moonytoast's reviews
253 reviews

the title is the most interesting bit of this book but it was still a decent, quick read for anyone who wants to learn a bit more about the science and customs around caring for the dead

TEMPORARY DNF — i will be getting back to this at some point but i gotta tap out for a minute cause it’s giving me Bridget Jones’ Diary levels of secondhand embarrassment

RTC… which will come once the HCP Union is able to negotiate a fair contract for their workers. 

Part memoir, part love letter to the natural world, this was such a heartfelt dose of warmth and poetry about a slew of fascinating plants and creatures that the author ties back to her own experiences in a beautiful way. Perfect for fans of The Anthropocene Reviewed. 

Thank you to Netgalley and Delacorte Press for providing me with a digital ARC of this book!

Once the action finally kicks in after a lengthy stint of character expositions and building the backdrop to this young adult thriller, Five Survive manages to create a compellingly tense story rife with mystery, murder, and aching wound of grief.

I think thrillers live or die by two things: character and setting. Five Survive generally succeeds on both fronts.

The first comes down to how Red Kenny grew on me over the course of the book. She’s a character whose internal monologue was, at times, mildly annoying. (Take a shot every time she says something along the lines, “It can’t be my secret. No one knows about the plan. That’s the whole point.” You’ll be drunker than Simon by the halfway point.) However, there’s something genuine about her…. not in terms of candor, but rather Red’s heart. There's the searing guilt at her core from years of her blaming herself for her mother's death, but the walls she tries and fails to put up to block those thoughts and emotions don't stop her from caring and loving in a deep way. Also, the more she started to buck up against Oliver’s domineering plans for the group, the more I liked her.

The second is how the setting of the RV elevates the thriller from an otherwise 'we're trapped in the middle of nowhere with a killer' story to one where the setting is almost a character in itself. The way they have to utilize items in the RV to protect themselves and attempt to escape--the flimsy mattress and ripped up suitcase for covering the windows--to the way it slowly builds a sense of claustrophobia in the narrative, the characters becoming more and more on top of each other as the night goes on. It forces the author and the characters to be smarter with their limited choices.

Final mildly-spoiler notes: I felt like there where a number of plot twists that were relatively easy to predict, I will give Miss Holly Jackson credit where it's due... THE DOORBELL REVEAL???!?? Even though I already had the inkling about who killed Red’s mother, I literally pushed back my chair and stood up to shout. 

As someone who doesn’t typically reach for thrillers when choosing their next read, I definitely enjoyed this book! (minus one star for some mild romanticizing of cops)

HOLY SHITTTTT this was so good, very much evoking.... a certain episode of The Haunting of Hill House (if you know, you know)

this book walked so that tiktok song about the 800+ military bases spread across the globe could run

 Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for providing me with a digital ARC of this book!

PREVIOUSLY PITCHED AS a sapphic murder mystery on a boat, I have been eagerly awaiting the follow-up to Freya Marske’s A Marvellous Light since I read it earlier this year and absolutely fell in love with this series. I’m a sucker for historical fantasy, and add a sapphic romance at the forefront and a Titanic-esque setting? That sounds right up my alley. 

 

A Restless Truth easily proves itself to be an enticing second installment in the Last Binding series and, in some ways, surpasses expectations by expanding the mystery and worldbuilding in a unique way. Over the course of Maud Blyth’s increasingly dangerous transatlantic journey, we see different ways of conducting magic beyond the standard English cradle methods introduced in the first book. 
 

As always, I adored Marske’s writing style. They manage to create these lush, expansive environments full to the brim with beautiful description and imbibes characters’ internal monologues with excellent and lyrical prose. It perfectly suits her current niche of historical fantasy with the Last Binding series, but I would honestly read anything by her. 
 

I loved A Marvellous Light and enjoyed Robin as a character, but I do think that Maud is a more interesting and engaging protagonist. Perhaps that is because she has a greater sense of agency than Robin throughout the story; both of the Blyth siblings were unceremoniously thrown into the world of magic, but I think that the difference between Maud’s early path and Robin’s is that Maud has a greater sense of the magical world at the start of the story. Maud knows magic is real and is tasked with a clear quest, even if that does go awry in the wake of Miss Navenby’s murder. Comparatively, Robin is thrust into this world without any clear understanding and put under a curse that effectively removes any choice to participate in the unraveling of a grand magical scheme. At many points, Maud internally voices that she feels useless compared to her companions, Violet Debenam and Lord Hawthorn, but the narrative itself disputes that belief. 

Violet was an intriguing character and it was fun to watch her perform and even more engaging to see her peel back these superficial elements and bare true parts of herself to Maud. There’s a complexity to her that feels so refreshing for a character that, at first glance, seems to parallel characterizations of Pansy Parkinson in certain fanfiction (if you know, you know). 

 

Quite surprisingly, I ended up enjoying the expanded role of Hawthorn in this book. I found him interesting in A Marvellous Light, but we as the reader don't spend that much time with him and, when we did, it was through the eyes of Robin and Edwin. The dynamic between him, Maud, and Violet Debenam ends up evoking elements of the double act—namely Hawthorn as the straight man. I think that suits his personality well and also helps to make the moments where that dynamic shifts... where Hawthorne breaks from that mold and reveals the glimpses of knowledge and experience that escalate the tension... even more impactful. 

 

I think Maud was the perfect character to help break down the seemingly passive yet thorny walls of Hawthorn. One of my favorite moments in the book comes after a scene in which Hawthorn challenges Maud to a game of chess in the hopes of getting her to stop pursuing the piece of the Last Contract and, despite being on a path to victory, willingly surrenders his king. There's a short, quiet moment when Maud is leaving and Hawthorn reveals his hand: "My sister..." He grimaced. "She was a little like you." 

The setting of the R.M.S. Lyric is an integral part of this story, isolating Maud Blyth in the liminal space of a ship surrounded on all sides by the Atlantic Ocean. She is effectively left to her own wits and persuasion in order to solve the mystery of Miss Navenby’s murder and recover the second piece of the Last Contract. 

 

Nineteenth and early twentieth-century passenger ships have such an interesting aesthetic and sociocultural nature with the distinction between first-class and third-class passengers in a very physical sense – there is a literal separation built into the design of the ship to prevent a co-mingling of these two groups in areas designed to be pleasurable for the wealthy first-class passengers. Moving between these groups comes at a social risk for first-class passengers… With the watchful eyes of members of English and American high society on board, the Lyric almost feels like a panopticon at certain moments, which is used by and against the characters of A Restless Truth. 

 
The plot in of itself is not as complicated and there is less intrigue, but such is the nature of some series. We learn in the first book the reason why this shadowy group of magicians were targeting Robin and their motivation for doing so, but there are still some gaps in the knowledge around the Last Contract that this fills in for Maud and her group of lovable first-class rogues. The pacing dips a little bit in the middle chunk of the book, but overall it didn't bother me too much. 

Now that

each side has one piece of the Contract,

I’m interested in how Marske will manage to build a compelling and engaging conclusion to this story. Personally, I hope Hawthorn gets the main character treatment in the next book. 

RTC….. until then, support the HarperCollins Union strike!

ok the audiobook of this?????? HOLY SHIT it lends so much to the tension and horror of this story, like the difference between maddie’s voice and not maddie’s voice is just so well done and exquisitely uncomfortable to listen to. my only qualms are that i think it