mcgbreads's reviews
1125 reviews

I won this book in a Booksta giveaway and I'm so sorry I don't like it enough to even finish it. DNF at 23% cause I just don't care about these characters and the writing is unbearable, in my opinion. I read a couple of reviews about the things that happen later in the book and, yeah, no. I had a feeling this wouldn't be for me, and sadly, I was right. I kinda regret adding it to my wish list just because it was hyped and I was maybe mildly interested in it when it came out. 

I was expecting to love this more than I did, but I still liked it a lot and I think it's a great YA fantasy. It's one of the best I've read in 2024, for sure.  

It has a lot of great things going for it. A strong, flawed, likable FMC whom I love and wish the best for, interesting side characters, good intrigue, cool magic systems and lore, engaging relationships, and good character development and growth. 

My favorite thing about this was the themes it explores (grief, trauma, identity, self-determination, etc.), the representation it provides, and the FMC's journey. I think those aspects are the strongest parts of the story and I love the way they were integrated with all of the cool fantasy elements. I also loved the writing style. 

My biggest and probably only issue with it is that it has one of my least favorite approaches to worldbuilding: info-dumping. It was info dump after info dump and they got very tiresome to read. It slowed the story down a lot and made it feel very dense, effectively sucking the fun out of it for several paragraphs or pages. Honestly, I would be fine with all the info-dumping if it actually made the world understandable, but it didn't. Not fully. There are a lot of things that are still confusing and unclear to me because of the way they were presented. It almost feels like I have to go back to the info-dumps, take notes, and study. I don't want to do that when I'm reading fantasy for fun, so I won't. 

Though the info-dumping was an issue for me, it's not a deal-breaker. I'm going to continue with the series. That ending was so good and unexpected! I'm not super invested in the love triangle aspect of this, but I'm intrigued about how it will be explored and handled in the next books. 

Creo que a partir de 2024, leeré este precioso librito cada año, el día antes de mi cumpleaños. No tengo nada que decir excepto que hay mucha profundidad en tan pocas páginas y muchas lecciones que si bien son impartidas a un poeta, pueden aplicar a cualquiera y ser aplicadas por cualquiera. Aunque no concuerdo con todo lo que dice aquí, me cae muy bien Rilke Rainer y me gusta cómo veía el mundo.

This was better than I expected it to be. Every story is really, really good. I loved how they flowed and took unexpected turns. I recognized a lot of this from playing The Witcher 3 and watching the endlessly disappointing Netflix adaptation, but reading the stories was still engaging and interesting. 

There are a few things that annoyed me a lot, though. The unnecessary mention of character's breasts and misogyny are impossible to ignore, for one. Examples abound and, unfortunately, I don't think it's out of the norm for the genre, especially older works like this one. 

I also don't understand the allure of Yennefer. I didn't understand it in the game and in the TV show either, but especially not here. We're led to believe that men just fall in love with her without knowing much about her and they don't understand why but they just accept it. Like... okay? Is she putting a spell on them and I'm not getting it? Cause I would be okay with that, I guess. It's not that I don't like her, it's just that I can't get invested in a relationship that's coming out of nowhere and based on nothing. 

Don't even get me started on how many fucking times I had to read the words "lilacs and gooseberries." Is that the smell of the spell or whatever she uses so men fall for her? Again, I would be okay with that, but I'm not sure if it's a clear implication and I'm being thick or if it's just the perfume she prefers and Geralt just feels the need to mention the scent every fucking time he smells it. 

ARC review; thanks to NetGalley, Random House UK, Transworld Publishers, and Doubleday for the access to this ebook. Pub date: Jan 30, 2025. 

This was not at all what I expected in a good way. It gave me some "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" vibes not because the stories are similar, but because "The Garden" has the same kind of eerie strangeness where you don't know exactly what, but you know there's something off with the characters and how they live. 

This is post-apocalyptic, creepy, and mysterious, and the horror elements are subtle but very effective. In the end, I didn't get all the answers I wanted and I don't think I was given enough information to speculate effectively, but it was immersive. It's the kind of book that will have you thinking about the answers you didn't get for a good while. 

Overall, this is quite a unique story and while it feels slow, you can't stop reading because you just want to know more and understand not only the characters better, but also what happened beyond the walls of their land. Even though I don't think the payoff of all the buildup was as effective as I had hoped, I enjoyed the strange journey. 

ARC review; thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for the access to this ebook. Pub date: Mar 04, 2025. 

I really, really enjoyed This Is How You Lose the Time War, so I was immediately intrigued by this. Overall, I liked it, but it's the kind of story that will fall out of my head in a few days because my mind couldn't fully sink into it. 

I have to compare it to the experience I had with This Is How You Lose the Time War. To this day, I don't understand the world we were in, but I loved the vibes and I connected so much with the strange characters and their compelling love story. 

This time, I didn't understand the world we were in or the magic (though what we do learn about the magic felt very unique and creative), and though I liked the vibes, I didn't emotionally connect with the characters. I appreciated the focus on sisterly love and connection, but it made no big impression on me. 

The story ends at 70% and the rest of the book is a different short story, which is a preview to a collection that will be coming up if I remember correctly. So it could be that this is just too short for some readers, like myself, to fully connect, and the author should've taken more time to establish/explore things. But also, I don't think that's their style, and that's okay. You're either with it or you're not. I'm with it, but this time it worked much less effectively than it did in This Is How You Lose the Time War.  

I don’t understand. Is the horror in this book the pushover MC? Her unbearable, insufferable family? Them bickering all the time? How boring this was for like 80% of it? 

The only thing I like about this is the cover and the audiobook narrator, who did a good job with the story, but that didn’t make the material good. I wish!

I'm trying to get the most out of my free month on Audible, so I gave this a go. The production of the audiobook itself and the voice acting were great and very immersive. 4 out of 5 stars for that.

On the other hand, the story honestly felt like a waste of time. It started off fine and it could've been interesting, but for some reason, the author decided to add a twist that rendered the whole thing pointless and boring, in my opinion. 

ARC review; thanks to NetGalley, Tor Publishing Group, and Bramble for the access to this ebook. This is an ARC for the exclusive deluxe edition that will come out Feb 25, 2025, which looks stunning. 

This had been on my radar so long because T. Kingfisher is one of my backlog authors. I love their writing style and I've enjoyed everything I've read from them so far. I had heard great things about this one and, honestly, I think it's underhyped. 

It's one of the funniest romantasies I've read in my romantasy journey and it was just a wonderful time, I ate it up!

The characters are lovable and interesting (I looooved Halla and Sarkis so much!), the romance is wholesome, the sense of humor was top notch IMO, and the fantasy elements are very nice even if the worldbuilding doesn't go super deep (granted, this is set in a world that I think is established in Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine, which I haven't read, but definitely will). 

I have nothing bad to say about this, I enjoyed every moment!