Tag: magical realism
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The Last Heir to Blackwood Library: A Haunted House – I Immediately Love It
The Last Heir to Blackwood Library is my first Hester Fox book, though after this it certainly won’t be my last. The setting is 1925 London and a woman finds herself the sole heir to an old estate in Yorkshire, an estate that has been owned by a very distant branch of her family. With…
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A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking – What A Fun Story
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher is such a cute, easy and cosy autumnal read perfect for young readers and old. Mona is a young witch whose magic is all about bread, her familiar is a sourdough starter that cannot die and she magics gingerbread men to dance (and serve as guardians…
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Fall into the Unique World of Seven Faceless Saints
Seven Faceless Saints by M.K. Lobb is a book I didn’t expect to come cross my radar, let alone find myself enjoying amidst the waves of YA fantasy recommendations flooding my feed. I must thank @in_emmas_library for getting this book on my tbr because this read unlocked many ideas and insights into themes and tropes…
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My Thoughts on Bunny
If you’re looking for a full review, I’m sorry but this isn’t that. I wish I could provide a more in-depth review of Mona Awad’s Bunny but it didn’t quite match my expectations and while it was fun for a little bit, my preferences and specified taste in tropes and themes clashed with those found…
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Susan Dennard’s The Luminaries – A YA Dark Naturalism Favourite
I love a book with a dark, moody setting. Give me a forest, a secluded town, and a mythical-dipped lore whereby people must guard the population by dealing with what lurks in the shadows. Susan Dennard’s The Luminaries gives all that and more and it’s a wonderful introduction to the world of dark naturalism –…
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The Finale I Couldn’t Finish
They say every story has a beginning, a middle, an almost-ending and the true ending. It sucks that I couldn’t even get through the middle to see how this magical world’s almost-ending or true ending panned out. Stephanie Garber’s Finale comes with a lot of threads to tie together and balls to juggle but unfortunately…
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Kristin Cashore’s Fire – The Perfect High Fantasy, Rainy Day Read
There’s a keen sense of nostalgia I get with reading this series and I only first read it a year ago. Kristin Cashore’s Graceling Realm series continues with this immaculate tale, Fire. It truly felt like I was drifting into this read without any reservations or hiccups – within the first few pages, it was…
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Legendary – This Book Makes Me Mad
So I finished my reread of Stephanie Garber’s Legendary, the second book in the Caraval trilogy, and I genuinely feel angry. Here is why. Warning: spoilers ahead, read at your own risk. The quality of the writing is so much better in Legendary than it was in Caraval. There was something lacking about Scarlett’s perspective,…
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Graceling – A Fantasy Like No Other
With how large of a genre fantasy is and given how themes and tropes often lead to similar stories sharing the limelight I cannot help but think about this book. Graceling by Kristin Cashore is something unique, standing its ground in an environment where inspiration and retellings have become commonplace. There’s just something about the…
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Is Caraval Worth The Hype?
So I read Caraval by Stephanie Garber several summers ago, during the years where I was absorbing as much YA reading as possible without letting myself have my own thoughts on things such as personal preference, character appeal, how decent the storytelling and landscape development were, etc. As you can imagine, once that rose-tinted lens…