Mystifying and Experiential

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A Review of Mystify Me by FreeFireFiction

Rating: 5 out of 5.

If you know me at all you know that I don’t necessarily like romance novels. I prefer fantasy novels because I like the fun of escaping into a different world and learning everything I can about it from the point of view of the characters. Having said that, though, I may need to amend my statement. I think the truth is I don’t necessarily like STRAIGHT romance novels. I could talk at length about how the oversaturation of heteronormativity in every other kind of media makes me ache for any other kind of story in my books, but instead I’ll focus on how much I ended up loving Mystify Me.

The book focuses on Ben, an immigrant from Russia who has been struggling to thrive with life in New York City, and Jackson, a mid-western college student with family issues trying to escape to the big city. They meet for the first time as reluctant lab partners who don’t quite get along. When a turn of events, however, leaves them both stranded in a bank ATM vestibule during a blizzard, their relationship starts to grow. From there, the twists and turns only intensify and by the end I was left totally enthralled with the two main characters.

Ben and Jackson’s character development walked such a perfect line of being absolutely realistic and absolutely dramatic, which I loved and kept me interested in their stories. I couldn’t wait to see how their relationship would continue to develop.

But wait, there’s more! Not only is this a book, it’s also advertised as a cinematic experience. What does that mean? Basically, at different points throughout the eBook there would be links to music or video and audio clips that helped to enhance the setting of the book. When they’re trapped in the bank at one point Ben starts listening to a song and a link is there for you to listen to the song along with him. That made the book feel so immersive and in-depth, as if the character development wasn’t doing that already!

I absolutely loved this book and I hope this is the future of eBooks because it makes the reading experience so much more amazing and tangible. This also really solidified that I need to read more LGBTQIA+ romance, because damn was this enjoyable.

If I had one critique of the book, it would be that’s it a little bit of beast in terms of length, but I became so involved in the character development that I overlooked it.

Thank you to FreeFireFiction for supplying me with a free digital download of the book for the purpose of this review.

Mystify Me is available now. Learn more here and check out some Goodreads reviews here.

The Happiness of an Unending Universe

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A Review of The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper

Rating: 5 out of 5.

When I was ten I wanted to be an astronaut. More specifically a ballerina, astronaut, janitor who was also a photographer. Unlike Calvin Lewis Jr’s dad, who collected Life magazines about the space craze of the 60s, I collected National Geographics. I clipped and taped images I liked all over my room and whenever I was feeling overwhelmed or like my dreams of being a ballerina, astronaut, janitor were unattainable, I would look at all of those pictures and it would make everything seem right.

I’m, sadly, not a ballerina, or an astronaut, or a janitor, but this book definitely transported me back to that time. It gave me an intense feeling of nostalgia, not only for my childhood, but also for my teenage years, when I was an aspiring journalist dealing with my own questions about my sexual orientation. Cal and I are SO similar, it’s almost a little scary. Perhaps that’s why I really enjoyed this novel as well, but, at its core, it’s a loving book about all the endless kinds of love there are.

When Calvin, Cal for short, learns that his dad has been selected to be part of a major space mission with NASA his life is uprooted completely. Literally and figuratively. He moves with his family from Brooklyn all the way down to Texas, where he knows his whole life will be on display as he becomes a part of media circus surrounding the mission. What he doesn’t expect, though, is to love it so much. Not just Texas, but the people, the story, and the heart, that surrounds everyone who plays a part in this mission.

Reading this book was like the equivalent of curling up on a couch on a rainy, spring day with a cup of hot tea and an old friend. The story felt so familiar to me and yet so exciting and new. I could see so much of myself reflected in Cal, with his Earth sign tendencies to always want to plan; plan for himself, for other people, for the country. I was also, however, getting an exciting look into Phil Stamper’s take on what a modern day “space craze” would look like.

This book is heartwarming and fun, but it’s also an exploration of us as a society, and our insatiable desire to always know what’s coming next. It also takes such a refreshing look at tough to tackle themes like mental illness, relationship conflict, and more.

