I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea

 

Black Swan except she makes a deal with the devil to get her talent. Also, there's a hot monster-boy with antlers and the heroine is more than happy to step into the role of the villain while screaming about how everyone is going to pay with her whole chest. Do we stan? We stan.

I FEED HER TO THE BEAST AND THE BEAST IS ME has some pretty ambitious shoes to fill with a blurb that literally compares it to both HOUSE OF HOLLOW and ACE OF SPADES, two of my favorite YA books. But honestly, after reading this book to the end, I'd say that not only is that a pretty apt comp, it's a really solid book. 

Laure is a down-on-her-luck ballerina oozing talent who is struggling to keep afloat in her snooty Parisian ballet school. Why? Because racism, classism, nepotism. Anyone would get pissed, but Laure has a take-no-shit personality that makes her even less tolerant to anyone giving her anything less than what she feels she deserves. So when she befriends a girl who takes her down to the catacombs and shows her a whispering river of blood, she doesn't exactly ask too many questions.

It took me a while to get used to this author's unique writing style but once I did, I was hooked. Some reviewers said that this book got a little slow in the last act and I would agree with that, which is why this is a four star review and not a five one, but the ending was AMAZING. Anyone who loves dark fantasy, gothic horror, and morally grey heroines is going to love this one. I will read literally anything else that this author writes, including the sequel. Stan, stan, stan.

4 out of 5 stars

Feed The Birds: A Gothic Mary Poppins Reimagining by Dakota Wilde

 

I'd never heard of this author before but I was actually high-key impressed. When you pick up a gothic Mary Poppins retelling, it can really only go one of two ways: fanciful whimsigoth or balls-to-the-wall insanity. I'm happy to report that this was the latter, because the latter is way more fun. I'm actually shocked that this doesn't have more ratings, actually, because erotic horror is HUGE. Maybe this book just hasn't found it's right audience yet, I hope it does. Halloween is just around the corner, y'all. Read this book!

FEED THE BIRDS is the story of Marigold Peppins: a woman cursed to be bound by the wind. Her only companions are her birds as she walks the streets of London, looking for the only thing that can break the curse. Barrett Blackford is a widower looking for someone to take care of his children. He's not expecting Mary, and he expects even less to be utterly attracted to her to the point of obsession.

But given Mary's curse, this can only end one way.

The writing was honestly so gorgeous at times and I thought the story was haunting (spoiler: not a romance). Novellas can be hard but I thought Wilde did a great job sticking to her page count and making the story work. My one real qualm is actually shared by the top negative reviewer for this book, and it's something I don't normally comment on except it was exceptionally noticeable here: the editing was pretty bad. There was about one incorrect use of a comma per page, and several noticeable mispellings that would have been caught by a pass with spell check. I enjoyed the story anyway but some people can be real hardasses about that, so if that's you, maybe don't read this book.

I would read more from this author. I think she has a fun tongue-in-cheek approach to gothic horror. 

3 to 3.5 out of 5 stars

Caress and Conquer by Donna Comeaux Zide

 

DNF @ 19%

It's been a while since I read a book I REALLY did not like but CARESS AND CONQUER was that for me. It reads a lot like Kathleen Woodiwiss at her worst, so if you really like Woodiwiss's style, you might really enjoy Donna Comeaux Zide. The opening, the daughter of a pirate watching her father's execution, reminded me a lot of the scene in Pam Godwin's SEA OF RUIN (which I loved). Possibly, this could have even been inspo for that since it's clear that Godwin loves old bodice-rippers from how well she captured the style. So that's one good thing this book did. But the racism, dated stereotypes, and heavy prose just didn't work for me. Sorry.

I'm very excited this was rereleased, though. I hope for everyone's sake that more of these old bodice-rippers get put on Kindle because I think they're crucial in how they've shaped romance history.

1 out of 5 stars

Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature's Toxins―From Spices to Vices by Noah Whiteman

 

It's been a while since I picked up a book that would make my FBI handler itchy, and MOST DELICIOUS POISON seemed like just the ticket. It's written by a biologist who has a fascination for poisons, and, to quote Paracelsus, it's the dose that makes the poison.

Discussing everything from cocaine to capsaicin, MOST DELICIOUS POISON is a pretty exhaustive book that discusses some of the toxic compounds that hide inside the things that we ingest. He also points out, repeatedly, that all natural does not necessarily equal "good for you." A reminder I think a lot of people could use in the age of wellness influencers dispensing medical advice without medical degrees.

