Ceraphina

Jung Yun's prior book Shelter absolutely wrecked me, so I picked up her new release O Beautiful without much thought. This was beautiful and heart wrenching but yet, the pacing was a bit off for me. Some parts felt more dry in the writing style and plot. Overall it didn't pact the ‘oomph' in the end for my reading tastes.

If you didn't get along with this one, I still highly recommend Shelter. If you've read Shelter and the premise of this book intrigues you, pick this one up as well as much of Jung Yun's writing talents show strong in this novel too.

I think there's a quantifiable struggle amongst readers to pinpoint / express what makes us love a certain novel.

I'm finding that struggle here. Slewfoot completely transported me to a different time, different world, and every character was filled with emotional range and complexity. A joy of a gothic novel.

Merged review:

I think there's a quantifiable struggle amongst readers to pinpoint / express what makes us love a certain novel.

I'm finding that struggle here. Slewfoot completely transported me to a different time, different world, and every character was filled with emotional range and complexity. A joy of a gothic novel.

Meaningless side comment here but what is up with the US edition cover looking like all of those poor, sad hidden romance/erotica novels found tucked ruefully away in a corner at your local B&N in early 2010's? Lol.

If that cover is all you're able to buy/or borrow from your library this is the one time I feel like I can genuinely say: Don't trust a book by it's cover. If you're into more lighthearted mysteries with a plentiful cast of characters, this is worth a read.

In the first couple chapters and knowing the Bookish circles I follow that said “ending is hit or miss” I got my brain working on what it was going to be. Though I didn't guess all the details correctly on that final chapter, I had correctly assumed the general ending which after reading I don't know how I feel in regards to piecing it together so early.

slight spoiler ahead!!

!!! Proceed with caution if you don't want anything spoiled !!!

I wish more than anything that Charlie's delusions were more prominent and wasn't immediately contradicted by what we can assume (in the midst of reading) with facts due to the change of POVs, where other characters were recounting things that were said/seen by Charlie while she was “hallucinating”. I had wanted and hoped for a different vibe. Something maybe more fever dream. Something where you're becoming genuinely unsure of the environment and situation from Charlie's movie trance hallucinations, and could spend lots of time picking it all apart and battling between a narrative you'd prefer vs a narrative that led and concluded to truths. This was way more “let me seem like I understand feminism by making a women with trauma but without comprehension of genuine women's suffering.”

You can go so many delicious ways with this kind of premise but alas, it's Riley Sager, and from what I've read in the past I've never experienced something the authors written that I've felt was sensational and recommend to all of your friends worthy.

I had a humiliating moment while reading, when I realized just how desperate I've became for Vampire romance to of ended up reading this.

It's... Awful.

I've read a couple things by Katee Robert at this point and irregardless to how fascinating a book premise of theirs is in the future, I won't dare to pick up another.

I write notes when I'm reading books and one of them I had was: “writing is janky. like the author was typing out scenes one handed and ‘flicking her nub' with the other.” and maybe that's too sarcastic even coming from me lol, but I can't seem to find another way to describe the structure for this. It doesn't flow. Not to mention that when I wrote that in my notes was because just a mere couple pages into the book, our character is orgasming on the floor and humping the vampire upon first meeting.

Majority of the scenes make little sense, particularly between the physical movement of the characters and actions. Example: (not pulled from the book directly but so you get a sense of what I'm talking about) if you're reading a character whose in a bedroom at night but a couple sentences later it's afternoon the next day and they're in the kitchen. You're left with a character finishing a sentence or a thought and next thing you know, you're transported elsewhere into a new situation. Sometimes that's okay but the writing has to be there to make those scenes come together and whole. This is not that.

The only thing I enjoyed in this was the fact that multiple vampires had sex with her, and lots of threesome scenes. i do enjoy reverse harem

We don't learn much about these vampires. We don't learn much of anything of the other vampires. The whole reason for why she's there doesn't feel like much of a reason. Any thoughts/emotions/motivations is surface level. It's presented as fact, leaving me disconnected from enjoyment. For me to read a smut book and come away only valuing the smut and not the characters is disappointing.

And that ending made my eyes roll so hard I could of been having a stroke. Spoilers here the vampires learn that Mina has magical abilities, that she may also be 'other'. Malachai is under a magical lockdown at his castle imposed on him by Mina's father. Why? idk. And in order to destroy this magical binding she needs to take 3 vampire dicks to unleash her abilities and break the barrier. I mean... Wow lol. After the threesome they talk about what should be done at this point. Somewhere along the way they decided Mina needs to become pregnant. It ends with "I need to get pregnant but first, we have to kill my father" Ugh. The cringe.

Not that it hasn't already been said but I won't be continuing.

I've been sitting on this for the day and the more I think about this series, the angrier I'm getting and knocking this down to 2 stars from my original 4.

First things first, the smut is bad. I'm sorry but two to three sentences of being eaten out isn't satisfying, and like, writing sex scenes shouldn't be as difficult as this book made it seem. It was clunky, and just not it for me. But I'm willing to overlook this because it's not the whole story. But I'd like to quickly add, that the rape between her and the demon (she agreed to this sex act however the disassociation, wanting it to be over, feeling “empty” general depression after the fact, and acknowledging this was only as a transaction is rape to me) was so poorly written? I can't get over it honestly. The writing style is very stream of conscious at times, and it was noticeable at this very pivotal time in the plot. It just didn't sit well with me.

Also the way Colliths death was handled? Again, stream of concious style writing had a huge disservice to his death. It's like our writer has so many ideas and plot points they want to make, it just sentence after sentence with no feeling. I'd expected to feel something for Colliths death and it was just bland.

Speaking of this, books are allowed I acknowledge to end on cliff hangers. But to start so many open ended questions of various characters or plots is hard to want to deal with. Like Laurie admitting he put the scar on Collith. Or Oliver leaving things in the real world. I don't want plots to feel like a huge effort to keep track of.

A lot of shit happens out of convienance too. I feel there has been zero repercussions for Fortunas actions. Colliths death would of been nice as a moment for her to really reflect on what's happening to her life, but instead she found a way to have advantage on death, regardless of what that cost was. Its whatever she wants, when she wants it, and if that's the entire series will we ever experience emotions during reading them? Another thing of convenience that bothers me the most is her “powers”, or “bond” she has with all the faeries in unseelie court. This bond is difficult on her when we want to add tension, but always seem easy to overcome and bring more power to her when she needs it, like during fighting?

Fuck I really could keep going on and on. This review is mainly for me to remind myself when the third book comes out, to not have high hopes.

This might be one of my top favorites regarding coming of age novels. The first two thirds of the book is lamenting prose with a lot of heart break in this family. We get to learn about these siblings and how they talk and move around each other, all tied to some horrific parenting and one sister stuck emotionally in it due to the mother's decision in leaving her stranded alone on the side of the road during a car ride. They're all trying to help her and understand what happened in how their sister got back home that night but the truth isn't very comforting. This moves us into the last part of the novel where we get a sudden change in the plot pace and everything unravels for our siblings. This had a very satisfying conclusion. Loved it to bits.