REVIEW: QUEEN BEE BY AMALIE HOWARD

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the Advance Reader’s Copy!

Plot | one | two | three | four | five
Characters | one | two | three | four | five
Writing | one | two | three | four | five
Setting | one | two | three | four | five
Pacing | one | two | three | four | five
Enjoyment | one | two | three | four | five
Ending | one | two | three | four | five

RATING: 3.25 STARS

I thought that Queen Bee looked like a fun read, so I was delighted when my request for an ARC through NetGalley got approved.  I spent several days delving into the Lyra’s world of Regency-era revenge and mischief, and I overall had a good time there, although there were a few things that fell flat.

Plot |I thought this book had a really solid plot.  The story progressed well, with the dual timeline as Ela’s naivety got the best of her and Lyra let herself get consumed by the thought of getting revenge.  I was worried at the beginning that this book would be a lot of sitting around and talking, but I was pleasantly surprised by the different parties and settings that progressed the plot forward.  I thought that the plot was enjoyable and fun to read, and I found myself getting lost in some of the story.  Do I think there could have been a little more action and a little less sitting around?  Yes, but the sitting around wasn’t ever boring.

Characters | The characters in this book is what really fell flat for me.  While I found that I actually really enjoyed Lyra, she was one of few characters that I actually felt connected to and truly liked.  It’s about time that we get more books about teenage girls who are fueled by spite, because I was once a teenage girl, and let me tell you, almost everything I did was fueled by spite.  She had an interesting character arc and she went through development, and I really enjoyed getting to know her throughout the course of the story.  However, I couldn’t get past my hatred for Poppy as a character.  And I get it, we’re supposed to hate her, she’s the antagonist.  But I thought she was too much of a caricature of herself.  Maybe that’s just my personal hatred for the “mean girl” trope in young adult books – this book, amongst others, takes away the nuance that I find so interesting in books.  Poppy was mean just for the sake of being mean, and my god, she was awful.  Always making a scene, always dragging everyone else down.  I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to hang out with her, and yet everyone flocked towards her because she was rich or whatever.  It seemed so unlikely that anyone would ever take her side, and I just couldn’t understand her motivations.  She was mean because she wanted Lord Ridley for herself?  It seemed so over the top, and it was honestly exhausting.  The rest of the characters were fine, although they didn’t make much of an impression on me.  Lord Ridley, the love interest, was just kind of there, and the only thing he really had going for him was the fact that he was soon going to be in a position of power.  I liked him in the three-years-prior portion, but he was just such a nothing man for the rest of the book.

Writing | Although I didn’t love the characters in this book, I thought that the writing was compelling.  I felt really immersed in the book, and once I got into the story, I was really into it.  I’ll definitely be picking up more of Amalie Howard’s books in the future, because I truly believe that my dislike of the characterization comes from personal preference and nothing else.  The story progressed well on the page, and I really enjoyed getting to know Lyra and her world as we moved back and forth through the years.

Setting | The setting was immersive, especially when they moved locations.  I’m always worried when I read a Regency-era book that it’ll be contained just to the sitting rooms (or whatever they call them), but this one had a lot of different places for me to travel to with the characters.  Different homes, different parties, the lake at one point, even the woods.  It felt like a real place to me, although the place where it loses points is the part in the middle of the story where Ela was sent away.  I didn’t feel as though I had a good grasp on where she was, which made it hard to care, so I wish we had gotten more there.

Pacing | The pacing of this book was compelling and interesting, although I had some problems with it around the end (I’ll get into that in the ending section).  I find that dual timeline books can always be hit or miss for me, and this one was a total win.  I usually like one timeline much better than the others, but the one from three years in the past and the one of current Lyra played well off of each other, and I never felt like they were switching too often or too infrequently.  The pacing was consistent throughout (except for the end), and the story progressed at a very enjoyable speed.

Enjoyment | I am a person who judges books mainly on my gut instinct, without putting too much thought into it.  If I enjoy it in the moment, then I’m probably going to like the book.  I found this one to be enjoyable because of the revenge plot and Lyra’s characterization and because of the general progression of the plot, but for me, some of the enjoyment was taken away because of the rest of the characters.  If Poppy had made a little more sense to me (or maybe if the people who followed Poppy made a little more sense to me), I would have enjoyed this much undoubtedly much more, but I kept getting caught up rolling my eyes at her.  And it’s a difficult slope to walk – I’m supposed to be rolling my eyes at her, I’m supposed to hate her, she’s literally the antagonist, but it was just so overdone for me.  I think she would have been a much more interesting and less flat character if there was more nuance regarding her mean-girl-ness.

