Look, 9 times out of 10 when an author decides to rewrite their book from the male love interest's perspective, it's not interesting and feels wholly unnecessary. LOVER is that 1 book out of 10 that really adds something to the story, and it's also basically a masterclass in how to write a gentlemanly simp who is respectfully obsessive. HAWT.
Do NOT read this book if you haven't already read THE CRUEL DARK because it contains major spoilers for the book. Before I dive into my review, I will say that these two books are set during the roaring twenties, and are a lushly written gothic saga about a girl with a tragic past coming to help a hot and tormented professor with his research, only to discover that the house that they're working in harbors dark secrets that inextricably twine with both of their own sordid histories.
Callum is such a great hero. He had some of the best lines in this book ever, and the spicy scenes were both elegant and hot. A Michelin starred dish of spice, if you will. I also loved seeing Millie through his eyes. I loved her a lot in her own book, and getting to see the hero falling in love with her, being in love with her, was a real treat.
Does this book do much for the plot? No. But it advances the story emotionally and is actually a very thoughtful and complex piece of fan service that goes beyond a mere smuttening, so I am happy.
This was an impulse download because I kept seeing it being suggested to me every time I went on Amazon. On a whim, I downloaded THE CRUEL DARK and ended up completely obsessed. It's kind of like a threeway cross between Gothikana, Jane Eyre, and RoseRed, but set in the 1920s with a headstrong heroine who has come to a remote and supposedly haunted mansion named Willowfield to help a hot and standoffish professor with his research, only to realize that nothing about the house-- or the man-- is truly as it seems.
The lush writing and rich setting are good enough for those who read their gothics for the vibes, but the characterizations and SPICE are also top tier. Spice does nothing for me if there's no emotional element to it, so I was delighted that the chemistry between Callum and Millie basically set the pages on fire. They're so good together, and the dangerous edge to Callum's character makes it even better.
I was thinking this was going to be a four star read for a while because there were a few niggling things that weren't my fave, but then that TWIST flew out of nowhere and everything suddenly flew neatly into place, and I was like holy shitteth, there is no way that anything that made me gasp out loud like that is getting anything less than the full five stars. I don't make the rules. (JK, I do.)
If you're a fan of Keri Lake, you need to read this book.
This scratched the dark academia itch I've been touting since starting the Zodiac Academy series: girls with cut-out hearts, creepy cults, and town founders with too much time and power on their hands, Hollow Oak is not a safe place for the unwary. Luckily, Luz, a half-Puerto Rican wunderkind who speaks four languages and has a whole J. Crew-inspired closet full of dark secrets, is hardly unwary.
Why Choose? is not normally a genre I gravitate too, but I just loved the academia setting so much. I also liked all the Blackwells, especially Locke (he gives major Lance Orion vibes, so if you stan Blue x Orion, you'll probably love this book). Allister, Nixon, and Everest were all interesting too and I'm excited to learn more about them.
For some reason, I was expecting a supernatural element, but this feels more like a horror movie pastiche. I was reminded of Wednesday, Happy Death Day, Trick 'R Treat, and Scream, in particular. Most of the gore is on the DL, although there's one pretty gory torture scene towards the middle that was very hard to read. It's not integral to the plot, though, so if gore is hard for you to handle, you can totally skip over it without missing anything.
The book ends on a major cliffhanger, with a potentially large twist. I still have so many questions and I'm very excited to have them answered when I read more from this author. What a stellar debut.
I'm surprised this was published in 2012, it feels like it was published ten years earlier. There's an emo vibe to this book that is such a perfect fit with the alt-girl aesthetics of the early 2000s. I wish I'd liked it more but the characterization of Jane was so odd. I love the idea of an underprivileged girl getting a scholarship to a weird and creepy school where people have gone missing or dead. But this book was all vibes and no explanation. Like, there's a portion where Jane is translating Latin she sees to herself... where did she learn Latin if she grew up in the "ghetto" surrounded by pimps and drug-dealers? So many things like this, that just were glossed over.
