clovetra's reviews
214 reviews

XIRAN JAY ZHAO THE GENIUS YOU ARE. 

i have no clue why i didn’t read this earlier but boy did i love this book!!!!!!

disabled rep in the form of both zetian & shimin? check. feminine rage? check. great dialogue? check. world building that makes sense? check. a love triangle that doesn’t feel forced and is resolved in an interesting way? check. loveable anti-hero as a protag? check. grungy elements that make this YA book feel like it’s pushing the boundaries of YA fantasy? check. check check checkkkkkkk

god i loved zetian. honestly she’s up there as one of my fav protags from literature. i always love a female protagonist who pushes against society’s rules and transcends beyond what is expected of her. plus she felt so rational, and i love that her character development wasn’t focused on her letting go of her rage!!!!! let women be angry and murder lots of men (in fictional books)!!!!!! i really enjoyed the plot and all its progressions and developments. the action scenes felt so real, and although i found it really hard to picture things such as the chrysalises & spirit armour…. i was having way too much fun to let the fact i didn’t have a super clear picture affect my experience reading this. 

i’m not a fan of love triangles tbh and they fucking piss me off but the way this one was handled….. chefs kiss. yet again XIRAN JAY ZHAO YOUR MIND. i wish the “resolution” of the love triangle (iykyk) was a bit more fleshed out and had time to breathe before the ending, and i hate when books are such a clear set up to a sequel. babes give me some form of resolution my god!!!!!!! but honestly with how much fun i had i can’t really complain, but i imagine those who read this when it first released would be fuming about the ending. it felt rushed. defo didn’t feel like it came out of nowhere but….. idk it felt Too Fantastical. the ending defo follows zetian’s established personality and motivations, but it feels like it.. wouldn’t be possible in universe. possible as in… yeah that could happen logistically…. but in reality would it be able to work? idk. 

but god this book literally scratches every itch i love in a book. 

in less than 400 pages, xiran jay zhao has cemented themselves as one of my favourite authors. plus they get bonus points for being a fellow nonbinary baddie. cant wait to see what chaos zetian causes in the next book 😼

yeah sadly i don’t think this book is my style. i thought it was! very much so at the beginning! but as i’ve read more i’ve realised this (obv) focuses a lot on rowing which…. i don’t care about. at all. i am not a sports fan. i like playing sports but watching it? no thanks. 

when chapters were about joe & his home life i was having fun, but now the book is about the meat of rowing and i couldn’t care less ❤️‍🩹

this book was a TRIP. at some points it was enjoyable, but a lot more often than not with this book it made almost zero sense. 

this book’s worldbuilding and characters really sucked me in to begin with. the world of crath, alongside livira as an incredibly likeable protagonist really worked. evar’s world also sucked me in, but i will say compared to livira, he was quite boring as a character. he lacked deep characterisation, and alongside someone as spunky as livira his chapters fell flat.

i think this book’s biggest downfall is although its almost 600 pages, it feels like it barely touches on the world of the story, and instead focuses on characters, which is all find and dandy if your worldbuilding is up to par. this book jumped steps 1, 2 &3 and immediately ran to step 4 regarding its world. like even in the first chapter the dust isn’t properly explained, and you kind of just have to piece together what’s going on. like sabbers - are they human? we’re told at some points, yes…. then no…. then like 70% into the book a nonhuman description is given…. but then yes they’re human. it felt like a battle between each concept as it would be explained one way, and then expanded on when the foundation wasn’t properly explored. 

also the amount of plot twists…. im a girl who loves plot twists, even if i predict them. what i don’t love is that this book is so complex and fails to fully explain the rules of its world that the plot twists literally don’t make sense, or feel like they’ve just been added for shock value. like once we got to jumping portals within portals and assistants and travelling back and forth…. after a while everything was twisting in on itself too much and seemed to be breaking the laws of this world’s universe i had no idea what was happening. this was probably the most egregious in the last 20% of the book. before that, i could reasonably understand what was going on. but in the last 100 pages or so i think this book really lost the plot… literally.

