Always Lost in Words

by Jenna Wolfhart, pub date 8/1/22

3*s. Best enjoyed when you need a quick and dark fae story.

Publisher’s Synopsis

“When the vicious fae king catches Tessa stealing powerful gemstones from his mines, he demands a cruel punishment. She must leave her family and friends behind and become his future human bride.

Tessa has never stepped foot inside the glittering fae city until now—no mortal is allowed. There, things are far more monstrous than she ever dreamed. King Oberon humiliates her, terrorizes her, and threatens those she loves.

But when she escapes, someone far worse finds her. The lethal Mist King, the enemy fae who trapped her people beneath the reign of King Oberon in the first place. The one who destroyed human cities and watched them burn.

He takes her captive and then offers her a deal.

Become the first mortal to kill a fae king, and he will free her people.

But the mists beyond the kingdom walls are dangerous, ruthless, and mesmerizing…and so is he. As Tessa fights her growing desire, she must make a choice.

Her dagger can kill only one fae. Which king will it be?”

Review:

Of Mist and Shadows is a pretty decent overall story. It has some very dark themes involving forced marriage, torture, and murder. 

King Oberon’s reign has been long and horrible in the land without night. It’s the only place that the people of his lands can be safe, however. Were they to cross the bridge into the misty woods, they would be plunged into night and most likely the jaws of one of the many shadow monsters that hide amongst the trees. King Oberon is obviously a horrid overlord, but is the Mist King the villain that Tessa and the other members of Oberon’s kingdom have been lead to believe?

Although I enjoyed this story, I had a rough time with Tessa’s character. She was pretty immovable in her thoughts and was far more stubborn than someone who had her experiences should be to the proof that was right in front of her. Granted, she’s grown up in an oppressive village under the threat of constant violence, but you would think she could see through the gaslighting of King Oberon, especially with how he killed her father and tortured her. 

However, despite my issues with the main character, I loved many of the supporting personalities, and I can’t wait to get to know them better in the next installment. I also was left with so many unanswered questions. What ARE the gods? What happens to King Oberon’s previous mortal wives and children? Are the human kingdoms across the sea intact? Will Tessa ever find her family who escaped into the Mist after the wedding? You’ll be asking these, too. Luckily for you, the next installment, Of Ash and Embers, is available now!

Thanks to Netgalley and Victory Editing for the advanced copy in exchange for this review. 

Kate M Williams, Pub Date July 31, 2022.

4*s. Best Enjoyed:

Publisher Synopsis (Random House Children’s):

“The beach read you have been dying for! When ten of America’s hottest teenage influencers are invited to an exclusive island resort, things are sure to get wild. But murder isn’t what anyone expected. Will anyone survive?

Everyone knows Unknown Island—it’s the world’s most exclusive destination. Think white sand beaches, turquoise seas, and luxury accommodations. Plus, it’s invite only, no one over twenty-one allowed, and it’s absolutely free. Who wouldn’t want to go?

The mysterious resort launched with a viral marketing campaign, and now the whole world is watching as the mysterious resort opens its doors to the First Ten, the ten elite influencers specifically chosen to be the first to experience everything Unknown Island has to offer. You know them. There’s the gamer, the beauty blogger, the rich girl, the superstar, the junior politician, the environmentalist, the DJ, the CEO, the chef, and the athlete.

What they don’t know is that they weren’t invited to Unknown Island for their following—they were invited for their secrets. Everyone is hiding a deadly one, and it looks like someone’s decided it’s payback time. Unknown Island isn’t a vacation, it’s a trap. And it’s beginning to look like the First Ten—no matter how influential—are never coming home.“

My Review:

This was my first “influencers go to an island for some sort of preview, end up in some real hot water” YA horror novel. To be honest, I stan! There are similar books like this one available or upcoming that you may want to check out if you enjoyed this one. 

Told through revolving POVs, Never Coming Home follows a group of influencers invited to an island paradise that turns out to be anything but. The rooms they have are sorely lacking the advertised amenities. Buildings are far from finished. There are zero staff staying for the weekend, meaning they must rely on themselves for everything. At one point, one of our influencers sees a very deadly sea snake in the pool. 

Right away after breakfast one of our influencers ends up dead in a way that was clearly deliberately targeted toward that person. The group can’t figure out at first if it this is just a fluke or maybe revenge for something that person may have done, but they soon find out that it is because all of them have secrets. Everyone has done something cause the death of another person in some way, whether deliberate or not. 

