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Season's Reapings by Sylvain Johnson. Rating: 2 stars.

Read from July 3rd to 5th.

Before I get into the review, a quick thank you to both NetGalley and the publishers over at Gallery Books for allowing me access to this ARC in exchange for an honest review. Season's Reapings is a dark Nutcracker retelling set in Montreal. In this book, a winter storm rages while a serial killer nicknamed "The Mouse King" haunts the streets. His signature is a live mouse in his victims' sealed mouths. A corrupt police officer whose niece fits the Mouse King's victim profile too well, races to solve the case and protect his family. Translated from the French for the first time, it rings in the holidays with a new kind of terror. Season's Reapings comes out on October 6th and is available for preorder now.

I really want to start out this review by saying that this one might be on me. As I was rereading the GoodReads synopsis, I noticed just how emphasized the gore, the grotesqueness, the blood soaked nature of it all are for this book. I do enjoy a good horror novel every now and again and I assumed this one would be super Christmassy so I was excited to read this one. But I'm realizing that this kind of horror just isn't for me. I do see other people commenting on the gore and saying that the ridiculousness of the murders made them laugh out loud. (Spoiler: Like when the old woman chokes on her husband's catheter.) It felt like the entire point of the novel was the gruesomeness and the gore. It's like the author specifically wrote these violence scenes and then built a story around it. I actually joked with my husband the other day that it feels like the author really wants to commit murders but realizes that they can't do that so instead they wrote out all the fantasies they had. I don't normally love the whole "If the author wrote it then they condone it" argument but it's the way the scenes are written. It's so over the top and absolutely disgusting. I was reading on my lunch break at work and literally couldn't finish my meal because I thought I was going to throw up. There is also animal related gore and death so that was always going to bring my rating down. I couldn't see how this was a retelling of the Nutcracker and I don't seem to be the only one feeling that way. Also, the only thing Christmassy about this book is the lights that are up on the buildings that the characters walk into. It's a book that takes place around Christmas.

There were some concepts in here that had so much potential. And I hate using potential as my positive for a book review because I know that there's always an audience for a book. Always. Just because I may not have liked something doesn't mean that there's no one out there who would like it. For me, the only real positive was the potential. I loved the idea of a serial killer who uses a snow storm to commit more murders without getting caught. I loved the idea that this cop who's sort of morally grey having to race against the clock to save his niece. Yet neither lived up to their potential for me.

Rites of the Starling by Devney Perry. Rating: 3 stars.

Read from June 26th to July 2nd.

I wasn't originally planning to read this one for a few months but then the hold came in from the library and I had to take a quick break from Christmas in July (which starts in June) to get this one done. I actually spent most of my time reading this one having an okay enough time. There were some things I didn't like. Some things I did. But then the final plot twist kicked in and I disliked it so much that it dropped the book from around a 3.75 star rating down to 3 stars. And I can't decide if my review should spoil the twist or not so I guess we'll find out when we get there.

I still really enjoy this world and this magic system. There's something about it that makes a lot of sense for me and it feels like there's a world with rules. I also still really enjoy the world as the author has laid it out. I can see everything really clearly with the way the author describes everything. The characters did a lot of heavy lifting in the first book and still managed to keep a lot of my attention but less so than before. I thought the plot for this one was okay but I did spend a lot of time wondering when everything would click into place (trying to be vague here, on purpose). It's weird because I had a good time (for the most part) but there's also such a bad taste in my mouth from that final plot twist.

I found that the time spent between two different POVs and two different couples made it hard to connect to either couple. The love (and absolutely feral emotions) I had for Odessa and Ransom from book one was lost because I didn't ever feel connected to their story or their relationship. Part of that was because they weren't together at the beginning. But this book is trying to do some much that we don't ever fully connect with the characters. This book also felt so derivative of other works. There's the start of a new type of journey that happens in this book that will probably finish up in the final book that comes out next year that just feels so similar to the Harry Potter series that it felt weird. Of course, it's not the same but it's a similar enough journey that I don't know if I'll even continue with the series.