Ana E. Way

  Thanks to NetGalley and publisher for the arc! I'm not gonna lie, I saw this beautiful cover and the words "heist, magic, queer" and I was sold. The magic system was complex though easy to understand. I liked Cemmy as a main character, she was a traumatized teen trying to survive in a world that wanted her and her friends dead. I was glad that she got mad at her mom, in her place I would have snapped so much sooner. This book did what it wanted to do very well and it was really enjoyable although it dealt with grief and guilt among other themes. I already wanted to read Mindwalker by the same author, now I'm even more eager to get to it. Rep: bisexual MC, lesbian SC TW: death, persecution, discrimination, blackmail, torture, blood, lies

  Thanks to NetGalley and publisher This book was very confusing since the first pages, we know we are in a dystopian world where the internet has crashed down and created some sort of ghosts from the blurb only and we actually never learned much more about what and how it happened. At first I was frustrated of not having more information, but it actually made sense since the characters didn't seem to know much more either. What mattered to them was how to keep on living in a new world. The focus was, as I said, not on this new world but on the characters that live in it, mainly Katerina whose point of vue we follow. Through her eyes, we see a "new" society with the flaws of the past (of our present): racism, prone to discriminate and to ostracize those who don't fit their sense of security. But there are so many people who are different, Katerina is a mixed race single woman who travels, makes remedies and talks to bees, Elisabet who is on the spectrum, a mute boy se...

  Thanks to NetGalley for the eArc! I was very eager to read Allison Saft and I'm very happy to say that I loved her latest book and her writing. I'll happily read A far wilder magic that I have in the French edition because it's much prettier than the originals (sorry). In A Dark and Drowning Tide, we follow Lorelei, a folklorist who embarks on an expedition with five other students, among them Sylvia, her academic rival. But the expedition starts badly: Lorelei finds her mentor murdered in her cabin. Lorelei must see the mission through and find out who the murderer is before it's too late. Lorelei is not really a likeable character and not always relatable for someone who hasn't lived systemic oppression like she has. Indeed, not only Lorelei isn't nobility as her companions, but she is also Yeva (read: Jewish) in an extremely racist German-inspired world. Fortunately for me, the investigation wasn't the forefront of the story, and neither was the romance...

Thanks to NetGalley and publisher for this arc  Welcome to Forever  may have been a little ambitious for me. As you've read previously, I'm trying to read more SF and am often left confused, but still, I'm enjoying my reads. I didn't think this book would particularly challenge me, but here we are, with me unable to wholly enjoy this story because I felt left out. Welcome to Forever  was a 5 star prediction, and if my rating was solely based on the characters it would totally be. I feel  like it isn't a story especially hard to understand, so maybe it was not the right time for me to read it. I still enjoyed it though and gave it a 3.5 stars! I can't really explain what I didn't understand since I would be entering the realm of spoilers. At the beginning, we are with Fox, a memory editor who wakes up in a Center for Memory Reconstruction with no memory of who he is, and more importantly, of his dead husband. Throughout the book, he will discover and remember...

Thanks to NetGalley and publisher for this arc The Book of Doors is the kind of book that leaves you in a haze days after finishing it. I couldn't stop thinking of the story and the characters, and the next books I read really paled in comparison.  The Book of Doors follows Cassie, a bookseller who receives  a little notebook from a customer. She soon will discover that this notebook is actually the book of doors, a book that transforms any door in another door, allowing her to travel anywhere she wants. But she will also find out that she is now in grave danger (as is the world). I loved everything about this book. The idea of the books was really fun (well, not all of them), the characters were real to me, the friendship between Cassie and Izzy so beautiful and strong, the grief so heartbreaking and everlasting, the baddies so terrifying... Here comes a spoiler: I was surprised to see time travel and was a little worried of how it would be exploited, but I actually found it...

At the start of the year I requested many arcs on NetGalley, as usual yes, and I'm reading them slowly but steady. Two of the first three were really good ( The Many Lives of Charlie and The City of Stardust ) and the third ( The Book of Love ) was...well boring. Sadly, The Warm Hands of Ghosts (Katherine Arden) fell in that same category. To be fair, it wasn't a given that I was going to love this book since it's historical during WWI, but I went ahead anyway because there was a promise of fantasy (ghosts!), the setting was my home country, Belgium, and I was very curious to discover Katherine Arden's writing. As I said, I was pretty bored waiting for the ghosts and at 100 pages, these were only mentioned so I DNF it. I'm disappointed because the synopsis still sounds really good, but I just couldn't continue. On the contrary, The Briar Book of the Dead (A.G. Slatter) was amazing! Ellie, the main character, comes from a family of witches and is the first to no...

  Merci à NetGalley et ME pour le SP (English below) J'avais très envie de découvrir l'œuvre de cette autrice tout en étant assez appréhensive des éléments d'horreur dont j'entendais parler. Thornhedge est une novella et une réécriture de conte, et donc moins intimidante que ses autres romans. Le livre compte une petite centaine de pages mais je n'ai jamais eu la sensation que c'était trop peu ou trop rapide. Il s'agit d'une réécriture de La Belle au Bois dormant du point de vue de la "fée" qui plonge la princesse dans un long sommeil. Cette "fée" est un personnage adorable et anxieux, isolée depuis des siècles car elle a pour tâche d'empêcher quiconque de réveiller la princesse. Quand un chevalier arrive à l'orée de la forêt et commence à lui parler, elle devra se confronter aux choix qu'elle a faits par le passé.  Dans sa note à la fin, l'autrice explique que ce livre lui a semblé être charmant et cosy, alors qu...