Ending | Listen, I didn’t dislike the ending.  I liked the development of Lyra’s character, and her realizations about revenge.  However, Church’s return felt too convenient – she shows back up and suddenly everything is miraculously fixed.  I love a story being tied up in a neat bow as much as the next person, but it all happened way too fast.  The pacing for the rest of the book was so solid that it took me off-guard how quickly the entire conflict was resolved.  Also, I was not a fan of so much of the climax just being Poppy standing there screeching.  But putting that aside, Lyra’s story had a nice ending (although a little fast), and I was happy with the events themselves, although I think the way they progressed left a little bit to be desired.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, and thought it was well-written.  Perhaps my dislike of some of the characterization comes from me being a little older than the intended audience (I’m a young adult, but not in the way that books are classified), but I still do enjoy reading a lot of young adult books.  I will definitely be picking up another book by Amalie Howard, and I think anyone who wants more Regency-era books, especially about a compelling female main character who is driven by revenge, would really enjoy this one.

Do you have Queen Bee on your TBR for its release on April 4?  What are you excited for about it?  Let me know your thoughts!

REVIEW: LIGHTLARK BY ALEX ASTER

Lightlark by Alex Aster has gotten a lot of social media attention recently, and most of it has been bad. I don’t think I’ve ever in my life seen a book’s Goodreads rating drop from 4 stars to less than 2 stars in one day because of how many one star reviews people were giving it. Of course, this made me incredibly intrigued, and I knew that I absolutely had to read it and see if these one star reviews had any basis, especially since my TikTok for you page went from people praising this book and telling me that I absolutely had to read it to people saying that it was horrible and hating on Alex Aster in the span of around five hours.

The Lightlark Controversy, (Poorly) Explained

I’m going to try to explain what is going on with this book, but there are so many moving parts and so many things that I’m bound to forget some or explain some poorly. A few months ago, I saw Alex Aster posting on TikTok promoting her book that was coming out. Most of these were either talking about the tropes that were in the book or talking about how excited she was that her book became a viral sensation on TikTok and that it was coming out soon. I thought nothing of this; if I had a book coming out, I would probably be doing the same thing. She was also posting about how the rights to turn it into a film had been bought before the book came out, and I remember thinking “Oh, good for her,” and then moving on.

More recently, however, once people started receiving arcs and actually reading the book, they started complaining that the tropes and quotes that Alex had been posting to promote her book weren’t actually in the book. Then, the idea of diversity within characters was brought up, since people were mad that the one “diverse” character in the book was a lot like tokenism.

And with the attention of her book, information about her background started coming out. Now, this is the part that gets a little muddled in my opinion. I’m not sure if she ever claimed to be self-made or anything, but it came out that she comes from a very privileged background and her sister is a millionaire with potential connections in the publishing world, which people did not like at all. (Another interesting thing that came up is that she also had a failed attempt at a music career – Addison Rae was even paid to promote it).

Once more and more people got the book and began to read it, they began to review-bomb the Goodreads rating, giving it hundreds of one star reviews and causing a lot of controversy.

My Review of Lightlark

I decided to read Lightlark to form my own opinion. I tried to go into the book without the preconceived bias that TikTok had given me (but who knows if I successfully did that).

The fact of the matter is that this is not a very well-written book. I found that the majority of this book was info-dumping, which was exhausting and confusing to read. The world-building wasn’t woven into the story but instead just slapped onto the page in paragraphs and paragraphs of descriptions. I also found some of the worldbuilding to be very lazy, especially the names. Nightlings? Sunlings? Moonlings? It’s just a little too on the nose for me.

The characters themselves were very surface level, especially Isla, who I found to be a very nothing protagonist. She fell into the trap of supposedly being an amazing fighter and “special,” but her personality was so boring and nothing about her character explained why she could beat a 500+ year old in combat. She was so boring and a blank slate, and she had no chemistry with either of the “love interests.” Honestly, I spent the whole time assuming that she was actually in love with Celeste, since Celeste was the only character that she seemed to have any chemistry with.