I'd give this a higher rating if not for a couple things. (1) I didn't feel like the book was organized all that well, and the overall effect was a grab bag of miscellaneous information. (2) The author really inserted himself into the narrative and sometimes this works, but a predominant theme of the book was the death of his father from alcohol use disorder (AUD). He brings it up repeatedly, even when it doesn't always makes contextual sense. As someone who just their father to brain cancer, I was sympathetic, but this was also very triggering and I wasn't expecting to see it in a book about poison food. (3) There's a single reference to autism spectrum disorder being listed with a bunch of diseases that could be potentially treated with mustard oils. I thought that was odd and something that could be potentially upsetting to readers.

Overall, this felt like a passion project and it did contain a lot of fun and interesting information, but the tone wasn't toning and I do think that the execution fell a little flat (which is probably why it has such mixed reviews for a nonfic book, which generally tend to skew high).

2 to 2.5 out of 5 stars

The Sacrifice by Rin Chupeco

 

THE SACRIFICE was a total impulse-buy for me, considering I wasn't too fond of the last book I read by this author. But everything about this book sounded so awesome that I wanted to give it a try anyway. A haunted island in the Philippines where a racially insensitive American film crew awakens something terrible while trying to film a ghost hunting show? And a nonbinary lead?

Yeah, there's no way we're saying no to any of that.

And I was so right, by the way. This was fun. Creepy and a little gory, but not more than I, a wuss, could handle. I forgot to mute my phone and when the notification alarm went off while I was in the middle of one of the scarier scenes, I literally JUMPED (and I was holding a water glass, so guess who got soaked???). The anticolonialist message pours from the pages, couched in rage, which serve as a nice counterpoint to the dry irony of the narrator, Alon, who knows that the interlopers are making a terrible mistake, but also knows that they won't heed their warnings because of their arrogance.

My only qualm is that the pacing felt uneven. There were a lot of slow moments. I get that slower beats are a necessity to allow readers to absorb the horror, which was quite well done, but I did find myself losing interest at some parts in the third act. The villain(s) were also kind of caricatures of evil, but because this feels like an homage to classic horror, I feel like that actually worked here. At many points, this feels like a satire of monster horror movies, and I kind of loved that.

Definitely read this if you like folk horror and East Asian settings!

3 to 3.5 stars

The Bride of Lycaster by Perci Jay

 

Holy cliffhanger, Batman! I am so glad that I picked this up literally right before the sequel came out, or I would have been PISSED lol. THE BRIDE OF LYCASTER was exactly the fantasy romance that I needed to read right now, in part because it made me feel so nostalgic for the fantasy romances I read in college, like Mercedes Lackey's 500 Kingdoms series, Sherwood Smith's Crown and Court Duel, and Maria V. Snyder's incredibly magical and suspenseful Study series.

The heroine, Serafina, lives in a patriarchal society where marriages are brokered based on power alliances. When her brothers die in battle, she is scarcely allowed to grieve before being shunted off to an all girls' academy where the status of her virginity is rigorously monitored and she is basically groomed to be a rich man's bride. But Serafina is not one to sit idle: unbeknownst to her family or the instructors, she has made a secret alliance with the son of a duke, and they plan to choose each other when they graduate, in what he believes is a love match, and what she just sees as a way out.

But... Serafina doesn't end up with the duke's son. Instead, she ends up with a nine-foot tall war hero, who some say is a half-giant, and others say is cursed. Also, she's 5 feet tall.

Like many people who picked up this book, I was hooked by the "he's 9 feet tall" device, thinking that this would be monsterotica. But it's actually a very well-thought-out new adult fantasy romance that deftly explores many complex themes, like the ugliness of war and the PTSD that can follow, the destructive nature of purity culture and internalized misogyny, and the devastating effects of toxic masculinity. Even though Riyan is nine feet tall and yoked AF, being a caricature of masculinity doesn't make him happy. He's actually painfully sensitive and doesn't really feel like he's allowed to be, which often causes him to resort to anger or violence instead. Likewise, Serafina has been so ruthlessly exploited that it has made her a calculating schemer, because hurt people hurt people.

I waffled between four and five stars while reading, which is a good problem to have as a reader. This book was ultimately what I wanted Sarah J. Maas to be for me, but wasn't, and lives up to the declaration that it has a cast of "morally grey everyones." I really, really enjoyed it and can't wait to read the rest.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Brontë Lovers by Angela Pearse

 

I grabbed BRONTE LOVERS during a Stuff Your Kindle Day event. I am obsessed with the Brontes and even have a series of videos on TikTok about random Charlotte Bronte trivia and reviews of Jane Eyre retellings. The heroine of BRONTE LOVERS, Lizzy, is dating a guy named Klint, who is doing his thesis on 19th century steam engines. She wants to do hers on the Brontes but isn't fully sure where to begin, although being in the town of Haworth, where the Brontes grew up and were inspired to write their books, is sparking her imagination.

