reading

Book Review: WHEN THE WOLF COMES HOME by Nat Cassidy

| Jessica Crawford

When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy is a 304 page novel published in 2025 by Tor Nightfire.

Genre:

Horror, Paranormal

Blurb:

One night, Jess, a struggling actress, finds a five-year-old runaway hiding in the bushes outside her apartment. After a violent, bloody encounter with the boy’s father, she and the boy find themselves running for their lives.

As they attempt to evade the boy’s increasingly desperate father, horrifying incidents of butchery follow them. At first, Jess thinks she understands what they’re up against, but she’s about to learn there’s more to these surreal and grisly events than she could’ve ever imagined.

And that when the wolf finally comes home, none will be spared.

Opening Line:

Daddy is roaring.

My Thoughts:

What a wild ride!

Nat Cassidy’s horror pulls no punches, so make sure to read the content warnings at the beginning of the book, but honestly I thought they made it sound way worse than it actually was. His writing is as entertaining and humorous as it is gory (…well, maybe not quite – it’s pretty gory!) This time around, it’s also really touching.

Jess finds herself in charge of a terrified young boy on the run from his father, and neither might be quite what they seem (if you prefer stories rooted firmly in reality without any speculative/fantastical elements, look elsewhere). This is a road trip adventure that will keep readers on the edge of their seats while also pulling on their heart strings. A theme of this book is the old FDR quote about the only thing to fear being fear itself. I was riveted, amused, and loving the journey…

BUT THEN.

This was a 5 star read for me right up until a resolution I was deeply unhappy with. I suppose it was an ending that made a good deal of sense, but certainly it could have gone another way.

Despite how upset I was with how the author chose to conclude this book, it’s still true that I loved the experience of reading it overall, and so 5 stars it is–but just know I am currently not speaking to Nat Cassidy (but will continue reading anything he writes)!

P.S. As an 80s kid myself, I can confirm Who Framed Roger Rabbit was terrifying

Goodreads

Book Review: THE COMPOUND by Aisling Rawle

| Jessica Crawford

The Compound by Aisling Rawle is a 292 page standalone novel published by Random House in 2025.

Genre:

Dystopian Fiction, Suspense

Synopsis:

Nothing to lose. Everything to gain. Winner takes all.

Lily—a bored, beautiful twentysomething—wakes up on a remote desert compound alongside nineteen other contestants on a popular reality TV show. To win, she must outlast her housemates while competing in challenges for luxury rewards, such as champagne and lipstick, and communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door.

The cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: Why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation. When the producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur. If Lily makes it to the end, she’ll receive prizes beyond her wildest dreams—but what will she have to do to win?

Addictive and prescient, The Compound is an explosive debut from a major new voice in fiction and will linger in your mind long after the game ends.

Opening Line:

I woke up first.

My Thoughts:

Well, I simply devoured this suspenseful dystopian tale!

The overall message is a condemnation of consumerism and late-stage capitalism. Sure, there’s the sexy story of a bunch of young people living in a compound together, forced to pair up with a member of the opposite sex at night if they want to avoid banishment from the reality TV show, alternately cooperating to complete challenges and scheming to oust one another in order to earn ever more desirable rewards (these are often luxury items, but sometimes things necessary for their survival, isolated as they are out in the desert).

But this story isn’t just trashy fun – where it really sings is in the creeping dread it steeps the reader in as it continues to hint at how bleak things are in the outside world without ever describing things explicitly (peep the fires outside of the compounds boundaries on the cover – such a good detail!) What exactly are these people trying to escape that has them so willing to put themselves through this absolutely bonkers experience?

As more contestants get eliminated, the tension ratchets up as the remaining characters lose themselves more and more to the idea of “winning” the chance to continue putting off real life. Ultimately the main character (and the reader) must decide which is more important in an imperfect world: luxury, or meaningful human connection?

I admit I was expecting a bit more of a bang at the end, which was rather more of a whimper. But I still loved this story, which was bananas in all the best ways!

Book Review: GIFTED & TALENTED by Olivie Blake

| Jessica Crawford

Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake is a 512 page standalone novel published in 2025 by Tor Books.