Aside from the big picture things, I also found the physical writing to be not great. Every sentence had the same structure and felt very choppy, and most of the writing was telling rather than showing. Some of the descriptions of things (see below) caused me to physically put the book down and question my life choices:

• “Lightlark was a shining, cliffy thing”
• “The sun had fallen. It was just a yolky thing…” (This one was the opening sentence of a chapter and happened only a few pages after the first one)

The concept of the book was compelling, but I found it to be poorly executed. The curse was not explained very well, the pacing was all over the place, and I found it to just kind of be boring.

Do I think it deserved all of the one star reviews from people who haven’t read it? No. Do I think Alex Aster deserves all of the hate that she is getting? Absolutely not. I think if you’re curious, you should give the book a chance and see what you think, but just know that I personally thought that this book got incredibly overhyped before its release.

Have you read Lightlark by Alex Aster? What do you think about this whole controversy? Let me know in the comments!

The Problem with Persuasion (2022)

I am a big fan of Jane Austen, both novels and movie adaptations. From reading Northanger Abbey to watching Clueless, I can never get enough of her universe. I’ve always found the Pride & Prejudice 2005 vs. 1995 debate to be funny and unnecessary, since each of them have their own separate strengths. In my opinion, there can never be too many Jane Austen adaptations. At least, I thought that until I watched Netflix’s 2022 adaptation of Persuasion.

This adaptation of Persuasion confused me, not because the plot itself was particularly confusing (for the most part, the plot structure followed that of the book) but because I could not for the life of me figure out who the intended audience of this movie was. Anne’s constant breaking of the fourth wall and use of modern slang suggested that the writers of this adaptation wanted Anne to somewhat embody Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s portrayal of Fleabag. However, this poses some problems in my mind.

The venn diagram of people who enjoy Fleabag and people who love Jane Austen is pretty much just a circle. Maybe I’m stereotyping here, but to me, it seems like anyone who has watched and enjoyed Fleabag loves reading Jane Austen, and anyone who loves reading Jane Austen has watched Fleabag or is intending to watch Fleabag. For that reason alone, turning Anne Eliot into a Fleabag-esque character doesn’t make sense from a viewership standpoint; it’s not a selling point that Anne is like Fleabag because people who watch Fleabag were probably already planning on watching any adaptation of Persuasion that was released.

I completely understand the idea behind the inclusion of modern slang and having Anne break the fourth wall and speak directly to the audience; it sort of felt like a way to try to make the dialogue, the story, and Austen as a whole more accessible and for a wider audience, since, sometimes, the writing style and dialogue can be confusing. But there are tasteful ways to do it, and I do not think that this adaptation correctly did it. Modernizing the dialogue should still be timeless, but even in just the time between the production and the release of this movie, some of the lines were already ridiculous and dated.

I also question the choice to modernize Persuasion as opposed to any of Austen’s other works. Northanger Abbey, for example, is about a teenager who is coming of age and growing up before the readers’ eyes; the youth of Catherine’s character makes it more sensible that she would be speaking in slightly more modern slang. But with Anne Eliot, who is Austen’s oldest protagonist, and Persuasion, which is Austen’s most mature novel, it falls flat and seems out of place.

Another reason why Persuasion was an odd choice out of all of the Austen novels to “give the Fleabag treatment to” is that Persuasion, as Austen’s most mature novel, is most likely not going to be the first Austen experience that a lot of people have. Which brings me back to the question: who is this novel for? The modernization suggests it’s for people who are unfamiliar with Austen, but the source material itself suggests otherwise.

One thing I’ve noticed as well is that people whose favorite Austen novel is Persuasion also tend to be Austen purists; they don’t want any even minute changes to their beloved novel. Which means, in my opinion, that this movie was doomed to fail from the start.

But in my eyes, the moment this movie failed was when I learned that Henry Golding was not playing the love interest. How are the casting directors of this movie going to take one look at Henry Golding and decide to put him in a period piece and NOT make him the love interest and instead cast a stiff, unlikeable Captain Wentworth? Henry Golding as a love interest was a missed opportunity, and I need to see him in more period pieces immediately.

I’m interested to hear other people’s thoughts on Persuasion (2022), especially people who haven’t read the books or are otherwise unfamiliar with Austen. Maybe I’m being a close-minded Austen snob with my dislike of this movie, and I’m fully open to that possibility. But either way, Henry Golding needs to be the love interest in a period piece.

Have you seen Netflix’s 2022 adaptation of Persuasion? What did you think? Please let me know in the comments!

