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Had to admit to myself once again that a fantasy book was not working for me - and such a well loved one at that. :’)

I liked Jezal and Glokta’s POVs well enough. I felt like they had a lot of potential for growth. Logen, though - he suffered the Eddard/Jon of GoT problem. Generic honorable man is just not that interesting, dark past or not. I didn’t get to the fourth POV because I DNFed at 25%.

The main reason I DNFed is because I was bored. ☺️ Nothing was happening that I cared much about, and what was there honestly felt a bit simplistic. Also - this is grimdark? GoT, Realm of the Elderlings, She Who Became the Sun, and Winds of the Forelands are all darker. There’s humor in this that really screws up the grim vibe.

I was also kind of stunned that there wasn’t a single named female character until 60+ pages into the book. When Ardee appears, I was sort of okay with her characterization, but she’s definitely not like other girls and intended mainly as a romantic interest for Jezal.

Lastly, in contrast to everything else I read, when I read fantasy I want lush description. I googled fan art for this book a good bit because I could not figure out what the vibe was, what era this was meant to imitate, what anyone’s uniforms looked like, etc. For all Logen’s talk of Flatheads in the first couple chapters, I had no idea what they were supposed to look like. Dogs? Humanoid? What?

Is this the price of reading Robin Hobb?? I can’t enjoy anything else…

I get why the average rating for this one is low, but it did work for me. It’s very slow and quiet, and the ending is pretty anticlimactic. You don’t really get an explanation for the fits. But overall I enjoyed the quiet moodiness.

I loved the way Caroline grew and the way her father fell off his pedestal. The subtlety of the relationship dynamics between multiple characters was really well drawn. I enjoy stories where most people are trying to keep things polite, but one or two other people are screwing it up. That awkwardness says so much with so little.

Beyond Eliza, the girls are not easy to distinguish. It doesn’t really matter, so I almost wish Beams didn’t try to distinguish them at all. Just embrace them as a cult of Eliza, an outgrowth of her.

The “treatment” from Hawkins was sooo painful to read through, and I thought it was fantastic when Eliza declared Samuel to be the worse man of the two. That’s really saying something.

My main complaint is that the birds don’t come to much besides a metaphor for little understood women and girls. They have more significance in the story than I feel like they warrant in the end.

I recommend this for folks who like a quiet character study.

I enjoyed the author’s movie The Love Witch, so I was interested in trying her book. It’s a unique project, though it reminded me of Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen in its engagement with gothic literature. Biller definitely goes in a different direction with it!

I wanted to like this more, but I enjoyed the first 1/3-1/2 more than the rest. It gets quite repetitive through the middle. It makes sense - that’s what happens in domestic violence situations - but it wasn’t used here in a way that felt like it escalated. I do appreciate the examination of how gaslighting and lovebombing works. It reminded me a little of My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell. They both touch on how a woman might be resistant to seeing a man for what he truly is because of what it means she has to admit about herself (that she was raped, that she was tricked and manipulated).

The writing often left a lot to be desired, but it’s hard to know how much was intentional. The tone was inconsistent in a jarring way for me sometimes. It’d be full of melodrama with tears and flowery description, and then suddenly there’d be a mundane line like “Phew, that was a close call.”

I wish the book had gone further with its exploration of the appeal of dark romance. I also wish it had been more supernatural in the way gothic novels often are. There’s a good idea here that just fell a little flat for me.

Despite the 2 stars, there are a few things I liked about this book. I just thought it was incredibly boring 90% of the time, so those enjoyable things were not enough to boost my star rating.

I’m a little baffled at the status this book has as something of a classic. I’m going to chalk it up to the bizarre ending and the unique scent-focused take this has on a murderer. Because otherwise this thing is very dull, full of details about perfume processing and very little about murdering.

What I liked:
1. The writing style. I thought it was successfully old timey. The narration felt right for the 1700s.
2. The setting. I liked the early days of European “science” feel.
3. The interludes about side characters. I often found those tangents more interesting than the murderer’s story.
4. The ending. It was surreal and bananas, and I just wish it was more like that earlier.

The frame for this story is one I really like. A group of childhood friends with a messy past reconvening years later as adults. You slowly learn what happened in the past as you follow them in the present as well.

I also really liked the concept of the magical houses. I love the idea of the Luck House and Oath House in particular. It must’ve been fun to play with as an author.

I wouldn’t say this is an especially twisty or shocking story, but it’s suspenseful and often creepy.

