Welcome to Litsy!

This is my second book by Harrow. I read Starling House in September 👍🏻, but I enjoyed this one more. I loved the historical setting and literary references, along with the fantasy of doors to other worlds. I also loved the characters more in this one, even ones we didn‘t get as much time with. I think Harrow could have easily made this into a duology, because I could spend more time with these characters and visit more worlds.

Finished 1/1.

Here is my #BookSpin list for January! 2024 was my first year doing this challenge, and it helped me get through/rid of quite a few books. I have high hopes that 2025 will be just as successful!

I‘m struggling with this one!! Should I keep going?

📚🕯️❤️ 🚪

I decided to tackle the forgotten bottom tiers of my Litsy to-read list and somehow this book was in the library. I don‘t know why I stacked it though. Well…let‘s see. 😅

#currentlyreading

Enjoyed it.

Happy New Year! Here is my reading list for 2024. Maybe you can see the theme 😛
@Blueberry

3.5 ⭐️s
a sweeping story of family, unlikely heroes, other worlds, and a magical girl. I loved a lot of this book: the writing, the characters, and especially the overarching story itself and how it all weaved together in the end. Why the 3.5 stars then? I kept feeling taken out of this turn-of-the-century setting with flippant, modern comments. Also, I‘m putting this book away feeling like it isn‘t finished and that I missed something important.

This was a solid portal fantasy with the feel of a fable. Part historical fantasy, part speculative fiction, it includes topics of racism, classism and colonialism. I liked the writing and it was a fast read, but I didn‘t love it. I think I didn‘t completely love the main character. However, I still recommend to those who like some fantasy with historical fiction. 4⭐️
#bookspinbingo!

This book is beautifully written! It's the story of a quest to find home, love, freedom, adventure, and family. It's filled with colorful characters, plot twists, great villains, and a love of words, books, and stories. I am smitten 😍

Knew all along I was going to love it, but had to start it a few different times before I felt it clicking — but once it did, it was so charming and enveloping, I didn‘t want it to end. I could have gone on a million more adventures (through a million more doors) with January.

An enjoyable mixture of fantasy and romance - a pleasant surprise!

Page 211 - People never got to stay in their Wonderlands, did they? Alice and Dorothy and the Darlings, all dragged back to the mundane world and tucked into bed by their handlers.
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(Sigh) Reality comes for all of us, sooner or later!

Page 165 - Once we have agreed that true love exists, we may consider its nature. It is not, as many misguided poets would have you believe, an event in and of itself; it is not something that happens, but something that simply is and always has been. One does not fall in love; one discovers it.
❤️
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This quote speaks to me on so many levels!

Whereas I thought the writing in this book was absolutely beautiful, I did think it was a bit slow to start and the back and forth made it a little slower for me. I really loved this concept and the characters. But, the story itself was not as captivating as I had hoped it would be. I think maybe this is just a tough genre for me, personally because I can respect why this book was so popular, it just wasn‘t my favorite.

I adore adore adore this book. One of my favorite tropes is “young girl goes through the door to another world” and this fit the bill perfectly. The longing of being separated from one you love really got to me. I made my mom read it and texted me from a commercial flight saying she was blubbering on the plane. She felt the full range of emotions that I felt with this book. And the cover 😍

I picked up this book to escape from the day and what a perfect choice it was. I love the idea of another world being a very literal door away. There was magic and intrigue and discovering something your soul always knew.

February #bookspin completed ✔️ @TheAromaofBooks

This novel feels similar to Starless Sea w/the same slow-burn story. I savored the descriptions and I know I'll return to it. The world-building is wonderful & the ending makes it all worthwhile. I loved so many of the supporting characters. It could have benefitted from some editing, but give yourself time to enjoy the portals into other worlds, secret society, diverse cast, epic love, and dangerous escapes and you won't be disappointed.

It‘s a feel good kind of fantasy that is engaging and in the realm of a love story.

It's a whole lot trickier to find flowers in bloom on the first of January, but I couldn't resist trying for this cover. Would that I was as pleased with the interior as the exterior. I love the Fractured Fables novellas, but I think the key component is brevity. Even when she introduces difficulties and poor choices, all part of a young adult character's growth, one is comforted by the page count that the resolution can't be that far away.

This is my #BookSpin January list. @TheAromaofBooks

I honestly don‘t know what to write here.
I didn‘t read this book as fast as I do some others but that‘s not to say I didn‘t enjoy it. In fact, I loved this book and its storyline as well as the way it was written (though I had my doubts at first). I particularly loved the way everything fit together perfectly and of course the characters!
4⭐️

I hope you will keep the world unruly, messy, full of strange magics; I hope you will run through every open Door and tell stories when you return.

I don‘t need these blessings translated. I can read them myself, in plainest English: To home. To true love. To Adelaide.

That what was shattered will be made while again.

“Freedom isn‘t worth a single solitary shit if it isn‘t shared.”

There is nothing quite like the anger of someone very powerful who has been thwarted by someone who was supposed to be weak.

Maybe all powerful men are cowards at heart, because in their hearts they know power is temporary.

But now I was free. Free to hate him, free to run from him, free to write my own story.

It had both changed and not changed in the last decade. So had the world, I supposed.

It turns out that only in loving you am I brave enough to leave you.

I am my own keeper now.

I might be young and untried and penniless and everything else, but -I clutched the pen in my hand until my knuckles were white crests- I was not powerless.

I believed in the black gleam of the ink in the night, in the strength of my own fingers wrapped around the pen, in the reality of that other world waiting just on the other side of some invisible curtain. I believed in second chances and righted wrongs and rewritten stories. I believed in Samuel‘s belief.

It felt like donning a suit of armor or sprouting wings, extending past the boundaries of myself; it felt an awful lot like love.

“If you are willing to try, I believe in you. Strega.”

“Maybe I did not make myself clear before, when I said I was on your side. I meant also that I would be at your side, to go with you into every door and danger, to run with you into your tangled-up future. For” -and a distant part of me as gratified to note that his voice had gone wobbly and strained-“for always. If you like.”

“I suppose it would take a brave man to love a witch, and men are mostly cowards.” He looked directly at me as he finished, with a kind of raised-chin boldness that said: I am not a coward.

“You did not need rescuing, then, it seems,” he said, a wry twist in his smile. “Stregas rescue themselves in all the stories.”
“Stregas?”
“Witches.”

“Bad is on your side.”
My smile sturdied. “Yes.”
“And,” he said more softly, “so am I.”

Destiny is a pretty story we tell ourselves. Lurking beneath it there are only people, and the terrible choices we make.

Men like myself cannot see anything beyond our own pain; our eyes are inward-facing, mesmerised by the sight of our own broken hearts.