Genre:

Contemporary Fantasy

Synopsis:

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six comes the story of three siblings who, upon the death of their father, are forced to reckon with their long-festering rivalries, dangerous abilities, and the crushing weight of all their unrealized adolescent potential.

Where there’s a will, there’s a war.

Thayer Wren, the brilliant CEO of Wrenfare Magitech and so-called father of modern technology, is dead. Any one of his three telepathically and electrokinetically gifted children would be a plausible inheritor to the Wrenfare throne.

Or at least, so they like to think.

Meredith, textbook accomplished eldest daughter and the head of her own groundbreaking biotech company, has recently cured mental illness. You’re welcome! If only her father’s fortune wasn’t her last hope for keeping her journalist ex-boyfriend from exposing what she really is: a total fraud.

Arthur, second-youngest congressman in history, fights the good fight every day of his life. And yet, his wife might be leaving him, and he’s losing his re-election campaign. But his dead father’s approval in the form of a seat on the Wrenfare throne might just turn his sinking ship around.

Eilidh, once the world’s most famous ballerina, has spent the last five years as a run-of-the-mill marketing executive at her father’s company after a life-altering injury put an end to her prodigious career. She might be lacking in accolades compared to her siblings, but if her father left her everything, it would finally validate her worth—by confirming she’d been his favorite all along.

On the pipeline of gifted kid to clinically depressed adult, nobody wins—but which Wren will come out on top?

Opening Line:

Meredith Wren, a fucking asshole, not that it matters at this stage of the narrative but it’s worth pointing out, sat blinded by the overhead lights from the stage, squinting unflatteringly into the brand-new, state-of-the-art auditorium that had just been completed on Tycho’s unethically verdant campus.

My Thoughts:

I guess I felt sorry for them, the Wrens. Which you shouldn’t do. Lord knows they don’t need your sympathy. If you give a mouse a cookie…you know how that turns out.

But hey, a bad dad is a bad dad.

The Wren siblings each have their own curious magical ability, as well as their individual contentious familial relationships. Having been raised with every resource available to the wealthy and respected, you would think they would naturally have had a step up to reaching the heights of success themselves. And yet…

He had simply believed, in his heart or possibly somewhere even dumber, that she could do anything…

This book tells the story of what happens when their father dies and they gather for his funeral and the reading of his will. Each sibling comes with their own attendant companions as well – various spouses, exes, mistresses, etc. Some of the characters can be very irritating, and yet the writing and especially the narrative voice (utilizing a clever twist on the omniscient narrator) in this book are spectacular. I’ve seen this story described as “magical Succession“, and certain bits about the nabob family reminded me of Mike Flanagan’s television adaption of The Fall of the House of Usher.

“I didn’t want happiness, for fuck’s sake–I wanted an A!” She felt sick with herself, with the repulsion of having seen her insides. “I wanted to get a good grade in life, in adulthood, in existing–but who was ever going to give me that?

Through a fairly angsty process, Thayer Wren’s adult children are forced to face their own personal hang ups, the joys and disappointments they’ve been served within their family. The angst, some characters being pretty unlikable, and the lack of satisfying explanation as to why some people seem to have a singular specific magical ability prevented this from being a 5 star read for me, but the clever writing and amusing voice that had me letting out the occasional startled laugh brought it pretty close.

In this version of the story, [she] might rewrite her selfish behaviors and her narrow concern for the mere aesthetics of life in favor of seeking redemption and accountability, having been suitably visited by the ghosts of Christmas past and/or a mental health professional.

Book Review: THE MARTHA’S VINEYARD BEACH AND BOOK CLUB by Martha Hall Kelly

| Jessica Crawford

The Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club by Martha Hall Kelly is a 336 page standalone novel published in 2025 by Ballantine Books.

