taliaissmart's reviews
2252 reviews

I mean, YA you can eat like it’s ice cream. Fun and fast-paced and flirty; court drama featuring a completely evil king and his hot & kindhearted son; a girl who’s somehow the top assassin in the country at 18 (and she’s been in prison for the past year), because, why not. The writing quality was far better than I feared it would be—the pages slide by without disruptive confusion or eye-rolling, which in YA-fantasy-land can be a bit of a high bar to clear (cough Crave cough). I shall read book 2!

Cute! It’s giving plot hole (and substance abuse) but I liked the found family vibe—though one could argue that maybe lovers should ultimately not end up related??

In this bloody, visceral novella, a captive mermaid sets her ferocious children upon her kidnappers and flees with the town's plague doctor. They travel together across a windswept taiga, drawing closer to each other and to unexpectedly familiar new dangers.

Khaw's language slices and stuns--this book is so original, stomach-turning, layered, and gorgeous despite its low page count.

A meta murder mystery that continually breaks the fourth wall, deconstructing the tropes of the genre as the clues & bodies pile up. Set at an elite hunting club's bicentennial 4th of July celebration, the mystery follows an outsider hired by an unknown lodge member to investigate an unknown goal.

I liked the premise, but the actual mystery felt lukewarm to me.