REVIEW: THE STEMINIST NOVELLAS BY ALI HAZELWOOD

I admittedly was not the biggest fan of Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis or Love on the Brain (which I know is a pretty controversial opinion). One of my main critiques about those books was the fact that a lot of them seemed to just drag on and on and were much too long for the story they were telling, which is why when I heard about the novellas that she was writing, I was excited. I was hoping that the stories she was telling in these would work better in the shorter form and that the pacing would work better than in the novels.

There are three STEMinist novellas: “Under One Roof,” “Stuck With You,” and “Below Zero.” I listened to all of these on audiobook, and each of them took me around three hours maximum to listen to them, which means I listened to most of them all in one sitting.

One thing I thought was cute and good about these stories is the structure with all three of the friends being in all three of the stories, each one following a different friend. I really liked that format, especially since when the previous main character would show up in the next book, I would get excited and feel like I was seeing a friend. I also really liked seeing the development in characters continue through the three books, even though I wish there was a little bit more of each friend.

I also think that Ali Hazelwood knows how to write a scene with tension. I found myself giggling and gasping during all of the interactions between the love interests.

Unfortunately, that’s pretty much all that I liked about these books. I was hoping that the shorter format would fix a lot of problems I had with Ali Hazelwood’s full novels, but really, it just made them feel rushed. I think that she needs to find her length sweet spot, since some are too long and slow and some are too short and rushed.

Also, it took me around halfway through the second book to put together the fact that Ali Hazelwood has given us the same exact story five times, just packaged in a different scientific career for her main characters. All the books follow the exact same structure and format, and all of them are just miscommunication tropes that take up an entire story, which is one of my least favorite tropes. Most of them are so frustrating to listen to because if the characters simply listened to each other for five seconds or acted like grown ups.

The writing and characters were juuuuust different enough that it took me a second to put two and two together that these are all basically the same story, but once I did, I couldn’t look past it. I think Ali Hazelwood built really rich and developed characters in the first book that she wrote, but it feels like she is incapable of creating new characters and has just been reusing them over and over again.

This is also a much smaller critique, but I don’t understand her obsession with talking about the size of her protagonists. I understand mentioning it at some points in the stories for description purposes, but in these books, it felt like I was constantly being hit over the head with these.

That being said, there was something about these novels that were so entertaining and that I couldn’t put down. I’m not sure what it is, since when I look at these books with a critical lens, I get so frustrated with them. But when I turn my brain off, I cannot get enough. Which is why I continued to write everything that she has written, despite the fact that it’s continually the exact same story over and over again. And I will be reading whatever it is that she writes next.

Have you read any of the STEMinist novellas by Ali Hazelwood? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!

REVIEW: I KISSED SHARA WHEELER BY CASEY MCQUISTON

I’ve read Red White and Royal Blue and One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston (you can read my reviews of them by clicking the titles!), so I was very excited to get approved to have early access to their YA debut, I Kissed Shara Wheeler. And while I had some problems with this book, I did overall enjoy reading it, and I thought it was really cute.

Chloe Green is so close to winning. After her moms moved her from SoCal to Alabama for high school, she’s spent the past four years dodging gossipy classmates and a puritanical administration at Willowgrove Christian Academy. The thing that’s kept her going: winning valedictorian. Her only rival: prom queen Shara Wheeler, the principal’s perfect progeny.

But a month before graduation, Shara kisses Chloe and vanishes.

On a furious hunt for answers, Chloe discovers she’s not the only one Shara kissed. There’s also Smith, Shara’s longtime quarterback sweetheart, and Rory, Shara’s bad boy neighbor with a crush. The three have nothing in common except Shara and the annoyingly cryptic notes she left behind, but together they must untangle Shara’s trail of clues and find her. It’ll be worth it, if Chloe can drag Shara back before graduation to beat her fair-and-square.

Thrown into an unlikely alliance, chasing a ghost through parties, break-ins, puzzles, and secrets revealed on monogrammed stationery, Chloe starts to suspect there might be more to this small town than she thought. And maybe—probably not, but maybe—more to Shara, too.

Fierce, funny, and frank, Casey McQuiston’s I Kissed Shara Wheeler is about breaking the rules, getting messy, and finding love in unexpected places.

RATING: 3 STARS

As a fan of McQuiston’s other books, I was excited to pick up their YA debut, I Kissed Shara Wheeler. And this book definitely made me feel all warm and fuzzy like One Last Stop and Red White and Royal Blue did; it’s a heartwarming queer story about overcoming adversity and learning more about yourself, especially in a super religious, southern high school.

