emmirosereads's reviews
402 reviews

What an absolutely incredible and delightful read! I think it's a fantastic sign when you love a retelling so much it makes you want to reread the original. Gabe Cole Novoa did an excellent job at weaving this queer story into the original source. This was incredibly heartwarming and sweet and I loved seeing the relationship between Oliver and Darcy develop. 
I know many people will have feelings about the historical accuracy of this novel but as a queer person I appreciate so much the choice of choosing queer joy and success in the end. It made me so freaking happy. I will never get tired of reading about queer joy. 

I know the point of this is to pit the girls against each other and they'll probably be character development later in the book/series but I am just not in the mood to read that right now. It wasn't keeping my interest. 

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for giving me an early copy of this book to read and review. 

I think this healed something in my religiously traumatized gay little heart. I loved everything about this from the writing of Jenna Voris to the characters, to the story itself. It was funny, it was heart wrenching, and equally as heart warming. 

As someone who grew up going to church and have been to many a church camp/retreat the setting was all too familiar. Many times nearly making me cringe from the memories of it all but to me that was a sign of excellent writing. I really connected with both Riley's struggle with faith and grappling with missing the familiarity of church even though you want nothing to do with the religion anymore. Along with Julia's struggle and the fear that comes with the realization that you like girls when you've grown up being told how much of a sin it was all your life. 

I really loved every single character in this book. They all felt fully fleshed out and well developed throughout the book. I loved seeing their bonds with each other and how everything came together so nicely in the end. I think Ben was my favorite though. His support for Riley, his love for his sister and the romantic love he has for Hannah was all so beautiful to me. While I hated Pastor Young I love him as a character as he was a very well done antagonist. I felt so strongly every time Riley was forced to interact with him.

Also despite there already being feelings present between our two love interests and them having an already established relationship Jenna Voris did an absolutely AMAZING job at not making this feel insta-lovey. That is my biggest issue with so many romance books and what will constantly keep them from a five star for me but she captured the sapphic yearning of these two girls so damn well and I loved every moment of it. Definitely a bit of a slow burn but I was here for it!

An excellent book about queer love, struggling with faith, and so much more. If this sounds up your alley I would so very much recommend it. I also want to mention how much I love the chapter titles in this book. Almost every single one made me chuckle and just a nice little bow on an already wonderful book. 

This was recommended to me by a friend and I'm so very happy that I picked it up. What an absolutely incredible story and message along with stunning art. There were multiple pages that I just had to stop and just really appreciate. The art style is incredibly unique and really just added to the whole feel of this book. 

I can definitely understand where people are coming from in terms of the cheesy message, and other issues with the book. There were a few things that just seemed a tad unrealistic but that didn't majorly take away from my own enjoyment at all. There were many reviews that mentioned the pacing not giving enough time for the characters to really shine but I truly didn't feel like that. It's so easy for me to feel like I don't have enough time with characters in graphic novels but I felt quite the opposite with this. I loved seeing every character and their story as their portraits were being made and felt like the story was very well paced. 

There's also a bit of a found family aspect about all of this that I really enjoyed. This really filled my heart and the ultimate message of "Just create art no matter what." was really touching and inspiring as a creative person. 

The feelings Billie Scott went through of her life changing forever and coming to terms with being unable to do what you always wanted to do in the way you always thought was something I really connected with as well. I could really feel the emotions she was dealing with through the story and art. 

I had a lot of fun reading this one! It definitely could be considered a bit tropey and predictable and I did have a few issues with the pacing. A lot of stuff happens in this book and I feel like a lot of times there isn't a very clear jump from plot point to plot point, which caused me to be lost a few times when I started listening to the second half of this on audio but other than that I loved this and ultimately none of those things effected my enjoyment of the book much as a whole. 

The writing and prose of this book was absolutely stunning. I really loved Lore as a character and how she was a soft and caring person but also realizes a lot of her strength throughout the novel. I don't read a lot of fae books anymore so it was fun reading about this stories version of them and the world building. We are left on a major cliff hanger and I can't wait for the next book to be released. 

I loved the incredible unique take on the Cinderella tale. Strong characters with a unique world and interesting twists and turns. I had some issues with the pacing of the romance and the development of the villain but other than that this book was fantastic. It's been a while since I've read a good fairytale inspired book. 

What an absolutely incredible book. It took me a long time to read this just because life has been a struggle but every moment I was invested. I don't think I have any complaints about this book besides the fact that sometimes the worldbuilding and info we got felt like a little info dumpy because it was often given to us through dialogue but even then it was sprinkled well throughout the book to not feel too overwhelming. 