I may not have become a ballerina, astronaut, janitor and I may not still know what I want to be when I grow up, but it’s okay not to know the ending sometimes. It’s okay not to plan for every little eventuality. It also okay to be “breezy”, as Cal would say. It’s okay to fall in love. I fell in love with this story and with Cal and Leon’s sense of wholeness as characters, and I know whatever path they choose from their endless options, they’re going to be happy together for a long while.

Thank you to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for providing me with a free eBook version for the purpose of this review.

The Gravity of Us is out today, February 4! Click here to purchase.

A Bloody, Philosophical Extravaganza

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A Review of Prosper’s Demon by K.J. Parker

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Prosper’s Demon begins with a murder, a murder that is very easily overlooked once the dark, twisting tale actually starts to wind its way down to Hell. A murder that, in the grand scheme of things, really isn’t so bad, is it?

Our unnamed narrator is, for lack of a better term (and I really mean that), an exorcist. His (and I only use He/Him here because, similar to our narrator’s demon, “this one particular, unique, individual specimen was definitely, in my mind, a He.”) job is to remove immortal, evil, entities from people when they’ve found a home inside of one. The process is brutal, bloody, and painful for both the entity and the human, making many of the encounters with these entities a zero sum game. However, it’s a game our narrator has been playing since he was very young and, luckily, he’s very good at it.

This novella is equal parts witty and gritty and takes you down dark, and even darker still, philosophical paths until you’re questioning who’s really in the right. Our narrator isn’t a “good” person, he makes that abundantly clear. Then again, he’s not an evil person either. He’s simply the person with the skills necessary for the job and the one that just happens to be around at the time to do it.

When our narrator encounters one of these evil entities hidden inside one of the brightest minds of the century, Prosper of Schnaz, he is faced with a dilemma. To remove the demon would surely end the man’s life, thus ending a life of pure genius. However, allowing the demon to stay means playing alongside that which he has vowed, and come to, hate. Like I said, it’s usually a zero sum game.

The gory, blood-splattered, bone-splintering ending was, really, both a complete surprise and completely inevitable. What surprised me the most was that I still ended the novella rooting for our unscrupulous narrator. He’s going to die eventually, but damn is he going to raise Hell in the meantime.

Thank you to Tor.com publishing and NetGalley for providing me with free access to the digital version of this book prior to its publication.

Prosper’s Demon will be available for purchase on Tuesday, January 28!

True Nightmare Fuel

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A Review of Testament by Jose Nateras

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

It’s not often that a book terrifies me, but wow did this one. Not to mention, as a queer woman, it was terrifying on two fronts, the paranormal activity and the thought that past evils of privileged groups of people can have lingering effects on a place, on a society. Honestly, that thought scares me more than the paranormal activity. The thought that, despite all of the advances we have made as a society, our dark past can never be undone, and it will never stop haunting those people still affected by it.

Gabe Espinosa is back at work after an ugly break-up and a suicide attempt, and although neither he nor anyone else at the Rosebriar Room, a fancy restaurant in an upscale hotel that was converted from an old Gentleman’s Club, thinks he’s quite ready to be back yet, Gabe is trying his best to return to some sort of normalcy. That is, until a man hurls a three hundred pound table at him and tries to kill him. From there, it only gets scarier.

This book heavily reminded me of the indie horror film, It Follows. Not just because of the way both the movie and the book involve possessed people just off in the peripheral working their way ever so closer and closer to you, but also in the meaning behind it. It Follows is a metaphor for an STI, the main girl goes on a date with a man she barely knows and she gets tied up and told that this “thing” walking towards her is going to follow her now, until she passes it on to someone else. In the same vein, Gabe’s following is tied to his idea that he cannot be worthy of love. In It Follows, the main character decides that she could never live with herself if she gave it to someone else, so she spends her whole life walking away from It. Gabe realizes he needs to move on, love himself, and find worth in himself to get the haunting to stop.

Not to mention, my favorite thing about this book is that NOT ONCE did anyone question Gabe and what he was experiencing, which I wholeheartedly appreciated.

I loved this spooky, atmospheric, dark-themed read!

Top 3 Books of 2019

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The decade ends tomorrow (which is still super weird to say and think about) and a lot of my fellow bookstagrammers and book reviewers are talking about their favorite books of the year.

