NB: This week, we’re taking a look back at 2023. We’ve got a week of best-of posts to share, with reviews, cover snark, sales, and more. We hope you enjoy revisiting our archives, and most of all, we wish...
NB: This week, we’re taking a look back at 2023. We’ve got a week of best-of posts to share, with reviews, cover snark, sales, and more. We hope you enjoy revisiting our archives, and most of all, we wish you and yours a wonderful holiday and a happy new year – with all the very best of reading.
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We’re onto part two of of our Best of Reviews for 2023! I’m eager to see if some of you guessed correctly. As I was looking up the site stats for these, I was honestly surprised by some of the top reviews. Others definitely made sense, though certainly some wild cards.
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5. How to Tame a Wild Rogue by Julie Anne Long (July 26)
Review by Lara
Grade: Squee
This book made me swoon IRL. Reading it was a fever dream and not just because of the sex scenes. I was so immersed in it that the real world and its troubles didn’t even occur to me for the duration of the book. (I am anxious by nature, so this is a feat.)
There is a delightful cast of supporting characters, but I would speedread those parts, desperate for more of Lorcan and Daphne’s far-ranging, emotion-laden conversations. Such is the power of this book, that I’m still in a fog of misty-eyed love a couple days later. If you need your heart to be held, loved and adored, then this is the book for you. Truly, I am in love.
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4. Movie Review: Spin Me Round (April 13)
Review by Carrie
Grade: C-
Tonally, the movie is all over the place. This is partly because its dark comedy premise revels in sudden escalation, but the escalations don’t always work. The abrupt inclusion of a lot of blood and a LOT of nudity in the, um, climactic scene is jarring, which might work for some viewers as a comedic element but really threw me off.
Ultimately, Spin Me Round is fun in the sense that a bunch of real-life friends hung out and made a movie together, and one gets the sense that they all had a good time. Good for them. For me, even though I could see what the movie was going for, it felt bland and disappointing and cringey and deeply unfunny. If I HAVE to consume a bland product, at least let it be a breadstick.
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3. One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig (June 21)
Review by Lara
Grade: B-
Let’s start with what this book does well. It’s a really interesting premise and the world-building is good (if slow). A long time ago, the balance of magic was upset and now the Spirit of the Woods is taking over with a magical mist that kills people. Cue: a need to save the kingdom and those infected by magic.
This really was two very different paced books stuck together, which makes reviewing it rather difficult. Overall, I’m glad I read this book and I’m glad I stuck with it through the dull parts. There are enough loose strings to the plot that book 2 in the series promises to be a belter and I’ve already preordered it.
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2. Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett (January 23)
Review by Brigid F. (Guest Reviewer)
Grade: Squee
Everything about this frost-tipped whimsical fantasy had me waiting for the snow to fall so I could bundle up in a blanket, dreaming about prickly faeries and fresh hot buns. Did I mention the delicacies in this book? It is full of chilly delights, including iceberries and star-brewed wine. I mean it when I say this is the perfect book to summon snow for your increasingly warm winter weather.
Chilling, packed with lore, and a slow burn, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett is the type of book I’ve been looking for. Their adventure from faerie field research to two professors running like hell from a faerie nightmare kept me on the edge of my seat. Yes, sometimes the annotations (made to feel just like an academic journal) felt a bit too lengthy at times. But I found myself so in love with the voice, the characters, and the story that I really couldn’t find myself caring all that much about its faults.
This book and I? We are an absolute match.
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1. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (October 16)
Review by Elyse
Grade: DNF
I am not here to yuck anyone’s yum. If you read Fourth Wing and you loved it, I am totally happy for you. I want people to love what they read.
This was not a book that worked for me, though, and I suspect I’m probably not the only one who didn’t love it. I made it about 45% of the way though before I finally decided this was just going to be a slog for me and I gave up.
Anyway, if Fourth Wing is your jam I am genuinely happy for you. For me it was too much about someone in a crappy situation insisting on staying in that crappy situation for reasons that didn’t make a lot of sense, alongside slow plot development, mixed with some tropes I don’t love. There were far too many times where I questioned why something was happening, and the text never revealed nor hinted at a satisfactory reason beyond “because reasons,” so I moved on.
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What are your predictions for the top five? Let us know in the comments!