But one thing I couldn’t help but notice about this book is that I feel like it tried to do too much at once, to the point that it felt like it should have been about three separate books. The plot felt a little bit disjointed at times; there was the part when Chloe, Rory, and Smith were all trying to figure out what happened to Shara, there was the time after Chloe finds Shara, and there was the whole graduation plot. It just didn’t feel very much like a cohesive plot; instead of all of these subplots being woven together, it was like one was written to completion and then the next one would start. Because of this, I found the pacing to be really strange, and I feel like this book was trying to do all too much at once.

Overall, though, I think this book has an important message. I’m probably a little bit older than the target audience for this book, but the world definitely needs more YA books like this, so I recommend this book to anyone who needs to be reminded that they’re not alone in high school.. 

(Also this is such a dumb criticism I had, but as someone who was involved in high school theatre, the fact that a high school had enough operatic singers to put on Phantom of the Opera felt incredibly unrealistic to me, and it continually took me out of the plot.)

REVIEW: SEE YOU YESTERDAY BY RACHEL LYNN SOLOMON

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the Advanced Reader’s Copy!

I’ve heard such great things about Rachel Lynn Solomon’s books (both her young adult books and her adult books) that even though I haven’t gotten around to picking up any of them, I knew I was interested in See You Yesterday, her new release coming out soon.  I’m very thankful for the opportunity to read this one early, because I really enjoyed it!

See You Yesterday tells the story of Barrett Bloom, a college freshman who’s hoping for a fresh start.  She’s had a rough time in high school and is excited to start anew – but then Lucie Lamont, her ex-friend from high school, is assigned to be her roommate, she’s humiliated by a classmate in her physics class, she bombs her interview for the school paper, and to make matters worse, she accidentally sets a frat house on fire that night.  The next morning when she wakes up, it’s not the next morning at all, but the first day of class again.  She’s stuck in a time loop, unsure of how to get out – and Miles, the boy from her physics class, has been stuck in the same loop for months.

RATING: 4 STARS

This book was so cute and charming – I found myself grinning like an idiot at the pages as I read it.  Barrett was a lovely main character.  She was hilarious and loud and unapologetic, and my favorite part was that she didn’t lose those traits when she developed and grew as a character.  Her development was so interesting to read about, as she had to relive the same day over and over again and tried different things each time.  Talking to Lucie, to Cole, to her mother, to everyone all helped her develop, and I loved getting to see her shine on the pages.  It did make me kind of sad for her that she went through all of this development but that everyone she spoke do didn’t remember it the next day when the clock reset.  I wanted her and Lucie to get along, and every time they did, it just started right back at the beginning the next (same) morning.

I liked Miles as a character too, and I liked his growth as well (not as much as Barrett’s, but that’s always what happens when it’s first person narrator).  His dynamic with Barrett was so charming, and I loved getting to see him open up and let loose a little.  The build up of his romance with Barrett was believable and fun and I couldn’t help but root for them.

The other characters were fun as well – I liked getting to know Lucie as she and Barrett got used to each other (or more like Barrett got used to her as Lucie’s memory kept resetting with the days), and I liked Barrett’s mom a lot.  The characters really came alive on the page, and they were all dynamic and realistic and well developed, which I really enjoyed.  They were all humorous and fun and had nice touches in their development (I loved Miles and his brother continually calling each other by ridiculous nicknames).

The time travel element of this book worried me before I started it, because I was a little apprehensive about getting myself into a book that had such a big emphasis on physics.  And while I will admit that a little bit of it did go over my head, for the most part it was explained in an interesting and simple way, and the story was structured in such a way that I could easily follow it.  Physics was not at the forefront of most of this book, which I liked because truth be told, I do not like physics and I do not understand it.  Where it was there, it was easy to understand and made a lot of sense, but I was grateful that it didn’t take up too much of the story like I was worried it would.

I was worried that the plot in general would be overdone (because of Groundhog Day) or repetitive (because Barrett and Miles were essentially going through the same day over and over again) and I was pleased to find out that it never was.  Barrett and Miles seemed determined to have a good time or to figure out what was going on, so each day was vastly different from the others and the pacing was done really well.  The author didn’t focus too much on the minute details of how each day was the same, so it didn’t feel like this book dragged on too much.  My only main complaint in regards to pacing is that the ending seemed a little rushed, but the book was so enjoyable that that’s a minor thing.