Soon, the members of the group begin dying in a myriad of very specific ways and there is no way to contact anyone outside. It doesn’t help that the locals avoid that island like the plague. 

Will they be able to uncover the killer before they all die at their hands? Or will the unfinished hotel buildings in this false paradise become their tomb?

The ending of this book is very surprising. I had my suspicions throughout, but there are some twists and turns that would make a rollercoaster junkie a little nauseous. If you’re up for some darkness in paradise, I highly recommend adding this to your TBR. 

Thanks to Netgalley and Random house for the advanced ebook in exchange for this review. 

By Julia Bennet, Pub Date 2/2/2023

3.5*s. Great Historical romance pick by an independent publisher!

PUBLISHER’S SYNOPSIS

“A defiant Victorian wife fights to escape a bad marriage but her love for a forbidden man jeopardizes her chance at freedom.

James Standish knows how to play society’s game. He’ll follow the rules, marry a virginal debutante, and inherit a massive fortune. At least, that’s the plan until he meets Francesca Thorne. She’s not the sort of woman a respectable gentleman like James could ever marry—not least because, strictly speaking, she’s married already.

Francesca is determined to flout convention and divorce her philandering husband. When James sweet talks his way into her life tasked with convincing her to abandon her dream of freedom, she’s unprepared for the passion that flares between them.

Torn apart by conflicting desires, James and Francesca must choose whether to keep chasing the lives they’ve always wanted or take a chance on a new and forbidden love.”

REVIEW

The Worst Woman in London follows two very interesting main characters. Francesca is a woman bent on escaping her marriage of roughly a decade to a spouse that has taken on many mistresses and doesn’t care to give her much of a glance since he found out that she wasn’t the naïve young woman he thought he needed to marry (this becomes a plot point later in the book). James is a respectable gentleman who must toe the line of polite society in order to inherit his aunt’s title and fortune.

When Francesca’s estranged husband requests that James meet with Francesca with an offer of a heavy allowance in exchange for her dropping her pursuit of divorce (strictly to stop embarrassing him, of course), James is surprised to find a woman with a backbone of iron unwilling to budge. She’s not at all the woman that his friend has been describing to him the last nine or so years as cold and unwelcoming. Instead, he sees a fire and passion that he finds quite intriguing, and he can’t quite blame her for her ire given that her husband not only has been keeping mistresses, but doing so in a very public and quite embarrassing way.

James is not the man that Francesca assumed, either. He seems to understand her predicament and her feelings. They form a sort of friendship that quickly leads to secret feelings. However, if Francesca is going to get all she wants from this divorce—her freedom and a possible ability to remarry if she so chose—she needs to avoid further scandal at all costs. James is in the same position. He knows that in order to inherit, he must be prepared to let his thoughts of Francesca go and do what is expected of him. Marry a respectable debutante who can sire an heir to his aunt’s fortune and title and eventually inherit it himself. 

However, as James and Francesca’s friendship develops into something more, they both must question if the futures they had planned for themselves are really what they most desire or if what they truly need is each other. 

I really enjoyed this one. It explored what divorced looked like back then, and how hard it was for a woman to obtain one when she was part of polite society. A man could absolutely flaunt his affairs in the face of society but even a whiff of scandal from a woman—true or false–and her entire reputation was in tatters. It is enough to boil my feminist blood to see how poorly women have been treated and disproportionately blamed for all of society’s ills when the majority had no true society-given power (but of course, it was also imposed on them by all other women in a self-feeding patriarchal societal system…), but I digress. 

Applying our modern sensibilities to the less than well-aged parts of past society is what I like most about historical romance and is also why the feminist undercurrent of these books is so appealing. Watching women take back their power is a personal kink and if you agree with me, you’ll find this book to be one of the ones where the heroine is what we all aspire to be and the hero is just what we want. 

Thank you Netgalley and Julia Bennet for the advanced ebook in exchange for this review. 

A letter to myself.

There are so many parts and pieces to healing from trauma that people just don’t know.

Healing from trauma, especially serial trauma, is an incredibly hard journey. This is something we know, something a lot of us live with daily. But what people don’t tell you is that when you are finally working through it, when you’re pealing away the bandaids after the bleeding stops and the scabs have formed, you’re still in an extremely vulnerable state. Sometimes it’s incredibly hard to not peel back those scabs and crawl back into the safety of the “bandaid,” being attached to your body but still somehow separate.

