simonlorden's reviews
1288 reviews

It's been a while since I read anything in Percy's world, and I never actually finished the Apollo series, but Nico was always one of my favorites. It was strange to read this at first because they kept referencing events I either completely forgot or haven't read at all. But I really liked how this went into the difficulties in Nico and Will's relationship. The opposites attract and grumpy and sunshine tropes are popular for a reason, but it's not that easy if you and your partner are complete opposites.

I still love this story (queer people vs capitalism and the multiverse), but I really have to accept that audiobooks just don't work for my brain.

Igazi macskás bölcsességek, aranyos illusztrációkkal, és még szebb Erzsi fotókkal.

West African inspired fantasy with lots of magic, and racism/colorism. I liked the worldbuilding, but I'm kind of grumpy about the ending. I also would have liked this book more if Amari and Zélie were the canon ship, but we can't have everything.

I struggled with this book. I like the concept, and if you summarized it in a few sentences it would sound interesting, but still the writing style and the characters didn't grab me. I also didn't like the antagonist reveal at all.

Thanks to the publisher and the author for making this available on NetGalley for an honest review.

First of all: this book is partly dedicated to the author's cats, and frankly, I think they should have included pictures. I want to see Salt An, Peppa and Frederica Bimmel.

I think when you read the blurb and the tags for a book, you automatically make some assumptions about the plot. This book didn't match any of my assumptions. It was almost impressively how different it is from the fun thief romance shenanigans I visualized.

You know those narrators who are so unreliable, they basically lie to your face in first person POV? Ella Gatz is one of them. This occasionally made for a confusing or frustrating reading experience, but interesting at the same time. This girl is a chess prodigy, and she's playing 3D chess in real life with real people as pawns. I had some pretty wild theories for where the plot was going, and none of them were right (still kinda sad about one of them), but it came with its own wild plots instead. Ella is a complex and maybe a bit morally grey character who is NOT a reliable narrator by any means, but you can see the childhood that led her to become this person, and she's a great character.

I do need to mention that this book deals with domestic abuse in a significant way. It's pretty "closed door" and more implied than explicit in description, but it gives the whole book a threatening, tense air.

The protagonist is sapphic asexual, and there are multiple sapphic side characters.

First of all, I love that they're taking Christine adventuring with them, and I hope she comes along often because I love her. Overall though I liked this somewhat less than the first one. I felt like some of the conflicts and even the solutions were repeated, and if it's already getting repetitive in the second book, then I don't know what's going on in the rest. Also, there were a few cases of me holding my head, because for an intelligent man, Whyborne can be really dumb sometimes.

The horrors were unspeakable and horroristic, almost more sci-fi than fantasy this time.

p.s. More Saul, please.

Griffin just wants a perfect Valentine's Day with his lover, but he gets a time-sensitive new case with horrible potential consequences. There's some horror, mystery and romance, although I would have liked to know more about the clients who hired him. It was nice to see Griffin's POV of Ival, though.

I love reading queer picture books, they warm my adult heart.

LOUD and PROUD and COLORFUL story of a little girl with two moms who goes to a pride parade for the first time.