Overall, See You Yesterday is a charming and funny book that I’m super grateful for the chance to read early.  I was impressed on its ability to handle some more difficult and heavy topics while still being mostly lighthearted.  The main character Barrett really sold me on this book – it would not have been even half as enjoyable without her at the forefront.  I would definitely recommend that everyone pick up a copy when it’s officially released soon!

REVIEW: THE WILDERWOMEN BY RUTH EMMIE LANG

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book!

I’m a sucker for a good family dynamic in a book, and I’m a sucker for an adventure story (especially if that adventure is a road trip).  So when I saw that The Wilderwomen was a book that had strong female characters, a complicated family relationship, AND an adventure, I was sold.  Add in the fact that there’s an element of magic with the psychic powers the main characters have, and I knew I had to get my hands on a copy.

The Wilderwomen tells the story of Zadie and Finn, two sisters whose mom walked out on them five years previously.  Even with their psychic powers – Zadie has premonitions in which she can see the future and Finn can see “echoes” of other people’s memories – they don’t know where she is or why she left.  When Finn decides that she needs to find out what happened, Zadie is along for the journey.  With only their powers and a vague idea of how to use them to help, they hope to travel across the country to find their mom.

RATING: 4 STARS

I think the best part of this story was the main characters.  I loved Zadie and Finn – they were complex and interesting characters even without their abilities, and then when you add in the abilities, it just made them all the more captivating.  I loved learning about their motivations and their vulnerabilities and I especially loved their interactions with each other.  The sibling dynamic was so interesting and really drew me in.  I liked Nora, their mother, as a character as well, but definitely not as much as her daughters.  I found that Nora was a lot harder to forgive and understand.

The plot was also (for the most part) really interesting and captivating.  Like I mentioned, I love adventure road trip stories, and this was one that ticked off those boxes.  The only issue I had with the plot was a little bit of the pacing – at some points it felt like it dragged on just a little, and I was anxious to get on with it and find out what happened next.  What I did like about the pacing was the back and forth between the past and the present, which let us as readers get to know Nora, even though she was largely absent from the rest of the story.  The plot, especially with the addition of the flashbacks, was well-crafted.

What else about this book that was well-crafted was the abilities.  For the most part, I found everything to be easy to understand without being over-explained, which I do think is often the downfall of books set in the real world that have elements of fantasy in them.  But I really liked the explanations of the abilities, and the interjections of Finn’s echoes and all of that.  The only part about it that I didn’t totally love was the ending.  I found the wrap-up of the plot and the climax to be a bit confusing, and I just feel like it didn’t necessarily have the pay-off I was waiting for.  Even so, I really liked the plot and the magical elements of this book.

With such a strong duo as the main characters, I was also pleased by the supporting cast as well.  Myron and his daughters as well as Joel stick out in particular as dynamic and interesting minor characters who felt extremely developed, which I really enjoyed.  Everyone was quirky and a little zany, but still felt grounded in reality (if that statement doesn’t contradict itself too much).  Every interaction was integral to the plot, and if what the characters were saying wasn’t that important to their development, at the very least it was entertaining (I’m looking at you, Joel, you were so fun to read about).

I think where this book particularly shines is with its portrayal of all of the relationships.  Zadie and Finn’s sibling relationship was complex, their relationship with their mom was explored a lot, and their relationship with others was just as developed.  I really liked seeing Zadie’s development in terms of her relationship and interactions with Joel, and I thought that the way that Lang explored all of the relationships was extremely fascinating to read about (wow, how many times can I use the word “relationships” in one paragraph?).  Overall, I really think that’s what this story is about at its heart, and it’s an extremely touching story when you look at it through the interactions and developments between the characters.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, although some of the pacing could have been more consistent.  If you’re looking for a fun read with an interesting cast of characters and a compelling plot, this is definitely one you’ll want to pick up come November when The Wilderwomen is officially released!

REVIEW: THE AGATHAS BY KATHLEEN GLASGOW AND LIZ LAWSON

Thank you to Netgalley for the early access to this book!

I saw The Agathas on the Netgalley dashboard and was immediately hooked; Agatha Christie vibes in a YA mystery? Sign me up! I was so excited to be approved for this title, and I jumped into the book as quickly as I could. Unfortunately, this book did not live up to my expectations.

Who killed Brooke Donovan? It’s the biggest mystery of the summer, and everyone in Castle Cove thinks it’s the wrong guy. Fans of One of Us Is Lying and Riverdale can’t miss this page-turning who-done-it that’s sure to be the next must read Young Adult thriller!