and the ending too….. i don’t even know what happened. like i do…. but gun to my head i couldn’t *explain* it. 

i really had fun reading this in the first half, but after that point i think too much was happening at once, it didn’t let me sit & digest what i was reading before another plot point that wasn’t fully fleshed out was introduced.

this sounds like such a mean review but i actually did enjoy myself reading this! before the halfway mark i was sure this would be a 4-star for me. but idk the way the second half of the book was….. not a fan 🙁

at this point im not even too sure if i’d want to finish this series. in one way im so attached to my girl livira i want to know what happened to her, but honestly i cant say i want to subject myself to another 600 pages of poor worldbuilding. 

i need to be real..... im not having fun.
i started reading this as a reading challenge in bookishreality's discord server & i was like "oh maybe after i pass 50% ill be having fun!"
nope.
i have no motivation or care to pick this back up again now that I've passed the halfway mark. i dont care about the count. i don't care. this book drags on so fucking much. did dumas get paid per page or some shit because seriously this book doesn't need to be almost 2k pages long. half of the time dumas is just describing the colour of a fucking brick that a house is built with or something. 
some chapters are fun, but honestly they're too few & far between for me to care about them. 
also i wanted to finish this because this is literally the one book my grandma has finished in her entire life. i wanted to bond with her about it. she enjoyed it. but i mean she also was born in post WWII serbia in a tiny village. welp, sorry grandma. this book was ass. i get if you had literally nothing else to do but..... its a no from me im afraid

i did not expect to like this that much?? i did not expect this book to go how it went either!!!!!

now i’m just gonna say up front - the only reason this isn’t a 5-star is because there was a LOTTTTT of space jargon. the book tries its best to explain it so i at least had some idea but…. i’m sorry by the end i was lost with how much jargon there was. not only was there insane science technical terms but made up concepts???? my brain short circuited it couldn’t keep up. even if i had no idea wtf was going on usually i could excuse that, but i will say when there were paragraphs of jargon by the end i just started skimming because i knew i would just be wasting my own time and hating every second of it. sue me.

other than that? this book was PERFECTION. i get why this guy had his book made into an award winning movie. ngl this needs to be made into one too. idk how they’d make rocky but honestly i don’t care!

grace was so funny and quippy. he did lose a bit of this by the middle, but tbh at that point based on the personality established i had grown to love him without his funny bone rearing its head every sentence so i wasn’t mad. i loved his flashbacks appearing in progression, especially his dynamic with stratter.

now - i gotta spotlight my boy rocky. ROCKY!!!!!!! i started crying over him because i actually just loved him so much. i won’t lie i did have to google illustrations of what the actual fuck he looked like cuz i actually could not imagine it at all. yes i am an avid fantasy & sci-fi reader with slight aphantasia and what? but after i got over that slight hump (i’m so serious i googled a drawing of him literally when his physical description was given so… this didn’t take long) i ADORED rocky. he’s my homeboy.

i actually started panicking because i thought rocky sabotaged the ship at the end. i was FREAKING OUT!!!! thankfully he didn’t or i would’ve been PISSED.

he was so quirky and made up for grace’s lack of funny one liners later.

the world building here also needs a great pat on the back. i mean i imagine the brain behind a blockbuster space movie would be great at world building…. and i would be correct in thinking that. everything down to the hypothetical(?) aliens & planets & situations felt so realistic that i actually forgot this book wasn’t sci-fi and was real. like if i went to space i would see a rocky. i saw on the news tokyo had 100mm of rain in an hour and my brain went “oh yeah that makes sense based on what the prediction surrounding astrophage’s effect on earth” and i had to pause. and realise. oh wait that’s not even real. it’s just raining a lot because of global warming and…. idk rain. not an alien parasite(?). even tho i had no actual idea what was happening on the logistical/technical side of things, from the dumbed down versions of events provided, it felt entirely realistic!!!!! i was so locked in reading this. can u tell seeing i read this in like 3 days as well. 