I’m not sure if there’s a true term for that disconnection when you’ve dealt with various forms of abuse throughout your life, but I’m sure it’s something along the lines of ‘incomplete disassociation.’ All I know is that when you begin to float back into your body after a long period of feeling out of it, it feels like a new skin.

However, when you do begin to shake off the shackles of oppressive thoughts and start living for yourself and gaining confidence and are finally ready to start trusting people and molting that old, scarred husk that was a prison of insecurity and fear, there are going to be those you thought cared about you and your well being that are going to do things that make you want to shove yourself back into it because they don’t seem to like what they see, and that’s the new you trying to break itself out like a butterfly. They are going to do things that make you want to sink back into that box that made you so very palatable for them.

You’re got to express new thoughts, new ideas. Tell stories and tales with a confidence that makes them wary because it wasn’t there before, and society doesn’t like a person who has always struggled to find their voice that can suddenly sing a beautiful, loud, and deeply freeing song. It’s startling, and sometimes they’re going to reject the true you, whether consciously or not, and it’s going to hurt. A lot.

It’s going to cause you to rethink relationships with people you really care for because that fresh new body you’ve just spent all that time creating and cleaning and preparing for your fragile new confidence is a vulnerability to you because you’re not fully locked in yet. That trust you’ve work so hard to start giving again will feel like porcelain, cracking under the pressure simply because someone you thought SAW you, someone you trusted and turned to during your journey, has no use for someone who is finding themselves and new ways to express their inner self. It’s going to throw you right back into those oppressive thought bubbles, causing you to be riddled with anxiety, and make you question if you are ever going to be worthy of love.

When you want people to have your back the most, they’re going to disappoint you in ways that hurt deeply and make you feel like you are completely outside again. In the dark. Alone. The blanket of depression will try to creep over you again as it has so many times before. Be patient.

It’s going to be hard to hold onto that light you have kindled in your freshly-washed spirit. They may not even know how much these little cuts hurt you, but they do. They pierce like needles into the hands you’ve scrubbed clean until they were baby soft again. They may not even mean to, but you feel it. And because you’ve spent time deconstructing your shell and your negative thoughts and are still working on finding ways to not blame yourself for how people react to you, you’re going to be able to see your trauma responses more clearly while they’re happening. The windows will be mostly clean because you’re had to do the work in order to find yourself, and it’s going to make you so irrationally angry because you have given them the very trust you have worked so hard grow again, the trust you sculpted like carefully blown glass, kept far from your body until it hardened enough to touch it and give it to someone like the gift it is. You have let them have a front row seat into this new confident you and you are COUNTING ON THEM to help you find your feet again, entrusting them with this gift that has taken you so long to form and handle and wrap…

I don’t want you to stop feeding that fire inside of you just because they let you down, just because they looked at that gift like it was just a trinket to put on a shelf and allow to gather dust. We should be used to people letting us down at this point, shouldn’t we?

Alas, don’t allow yourself to be disheartened. You’re going to have other people who have felt the same pain as you on their own healing journey who will support you and show you they love you no matter what your new brain communicates to the world through your newly budded, fragile lips. They will see that little bubble of trust that you have tried so hard to create, and they will cherish it because they know. They will encapsulate it in iron and place it on their belt because that is a token that deserves to be displayed. And the key is to cling to that feeling of support and to not let yourself down. Let go of those feelings of bitterness and anger that you may have towards those who ultimately just aren’t ready to be inspired by your strength and start their own journeys, and treat your trust and love like the gift it is. Rise above, babe.

In the end, we’re all on a healing journey, and someday you may be able to help them find their legs in a way they couldn’t help you find yours. But you’ll know what to do when that day comes and you’ll clip their hopes to your belt, too. Because you’re amazing and a true wonder to behold. Never forget that. Forge on.

By Lauren Blackwood. Pub date Feb 7, 2023

4.5*. Enjoy with a cup of hot tropical tea, something that makes you feel like it’s straight from the humid recesses of a caribbean island jungle.

PUBLISHER’S SYNOPSIS

“Eighteen-year-old Victoria is a Wildblood. Since she was kidnapped at the age of six and manipulated by the Exotic Lands Touring Company, she’s worked as a tour guide ever since with a team of fellow Wildbloods who take turns using their magic to protect travelers in a Jamaican jungle teeming with ghostly monsters.

