woodslesbian's reviews
70 reviews

Over all, I found this to be a very heartfelt, passionate read about a very nerdy teenager struggling with her mental health, although there were some issues for me in terms of character choices and the terms of the plot itself. I will say: definitely don't go into this expecting a romance or seeing Skylar as a love interest, as that's really not what the book is setting out to do. 

Brynn is a great main character, with her anxiety presented in a candid and understandable way. Genuinely this is one of the only instances where I've ever seen the experience of being a deeply online, nerdy teenager in this day and age really captured accurately--any moments of, for lack of a better word, cringe were just me cringing because Brynn's online experience was TOO accurate to my own lol. I also really enjoyed her bonding with her Dad and reconnecting with him. There were aspects of the mystery surrounding Skylar that worked for me as well, but I do think it's important to note that the focus really is on the mystery, rather than Skylar being a love interest, as I initially assumed from the blurb. This is really a story of Brynn connecting with herself and growing up, and I think it achieves that goal with a lot of empathy and heart. Another positive for me was the beautiful, vibrant descriptions of the Florida landscape, those really helped me picture a place unfamiliar to me and captured the peace of being out in the natural world! 

Overall, I think this book could be super impactful for a younger audience than me, especially those unfamiliar with anxiety and OCD (especially those seeing their experiences put into words for the first time!), but unfortunately this one just didn't necessarily resonate with me. Some of the dialogue and prose felt a little cheesy and like it was really over-explaining how to approach mental health, which I think is completely understandable for the book's goals, but it wasn't necessarily my favorite to read. In addition, at a certain point it felt like Brynn was just making the same poor choices over and over again, going through a loop of being reckless and facing the repercussions for her physical and mental health (and stressing the hell out of her dad) just like...3-5 times in a row, just with slight variations. There were also some parts about the ending that I felt could've used slower pacing and more explanation (though I will say that the conclusion of Skylar's arc did make me tear up a bit!), especially taking a little more time to show Brynn's growth. It just didn't resonate with me as strongly as it might for other readers. 

Overall, this is a pretty solid book with a few character motivation/plot issues, but it just didn't especially stand out to me personally. 

This was a strange, quirky read, with each short story focusing on a different Sarah and her journey. While there were some stories I enjoyed ("Exorcism, or Eating My Twin," "The First Sarah," and "All the Teenaged Sarahs"), none of them struck me or was especially memorable, and I had to flip back through to even remember that all of those stories were included in the first place. Even "Becoming Trees," which was probably my favorite in the collection, wasn't especially memorable and I haven't been thinking of it since finishing the collection or anything like that. I think these stories have a lot of heart, and there was plenty of interesting character work, vivid imagery, and weird shenanigans in here, though! Cohen's writing is snappy, weird, and empathetic without providing judgement or easy conclusions, which I do enjoy. It's just that the stories didn't especially resonate with me. I personally really want short stories to haunt me after I finish them and which I can't help but think back to, and these just didn't achieve that. Still, I think Sarahland will be absolutely moving and affirming to others, and I do recommend it! 

Okay full disclosure that this was my sixth straight horror/thriller read in a row this summer, and I might've just been hitting my upper limit of that kind of stuff when I read this one. Still, I think I wasn't quite prepared for how upsetting this YA book would be. That might sound kind of silly, given its focus on colonial history and an indentured girl struggling to deal with famine, but it somehow went straight over my head that this was set in The Starving Time despite that being mentioned in the blurb. When I was around fifty pages in or so and realized that, ohhh this was that ONE winter where everyone starved and when that one guy ate his wife, I probably should have set the book down again and, like, processed that a bit more. Instead, I read straight through to the end and was left feeling queasy and disturbed. This is a sign of effective writing, to be clear; Ellis' simple voice conveys both her uneducated status and her young age, and this childish tone made all of the horrible stuff happening twice as upsetting! It just also meant that I had a bad time reading this one. To be clear, I'm not usually bothered by horror and violence in general, or even

cannibalism and the protagonist literally dying at the end of the novel

but this just really got to me for some reason. It felt very dark for YA, and while usually that's my thing, I think I should've just... braced myself for the subject matter of this one more than I did.

