Cleo McQueary is lost in life and absolutely obsessed with what happened to the crew of Providence I. Twenty years ago all 203 of them had simply disaCleo McQueary is lost in life and absolutely obsessed with what happened to the crew of Providence I. Twenty years ago all 203 of them had simply disappeared and no one at NASA seemed to care enough to figure it out. Cleo and her friends, though, hatch a drunken plan to break into the space ship to puzzle it all out for themselves. The plot spirals out of control from there in ways the official synopsis doesn’t touch on so I feel obligated to leave out as well.
The Stars Too Fondly is marketed as a queer space odyssey rom-com and while I can see where they’re coming from, it (along with the mention of a heist) wasn’t anything like what I was expecting. I’d compare it to Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers more than just about anything else and it has too much heart to be distilled down into just ‘rom-com.’ I can see it being an absolute hit with the right audience. That audience just really wasn’t me.
First of all, this is very much science FANTASY more than the hard sci-fi I’d expected. I’m a chronic overthinker so every modern day pop culture reference and impossible piece of science magic sent me spiraling. And there was a metric ton of that. So, if you’re the kind of person who will wonder why TikTok and Thomas the Tank Engine are still relevant in 2061 or if a ‘food extruder’ would be super convenient or a hellish prospect for someone with celiac, then this might be a skip for you. I think I’d have had an easier time with all of it if Providence I hadn’t been launching a mere 17 hypothetical years from now when it seems people from 2061 had made little to no new scientific advances (despite so many kids purportedly having gotten obsessed with Providence and then going into STEM fields). And also if there was a single pop culture reference that wasn’t from 2019 or later. I care far too much about the logic of it all and this is a book that requires the reader to largely just go with the flow. It is intentionally silly and often requires a hefty suspension of disbelief.
Because I am nothing if not nitpicky, a couple smaller things that made it difficult for me, personally, to stay within the narrative: Sometimes conversations lacked dialogue tags and it tripped me up every time. This is about a group of 20-somethings, but it absolutely leans very YA (by which I mean I haven’t read someone sticking out their tongue so often since fanfiction in 2010 but also the cadence of the writing/narration is very bright and young and often immature). I just cannot pinpoint why the formatting chosen for this novel didn’t work for me. It flips from a close third following Cleo, to old Providence I reports and private messages, to a [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] perspective rapidly within each chapter. Usually I love having multiple weird perspectives, but I think there was a lack of separation, especially at the beginning, that got under my skin as a reader.
Probably the biggest issue I had over all was honestly a marketing problem where huge parts of what the plot of this book is about were fully left out of any synopsis I read before or after. I was honestly so excited to read this book (between sapphic space heist, the title, and the cover I was so sold) and I’d have never requested it if I’d known that it contained a plot point (plot gimmick, trope, ??) that I almost always dislike. For the record, it’s a totally fine plot point/trope and doesn’t require a content warning of any kind, I’m only not being explicitly clear about what I’m talking about here because they chose to leave it out of their marketing and I’m writing this review before the book is actually out. I’m trying so hard to avoid spoilers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not holding marketing decisions against Hamilton, it’s just super frustrating in general.
I feel like I’m being so negative when I don’t necessarily mean to be. This debut was not all bad. Not in the slightest. I can recognize that it wasn’t meant for me. It didn’t focus on what I wanted it to and I went in with all the wrong expectations. It’s just that as someone who often reads reviews before I pick a book up, I want to get all the reasons I wasn’t 5-star in love with this out of the way first.
So now for some of the things done right: There’s what I can see being a solid romance here and beautiful found family dynamics. I enjoyed the diversity and the different places each character was coming from and how easy it was to distinguish where their priorities differed. There’s action sequences that fully drew me in. I love the inclusion of multimedia bits, especially the ones that give new information from an unexpected direction (I mean, the one that’s very clearly the abstract for a scientific article? So good!). There are ideas and themes here that I absolutely adore, like how far people will go for those they love and how easily power can corrupt an ideal and just the messy business of still having growing to do into your twenties and thirties and probably forever. I can absolutely see this book being loved. Truly and fully.
I’m just so utterly bitter that it couldn’t work for me.
[I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Huge thanks to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for this eARC.]...more
Jack and Vi’s senior years are off to a rocky start to say the least. Jack suffers an injury that puts his future plans in jeopardy, not to mention hiJack and Vi’s senior years are off to a rocky start to say the least. Jack suffers an injury that puts his future plans in jeopardy, not to mention his girlfriend is acting weird and pulling away. Viola’s starting fights and burning bridges, cutting herself off from all the hobbies she usually uses to escape. The two of them become grudging partners both in real life and in Twelfth Knight, an MMORPG Viola loves.