I’ve only been doing the whole bookstagram thing since November, that’s also when I started my blog, so I don’t really have a whole year to go off of, but the #FOMO was becoming so real, I had to do a little something. Now, this isn’t to say I wasn’t reading at all before November, I just wasn’t in the habit of documenting it and tracking everything through GoodReads so it’s hard for my impatient Millennial brain to recall what I read before then. I’m like 99.99% positive, though, that if I had been keeping track of the whole year, this list wouldn’t be any different. So, without further ado, here are my top three books of 2019!

1) The Starless Sea

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
This book took me through the ringer emotionally. I know I never shut up about it and it’s really purely because it IS that good. Not only is it about an LGBTQ+ couple, it’s a book about books, so what’s not to like. The more I reflect on this story the more I realize I loved it so much because it felt like it was written specifically for me. Another reason I loved this book so much is because there’s not a single character I didn’t like. Not a single one. Even Allegra was a highly enjoyable character to read and a badass to boot. Mirabel was amazingly complex but still relatable. I feel like Morgernstern writes characters that subvert all the gendered tropes I hate about most other stories in such a subtle way. Her women are capable and strong but aren’t so “tough” they refuse to ask others for help. Her men are emotionally mature and know how to express what they’re feeling. It makes her stories an absolute joy to read.

Amazon| Barnes & Noble | GoodReads

2) Gideon the Ninth

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
I honestly believe that Gideon the Ninth is going to take off in 2020. It came out in late 2019 but from what I’ve seen it’s fanbase is rapidly gaining speed and size and I hear more and more people talking about it. Good, because it honestly deserves all of that and more. If you’re a fan of sci-fi you should read this book because the plot and setting will be your cup of tea, but you may be introduced to some types of characters you don’t traditionally meet in sci-fi books. If you’re not a fan of sci-fi but you like the young adult “pining” troupe or you enjoy fun narrators who make a book even more exciting to read, you should still consider checking out Gideon the Ninth. The second books comes out in June and I couldn’t be more excited!

Amazon| Barnes & Noble | GoodReads

3) Call Down the Hawk

Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater
Maggie Stiefvater and The Raven Cycle were so good to me throughout the years that Call Down the Hawk ended up becoming one of my most anticipated new releases of the year and, let me tell you, it did not disappoint. First of all, the Declan Lynch character development has cleared my skin and helped my crops thrive, and second of all, Maggie Stiefvater writes badass women. I seriously can’t wait for the rest of the trilogy. If I have one wish for the series it’s that I’ll get to see just a LITTLE bit more of the original Raven Cycle peeps outside of Ronan and Adam, but the Lynch brothers more than make up for any holes I may have felt in their absence.

Amazon| Barnes & Noble | GoodReads

For the Love of Dark Academia

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Why a Sub-genre about Privilege has such a Cult Minority Following

Dark Academia isn’t new, in fact, it’s centuries old. The genre is predicated on a few things, it involves a school setting (usually college or private in nature), a group of friends, and extremely dark themes such as murder, violence, deceit, suicide, etc… Many Greek tragedies are considered Dark Academia simply because they usually take place in a scholarly setting and examine deep, philosophical questions about nature, humankind, and more. Historically, these themes have only been examined, for the most part, by white males, particularly of European or Anglo-Saxon descent. So why, then, does this genre currently have such a cult following of minorities?

Here are my thoughts on the matter as a queer woman:

Evil isn’t personified but still recognizable

In a lot of other genres a finger can be pointed directly at the thing or person who is evil. It’s a dark force of nature or a malicious deity or a wizard bent on destruction. In Dark Academia, often times, there is no point blank evil force, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t evil. In Dark Academia, evil resides in the people and things we recognize all too clearly, the young college boys who harass and demean women but never face consequences for it, the institution that turns a blind eye to evil acts because it benefits from them. Dark Academia gives us the opportunity to explore those lives we often love to hate. The rich, the elite, the tone deaf, the only difference is, most of the time the evil characters are bookended by characters we HOPE exist in these places, working against the system they were born into. Darlington from Ninth House is a perfect example of this.

