Cecilie

I... am so angry.
These are my immediate thoughts after reading, so bear with me.
But why? I don't get why this? Why?
It feels pointless to have read this book.
The first 75% of the book, I was enjoying so much. Genuinely was having such a good time, and I was excited to read it whenever I picked it up. So WHY.
OLIVIE, WHY. MISS BLAKE, WHY.
She killed off my two favorite characters of this book. Why would you do that? You made, arguably, the main character so... uninteresting. The motivation felt so disconnected from what was happening. It was characte  deterioration at its worst, like, I didn't like it at all. And like, what was the point? To say “haha life sucks and people are bad”? 
I just don't get it, Olivie. What did you accomplish here? Like, why? Why? Why?
I'm so conflicted. 

Overall, I thought that there were quite a few stories that simply were not dark academia, but just a campus mystery, so that pulls the anthology down in general. No stories were exceptional, though I definitely would have loved more of The Unknowable Pleasures. It ended too abruptly and I was invested.
Standouts were: Pythia, The Ravages, Four Funerals, The Unknowable Pleasures, and Phobos.

I don't know if this is the right rating. It was so intense and I spent the majority of it feeling like my heart was going to burst out of my chest - and not in a good way.
It was addictive and terrifying. God, Paul was so terrifying. It was really good.

There was barely a plot but the vibes were all there. 
I nearly felt sick at times at the suspense of when everything would go to shit, knowing it was right around the corner.
Ines truly ends where she started. Theo's brainwashedness is so awful to read. CH clearly drugged him on “three pills a day” and the hypnosis-plasm stuff they do. Of course, he was always obsessed but by the end, he's barely a person anymore. Just a shell obsessed with immortality and beauty. It's so gross.

Absolutely unhinged. In the best way, I loved it! The rating might increase based on jow the book stays with me, but I had a great time! Took a bit to get into the groove of it for me personally, though I would say that had more to do with my busy days rather than the book. 
It was deranged and ridiculous. Highly recommend. 

This had elements I liked much better than the first book and elements I liked much less. So it was weird combo, inevitably ending with the same rating though.
I thoroughly enjoy Callum every single time he's there, he gets better and better with every chapter. I didn't love Libby's story, and Nico and Reina's spat seemed odd and out of place. I loved Tristan coming into himself more, but as a character he's still wildly annoying. I definitely wanted more of Parisa in this one, but I was glad that we at least got more of Gideon, who is such a joy. 
I don't know that I really like the overall plot, I think it is going in a direction that I worry can only leave me disappointed because of how vast the point of contention is. It's like waging war on the world - it always ends in disappointment. 

It's got major book 2 vibes from having the love interests be separated for the vast majority of it, but it also has major final book vibes from all the planning to save everyone, and both of those things are not super fun, so. It was fine. I was there for the characters I've grown to love but even those were separated for a while. And we weren't in the school anymore either. Basically, all the fun bits were out and all the serious bits were in. It put a damper on everything. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Orion, tell me you did not just do that. I mean, I knew you would, but I'm still mad about it.
I had a great time reading this. It's just fun. I like that El is so cranky, and I like that Orion gets giddy when El lets something romantic happen, even though he's hardwired to be a mal-killing machine. It's just fun, y'all.
Most of the book is just training, which can get a little tedious, but because we're constantly moving towards new goals, the story doesn't go stale.

I think the book is well written and it does nothing very offensive. It's clear from the beginning who will do what but that's not necessarily a flaw so. Idk, I just didn't feel strongly about it at all. 
But at least it's got lesbians.

I was having a fine time with it, it was a quick and easy read. But the ending disappointed me. I was debating where it would fall between three and four stars as I was reading, but the last 50 pages really didn't do it any favors so this where we ended up. The twist was bad. 
Side note: One of the blurbs said “the twist blew my mind” which I can see why someone would feel that way but it's not for a good reason. Because it wasn't foreshadowed at all. It didn't give the book more depth. It was just shock value and it didn't make me feel like I should have known all along. There was no way to know. The hints were not there.

I had a great time reading this! It's deeply unserious in the way that Percy Jackson books are also deeply unserious, you know what I mean? Like, the exasperation from the MC makes you want to take everything as a joke but it isn't actually. I really enjoyed it!
I know there was some controversy on this back when it came out about representation, and its probably safe to say that it didn't nail it head-on - mainly because it isn't very representative at all. But I enjoyed it nonetheless, and I don't think the book does any active harm either.

Meh. Stoner was a coward, and I wasn't very invested in his life. Overall, it was just too boring for me to find much more enjoyment from than 2.5.

God, the second half was so good. I think Callum is such a fantastic fucking character, and I really need more of that psychopath. His and Tristan's dynamic is just chef's kiss. 