When she meets Dain, who works at the parsonage, she's immediately attracted to him. Not only does he dress up in period attire to do tours, he's just as obsessed with the Brontes as she is, and he has the emotional warmth and availability that her boyfriend lacks. Klint also is moody and temperamental and he has a parasomnia where he actually bites(!!) her in his sleep, causing bruises that she can't explain away. Even though she's still invested in her relationship with Klint, she can't resist the attraction she has for Dain. DRAMA ENSUES!

So I didn't realize when I picked this up that this was a cheating romance or I probably wouldn't have read it, since that's not really my thing. I loved the Bronte trivia, though, and I think the author did a great job of showing why Klint and Lizzy were wrong with each other without resorting to extremes. What made the book a little bit of a hard sell for me was the pseudo paranormal elements and the fact that the heroine freaks out over the hero being bisexual and says some really biphobic things. Up until that point, I kind of got why she emotionally cheated on Klint, and could see why she and Dain worked together, but the biphobia just felt like a total breach of his trust. I do think she felt remorseful about her reaction, and the HEA works... but it was hard to come back from that.

Overall, though, I really enjoyed BRONTE LOVERS and can't wait to read more from this author. There's a very 2000s-era chicklit vibe to this book that made me feel nostalgic, and she totally brought the small English village setting to life. It's hard not to love that, flaws and all.

3.5 to 4 out of 5 stars

Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong

 

Oh my gosh, that was actually so amazing??? I don't understand why this has such low ratings because it is literally everything I want out of gothic horror. In fact, it actually reminded me a lot of T. Kingfisher's horror novels, in the sense that no matter how chilling or gory it got, there was something almost cozy about it because of how likable the heroine was, and how great (most of) the side characters were.

The premise is pretty simple. Laney got Hemlock House after her divorce from her rich CEO husband, Kit. She adores it and looks forward to living there whenever she can, but in order to keep it, she has to rent it out to people who are often assholes. Lately, said renters have been even more assholish than usual: someone is leaving behind creepy symbols and sick pranks. Her most recent batch of renters fled after demanding their deposit back when they found blood.

Laney goes down to the island to find out what's going on, accompanied by her niece/ward, Madison, and finds that she's been beaten to the punch by her ex-husband, his sister, Jayla, and two other people from her past: Sadie and Garrett. They agree to spend the night on the island but things quickly become tense, because all of them have reasons for growing distant from one another. And when creepy things start happening and escape becomes impossible, Laney realizes that maybe the "pranks" weren't pranks after all.

Someone might be sending her a message.

I loved this so much. I literally had no idea what was going on and even though the ending was a little cheesy, I still loved it because it worked for the story and definitely passed the vibe check. Also, as with other works I've read by this author, she's effortlessly diverse. Heroine has anxiety (never related to a character as much as I did when she said that having people in her house made her want to reach for the weed gummies). Her ex husband and ex-best friend, Jayla, are Black. Trigger warning for references to SA and pretty descriptive gore, but apart from that, there's nothing too horrific (I'm a wuss lol).

Can't wait to read more from this author. This book slapped.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Five Broken Blades by Mai Corland

 

FIVE BROKEN BLADES was the cheesy fantasy-fest that was exactly what I needed to get out of my reading slump and big heaping thanks to my friend, who bought me the "special edition" version with the sprayed edges. I feel like the best way to describe this book is that it's Asian-inspired fantasy with a fast-paced heist vibe reminiscent of One Piece or Blue Eye Samurai. In the author's note, it kind of sounded like the author wrote this book as a way of reconnecting with her Korean heritage, and I thought that was neat.

This book had SO MANY POVs, though. It took me forever to get used to all the head-hopping, especially since the chapters were so short. There's Royo, an assassin for hire (he kind of reminded me of Roronoa Zoro); Sora, a female assassin whose body is made out of poison (think Poison Ivy crossed with Cat Woman); Aeri, a ditzy thief with a dark secret (I was kind of picturing her as Saint Tail but older); Mikail, a jaded assassin; Euyn, a spoiled and indolent younger prince now on the run for his life; and Ty, a spymaster and son of a count.

The world building was pretty easy to understand and there were some nice adornments that made it feel unique, although I sometimes found myself wishing for more details. Part of my frustration with the short chapters and multi-POV format is that it made the book feel very choppy at times, and the author seemed to feel the need to end each chapter with a cliffhanger that sometimes felt a little bit like getting slapped in the face. Especially if we were at a part of the book that I thought was interesting and wanted to hear more about. The premise was great though-- who doesn't want to hear about a bunch of down-on-their-luck iconoclasts who want to hunt down and kill a god king? Especially when their summons come semi-anonymously, locked-room-mystery style. You know there's sus-nanigans afoot.