I also think that, while the author is clearly trying to explore the wrongdoings of the European colonizers on indigenous land, I'm not sure she really succeeds. The main characters are largely white, and when indigenous characters do appear, it feels like they're most often mouthpieces to express the author's point rather than full-fledged characters, just by virtue of how little time we actually get to spend with them. The author's note makes it clear that this was the opposite of Bruzas' intentions, and I think she does a decent job of showing the unpreparedness, stupidity, and cruelty of the bulk of the Jamestown residents, but I just feel like the book didn't quite achieve the goals she describes in her author's note. 

Overall, To the Bone has some really effective writing (I am not easy to upset and this one absolutely managed to do that), and was an interesting exploration of this historical incident while being well-grounded in the time and actual historical evidence. I did enjoy Ellis as a character and was absolutely drawn into the atmosphere and descriptions of this one, I think I just ended up having a bad time. That might just be from reading too much horror consecutively, and I think queasy is actually the right feeling to be left with for the topics that this book is tackling, but I also don't especially feel like I learned anything that I didn't already know or had my views changed at all. 

Admittedly I don't read a ton of thrillers so I might just not be the right audience for this one, but I wanted to buy a book by an Icelandic author while in Iceland and the premise of this one really intrigued me. There were some really good, spooky moments throughout and I was very into the mystery of how these all connected as I read this one, especially as we alternate perspectives between the investigation of these mysterious deaths after the fact and the point of view of one of the young women we know to have gone missing, which I thought was very effective. In general, each perspective was pretty interesting and had its own spooky moments and good descriptions. I think my issue with this one was just not feeling satisfied by how all these story lines came together in the end. There was so much build-up that I was really expecting something cool and cohesive when all the plotlines converged, but The Prey didn't really deliver on this. It felt more like random happenstance connected some of the plot lines together rather than something more satisfying. Other plotlines were definitely better connected, but with the amount going on in this book and how long it took to get to the conclusion, I expected more and what we got fell flat for me. The writing style was also very big on telling rather than showing--this might be a result of The Prey being a translated work, but it still wasn't my favorite to be spoon-fed all this information about the characters that I could've inferred from their actions anyways.

I also didn't love the reveal at the end that all of this happened just because this one human guy kind of sucks... since there were supernatural elements, I really wanted one big, connected supernatural threat to tie together each story line, not this random guy. I also just felt like his perspective was so brief that it couldn't really make him all that interesting or really explore why he's like this or anything like that. It was just a disappointment to me personally, rather than coming off as a clever, well-fitting twist.

Overall, I don't think The Prey was bad by any means, and there were plenty of strong points! The atmosphere and description of setting were great, and I always love the danger of a barren, freezing landscape and the isolation it provides in horror. The ending was just disappointing for me and I'm not huge on thrillers/mysteries to begin with. 

Every once in awhile I come across a book that has so many specific things that I love in it that it feels like it was written for me personally, and this is one of those finds! Grey Dog gave me everything I wanted, starting at such a gorgeous, eye-catching cover and ending at, well, an ending that had me going :^O for days every time I thought of it! This is a slow, atmospheric horror about what it means to be a woman denied agency, focusing heavily on the natural world, both in terms of Ada's love of science and in the way that nature is distorted to create horror and dread. The diary-style of the narration was executed well, giving equally beautiful and gruesome descriptions and capturing Ada's declining mental state very well while maintaining tension. The beginning of the book might be too slow for some people, and it definitely takes awhile for the horror to get started, but this really worked for me; I'm a lover of slow-burn in all things and I personally really felt like getting a strong understanding of the town, the status quo, and Ada herself before all these things begin to change was very effective.