Got this from my mom. I heard tell that it's Jane Eyre inspired but so far it's reminding me more of Rebecca.Got this from my mom. I heard tell that it's Jane Eyre inspired but so far it's reminding me more of Rebecca....more
So I'm doing this project where I'm reading every Jane Eyre retelling I can find (that is in my budget), and when I found this cozy mystery Jane Eyre retelling on Kindle Unlimited, I dropped everything and picked it right the fuck up. Here's what I'm learning about this project: I'm not a purist. I know how the original story goes because I've read the original story and when I pick up a retelling, I'm not expecting a reprise. All I want is something that pays homage to the original but has its own special take on the characters I know and love.
That said, DEATH OF A SCHOOLGIRL does all that and more. It's more of a direct sequel than others I have read. Jane has just given birth to her and Edward's birth son and they're wondering how Adele is going to take not being their only child, because she's been strange and uncommunicative in her letters from boarding school. Then, one day, they get a letter from her begging them to save her, which contains strange threats written in someone else's hand.
Obviously, that freaks them out and after some discussion, Jane leaves Edward and her new baby behind to go to London and find out what's going on with Adele. On the way she's robbed, and due to a series of unforeseen circumstances, she kind of accidentally-on-purpose lets the headmistress think that she's the girls' new German teacher, because right away, it's clear that the vibe of the school is O F F. Why? Because someone was just murdered.
I saw some reviewers saying that the killer was obvious. Call me a dunce, because I did not guess. I wasn't really trying to guess, though. Mostly I was just along for the vibes. After so many retellings that turned Edward into a bad person, it was fun to read one where his passion and intensity remained, but he was softened by his relationship with Jane and his entree into fatherhood. I also liked how Jane had full agency in this book and got to play at being a detective for two weeks. She was very self-contained and clever in the original, so it actually made sense to see her apply those skills towards assisting in a murder investigation. After watching A Haunting in Venice, I wanted more period piece murders, so this was literally EXACTLY what my mood-reading self wanted.
Was this book perfect? No. But it was incredibly fun and was a nice piece of public domain fanfiction to read and enjoy, and I thought it did a great job staying true to the original characters.
I'm honestly shocked that this has such low ratings because it fulfilled the scandalous dark academia void left by Donna Tartt's SECRET HISTORY. It's a Rebecca retelling, set in a pretentious New England art gallery, with a naive ingenue who wants art that is beautiful and makes her feel things, and his horrified by the darker avant-garde tastes of her predecessor and the people she associated with.
ALENA is a decent retelling, I thought, as long as you give it proper leeway and don't expect it to be a cut and dry reenactment. I actually thought the commentary on art was even more interesting than the thriller elements. Pastan perfectly captures the snobberies of the artist, questioning when the metaphorical becomes nonsensical or just purely self-indulgent. So much of art is up to interpretation, and I thought this was a fascinating examination of the boundaries of art, and when and how beauty becomes ugliness (and vice-versa).
This is like a cross between THE SECRET HISTORY and Kathe Koja's SKIN. And since neither of those books are for everyone, I guess I can see why this book was panned by critics. The core message is ugly and it's not a particularly happy book, but the way it was told was beautiful, and I liked the unnamed narrator, too, and how desperately she wanted the world to be beautiful, and how sad she was to see her vision of her perfection shattered in the faces of the people whose respect she craved. Sometimes art is cruel.
AKATA WITCH was amazing and I was so excited to read the second book in the series. In my review of the first book, I talked about how it kind of subverts a lot of the typical magical school tropes, and how much I enjoyed the world-building and transformative nature of the magic. AKATA WARRIOR starts off where the last book left off, although it does something really helpful: it has a recap of the last book in the beginning for those, like me, who haven't read the first book in a hot minute. I think if you're reading back to back, you could skip, but I found it really helpful as a reader.
AKATA WARRIOR isn't a bad book but it's much longer than it needed to be and felt draggy as a result. AKATA WITCH was about one hundred pages shorter but was a nonstop action ride of discovery and adventure. AKATA WARRIOR had the characters wandering around a lot, and way too many descriptions of the characters sitting down and reading books. I found the introduction of Nsibidi, a magical and mysterious script, interesting, as did the draining effects on the people who read it, and how the letters could move and form dream-like movie scenes, but I really could have left some of those passages behind in the dust. There were also too many scenes with characters wandering around, talking about what they were going to do. I would say AKATA WARRIOR is a mediocre sequel with some really great moments that stand out and probably make the book feel better than it really was in hindsight.