I think if you go into this book expecting really detailed world-building, you might be disappointed. It's also not as spicy or romance-heavy as FOURTH WING, despite being from the same publisher. Most of the sex scenes in here were vague or fade-to-black. I think it would be appropriate for older teens and would probably classify this as new adult, since the characters were in their early twenties. This is costume fantasy, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, as long as you're just looking for something escapist and not something semi-literary to be snobby about. And there were some great twists at the end! So I would definitely consider reading more from this author.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Sanctuary of the Shadow by Aurora Ascher

 

I almost preordered this as soon as they dropped the cover and the gorgeous sprayed edges, because I loved THE FOURTH WING, and I figured that they had gone out and acquired a bunch of really similar stories to chase the smashing success of the dragon romantasy series. Plus, I saw some early reviews comparing this to THE NIGHT CIRCUS meets Avatar: The Last Airbender and someone (a liar, as it turns out) put it on a list of WUTHERING HEIGHTS retellings. So the marketing was marketing, and I was ready to be obsessed...

...Except, for a hyped-up fantasy romance from a BIG publisher with a successful release, this had incredibly mixed advance reviews.

So I didn't preorder and basically was only tangentially aware of this book's existence as a pretty cover in my orbit housing a book that I might or might not want to read-- until one of my friends bought it for me as an early birthday present. Now that I've read it, I'm both surprised and also not surprised that it did so badly with its audience, because this feels like it's trying very hard to emulate Sarah J. Maas: it's got a bat boy shadow daddy, everyone purrs with pleasure and rolls their shoulders, and the smut smuts like a 1980s bodice-ripper that's got Fabio on the cover. SJM might not be my taste, but she's very popular, and I'm kind of surprised her fans weren't more into this, especially the HOUSE OF BREATH AND BLOOD people.

I personally felt like the world-building was way too shallow. I didn't understand how these various Elementals were really tied to their elements and why they looked the way they did, and I felt like the big war between the feuding queens was seriously underplayed, especially since it's partially responsible for the main conflict of the book. Every time there is a big conflict, it's resolved almost instantly, which doesn't feel interesting and didn't leave me feeling very invested. Also, the heroine tells the hero she loves him after five days, two of which he is in a cage, barely talking and suffering from amnesia, and I think the remaining three, they're just banging nonstop (over three fairly long chapters). I was kind of surprised, since it didn't seem like they had much chemistry and I seem to recall that his soul was compared to a child's because it was so pure and empty, so that was weird and a little uncomfy. I feel like the author was trying to subvert the trope of experienced man/naive and childlike woman by reversing the genders, and in that sense, I get what she was trying to do, but I don't like that trope between an EM and N&CW, and I didn't like it with an EW and a N&CM.

Overall, this kind of ended up being a disappointment for me, which makes me sad because I really wanted to love it and be this book's champion, because I often feel like when a book has a Goodreads average rating this low, that usually means they weren't able to find their target audience. That still might be the case, because, like I said, this really had strong HOUSE OF BREATH AND BLOOD vibes, if it were written as one of those fantasy Harlequins, so I think if you read it as a cheesy romance with the understanding that the world-building and fantasy elements are mostly just window dressing, you'll probably like it more than people who picked it up expecting another FOURTH WING.

2 out of 5 stars

Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber

 

DNF @ p.108

I loved CARAVAL and liked LEGENDARY, so even though I ended up not liking FINALE, I was still excited about the spinoff series about Jacks, Once Upon a Broken Heart. The beginning starts off super promising, with Evangeline making a deal with a Fate to stop her stepsister from marrying the man she thinks she's in love with-- only for it to turn into a Curse of the Monkey's Paw sort of situation where sometimes the resolution is worse than the curse.

Here's the thing about Stephanie Garber: her books feel like the stories we all wrote in our bedrooms when we were sixteen. There will be people with names like Morning Glory and Neptunia, and kisses will taste like vanilla ice cream and all the men will smell like candles. I say this without any malice in my heart because I do think there is a certain charm to this style of writing-- one of my guilty pleasure reads is ENCHANTED PARADISE by Johanna Hailey, which is basically a Sarah J. Maas book if it were written in the 1980s. It worked for me in CARAVAL because I think there was a better danger to whimsy ratio, but here, everything just felt a little too fluffy and frothy for me to take seriously. I got really bored and kept putting it down. I don't think I'll pick it up again.