When the boss denies Victoria an earned promotion to team leader in favor of Dean, her backstabbing ex, she’s determined to prove herself. Her magic may be the most powerful on the team, but she’s not the image the boss wants to send their new client, Thorn, a renowned goldminer determined to reach an untouched gold supply deep in the jungle.

Thorn is everything Victoria isn’t – confident, impossibly kind, and so handsome he leaves her speechless. And when he entrusts the mission to her, kindness turns to mutual respect, turns to affection, turns to love. But the jungle is treacherous, and between hypnotic river spirits, soul-devouring women that shed their skin like snakes, and her ex out for revenge, Victoria has to decide – is promotion at a corrupt company really what she wants?

A fierce, lush fantasy by New York Times bestselling author Lauren Blackwood, Wildblood tells the story of a girl who must find the strength to defeat the demons of the jungle as well as her own to find where she truly belongs.”

HEART & SPIRIT (REVIEW)

I had the absolute pleasure of reading Lauren Blackwood’s Within These Wicked Walls and was overjoyed when I was approved for her upcoming fantasy novel, Wildblood. Put this one in your TBR! 

Some overarching themes may be TW: references to sexual assault, overt tones of racism, and violence. 

Victoria is a Wildblood. They are a special group of people who can turn blood into weapons or manipulate it and she is particularly good at what she does. Like her, the people who “work” for her company are mostly people of color, feared for their abilities. Also like her, most of the Wildbloods in The Company were kidnapped or taken from their parents. Their specific type of magic holds purpose in what they do, and that’s to help tourists or others through the jungles in Jamaica, which are populated by deadly insects, bloodthirsty beasts, and dangerous spirits that lure you to your death or even steal your face if you don’t know how to properly treat them and avoid them. It gives value to their abilities, but it’s also the only existence for Wildbloods. They are paid, but not enough to ever escape, and the only option would be going through the jungle if the guards don’t kill you first. Even then, the world outside can be so dangerous when your body was born with magic that not everyone understands.

Victoria’s main driving force is to get promoted so she can be paid enough to get her charge, Bunny, out of the company. He struggles with his magic and Victoria is afraid that he will stretch himself too far with it, which can be deadly for Wildbloods. However, the promised promotion is no where in site and instead she is given a deal. If she helps Dean, her former friend turned mortal enemy, on the next expedition and makes him look good, she will have her promotion. However, the next mission isn’t like all the others. The newest tourist group is headed by a man named Thorn, a very wealthy person of color whose fortune came from mining. Instead of the usual transport through the jungle on roads that are travelled often by clients of The Company, Thorn needs to get to the center of the jungle. However, the jungle doesn’t take politely to intruders and will not tolerate the intrusion this group brings. 

This mission is unlike any other she has been on before, and three warnings are given over the course of the trip that make Victoria beg both Thorn and Dean to stop the journey, despite the punishment that she might get from it. However strong Victoria’s connection to the jungle and its creatures, it won’t be enough to stop the death, deception, and danger that they are all in. As things fall apart, Victoria must acknowledge who she truly is if she is going to get herself and the people she cares about back to safety. 

This book was filled with so many twists and turns and mysteries that opened up like beautiful tropical flowers. It’s so hard to write a review without revealing too much, and there are so many things that happen throughout the pages that are surprising and heartbreaking and also beautiful. Discovering where Victoria came from and how she came to be in the company was my favorite part, but you don’t discover it until far into the book, but it explains so much.

I highly recommend this book!

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press/Wednesday Books and Netgalley for the advanced copy in exchange for this fair and honest review. 

By Olivia Dade, Pub Date 11/15/22

5*s Best enjoyed when you’re a general person who loves love in all its messiness. Read on, I’ll explain!

PUBLISHER’S SYNOPSIS

“Maria’s one-night-stand—the thick-thighed, sexy Viking of a man she left without a word or a note—just reappeared. Apparently, Peter’s her surly Gods of the Gates co-star, and they’re about to spend the next six years filming on a desolate Irish island together. She still wants him…but he now wants nothing to do with her.

Peter knows this role could finally transform him from a forgettable character actor into a leading man. He also knows a failed relationship with Maria could poison the set, and he won’t sabotage his career for a woman who’s already walked away from him once. Given time, maybe they can be cooperative colleagues or friends—possibly even best friends—but not lovers again. No matter how much he aches for her.

For years, they don’t touch off-camera. But on their last night of filming, their mutual restraint finally shatters, and all their pent-up desire explodes into renewed passion. Too bad they still don’t have a future together, since Peter’s going back to Hollywood, while Maria’s returning to her native Sweden. She thinks she needs more than he can give her, but he’s determined to change her mind, and he’s spent the last six years waiting. Watching. Wanting.

