Her Dark Wings by: Melinda Salisbury

Published by: Random House

Publication Date: 12 12 2023

I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to them and the publisher.

Alrighty, I’m going to start this review off with everything that I liked about this book.

For one, it’s a Hades/Persephone retelling. And like many people, I absolutely love Hades/Persephone retellings.

The thing that I loved the most about this is that “Persephone” is given more agency.

Corey (a fun nod to “Kore”, Persephone’s name before it became Persephone) lives with her dad and step mom. She’s got a garden in their backyard and is happy with their life on the island. She’s got on former best friend and her ex-boyfriend. The three of them used to be super close until they decided to cut her out of the picture.

Loosing your boyfriend and best friend at the same time to each other sounds so incredibly painful. And I felt so bad for Corey. Add in the fact that it’s a small town and everyone knows everyone and everyone’s business? That just amplifies how much it has to hurt. There’s nowhere to hide. 

I really liked the writing. There were times where it almost had a sort of lyrical quality to it. And I got wrapped up in the descriptions of things and events.

I loved the voice of Corey and the other characters she met along the way. However her voice was the strongest. Everyone, even Hades, sort of paled on the page in comparison. Except for the Furies. At least Alecto. She was every bit as vibrant.

Now, this leads me to what I didn’t like about this book.

Alecto is one of the Furies and that’s explained in the book pretty well without feeling like an info dump. But there is a lot of stuff that isn’t. There are words that aren’t given an explanation and you just have to use context to be able to figure out what they mean. And it’s something that happens frequently in the first half of the book. The events in the beginning sort of rely on the reader having a decent understand of ancient Green funerary customs. And then later on in the story, this is the same. You need to really know a lot and it threw me and pulled me out of the story. I ran into a word and whatever was going on and had to stop, figure it out, and then keep going. By then I was pulled out a little.

The other thing that really bugged me was the worldbuilding of the island. The people who live here keep to the old Greek ways of doing things. They learn about the gods in school, do homework on them. They see things in the woods. Their entire lives are shaped by the culture and the gods. There’s a temple, just all manner of things. And the island is just close to “the mainland”. I like knowing where the characters are in a story. And I didn’t get that.

It was just the island and the mainland. I had a better idea of where she was when Corey was in the Underworld that I did when she was back on her island. It’s also never said why they follow these old ways so much. Just a little line could have done a lot to explain it. I was questioning it the entire time. Just why are they doing this? Why are they like this?

When it comes to character growth, I think Corey had a good amount of it. She goes from being absolutely heartbroken over this boy and her ex best friend to fine. And she comes into her own power. She learns to speak up to people instead of being quiet.

There were a lot of things I loved, especially the way Corey just stopped caring about herself and doing things while in the depression of her losses. She stopped leaving her room. Kept the light off. Left her plates in her room and she smelled.

Do y’all know how rare it is in fiction for a girl to stink and just be allowed to?

It wasn’t that sort of post workout stink of sweat. It was that stale smell of body when you haven’t moved. Haven’t seen the sun or a bar of soap. And it fit so well with what was going on. That honestly might be one of my favorite things about it.

All in all, it gets a 4/5 from me. There were some things I would have liked to see expanded on. But it was still a good story about a girl coming into her own and dealing with her heartache and pain and rage. I really recommend it. Just be prepared to need to look some stuff up as you go.

Splinter by: Jasper Hyde

Publication Date: November 15 2023

I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of this book and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s advertised as a diverse Sleepy Hollow retelling and that’s exactly what we get. We’ve got a Black main character and the love interest, Ichabod, is half Filipino.

I really liked this book. It’s fast paced but still plotted well enough that I didn’t fell like things were passing me by. I devoured it. A Black female lead who ends up a witch and doesn’t use her power solely to the aid of a white character? Please, I was giddy.

One thing I really enjoyed was the character’s personalities and the way they interacted with each other. These are people who used to be in a relationship that didn’t end well and it shows. And it’s actually funny. Just the cutting remarks, the way they react and respond to each other. They were throwing volleys at each other and it was so funny to see it. And I liked how they author showed that when first loves go sour, it can linger with us well into adulthood.

I also really loved that I could tell a lot of detail had been researched. The town felt real and like I could actually see it if I tried. The battle between them and the horseman was great, I don’t think there was anything about this book that I disliked.

My only qualm with this book is I wanted more. I wanted it to be longer. I wanted more lore on the families and the town. But I’m a lore lover and will never apologize for that.

