Not for me. Good creepy feel to it but it dragged and the twist was meh.

Light and fun. If, like me, you love the vibe of Gilmore Girls but can't actually stand Luke and sometimes Lorelai, you get the same thing here. This is like a GG fanfic with names changed. That sounds like I had a bad time. I didn't. I enjoyed it more than the soso would make you think.

I absolutely love RPGs.... I do not love lit RPGs. Pretty much the only one I really adored was Ready Player One (1st only). And I think it's that RPO is more about puzzle solving and the players are already established in the game world. This.... i get where a lot of the themes were trying to get to and I appreciate that, but it became pretty boring to hear/read game mechanics so often. Con't in comments.

I figured this would be a love it or hate it book for me. Ended up being a love it book. The mood and the story were all fantastic. Not particularly scary, but there were some pretty frightening bits. Looking forward to reading other books by Grady Hendrix.

Not as good as I hoped for, but still pretty solid. I listened to it on audio while diamond painting and it was perfect for that.

Yes. This! Creepy, terrifying, surprisingly funny. A solid folk horror. The effigies are gonna live in my mind for ages.

This one caught me off guard 🤣🤣

Really enjoyed this one. Nice slow-build relationship and interesting story. Can't wait to see what happens in the next one.

Second to last book club book for the year. Obviously I've heard of the story before, but this is my first time reading it. Just what I imagined so far.

Everytime I read another T Kingfisher, I get the urge to read ALL T Kingfisher.

Never can resist a book about libraries and I often get burned. This one might be..... good? Can it be?

Finished this series and very much enjoyed it. This one focuses far more on Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism and sort of political intrigue between those sects as well as demonic sects. A lot of morality talk and fight choreography and a smattering of romance.

Loved my time reading this one. It doesn't break any new ground as horror goes, but quite frankly, I didn't want it to. I wanted exactly what it gave me. Chills, a creepy old inherited house, page-turning mystery, and a satisfying ending.

💜💜💜

So happy to find this gorgeous edition of this book. 2 chapters in so far and the writing is lovely.

This was basically a Studio Ghibli movie in book form. I just adored it.

I liked this YA, but it felt like a university setting would have been a better fit. And the slang drove me up a wall. I also don't care to read about 16 year olds having sex. It wasn't explicit, but it was more on page than I cared for 🤢

Time to reread the best classic on poor decisions.

This one was less than 100 pages, but it used every last one to full effect. Horror mixed with longing mixed with fantasy. Very good. I have another, longer, one by this author and I very much look forward to it.

This is a reread cause I finally just got the second in the duology.

Really good take on people developing superpowers and what that change would do to you. I am looking forward to reading the other half of the series

My favorite book.

It's hard to know how I feel about this. It's incredibly hard to read and sometimes made me feel sick. But I also feel like Oates intended that reaction so you'd agree with her ending.

On to Frankenstein 🥰

I love this book but I always forget how much these men T A L K.

My good sirs, you are dramatic. Up front info would help a lot.

The Good: great writing, atmospheric setting, unsettling events that left me gritting my teeth, was left wondering what I'd just read

The Bad: was left wondering what I'd just read.

3 or so stars. More like 3.5? Yeah. 3.5 stars.

A really good start to this series! I absolutely believe when people say this series is less about the romance and more about political intrigue. I love both main characters as well as the side characters that have shown up so far. Also, I love all the art that Seven Seas puts in their danmeis. Absolutely gorgeous!

This is very hard to read. Very unsettling. Oates has always been one for unsettling truths and she doesn't pull punches here.

Probably cliché, but this is still my favorite Dickens (followed by Nicholas Nickleby). I definitely appreciate Dickens in shorter form. Eventually I'll reread Bleak House without the pressure of a term paper cause it definitely feels like one I'd like with a little extra time.

One of the reasons I love and prefer the Norton Critical Editions of classics is the (hefty) footnotes instead of endnotes. I detest flipping to the back of the book to read them.

Also, rereading this cause I adored it when I read it for a Humanities class.

LOL

Time to start a new series. The premise of this one is 🤌

Shirley Jackson does creepy so so well.

Also, my goal of having fewer than 100 books on my TBR by the end of the year is in danger because of book purchasing. *sigh*

Started last night (I have very little respect for sleep and reading sounded better) and finished this morning.

This one isn't so much scary to me as creepily unsettling. I just love how the language in this book keeps me feeling uneasy.

Absolutely fantastic version of sleeping beauty. I really love when authors take an existing fairytale and completely turn it on its head.

Nevermind the astonishing amount of cat hair. Bastet has been rolling around.

A reread and still fantastic.

I've also decided to keep a running count of how many books I have on my TBR to dace myself. I'd love to have fewer than 100 by the end of the year but we'll see 🤣🤣

I appreciate what she did in writing this but so far I care very little about the actual story. I will push through a little longer on this simply because the writing is lovely and the audiobook narrator is great.

Every single cover of this series is just gorgeous. 🥰😍

Another great volume. This one felt like the longest case in this series yet. I really enjoy manga as a medium for mystery/whodunnits. The illustrative element adds so much.

Stormy outside, cozy inside.

This one is so good so far. I love T. Kingfisher's writing.

I liked it. I think. It'd probably take a second read to figure out if i love it.

I've heard fantastic things about this one! Looks like it will be a quick read. But that cover 😍😍😍 so weird and wonderful.

I really enjoyed this book but didn't realize until the end that we wouldn't get a wrap up some key points and that there would be a sequel... that doesn't seem to be out yet.

But I did enjoy this one.... it felt kinda like cozy fantasy but with distinctly more plot than they normally have. Will definitely pick up the sequel and I dearly hope Sybilla shows up again.

(The panel is read right to left)

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

This one is actually a little sad for me. I like the writing and the characters are fine, but I can't latch on and care about the story. I don't really know how to explain that I really liked all the parts of it, just not the overall product. I still have Anxious People to try and it sounds far more interesting to me overall so I'm still looking forward to it.

This is the rest of my reading pile for June. Can I finish it? We'll see. An awful lot of this month was taken up by manga, but I've still made a sizeable dent in the novels I'd put aside to read.

Everything about this manga seems like I should love it. Unfortunately, three volumes in and I still don't like it. I'm just not interested 😭

I'm absolutely loving this series. The artwork alone is absolutely STUNNING. As a librarian, I'm happy to find any series with librarians front and center, but this one is just so so good.

Currently trapped so I'm glad I'm reading such a long volume right now.

I'm really loving this series! It's such a good take on vampires and doesn't shy away from morality, ethics, or how dangerous the vampires (or devils here) can be. No fluffy easily controlled creatures here.

What an opening 🤣🤣