I think the thing that struck me the most about this book was Tracy Deonn's INCREDIBLE writing and prose. It was beautiful and lyrical without being so extremely overpowering with flowery writing. The way she writes and describes grief is both heart wrenching and so beautiful. I tabbed and annotated so many moments and quotes.

The worldbuilding was fantastic in this with the magic system, the secret societies, the Arthurian legends woven into all of it. I can't wait to dive into and learn more in the sequel. 

I also really appreciate the social commentary woven into this story. There was no shying away from the real history of what black people went through in America, especially with this book taking place in the south and the generational trauma that effects Bree in the modern day. Bree is such an incredible and powerful young character and I loved every moment of seeing her development and growth in this first book of a series. 

A few chapters in it was so obvious why this book is so popular and so loved and I cannot wait to dive into the sequel and the rest of the series. 

A very enjoyable and cute romance novel! As a nerdy person who loves gaming I LOVED the premise of this and all the gaming references. I loved the two main characters and seeing their relationship blossom. I also loved seeing this set in Atlanta as someone who used to live near Atlanta that felt very familiar and fun. 
I think my only real complaint was some minor issues with the pacing and some of the time skips. Sometimes it was a little confusing and jarring and sometimes made it feel a little insta-lovey but that didn't take too much away from my enjoyment. There was also like super cheesy, borderline cringey comments throughout the book, but again that's pretty on par with a typical romance novel so didn't bother me a whole lot. 
Definitely really fun, and would recommend for anyone wanting a fun a quick romance read!

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sending me an eARC for an honest review of this book. 

This was about exactly what I expected it to be. Nothing more and nothing less. If you like apocalyptic stories or maybe you're new to the genre I think this would be a great place to start. It's unique in some of the premises, like the backdrop of an abandoned bookstore and are main character Liz who might seem a lot softer than a typical character in a story like this who's been hardened and has to survive. I like that contrast and the premise of the disaster that brought on this end of civilization as we know it was interesting as well. I also thought it was interesting how the story was told. How we flip flop from present day to the past and also little bits of other people's story that's written in a book our main character has. 

While there's a lot of promising aspects and I had enjoyment while reading this overall I felt like the story itself and the relationship between our two main characters just felt very basic and predictable. Neither I felt like had any crazy character development and growth and what little there was felt very rushed.  I just didn't connect with the characters or story as much as I would have wanted to.  

I'm having such mixed feelings about this book. Up until about the 80% mark this was a solid 4 star book. It wasn't perfect but I was enjoying it. Though as I finished and as I was thinking about it, the less and less I liked it and the more problems I saw with it as I read reviews. 

This had so much potential. What I did like about it was the intertwining of greek mythology and Indian lore. This made for a rather rich backdrop for this world to be set in and these characters to be built up in, I loved the themes of feminine rage, Manisha serving justice and giving these monstruous men what they deserved. I also really appreciated the messages weaved through out this book, of what really makes a monster a monster? Though our characters maybe could have had a little more dimension to them I did overall really enjoy them as characters.

This book is dark, and heavy. While we were more than adequately warned of the contents of the book and I knew what I was getting into it was still extremely difficult to get through most of the time as a lot of the violence against woman is on page. It seemed like a very fine line of getting the message of the book across and simply throwing as much pain and trauma onto the pages as possible and I'm unsure of if that line was crossed or not. 
As I was reading other reviews to kind of gather my thoughts and see if people could better voice what I was feeling, one review made an excellent point that ties into the above point and maybe the reason it felt like that line was being so toyed with. It was the fact that all of the abusers and rapist in this story almost felt like 2D caricatures. They were sleazy men that were very clearly bad from everyone's perspective when in reality most abusers do an excellent job at pretending to be model citizens. They are people we know and often people we trusted. I'm bad at wording things properly but when that was pointed out that was another thing to add to the list why this book felt off to me. 

Ultimately though the biggest issue I had with this book was the writing and the pacing. Many reviewers have pointed out how the writing came off as though written for a middle grade novel, while having the contents of an upper YA/adult novel and I would have to agree. That in itself was quite jarring. It's also just extremely slow paced. We don't even get to the meat of what we're told into the synopsis until we're about 100 pages in. It also feels like we don't get a whole lot more then what's in the synopsis.  While I appreciate the method of jumping back and forth between the present day and timeline, it ultimately came off a little jarring and choppy trying to realign with what was going on with each new perspective shift. 

I feel like I have many other thoughts but it's getting late and this review is getting long. Overall this book had a lot of potential. I appreciate it for the message it was trying to convey but overall it just fell flat and didn't quite reach my expectations.