When I leave five stars for a book but not a review right away, it’s a sure sign I’m afraid I won’t do justice to the story with my words.

The Tortoise’s Tale is an incredible saga. Written so expertly from the point of view of Magic (The Tortoise) that you don’t doubt she’s the one who’s telling you her story.

There’s a lightness and some refined humour. But there’s also soooo much depth it breaks your heart.

I believe every single person should read this story. We all need to deeply contemplate on the kinds of topics The Tortoise’s Tale touches upon.

To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.

[The great monarch migration. WWF.]

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is beautiful writing. A vivid, deep and difficult read. The intimate scenes felt overly descriptive, but there were many lines that are very well written and they will feel better and more beautiful with each reread. This indeed is a novel that is original, poetic and so real.

This book is narrated in the form of a letter written by a young American writer of Vietnamese origin, to his mother who is illiterate. It is about communicating the difficult times and expressing all those complex memories.

Surely, Vuong's 'On Earth We`re' is totally Gorgeous!

"If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink of an eye, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you're born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly.

From the notes -

"If we are lucky, the end of the sentence is where we might begin."

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"At recess the next day, the kids would call me freak, fairy, fag. I would learn, much later, that those words were also iterations of monster."

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"Outside, the leaves fell, fat and wet as dirty money, across the windows."

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"Because a bullet without a body is a song without ears."

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"Ma. You once told me that memory is a choice. But if you were god, you’d know it’s a flood."

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"Through this careful bruising, you heal."

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"Because the thing about beauty is that it’s only beautiful outside of itself."

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"We were exchanging truths, I realized, which is to say, we were cutting one another."

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"In a world myriad as ours, the gaze is a singular act: to look at something is to fill your whole life with it, if only briefly."

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"They say nothing lasts forever but they're just scared it will last longer than they can love it."

== "The truth is we don't have to die if we don't feel like it."

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"Did you know people get rich off of sadness? I want to meet the millionaire of American sadness."

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"It's not fair that the word laughter is trapped inside slaughter. We’ll have to cut it open, you and I, like a newborn lifted, red and trembling, from the just-shot doe."

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"They say if you want something bad enough you'll end up making a god out of it."

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I regret not picking this up sooner. I LOVED THIS MUCH PLS PICK THIS BOOK UP IF YOU HAVEN'T!

I enjoyed this book so so much, it was super fun to read about, and very unique! It explored very important themes, including generational trauma, racial injustice, and grief.

The writing style was great and it hooked me in right away. I know many people complained about the writing style, but I think it's because the book is YA, so do keep that in mind. Personally, I am the target audience and already ready YA a lot so this wasn't an issue for me.

I love Bree so SO much, she's such an icon. She's incredibly brave (even if she makes stupid decisions at times) yet at the same time deeply flawed. I honestly teared up a lot reading this book, it's definitely an emotional read at times. I loved the other characters as well, especially Alice and Selwyn.

The plot was well written and constantly had me on the edge, I couldn't stop reading, even if it was slightly confusing in the beginning. You know I'm HOOKED if I read a book with 500+ pages in 2 days. Again, sometimes things were confusing but it eventually got resolved by the end.

Highly highly recommend. Please read if you haven't.

PS: I'm actually considering putting it in 'my taste,' just unsure of which book to sacrifice for it.

I found this book to be a bit of a disappointment after the first one. I gave the first book a light four stars for the worldbuilding, but this one is really at a generous three stars. My main issue with this book was that it meandered quite a bit. There was clearly an ending that the author was aiming for, but it really did feel like she was just trying to fill space between resolving the cliffy from the end of the first book and the ending that she was trying to write towards. This sequel very much did not need to be 494 pages, and I often found myself sort of drifting towards boredom at various points in the middle of this book.

tl;dr After the events of the first book, Jack and Adaira have been separated and must find a way to come together again. Beyond those troubles, the spirits are not only starting to chafe against their king's tyranny, but they are also suffering from a blighted illness that is crossing into the human realms. It may take cooperation across the whole isle (and a little music) to deal with the illness as well as to save the Isle of Cadence, spirits and humans alike, from Bane's anger.

In the first book, I had really wanted the spirts to play a bigger role rather than only appearing when Jack had summoned them with his harp. In this book, the spirits played a much bigger role, which I enjoyed...but it was a little bit too little, too late. For all that the characters talked about how important the spirits were in the first book, they really did not feature as much as I had thought they would, so the fact that they were so heavily featured in the sequel made it feel unbalanced across the duology as a whole. That said, I did enjoy the new spirit characters, especially Hap and Ash, and I enjoyed how the spirits and humans had to work together in order to deal with the blight and defeat Bane.

I also found that the characters really felt like they were retreading old ground from the first book, especially Torin and Sidra. In the first book, Torin was injured by a knife with a silencing enchantment on it so that he had to be silent, which led to his character development in terms of appreciating his wife and what he had more and to let his anger go. In this book, Torin ends up stuck in the spirit realm and is able to see Sidra while she can not see him; through this experience, he learns to...appreciate his wife more and let go of his anger. It really just felt like the exact same story for this pairing that was told a different way, which was a little frustrating because I was like "Didn't he already learn this lesson once??"

Jack and Adaira had a slightly different story in that obviously, they started this book already together and married, but I just found that I didn't...care that much about it? I don't know if it's because I'm just very much not a romantasy person or because they were bland people, but I found their sections to just be pretty boring. They were each other's strength and compensated for each other's weakness and pushed each other to be their best selves, blah blah blah. I obviously don't want drama for the sake of drama, but it just felt like it was lacking a sense of conflict. All the conflict came from the plot, which normally I probably would have been fine with (it's not like I don't like happy couples!) but the plot felt too weak to hold up the whole book.

Honestly, this book felt a little extraneous. The author obviously needed to resolve the cliffhanger, but if things in the first book had been tied up differently and maybe been a bit longer, I think the whole story could have been written as one book. Honestly, the blight and the spirits could have made up the plot of the first book, and the truth of Adaira's parentage could have come out that way; Moray had always felt like a weird loose thread that didn't quite fit, both in that book and here, and all the main plot points could still have been hit. And that way, the spirits could have played a bigger role from the beginning of the series.

I will say that I did enjoy some parts of this plot. I really liked the island coming together to deal with Bane, the illness, and just building relationships, and the way that the Lairds of the East and West led by example. I found myself really liking and respecting Innes and the way that she pushed herself to grow beyond her prejudices because of her newfound daughter. And I enjoyed the background of how Bane came to be and how Jack used his own musical abilities to face him. The folklore aspect of this story was still great, and I really enjoyed the parallels between Torin/Sidra and Innes/David as well as Jack finally getting to reunite with his father.

Was this worth a read? Eh. I was curious about how the threads from the first book would be resolved, but I don't know that it was worth the read per se. Sadly, I don't know that this author is for me; I probably could have just read a summary of this book and been perfectly happy.

See my Elements of Cadence series reviews:

A River Enchanted (#1) | here A Fire Endless (#2) | here