The Reading Frog > Recent Status Updates

"The kiss that unlocked the hunger and drove Varadin to bite the dead flesh off his wife's lips and Ghena to dig her nails deep underneath her husband's skin at the base of his neck and pull the large strips to her mouth where she chewed with gusto and swallowed."

I'm normally an enthusiastic consumer of cannibalism as an allegory for love/hunger/want/whatever, but idk about this one lol

"The branches, gnarled and twisted as they are, still reveal the hint of human hands-outstretched towards the sky. "As if drowning," that's how Mom described them back when she was up to describing anything."

Botanical/eco horror, my beloved 👏

Aquired this ARC via NetGalley. Might not binge-read this one since it is an anthology.

I'll try, however, to finish it before its publishing date. 👏
Buddy-read for spoilery updates is live on Storygraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/buddy_r...

I love how intersectional this is 👏

Unexpected sapphics?! Don't mind if I do 💅

"When the new memories come, they get all jumbled up with the old ones-like if you had a finished puzzle and somebody started sticking in new pieces in spaces that shouldn't even be there. (...) It's the differences that stand out. (...)"

"But these... memories. They're not real."

(...) "They not real. But they not unreal either."

— I love the way this is written!!

"Don't you feel it, Annabeth? That something's wrong? With this whole society? This world?"

Oh, I'm locked in 👏

'small loan of a million dollars' type guy 😭

I'm barely 3 pages in and already annotating like a mad man and starting, once again, a 'men who I hope die before the book ends' list 😩

I'm normally really stern about reading stuff in order, but the blurb for this one spoke to me, so yeah, whatever! I can tell from what I've barely read so far that I'll probably love this novella👏

(...) understanding their plight was not enough to make me regret my decision. (...) My compassion did not pulse as strongly as my hate.

Here we go... 👀

So, uh, time for a villain arc, right? RIGHT???
Please, I need some catharsis after all that 😩

NO FUCKING WAY???!! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT 😭

Literally did not see that coming when I should have.
I don't think we can delulu our way out of this one...

Dom, I get you.
I, too, would not give a shit about people knowing I'm gay anymore after surviving THAT.

Just when I started to think this book is not really a horror, it suddenly got really gory and graphic.

My god, every character who witnessed this scene deserves some free therapy.

Grace, my queen, I'm proud of you for reading that man to filth, but you are also super duper pregnant, and I'm very scared for your life right now 😩

If I weren't so tired all the time, I would've probably finished this book already. Today AND yesterday, my reading time got interrupted by way-too-long, accidental naps, which means my progress is very slow.

Gonna try to read some more tonight, but idk how far I'll get. Def gonna take longer to finish this book than I'd normally would 😩

If this racist, xenophobic, homophobic, bigoted asshole doesn't die before the end of the book, I WILL be disappointed.

"Everyone in the old Aplin Shade had died.

They had all died on the same day. And the cause of death listed for each person was the same, single word.

Blight."

— Okay, I'm listening 👀

Just started reading the prologue, and a bone just fell out of the sky and sliced the MC's face. No idea what's going on, but def intrigued to find out.

Genuinely tweaking out trying to choose my next read.

I've been having such great luck with the ARCs I've been reading. The last six reads, except for one, are all 4.5⭐ or higher, and now I'm scared nothing will live up to this wonderful streak I've been having 😩
Maybe I'll just read some more of TMA transcripts until my mood-reading ass suddenly craves a certain type of book.

"Camera technology (as exemplified by deep focus in particular) and camera movements (determined by the action of the protagonist), combined with invisibile editing (demanded by realism), all tend to blur the limits of screen space. The male protagonist is free to command the stage (...)"

This is single-handedly teleporting me back to my animation/critical studies years at the art academy.

"What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance"

—Old text on the male gaze in cinema, yet still relevant today. Love the emphasis on women in film only being allowed to centre as a form of erotica

Nico Verce... What did you just do to me??
I'm gonna need a few business days to process this one and write a comprehensive review.

RTC

"Three years and we still-"

(...)

"You don't get to speak about three years, (...) You disappeared," Astrid snapped. "You don't get to come back now and sneer at the only person who carried him."

Julian's smile died.

"You carried the container," he said softly.

"Don't confuse that with care."

I knew shit would escalate once the container/urn came out. My god, they all need therapy!!!

Sick to my fucking stomach. This chapter was traumatising for everyone involved except for the one who orchestrated it.

Also, the self-blame? It's insane that when someone has completely fucked with your brain, this is the conclusion one comes to.

This book is so good, but so intense and heavy. Oliver has once again poisoned something for the mere fact that it wasn't centred on him...

"Come on," he said lightly. "Don't be dramatic."

(...) Julian followed.

Because refusing would mean admitting Julian had a limit, and Oliver's whole power was convincing Julian that limits were childish.

The way Oliver conditioned Julian to keep adjusting/ignoring his boundaries to appease him is crazy. He treats this group of people like they are his own personal barbie dolls.

"Stimulus. Response. Relief.

Nils watched the loop and felt a quiet, nauseating certainty settle in.

He could not prove what Julian wanted.

He could not prove what Oliver had taken.

But the sequence was clear enough.

Correction. Compliance. Reward.

Again.

Again.

Oliver did not need to force people into roles

once he had taught them how to step back into place."

—Oliver is truly playing 4D chess mind games

Julian 🤝 Neil Josten
Repeatedly saying "I'm fine" while going through unimaginable horrors

This is getting so juicy and even more tense! (which I didn't know was possible) I'd probably stay up all night to finish this book if not for me having to be somewhere tomorrow morning 😩 But, hey, made it to the halfway mark.👏

I've been loving this so far!

I'm telling you, Oliver is a cult leader. But instead of religion, the system he uses to control is social power and hierarchy. He scares me a little tbh...