Some of my favorite moments or introductions: the idea and concept of Nsibidi, the giant flying Grasscutter, the showdown with the spider deity, Sunny's punishment for violating magic law by being thrown into a dark basement haunted by a djinn, and the way Sunny gets revenge on a group of gang leaders who are tormenting her brother. I also liked how the relationship between Sunny and her brothers seemed to deepen in this book. In the first one, the relationship felt more impartial/adversarial, but here, it started to feel like Sunny coming into her own gave her the ability to relate to her family on her own terms while also setting boundaries, and I really liked that.
So overall, not a bad book, but not a great sequel, either. I'll probably still read the third book but I hope it isn't as pointlessly long as this one was.
Geraldine, like horseradish and '90s Eurodance music, is one of those things that is better in small doses. That said, after the devastation of CURSED FATES, obviously I needed some fluffy flounders in my life, and where better to get that than with some Geraldine/Max action. Which the book totally delivered on by the way.
This book starts with Gerry and Max hooking up during the lunar eclipse and ends with a surprise birthday party for Tory and Darcy. Definitely don't read this until after book five because it contains spoilers for books 3-5 (major ones). The sex is honestly pretty bad with Geraldine narrating but it's interesting to know that she's a dominant. Seeing her tussle with Maxy and his barracuda was pretty entertaining and it's sweet how into her weirdness he is.
Not sure what else to say about this book, tbh. It's short but still delivers on fun bonus content and is a nice reprieve from the angstfest that was CURSED FATES. Geraldine is still the best but man, thank goodness the authors deal her out in small doses.
I wasn't expecting the Zodiac Academy series to be so addictive. Seriously, I mostly just picked it up hoping to laugh at it and maybe enjoy it a little bit. Cut to me sinking hundreds of hours reading thousands of pages of these books like a total sucker. Irony, I don't know her. But seriously, these books are pure crack. They have all the fun escapism of the Harry Potter series, only without the TERF guilt. It reminds me of this time I was on a luxe cruise ship pregaming with my friends and drank five glasses of champagne (don't judge me). It felt good going down until it didn't and suddenly, BOOM. Hungover and seasick, leaving in the middle of a surf n' turf dinner to worship at the altar of ultimate regret. The moral here is that bingeing five things in a row probably isn't a good idea, especially if they might be more intense than you fully realize. Case in point: these books.
This book continues where the last one leaves off, with heartbreak and betrayal. The last book ended on such an emotionally wrenching note that I needed a bit of a breather before diving into this one. In this book, CURSED FATES, we learn the full effects of what it means to be Star Crossed, which was kind of foreshadowed in one of the earlier books. Which makes this 800+ page tome a veritable BRICK of angst, where we watch our ill-fated couple bite their nails and fight back lust over their inability to be together. Hard to watch? I THINK SO. (Alexa, play Bishop Briggs's "Never Tear Us Apart.")
I actually think this book is a lot better than the previous one. There's still way too many unnecessary POVs (which I hear gets worse in later books), but I loved the development between the Vega twins and the Heirs. Someone told me that this is when they finally start to work together for the greater good of the kingdom and yeah, I see it. The transition from hatred to wary alliance was really well done, and I liked it. I also liked that we got more insight for Tory's behavior in this book. She's not an easy character to like but I don't hate her as much as other readers do because I think if you read between the lines it's easy to see how circumstances have made her distrustful and leery, and how much she's hurting. There's also a totally hot threesome in this book which I'm normally not into, but it's kind of been foreshadowed/hinted at in previous books and I thought the authors did a good job with it.
