Emma > Recent Status Updates

When you can’t hide from who you are, you have to make it the headline act.

Another continuity issue with Moon going from only having a couple of seeds to having four although willing to say they glossed over him doing a Wash in anew Davia while Margo recovered from the tattoo.

It’s not quite that it’s slow or stilted but I feel at a remove from everything. Not sure why. Waiting to see if it picks up when Sydney shows up.

The bonus materials from BN (bonus epilogue with everyone talking about another holiday in The Magnificent North) and Waterstones (cute story where Julian asks Legend to help him plan a Caraval Wedding for Scarlett) were really fun and perhaps my favorite (especially Waterstones).

Beautiful book. Such lovely illustrations. A lot of the story didn’t do it for me but overall fine and, of course very festive. As always I wanted more Scarlett and Julian than Tella and Legend. Alas.

Excellent audio

This is really underscoring the Tella and Legend are NOT my favorite couple in this series. I don’t like the turn this has taken with tella making out with the kidnapper as he forces his attention on her is not it.

This book is so beautiful.

The Meant to Be books can always be hit or miss. The secondhand outrage from the toxic masculinity and secondhand embarrassment from Mulan trying to make herself smaller were a lot. I also felt like it gets a little bogged down in the finance details which makes parts drag. Fun and entertaining but not without flaws.

I get we need to be grounded in the story but this finance stuff is really gibberish.

This was fun and I’m glad we got the companion/sequel but the pacing was off. Not just too long but the beats felt like they were in the wrong place. I liked Koen more than Lowe. But I like Misery more than Serena so that made this story a little less compelling. I also think I’m still a vampire girlie in my heart so all the weres were less interesting without some vampires.

Mundane things can feel so exotic when your entire life has been one plot twist after another.

Vibe

He’s 36!

“He doesn’t look old, just like he’s been through shit.”
Vibe.

Her pale elfin face is as close as I’ll ever get to having a home.

At least a decade older?!

I feel like one of the problems with this one is that it is starting in a weird place. Like the epilogue of Bride was punchy. And then it’s just like “oh yeah Koen explained the situation and now they’re both ignoring it”. There are no stakes.

Not entirely surprising but this is actually too scary for me!

Ame Dyckman is a powerhouse. This was a lot of fun. I’m not always sure about Teague’s art style but overall quite well done. We see Cat referred to as she/her and bat as he/him but Rat is always referred to as Rat, no pronouns so I wonder if we have an agender character in this trio.

So fun. Beautiful because it’s Sophie blackall and a really fun exploration of imaginative play.

The more time I spend with this book, the more I love it. Amazing use of light and dark and lovely adult/child relationship that can be defined however the readers choose. Deceptively sophisticated for the limited vocabulary that is all dialog but it works well.

Really fun deep dive into the color orange. Beautiful artwork and a lot of variety from page to page (and evne under the dust jacket). No back matter but the copyright page at the back has citations for direct quotes and, for some reason, the image of the Tokyo Tower.

Fun. Breezy. Sort of a love triangle. Could hand this to a lot of readers.

Like Rowan I am an anti-royalist so while this was fun wish fulfillment (the maid becomes the queen!) I wanted to see Ruby taking steps to tear town the monarchy in the final chapters or epilogue. Oh well.

Love interest who possibly wants to kill MC is my least favorite trope(?) and this book didn’t change my mind. I liked Asher in the end but wanted a little more about why tf he thought it was okay to try to strangle Ruby in the beginning. Wtf?

I liked a lot of this. I don’t like how often Ruby is doing Hot Girl S*** (finding clues) while in a dressing gown. Some twists were contrived and others heavily broadcast but overall fun and imo rewarding to close readers in catching things early but not to the point of being frustrating.