simonlorden's reviews
1297 reviews

A gardener who can see ghosts, and his ghost buddies. And ghost boyfriend. I really like the aesthetic and all the green and plants. The story is pretty short, but i liked the one-year-later parts the most, fun ghost-hunting shenanigans.

Get your cannibalism, pedophilia, witches, folk tales, monsters, and ballet dancers here!

Love folk tale retellings that really go into the horror and bizarreness of the original. I didn't know the Juniper Tree before, but I read a summary, and I think the main parts definitely stayed in this book. I love how some things are only implied in the beginning as Marlinchen prefers to ignore them too, then she just can't hide from the truth anymore.

Nem nyert meg magának teljesen a versek műfaja, de azért még próbálkozok. Volt benne néhány nagyon jó. 

Szerintem néha az a bajom a versekkel, hogy annyira személyesek, vagy annyira egy bizonyos emléket, pillanatot írnak le, hogy úgy érzem a költőn kívül tényleg nem is érti senki, hogy miről van szó.

I've been meaning to read this anthology for a while. 19 short stories and poems. Some of them have explicitly aromantic protagonists, others don't really mention the romantic orientation but focus on platonic relationships. Most of them are fantasy, although there's a couple that are more sci-fi.

As all anthologies, some stories hit me better than others, but I'd say that the average enjoyment was pretty high. I haven't read anything by any of the authors before, so it was an especially nice surprise. (I'm more familiar with the editors, but they didn't actually have their own works in the book sadly.)

Some of my favorites:
 – Jennifer Lee Rossman: Cinder - Disabled Cinderella, fairytale retellings, princesses saving princesses, an app to find a magical prince to rescue you.
 – A.Z. Louise: Dracanmōt Council of Human Study Report Compiled by Usander Greystart - An outsider studying human customs.
 – Jeff Reynolds: Fishing Over the Bones of the Dragon - A story about family, kidnapping fae, and also about generational trauma tbh.
 – Polenth Blake: Busy Little Bees: Cloned siblings! Love them. I would have loved to continue reading this one.

I was a bit intimidated by the low rating on Storygraph, but looking at the reviews, most of them are from people who apparently weren't aware (like it's not clear from the blurb?) that it's a dark romance book. Oh, there's dubcon and "romanticizing prostitution"? Cool, do you go on horror books to complain about gore?

That being said, despite the dubcon, it's surprisingly romantic. The power dynamics are fucked, but Finn still treats Lily gently and attentively, and Lily genuinely wants their encounters (although she doesn't really have the option to say no, hence the dubcon). The sex scenes and Finn also mostly focus on the woman's pleasure, which was nice.

I have two issues, one of them is the lowkey racist vibe that frames the story. Two white men walk into a brothel in Hongkong, and they're both immediately concerned when they find a young white woman there, because she must be there against her will. But all these Asian women must be there for fun, right? So that double standard was a bit weird. I can suspend morality to accept male characters in fiction who are okay with prostitution, but this came off badly.

The other thing is that I would have appreciated just a biiit less sex and more plot. The whole story ends on a cliffhanger, but we don't really get to know that much about the kidnapping and such, because they're too busy having sex. Which is yes, the point of the book, but the endless sex scenes got a bit boring for me by the end.

A very good book about magical books, a secret library, and time travel. Great characters, beautiful friendships, satisfying twists. Kind of gore-y and bleak sometimes, but mostly when the Woman is around. I liked it a lot.

A really cute story about two schoolkids who become friends through a third person sending them letters. It starts with a pretty dark scenario, where a girl stands up for another girl being bullied, and then gets excluded from the class. I love the cat and the school witch.

I liked the concept at the beginning, but I guess I expected something more exciting, or juicier secrets. There's a love triangle, then two men try to frame each other for the same crime.

 

Volt benne egy érdekes csavar, de a végén nem teljesen értettem a logikát.