Characters face consequences for their actions outside of the law

While the evil is identifiable that doesn’t mean Dark Academia is black and white. Often times characters will act against other characters who have done evil or malicious things in a way that is also evil or malicious, taking the, somewhat, twisted, role of a vigilante. I find this particular plot point so interesting to read because, as minorities, we tend to know that there isn’t much the law will do to help us. Rape kits sit untested in evidence rooms for decades, reports of harassment go undocumented, the list goes on and on. Dark Academia gives us a place to see those privileged, maligned characters get their “just desserts”, even if the revenge is just as morally repugnant. An example of this would be The Secret History by Donna Tartt and also Alex Stern’s revenge blackmail of a college frat boy who raped her friend in Ninth House.

Heavily implied homoerotic subtext

One of the thematic elements that you can find in almost all Dark Academia is homoerotic subtext. Historically there aren’t usually “out” gay characters or gay relationships, but because MOST of the characters tend to be men, there is a lot of subtext and interpretation that could be construed as homosexual in nature. In recent decades, however, that has started to change and writers have begun to include actual LGBTQ+ characters, for instance Ronan and Adam in The Raven Cycle series. But older examples like The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dead Poets Society just heavily imply it.

It’s fun to hate characters sometimes

I don’t always need to like a character and support all their decisions for me to recognize that they are a good (ie well written) character. Sometimes it’s fun to hate characters and watch their actions like an on-going trainwreck. I know this a matter of preference but I think it also really lends itself to why Dark Academia has such a cult following. The characters inspire such strong emotion, it’s hard not to want to talk about it with other people and discuss what happened. If there’s one criticism I see from people who don’t like Dark Academia it’s that none of the characters are likable and I have to say, I just don’t understand that. A character doesn’t have to be likable for me to like them as a character, in fact, them being wholly unlikable usually makes it more exciting.

Dark Academia Recommendations

Interested in trying out the genre? I have a few books listed below that I have personally read that I’ve ranked from “easiest” to “hardest” in terms of how difficult they can be to get into if you’re new to the genre. This is by no means an exhaustive list as it only includes books I’ve read, but I highly recommend all of these.

  1. The Raven Boys – Maggie Stiefvater
  2. Vicious – V.E. Schwab
  3. A Great and Terrible Beauty – Libba Bray
  4. Ninth House – Leigh Bardugo
  5. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
  6. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
  7. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
  8. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
  9. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

Lesbian Necromancers in Space!

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A Review of Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Rating: 5 out of 5.

I was about 100 pages into The Night Circus, which I had been told time and time again I needed to read if I loved The Starless Sea as much as I proclaimed to, when my other half finished Gideon the Ninth. As soon as they finished it, they insisted I read it and when I learned it was about a buff, kind of naive, lesbian and her pointy, angry, elf-like necromancer friend, I knew I had to listen.

I put aside The Night Circus (don’t worry, I’m back in it now) and finished Gideon the Ninth is a rip-roaring, spell-binding, heart-aching two days. When I say this book reached into my chest and pulled out my still beating heart and then ate it in front of me straight up Khaleesi style, it’s not an exaggeration.

Gideon is a fighter, in pretty much every sense of the word. She’s an orphan who was all but abandoned on a desolate planet under…shady circumstances, but she’s never let that stop her from being a badass. The only other person remotely near her age on the planet is Harrowhawk, the princess of the Ninth House, and stone cold bitch extraordinair. They hate each other, but, when a call is sent out for the necromancers of each planet, or House, to enter a competition that hasn’t happened in a millennia, Harrow and Gideon join, reluctant, forces.

The cast of characters that Muir manages to each give distinct personalities and backstories is insanely huge. Despite the host of characters, they all feel unique and they all play a significant role in the story and, thematically, help force Gideon and Harrow closer together.

There are some issues with pacing, I feel, in the second third of the novel, but it more than paid off in the end when, as I said, my heart was ripped from my chest. This blood-thirsty, gut-wrenching, bone-crunching novel got me so good in the “feels” I took a few days to not read anything else and let the story process. I legitimately think *SPOILER WARNING* that I was in some sort of mourning.

