immakingt0ast's reviews
841 reviews

Thank you to Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for an honest review.

There's a lot of interesting stuff here. First, the premise. We follow Cora, a Chinese American, and a few of her Chinese American friends in New York during the height of COVID, where they are working as crime scene cleaners. They are noticing that they have been cleaning up a LOT of murdered Asian women... and then they start finding bats at the crime scenes. Oh, and they start seeing ghosts of the murdered women. 

I really appreciate what the author was trying to do here. Telling the stories of Asians during COVID who are dealing with all the hate and violence directed at them during that time is SO important and quite frankly I would really like to see more of it. There is also some really cool cultural information shared over the course of the novel and I always love to that. 

That being said, as much as I loved the premise, I'm not 100% sure I loved the execution. Cora isn't really that interesting of a character (though I did love Aoife and Harvey). But my biggest gripe was that I really didn't love how the mystery unfolded. The whole book is a slow burn, and the ending feels a little rushed and not very satisfying. That could have been an intentional choice of the author (the character mentions this specifically) so this is probably just me wishing everything could be wrapped up in nice bows. But still, even a vague ending can be a good one and the last 10% just felt rushed for me.

Overall 3.5 stars rounded up and I'd like more Asian ownvoices covid stories please

ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

This one really didn't do it for me. The art was cool but for some reason I couldn't get past the fact that the MC was Korean for no apparent reason? She doesn't really have a backstory except that her parents were murdered so it just seemed a... strange choice. It does not seem to inform her character or her decision making in any way, so it just seemed off. Ofc diversity is cool but it just seemed like it was inserted for the sake of diversity, both with the race of the MC and other characters. 
The rest of the novel was pretty okay, the art was so colorful and great to look at but the story did not really draw me in. 

 Favorite book of 2025 so far!!

Hilarious and flawed mc, neat magic system, a mystery with incredible twists and turns and a cute romance. Absolutely devoured it and I'm sad it's over. 

Not vibing with the audio but the story is interesting. Setting this aside to pick up in print at a later date

Art: 5/5
Story: 5/5
Ease of Comprehension: 2/5 lol

So, this might be a "me" problem, but as much as i loved the art and the overall story of this, I found it really hard to understand. It's in English, mind, and there are no problems with the actual text localization which is perfect native English. The problem for me is that the story is kinda in "stream of conciousness" format, where thoughts overlap and flow into each other and characters are speaking and thinking at the same time, and I had a really hard time following it. This is definitely not my first time reading manga, and while I wouldn't consider myself a manga afficionado or anything, I'm not exactly a stranger to it and I found it really hard to figure out what character was saying what, which bubbles were thoughts, and what was the narration. It was really jarring at times because I would have to flip back a few pages and try to figure out what was going on, which kinda killed the simmering, emotional buildup the author was trying to achieve. I'm not sure if this would be easier to understand in the original Japanese, or the localization editors could have done a better job, or if I just kinda suck at reading manga but unfortunately this fell a bit short of what it could have been.

4 confused stars. 

Don't get me wrong, this book was good and I enjoyed reading it, but I feel like the description is a bit... misleading? 

(mild spoilers)

This book is fast paced and the plot has some really interesting twists and turns. The world building is good, and the alt-history setting of wartime Bletchley Park is super interesting! I also love the lore we get about the dragons (which talk and are sentient) and how they were historically integrated into Brittania's society. 

That said, since I have a habit of barely glancing at book descriptions and picking them based on ~vibes~ I didn't have any complaints til I went to write up my review, and realized that if you are someone who reads the descriptions, you might not agree at all.

Some issues I have with it based on the description:

Slow-burn, enemies to lovers romance: The romance is bland and underdeveloped, and describing this book as a romantasy is comical. It felt like the author copy-pasted a pretty generic romance because it was a required checkbox, however, this didn't really bother me while reading because the romance took up very little page time. (but again, it seems disingenuous to call this romantasy because it just is not) Also, they weren't enemies at any point. 

Dark Academia setting: The setting is not a school? girl quit lyin. Yes, they talk about school a lot because the MC wants to study languages, but this takes place at Bletchley Park, which is not academia?

My biggest issue: This book isn't explicitly described as a standalone, but the story does NOT conclude at the end. The main conflict, aka the civil war, is not resolved at the end, not even close! But there is no mention of a sequel. I don't know if there will be another. I do not know if the author left it open ended on purpose because they were hoping to get a book deal for a second and it didn't happen? Idk, but when I hit the 80% mark and realized there was no way it was going to wrap up I was irritated. I would read the sequal if there was one, but I would have preferred to know that beforehad. 

This is super cute! The art is an absolutely gorgeous watercolory style and each page is bursting with color. A real feast for the eyes. The story takes place the future on a planet (or maybe moon?) called Meridian, which is 2 generations removed from humans living on earth. We follow Oberon, a trans teen who has recently dropped out of university, as he is learning how to harness his latent superpower, which is the ability to manifest in reality things he has seen in his dreams. The other MC is Kon, the one who got away, who Oberon hasn't seen since he moved schools several years ago. 

The story has slice of life, coming of age vibes but also discusses a number of serious issues including blended families, generational trauma, mental health, coming out, and a number of -isms, all thoughtfully discussed and presented in relevant situations. The story evolves in a way I wasn't expecting and I loved the ending. 

The only reason I'm not giving it 5 stars is because a number of the comic panels were designed in a way that was somewhat unclear, and I wasn't sure what the author / artist was trying to convey. It didn't take away from the overall understanding of the story, but it did happen a number of times. Still though, a very heartwarming and enjoyable read. If you like Heartstopper and superhero stories, you will probably like this too.