awanderingweasel's reviews
247 reviews

Room on the Sea by André Aciman

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emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

An Education in Malice by S.T. Gibson

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dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

An Education in Malice became my most anticipated book of the year as soon as S.T. Gibson, whose work I have loved since reading A Dowry of Blood, announced she was working on a Carmilla retelling. I love consuming media about vampires. My academic research revolves around vampires. In other words, I’m somewhat of a vampire connoisseur. In extending some grace to this book and its author, I’ll partially blame the following thoughts on my high expectations and my familiarity with the genre and its tropes. 
 
This book tries to do a lot of things at once. It traverses the horror, gothic, fantasy, romance, and dark academia genres without grounding itself in any of them. What immediately struck me about its lack of dark academiadness was the fact that, despite my close reading (I was taking notes for an academic project), by the time I reached 60% of the book I had forgotten they were enrolled in a college and had classes to attend. I just thought they were taking a poetry seminar because the narrative solely focused on De Lafontaine’s course. Towards the end of the book, other courses – Astronomy and Church History – are mentioned because Laura and Carmilla have finals. Tell me more about Saint Perpetua’s course catalogue, please!! I was a bit annoyed by the lack of worldbuilding, especially because the setting isn’t even contemporary, so I think we could have spent more time looking at the time period and the academic environment. And to be quite frank, there wasn’t much going on with the plot or the characters that we couldn’t focus on worldbuilding every so often. 
 
With that premise out of the way, I have to say that although I found the reading experience most frustrating at times, there are some elements I appreciated. The religious references and overtones, which pullulate S.T. Gibson’s books, were very nice. I like when an author has a peculiarity about them, a predilection for some thing that inevitably bleeds into everything they create. Religious imagery is it for S.T. Gibson, and I really like that. I also enjoyed the absence of men in the narrative. It is both true of real life and vampire novels that men ruin everything, and you can quote me on this. Human men kill Carmilla in the original story, but this book forsakes that ending in order to focus on the blossoming of a (complicated) sapphic relationship. 
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House” is a timeless masterpiece of psychological and ghostly horror. Set within the foreboding walls of Hill House, the novel grips readers from its beginning, refusing to give away its secrets even as the plot advances.

What impressed me the most was Shirley Jackson’s writing, which I find truly unparalleled. Her meticulous attention to detail and evocative prose makes for a chilling read, as readers are left to their own devices in the navigation of a labyrinthine and uninviting home. Eleanor is one of the most interesting characters I’ve ever encountered in fiction, though I have a soft spot for Theodora. 

This book was my favorite read from 2023, and a great way to ring in the new year. After thinking about it non-stop for 3 months, I decided to post about it. The Haunting is a story I was extremely familiar with — my parents showed me the 1999 film adaptation when I was younger, and it made me scared of my own shadow. But I always meant to return to this story later. And when I did, I loved it.
Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Reading the Leaves: An Intuitive Guide to the Ancient Art and Modern Magic of Tea Leaf Divination by Leanne Marrama, Sandra Mariah Wright

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informative fast-paced

3.0

Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata

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dark reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata was an interesting read, but it ultimately did not impress me a lot. For the most part, I found the stories to be too short, making it hard to develop a real attachment to the narrative and the characters. With that being said, the first story, "A First-Rate Material", and the titular story, "Life Ceremony", were good, and I think that they go hand in hand. I almost would have preferred seeing a short story collection from Murata that exclusively explores unconventional ways of upcycling human bodies post-mortem. The first story was, again, a bit too short for my taste, and I found that it ended abruptly -- like many other stories in this book. Had the tension between the engaged party been drawn out a big longer and the stakes raised, I don't doubt that it would have been a 5-star read. "Life Ceremony", on the other hand, was really really good. I enjoyed learning about the relationship between the characters and the lore behind life ceremonies, and I thought that the story arc was well-executed with a satisfying ending. In my head, these two stories would work wonderfully as Black Mirror episodes.

Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Press for providing me with an ARC of this book! All opinions are my own. 
Di tutte le ricchezze by Stefano Benni

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funny lighthearted medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal

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adventurous mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

I found out that A Tempest of Tea was coming out a few weeks before its publication date, and upon being presented with the keywords “vampires”, “heist”, and “tea”, I immediately requested the e-book from my library. Then, I spent the waiting period perusing Hafsah Faizal’s TikTok to find out more about the book. She described it as “Peaky Blinders meets a dash of King Arthur with vampires and a heist”, which to me sounded pretty unusual and interesting. I was suddenly very curious as to how she managed to fit all these themes together in a coherent way. Spoiler: she did not. 
 
My entire reading experience of A Tempest of Tea consisted of dragging myself through the long and boring parts, but mostly of thinking over and over “this book is a marketing ploy.” At its very core, the story is eerily similar to Six of Crows with a bunch of appealing elements sprinkled on top: vampires (they mostly hang out in the background) and King Arthur (Arthie, the main character, has a pistol named Calibore, whose backstory mirrors that of Excalibur). Arthie and her brother Jin run a tea shop called Spindrift, like the American brand, which made me think the whole time that they were sipping on fruity sparkling water – but maybe that’s on me. The thing about the tea shop is that other than serving as an excuse for Arthie and Jin to plan a heist, and as a place where vampires hang out afterhours, it does not come up throughout the story that much. 
 
Overall, the book felt “tropey”, and the tropes stood out too much for me to ignore them even if I was enjoying the narrative – which I wasn’t. I struggled to connect with such underdeveloped characters, and once I realized the parallels with Six of Crows, I couldn’t help thinking about how much those characters meant to me and how I was on the edge of my seat for fear that something would happen to them. In this book, the stakes are almost as high, but my attachment to the characters was lacking. Even the relationships between the characters feel fabricated. Attraction and romance do not naturally develop; rather, characters are slotted into romantic arcs, it seems, to fit an imaginary requirement. On a technical level, there was too much exposition and not enough action, which hurts a narrative where action is supposed to drive the story forward. As a direct result, pacing was off. Most of the brief chapters preceding the heist could have been summarized with a “And thus, they waited.” Instead, the reader has to sit through a handful of variations of that same sentence. At that point of the book, I was desperate for something, anything, to happen. 
 
It genuinely upsets me when a book with so much potential does not become a favorite of mine due to poor execution. Almost everything I have commented upon could be fixed with revisions and a second draft. This is a feeling I have about many recent releases, and it frustrates me to see that publishers think they can keep presenting readers with books that still need lots of editing. 
Garlic & the Vampire by Bree Paulsen

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adventurous emotional inspiring lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse #1 by Ben Templesmith

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.75