Not to mention that the imagery in this book is just fantastic! There are descriptions and even a few key lines that I keep coming back to even weeks after finishing it, many of the horrific moments are just that vivid. I also loved Ada as a character right from the beginning, especially her passion for nature and love for her sister. The sister relationship itself is an especially strong point for me, just in the little moments from the past we see between Ada and Florrie, and Ada's mourning for her sister were all so powerful and well-done. Even when I wasn't sure if I was rooting for or against her, I was always invested in what Ada would do next and understood her actions, all the way to the very end.

While slow, the building of tension also worked so well for me in Grey Dog. Little by little, it just felt like the whole world was pressing in on Ada in this isolated, judgmental environment, where she has so few people to turn to and where she's bound by all the social expectations placed on a young woman. The story just kept gathering speed until the conclusion, and again, the final few reveals of the book and the last scene especially just... whew! I'm going to be thinking about that ending for a long time.

I really love the ambiguity of it, where I both feel glad for Ada casting off the shame and social mores that have controlled her life but am also so afraid for her and the people around her. I think more lesbians should get to be depraved and violent and covered in blood, tbh! Not to mention that the Grey Dog, the God of Outside, or whatever you want to call it was such a frightening, enigmatic force throughout the entire book! I love love love that we never really get to see it, not clearly, and while Ada is told one version of its intentions, we can't really know, either. As the book says, seeing something makes it less frightening--and Gish keeps us scared until the very end.

I really recommend this one if you're a fan of slow-burn historical horror, a science nerd, interested in historical examinations of sexism and agency, or just a fan of complex lesbians experiencing The Horrors. I've gotta reread this one for sure! 

I am a complete sucker (pun intended) for lesbian vampire books, and this was such a refreshing and thoughtful read! Gilda's story, from her escape from slavery, becoming a vampire, and on to the many impactful connections she forms over hundreds of years, was a truly incredible read. So much of this book was incredibly powerful and inventive, especially for such an over saturated genre. This book is split into several sections, each in a new time and place, and each one focuses on who Gilda has become in that moment, her views on the changing world around her, and especially the bonds she forms with humanity and other vampires. This was just a stunning look at community and human nature, using vampirism as a tool to explore these themes.

This book is definitely on the slower side and focuses more on character work than action, though there are absolutely some tense moments throughout. I really enjoyed this leisurely pace, but it is very different from a lot of vampire fiction and might not work for some. The writing style itself I would describe as reserved, giving the reader a clear sense of Gilda's interiority but is not overly descriptive or saccharine. While all are moments from Gilda's life, some of the different sections felt a little too disconnected from each other for me, more like short stories than an overall narrative, though others called back to Gilda's past more strongly. I will also admit that the last two sections lost me a little bit--since they are set in 2020 and 2050 in a book written in the 90s, the tone moved towards speculative rather than historical fiction. While many of Jewel Gomez's predictions were very accurate, others made me lose my suspension of disbelief a little bit. These sections also felt a little less grounded and thoroughly explored than the earlier ones, and I really enjoyed that slower pace a bit more.

I'm so glad I read The Gilda Stories; it really felt like I got a key insight into such an important development in the vampire genre and a beautifully told, heartfelt exploration of one woman's life! 

There were a lot of things I enjoyed about this book, but it unfortunately didn't actually leave a very strong impression on me after the fact. The writing was beautiful and I was absolutely compelled by the main character's struggle, while also drawn into the mysteries of the Holistik's fishy business. I really enjoyed the blend of sci-fi elements and a sort of dreamy, disconnected tone throughout the book and felt like it added nicely to the overall vibe. While there were some unpleasant and tense parts and a good build of atmosphere, the horror in this novel is definitely more on the subdued side than super graphic or thrilling--that being said, though, there was definitely one reveal at the end that made me close the book and walk around going O.O to just try and process it. The messaging was not especially subtle and the pacing felt too slow/too fast in some places, especially towards the end, but I enjoyed this one a lot overall. I just wish it was a bit more memorable! 

