joy, people being happy in their body and loving who they are.

The structure of the book didn’t work for me and unfortunately that affected a lot my enjoyment in reading this. I do think there is cohesiveness in the way Caro De Robertis chose to put together transcripts all relating to the same topic of discussion in the same chapter, but these segments were all mixed together with even ones by the same person split apart, breaking the flow of their train of thought and, consequently, my own reading. This made the reading a bit confusing, losing track of who was saying what, and blended all their voices together instead of keeping them distinct. I wanted to learn more about these people individually, but with the way this book was written it was hard to piece their history together.

I might be in the minority here but I absolutely loved this. The structure, the characters, the way the story was split between them, the social commentary around how women are viewed and manipulated by society, how much their trauma changed them and makes them so angry and hurt to the point where that harm switches from the outside to coming from themselves without them even realizing it.

None of the characters are likable, but that’s exactly what makes reading this and learning about their stories so much more interesting. You get an immediate first impression when you’re introduced to them, but the more they tell their story, the more you get to understand that there’s so much more to them than just being “unlikable”, that they’re also hurt and most have never had the chance to heal and get help. For most of the book, a lot of the characters show no empathy for the other people in the group, they’re not what you’d call “girls girls”, but they’re also not supposed to be. This is not a book about women caring for each other, it’s a book about how much harm was caused to them and how they deal with it in the present.

The characters feel exaggerated with the way they talk and interact with others, but in a way that is done on purpose, to emphasize how different they are, how each has a distinct personality and how their story makes sense to them.

The way each character's story was told was so interesting to read. Because each of their stories are based on fairytail, there’s so many unique details that indicate what fairytail they’re representing, so many similes and parallels that I found to be written so well, casually inserted into their story that could otherwise be seen as a mindless details, but that here have so much meaning. You can still read this without knowing each fairytail and what each character represents, though I do think it has a way bigger impact when you know the original story and how the author decided to put their own spin in this book.

There’s also an element of mystery with all these women having been called to join this therapy group and these mystery emails having been sent to them. Why? Who sent the emails? Why them? With what purpose? You get to slowly make theories and find out why they all got together to share their lives.

I won’t say this was the most well written book ever, and I do understand some of the criticism it gets, but this worked for me and personally really enjoyed reading it.

Carissa Broadbent meant it when she said this was her darkest and most action-packed Nyaxia book yet and omg I loved every second of it!!!

Kyrene was everything and I’m actually in love with her. She’s such a well written character, strong, fierce and not afraid to do what’s needed to get to her goals even if that means having to sacrifice others. She also grows so much throughout this book and it’s so heartfelt to see that growth, to see her go from what it seems like an emotionless character that cares about no one to understanding she has a lot of caring that she tries to hide to protect herself and others.

If you’ve read the previous books in the series, you know Septimus isn’t necessarily a likable and easy character, but when I tell you I felt everything for him in this book. You get to see so many different sides of him (my favorite was soft Septimus, need a novella of him being soft for Kyrene on my desk by tomorrow thank you Carissa), understand so many of his past decisions, feel for his story and his past and why he is the way he is. While this doesn’t excuse a lot of wrongs he did to the past books’ main characters, there is a reason for it and you get to have that understanding.

I might start crying if I think too much about Kyrene and Septimus, cause I genuinely just loved them as individual characters but also as a couple. There’s a lot of yummy tension between them that gets really well explored throughout their journey, so much bonding over wanting to reach the same goals and bonding over past trauma that changed how they both viewed the world, both of them understanding each other and slowly starting to fall and care and wanting to protect the other. ahh they were just perfect stunning beautiful amazing.

One of my favorite parts about this series is the plot around the gods and this book delivered!! There’s so much focus around the gods and Kyrene and Septimus’ mission involving them, you get to understand a lot of gods that hadn’t been on the spotlight before, and just how much the gods impact the world they live in and the people in it.

I have such a special love for this series and this book just reminded me of why.