Category: YA Fantasy
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Another Sweet, Eerie YA Dark Fantasy With Small Favors
After reading House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig, I had to pick up more of her work. Her dark fairytale horrors are so vivid and descriptive and when I saw Small Favors I knew I needed to read it. An isolated religious town. An ominous vibe in the air. Bees. What’s not…
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Let Death’s Assassins Thrive in Robin LaFevers’s Grave Mercy
I read this many moons ago but there is something that’s calling me to reread the His Fair Assassin trilogy. Robin LaFevers’s Grave Mercy is a historical fiction young adult fantasy novel rife with political tensions. In a time when women had no autonomy, Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into…
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The Hunting Moon – A Sequel I Wish Gave More
I really loved Susan Dennard’s The Luminaries for it’s rich attention to detail and emotive language. I thought that the vibes were all there for an unsettling YA Dark Naturalism, mythical folklore-laced series that would leave the reader eager for more. I went into her newest novel, The Hunting Moon, expecting the same descriptive lushness…
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The Whispering Dark is a Beautifully Haunting Read
I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book as I’ve been burned by Dark Academia recommendations from bookish social media before, namely Ninth House, A Study in Drowning, and the cult classic The Secret History. So I went into this with some reservations and some low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised when…
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Strange the Dreamer – Beautiful but I have DNFed it
I have seen Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor mentioned many times across all bookish social media platforms and I can see why it’s so popular. The world is incredible rich and lush and beautiful, however, I have read 180 pages and I have no interest in continuing this book. Why is that? Let me…
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A Court of Silver Flames Deep Dive
Finally, after what feels like months, I have finished (or caught up with, given there’s a pending sixth book) Sarah J Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series reread. There have been ups and downs, pleasant realisations and some no-so-pleasant moments where I strongly reconsidered this reread journey. I knew it was to get…
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A Court of Frost and Starlight is my Breaking Point
This book is the one that solidified my stance on the ACOTAR series. A Court of Frost and Starlight is the novella set after the war and as novellas are, it is a short read. Unfortunately, there are several issues such as word choice, poor sentence structure and repetition of detail and phrases that makes…
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Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue – One of The Darkest YA Books I Have Read
Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue is like nothing I have read before because of its unabashed confrontation of abuse and trauma. It’s heavy-hitting in its detail, in the way characters interact with each other or react to triggers, and it creates such a complex world and multi-layered situation to unravel. Before you decide to read it, I…
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Finishing my Reread of A Court of Wings and Ruin
At last, I have finished reading the A Court of Thorns and Roses trilogy. A Court of Thorns and Roses set up the fantasy world and introduced us to one side of the coin, A Court of Mist and Fury showed us the other side of the coin alongside another batch of characters and how…