I absolutely loved the first three quarters of this book for its visceral prose, strong cast of characters struggling to find themselves and stick together despite the circumstances, and the eerie, slowly unfolding horror of the wilderness camp. However, the ending didn't quite stick the landing for me, especially in terms of pacing, but I'll get more into that later. 

For starters, I love the way Gretchen Felker-Martin writes horror; her prose is so vivid and nasty and bodily that you can really feel it, and she does a fantastic job of building and maintaining tension. Seriously, I am so impressed by the way she can deliver just a few well-chosen details and paint an entire picture of some monstrosity, or give you just a little hint into a character's life and trauma that makes you all the more invested in their story. I opened this book basically completely exhausted after a great concert, just to glance at it, and couldn't put it down until I'd finished the opening chapter entirely. I'd describe this book overall as cinematic, which means it really gives a clear picture of all the horrible things happening within, which I personally really enjoyed! 

I also found the characters to be very strong overall. It felt like they all had a real sense of history to each of them and flaws that made me really care about them and their relationships to each other. I do think Felker-Martin did a great job of showing the way that trauma will stick with people and shape the rest of their lives, and I personally love those sorts of consequences for characters. The horror elements of the story also absolutely worked for me; it really delivered on gross creature horror and uncanny valley stuff, while also highlighting the brutality that lgbt+ kids can face with society turning a blind eye or even supporting it. 

Without spoilers, I think the reason this book doesn't have a higher rating for me when I enjoyed the beginning so much is that I think the pacing jumped around too much towards the end for me to really enjoy it. There's a pretty major time skip that I felt like both rushed the events leading up to said time skip and the ones after it, making the book's ending feel underdeveloped and weak. The ending also took Cuckoo from being a novel with some parallels/homages to Stephen King's It to one that seems to be engaging with It very directly, in a way that felt detrimental to Cuckoo's ability to stand on its own. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of It and enjoyed some of the ways Felker-Martin sort of responded to issues within King's work, but I also felt like this took away from Cuckoo as an individual work, especially when I couldn't stop noticing the parallels. Overall, I think the ending just felt rushed and unsatisfactory to me, and really lost a lot of the tension that had been built up throughout the book to that point. 

After reading Manhunt, I knew to expect this, but Cuckoo absolutely doesn't shy away from the violence these teenagers are experiencing and depicting all of their biases and issues of the time period, too. While I sort of interpreted a lot of this as Felker-Martin working to accurately portray the thoughts and feelings of a bunch of messed-up teenagers, the amount of fatphobia, racism, and general violence these teenagers experience cannot be overstated and definitely might put some people off. 

With spoilers:

I really feel like the jump to adulthood and the main characters all coming back together to hunt down the cuckoo just did not work for me. Like I said, all the momentum from the first section where they escape from the camp is lost, and we're not really given enough time to reacquaint ourselves with the main cast as adults before the action picks up very, very quickly. I sort of get why this section is here, with a theme of responsibility towards stopping more violence from being inflicted on younger generations and having to reckon with the past, but I just don't feel like it was executed very well. Also I really felt like the most interesting characters all died, which was kind of a bummer :^/. It's also in this section that, again, the It references really kick up a notch, where we go from a pretty distinct premise with a few parallels (like the cuckoo's origin, for example) to like... this is just a reworking of It's ending, almost. I don't know for sure, but it felt like Gretchen Felker-Martin wrote the first section, realized that those parallels were there, and decided to lean into it, with how similar the last section is to It. Again, the first section wasn't entirely completely unique (but no stories really are) but it still felt original and like its own discrete story, so it felt like a bit of a downgrade to just go into something so in conversation with a different novel? Or maybe I'm just too obsessed with It and am reading too much into the parallels, but either way, I didn't feel like the time skip or the ending were fleshed out enough to really work effectively. I also felt like some of the parallel moments didn't fit in very well... like the teenage orgy scene in Cuckoo is definitely LESS unpleasant and thematically flawed as the one in It, but that's not really saying much! I felt like the ending overall muddied Cuckoo's themes and intentions and sort of distracted from the rest of the book, in a way. This whole section also just wasn't frightening in the same way as the earlier portions, which was a bummer considering how well-crafted the earlier horrific moments were. This ending wasn't enough to ruin the whole book for me, and there were some good moments from it for sure, but it didn't match up to how strong the first portion of the book was for me.

