Reviews and Comments

Enum & Valerie

enumeration@kirja.casa

Joined 3 years, 3 months ago

@vivavaleria@eldritch.cafe on the mammooth site. Reading mostly wlw rom-coms, with the occasional exceptions. I try to rotate languages, but it isn't really easy to find queer romance books in other languages than English. Reviews and comments usually in the same language as the book.

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Zoe Hana Mikuta: Off with Their Heads (2024, Disney Press)

In a world where Saints are monsters and Wonderland is the dark forest where they …

This is fucked up

To be clear: This book is quite often called a "retelling of Alice in Wonderland", but I don't really agree with that description. The book is full of references - for instance, you'll find an Alice (Icca's middle name), a Rabbit (Caro's last name), a Red Queen who asks for chopped-off heads, a Hattie (the Red Queen's first name), a Cheshire (the apothecary's last name), jabberwockies, and, of course, a Wonderland. And regular nonsense. But apart from that, Off With Their Heads has nothing to do with Lewis Carroll's classic.

It is quite fucked-up though, and confusing (probably on purpose). Fucked-up girls in a fucked-up world, lovers-to-mortal-enemies, siding with the Queen or against her. Slaying saints.

Oh right, that is a consistent Mikuta feature: Every one of her books is about killing religious entities. In Gearbreakers and sequel, the girls slay gods. In Off With Their Heads, they decapitate saints. …

Dahlia Adler: Under the Lights (Paperback, 2015, Spencer Hill Press)

Josh Chester loves being a Hollywood bad boy, coasting on his good looks, his parties, …

A sequel thet doesn't feel like a sequel

Both Josh and Van really are good characters from Behind the Scenes that desperately needed their own stories. Whenever a romance story is told from two alternating points of view, you automatically assume they're the couple. You're in for a surprise then...

Dahlia Adler: Behind the Scenes (2014)

High school senior Ally Duncan's best friend may be the Vanessa Park - star of …

Not overwhelming, but enjoyable

I am a bit disappointed how it all boiled down to "oops we didn't communicate" again. Same applies to "Cool for the summer" btw. None of Dahlia's books have a really elaborate creative plot, but they're still fun to read and hard to put to the side.

Hafsah Faizal: Tempest of Tea (2024, Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

From Hafsah Faizal, New York Times–bestselling author of We Hunt the Flame, comes the first …

Read if you like coconuts

The largest part of the book is about an elaborate heist, so if you like heists, knock yourself out. However, it's embedded into a larger major story, which doesn't really need that heist - it would work just as fine without it. Then again, the Spindrift Tearoom & Bloodhouse concept is pretty cool. And: coconuts!

Wendy Heard: The Kill Club (Paperback, 2019, MIRA Books)

Wie beim Wichteln...

... aber statt anderen Geschenke zu besorgen, erledigst du ihren Mord für sie - und dafür kümmert sich jemand anderes um deinen. Und so gerätst du niemals in Verdacht, weil Motiv und Gelegenheit nie übereinstimmen. Was kann da nur schieflaufen? Jedenfalls war es verdammt schwer, dieses Buch zwischendurch auch mal aus der Hand zu legen um zu schlafen...

Dahlia Adler: Going Bicoastal (Hardcover, 2023, St. Martin's Press)

Natalya Fox has twenty-four hours to make the biggest choice of her life: stay home …

Multi-track drifting

This is a funny concept: The chapters play in two parallel timelines - one where Natalya stays in New York, and one where she goes to Los Angeles for the summer. The subtitle is "There's more than one path to happily ever after", and that's exactly what the book represents. However, both timelines are a little too straightforward, and seen individually, they wouldn't make an interesting story. It really is this multi-timeline-drifting approach that makes it an entertaining book.

Zoe Hana Mikuta: Godslayers (2023, Square Fish)

« Okay. So. I have been incredibly mean to my characters. »

This is a sentence from the Acknowledgements, and I'm glad she acknowledges it. Because, twin hells, you have been incredibly mean to your characters. And that made the book really hard to enjoy, unlike its predecessor, even if it's written in the same spirit. In Eris's words: « Absolutely rot ».