Some other random thoughts: Washer is still gross but I think I might hate Professor Highspell even more. It was so satisfying to see Kylie finally get her comeuppance even if it was late in coming, but that's okay because I have Mildred to hate instead. I KNEW the Orion/Darcy ship was getting too cozy and I'm not even surprised that the authors decided to fuck with it to cause me pain. Darkmore prison seems even worse than Azkaban and I'm super excited to read the spin-off series set there. There's some more world-building and twists in this book that were shocking AF, especially that ending. Holy FUCK. Just when I think the book can't hurt me anymore, it finds a new way to twist my arm. Also, Lionel is so gross and needs to DIE. It's been a while since I wished death for a character so badly. Loved the plot twist with Gabriel though, although I swear, that dude is allergic to shirts.
Romantic angst is the primary conflict in this book but I'm excited for the new stakes being delivered to the kingdom of Solaria and how the boys and the girls will band together to stop the threat. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to be nursing this glass of port while moping to Smile Empty Soul (I think I might have just given my age away with that music reference, whoops).
I've been bingeing this series over the last week or so because it's just that addictive. The last time I read something that was this cheesy but emotionally wrenching was during my college manga phase. You think anime is all fun and games until you decide to read the entire Hana Yori Dango series in one summer and find yourself drinking wine by the glass and clawing out your hair in chunks. Then you know pain.
SHADOW PRINCESS is book four in the Zodiac Academy series. Book three, THE RECKONING, was my absolute favorite book in the series so far-- it was action-packed, dramatic, emotional, and stunning, with character development and the answers to questions that had been steadily building over the previous books. SHADOW PRINCESS, on the other hand, is... the weakest? Ah, don't hate me!
But, like, seriously. I've been Tory's staunch defender for the last couple books. I know she has real emotional pain and boy, does this book prove it. And even though she has some of the best lines in these books, she is also such a stubborn fool. Her sleeping around doesn't bother me, but her emotional pigheadedness does, as does her constant need to be a jerk and never change. Darcy has changed a lot over the four books. You can tell that she's on the verge of becoming the powerful woman she'll one day be: she doesn't take any shit, she's nuturing, and there's an emotional maturity to her that Tory really lacks. It makes it really, really hard to like Tory, who doesn't change. She just remains a self-centered asshole who insults everyone to cover up the pain inside.
And don't even get me started on Darius, who is literally the exact same way. They're both Sad Dracos in Leather Pants, I swear to God. Every time I find myself warming to the guy, he does something stupid. Maybe I just don't like him because I was shipping Tory and Caleb and this feels like a reprise of the Rhysand/Tamlin situation that put me off the ACOTAR books. I don't like it when one ship kind of feels like end game, only for the author(s) to play a big switcheroo. That said, the ending legitimately made me tear up and scream, NOOOOOOO. I would hate to be a reader picking these up as they were coming out and wondering what was going to happen next. I mean, really.
So why three stars instead of four? This book started to feel really dialed in. There were too many POVs. I didn't need to see Max mooning over Geraldine. I don't really care about Max. I also don't really care about Seth. In fact, I hate Seth and this book just made me hate him more. I actually preferred it when the books were mostly just in Tory and Darcy's POVs. It was more fun for me when you could only guess at what was going on in the guys' heads. Subtlety is an underappreciated art form. I found myself skimming chunks of these books and noticing a lot of repetition. The word "growl" and its various iterations are used 175 times and smirk was used 121 times, just to give you a taste. I was pressed to look it up when I noticed the words "I smirked" TWICE on the same page.
Also, Washer doesn't need that many cameos. He's gross. I don't want it. Stahp.
ALSO, why do they celebrate Christmas? Is there a Faerie Jesus?
Silly old me picking up this novella thinking it would be a cute piece of fluff about the boys when they were still high school students. WRONG. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. This book, ORIGINS OF AN ACADEMY BULLY, is told in dual POV by Darius Acrux and Lance Orion. Darius is 14 and I think Lance is in his very early 20s. We see Darius learn his affinities and explore the school he'll be going to in four years as part of an orientation sort of thing, which is actually quite cute. But then the book gets dark, fast.
I love the Zodiac Academy series so much. I'm afraid that I've been pretty annoying in my love about it, spamming people with multiple status updates because people have been unfriending me for it. I'm SORRY, okay. I've had to watch people posting updates for ACOTAR for years, to the point where it's literally the only thing in my feed whenever a new book comes out, so I feel like it's my turn to stan something. I'm sorry I'm a thirty-something with trash taste in books. But also-- it's not like I hid it or anything LOL.
