A fun little insight into the Locked Tomb series, featuring Palamedes and Camilla. Free short story available on Tor.com -- the prose is a bit different than Gideon the Ninth, but suits the characters it follows best.

Cute and funny. Doesn't have the most extensive bird information and is more of a general info guide than any kind of identification tool. Has good basic information though and I definitely jive with author's sense of humor lol.

Honestly I have very little to say about this one, which is a feat in and of itself.

Basically, make Frankenstein's monster into an American-born Latino person/mixed race white-Latino person and then replace "Mexicans" with "Stitchers" during Trump presidency era (but rename Trump and make him a woman).

That's it. The end. I dunno. The writing is dry, repetitive (exact repetitions of reoccurring events that . . . just don't hit), and the MC feels very ritualistic OCD coded (knocking 3 times, jogging start, repeating himself). Not my fave, even though it properly gives its dues to pan dulce.

Ghost Forest is written in a series of vignettes, with a style similar to Sandra Cisnero's

The House on Mango Street. It is simple - the lack of punctuation makes it feel like reading the protagonist's thoughts, hearing as she hear stories told to them about her family's hardships, their lives before she was born.

There is an emotion so heavy, so true, behind this book. The idea of knowing someone your whole life, no matter how distant, and having one opinion of them, that when suddenly they are sick, when they are dying, you realize that maybe you had been looking at them the wrong way the whole time - and the idea that you don't notice until they are gone and you can't go back and fix it - go back and forgive them and yourself - is such a difficult emotion to bear, but not one that is exclusive to the author.

I cried a couple times while reading this, and I will read this again, just so maybe I can feel that again.

I think this one is worth marking your calendars for! ✍️

I love the evolution and applications of the vampire myth and here vampires feel more like Blood Mages a la Dragon Age, but they actually have to consume the blood (hence vampire) in order to use magic. While some of the ending plots seem to point to some more conventional tropes for the next book in the series, I feel very at peace with it and will be more than happy to pick up the next installment. In a way this book reminded me of Rin Chupeco's

Silver Under Nightfall but less horror and Castlevania and more court intrigue and blood magic.😉

Some of the things I really liked about this book:

🩸- a triad poly relationship that isn't always sunshine and rainbows

🩸 - strong but fallible FMC

🩸 - no miscommunication tropes. they do lie though - as the title suggests lol

🩸 - believable political conspiracies and manipulation

🩸 - the feeling of otherness as a POC in a white dominate country/government

🩸- vampires can do magic using blood

🩸 - light murder mystery

I loved how each poem seemed to incorporate a piece of nature and mold it into something felt. Despite the name, this collection has an uplifting message - of living in the now, respecting the past and those that came first, loving what is.

Will probably reread again in the future.

this one was super fun and paradoxical. and it had a great set up for more characters that i'm very interested in reading about in the future

i think there was just too much plot explanation for this one in book one, that the author was sort've written into a corner about the events that had to take place here. some of it was cool and some of it just really made me hate/question characters that i didn't before lol

this was really cute and broke some m/m stereotypes in a way i really enjoyed. it does have some TWs for domestic violence survivors

i didn't think i would like this at first, but it was fun, quirky, and i am now officially invested in these portal realms.