If you know Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, it’s clear what shenanigans are about to ensue.
Twelfth Knight takes Shakespeare’s story and characters and not only modernizes them with football and video games, but also through focusing on the kinds of things young adults might be struggling with today. Like what it’s like to question your sexuality in a situation where it may not be safe to or being a young black man in an upper middle class neighborhood and school system. As much as this book reads like an early 2000’s teen romcom, it’s truly an updated version.
Speaking of 2000’s teen romcoms (and more specifically Shakespeare retellings), Viola feels very Kat Stratford shrew-like and I could not get enough of her. These characters were just all so charming, if I’m being honest. I adore Jack and Viola and their slow understandings of each other. They’re both so unflinchingly kind that it kind of kills me a little bit just to think about. The long list of side characters are also so endearing, particularly Olivia and Bash (though surprisingly Nick Valentine and Pastor Ike really made me love them, though their roles were so tiny). Just a phenomenal cast of characters. They’ve burrowed their way into my heat.
The narrative style of Twelfth Knight feels, fittingly, like a soliloquy. Everything is told, almost offhandedly, to the reader. The character stands at the edge of the stage and just bares it all. There is definitely a lot of telling involved, a fair bit of stream of consciousness, and it’s definitely not a style that I usually prefer. I’ll be honest, there were times when it grated on me, but those moments were far outweighed by some of the most beautiful lines in the book that wouldn’t have worked as well if framed by a different style of narration.
Another thing worth noting, I think, is that Twelfth Knight does that thing where it’s set in a world that is basically our own modern America but most of the pop culture references are made up. Bash and Olivia run lines from Shakespeare, but instead of Game of Thrones or ComicCon or any of a multitude of TTRPGs there���s War of Thorns and MagiCon and ConQuest. Viola explains to the reader that Twelfth Knight is like World of Warcraft, but better. There’s comments about ‘Empire Lost’ and it’s white plot lines that makes me think it’s mean to be Star Wars. Cheeky moments where the football team plays Padua and Verona. When my mind wasn’t fully immersed in the storyline, little things like that set me on tangents wondering how it all works, what exists in their world and what doesn’t. In the end, it didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the book over all, but it was frustrating in the beginning.
Outside of that, this book felt exactly like the old Shakespeare retelling romcoms feel. It’s that same fun but heartfelt storytelling that I grew up loving. I laughed, I cried, I grinned madly at all the dramatics and banter. It’s an easy recommendation to anyone who wants to recapture that old magic with a few new twists.
Honestly, I kind of want to turn around and read it all over again.
Huge thank you to Netgalley and Tor Teen for the eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own. ...more
Evergreen is only in the loosest sense a reimagining of The Secret Garden, which was the main point of interest for me personally going into it, 2.5/5
Evergreen is only in the loosest sense a reimagining of The Secret Garden, which was the main point of interest for me personally going into it, but at this point I take most comps with a grain of salt anyway. (This book is also a lesson in not judging based solely off of covers because for some reason I went into this thinking it was sapphic??)
Honestly, though, Evergreen is an urban fantasy coming of age story that leans heavily into a romance between Quill, the first male druid and a bit of a Rapunzel character, and Liam, the boy next door. Quill is tasked with taking care of his family’s magical garden while he struggles to come to terms with the fact that he’s 17 and hasn’t shown any magical capabilities of his own.
Quill is stubborn and selfish, sarcastic and incredibly bitter, yet so fully naive at times. I tend to really enjoy unlikable narrators and he definitely fits the bill, though I can’t tell if it was intentional or not. For most of the book the fact that Quill was just a teenager who made stupid or silly decisions felt like a nice change, but there’s a point where you expect the main character to grow. With Quill that switch comes late and sudden when I’d have thoroughly enjoyed a slow build. Outside of that he was sometimes very inconsistent with his narration in a way that doesn’t feel intentional. Something about him stumbling his way through the human world was just so fun to read, though what he knew and didn’t know felt like this part of his character could have benefited from being a little more thought out.
There were also times when the information he was conveying was inconsistent as well. He’d wax poetic about how he knew every inch of the garden in one chapter, then the next introduce a room he’s never been allowed inside of, then the next reveal that he hardly ever strayed past the front of the garden actually, and a few chapters later complain that he’d walked every inch of it a hundred times over the years. That inconsistency existed in other areas of the writing too, creating plot holes and convenient excuses that were difficult to ignore. I found myself fact checking (tap water does have chlorine in it more often than not and like 90% of gummy worms aren’t vegan) and constantly flipping back and forth to make sure that I wasn’t actually crazy and that there were direct contradictions happening.
