tbh I went into this bc I wanted something super messy and trashy, which I'm not sure why considering Tia William's blurbed it. this is obviously not that. I'm reading this for trash and as I read I'm just sucked in by the beautiful writing and human characters and my desire to see how this plays out. this is genuinely good and I completely recommend.
honestly based on this author's other works, I wasn't sure what to expect going in. but this was really good! it was fast paced with a clear character voice that was really impressive
I'm so disappointed. everyone seems to love this book..... why?
Maybe I'm a hater, but I really just didn't like Marvin. I mean, neither of the two characters had any personality other than Marvin having anxiety, but being stuck in Marvin's bland ass head the entire book SUCKED. he's not a bad person or anything, but he is the most boring person on this planet. I couldn't fathom being his friend or god forbid his partner. oh, sorry, he hates that term.
Marvin would talk to us like we the readers were also in kindergarten which I get is probably par for the course of teaching young kids, but at the same time I would just get so aggravated. everything that happened in this book was reexplained to us like we were 5. like okay I get that the joke you made was taken as a joke because it was a joke. shut the fuck up.
This one felt cozier than the other books in the series yet just as hilarious as the others. so glad Alexis came back as a major character also an angry little kitten?? love it
Enjoyment wise, this was a 4, but there were a couple things that I just couldn't get over that dropped it down to a 3.5.
- maybe this was me, but I really didn't get the magic system. I did not understand the rules and why certain people could do things but then others couldn't, but they also still could? idk. how did the deviation actually get in Venus? like I know but I don't know. and Presley??? what about them?
- sometimes the chapters would end super abruptly. like it still felt mid-scene, and it didn't help that a lot of times these end chapter pages would still fill the entire page. like I would turn the page expecting more but then we switched chapters and I was like okay?
overall though I do recommend this. the importance of family was a very strong theme which made it so easy to care about these characters. and it was FUNNY. like some incredibly serious information was given to Venus and she literally responded "say sike right now". I just love fantasy stand alones.
I think if anyone else wrote this book I would've hated it. the miscommunication for half the book was frustrating, hence the 4 star, but yet I was still kicking my feet more than I was rolling my eyes?? is Abby Jimenez a wizard?
If i had a nickel for every time i read a sapphic YA rom-com where one of the girls hits the other with a car, i’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice