epsyphus's reviews
320 reviews

I don't know. I don't not like this book, there's just other books that I want to read more. It's just not holding my attention. 

The first 90 pages are kind of slow, but then dang it really picked up. There's this kind of descent into madness that was crazy to read. The narration took some getting used to, but I really liked it. 

I'm having a hard time organizing my thoughts on this book. It was scary, not like can't-sleep-with-the-lights-off-for-a-couple-nights, but more like do-we-ever-really-know-anybody?? sort of thing. Even knowing before hand that the narrator was unreliable, I still found myself surprised and horrified at the end. The narrator used a lot of derogatory language commonly used in the 1970s which bugged me, but I did enjoy the book. The characters were interesting.

This was really good! The world building was very interesting; I felt like there was a good balance between making sure I had a good enough understanding of the way the world worked to follow along but not so much that I felt like it was just info dumped on me. I've found that to be a difficult thing to do in a standalone, but it really worked here. Not only was the world compelling, but I thought the characters were as well. I felt like I had a good understanding of their motivations and character. There was initial attraction that created a bit of tension, but it wasn't dwelt on like this cheesy "I hate them so much but oh my gosh they're so attractive I can barely control myself around them" nonsense. The tension and romance that built between them felt well paced and organic. The side characters were fun too! Really an excellent read.

I try not to read books when they have a lot attention from the book community— both good and bad in most cases— just because I want to make up my own mind about books without a lot of outside influences first. But I was looking for a faster pace audiobook and this one was available. I tried to avoid watching videos about people talking about it but on the positive side I did hear a few people describing it as the new ACOTAR in terms of enjoyability, expected popularity, and probably spice too. On the negative side, I’ve heard criticism about how she handled POC. Like she included them but made no mention of how race fits into the world. Which may not seem like a big deal especially as it’s fantasy and not our world, but as the one creator I saw about it said, not including it in the world building it has the feeling of “it’s a utopia where all POC have assimilated into a single white/western culture” which is problematic. I feel like it would have been better to either make it clear that this is a world in which race never factored much into culture and instead culture is based almost exclusively on nationality (as nationality is  already established to be important to the storyline) or to include the ways in which race does factor into culture, even if this world is handling racism better than ours is. 

The writing was alright even if there were some occasionally weird modern sounding phrases mixed in. I felt like the characters could have been fleshed out more and I do tend to prefer a slow burn romance, but that being said, I did enjoy the book. It was a fun world and an entertaining read. 

Interesting. 

Absolutely lovely. The academic approach to faeries was so much fun. I want to read all of the articles and studies she mentions in her footnotes. I didn't realize it was a series until I finished it and I can't wait for the next one!

I liked this one a bit more than the first one-- I felt like more happened. I still feel like I don't have as good as a grasp on the characters as I think I should though. 

I'm branching out, trying new things. I don't really care for spice, but this was fun.

This was fun even though I don't gravitate toward insta-love. The sequels seem to be focused on other couples so I don't know if I'll finish the series, but I enjoyed this one.