2 to 2.5 out of 5 stars

The Wicked and the Willing by Lianyu Tan

 

One totally valid criticism about both dark romance and erotic horror is that they tend to be heteronormative, and finding a sapphic variant of either can be a chore. Therefore, I was super excited to find out that THE WICKED AND THE WILLING is a sapphic work of erotic vampire horror set in Singapore during the roaring twenties.

Our cast of characters are Gean Choo, a young and desperate girl who needs employment to pay off her father's debts; Mrs. Edevane, a British colonialist reaping the benefits of her beauty and privilege while feasting upon the locals; and Po Lam, Mrs. Edevane's gender queer estate manager, who she bought as a slave when she was a child. There are other players but these are the three main ones, who revolve around each other's orbits like toxic little doomed stars.

I really appreciated how vampirism was an allegory for colonialism (and I confirmed this with the author-- it IS canon). Mrs. Edevane literally consumes the locals, and she is blind to their plight or their culture, exotifying her Asian lovers, indulging in casual racism when it suits her, and devouring the people whenever it suits her. She is a destructive force, using a foreign country as her refuge and playground. But, as a woman, she is also a victim to a man who hunts her footsteps. Which shows how someone can be an oppressor but still a victim of infrastructural prejudice, even within a colonial structure. The complexity and nuances were brilliantly done.

This is a very violent book-- sexually, emotionally, and physically-- and I had a hard time reading some of the graphic rapes and torture scenes. It starts out so slow and unsettlingly, but by the end of the book, it's a blood bath. None of the characters are particularly likable and I don't think they're supposed to be, although I loved Po Lam's character and I really empathized with Gean Choo's desperation as the motivator for so many of her actions. Even some of the almost humorous scenes, like Gean Choo fleeing a nest of East Asian folkloric monsters when her period comes during a party, are couched in dread and horror. This is like intellectual grindhouse, which I feel is probably the vibe the author was going for, and I think extreme horror fans will probably like it, especially if they have been hungering for queer and diverse entries in the canon that aren't Eric Larocca.

Interestingly, this story has a "choose your own ending" ending. There are three endings: two are in this book and apparently there's a third ending you can get by signing up for their mailing list. I'm not sure how I feel about this-- I read both endings and I think the author made both work, and suit the characters, but it also felt like a lack of commitment to the story. THE WICKED AND THE WILLING has a very strong beginning and I loved the portrayal of vampires and the gays-behaving-badly themes of the work, as well as the anti-colonialist narrative, but the ending petered out a bit and became far too violent for my own personal tastes, and even though I appreciated the uniqueness of this ending, I didn't really like it. I did ultimately like the book, though, and would definitely read more from this author.

3 out of 5 stars

After the Shut Up Ring by Cate C. Wells

 

I'm kind of shocked that this has such mixed reviews because I thought it was fantastic. This is the first time I can remember seeing a romance heroine with herpes represented in a book, and I thought the way the author handled her insecurities, without coming across as insensitive or judgemental in the metatext, was really well done. The research seemed accurate too (although I'm not a doctor, so, like, don't quote me on that). I was just really impressed with this narrative choice.

Angie breaks up with her boyfriend-turned-fiance AT THEIR WEDDING after he reads aloud a series of incredibly humiliating vows that belittle and berate her in front of all their family and friends. Brandon, her childhood friend who has been in love with her for all of these years, witnesses this and it makes him very angry-- but part of him is also pleased, because this is his chance to get Angie for himself. But he doesn't know that Angie has an STD and she's terrified to tell him, even though she knows that it isn't really her fault.

I loved so much about this book. Nobody writes strong simp daddies like Cate C. Wells. I love all of her heroes, they're so dreamy. And the fact that he's been in love with her for years? LOVE TO SEE IT. Angie was also a great character. We love to see a single mom who would do anything for her kids, and I thought her character arc of recovering from her would-be husband's emotional abuse was really done. This isn't usually my go-to genre of romance but I love the way she does characters and how they feel so real, like people I could meet right on the street.

Still an autobuy author, for sure!

4 out of 5 stars

Pregnesia by Carla Cassidy

 

How can you see a book with a title like PREGNESIA and not pick it up IMMEDIATELY? If you tell me you can, you're either a liar, or you're made of stronger stuff than I, lol. I told my followers I would read PREGNESIA if/when I hit 6,000 followers on Threads, and lo and behold, I hit 6,000 followers on Threads and here I am, reading and reviewing this book.

***WARNING: SPOILERS TO COME***

Lucas is an ex-Navy SEAL who does security work now with a team of his guys (who all have their own books, too, I believe). One day, while trying to repossess a Buick, he finds a suspicious pregnant lady sleeping in the back. The pregnant lady has amnesia. He calls her Jane Doe.