That said, getting to read a story based around a family of dryads was interesting and the fantasy elements built into the world were very soft and generally fun and easy to understand. I think the soft world building was the most developed part of the story and allowed for moments that genuinely shone in my opinion. It stayed consistent in ways the other parts of the writing just didn’t.
Honestly, this book just needed another round or two of edits and some more in-depth development. The idea is solid and there are parts that made me want to like the whole book far more than I did. For instance, the ‘big bad’ and the last quarter of the book? Imagining someone just walking into town and finding that situation? Fantastic creeping horror idea. It’s going to haunt me, genuinely. (I’m trying to avoid spoilers so bad, guys.)
There are scenes that shine and the bones to a really great story, but in the end there just wasn’t enough development. I think Greenlee could do some really cool things in the future, this debut was just a little too rushed. It would have benefited from some more eyes on it and another draft, but he’s an author I’ll be keeping an eye on for sure.
[I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Huge thanks to NetGalley and Entangled Publishing for this ARC.]...more
Gibson’s A Dowry of Blood was an unexpected favorite read of mine last year so when given the chance to pick up An Education in Malice I was overjoyedGibson’s A Dowry of Blood was an unexpected favorite read of mine last year so when given the chance to pick up An Education in Malice I was overjoyed. I knew the two are vaguely connected, but I didn’t expect them to hit quite so different.
Just to put it out there, I’ve never read Carmilla so I’m not one to point out how closely An Education in Malice mirrors, retells, or strays from it.
This book is beautifully written and depicts wonderfully complex relationships including a really good sapphic academic rivals to lovers arc. I think it’s an easy hit for its target audience, I’m just unsure if that audience was meant to be me. For reference, I know smutty books aren’t really my cup of tea and that I struggle with anything not set within the last 30 or so years. There are some very sexually explicit scenes here (not to say they were bad, just explicit) and the setting itself pulled me from the narrative often.
That said, I’m still so unsure why 1968 was the chosen setting for this story. Regardless of the reason, the narration felt a lot like Rebecca to me, style-wise, with hints of The Secret History mixed in. The writing flowed well, I just had to shake myself every now and then when a reference to the 60’s was brought up. The cadence felt so much older than the setting to me. It was constantly pulling me out of the narrative, though I’m fully willing to write it off as a personal failing as historical anything is always going to trip me up at least a little.
Other than that, the main fault I found had to do with pacing. The opening of the book was languorous at best, sometimes including scenes that felt entirely unnecessary to the plot, to the point where the plot didn’t really show up until halfway through and even then felt half-hearted. Unfortunately, that only accentuated how little time was spent with the scenes that ended the story, which made them feel overly abrupt and disjointed in comparison. Character arcs were shortened to the point where one character’s entire demeanor was forced to do a 180 in the span of a chapter. Logic was entirely bypassed when it came to certain character choices in order to hurry the plot along. I was constantly trying to figure out when these scenes were taking place because they were taking finals after Christmas break but there was ice on the ground and in the span of a few pages there was an implied entire semester and graduation told through very brief summary. It just felt so rushed.
Even with that in mind this was a tough rating to give because there are parts of this book that were just so well done (like the themes of possession and obsession vs love) or so entertaining to me (like the whole Halloween party from Carmilla’s perspective just cracked me up) that I still truly enjoyed it for the most part and will definitely recommend it just not for any real plot-related reasons.
Thank you to NetGalley and Redhook Books for providing me an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own....more
I’ll be upfront. I am very bad at history. Telling me something is in the Victorian era brings nothing to mind. I could not tell you a single thing, iI’ll be upfront. I am very bad at history. Telling me something is in the Victorian era brings nothing to mind. I could not tell you a single thing, including which years the era contains. Having loved Atwater’s Regency fairy tales, I knew that would not matter. If there’s historical inaccuracies here, I am the last person to ask.
What is here, though, is a darker fairy tale than I expected. The romance burned low and slow in all the ways I adore, the characters manipulated and lied and were heartfelt all the same, the plot was a nice solid little knot. I loved every second of this book. It made me grin wildly nearly as much as it made my heart ache. It was a little more connected to the Regency Fairytales than I expected, but in the best way. I literally cannot wait for the next installment in this world.
I’d advise to check the trigger warnings and make sure that it’s the kind of book that you’d like before just diving in, but to me it was perfect.
Thanks to Victory Editing and Netgalley for the eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. ...more
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