the relationship between rocky & grace ate so bad. god and the ending too?????? ugh impeccable. no notes. chefs kiss. i had such a fun time reading this.

anyways omw to add the martian to my letterboxd watch list 🫡

i really dont know how to explain *why* i enjoyed this book so much. all i know is that it made me cry and i had a good time and i didnt expect a book about food to do this to me.
i think this book hit so hard as i did relate to rika quite a bit - daddy issues & perpetual feelings of loneliness? yeahhhh we're twinning. i really enjoyed how she was written, and could put myself in her shoes constantly. she was incredibly likeable and probably contributed to >90% of my enjoyment of reading this. side characters such as reiko & shinoi were also well-written, as was the star of this book, kajii. 
i found kajii intriguing, as it was difficult to tell her underlying motives. just like rika, im sitting here contemplating the kajii beyond what she display(ed) to the public. truly fascinating character, and i especially liked her ending. and in general i loved this book's ending. felt like a nice full-circle.
speaking of, not only did i not expect to love a book about food, but i really loved how the book centers itself on relationships. relationships in terms of friends, family, and lovers, were superbly covered in this book. ngl i think the ending regarding rika's relationships is what made me cry. idk i didnt expect it and it hit me Hard.
what else did i like? i mean there really wasnt a plot if im honest. yeah sure we're following kajii & rika.... but there's no logical flow. there's no beginning, middle & end to this. it follows rika and honestly that was fascinating. seeing rika switch between admiring to fearing to resenting to loving kajii was great. honestly i think the no-plot only works because rika is written so well and is very relatable. without it, i think i would've dnf'd this a chapter in.
i really like how the book lowkey changes halfway through. it was unexpected yet it felt realistic based on the setting and characters' presented. especially with reiko's chapter, i liked how the story turned into something else.
now the real question is - why is this not a 5-star if i seemed to live laugh love everything? well im ngl but even though rika is so likeable so i said the no-plot wasnt an issue.... it kind of is. there's almost no resolution regarding the plot proposed to readers for the first half of this book. im not saying i needed a "where are they now" of kajii and a complete resolution - i understand it was likely written as ambiguous or not mentioned at all to fit rika's characterisation at the time. still, as a reader, i can't lie and say it didnt annoy me slightly. plus, as much as i loved the passages with rika & her foodgasms, after the first 4 paragraphs about how great butter is i was.... not bored? moreso it felt redundant. girl i know butter is orgasmic u said so literally 2 sentences ago. can we move on to the actual story staring me right in the eye. i mean i didnt hate the food chapters, but i didnt love them. they were... fine. 
anyways im so serious after reading this ive had to contain myself from not going to the shops to buy a ridiculously expensive butter to see if rika is actually just a weirdo or if butter is *that* good. lock ur doors yall if you have butter in ur fridge the clobster is coming to yoink it all tonight 😈

thank you NetGalley for providing me an ARC of this in return for my honest review! ❤️

the book follows two main characters - noah, an everyday joe who has unknowingly been employed at an eldrich horror-esque newspaper company; and malachia, who works for the congregation, who finds her entire city of silence empty. the story follows these two trying to figure out what in the heck is happening around them. 

now i would like to preface that i really dont enjoy giving low ratings to indie books, but i cant lie and say i enjoyed this more than i did. i would also like to preface i am a vibe-rater first and foremost, but even though the vibe of this book was great, i did find there to be quite a few issues holding me back from enjoying it more.

i want to start with the positives of this book. firstly, did not expect lgbt+ rep going into this! i am always a sucker for rep, even if it is incredibly inconsequential. i enjoyed that in the world shiveley created, gender & attraction doesnt matter when you’re working a job of lovecraftian horror. i love when in horror/fantasy being queer is not an issue at all. 