Lucas takes Jane back to his sister, who is a nurse, because of her head injury (Jane is adamant that she doesn't want to go to the police). Lucas thinks she might be lying about the amnesia but he's transfixed by her hot pregnant bod. She's not like other pregnant ladies, she's sexy-pregnant. She's very slender, except for her little pregnancy ball (it's described as a ball) and her gigantic pregnancy boobs, which he ogles at least five times in the book.

At one point, when they come out of a store, Jane is nearly dragged away in a van that has an eye inside a triangle on the car (stupid to take the branded vehicle out when you're on a kidnapping sesh). I was hoping so, so hard that the enemy in this book was the Illuminati, because that would have been hilarious and amazing, but sadly that is not the case. It's some made-up org called the Church of Enlightenment, although it's not really clear why they want her.

Here are some more things you need to know:

-There's no banging. Because pregnant ladies aren't allowed to bang. She gives him a handy though, and no, he doesn't reciprocate. Rude.

-The Church of Enlightenment is actually a cult she got involved with when her husband died (mugging). Her husband had nothing to do with the cult, and the husband and wife who took her in want to steal her baby and raise him as the next great prophet.

-Why? Pregnesia, idk.

I thought this book was pretty meh, I'm sorry to say. With a title like PREGNESIA, I was expecting high octane shenanigans, but we didn't even get to find out that much about the cult or see them act scary. I was hoping that at the very least, she would have been MARRIED to the cult leader but no.

The ending was somewhat anticlimactic after all that. I looked at the author's other books, though, and it looks like she has a title called TOOL BELT DEFENDER, which made me laugh really hard, so I'm awarding a bonus half star just for that. Honestly, this book wasn't bad, I think I was just expecting something that was funnier and maybe a little more fleshed out. With a title that self-aware, I was hoping for more tongue-in-cheek story-telling, too.

1.5 to 2 out of 5 stars

A Thing Divine by Rian Adara

 

It's been a while since I read a work of erotic horror that pushed my limits like this, but still made me feel so compelled to continue. So this is what a mouse hypnotized by a serpent feels like. First, a word of warning: the trigger warnings are all the way in the very back and I missed them going in. This is very violent, and graphically so, including disfiguration and what I would consider body horror. One of the triggers, for example, is "destructive fisting."

Ehvy is a medical examiner who is on a tour of an old creepy mansion with friends, when she happens to meet one of the descendants of the house, Will Sandridge. His presence there intrigues her because not only is he incredibly attractive, and they have an instant connection, his family history is highly sordid. Sex parties and murdering of the townsfolk? Naughty, naughty. But Ehvy is very into naughty. She is also very into Will.

I don't want to say too much else but the story becomes a cat and mouse game of sorts between Will and Ehvy. Ehvy is determined to know more about the man who literally haunts her dreams, and Will is... well, eager to continue their relationship in a way that is frightening, once you see what else he gets up to in his free time. Until the very end, I was never 100% completely sure what endgame was.

People who like gothic horror, erotic horror, and vampires who actually act like vampires will enjoy this book. The writing was great, and stylistically, this feels very much in the vein (ha, vein) of authors like Clive Barker and Lucy Taylor. If you read this, expect bloodsplatter.

Thanks to the author for providing me with a copy!

3.5 out of 5 stars

We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story by Simu Liu

 

This is a great memoir about Asian-Canadian actor, Simu Liu, and his upbringing in both China and Canada. He talks about how he got his big break (and some of the roadblocks leading up to it), as well as the struggles of being an immigrant in a new country, and the child of immigrant parents with sky high expectations whose means of punishment may seem unconventional or even cruel when perceived outside of their cultural contexts.

Simu comes across as very likable in this memoir and part of that, ironically, is that he doesn't slink from his less likable moments. One of my criticisms of the celebrity memoir is that they often feel too glossy, but he admits to coasting and then nearly failing in college, and quotes one of his ex-girlfriends' takedowns of him when he was behaving like a Nice Guy(TM) to give her seemingly callous treatment of him in their relationship the proper context it deserved.

This was just a really honest, really endearing memoir and I liked it a lot. I like the actor a lot and this made me like him more.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself by Crystal Hefner

 

Whoa. I've read several of the Bunny Girl memoirs but this is the best one yet. The writing is so poignant and beautiful, and I was really impressed by the amount of introspection Crystal Hefner has about her life. I'll admit that I used to be really judgy. I figured anyone who was a Bunny was probably a bimbo (derogatory), and I'm not proud of that. Especially after reading this books and finding out just how smart some of these women were, and how they were forced to hide it to perpetuate the male fantasy of uncomplicated, fun-loving girls.