Genre:

Historical Fiction

Synopsis:

2016: Thirty-four-year-old Mari Starwood is still grieving after her mother’s death as she travels to the storied island of Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. She’s come all the way from California with nothing but a name on a piece of paper: Elizabeth Devereaux, the famous but reclusive Vineyard painter. When Mari makes it to Mrs. Devereaux’s stunning waterfront farm under the guise of taking a painting class with her, Mrs. Devereaux begins to tell her the story of the Smith sisters, who once lived there. As the tale unfolds, Mari is shocked to learn that her relationship to this island runs deeper than she ever thought possible.

1942: The Smith girls—nineteen-year-old aspiring writer Cadence and sixteen-year-old war-obsessed Briar—are faced with the impossible task of holding their failing family farm together during World War II as the U.S. Army arrives on Martha’s Vineyard. When Briar spots German U-boats lurking off the island’s shores, and Cadence falls into an unlikely romance with a sworn enemy, their quiet lives are officially upended. In an attempt at normalcy, Cadence and her best friend, Bess, start a book club, which grows both in members and influence as they connect with a fabulous New York publisher who could make all of Cadence’s dreams come true. But all that is put at risk by a mysterious man who washes ashore—and whispers of a spy in their midst. Who in their tight-knit island community can they trust? Could this little book club change the course of the war . . . before it’s too late?

My Thoughts:

Not a perfect fit for me, but there were things I enjoyed about this book, including the strong sense of place whisking me away to the beaches and cottages of 1940s Martha’s Vineyard. The historical fiction aspects were nice, including the ways WWII changed day to day life for civilians. The love for literature was great, as of course an author expects when they know their audience is going to be, well, readers!

A few things that niggled at me included the sudden and complete 180 between the two lovebirds for no discernible reason, the painful contractions and elevated BPs and edema in a woman in the very beginning of her pregnancy, and a so-called book club that seems to meet daily and assign a new book every single week but with the members VERY rarely actually seen reading or discussing the books at book club. I quite like the cover of this book, but it honestly has very little to do with the story.

There are two timelines in this book, with the bulk of the story unfolding in 1942, and only 3 chapters happening in 2016. In the latter, a character is mourning the death of her mother but declines her provider’s suggestion of antidepressants, with the implication that it would make her just forget her lost loved one. There is a lot of love for L.A. in these sections, with some random mentions of Theresa Caputo and Tori Spelling, and the implication that any other city that doesn’t demand its women be blonde therefore has “relaxed beauty standards”. The potential love interest in this part of the story seems completely unnecessary.

There is mention of a swastika design within the bricks of a house and how this suggests it is the home of Nazis, but there are plenty of homes in the U.S. with this design built into the brick pattern as it predates the symbol’s eventual association with the Nazi party.

But taken as a WWII story about the women living on Martha’s Vineyard while the men are shipped out, during U.S. military training exercises on their shores, with a bit of intrigue and family saga as well, this book worked pretty well.

Book Review: THE LISTENERS by Maggie Stiefvater

| Jessica Crawford

The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater is a 400 page standalone novel published in 2025 by Viking.

Genre:

Historical Fiction, Magical Realism

Synopsis:

#1 New York Times bestselling novelist Maggie Stiefvater dazzles in this mesmerizing portrait of an irresistible heroine, an unlikely romance, and a hotel—and a world—in peril.

January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa has always offered elegant luxury in the wilds of West Virginia, its mountain sweetwater washing away all of high society’s troubles.

Local girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, have trained her well. But when the family heir makes a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats, June must persuade her staff—many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the front lines—to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile.

Meanwhile FBI Agent Tucker Minnick, whose coal tattoo hints at an Appalachian past, presses his ears to the hotel’s walls, listening for the diplomats’ secrets. He has one of his own, which is how he knows that June’s balancing act can have dangerous consequences: the sweetwater beneath the hotel can threaten as well as heal.

June has never met a guest she couldn’t delight, but the diplomats are different. Without firing a single shot, they have brought the war directly to her. As clashing loyalties crack the Avallon’s polished veneer, June must calculate the true cost of luxury.

Opening Line:

The day the hotel changed forever began as any other.

My Thoughts:

Belief was contagious. When you believed in one intangible thing, why not a second, why not a third. If God, then why not the listeners in the water, if the listeners in the water, why not ghosts, if ghosts, why not unicorns–

Maggie Stiefvater’s adult debut is a large heaping of historical fiction with a dash of magical realism that evokes an invigorating sense of place and authentic characters.