i also am a sucker for mixed media in books!!!! the random newspapers at first were just pretty to look at & i skipped them, but then i realised “hey i want to read these” and they were cool! also i have no idea why my brain originally decided they were just for aesthetic and had nothing to do with the plot. why did i decide that. i found the mini-stories(?) in the newspapers super intriguing, especially moss-girl. wouldve loved to know what happened to her though </3. the fact the newspapers, although they could stand on their own, tied into the overall story by showing us what type of company printed matter is, letting us get freaked out before noah is even aware of who he’s working for. 

speaking of noah, god was he funny! honestly he carried this book. his humour was honestly the biggest thing that kept me intrigued. instantly in the first chapter with his likeability, his “everyman” characterisation and his wit i was sold on him. this kind of faded with time, but i cant lie and say simply because of how great a character noah was, i thought this would be a 4-star book. 

and now i have to discuss why it wasnt… and the main reason is malachia. i had absolutely no idea what was going on with her plot. i dont mind when a book introduces concepts unique to this world, but when concepts such as the “mansion of silence” and the “third silence movement” and the “congregation”... i mean hey if its shown not told that works! i promise im not that dumb needed things spelled out that explicitly. but there was no showing or telling. i could not piece together what was happening until i was like >85% finished this which does not make for an enjoyable reading experience! and i only had this issue with malachia’s chapters. noah works as he also has no idea what is going on like the reader, but with everything weird occurring being pretty normal for malachia, it felt like i, as the reader, was left behind in terms of background information.

also malachia was essentially a noncharacter. that might be because i had actually no idea what she was yapping about 95% of the time… because it was all context that was missing. idk when i was reading her chapters my heart was not in it, i was waiting to get back to noah’s fresh hell.

i think that is the book’s fundamental issue. it does not explain its unique concepts. gun to my head i could not summarise this book without a guide. not because i wasnt concentrating, but because i was incredibly confused. im so serious i cannot tell you what malachia was doing this entire story. like i can TELL you, but what was her goal? anything beyond surface level, i cannot tell you a single thing. noah’s story was a bit easier to grasp, but at some points i was still lost. honestly though with noah’s story i found it easier to just be along for the ride because he was so bewildered with what was occurring, as was i. malachia seemed like it was just another monday for her, which meant i felt like i was being dragged through the entire story with new concepts being added when i had just figured out what the city of silence or congregation actually was. i think the actual story of this world defo needd more fleshing out.

the other major drawback of this story is that it feels like it doesnt know what its trying to do. at some points it felt like weird horror, other times it felt like dark fantasy, and at other times it felt like a magical realism x horror novel. this book kind of reminded me of piranesi in a way, with the reader also having no idea whats going on but is along for the ride. noah is also kind of like the titular piranesi, in that they are both silly goofballs which make the book great. but the plot in this novel kept pulling me in so many different directions, and in <200 pages, we dont have time to be doing this much. 

i think this book’s fatal flaw is not having more pages. i think if there were more pages, a lot of the “issues” i had whilst reading this would have been resolved. i still had a good time, and i can definitely say this book is unlike anything i’ve ever read before! sadly i do think its hiccups are too prominent for me to have overlooked whilst reading this, and as they negatively affected my enjoyment, i cant look past them.

confessions was so good & honestly this was a bit of a letdown…. 

the first chapter was really great & gripping, but i think with each chapter the book progressed it fell into a quite repetitive pattern. not only was it very formulaic like confessions, but the chapters themselves all followed the same beats and weren’t very interesting beyond what the characters themselves did at the end of each chapter. 

confessions really benefited from this structure as following the story from each character’s perspective deepened the story, and kept pumping out great plot twist after great plot twist. this book felt like it was trying to do the same, but with making the character seeking vengeance incredibly unlikeable and portraying her as unjustified, i really was just reading to read. 

