Oh, how I loved this wickedly smart, gothic reimagining of Cinderella! In which Ella *IS* the house (or, rather, the house’s ghost), her stepmother is her murderer, and her stepsister is her torturer, and the prince is — well, I won’t spoil it.

I almost — almost — let this one slip through the cracks of my TBR. Reader, that would have been a grave mistake. What an incredible firecracker of a standalone fantasy novel!!

As a fan girl at heart, I love feeling 10x more informed about Tolkien’s lore and hope to pick up more of his supplemental works someday, perhaps starting with the story of Beren and Lúthien.

This is one of those books you can’t examine tooooo closely, but if you just go along for the ride, you’re going to have a really fun time.

Well, I did not expect this novel — about a (female) blob monster who falls in love with a (human) woman and decides she wants to lay her eggs in her body, after which her offspring would devour her from the inside out — to be one of my favorite reads of the year. And yet! What fun this was!

Adrian Tchaikovsky is trying to do a lot here, and insofar as his intentions go, I think he succeeded — Service Model is a funny, voicey book that hits its themes home. Unfortunately, the execution was just not for me.

This is masterful writing and an epic; beautiful story. It’s a slow-paced, aching, intimate, sweeping 700-page book that takes its time, and so must you.

What a moving exploration of youth, love, desire, and recovery from trauma. I’m intrigued to see what the sequel holds for these characters!

Ultimately, it’s like this book aaaaaalmost became what it was trying to be. A bit of a bummer, tbh.

Maybe I’ve read too many books with a similar setting, character archetype, and mood, but I didn’t feel like this one did anything compellingly new for me; it was just another well-written book in its subgenre.

It took me way too long to read The Tainted Cup — its Hugo nomination tipped the scales — because y’all, this was SO much fun and just so well done.