painausten's reviews
875 reviews

This was fine

How lucky are we to live in a world with Emily R. Austin’s writing?

I think, and I say this so sincerely and genuinely, KC Davis should be canonized for writing this book. I think she deserves a Nobel prize. I think she has changed my life forever with this.

Without trauma dumping too much, I have tried to read this many times and always gave up a chapter or two in because self-compassion was simply not in the cards for me just yet and it is (rightfully so!) the crux of so much of this book’s ethos. I’m so glad I gave it another shot.

Kinda reheated house of leaves’ nachos with creepypasta queso but it was delicious soooo

“In magic, as in life, it is the failures that prove to be most valuable, because it is in failure that you learn anything useful — about the world or about yourself.”

This was so ungodly gnarly at times, I genuinely felt sick and woozy. I loved this so so so much and I could feel how much reverence and respect Grady Hendrix has for the girls who were forced to endure these awful conditions and judgements in real life. 

I really liked Mavis, the main character, but I didn’t care about the mystery or the mystery within a mystery, lol. 

I love mess :)

Thank you to the author for the free audiobook + to Steph for gifting me a signed physical copy!!

One of the highest compliments I can give a book is that I set it down multiple times because I didn’t want it to end. That’s exactly what happened with this one, and I actually had to force myself to get to the end because, as it happens with most of my favorite media, I could’ve stopped around 75% forever and pretended the book didn’t end at all. I loved how Samantha Allen’s voice came through so clearly here despite how different this book is from her other novel and her non-fiction work. She writes with so much charm and her characters here felt SO human (even the ghost) that it hurt to say goodbye to them. The foreword in my edition of the book talks about some of the inspo Samantha took for the character of Roland but I still liked making up my own headcanon of who he would be an amalgamation of in our own Hollywood landscape. My one liner review for Patricia Wants to Cuddle was “this is the perfect Mari book” and tbh the same goes for this one. It felt like it was written with all of my silly little interests in mind and for that I’m eternally grateful. 

Sorry to lib out but uh......we should be scared. I hadn't read this since high school and I listened to the Andrew Garfield/ Cynthia Erivo/Andrew Scott narration this time. Those three should actually narrate everything forever.