This memoir begins prior to her life at the Mansion, talking about the trauma of losing her father to brain cancer (which I really related to-- that's how I lost my dad), losing her first serious boyfriend, and being raped. Like a lot of the other girls, she met Hugh by chance at a club and he picked her because he liked the way she looked. Like a lot of the other girls, she talks about Hefner's narcissism and the way he used his money to control his girlfriends, and how the other girls would often fight or go behind each other's backs to stay in his favor.

Most of those memoirs were written while Hefner was still alive and I did get the impression that some of them were holding back because of that, which is maybe testament to the power he held over their lives. Crystal's memoir, on the other hand, is no holds barred. She repeatedly calls him a narcissist and talks about how he would body-shame the girls in an attempt to get them to lose weight or get cosmetic surgery. Two of Harris's procedures nearly killed her and one ended up causing an autoimmune disorder (which is ironic, because in Izabella St. James's memoir, she talks about how lucky they all were that nobody in the Mansion ever had any complications from their surgery).

It gets grosser. Apparently, Hefner was paid $400,000 per episode of The Girls Next Door and Crystal got nothing. After his proposal, when the show Marrying Hef was being produced, Hefner was getting $800,000 and Crystal got $2,500 for the whole season as a sort of appearances bonus. She claims that he had peep holes in his bedroom that he used to film himself having sex, and based on some discussions she claims to have had with him in this book, it doesn't sound like the people he filmed always knew about it. When he and the girls went out together, he would encourage them to remove clothes or flash the camera and he would take pictures with a disposable camera. Crystal talks about finding the pictures and destroying them, while going through her husband's things.

I think the saddest thing, though, was at the end, when she was going through his scrapbooks and looking at the letters he received from people who liked what he was about. There was one from an 11-year-old girl who loved The Girls Next Door and told him she wanted to be a Playmate when she grew up. She sent him a picture of herself, too (in a school outfit), which he KEPT. There were also letters, she said, from boys thanking him for teaching them how to treat women.

Crystal repeatedly says that she often felt like she didn't have any value beyond her looks, and living at the Mansion only made that worse, because she was living a lifestyle where she was forced to be a prop and was constantly judged by her looks and mocked or commented on as if she didn't have any feelings. So many reviews have questioned why these women didn't just leave, but the prevailing theme in so many of these books seems to be that they didn't feel like they could-- that the ugly side of pretty privilege meant that nobody really took them seriously, so they felt like the Playboy brand was a stepping stone to something achievable, and possibly validating.

This was honestly a pretty devastating read and I felt so sad for her and the other women by the end of the book. She spills even more tea than St. James did and it is scalding and I hope she's doing well in her post-Mansion life, because it honestly sounds like she went through five different kinds of hell.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Bunny Tales by Izabella St. James

 

The first Playboy Bunny memoir I read was Holly Madison's. I didn't realize that there were so many others! (This one came out like nine years earlier.) When I was in high school, there was such a fascination with Playboy. I remember seeing Playboy Bunny necklaces for sale at the store (for teen girls). Hugh Hefner was considered a sex symbol well into his old age, and no small part of that was because of the harem of women he surrounded himself with and partied with. They never really talked much in the interviews though, which always made me wonder: what was it really like?

Izabella St. James defies a lot of stereotypes. The book opens with a history of Poland in WWII and what it was like afterwards, when they were under the Iron Curtain. Her grandparents were both adversely impacted: in fact, her grandfather was sent to Auschwitz for protecting and sheltering Jews. Both of her parents inherited that legacy of pain, and when she and her parents left Poland, it was to escape the lingering shadow of Nazi Germany and Communism.

She is really smart. She went to McGill and then got a law degree from Pepperdine (although she didn't pass the bar). She speaks like four languages. The reason she became a Bunny was because attending college in California put her in close proximity with party culture when it was at its zenith and she, like many women, was curious about what living with Hefner would be like. Like many people, she also had a romanticized vision of the reality, too.

A lot of what she says in here corroborates Holly's memoir, although unlike Holly's memoir, she portrays Holly as a villain. According to Izabella, Holly was controlling and played power games to keep Hefner to herself, hoping to become his next wife or top girlfriend. She seems to have more disdain for Hefner, too, with an entire chapter kind of ridiculing what went on in the bedroom (apparently he liked having his nips sucked and wanted to watch girl on girl before finishing himself off to porn). She also talks about how weirdly cheap he was, sensitive to the fact that he knew girls wanted him for his money, and how he seemed to take pleasure in controlling and denying them that.