I eagerly await the second book in the series, Harrow the Ninth, of which I have already read the prologue for. You can find it here. The second person fucked me up emotionally, man, my heart isn’t ready for that shit. Now I just have to somehow survive until June without gnawing my own fingers off and trying to resurrect my fractured soul from the bones. Damn you, Muir!

PS: If Gideon and Harrow aren’t endgame at the end of this trilogy I will, first, grind my bones down into dust, and then sprinkle them in Tamsyn Muir’s cereal.

8 Books I’m Thankful For This Year

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Thanksgiving is later this week and I cannot tell you how much I’m looking forward to it. Not only do I need the mental break of a long weekend, I’m looking forward to some much needed family time and, of course, some delicious food.

In the spirit of thankfulness, I wanted to highlight eight books, plays, or graphic novels that I’m thankful for this year, whether because they have significance in my life or I just really enjoyed them recently. I apologize up front that I AM, in fact, going to rave about The Starless Sea again at some point. Sorry…but not really.

Let me know what books you’re thankful for this holiday season in the comments!

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Carry On – Rainbow Rowell

In many ways I owe Rainbow Rowell a lot. Carry On was one of the Young Adult books that really got me back into reading after I had been out of college for a few years. Wayward Son was also SO bad it motivated me to finally make a GoodReads account and leave my first review. Seriously though, Carry On is worthy of all the praise it receives. The LGBTQ+ characters combined with the magical setting and plot made me so damn excited. Unfortunately, Wayward Son disappointed me this year. I hope Simon and Baz both find their spines in the next book.

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Snotgirl – Bryan Lee O’Malley, Leslie Hung

This one made the list purely because of how much I enjoy this graphic novel series. It’s good, extremely colorful fun that still has a nice mix of murder, because, you know, everything needs just a little bit of murder to make it interesting. It’s also another book that has slight LGBTQ+ themes. If you’re starting to see a trend, yeah, welcome to my blog, I like queer fiction. Seriously though, if you haven’t given Snotgirl a try, I definitely suggest it. It’s great for people who love graphic novels and also people looking for some “beginner” graphic novels. 

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The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern

Don’t mind me, I’m just going to rant about The Starless Sea for a little bit more. It’s extremely rare that a book hit me as hard as this one did. It’s not often I read a whole half of a book until all hours of the night on a work night just to finish it. It’s even less often that I spend the next few minutes SOBBING LIKE A BABY after I finish said book. I wish more writers were willing to take a chance on the whimsical and the nonsensical like Erin Morgernstern is. Her writing is masterful and…would you look at that, this book is also LGBTQ+. 

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The Adventure Zone Vol 1 – Griffin, Travis, Justin & Clint McElroy, Carey Pietsch

The Adventure Zone meant so much to me as a podcast. I listened to it going to and from work at a job that I very much hated with a super long commute that I also hated and binging the back log of The Adventure Zone: Balance until I caught up just in time for the final chapter and the finale was really what kept me going. I own….uh….four volumes of the first graphic novel, Here There be Gerblins, because I pre-ordered one through First Second, the publisher, when it went live, then pre-ordered a second one from Barnes & Noble when they announced a B&N exclusive cover, and then got one with my ticket to see them live in NY when the first volume launched…oh and my partner got one, so I’m counting that too. So, yeah, just mildly obsessed. I also have it tattooed to my body. 

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Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban – J.K. Rowling

I added the third Harry Potter book to this post because Prisoner of Azkaban was the first book I kind of read on my own. Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets were read to me by my mom at bedtime but by the time the third one came out, I was ready to try and read it on my own. I remember so vividly being utterly SCANDALIZED when Aunt Marge said the word “bitch” in reference to a female dog. Seven year old me was shook. I’m like 98% sure this is the first one I read by myself, but if I’m wrong mom, just text me. 

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It – Stephen King

For such an avid horror fan I really haven’t read much Stephen King. I read the first and second book of The Dark Tower series last year but I knew if I read them all in a row it would burn me out of the series. I haven’t returned to it, simply because there’s always something else I want to read more. So, when I picked up the 1,000+ page brick that is It, I honestly didn’t know if I would finish it, but I blew through it. Similar to The Starless Sea, but so very very very different in subject matter, King is never afraid to spend paragraphs talking about things that don’t make sense. I spend so much time in life trying to make sense of everything, I find it’s almost relaxing to suspend reality and just accept that not everything needs an explanation when I’m reading, I think that’s why I love books like It. 