The setting is a luxury hotel and spa in the mountains of West Virginia, where the sweetwater from the hot and cold springs is said to have restorative powers. The year is 1942 and the U.S. has recently joined in World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor when the State Department and FBI direct that the hotel guests all be checked out so that the hotel can be used to host (read: detain) a few hundred foreign nationals, diplomats and dignitaries from Axis nations. The hope is for diplomatic reciprocity – we treat these people well, and the Americans abroad will be treated well in turn until an exchange can be negotiated. And so the staff of the Avallon find themselves expected to treat the enemy to the heights of luxury.

June Hudson is the general manager of the hotel. Originally from a coal mining town in the mountains and abandoned when her mother couldn’t afford to take care of her during the Great Depression, June began working in housekeeping at the hotel but over the years was taken under the wing of the hotel’s owner and became an honorary member of the Gilfoyle family. She was groomed to take in his role after him because the two share a special ability to commune with the sweetwater. Because it turns out the water under the mountain, tinkling out of fonts all throughout the hotel, is closely tied to its success or failure.

Tucker Rye Minnick (whose name is almost always given in full each time in this book) is an FBI Agent assigned to surveilling the hotel’s new “guests” during their stay. He has a troubled history of his own in Appalachia, and the Germans, Japanese, and Italians in his charge provide him with the opportunity to pull off something that will impress the powers that be enough to save his career.

It was the historical fiction part of this story that worked best for me, plus the setting and characters. (The guest in 411 who hasn’t left her room in years! The neurodivergent child tasked with memorizing a coded message!) I was all in with these parts of the book, and they alone would have earned 5 stars from me.

What I didn’t love was the romance, which seemed completely unnecessary to me, and the fact that I never felt like the question of the sweetwater was fully answered to my satisfaction. In a system of quarter stars, these things bring my final rating down to a still commendable 4.75 stars.

Book Review: THE GHOSTWRITER by Julie Clark

| Jessica Crawford

The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark is a 328 page standalone novel published in 2025 by Sourcebooks Landmark.

Genre:

Mystery, Thriller

Synopsis:

June, 1975.

The Taylor family shatters in a single night when two teenage siblings are found dead in their own home. The only surviving sibling, Vincent, never shakes the whispers and accusations that he was the one who killed them. Decades later, the legend only grows as his career as a horror writer skyrockets.

Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of Vincent Taylor. Now on the brink of financial ruin, she’s offered a job to ghostwrite her father’s last book. What she doesn’t know, though, is that this project is another one of his lies. Because it’s not another horror novel he wants her to write.

After fifty years of silence, Vincent Taylor is finally ready to talk about what really happened that night in 1975.

Opening Line:

“I know what your dad did.”

My Thoughts:

This is an engaging mystery told through the lens of a ghostwriter penning the memoir of an unreliable narrator and trying to puzzle out the truth about an old murder case. It’s written in the first person present tense, and chapters rotate through three POVs in two timelines – Olivia in the present time, and her father and aunt in the months leading up to the murders in 1975. There’s a lot of nostalgia for those who grew up in the seventies here! We see a lot of flashbacks (and actual video footage from fourteen year old Aunt Poppy’s Super 8 camera) displaying family life and social issues of the era.

Did I side eye some of the details in this book? Sure. Did I remain hooked to the unfolding story anyway? You bet!

I’m beginning to realize that once you lie about your past, you wall yourself off from the present. From the people that care about you.

Book Review: THE BOMBSHELL by Darrow Farr

| Jessica Crawford

The Bombshell by Darrow Farr is a 416 page standalone novel published in 2025 by Pamela Dorman Books.

Genre:

Literary Fiction, Popular Fiction, Historical Fiction

Synopsis:

A young woman’s radicalization sparks a widespread movement and media frenzy in this explosive novel of youthful passion, political awakening and first love, by an extraordinary new talent.


