I mean… did you expect me to say anything different after everything I’ve been saying about Forest of Souls? Come on now!

The real goal is to make sure that I actually choose different books for the different categories because Forest of Souls can’t win everything… or can it?

Seriously, read this. I requested this book at both my libraries, recommended it all over Facebook. Just do it.

So clearly I haven’t read a lot of sequels this year – because we already know I don’t finish series timely – but I actually got to this one and I was shooketh. This was absolutely one of my favorite books in addition to being the best sequel I read so far, so I’m glad I got to read this one. I may have read the final book in this trilogy, but I didn’t finish this one before I did, so I think I’m going to have to reread that final book now that I know what happened in the second one.

Even though I was denied on both Netgalley and Edelweiss for a review copy – *insert endless supplies of tears here* – I am so very excited to read this novel. I already ordered my copy so when it comes out, I should have it soon. I would just love the opportunity to read about a Black witch in this kind of story, you know?

This is supposed to come out in October, and hopefully there won’t be any delays. I personally haven’t had an opportunity to read many Indigenous #OwnVoices novels before and this would be my first one. Also as an #OwnVoices Indigenous creator that hasn’t seen much rep specific to my tribe, it would still be really awesome to support this novel and Roanhorse.

I think this book was too hyped up for me over the years that by the time I finally read it, I didn’t understand why it was so amazing. This isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy the book or the characters because I did, but the way that I hear the book community talk about this book, you would think that this was written by the gods or something. I don’t know. I love Bardugo as an author and no doubt I’ll be reading her books always, but it just wasn’t jaw-dropping for me. I’m sorry, friends.

I’m the biggest baby in the world, so I was honestly terrified that I was going to not be able to get through this novel. Katsu is known as the horror queen, so yeah, I was already pretty intimidated. But I really liked this one! I don’t think it scared me as much as I thought, thank gosh, and I actually want to do a reread through the audiobook for that experience. So I may do that.

June Hur is freaking amazing! Her debut The Silence of Bones was absolutely jaw dropping and beautiful and I can’t wait to continue reading all of her books in the future! Forever fan right here!

I swear I have been low-key crushing on both Sirscha and Saengo since reading Forest of Souls, so of course I had to include the amazing character art that Lori included in her preorder campaign! I hope I ordered my copy in time to get these cards because I’m dying to have these art surrounding my life. Ugh do you see their clothes? Their expressions? I’m obsessed. I will never get over their character arcs and I can’t wait to see what ends up happening to both of them in the rest of the trilogy. I’m a huge stan.

Okay so this is the Maia Tamarin character card from the Spin the Dawn pre-order campaign and I am so obsessed with how gorgeous this card is! Maia was one of my favorite characters this year so far and her story just took me into a whole different world. I kind of forgot to do anything else when I was reading Spin the Dawn, and I just had a real soft spot for Maia throughout the entire novel, so I had to include her here. THAT ENDING THO.

Oh man I was really emotional for this book, especially because of the part where Black women (Sirens are always Black women in this world) are hated as much as they are in our real world. And I hate it so much because it just really made me feel what I feel on a regular basis, and it just doesn’t make sense to me. And even the ending I was upset about because I feel like something was missing and I couldn’t tell whether the ending was really good for our characters.

This book gave me all sorts of feels. Not only was Kimi learning more about her Japanese heritage – which hello? That’s me and I’d kill to go to Japan and learn more about my family – but she also finally got to discover her passion and realize that it’s not just something silly or a hobby. I think the trip was really good for her, and I was just so happy reading this. Seriously I just felt like I was reading about a cousin or someone that I really wanted to see succeed.

Technically this hasn’t premiered yet BUT when I found out the news that Netflix was going to adapt this trilogy I WAS SO EXCITED! I mean, I know I only read the first book but I have the second one and I need to get the third one but I am already a huge Stan of this novel so I’m super excited to see how Netflix does with the adaptation. They better do a good job, that’s all I’m saying. I mean I’ve seen their other Netflix only shows and they have been great, so I have high hopes for this.