FWIW, this series is aggressively addictive. Like, here I am, scampering around for the bonus materials for just another hit. Like it's blood magic or something (WINK). But I just can't help it, you know? Even though the writing is soap opera-y and, yes, objectively trashy reading, the story-telling and world-building are so good that I just HAVE to know more. In this novella, we learn about what really happened to Clara Orion and how Darius and Lance became bonded in a guardian relationship. Both scenes are brutal and chilling and are honestly probably going to give me nightmares. Which makes me feel like maybe this almost should have been a full-length book. I feel like the progression from lalala privileged rich kid heir frolicking in his soon-to-be-new-school to complete and utter despair happened so quickly it gave me whiplash.
Also, poor Lance. All of his dreams-- crushed. My poor little vampire. And the pressure on Darius and Xavier is just truly heartbreaking. You can see why Darius hates Tory and Darcy so much, especially with his father wanting his son to be King Gary Stu. All that training and effort, only to see two totally inexperienced people who are completely more powerful than you without any effort? It went a long way towards explaining his resentment and hatred. I think it also really explained the bond that Darius and Lance have, which I actually really liked. It's rare to see such intense intimacy between male friends in a dark romance book, and I really liked that. It's clear they care a lot about each other, which makes what happens to them that much more devastating.
I think this adds a lot to the series and it packs a surprisingly emotional punch, but it doesn't really feel like a ~complete~ narrative arc either, so for that I'm giving it a three.
If a man was stranded for a full week in the desert with no food or water, he still wouldn't be as thirsty as these boys. This was hornier than Love Island. THE AWAKENING AS TOLD BY THE BOYS is exactly what it promises to be: it's a retelling of the first book in the Zodiac Academy series retold from the POVs of the four Heirs plus Orion. I guess because that book was exclusively told from Darcy and Tory's POV and in later books, the authors started cramming the other POVs in whether we wanted them or not (hi Seth).
After the events of book four, I was not emotionally ready to continue onward in the series, so I thought it would behoove me to remember how this all began. And to the authors' credits, there were certain scenes I did really enjoy. Finding out the Orion basically scored Darcy a free top-shelf drink (my mans <3), his instant lust for a certain twin's blood while he's hauling their asses into the school, the moment he claims her as a Source, Gabriel arranging things so that he can save Darcy and come to her sister's rescue for big man brownie points. Oh whoops, look, all my favorite moments were about Orion. HOW ABOUT THAT.
That isn't to say that there weren't other scenes I liked. It was fun seeing the Heirs reacting to the Vega twins that first time, and I liked the beginning scene when Darius and Orion are hunting nymphs. I think this book also shows Darius's pain a little more and the protective feelings he has for both Xavier and Orion. I really hated him in the first two books, but then all those feelings transferred to Seth, who can fuck right off any time he wants. I'll even be there to make sure his tail gets slammed in the door on his way out. But seriously, Seth is the worst. :) The only redeeming value he has is that he sort of has a thing going on with Caleb and I like them together. Seth is literally only good when he's with his friends.
Did this book NEED to be written? No. Most of the book is about the guys wandering around with erections while shaking a fist at the sky and shouting VEGAS the way Timmy's dad shouts DINKLEBERG in Fairly Odd Parents. I knew going in that it was probably going to be a lot of thirsting and pining, but I was literally not prepared. This book is pure fan service. I probably would have liked it if it were a bit more subtle and had more scenes that didn't involve 'roid rage-fueled lust, but I know I'm not most people. But it was way too long and reading this just made me realize how much I prefer reading things from the girls' POVs instead of the boys'.
If you heard a loud YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASS echoing in the distance, that was me. Best book in the series so far? I THINK SO. But I knew it would be, because the title shares the name of one of my favorite songs by Halestorm. #foreshadowing
I began Zodiac Academy on a whim a couple days ago, only to get sucked in. It has everything I love in a story: magic, danger, action, romance, strong heroines, dangerous men, and well-placed humor. Picture Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield fighting their way through Vampire Academy against Hana Yori Dango's Elite Four while using Harry Potter spells, and that's basically the whole premise in a nutshell. Darcy and Tory Vega are the long-lost princesses of the fae kingdom and they're enrolled in school to prove their worth before they can claim their inheritance and their throne. But the four elemental heirs who grasped power in the void aren't willing to give up their legacy. If they can't rule, no one can.