Corsica, 1993. As a sun-drenched Mediterranean summer heads into full swing, beautiful and brash seventeen-year-old Severine Guimard is counting down the days until graduation, dreaming of stardom while smoking cigarettes and seducing boys in her class to pass the time. The pampered French-American daughter of a politician, Severine knows she’s destined for bigger things

That is, until one night, Severine is snatched off her bike by a militant trio fighting for Corsican independence and held for a large ransom. When the men fumble negotiating her release, the four become unlikely housemates deep in the island’s remote interior. Eager to gain the upper hand, Severine sets out to charm her captors, and soon, the handsome, intellectual leader, Bruno, the gentle university student, Tittu, and even the gruff, unflappable Petru grow to enjoy the company of their headstrong hostage.

As Severine is exposed to the group’s political philosophy, the ideas of Marx and Fanon begin to take root. With her flair for the spotlight and newfound beliefs, Severine becomes the face of a radical movement for a global TV audience. What follows is a summer of passion and terror, careening toward an inevitable, explosive conclusion, as Severine steps into the biggest role of her life.

The Bombshell is an electric novel filled with seduction and fervor as it explores the wonders and perils of youthful idealism, the combustibility of celebrity, and the sublime force of young love.

Opening Line:

In the hours before her kidnapping, Séverine Guimard claimed Antoine Carsenti’s virginity in a grotto overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

My Thoughts:

Maybe he was a kind of oracle, and maybe they were hurtling towards a cliff’s edge on a train whose brakes she herself had dismantled.

In 1993 Severine, the daughter of the French prefect of Corsica, is abducted by a group of militant revolutionaries. When the minister of the interior refuses to negotiate with terrorists and meet their demands to release a political prisoner, the freedom fighters are left with an egotistical and brash seventeen year old girl on their hands, one who knows how to charm and manipulate people to her liking. After being given reading material about the cleansing force of violence when overthrowing oppressors to pass her time in captivity, Severine decides she wants to join the revolution. She wants to help eradicate injustice, sure – but she also really wants to be famous as the mouthpiece for the organization, and the liberation movement as a whole.

Here was Severine at the top of some mountain, speaking to a camera for five minutes, and consequently, down below, fire, blood, smoke, ash.

I was sucked into this story! Severine was a great main character – not a great person all the time, certainly, but a really fascinating and bold driving force of the story. She is not one to let decisions be made for her, and is often able to mold things into the shape of her choosing using all the wiles at her disposal. And, now, also bombs.

In that moment, she understood something else essential about Bruno: as long as she assured him of his virtuousness and correctness, he’d believe it.

I also actually wound up feeling a certain kind of way for this little found family of revolutionaries! Although I never held out much hope for their chances, when they wound up effectively being led by someone who was in it for the right and wrong reasons.

…[she] had the unsettling realization that everything she’d ever done, any choice she’d ever made, was in consideration of men. Without an audience of even one man, who was she?”

This book doesn’t end in a manner that was as big and revelatory as I had anticipated. It’s a pretty quiet finish to an otherwise explosive story, but still satisfying enough in its own way.

Book Review: VICTORIAN PSYCHO by Virginia Feito

| Jessica Crawford

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito is a 208 page standalone novel published in 2025 by Liveright, imprint of W. W. Norton & Company.

Genre/subgenre:

Horror, Satire, Gothic, Historical Fiction, Dark Comedy

Synopsis:

From the acclaimed author of Mrs. March comes the riveting tale of a bloodthirsty governess who learns the true meaning of vengeance.

Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze. Compounded with her disdain for the entitled Pounds children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. French tutoring and needlework are one way to pass the time, as is admiring the ugly portraits in the gallery . . . and creeping across the moonlit lawns. . . .

Patience. Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House. Brimming with sardonic wit and culminating in a shocking conclusion, Victorian Psycho plunges readers into the chilling mind of an iconic new literary psychopath.

Opening Line:

Death everywhere.

My Thoughts:

Well, that was wild!

I personally got 3 star book enjoyment from this one, but it has 5 star writing, so I guess I’ll compromise with 4.

