booktribe's reviews
552 reviews

I finally read my first Shon book and it did not disappoint! This was such a soft, sweet romance. The love Blair & Elijah shared was beautiful to witness. Elijah is definitely one of my new favorite book boyfriends! If you’re in the mood for a beautiful, soft romance to sink into, check this one out!

I was so excited for this one, but I just can’t connect to the writing style. It’s so chaotic and the story is skipping around too much. Every chapter takes place in a different time period. Nonlinear storytelling to THIS degree is just too much for me. 

Thank you Daw and NetGalley for this arc. All opinions are my own.

I am a huge fan of gothic dark academia novels, so when I found out that Alexis Henderson wrote one, I was incredibly excited!

This book has solidified Alexis Henderson as one of my top 3 favorite authors of all time! She is genuinely one of the best writers I’ve ever read. Her writing style is so beautiful & distinct. I can see her becoming a classic horror author that people will read for years to come. 

This novel is so mysterious and creepy. The imagery is HAUNTING. I could definitely see this becoming a movie! I absolutely LOVE the idea and execution of the persuasion magic in this novel. It was a very interesting spin on the power of mind control. I may or may not have been wishing that I had the power of persuasion while reading this novel lol. 

The novel did slow down at times and there are aspects of the story that I wish had been explored and delved into more, like the aberrations, but I enjoyed this so much and can’t wait for everyone to read it!

Thank you Ace and NetGalley for this arc! All opinions are my own. 

CW: suicidal ideation, animal cruelty & death, adult/minor relationships, child abuse

I will be withholding my review for this title in solidarity with the St. Martin’s Press boycott. 

I will be withholding all reviews for St. Martin’s Press titles until the publisher meets these conditions:

• Address and denounce the Islamophobia/racism from their employee.

• Offer tangible steps for how they're going to mitigate the harm their employee caused.

• Address how, moving forward, they will support and protect their Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab readers, influencers, and authors in addition to their BIPOC readers, influencers, and authors.

St. Martin’s Press is one of my favorite publishers and I hate that I cannot promote their books because they won’t speak up and address our concerns.

Boringggggggggg. Almost 200 pages in and nothing has happened. I don’t care about most of these characters (except you Lan, you are loved, but not enough for me to continue) and I don’t care where the story is going.

Boringggggggg

I’m a huge fan of dark academia, and since it’s by a queer author of color, I genuinely thought I would love this, but I can’t get into it. I must DNF at 15%.

The first chapter started off with lots of info dumping, which was making the story drag. And from there it just got incredibly confusing. I had no idea what was going on. I couldn’t even picture what was happening in the scenes. I set it down because of how confusing it was, but I wanted to try to give it another chance eventually. But it has been several months and I haven’t been tempted to pick it back up, so I’m calling it. If I ever decide to try again, I’ll update my review!

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for his ARC. All opinions are my own.

This was one of my most anticipated releases of 2024, but sadly it fell completely flat for me. I couldn’t finish this collection.

Firstly, I do want to mention something that I did enjoy. I absolutely loved the intro to the collection. It gave the collection as a whole purpose and an even deeper story! The intro really had me excited for the stories! However, this book is not what I thought it would be…

I was expecting this collection to be horror stories that empowered people of color, but these stories just center whiteness & racial trauma. I probably should have known from the title that the collection would center whiteness, but I genuinely thought this collection would flip the common trope of Black people & people of color dying first in horror on its head, but it didn’t. 

Every story is about racism or wanting to be white/fit in with white people. Why do all of these characters of color have such racist friends? I will mention that I had the privilege of growing up as a Black person in almost exclusively predominantly Black experiences. All of my schools were predominantly Black, I was hardly ever a minority surrounded by white people. So, maybe that’s why I don’t understand choosing to be friends with or date racists. But, that just felt unbelievable to me.

Another thing that bothered me is this: why does the white guy have to be racist to die first in EVERY story??? In all the movies and books where the Black person or person of color dies first, they didn’t have to deserve it. They were killed first whether they were good people or not. So, what bothers me is that it seems like this book feels the need to justify the white guy’s death with him always being racist. If we, Black people & POC, in these circumstances never have to deserve our death to be murdered, what makes the white guy any different? The white guy can just die without being racist, with no justification, just like us for all these years. THAT is how you turn the trope on its head.

Those things just made this collection disappointing for me as a Black reader CRAVING more BIPOC horror where WE are centered. I usually don’t read racism horror, I see enough of racism in real life, so I couldn’t enjoy this collection with so much blatant racism & micro aggressions in every single story without being prepared for that. Maybe one day I’ll come back to this knowing that it is racism horror and enjoy it more because I’ll be prepared for the anger and annoyance that comes with it, but for now, I won’t be continuing.

side note: out of all the stories I read, I can say that I did enjoy H. E. Edgmon’s story Best Served Cold!

Thank you Tor Teen and NetGalley for this arc. All opinions are my own.