One of the things that makes this so much richer than other bully romances is because of how the sisters fight back. Their acts of revenge are truly brilliant and some of them wreak pretty devastating results on the boys. When one of the boys in this book finds out who was responsible, he FLIPS THE FUCK OUT, and boy is it satisfying to watch. It isn't often that you get to see a female character commit that kind of betrayal, so I loved that. And the Heirs deserve it.
Some of the stand-outs about this book were the introduction of Hell Week: a week of hazing before the students go through The Reckoning, a series of Goblet of Fire-esque challenges to test the mettle of the students and see if they're worthy of enrollment. Also, one of my ships FINALLY banged, and that was royally satisfying on so many levels and didn't disappoint. There's actually a lot of smut in this book, to the point where I might have to start calling it Smut Academy. I know some people don't like Tory for being more promiscuous than Darcy but YOU KNOW??? She should get some, if that's what she wants. The vampire sex games she plays with Caleb were hot. And Darcy and Orion are the MVPs.
Some other random thoughts: Professor Washer and his sex toys literally scarred me for life. Seeing the fae getting all horned up during the lunar eclipse was hilarious. I will never not laugh when Caleb gets mad at people for thinking he has a pegasus fetish. Geraldine and Sofia are the BEST and I love them. Xavier must be protected at all costs. I want to go to a Fairy Fair. AND AND AND we finally get to find out what Darcy and Tory's Order is... and it is PERFECT. Look at me being all good and not spoilering you the way I DESPERATELY, DESPERATELY want to. I'm being good for your sake. So you'll read these books too and be as awed and astounded as I am.
But God. That cliffhanger. Everything has changed now.
So I started this series expecting not to like it and lo and behold, I finished THE AWAKENING in one day like a total clown, only to immediately dive-bomb into book two. The writing is not the best-- it's not badly written but it does feel "indie" in the sense that the grammar can be sloppy and it's often repetitive in description. If I never see the words "stupidly attractive" or "bulging muscles" again, I'll be happy. But despite its flaws, this series is stupidly charming. It's like a cross between Vampire Academy and Harry Potter, only with more smut than either of those books ever had, and I love how self-indulgently written it is. Reading it makes me feel like I'm a teen on Quizilla again.
RUTHLESS FAE starts where the last book left off. Tory and Darcy have been freshly humiliated and are contemplating leaving the school, but they end up settling for revenge. In between various other things being lobbed at them in this book, the bulk of the plot is about them planning really messed-up things to do to the Heirs-- and honestly?? The punishments are brutal. It's quite satisfying seeing female characters being given the agency to punish men who do them wrong, even when those men are the love interests. Like, yass queen. ACCOUNTABILITY.
The relationships between the characters develop beautifully in this book. I love the friendship between Darcy and Tory and Geraldine and Sofia. You get to meet Geraldine's dad in this book and he is ADORBS. You can totally see where she gets it from. Caleb remains my favorite of the four younger boys and Orion definitely becomes more of a forbidden love interest a la Dimitri from Vampire Academy in this book, not that I'm mad about that. I think my absolute favorite parts of this book were the clusterfuck of a dinner at Casa Acrux and the rumor mill deciding that Caleb likes to fuck winged horses. When the inflatable unicorn sex toy appeared, I spat out my coffee. It was so good. I also like that the authors aren't afraid to send their main characters to some pretty dark places. Even though they are kind of Mary Sue-ish, it's tolerable because they still reap the consequences of their failures and nothing's too easy for them. In fact, usually it's the opposite. I love that.
The ending of this book really comes to a fever-pitch, with allyships being forged and tested. There's a beautifully done fight scene, an intense sports match, and a sort of cliffhanger ending that absolutely means that I need to start the third book immediately. I'm dying to know how the relationships between these characters are going to develop and what Tory and Darcy's order will be. Also, I feel like there's a lot of behind-the-scenes court intrigue stuff happening too, and I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING.
