Sylphrena

Not quite cozy fantasy, but this delivered as a platteable book to eat up quickly. Like my last book by Kingfisher, it was still too YA for me and the romance was decidedly boring. Unfortunately, unlike the last one, it failed to win me over with any unique charm... this felt cookiecutter. Pretty solid, but I'll consult a fan for a better fit before picking up another of her books. I'd also not call this dark fantasy, even for YA, but maybe my standards for such are high?

gods, i need to stop listening to books i think I'll love, I wish I could have read this for the prose. I loved the slow realization that all the perspectives are the same person and the use of second person narrative was amazingly deployed. I'll get around to (reading) the rest of the series at some point. Great narrator, though that's not a surprise to me, I've been picking audiobooks for my new commute by narrator previews moreso then order in my want to read

Lovely sapphic short story, I just wish it hadn't been predictable, it left you feeling like the protagonist was little silly. I think a much lighter touch on the foreshadowing would have jumped this to five stars. I'd recommend, but don't expect anything groundbreaking :)

All signs said I should love this book, Burning Kingdoms is amazing and a contender for my favorite series of all time, there's lesbians, (kinda) enemies to lovers, the narrator was great... but it failed to get its claws into me. I didn't feel strong emotional attachment to the romance or interest in the magic system and these are the primary factors that I've liked in the author's previous work. It felt like it had all the potential to be a five star read, I can't tell if audiobooks can no longer captivate me like physical/ebooks or if I'm just unable to properly articulate my issues with the book writing my review almost a month after reading (ugh, I've been in a reading slump recently).

I think from the title and cover I expected the sapling cages to be transgender, rather than the very cute YA witchcraft story with a coming of age transgender protagonist. It became pretty clear after a few chapters that this wasn't gonna be quite what I expected, but I'd have loved to have had fantasy like this growing up. I'd probably pick a different book if I could only hand my younger self one book to spoil my gender reveal, but it'd make the list.