His shipwrecked Swede doesn’t stand a chance.”

REVIEW:

I have relatively recently become a huge fan of Olivia Dade, namely when I was approved for All the Feels, the second book of this same series. I quickly had to add Spoiler Alert to my library and absolutely devoured it. I wasn’t sure I would love this one to the same level I loved the others, but I was very wrong. As an extra extra luscious lady myself, there aren’t too many books written about people with our body type but Olivia Dade has been an amazing and very much welcome addition to the contemporary romance scene.

Shipwrecked follows the story of Peter and Maria, two plus sized stars of the series that brought us the heroes in the first two books of the series. It starts with a one night stand that turns into a series of somewhat hilarious events that lands them both on an island off the coast of Ireland as romantic costars in a highly rated fantasy show. Maria and Peter, who still secretly have the hots for one another, must navigate the ins and outs of a working relationship that includes body shaming by producers, a dolphin with a penchant toward violence, and salty licorice. 

What I loved about this was that Maria was totally okay with being a luscious Swedish bombshell, while Peter had the true struggles with accepting his robust body. Regardless, I am a lover of large men and loved that Dade decided to bring these costars to my ereader screen. The struggles they faced as lovers later (Spoiler Alert?—this is a joke. If  I’m spoiling this for you do you even read romance?) are all regarding how they will maintain their romance and coming to terms with compromise and self-acceptance, respectively. All things that everyone in all their bodies tend to struggle with. 

As much as I say that I love this as a luscious person, I think those who are leaner would also enjoy it very much. The struggles that fat people face are often the same that skinny people tend to face. Self-acceptance, compromise, belief in our abilities as humans, how to navigate potentially long distance situations, how to be in a relationship. That’s what I loved most about this installment. It really explores those issues in a cogent and important way that is universal. So if you aren’t sure of yourself, or you’re lean, or you’re luscious or you just want a fun romp filled with broody heroes and herring-wielding ladies of the gorgeous type, pick this up. Dade gets you. 

Thank you so very much to Netgalley, Avon and Harper Voyager, and Olivia Dade for the advanced copy in exchange for this review. It was a fun couple of days and I can’t wait for the next!

By Amelie Wen Zhao, Pub date 1/3/23

5*s. Best enjoyed if you love some amazing fantasy folklore retellings from our Far Eastern neighbors. 

PUBLISHER’S SYNOPSIS:

“Once, Lan had a different name. Now she goes by the one the Elantian colonizers gave her when they invaded her kingdom, killed her mother, and outlawed her people’s magic. She spends her nights as a songgirl in Haak’gong, a city transformed by the conquerors, and her days scavenging for what she can find of the past. Anything to understand the strange mark burned into her arm by her mother in her last act before she died.

The mark is mysterious—an untranslatable Hin character—and no one but Lan can see it. Until the night a boy appears at her teahouse and saves her life.

Zen is a practitioner—one of the fabled magicians of the Last Kingdom. Their magic was rumored to have been drawn from the demons they communed with. Magic believed to be long lost. Now it must be hidden from the Elantians at all costs.

When Zen comes across Lan, he recognizes what she is: a practitioner with a powerful ability hidden in the mark on her arm. He’s never seen anything like it—but he knows that if there are answers, they lie deep in the pine forests and misty mountains of the Last Kingdom, with an order of practitioning masters planning to overthrow the Elantian regime.

Both Lan and Zen have secrets buried deep within—secrets they must hide from others, and secrets that they themselves have yet to discover. Fate has connected them, but their destiny remains unwritten. Both hold the power to liberate their land. And both hold the power to destroy the world. 

Now the battle for the Last Kingdom begins.”

REVIEW:

When I tell you that this book blew me away, I’m not kidding. I absolutely adored it. It took me a couple of chapters to get into it, but after that it absolutely FLEW by. I am in a major East Asian folklore retellings phase right now, though I have been a fan since I first read The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo. My interest was rekindled by Elizabeth Lim’s recent Six Crimson Cranes and Blood of Stars duologies. Perhaps that makes me slightly more biased, but if you enjoy stories like that, you will love this. 

