Grey Cupertino

I dislike this book the more I think about it. The 3-star rating is really only for the quality of Fred Berman's performance as narrator. 

I can handle Ig Perrish being an unreliable and unlikeable narrator. The problem is that everyone in this book is unlikeable, even Marrin. Ultimately, all of the events in this book are triggered by Marrin making decisions for Ig. Supposedly, these decisions are driven by her love for him but I can't view them as anything but truly selfish and disrespectful of Ig's autonomy. 

The book rotated through the POVs of different characters, which can be a wonderful storytelling device. However, I very much did not need to have Lee Tourneau's actions justified by mental illness. It could have and (in my opinion) should have been left to an entitled white man doing entitled white man things.

I backed this book via Backer Kit, and got the hardback as my pledge reward. I was extremely excited to back a couple of independent authors from my home state. The fact that it's urban fantasy with queer rep just made the project all the more appealing.

It took me far too long to get to reading the book, thanks to work and ADHD conspiring against me. I'm so glad that I managed to make this the last book I read in 2025.

Both Acanthus and Cypress are fully realized characters, and I love the concept of the Night Garden as a sort of Underground Railroad for supernatural individuals. Given how Acanthus was turned, and the way they spent the first 60 years of their immortal life, I completely understood why providing a path to freedom would be important to them.

The evolution of the relationship between Acanthus and Cypress was wonderfully organic, and I was very happy for the reveal that Acanthus had become Cypress's pack. My heart hurt for them as they each worked through their self-doubt and uncertainty regarding their relationship. They both needed that care and support, but it's so incredibly hard to reach for those things when one has been hurt so much.

Getting more insight into the Night Garden and how it operated was fascinating. Being a founder of the Night Garden, Acanthus's journey following it's path as a supplicant rather than a gardener was fraught and uncomfortable. However, it reconnected the vampire with the friends he'd left behind when he went into his self-imposed isolation. In my opinion, this was invaluable in helping Acanthus rediscover his strengths.

For Cypress, taking the path of the Night Garden was invaluable rediscovering their self-worth and self-confidence. He was also able to start rebuilding his faith in others, and discover a community that welcomed him with open arms. Without the Night Garden, I don't think Cypress would have learned to communicate their needs to Acanthus.

I'm incredibly excited for the next chapter in their story.

It took me forever to get into this book - the main character, Max, was incredibly whiny from page one. Also he's 16, and supposed to attend a huge gathering to find his Mate. Yup, capital M, as in One True Love for Life. 

I can't even... At 16, no one is ready for that kind of thing. 

Once we get to the gathering, everything seems very heteronormative and binary. And Max, despite being 16 and hormonal, doesn't seem to have ever considered that he might be gay. I find these things pretty problematic for a book marketed as a queer romance. 

On top of that, the whole fated mate trope always feels coercive to me. WTF is a person supposed to do if one half the bond (after all, these are usually reserved for couples) is occupied by an abusive person? Suck it up and take it, because the universe has told them they have to love the other? Sadly, this is exactly what Max did for basically the entire book. His mate, Jasper, treats him like garbage from their first, accidental encounter.

Honestly, this book felt very much like Max was intended to be a female, but the author was told that a paranormal, m/m romance would sell better. 

The dialogue was terrible. It all read like what a middle-aged or older person imagines young people sound like. Even Max's inner monologue made me roll my eyes in sheer disbelief. At one point, visiting Jasper's home, Max sees Jasper's trophies and says, “He's won more prizes than Meryl Streep.” I can't think of many 16 year old individuals who would be familiar with Streep's ouevre. 

Of the characters we saw the most, none were likable. One couldn't even name her boyfriend's major. Max has an immense superiority complex, dubbing many other male characters and dismissing them as ‘bros.' There were huge issues in the world building, discrepancies that took me right out of the story.

I can't say that I'm at all interested in reading the rest of this trilogy after all that.

 Well, Fear the Flames by Olivia Rose Darling is a book that happened in my life. I initially rated it 1.5 stars on my personal scale, and in the ten minutes I looked for my reading journal (it fell behind a fan), my brain supplied so many glaring inconsistencies that I took half a star off. 

The female main character is the most Mary Sue of Mary Sues. Somehow, despite being a fugitive princess, she's managed to found her own kingdom, learned to be a healer, a thief, baker, gardener, and dual-knife wielding master assassin, and mastered high court social graces.

Uh-huh. 
  Barring her gay bestie and another side character, every man who crosses her path is instantly attracted to her. To an insane degree. 

Oh, and she has five dragons who are spiritually bonded to her. Except those dragons are being held captive due to a prophecy, the same prophecy that turned her into a fugitive. The same prophecy that turned her father into a paranoid, power-hungry despot who decided that it was okay to have his child of no more than five years, be tortured daily for years. 
  And yet, somehow, she's so unblemished and perfect and beautiful that men get stupid around her. 
  The vast majority of the book - some 200+ pages - were spent building up to the ‘heist,' to break into a castle and rescue the dragons. The ‘heist' was over in like 5 pages, with the MMC setting off a deus ex machina bomb. One that conveniently lets the dragons fly off. 
  Yes, fly off, even though they've been chained down for YEARS and wouldn't have the muscle power to generate a stiff breeze with their wings. 
  But to get even that far, I had to wade through a very weak enemies to lovers arc, with back and forth that was hardly witty enough to be called banter.  I also had to read the FMC and MMC getting horny for each other in a dirty ass alley after murdering a soldier for his uniform, a torture porn scene, and several instances of FMC swearing that the fact that she was tortured meant that she could do her own fair share of torture. 

Chronicling the murders of Stephanie Sprang, Tina Hermann, and Kody Maynard, as well as the kidnapping of Sarah Maynard, I read this book to satisfy the ‘true crime' square of my #spookyreadingbingo challenge for the fall of 2024. 

While I would never advocate the sensationalizing of crimes as horrific as these, this was an excruciatingly boring read. Frankly, it read like an eighth grader's book report. The writing was awfully simplistic, and I caught more than one place where some copy-editing was needed. Overall, it read like a basic summary of contemporary news articles.

Additionally, given the emphasis on Sarah Maynard's recovery and behavior in the aftermath of the arrest of the perpetrator (especially in the last handful of chapters), it feels like the book was published to provide explanation for Sarah's survival. While I did not go digging into how the public reacted to Sarah in the months after the murders, it feels like Sarah was accused of recovering too quickly, or cooperating too much with her kidnapper. While I can understand how Sarah and her father would want to recover her reputation, I don't know that this was the best way. Trolls would have fed on this sort of thing. 

That said, given that this book was published just a couple of years after the murders, I can see how emotions would have still been high. Regardless, this isn't something I would recommend reading.