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The Raven King – Maggie Stiefvater

Similar to Carry On, The Raven Cycle series is another thing that got me back into YA and back into reading after graduating college. I settled on highlighting The Raven King specifically because…surprise, it’s ALSO LGBTQ+, though my partner, Mandy, will tell you that The Dream Thieves is also very gay. I think if there was any writer I would pinpoint as being the inspiration for my own writing, it would be Maggie Stiefvater. Not only is her writing hysterical at times, it’s also lyrical and easy to read. You brain never has to start and stop and can instead just get lost in the amazing world and characters that Maggie has created. 

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream – William Shakespeare

I am actually a HUGE Shakespeare fan, or I guess rather I’m a fan of classic literature and plays and a lot of it is Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is, hands down, my favorite. It’s only with writing this down right now that I’m realizing it’s also because of my love of whimsical and magical shit that doesn’t make sense. Also, fun fact, I played Quince in my elementary school’s Shakespeare Club production of this play. I feel like I won an award for it, but maybe I’m making that entirely up. My goal for 2020 is to get something from this play tattooed to my body. 

I guess if you’re going to take anything away from this list it should be, the more gay something is the more I’ll love it and the less sense it makes the quicker I’ll devour it. I feel like nonsensical and queer is a pretty good combination to live by. 

 

A Story for Storylovers (A Review of The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern)

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

Let me just start off by saying that this book is an absolute masterpiece. I would not even remotely hesitate to say it is now one of my favorite books of all time. I finished the book last night at one in the morning. When I started around eight earlier that night I was a little over half way through the book, but I reached a point in the story when I knew I couldn’t possibly stop or it would break the spell the book had put me under, so I forged ahead.

At one in the morning I sat on my sofa, the apartment quiet except for my heaving sobs. I couldn’t fall asleep right away and when I did it was full of dreams of bees and pirate ships on golden seas.

This story is masterfully woven and I know I will return to the world of The Starless Sea over and over again.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a grad student studying video games, specifically how stories are told in video games. Also being a person who plays a lot of video games, especially story heavy ones like visual novels or mmorpgs, it shouldn’t have surprised me that parts of this novel read like video game scenes. You wander into a new map and you stop by a shopkeeper and press X to talk. He gives you his canned script about how the love of his life is off in some field, picking vegetables. You leave the shop and immediately think you should go back in, maybe you missed something. You walk back in and it’s exactly the same. The shopkeeper gives you the same script. You walk out. You hope his wife is okay but you didn’t stop to talk to the woman you passed on the cliffs on the way to this town who would have told you a dragon has been spotted flying over the fields and pastures recently. This is what reading The Starless Sea feels like. Except you aren’t in control of the characters, you can only read on as Zachary makes his own decisions and chooses his fate.

While browsing the shelves of his college’s library he finds an authorless book. It’s full of tales that don’t seem connected, pirates, and people who have sacrificed their tongues to a greater cause, and….a story about him. The book “Sweet Sorrows” immediately takes over his life. He goes on a wild chase to find clues about the book’s origin and instead finds an unknown world, a giant abandoned library underneath the earth, and himself.

Make no mistake, this book will not be for everyone. But, if you can suspend belief, give into whimsy, and let the allegory roll over you in waves, this book will crawl into your heart and refuse to leave.

If you can suspend belief, give into whimsy, and let the allegory roll over you in waves, this book will crawl into your heart and refuse to leave.

Like I said, I play a lot of video games, one of my favorites being Hello Charlotte. This RPG Maker game series is about a girl named Charlotte Wiltshire who slowly starts to realize she is part of a story. Fighting against the story, however, would be her unmaking, since you can’t end a story that’s about you without ending you. She travels further and further down into the story, searching for a way out, until finally she meets the author of her tale. She fights for autonomy and eventually breaks free of the story, but in so doing, becomes something that was never Charlotte Wiltshire and will never be Charlotte Wiltshire again.