I think I liked this book more than DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE because she felt very pragmatic. Some readers seemed put off by her arrogance, but she just struck me as very confident and giving no shits. I do think that one of her quotes about wondering why Hefner would pay for plastic surgery but not her tuition fees is very on the nose: if he truly wanted a care-free party girl, why wouldn't he remove the obstacle of their debt woes? Instead, he seemed to prefer to cultivate insecurity-- or to allow the other girls in the mansion to do that for him, with catty infighting and rivalries. I wouldn't want to live this life and I can't imagine wanting to, but it sure is an interesting story.

St. James seems to have kind of dropped from public eye after all of this blew over. I looked her up and the last big thing she did was a 2015 Polish reality show and a pug dog rescue foundation. Hope that whatever she's up to now, she's doing well. But it's interesting that she seems to have lost her taste for fame, when so many of the Playmates have chosen to remain in the public eye.

4 out of 5 stars

When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey

 

WHEN WE WERE MAGIC is kind of like The Craft meets Lisa Frankenstein, but delightfully queer and strangely surreal. The book literally opens with the heroine, Alexis, accidentally murdering a guy during a hookup by making his dick explode with magic. Desperate, she calls in her squad of five friends to help her. They're all kinda sorta witches, and their original plan is to bring him back to life with magic. Instead, they separate his body into pieces, including his heart.

There's a little bit of The Telltale Heart with this book, too, as the pieces of the boy haunt each girl as they're forced to dispose of the body, while also reckoning with how his disappearance/murder impacts the community, their relationships, and their magic. I think the beginning was stronger than the middle and the end, which felt a little unsatisfying to me. Especially since I know Gailey can do better. I'm reading one of their adult novels right now, JUST LIKE HOME, and it positively drips atmosphere and character development.

One of my friends said that this would make a better movie than it would a book and I see what she means. It would be a good visually arresting artsy horror movie, like Lisa Frankenstein or Velvet Buzzsaw. Not bad, though.

2.5 to 3 out of 5 stars

How It's Done by Christine Kole MacLean

 

I'm kind of sad that this author never wrote any more YA books after this one, because this was fantastic. Despite being published in 2006, it really doesn't feel dated. Reviews for this one are mixed, but weirdly, people seem to be taking issue with the exact things I loved about it. HOW IT'S DONE is one of those cautionary sorts of stories, about a sheltered girl with religious trauma, who escapes from her fundie parents by running right into the arms of a sophisticated older man.

I remember reading this as a teen and thinking Michael, the college professor, seemed hot. Now, reading this as a middle-aged woman, I just thought he was gross. The way he gaslit Grace and was constantly trying to Pygmalion her into being what he wanted was so brilliantly done, but it was also really hard to read. Grace also has a toxic relationship with her friend, Liv, who is poorer and desperate to escape her abusive family situation. They were close when they were younger but their diverging paths have created rifts in their relationship that have led to resentment, jealousy, and even a little cruelty.

HOW IT'S DONE never shies from its difficult subjects, and the writing is spare and beautiful and emotional. I know some people criticized the heroine for being too naive, but a fundie girl in the 2000s with the internet still in its infancy, and her only real knowledge of relationships coming from pilfered bodice-rippers? Yeah, I think her naivete makes sense. Just like how it also made sense that her strict religious upbringing and home environment ended up creating the perfect storm of self-blame and internalized misogyny that unfortunately made her so vulnerable to a predatory older man.

This is not an easy read but it is a good one, and I loved it as a coming of age story as well as a teen girl's ultimate triumph over her own oppression.

4 out of 5 stars

The Other Half by Charlotte Vassell

 

Easiest five star review I've written in a while. Has the same fun vibes as a murder mystery show, like My Life Is Murder or Midsomer Murders, but plunges into the toxic and half-rotten corruption of the British upper-class like THE SECRET HISTORY. At times, I definitely got almost-Donna Tartt vibes from this book.

Caius Beauchamp is a half-Jamaican millennial detective who just got dumped by his hot French girlfriend. In the middle of yass-ifying himself post breakup, with skincare routines and bread making, he gets put on a case for a society princess-cum-influencer who was found dead in a park, wearing a flower crown. Actually, he's the one who found her. While jogging as part of his self-improvement regimen.

As he looks into the dead woman's circle of friends, who is named Clemmie btw, Caius learns about a birthday party at McDonalds with top-shelf champagne and cocaine, an art gallery that doesn't actually seem to move much art, and a beautiful and slightly pathetic sociopath named Rupert, who was dating Clemmie but had eyes for a manic pixie dreamgirl of a woman named Nell.

Nothing in this book is as it seems and even fifty pages from the end, I wasn't totally sure what was going on. I'm surprised that the ratings for this book are so mixed because I thought it was fantastic. I am so glad that it's the first in a series because I didn't really want to let any of these characters go, even when I'd finished the book.

5 out of 5 stars