sae’s chapter was really interesting and a great way to open the book imo. maki’s chapter honestly was… Mid! like it was fine but idk her chapter slammed in between sae & akiko’s felt odd. like idk we should have been building up with the “severity” of the stories, and maki’s was a weird dip in the pacing. akiko’s was only good at the end, otherwise it felt like she was just yapping to get to the end. yuka’s was also pretty boring, but i will say i preferred hers over akiko’s & maki’s. like my ranking would go: sae >>>>> yuka > akiko >>>>>> maki. emily’s mother’s chapter was also incredibly boring, and the final chapter was…. Fine! 

idk i couldn’t really find an ability to give a shit about the characters beyond wanting to know what happens. minato has a good ability to hook you, but idk here it felt like she only really hooked me in at the end of each of her chapters. 

i mean i still had a good time! i still wanted to know what happened! i was interested! but compared to confessions….. Flop. i was so excited to read this because confessions was actually so addictive and GOOOODDDD. and this was just ok! my expectations were ridiculously high im afraid. 

thank you NetGalley & PeachTree Teen for providing me with a copy of this ARC! 

this fatal kiss follows gisela, an undead water nymph (a rusałka) who dreams of returning to the mortal world, which can be done if she receives a kiss from a mortal. but its kind of hard to get someone to kiss you when you’re freezing at the touch. in comes kazik, the town’s exorcist, who cant stand the spirits that run the town he lives in. after flubbing gisela’s exorcism, he agrees to get a mortal to kiss her. insert hijinks!

so, right off the bat, i loved this book’s LGBT+ rep. the fact both the MCs are bisexual is so beautiful i loved to see it. the fact gisela and kazik are unapologetically bi is so refreshing to see. the lgbt+ rep ate in this book. no notes there.

the chemistry between kazik & gisela was great. gisela is such a funny, charismatic and easy character to empathise with. kazik’s growth was great to witness, and his interactions with gisela are so good. their chemistry was off the charts. 

as a fellow slavic (dont ask from where specifically nobody knows) i LOVED the seamless integration of slavic culture within the story. yapping about kefir & goulash made my little balkan heart sing, and the way the general vibe of the story managed to balance its setting to be contemporaneous yet also holding true to its slavic nature was so nice to read. its rare to read a book featuring eastern european culture and god i couldnt get enough.

the book also has some GREAT humour. this book does not take itself seriously, and it was such a good book to read. it had a nice lighthearted vibe which made the atmosphere feel so cozy whilst managing to still crack me up with funny one-liners or even just how the characters were acting. like im sorry gisela is a comedy queen. kazik and other characters did have some humorous moments, but gisela solo’d.

now.. you may be wondering why this is only a 3-star. 

for starters, i think the biggest thing holding this book back for me was the lack of tension. i wasnt truly worried for the main characters, even when they were in “concerning” or “dangerous” situations. there werent too many situations where they were in danger, but even then, the tension was resolved super quickly.

for example, with rosa, yeah i was worried she was gonna jump my girl gisela. but then the other water nymphs came and i just knew she would be save. same with kazik jumping into the crystal palace & them with the house spirit.

the situations they were placed in werent too serious, so i knew the characters would make it out ok, therefore i had no motivation to actually… read this. and ive read lighthearted low stakes stories with no tension (like legends & lattes), but the plot was still interesting! it felt like the story really floundered in the middle, was gripping for the first 50 & last 100 pages.
the world building at times suffered from exposition dumps, especially surrounding the other spirits in the area and certain lore. i am by no means a fiction writer so i imagine i would do a horrific job at explaining fantasy elements if i were to hypothetically write a story but. a lot of times the exposition or lore dumps were literally just “insert creature. they do xyz, and beef with abc”. it did get a bit annoying by the end where something was only explained once it had been introduced. sometimes it went nowhere, and sometimes the worldbuilding was addressed there & then (like the spirit just introduced was staring gisela or kazik straight in the face). idk i got tired of the repetitive way lore was conveyed.