Ultimately, there were a lot of things I really did love about Cuckoo, and though the ending definitely fell a little flat, I will be picking up Felker-Martin's next horror without a doubt. 

I'm definitely biased towards any book exploring butch identity, and this one does so with so much empathy, nuance, and care, especially towards how isolating the experience of gender-nonconformity can be. At the same time, the narrator's bond with the house mistress was so vibrant and formed a beautiful point of connection and growth in their character arc that I adored. The central relationship between the narrator and the headmistress, too, was electrifying, though in a very different way--I loved the slow buildup and the exploration of conflicting identity between them. 

Stylistically, this novel is probably very hit-or-miss for people, with a lack of quotation marks and dreamy, atmospheric prose. While this didn't detract from my reading experience at all, I'm also not sure that it especially added to it, either, and I know it really didn't work for others. Overall, I enjoyed this work a lot and found it to be much more of a fascinating character study about a relationship rather than a romance, which worked just fine for me. It was a beautiful little book with characters I'll be thinking about for awhile! 

The scariest part of this book was just the slutshaming :^/ Seriously, I'll get into this, but there was a serious Madonna/Whore Dichotomy going on, especially for a book that's trying to discuss women experiencing their own sexuality and dealing with sexual assault. 

Beyond that, though, this book was just very boring. It was extremely slow and took so long for the mystery to unravel, with only the most occasional hints about the mysteries surrounding Audrina's memory, and most of those are right at the beginning. The middle completely drags, mostly just focusing on her growing up and her romance with Arden (boo). I will say that this book had a great gothic atmosphere, especially with the descriptions of the old house, but it just didn't really build to anything or deepen in the way I wanted. I also expected this book to be quite a bit scarier. Don't get me wrong, the contents are definitely dark and upsetting, but not scary in the way I wanted from a horror book. This may just be me not being familiar with V. C. Andrews' work and having inaccurate expectations, but still. I also just felt like the twist didn't really make a ton of sense and felt underwhelming for the amount of build-up, and the sudden shift at the ending was super frustrating for me. 

Now, I do know that this book was written in a different time, I get that, but I am reading it right now and have opinions based off of reading it in the present. The way that Vera is consistently shamed and demonized for being sexual compared to sweet, pure Audrina drove me up the wall, especially when she's clearly been done wrong in her own way.

The fact that Vera is consistently the antagonist of the book because she's just such a huge, evil slut is something I just have so little tolerance for! Especially when Audrina's father ends the book largely forgiven for 1. gaslighting one of his daughters and giving her a life-long sense of shame around sex and 2. refusing to even acknowledge his other daughter and being constantly SO mean to her. But Audrina forgives him and he lives while Vera falls down the stairs and dies after sleeping with almost every guy in the book. Not to mention the fact that Audrina's assault is actually Vera's fault for tipping off the boys in the first place. The fact that this book which is clearly trying to examine sexual assault and its effects on women makes the central attack the fault of an evil, promiscious woman more than the boys that actually attacked Audrina is INSANE to me. Not to mention the way Audrina's mother is also blamed for instilling a sense of shame in Audrina almost more than her father and the literal gaslighting. Again, I know the book is trying to genuinely explore these topics and seems to want to break past the barriers of sexual shame that both societal forces and assault can create, but I just do not think it succeeds even a little bit in this regard.

Anyways. Even beyond the Madonna/whore stuff this book just absolutely dragged by for me, and it was a relief to get it over with. I also acknowledge that I might be analyzing it a little too seriously for what may be intended as more of a pulpy, drama horror novel than anything else, but I can't help it. I totally get people having read this when they were younger or when it first came out and enjoying it just for its ridiculousness, but this was definitely not my thing.