This was not what I thought it would be at all but if I didn't enjoy the hell out of it anyway, tho. 
It's actually gross, so don't read it if you're squeamish. But otherwise? Who doesn't love some good ol' wlw romance?

Started out being too much like PLL and GG, but it got better wheb things turned more serious. I really liked how queer it was, and I liked that Devon and Chiamaka were had such clearly different black experiences and backgrounds, but obviously still had so many other common experiences too. It led to a great nuance, and made it easy to tell from the writing alone who was telling the story in the chapters.

It hurts. I hurt reading the ending. The last 20% of the book is when you realize just how hopeless it feels to ask for change in a system that doesn't listen. 
A brilliantly written book that really captures colonialism at its core, but not at its worst. That's the scary thing about it.

A book that's been on my list for so incredibly long it feels like. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was expecting it to be more dark academia because I saw it on a list of DA, but I definitely wouldn't call this dark academia. It's very crucially missing the academic aspect lol. I thought Eli as the antagonist is quite boring because all he's raging on is a God complex and I find that boring. I was expecting to be able to be sympathetic to both sides but I was only sympathetic to Victor. That's why it's not higher rated, because otherwise it's intriguing the whole way through, and I always love when bad people have to navigate having a kid around and actually wanting to keep that kid a little safe too. It's a favorite trope of mine and part of what made me interested right from the beginning. 

Oh I loved the ending! Thank you, M. L. Rio, for not leaving me hanging with only a tragic ending. I needed that. What a brilliant Act V.
I wanted more queer than there was throughout ALL of it. I honestly thought they were gonna hit me with the plausible deniability of any Shakespeare play right up until the kiss on stage. Thank fucking god they didn't.
Filippa is MVP, hands down. The only sane of the bunch of them, and deeply relatable. Had this been The Secret History, Filippa would have been the main character lmao. 

I don't even know what to say. It's incredibly difficult to rate this book. It was weirdly inconsistent in managing to grab my attention. I felt like I was on a roller-coaster in some ways because it kept going up and down when it came to grabbing my interest. At times I was completely into it and couldn't stop reading and at other times I was slugging through it, bored out of my mind. This would have been helped if it was simply shorter. 
The book was also unexpectedly homoerotic, but with, like, no pay-off whatsoever. I've never read something so distinctly homoerotic and yet so unequivocally heterosexual in execution.
To call it a modern classic is accurate, in that it gave me all the same feelings as practically every other classic I have read. Particularly, I have similar feelings about this book that I do the Great Gatsby. The characters are flat and unlikeable which makes things hard for me, but they are at least interesting characters, which makes me want to continue. The good thing about Gatsby is that it's a short novel, whereas this one was way too long. That's what made it so boring at times. The good thing about TSH is that it has interesting plot points, which Gatsby sometimes lacked. Overall, though, I find neither particularly impressive.

I know who my ship is now lmaooo. I'm way too much of a sucker for the fall-at-your-feet-in-service-and-love to go any other way.
I have a great time with Alex in these books! There are times when it gets a little ridiculous in terms of how things just happen to fall into place.
The magic also goes full swing in this one. If I thought the end of Ninth House was just bordering on the line into too much magic, this book definitively crossed it. I still had a great time, but that's why it doesn't reach the same height as the first.
I still can't get over the fact that these characters will simply quote a million different authors and scriptures without batting an eye as if it's normal for a whole group of people to simply have that kind of memory.
That aside, I love the dynamic between the characters. I love the way Dawes loves so easily, and the way Alex protects so fiercely. I love women <3

The amount of time I spent unaware that Lethe was not a ~Society~ but actually the equivalent of Campus Cops is embarrassing.
But oh did I really enjoy that! It took a while to pick up - about 160 pages, in fact. But when it did I was so there for it. And I can't for the life of me figure out if I ship Dawes&Alex or Alex&Darlington. I think I'm leaning towards Dawes, but whenever I think that my mind goes “but Darlington will serve her forever!” So yeah. Pretty ambivalent. Maybe the second book will make my feelings clearer. 
The end goes full on magic, to the point that I do wish the book was a bit more contained in that manor. This is why it's not rated closer to five.

I have been reading this book for TWO YEARS. FINALLY! 

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.” This quote completely did me in. I practically raised my rating with a whole star. No one does confessions like Jane Austen.

In the beginning there was a lot of confusion about timelines and the connection between characters, but it eventually became a very interesting story to follow as the characters unravel the workings of a secret organization. It was a solid mystery novel.

What a novel. I've never given much thought to the life of people within ISIS, so this was my first foray into that. It was an incredibly interesting, gut-wrenching, and terrifying story. 

I knew nothing about Albania before reading this. Now I know a little bit about Albania in the 90s. I liked it. It was well-written and interesting to read.