Easily one of the best gothic romance novels I've ever read. What made this even more of a fun read was that I got to buddy read it with Sarah. Seriously, what didn't I love about this? It's got a dynamic heroine who is slowly corrupted by the band of libertines she's married into. When her bond with one of them goes awry and she's left for dead, she decides to seek her revenge (and this isn't a spoiler, it's literally the blurb on the cover). The Apollonians are cold and cruel, like a troupe of theater kids from hell, and honestly-- this scratched THE SECRET HISTORY itch I've been longing to scratch for years.
I'm simply devastated that this isn't in print. It deserves a reissue because I think everyone should reread it. People who like sympathetic heroines, secret societies, dark academia, and the idea of tortured artists throwing themselves on the pyre of their art will eat this up.
I could say so much more but I don't want to spoil anything for potential readers. But what a keeper. Anastasia Cleaver/Natasha Peters never disappoints.
I can't help but feel that every teen who likes dark academia secretly has a copy of this book moldering somewhere in their bookcase. MATILDA is like the OG dark academia book, and so many things about it shaped tropes I still love today: shy and bookish heroines who are quietly brave; evil schools; strong female friendships; and off the wall crazysauce. It's a scathing criticism of the cruelty of English schools, but it's also a story of female empowerment.
Every once in a while I get criticism for my middle grade reviews. People will say things like, "What do you expect, this is a book for children?" Which, if you ask me, is rather condescending, because it suggests that some authors are assuming children are too dumb to recognize inferior goods when they come across them. Which, to be fair, some don't. There's no accounting for taste. But plenty of middle grade is good and does hold up, so the "it's a book for children and adults shouldn't criticize!" remark really doesn't add up, and age group really oughtn't to be a shield against criticism for things like character development and cohesiveness of the plot. Just my two cents.
MATILDA is one of those rare books where I actually think the movie is better, just because of the casting and how the movie adds some chilling scenes (such as when they sneak into Trunchbull's house) and answers some questions that the book really didn't. I also personally like the ending of the movie better, but I won't say why outright because spoilers. It's the eponymous story of a girl named Matilda who is incredibly brilliant and is already reading things like Dickens and doing large mathematical sums in her head before she even turns five. Her parents are awful people-- the mom makes money from playing bingo and the dad is a shady used car salesman-- and neither of them like her much at all, and at worst, their behavior could be considered neglectful and emotionally abusive.
Before she goes to Crunchem Hall, all of her education was self-taught, mostly from a kindly librarian who helped her pick out famous classics despite being quietly fascinated by her intelligence. School ought to have been the place where she felt like coming home, but because of the sadistic and abusive headmistress, it is a place of terror. I think Dahl did a good job making her seeing fantastically but believably evil. The chokey was always incredibly terrifying: it's a cupboard where Trunchbull would lock up "bad" students. The walls were paved with broken glass and the door had nails in it, so if you didn't stand perfectly straight in the airtight cupboard, you'd get all lacerated. Yikes. Then there's Miss Honey's story and the implied molestation and abuse there, and it's all honestly pretty chilling.
So you can get what happens. Matilda ends up in a war with the Trunchbull. The movie is way more emotionally intense but the book does a great job too and the ending is still pretty satisfying. I loved the characters of Matilda and Miss Honey and I thought Matilda's family was believably awful because we've all met oafish jerks like that. Roald Dahl is a great children's author but this has always been one of my favorite books of his, partially because it's more believable and partially because it features a girl protagonist who is allowed to be strong and victorious, and not beaten down, which makes the story feel both timeless and incredibly progressive, all at the same time.
This has been on my radar for a while but I've avoided reading it because I thought it was set in a high school (and I don't really like reading romances set in high school) and because the people who were shipping it generally shipped other fantasy authors whose works I didn't like, and contrary to some people's beliefs, I am not a hate-reader. When I pick up a book, it's because I genuinely want to like it. The one-star review is a reflection of my disappointment.