the ending was a bit of a letdown im not going to lie. i expected a lot more to happen, especially in the epilogue. the plot has mostly been resolved, but yet everything is kind of left super open? gisela’s family is just touched on after that being her motivation for the entire plot.. kazik’s story still being open… aleksy doing literally who knows what. idk i would’ve liked a chapter with a bit more of a flash forward & with a more conclusive ending for the characters.

overall, i will say i had a good time. although i wasn’t reaching for this book quite often due to there being a lack of tension to pull me in & have me worried for the characters, once i was reading i was having a ball. the atmosphere and world created by jasinska was fabulous, and really gave a cutesy cottagecore meets mythology vibe. i will always give extra points for hitting me in the Culture Feels™️, but the ending was a bit disappointing :(

i can’t wait for this book to come out so i can oggle at gisela fan art 

first and foremost — YO I JUST MET MY 2024 READING GOAL! 60TH BOOK OF 2024 WHO CHEERED!

anyways i need to be real. this book was really confusing for my tiny little pea brain. i will admit i think i might have liked this story a bit more if i had read it at a different time. like im so serious i have no critical thinking right now. changing to a new antidepressant coupled with a cold? yeah i have about zero reading comprehension at the moment so take everything i say critiquing this book with a grain of salt. hell i might come back to this book in 6 months and give it an extra star cuz i did really enjoy this book at times! but idk i don’t think i can give this 4-stars when i was confused for a good chunk of the book 💀

most of my confusion i think comes from what the character’s motivations are and why they’re doing xyz. rose, judith, the barber, the foreman, garreth & merley or whatever the fuck his name was, none of their motivations made logical sense to me. yet again i am not one to talk about logic when i am literally noncoherent in daily conversations & my memory is of a goldfish. like gun to my head i cant figure out what the M guy’s actual goal was, or damien/damian (i’m gonna go with the ‘a’ spelling & if im wrong sue me). i am still confused by that.

i am also confused about the time period this takes place in, as well as the actual setting. yeah i know its in canada and its snowy and shit. but like do the girls live in a mall? where is gareth living? what even was the camp supposed to be?

the ending was lowkey kinda fire, i did not see those reveals coming (but tbh you could’ve given me a mystery novel where the killer literally confessed on the first page & i still would’ve been blindsided at the moment). i really loved the white alice chapters and as things slowly started to make more sense i was having the time of my life. but when those reveals only come with 20% of the book left….. i mean like i said i cant 4-star it.

the characters themselves were….. fine. rose was likeable most of the time. i really couldn’t work out her motivations or her true thoughts by the end. willow was also fine. judith was meh. the other blooms were literally non-characters. garreth was insufferable. the rest of the male characters were fine. i still don’t really get the barber’s motivations by the end regarding him & rose but 🤷 im not mad at it. same applies to M-guy what the fuck was he trying to do at the end. numbskull

the plot was… Ok! the actual story felt like it was going nowhere, but like i said i absolutely loved the white alice chapters. give me an entire book expanding on those chapters & im sold. those chapters kinda remind me of ‘i who have never known men’ and i adored that book so!

the preachy messages about the patriarchy and men sucking got tiring at times. yes i know men suck. they are opportunists and shallow and see women as objects and blah blah blah. sorry you’ve said your message to me, now do something with it. i mean the book kind of did at the end with white alice & rose but… idk more should’ve been done with that.
i really liked the grimy vibe of this book. idk what more to say about that it had a real edgy vibe that i liked.

i have a feeling this review is all over the place (when are my reviews not) but anyways. i had a good time. i found this book average. probably shouldn’t have read this whilst my brain is mush. i defo want to come back to this in the future and see if i enjoy it more when i can actually think coherently. anyways off i go to increase my reading goal now that ive met it with *checks calendar* FOUR MONTHS LEFT OF 2024.

god speed