This is basically super gory satire about the Victorian era. It was weird, and I often like weird books, but this style of weird wasn’t 100% to my tastes – although the absurdities did make me laugh out loud several times. I also prefer suspense and psychological horror to the straight up grotesque. It lacked the depth that really draws me personally as a reader into feeling connected to a story (and in this case, thank goodness for that!) But for what the author was going for, the writing really hits the nail on the head.

So clearly, I have mixed feelings on this one!

Examples of the humorous satire about a truly psychopathic governess living in Victorian times:

As advised by the Ladies’ Journal, I am clothed in a ‘plain and quiet style of dress; a deep straw bonnet with green or brown veil’ (brown, in my case, as the drab color blurs the identifying features further, obscuring my expression of unfathomable emptiness to resemble one a casual observer might mistake for solemnity).

When Mrs. Pounds makes an inquiry into her health, he scoffs at his wife’s ‘slight hysterical tendency’. She has been languishing on settees and refusing meals since witnessing the drowning of their youngest son.

‘Nothing a good rest devoid of intellectual strain can’t cure,’ Mr. Pounds says brightly.

‘Agree wholeheartedly,’ Mr. Fishal says. ‘Mrs. Fishal said writing energised her, so I took away all her quills and now she’s decreed that she’ll write in her own blood if she must.’

There is some good-natured tittering around the table, some good-natured shaking of heads. Women! Theatrical bitches.

If large quantities of gore in an effort to effect satire don’t bother you, you should most certainly read this book. But if you consider yourself on the squeamish side, you should probably give this one a pass.

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Book Review: EMILY WILDE’S COMPENDIUM OF LOST TALES by Heather Fawcett

| Jessica Crawford

Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett is the third book in the Emily Wilde series. It is 358 pages and was published by Del Rey in 2025.

Genre:

Fantasy

Subgenres:

Cozy, academia, Fae

Opening Line:

If there is one subject upon which Wendell and I will never agree, it is the wisdom of attempting to drag a cat into Faerie.

Synopsis:

The third installment in the heartwarming and enchanting Emily Wilde series, about a curmudgeonly scholar of folklore and the fae prince she loves.

Emily Wilde has spent her life studying faeries. A renowned dryadologist, she has documented hundreds of species of Folk in her Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Now she is about to embark on her most dangerous academic project studying the inner workings of a faerie realm—as its queen.

Along with her former academic rival—now fiancé—the dashing and mercurial Wendell Bambleby, Emily is immediately thrust into the deadly intrigues of Faerie as the two of them seize the throne of Wendell’s long-lost kingdom, which Emily finds a beautiful nightmare filled with scholarly treasures.

Emily has been obsessed with faerie stories her entire life, but at first she feels as ill-suited to Faerie as she did to the mortal How can an unassuming scholar such as herself pass for a queen? Yet there is little time to settle in, for Wendell’s murderous stepmother has placed a deadly curse upon the land before vanishing without a trace. It will take all of Wendell’s magic—and Emily’s knowledge of stories—to unravel the mystery before they lose everything they hold dear.

My Thoughts:

“We should start with…the old queen’s ladies-in-waiting.” “Most of them have fled.” “Or they’ve been killed,” Lord Taran said. “Oops.”

What a treat it was to return to the world of Emily Wilde and Wendell! But ultimately this third installment of their tale seemed a bit gratuitous.

When Emily and Wendell travel to the latter’s realm in Faerie to take their places as its rulers, they find that the old queen, in her defeat, has cursed the land. Emily believes the answer to how to address this problem lies in the stories told in Faerie, as the rules of that place don’t necessarily follow the same logics that the mortal world does.

This wasn’t as tightly plotted as the previous books of the series, but it was still a real pleasure to spend time in Emily’s wondrous world, oftentimes as horrifying as it is amusing.

Faerie snails possess a crude intelligence and value their dignity above all things; as such, they spend most of their lives occupied with revenge quests. While their vengeance may be slow in coming, they will always have it in the end.

I do wish I had reread the previous installments before staring this one, as there were several secondary characters I simply did not remember. But this was overall still quite a lark, and I will happily read on in the series should the author choose to write more!