The Neurospicy Bean

  Man, there was so much hype surrounding this book (not to mention the gorgeous cover), and it just didn’t live up. Given the whole context and aesthetic it sets up, I was looking for something with a sort of Moulin Rouge vibe – overwrought and angsty and dramatic. But I guess there was just way too much going on to really establish a coherent vibe. Basically our main characters Esme and Sybil, roommates and best friends who are also in love with each other, get roped into a scheme to steal Queen Mab’s jewels for the owner of popular club The Absinthe Underground.  There’s a lot of jumping around, from the streets of Severon to the Absinthe Underground to the main character’s brother’s house to Fae and back again. And there are so many different dynamics going on – Esme and Sybil’s relationship, Sybil’s family history, all the dynamics of Severon, the worldbuilding of Fae, the characters in Fae, and there just isn’t  room for them to all get fleshed out properly. There’s nothing to an

  For whatever reason, nothing about this one clicked for me. The premise – girl from a family of brujas doesn’t want to be a bruja, casts a spell that accidentally banishes her family, and has to save them from dark forces – is perfectly compelling, and I genuinely did quite like the wide variety of mythological creatures that were incorporated into the story. There were beings and creatures that rarely come up because, frankly, Latine mythology just isn’t that written about (though this is changing!).  But I found Alex really frustrating as a main character, and Nova was flat-out unlikeable – I know we were supposed to get a flirty banter, rivals to lovers kind of vibe from his dynamic with Alex, but I just didn’t get it. But then the other love interest, who may have had more potential, wasn’t there for half the book! So we didn’t even really get to see her dynamic with Alex much at all, which was disappointing. Beyond that, something about the pacing just felt awkward. I can’t poin

  I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by this one! It’s a fairly traditional enemies-to-lovers setup, and there’s not anything super out of the box, but I was shocked by how invested I got in Rune and Gideon’s relationship (I know – JAY getting invested in STRAIGHT PEOPLE?). There were also a few elements that I particularly enjoyed.  First, despite this being a YA romantasy, there’s actually a shocking amount of complexity and nuance that gets conveyed. We’re introduced to a world in which witches are brutally hunted and executed, which of course sets the reader up to side with Rune, the witch in hiding. But as the book goes on, it becomes very clear that the revolution that overthrew the witches was very much justified. The story does a really good job of showing the ways that privilege can change rapidly and how people can be talking about two entirely different things without even realizing it when it comes to power dynamics. Spoilers on this one! Another thing I thought this

  So uh this might literally be the worst book I’ve ever read. I genuinely don’t even know why I kept reading it except that it was oddly compelling to just watch it get worse and worse and worse. Basically the premise is that a young sorceress named Kami goes on a quest to destroy the Crimson Queen and save her town from monsters, except also the Crimson Queen is into Kami and wants her to come be her wife. And there is just nothing redeeming about any of it. The writing is bad, the plot is uninspiring and takes forever to actually go anywhere, and the way it handles gender and sexuality is just abhorrent. Spoilers from this point on, as it’s necessary to explain just how bad this was. There were a lot of things about this book I found absolutely disgusting, but probably the most egregious was that Kami MAKES FRIENDS WITH HER ATTEMPTED RAPIST. There’s a dragon in human form named Skye and he decides he needs to have sex with Kami because monsters can smell virgins or something??? And

  I feel kind of betrayed by this book. I mean, there is SO MUCH POTENTIAL here, right? There’s nothing I love more than a good wintery horror story when I’m home for winter break (yes I read this book six months ago it’s fine), and this anthology is just packed with talent. So it should have been absolutely amazing. And yet it was just…meh? I’d go through them one by one, but only a couple have actually stuck in my head enough to really comment. “The Mawkin Field” was really interesting and built a real sense of dread throughout the story, but then it just…ended without really getting anywhere.  In fact, that was probably my main problem with most of these stories. They had interesting ideas for the most part, but almost none of them really had any grip to them, and the endings were mostly confusing instead of scary. The one that I think was the strongest was “The Lord of Misrule.” It was creepy and disturbing, and the ending was actually comprehensible, which, you know, is kind of im