But I kept seeing people picking up this series and loving it and then I found out that it's set in university and not high school, so it felt like the literal stars were conspiring against me, taking away my reasons for not reading this book one by one, and I was like FINE UNIVERSE. I'LL READ YOUR STUPID SMUT GOD. And guess what... I. LOVED. IT. I really fucking loved it. I read book one in one day, in just a few hours. Even though it was almost 500 hundo pages. W H A T.
Here's the thing. When I was a teen-- YES I AM OLD-- there was this magical site called Quizilla. And one of my favorite things to read on that website were harem paranormals where the girl could end up with any one of an entire Pokemon booster pack of men with different supernatural powers. I would stay up until 5am reading those trashy stories and every once in a blue moon, I'll come across something self-published that has that same addictive, cracky qualia of just being impossible to put down, gratuitously self-indulgent, and resplendently fun to read. And for me, THE AWAKENING, was that book.
I almost didn't make it through the beginning because the desperate edginess of their normie setting almost put me off. TWO police chases before the 10% mark??? That seems excessive, MA'AMS. But then Professor Orion barged into the scene and things got really good. I loved the descriptions of Zodiac Academy and the world-building was genuinely amazing. The opulent dorms and dining hall, the enchanted "pegasus" meadow, the classrooms named after planets-- IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. But even though it looks and quacks like a fairytale... it's not. Darcy and Tory Vega find out that they're the heirs to the fae kingdom and even though they have ALL THE POWERS, they don't know how to use them. And people resent them for having the power and for upsetting the status quo, and so basically everyone bullies and fucks with them (except for a small contingent of royalists who stan their family the way people used to stan the Queen of England). Which actually made a lot of sense.
Fuck those interlopers.
The new rulers who have stepped into the void of their fae parents' deaths are called the heirs. There's Darius, the dragon. Seth, the werewolf. Caleb, the vampire. And Max, the siren. Like everyone else in the school, they've each specialized in a single element-- fire, air, earth, and water-- and like everyone else in the school, they have a bone to pick with the interlopers. A lot of the bullying takes the form of sexual harassment, which is typical in bullymances. I personally am not bothered by this-- honestly, if you've read Hana Yori Dango, some of the stuff that happens in that book is way worse-- but it's something to think about if you have triggers. Personally, I liked the distinction about it being all about power; it made sense that the fae would brutalize each other like that to show animal dominance.
As big a part as the romance is when it comes to setting the stage, a lot of the book is also about the sisters struggling to develop and control their powers, while also trying to take in this whole other world they didn't even know about. At first it's disorienting trying to take in all of these names and descriptions, but that translates to the characters' bewilderment as well, and it's really well done. We learn about the world as the characters do and whether that's brilliant writing or a happy accident, I don't even care because I loved it and didn't want it to be over. These classrooms are way more dangerous than the ones in Harry Potter and the teachers are just as cruel as the students. There's also a sort of romance with one of the sisters and their hot vampire professor, Lance Orion. He's actually the love interest I liked the most, because even though he was an asshole, he was an asshole to everyone. This is a man who will crack someone's head against a desk for backtalking him. Although if I'm pressed, I'd say that my favorite of the boys was probably Caleb just because I'm a sucker for vamps.
I ended up really liking Darcy and Tory. I do agree with the criticisms that their POVs are pretty similar and it was easy to confuse them but they ARE twins so I guess it makes sense that they'd be alike?? I also liked how they simped for each other and always had each other's backs. The girl on girl hate was also pretty minimal for a bullymance. I liked how the girls were kind of disgusted when the guys slut-shamed other women and how some of the girls weren't treated as rivals but as friends. Nothing was perfect, but it felt more realistic and less a reliance on gross gender stereotypes, even though the word "alpha" was used in here about twenty times too many, and I began eye-rolling at the mention of a muscled chest (because of course, it happened every time something with a dick walked on stage).
I've developed a bit of a reputation on this site for being a picky snob and that's probably true, but my standards are actually pretty low. All I ask is to be entertained. This book more than served me up in that regard and I've already got book two on standby. I'm wildly jealous of the authors for thinking up this delicious, slutty hodgepodge of Vampire Academy, Harry Potter, and Cruel Prince, and now I guess I have to read thousands and thousands of pages of this self-indulgent fanfiction to find out how it ends.
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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Books:
dark-academia
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