Last summer, Alice Ogilvie’s basketball-star boyfriend Steve dumped her. Then she disappeared for five days. She’s not talking, so where she went and what happened to her is the biggest mystery in Castle Cove. Or it was, at least. But now, another one of Steve’s girlfriends has vanished: Brooke Donovan, Alice’s ex–best friend. And it doesn’t look like Brooke will be coming back. . .
 
Enter Iris Adams, Alice’s tutor. Iris has her own reasons for wanting to disappear, though unlike Alice, she doesn’t have the money or the means. That could be changed by the hefty reward Brooke’s grandmother is offering to anyone who can share information about her granddaughter’s whereabouts. The police are convinced Steve is the culprit, but Alice isn’t so sure, and with Iris on her side, she just might be able to prove her theory.
 
In order to get the reward and prove Steve’s innocence, they need to figure out who killed Brooke Donovan. And luckily Alice has exactly what they need—the complete works of Agatha Christie. If there’s anyone that can teach the girls how to solve a mystery it’s the master herself. But the town of Castle Cove holds many secrets, and Alice and Iris have no idea how much danger they’re about to walk into. 

RATING: 2.5 STARS

I think I’m in the minority when it comes to this book. I’ve seen so many reviews raving about it, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt, because maybe there is just something about this book that I’m missing.

The Agathas promises more than it delivers. Perhaps it set my expectations too high with its title, comparing it to any Agatha Christie novel, but I found that, while the concept is compelling, the plot itself fell a bit flat. For one thing, a lot of the speech patterns were awkward, and it was very clear that there were two adults who were trying (and failing) to pass as teenagers.

I also found that as the story went on and Alice and Iris became more involved in each others’ lives, it was hard to differentiate between the two of them. By that I mean that there was almost no stylistic differences between the two characters’ points of view.

The plot and mystery itself I think was well done, although the entire time, one of the only things I could think of the entire time was why so many people were just handing these teenage girls so much information, Ricky especially. Alice and Iris being the ones who solved the mystery just didn’t make sense to me.

Overall, the story itself fell flat, especially with the random side characters who were kind of there but kind of not and the Agatha Christie mentions that weren’t in it enough to be a theme but in it too much that it was awkward.

I was disappointed in the execution of this book because the idea and concept was there, but it just fell flat. I’m hoping to pick up some other books by either of these two authors, because I think that they clearly have talent, and hopefully, this book is an outlier in their respective collections.

Have you read The Agathas  or anything else by either of these two authors? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!

Thank you again to Netgalley for the ditigal ARC of The Agathas!

REVIEW: THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP BY GRADY HENDRIX

I read The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix earlier this year (you can read Jane’s review of that one here), and I liked it enough, but found it to be lacking just a little bit.  But I thought that the concept had a lot of potential, so when I got my hands on The Final Girl Support Group also by Grady Hendrix, which has just as interesting of a concept, I knew I wanted to give it a shot.

The Final Girl Support Group tells the story of Lynnette Tarkington, a real-life final girl who survived a massacre several years ago and was left severely traumatized.  She meets up with other final girls who were left standing in the wake of a massacre, most of whom killed their slasher before they were killed, in a kind of support group for them.  One day, one of the final girls misses a meeting, and they all know that something has gone wrong – someone knows about the group and is determined to take them down one by one.  But the final girls have each other for support now, and no matter how many times they’re hunted, they will never give up.

RATING: 3 STARS

This book has such a cool concept, but I was kind of expecting a completely different book than the one I ended up reading.  I thought it would be more about the final girls and their trauma and their connections to one another and to their attempted murderers, as the title suggests, but instead it was basically a complicated and fast-moving slasher book.  Not that that’s a bad thing, I was just a little caught off-guard by the fact that most of this book involved Lynnette fleeing across California and its surrounding states from an unknown killer.

I think one of my main problems with this book is that there’s a lot of repetition in it.  It takes its main concept – Lynnette and her determination to prove that someone is targeting the final girls – and basically hits you over the head with it again and again.  It was fun at first and got my heart racing, but after a while, I was exhausted just reading it, and I can’t imagine how exhausted the characters must have been.  It went on just a little bit too long: there were just a few too many guesses about who was the slasher that was going after them, and in the end all that made me was confused.