Song of Silver, Flame Like Night explores severe colonialism and culture erasure from the viewpoint of the oppressed. That alone is a good reason to read this, but the intensity does not stop at the violence. The Elantians, who are colonizing the Hin lands, bring a strange magic that is pulled from metals as opposed to the magic of the Hin people, which is based on qi-the natural energies of the world, which must keep a balance. The Hin people pre-conquer believed in keeping qi in balance, and also believed in the four Demon Gods who used to rule the land. The Silver Dragon, The Phoenix, the Azure Tiger, and the Black Turtle. These demons were purportedly long trapped, but those who possessed the dark qi of the demon gods wielded great but uncontrollable power. The first chapter goes through the history, legends, and lore and adds depth into the world build and aids in the reader’s understanding of the need for balance and care by practitioners of qi-related magic. 

In the beginning of the book, Lan, orphaned at a young age, works for the largest tea house in the capital, Haak’gong as a song girl. Life as a song girl is very precarious and Lan, a strong and rebellious sort, soon finds herself in hot water when a Elantian soldier threatens her and she unwittingly kills him with magic she didn’t know she had possessed. She is saved by a boy in hiding as a Hin court employee, Zen, who secretly is a qi practitioner and part of the last hidden school of magic. 

Soon, Lan finds herself in the secret school training. However, as the threats to the last remaining bastion of Hin culture loom ever closer, Lan and Zen must find the secrets behind the mark left on her by her mother before her death at the hands of the Elantian Winter Magician. It may be their only hope to saving their people. Danger lies ahead, and a hunt for the four demon gods begins. 

The fantasy elements of this book are incredible, the writing is absolutely engrossing, and you can feel and practically see the emotions and settings of this book. I give major props to Wen Zhao. I didn’t think I could be as captivated by this as I was and it was so much better than I could have anticipated. I had this on my list for 2023 books I was interested in, and that list was super short this year (MAYBE 10 books deep). I was overjoyed to get an advanced copy of it and finished it so very quickly in December, 2022. Yes, my review is late, but that should tell you how great this was that has stuck in my brain so firmly. In other words, it’s been released and if you don’t have it in your cart right now or even have it already on its way, you are sorely missing out. PLUS, IT’S FRIDAY. You have the whole weekend to explore this brand new world!

Genuine thanks to Netgalley, Amelie Wen Zhao, and Random House for the advanced copy in exchange for this sincerely honest review. I can’t wait for more books like this!

By Gloria Duke. Pub date 10/4/2022

4*s. Best enjoyed when you’re luscious and very much non undead…or you are. Either way, you’ll like it.

PUBLISHER’S SYNOPSIS

“A paranormal Dumplin’ for adults, When Life Gives You Vampires is part a journey of body positivity, part a story about learning how to accept love at face value, and part a hysterical romcom told through a paranormal lens.

Twenty-five year old Lily Baines is used to waking up hungover, overweight, and underemployed. Waking up with fangs? Not so much. But when it turns out a little light necking has more serious consequences than she ever imagined, Lily’s determined to get to the bottom of it.

Tristan hadn’t meant to turn Lily-it’s against vampire law-but now that she’s here, they need to team up to save their hides. They strike a truce, fending off other vampires, Lily’s work-rival-turned-slayer, and her mother’s tone-deaf romance and fitness advice-all while Lily faces down her insecurities about the fact that she lives in a diet-obsessed world with a body that will never age, never die, and never change. Can she learn to love the (plus size) woman she’ll be forever more?”

REVIEW

I’m not going to lie. As a luscious lady myself, I’ve often thought of how becoming Undead would affect my mindset on how I feel about my body. I honestly love that Gloria Duke wrote an entire book about it, because as much as I’ve thought about it I’ve never really talked to anyone about it. It for sure felt like I was doing that while reading this, and she said ALL the things I was thinking. It’s hard to live in a plus sized body as it is, but a plus sized body forever? 

Honestly, the things that we worry about when it comes to having a plus sized body go beyond just acceptance to our health. But if we’re undead, what’s the honest to the gods reasons for worrying about it and not accepting it? I loved the journey that Lily went on throughout this book. Finding love not only externally but internally, and accepting her new strength and resilience. Not only that, but also realizing that the same judgements she held for herself were just as true of those with more societally accepted bodies. Women are just made to feel like crap for what we look like, undead or otherwise. 

All that said, the romance felt super pure, and the adventure that came along with it was all the more amazing. Lily is a total badass, and no one in the undead set really used her looks against her, which put a real warm and fuzzy vibe in my very un-undead heart. 

Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for this amazing book. I really appreciated the way this material was handled. It’s honest but far from impartial.