I recommend this fun, easy read.

I read a quote, don’t remember who from, that said “easy reading is damn hard writing”. this book is super easy to read and super enjoyable. So give it a shot. It’s 4 stars from me.

Bright Ruined Things by: Samantha Cohoe

Bright Ruined Things is a YA retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and had such an incredible premise that I was excited when I got it and dove into it.

The story premise is let down by weak characters and a plot that is easy to see coming.

Our main character, Mae is a weak willed, gullible girl is who is living with and off the generosity of the Prosper family. She knows that her way of life, for what it is, is at risk when the story starts because she’s come of age.

Lord Prosper promised her father Mae would be taken care of until she came of age and now she’s hoping no one notices she has since they don’t take much notice of her as it is.

The Prospers’ wealth comes from aether. Magic only exists in the archipelago where the family lives and only the Prospers seem to be able to really control it. And only the males of the family.

And every member of the family is coming for First Night.

Instead of human servants, there are spirits and they’re all bound. They don’t speak and just do as they’re told. Then Mae sees a spirit that looks like it’s dead which is impossible.

Spirits can’t die.

From there we’re thrown into the story when Mae’s best friend Coco shows up along with Miles, the boy she loves and one of Coco’s cousins.

This story was not very strong. None of the characters really stood out and our main character is so weak and gullible, I didn’t root for her. Why when she wouldn’t live up to it?

And she knows she’s weak too. It was honestly infuriating.

The romance was weak and felt rushed. Honestly the entire story felt weak and I was uninterested the entire time. As the story went on my enjoyment waned. At the end, I simply didn’t care any longer.

No to mention, the writing, while enjoyable, didn’t always hold my interest.

This book gets two (2) stars from me. I wanted more and there’s potential so I’m not writing the author off yet.

More diversity however, would be nice. Just a thought.

I received this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Ariadne by: Jennifer Saint

A telling of the life of Ariadne with nothing powerful to show for it

I want to preface this by saying I did enjoy the book I enjoyed it as a single read only, but I did enjoy it.

I love Greek myth, I’m not sure who didn’t grow up at least a little interested in it. As a result, when I saw this book and it’s simple yet gorgeous cover, I fell in love.

The story of the minotaur is always told from the point of view of Theseus and I was really curious about how it would feel to read it from the point of view of the woman who made it possible.

This story reads with a feminist tilt. Ariadne and her younger sister Phaedra are women in a man’s world. They have no power and their father Minos is a monster in his own right. He uses the minotaur and the labyrinth that houses it as a weapon.

We all know the myth. What I wanted from this book is to see Ariadne coming into her power on her own.

That’s not what happens. Jennifer Saint writes the myth with more modern prose. It’s told from Ariadne’s point of view, then Phaedra’s. You get a solid enough feel for the two of them and become attached enough to follow them through their journeys but nothing really that I didn’t already know.

She doesn’t bring anything new to the story and the characters, while well rounded, didn’t really sink their hooks into me. I wanted more, I wanted to feel more for these women. Although I knew how it would end, I still wanted to be surprised.

Madeline Miller did this with Circe. While I knew the story, the way it was told and the life she breathed into the character of Circe was amazing. I wanted that. I wanted characters that felt real.

They were a bit flat. They were a bit boring. And there were points during the book where the dialogue and the conflict was off. There was a point where Ariadne and Dionysus had an argument and it felt contrived. It felt weak. Contrived.

There was a point where she was arguing with her sister and her sister’s words were meant to be hurtful and they boiled down to “I’m not fat from having kids, I don’t have a baby on my chest anymore.”

And that was meant to be hurtful? Not once after leaving Crete had Ariadne given any thought to her appearance and then her sister brings up that she’s fat because she’s had five children and that hurts?

It was so weak.

I finished the book to see the ending. Honestly, I was too close to the end of it to just give up. I closed the book and just shrugged.

Maybe someone else will enjoy it more. The writing it solid and easy to understand although Jennifer Saint has a problem in this book with hammering on with description of emotions. I read a literal paragraph of how glorious some part of Theseus body was or another paragraph about how handsome he was or when it came to how she was feeling she just kept saying the same thing over and over in the same paragraph.

Run on sentences are annoying when they happen often. When it’s the entire paragraph and you’re getting the same idea but with different flowery words, it’s enough to make me want to quit.

I’m giving it a two and a half.