Hooooo boy. What a book. What a magnificent masterpiece of a book. I’m not this will be a review, so much as me rambling and spewing thoughts. I think a lot of people went into this one expecting it to be a romcom type of book. However, it is more of a coming of age/exploration of adulthood with some romance. The main focus is Grace and her journey, rather than the romance (though that is definitely a part of her journey). I just. Ugh. Reading this as someone who is nearing the end of an astrophysics PhD (like Grace) and experiencing burnout, depression, and anxiety (like Grace) hit so me so hard. It really made me feel SEEN.

I just couldn’t get enough of retellings hahaha. So here is my list of retelling recommendations, part two! A lot of you seemed excited by the last post, so I hope you will enjoy this one as well. And if you have any other suggestions, please do let me know so I can further expand my TBR lol.

I have been meaning to read Aliette de Bodard’s work for a long time now, so I practically jumped when Tor.com approved me for this eARC!! I’d like to start this review with the AO3 content warnings and tags that the author wrote herself:

[tw-abuse, tw-assault-non-explicit] sword lesbian, diplomat lesbian, sunshine girl, fire girl (who is also sunshine girl), colonialism, sapphic shenanigans, symbolically unsubtle chess, garden flirting & more, drawn sword, tea on fire, scary tiger

If you didn’t know, AO3 is a fan-fiction website and their tagging system is godly. I need all books from now on to be described in this way, THANKS.

I feel like it has been SOOOO long since I fell this in love with a YA fantasy book. But omg you GUYS!!! This book is so good!!! I had seen a bunch of my bookstagram friends reading and loving it, so I was expecting to like it as well. But I didn’t know JUST how great it would be.

One of my favorite type of books to read is retellings, of any kind (though diverse ones are always better). Mythology, fairytales, classics, etc; I will literally consume it all. There have been a lot of new releases that are retellings, so I thought I’d make a post about my favorite ones I’ve read, and ones that I’m excited to read! I also wanted to make sure that I included adult SFF retellings. It seems that most of the popular ones out there are YA, but never fear, adult retelling fans! I am here to help you. And me. Mostly I made this list for me 😂.