I liked Lynnette a lot as our main character and narrator.  She was a complex and flawed character, and her inner psyche was incredibly interesting.  I loved her paranoia and her precautions that started from the very beginning with the way that she never took the same route home and following through with her barely trusting anyone.  She and the other final girls were really interesting to read about, although I was a little confused at times about which one was which and what each of their slasher stories were.  I loved how Lynnette was always prepared and had about sixteen contingency plans in case the previous one went wrong.  I really enjoyed her development throughout the story, and I felt myself getting very stressed out as wrong thing after wrong thing just kept happening.

The other characters blended together in my head just a little bit, especially the other final girls.  I thought that they were all very interesting though, and as I mentioned, I just really loved the concept of having a therapy support group of all of these women who went through very similar terrible things when they were young.  They weren’t all that likeable, but I love unlikable characters, and I guess it also makes sense that they would be harsh and think only of themselves, considering the horrors and atrocities that all of them went through.  I wish I had been able to discern between them a little bit more, but they served their purpose.

The twist in the book was a little messy, just because there had been so many attempted beforehand (Lynnette kept guessing on who was the slasher, and by the time it was finally revealed, it was seemingly the only person that hadn’t already been considered).  The whole plot just felt messy, which I think was kind of because how long it went on.  I personally think if the story itself was a little tighter it would have been cleaner and more enjoyable, but as it was, I was just a little lost throughout, especially in the middle of the story.

Overall, I was feeling a little conflicted about this book.  On one hand, the concept was interesting and the characters had so much potential and the plot was exciting, but on the other hand, it just felt a little longwinded and lost, and I kind of was forcing myself to get through it.  I did enjoy the references to slasher movie franchises, and I liked it enough, but I was just waiting for it to have that one final push that made me like it more.  I felt like I was waiting for something more, but instead it fell a little flat.

Have you read The Final Girl Support Group?  What are your thoughts?

REVIEW: PORTRAIT OF A THIEF BY GRACE D. LI

WARNING: This review contains moderate spoilers. Proceed with caution!

I feel like I’ve seen this book all over TikTok, especially from the author’s sister, who, might I add, is doing a fantastic job marketing this book. It’s been so hyped up, and it was compared to Ocean’s Eleven, so I knew this was a book I had to read as soon as possible. A critique on colonialism mixed with an art heist made up of college students? Sign me up! And I’m so glad that I did read this book; it definitely deserves all the hype it got.

History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now.

Will Chen plans to steal them back.

A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents’ American Dream. But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible—and illegal—job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago.

His crew is every heist archetype one can imag­ine—or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down.

Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars—and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they’ve dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted at­tempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.

Equal parts beautiful, thoughtful, and thrilling, Portrait of a Thief is a cultural heist and an examination of Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary cri­tique of the lingering effects of colonialism.

RATING: 3.75 STARS

This book definitely took me by surprise; I was expecting something much more action-packed with most of the focus being on the heist, but what I got instead was a character study into immigrants and the children of immigrants and their feelings towards their identities. While at first it took me off guard and I found myself wishing for more action, I grew to really love the emphasis on the characters’ introspection and inner monologues.

I also loved the found family aspect of it; we get to see people who have known each other for years become closer and people who did not know them at all join the family, resulting in a great dynamic that I loved. At times, the switching POVs gave me a little bit of whiplash, but overall, I’m really glad that there were all of their POVs, since all of them had their own internal (and external) struggles that I wanted to see.

I really liked all of the characters EXCEPT FOR Irene, who I found so annoying. And I feel bad saying this, because I’m pretty sure the author based her off of her sister who has been making all of the TikToks, and she seems like a nice enough person (and her videos are very funny), but she was just an insufferable character. I feel like she was the opposite of a team player, and everything she did had me wanting to punch the wall and wonder why she would do things like that without consulting the rest of the group. I also thought that her hatred of Alex at the beginning was so unfounded. I understand that the author wanted to give them an enemies to lovers arc, but I feel like Irene just hated Alex for the sake of hating her. It made absolutely no sense to me.

I also found some of the writing and descriptions to be a little repetitive, but the writing itself was so beautiful and well-crafted that I didn’t really mind that.

Overall, I think that the title really fits the content of this book; rather than focusing on the heist, Li focuses on sketching a portrait of the thieves themselves and their inner thoughts and motivations, which is something I really grew to like. This was a stunning debut novel from Li, and I’ll definitely be looking out for any future books that she writes!

Have you read Portrait of a Thief? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!