lovefromhannah's reviews
364 reviews

I would have absolutely loved this if I had read this 4 years ago

the characters were snarky. they were diverse. and yet the writing was too juvenile for my current taste. i'm sorry Persephone Station, I should have read you when I first bought you.

if you are new to neo-gothic poetry, then this may be the collection for you.

this collection is fine. it struggle to decide whether it wants to be more instagram poetry or normal poetry. whilst I did appreciate some of the imagery, I don't feel like the chinese mythology inspiration was particularly apparent.

my favourite poems were: monster tinder, computer love, hikimori and beatrice and bluebeard. as I am going over these, computer love stands out the most. funnily enough, these are the poems with the imagery I liked the most.

 witty and emotional, reilly's debut is the queer narrative of your dreams.

reilly immediately catapulted themselves as an instant buy author with this. greta and valdin is down to earth, funny and a extremely well crafted novel about siblings as they navigate life and their queer identities in their mid and late twenties.

an excellent, well thought out character study on a close-knit family that did not drag despite its subliminal plot. the short chapters helped a lot with that too. the characters are extremely lovable and you will root for them even if they don't themselves.

i would also LOVE to see this as a stage production.

ava reid is a literary force to be reckoned with.

despite this being her debut, I actually read juniper and thorn prior to this. perhaps this was a mistake on my behalf as I enjoyed that more. whereas this fantasy is more folklore, oral tradition, holly black-esque conventions, juniper and thorn is more adjacent to the horror of girlhood, body autonomy and complex family relationships. on paper, I was destined to like juniper and thorn more - but I still really enjoyed the wolf and the woodsman and being witness to her growth as a writer.

I was originally going to give this 4.5 stars I kid you not: in the epilogue there are a couple of lines that suggest that there is a good chance the main romance don't end up together after the events of the book?!?! like you just said you would make her your wife and now (and I quote):

Although, whilst writing quoting I do appreciate the mistletoe imagery. And honestly, the yearning and the tension was so well written that out of spite I might drop my rating to 4 stars.

I will continue to devour ava reid's backlog as I wait (im)patiently for lady macbeth to release.

LOVED the water imagery to describe girlhood! will need to reread again at some point.

it's my fault for reading historical fiction, in all honesty. however, the blurb persuaded me that this would be my cuppa tea.

victor vale is the best thing about this book. apart from my own curiosity and stubbornness, baring witness to victor's narrative arc was the main thing keeping me going.

I read the opening chapter multiple times and couldn't get myself to continue. I don't know why this attempt led to me read this as my first book of 2024, but it was different.

victor fucking vale is by far the best character -- you could also push the boat out to say everyone else was significantly duller in comparison. his internal monologue, sarcasm and morally grey actions are immediately impressionable upon the reader. he is the best thing about this book.

the web of relationships between the characters is intricately woven. i liked how everyone had/was going to meet everyone else at some point. some highlights for me: in the first third of the novel, seeing the before and after of victor's and eli's friendship and trying to guess the middle; sydney's and serena's relationship and the trajectory of it and how serena eventually mirrored their parents; eli's and serena's backstory was electric.

also where was the world building ???? yes, names of places were just casually dropped but i still feel the world was so underdeveloped, which I am in two minds about. one: their thesis/experiments had the potential to change reality as we know it, so I understand why schwab didn't focus too much on it. two: if the world continues to evolve, world building would be essential to show the stark differences from the beginning of the series to wherever in future installments.

overall, I very much enjoyed reading this character study -- but I don't think it was enough to make me read onwards. maybe I'll pick this up again. maybe I won't.

just from a few pages, it is pretty clear that this book was made for mass production.

it's clear this was written with the mindset of being accessible to the general public. and you can tell. matyszak shares pretty basic information about magic and uses sources from greece, rome, christianity and germanic sources as evidence. where was that in the title?

for a piece of work littered with ancient historical anecdotes and referenced, I am surprised it isn't littered with footnotes. there are a few, but they mainly exist to provide context to the images of artifacts.

he references Fasti by Ovid, at one point. this is viewed as an "unreliable source for Roman cultic practice and belief" according to Carol Newmans in Playing With Time: Ovid and the Fasti. yeah.

it continues. in chapter two, when he is referring to witchcraft, what he is actually referring to is closer to alchemy. here are a couple of examples.

overall, i wanted to read this to dip my toes into nonfiction books however, I found it lighthearted and brief and the title to be misleading. initially, the long winded analogies were funny, but I soon grew bored of the same chunk of text trying to describe a very general statement about witchcraft and magic to some menial task we do everyday. this lighthearted nonfiction book is perfect for fans who want some light reading, who are complete beginners to history.

as my mother's daughter, I thought this would be more emotional.

the internet is currently obsessing over motherhood from a daughter's perspective and it has led me to take a closer inspection at the relationships I share. there are some good poems - my personal favourites are 'see also' and 'dance on my grave' - but alas, this collection fell flat for me. 

it's boxing day (happy christmas to those who celebrate) and I wanted a light read to pass the time whilst I wait for the new year (and reading goal), so I picked this up. I got sent this back in August and have been hoarding it since.

unfortunately, this failed to grab me. the characters are undeveloped and the style does not compensate. morgan had potential, but alas -- it was already too late.

*i received an arc for free. thank you to the publisher for sending it to me*