An Vo

Decenter men from your lives, ladies. This book could have been about 150 pages shorter btw 🤷🏻‍♀️ 

This book tried to be a coming-of-age, romance, AND murder mystery book. I only care about the coming of age part to be honest, that's where most of the heart of the books is, telling a story of a deeply wronged child. The romance part was icky, authors need to stop writing love story between an adult and a minor. The murder mystery and the twisted ending was whatever. This could have been a 3/5 book, but then I remember that one page where the author decided to use racial slurs about 10 times for literally no reason, adding nothing to the story. Stop doing that, especially if you are white geez.

One word I can use to describe this book would be “FUN”, but unfortunately, it kinda ends there. The premise is super intriguing: a ship and her companion medical bay learn to reach beyond their usual programming to save the group of ragtag passengers full of monsters that they grew to love. However, the main part of the plot only happens more than halfway through the book's length. The pacing was really doing this plot an even worse disservice, as it makes the storylines feel disjointed and fragmented. 

More importantly, the blurb was trying to sell me Dracula's murderous rampage in space—but the book only delivered about 50 pages of it, leaving me wanting so much more. I also wish there were more world-building for this future, where intergalactic travel is as accessible as economy class, or more to the actual relationship between Demeter-Steward and Agnes-Wilhelmina, instead of the underdeveloped romance plot we got.

I feel like this book is written (subconsciously) to be a TV show, as the storytelling just doesn't fit the book format very well. Though, still pick this up if you want to give cozy sci-fi a try! Maybe you'll love it better than I did.

This one hurts. I wanted to love this book so much because the premise is great, the dynamics between some characters are quite fun to read, and the French gothic setting was done very well. However, I cannot stand the way this book treats EVERY single female character. Not a single female character was portrayed in a positive light. I also draw the line at Joan of Arc, in this setting, being actually possessed (which is what she was accused of in real life, which led to her demise). Also, I didn't like how the rebellion that led to the French Revolution was concluded to be due to demonic contaminated water in Gévaudan that turned the locals violent...  
Though I thoroughly enjoyed the performance of the audiobook narrators, they did an amazing job, and it was a delight to listen to them. Considering this is a debut, I hope Sullivan's later works take into account the issues with this one.

This was decent, but a very simple and unchallenged take on feminism, or shall I say white feminism. I didn't hate but I didn't find it that engaging either. The random JFK  assassination being the turning point for Margaret is weird to say the least.