The six friends all felt distinct, which is a feat, and I wish I got more POVs than Jay’s. That could easily get unwieldy, but maybe Brandi or Hilma would have been nice to add in. I thought the way that the change in Brandi and Jay’s relationship was shown was great, and having Brandi’s thoughts would have been a nice addition. Maybe it would give away too much? But since it’s not a twisty story, I don’t think I’d mind.

My main complaint with the present day storyline is that it took too long for them to visit all the houses. With Brandi missing, I feel like the first thing to do would have been to check at all of the magical houses, especially the Forever House. That visit felt artificially delayed, though I understand the story reasons for doing that. I wish she had come up with a reason for them to not be able to go there at first. Maybe have a certain character lie and say it was burnt down.

It all came together pretty well in the end! Great October read.

I want to be a romantasy girlie so bad, but there are some things currently popular in the genre that I don’t like and are difficult for me to ignore. Especially when it starts to pile up.

1) Super unique physical appearance for the MC, usually involving eye color. I rolled my eyes at this part but felt like I could move past it once established.
2) Dialogue that feels silly and/or contemporary. Initially it seemed like this book was going to avoid that problem, but it started up once the initial danger was past.
3) Simplistic or nonsensical world. Often aspects included for aesthetics, not because it makes any sense. At 25% in, I had no idea how a magical ability to create glass flowers and butterflies mattered. Can she also make other useful things? What is this for?? There’s also a group of guards of the Queen that have had their eyes removed - I’m sure some reason is given for this at some point, but it’s very much the kind of thing that bugs me in fantasy. I think it’s included for the look of it more than anything else.
In general I had a very weak sense of setting and world, so I was getting frustrated. I prefer much more lush settings.

On the plus side, it’s a very readable book. I liked the opening chapters enough to get a good ways in. I think if the characterization of the MC had been stronger, I could have excused the rest and kept going.

This was okay - it reminded me of American Exceptionalism and American Innocence as well as Lies My Teacher Told Me. There's useful information in here, I've just already heard much of it elsewhere in some form. This would have been much more useful to me years ago.

It's also largely a list of facts or "facts." Unfortunately, air quotes are needed because sometimes his sources are real iffy, and he makes some unwarranted leaps of logic. That's extra frustrating when you agree with the overall point an author is making - don't ruin it with shoddy research. The fluoride stuff was a real eye twitch moment for me.

The thing about lists of facts, though, is that it's not very interesting to me. I can't retain all of that, especially when it's so much and so broad. The data he included often felt meaningless without context. "x gallons of toxic chemicals are dumped into our water supply every year!" Okay, I guess that's bad? Should it be zero? Should it just be lower? I appreciated it when he gave me the context I needed to make sense of the data, like when he compared the cuts made to a social welfare program to 1/3 of the cost to build and maintain one military aircraft.

I do appreciate that this exists because there was a time I was looking for more of this information and couldn't find a resource. It's unfortunate that it's a textbook and expensive. A mishmash of other cheaper books cover a lot of the same ground, but having it all in one place is nice.

The tone of this book was a pretty immediate "no" for me. It'll work for you or it won't, I think. I can like a comedic horror movie (Werewolves Within feels pretty comparable), but the comedic tone here was more annoying than anything. The joke of the mom scolding the daughter for cursing ("Language!") got old really fast.

What I will give the book credit for is the slow reveal of the husband's abuse. I had not picked up on it with how Margaret talked about Hal at the start, and I was surprised when it became clear. I think Margaret was compassionately written. The author was trying to get the reader to see how a person might slowly succumb to the situation, especially if the reader's tendency is to judge people who stay with an abuser.

But the tone just didn't work for me. Especially at the end, there's some really horrific imagery, but it just doesn't hit when the dialogue is like "Oh my heavens!" There's also a drawn out action sequence which could have been interesting to see in a movie, but in a book it just dragged. There's no tension because I don't have any real fear for Margaret or Katherine's lives. There isn't much satisfaction in it either since Master Vale is largely an unexplored villain. What he did feels tangential. I had a hard time keeping all his ghost victims straight outside of Elias and Fredericka, so their revenge at the end feels pretty hollow.

Chunks of the story also felt very repetitive and dull. There's a stretch where Margaret is trying to hide the supernatural elements of the house from Katherine, and it's just the same thing over and over again. I wasn't even sure why Margaret thought Katherine would see it given how the priest couldn't see it. Then all of sudden Katherine and the police can see it, just because?

I was also baffled as to why the police, upon starting a missing persons case for Hal, didn't at some point search the entire house, including the cellar?? Would that not be standard?

This has a pretty high average GR rating, so clearly I'm in the minority on this one. :P