Welcome to Litsy!

*Not the tagged book* I thoroughly enjoyed Rachel Howzell Hall‘s novella, How It Ends. It is a thrilling mystery and suspense story. It incorporates several unexpected and ingenious twists.

Full review abookandadog.com/blog/how-it-ends

Marketing aside, the beginning was quite slow, the second half DOES get interesting but I never felt invested in the romance, & it ends quite randomly… I don‘t feel it was strong enough for that. I didn‘t love the tone/word choices. Sometimes casual language works in fantasy, but when you have ageless magical beings with no setting in the modern mortal world calling people “nasty ass” or saying “this realm is a dump” it takes me out of the moment.

This is kind of a slog. I think blurb set it up for failure: “The Witcher meets N.K. Jemisin in a new series from NYT bestselling author Rachel Howzell Hall where a young woman awakens in a field with no memory & learns that the world is dying…” The Witcher I can almost see: the details, the monsters. BUT The Witcher also had nonlinear storytelling & iconic characters. &if you invoke Jemisin: I expect ethereal prose. We do not have those things.

I wanna read this book so bad but it‘s so pretty I don‘t want to put my greasy mitts on it whatdoido

Loved the plot and all its crazy plot twists come the end. Pretty sure this romantasy had things backwards - not sure if good or bad. There was so much hidden throughout the story, where the ending revelations were so good. Romance was so much yelling at each other and lying. Did not like at all. This is a dark feminine rage of “how dare they think they can control what‘s mine”. She‘s just as violent as they are; it doesn‘t bother her.