Finishing Hello Charlotte and finishing The Starless Sea gave me very similar emotions. I was sad because it was over, sad because even if the characters were ignorant in the beginning, I thought life was easier for them then, I mourned the life they could have lived but also celebrated the brand new, unheard of life, they have now achieved for themselves. I was happy to complete a story so full of meta allegory that was nonsensical and didn’t apologize for it. I was frustrated because some part of me always wishes my story would be upheaved in such an adventurous and magical way, just like Zachary.

I wish I could say more about this book, but it really is hard to describe it in words. If you like allegory and myth, you will love this book. If you’ve enjoyed things like Spirited Away or Night on the Galactic Railroad or The Little Prince or just love a really good story, you will find a home somewhere on the Starless Sea.

Overcoming 4-Star Syndrome

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Why I give every book I read a four star review and why I need to stop

The time has come. I’ve finished the book I’ve been reading for the past few days and now I need to mark it down and give it my final review. I open up my GoodReads account to say that I’ve completed it and the notification pops up asking how I would rate the book between one and five stars. I take a second to reflect on the book, how I felt about it, how I think the characters and the story progressed, and then I select the four star option. I do this without fail almost every time I finish a book and I need to STOP!

I feel like this might be a pretty common occurrence amongst readers and I think I’ve cracked why. The grading system.

I grew up in America so this will all be based on the American grading system, but unless your country’s grading system is pass/fail I’m pretty positive this will still apply.

When I think about reviewing books I have subconsciously superimposed the review rating onto the grading system I grew up with, so:

  • ★★★★★ = A
  • ★★★★ = B
  • ★★★ = C
  • ★★ = D
  • ★ = F

At face value it seems like it should be accurate but it’s not and let me tell you why!

1) Books Aren’t Grades

Reading and finishing a book is in no way comparable to a grade on a test. Most people, unless it’s your job or you’re writing a dissertation, aren’t studying each book they read before they review it. They’re reading the book as they go about their days and then giving it a review based on how much they enjoyed it, or didn’t. Any plot or thematic or character analysis in a review is still only going to come from someone who read a book leisurely one time.

Not to mention there is SO much more encompassed in one book than there is in one grade. To be honest, most things have more meaning than grades, but we’ll get to that later.

2) Reviews Are Subjective

The reason places like GoodReads or Amazon or Barnes & Noble collect and display an average rate based on multiple reviews is because literally no two people are alike and no two people have the EXACT same feelings about a book. One person could rate a book one star and another person could rate the same book five stars. Reviews are entirely subjective and purely based upon the reader’s opinion. Whereas, with most tests, there is a clear right answer. There’s no reason to think that a one star review is comparable to an F when the one star review is based on one person’s preferences and the F is based on “the correct answer was 22 and you said 7”.

3) Grades Were Never Indicative of Your Self-Worth

I know this is a hard one to understand, especially because I’m assuming a lot of you were fellow overachievers in high school who felt like a B- was one step too close to the first circle of Hell. But…grades really meant nothing about you as a person nor were they ever truly reflective of your skill and intellect. I hesitate to give a book a three star review because in my head that’s a C and that’s pretty much almost failing, but a book can’t FAIL. A book can be not the right book for you, and that’s fine, but it’s going to be perfect for someone else. I stop myself from giving a book a three star review because if I got a C on a test I would feel like I had failed. I also stop myself from giving a book a five star review because that would be an A and, let’s be honest, does it really warrant an A? It had its flaws, it didn’t blow my socks off, it’s not the next literary masterpiece. Stop! Those arbitrary letter grades meant nothing and they still mean nothing, stop allowing them to dictate how you feel about something you enjoy doing.

So, with this in mind, below is the scale I’m now going to use to rate books. Hopefully, this will finally cure me of my four star syndrome.

  • ★★★★★ = I loved this and would recommend it anyone
  • ★★★★ = I loved this and would recommend it to the right person
  • ★★★ = I liked this and would consider recommending it
  • ★★ = I didn’t enjoy one or a few aspects of the book
  • ★ = I didn’t enjoy the book

So, there you have it. I really do hope this helps and I’m positive I will be referring back to this as I review books to remind myself how the scale should ACTUALLY work and then rate accordingly. Now I just have to hope my next few reviews aren’t all four stars!