Welcome to Litsy!

I'm not sure now that I've finished it that it was worth it.

Things I liked: lots of queerness, Mallory's fibro, the closeness of the main characters, the platonic love between Mallory and Theodore. Forensic science on magic.

Things I didn't like: it felt kinda of... young? The concerns of the trio of girls were very teenage. The real clues started to become so obvious. Obnoxious monologuing to explain a load of tortured clues.

I am determined to finish this tonight, but I have to pause to scream and clear my mind about how obviously they have the wrong culprit.

I thought I'd probably be DNFing this, but I guess I'm curious enough to stay the course. At least at this point, when my tracker app says I can finish it in 1h30m. I probably wouldn't be up for investing another two hours into it, though.

Started this because I love the tagline ("be gay, solve crime, take naps") and it all sounded fun (and of course it's on my #BookSpinBingo card), but I'm not entirely sure if it's for me. Not sure what's bothering me, just... vibes. I'm cognisant that it's longer than 400 pages, so I might just be getting daunted due to most of my reading being significantly shorter than that. Silly, but it's a thing that does happen to me these days.

It felt like a weight I didn‘t know I was carrying was lifted to read a fantasy about someone with a chronic illness. Real seeming chronically ill characters, where it‘s every day, don‘t show up much in genre fiction. Then I started to wonder why the character wasn‘t stressing about paying for their medication. I thought they must be fabulously wealthy. Then I remembered, the author is Irish not American. Now I‘m just kinda sad.

This magical murder mystery had some cozy vibes and great rep (MC with fibromyalgia, lesbian/gay MCS, nonbinary side char), & I'd rec it for folks into paranormal fantasy who don't mind flashes of brutal violence, fairly immature MCs (I think I'd categorize it as YA?), and overt mustache twirling. There were a lot of side themes! I'm curious if the next book settles down a little and decides if it's doing a cozy or a hard-boiled detective mystery.

First two days of this week already done… I haven‘t read anything since Sunday, I can‘t concentrate. Election anxiety is sky high, especially since I‘m not American and can‘t really do anything. To all American 🇺🇸 Littens, please make your voices heard today 💙🗳️.