Category: Book Reviews
-
An uneven YA mash-up of Pride and Prejudice and Twilight that is tonally between Netflix’s 2022 adaptation of Persuasion and the TV series Sleepy Hollow (2013-2017). A mostly light and entertaining read that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be or how to handle its own lore.
-
A soapy and angst-filled new adult offering that blends romance, off-kilter humor, suspense, and dark academia. Nightshade is a surprisingly entertaining first installment in a new two-book series that may appeal to readers aged 18+ interested in a medium-spice, minimal-gore, dark romance. Readers should take note of the author’s content warnings.
-
Excellently wielding a dual POV, multiple-timeline structure, Brown’s Society of Lies delivers a riveting and suspenseful tale that probes into power, privilege, identity, and the frightening costs of belonging.
-
Love and Other Paradoxes is a short, smile-inducing reverie that fuses humor, time travel, and romance. It pairs well with the romantic comedy About Time and Kaliane Bradley’s genre-blending The Ministry of Time.
-
A delightful and cozy genre mash-up that reimagines Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy as young lawyers with sparkling chemistry on a quest to solve an incendiary murder case.
-
A thought-provoking, fast-paced battle of wills set in the midst of the Victorian royal court that features a wry, fearsomely determined protagonist on a dangerous mission to claim vengeance and her autonomy.
-
A backlist title from 2018 that presents a winding and suspenseful journey through a dystopian world that feels similar to Ling Ma’s Severance and the films It Comes at Night and 28 Days Later…[it] leads readers through a near-constant state of upheaval that ultimately lands in an affecting and hopeful place.
-
An engrossing, well-paced first book in a new adult fantasy series by an author known for her YA fiction. With a style that mixes fantasy, romance, and literary elements, The Courting of Bristol Keats gives readers an intricate, otherworldly story of slow burn romance, betrayal, generational secrets, and self-discovery.
-
A dark subversion of the fairy tale happily-ever-after that wrong-foots the reader at every turn alongside its imperiled heroine. With parallels to Crimson Peak, The Invitation, and Mexican Gothic, Midnight Rooms is full of spellbinding prose that unfolds like a peculiar and disturbing fever dream.
-
A riveting, standalone dark fantasy with a creepy and hallucinatory atmosphere that reads like Elisabeth Thomas’s Catherine House crossed with Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House.
Connections 