“And it begins, as so many stories do, with a dead girl.”

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This book made me need immense therapy. And that’s all I’ll say on the matter

Sadie is a nineteen-year-old girl who has been raising her little sister, thirteen-year-old Mattie since Claire, their drug-addicted absent mother left them. The love Sadie had for her sister was indescribable, and without her, the world was bleak and colorless. When Sadie learns of her sister’s murder, she snaps and set out to find her sister’s murderer and to kill him.

West McCray is a radio personality who has been enlisted by Sadie’s surrogate grandmother for help. When he first begins, he believes there is no case. After all, girls go missing all the time. He starts a serialized podcast, detailing the events and clues he finds while trying to find Sadie. But the farther he goes, he realizes her story is much more complicated and messy than he could have ever imagined.

This book is not an easy read. It is a chilling thriller that will keep you up at night. It is truly haunting and will stay with you long after you finish it. Essentially this is a story of grief, and what loss can drive a person to do. But it is also a story of sisterly devotion, but one that is clouded in mystery and guilt and anger.

This book switches between Sadie’s voice West’s voice. We see both of the horrors they uncover as they find them and their reactions to them as well. Something awesome about this book is just how angry Summers lets Sadie be. Too often we read books where if the females have any kind of unsavory emotion, it must be repressed beyond all measure, but this does the complete opposite. In fact, it takes that stereotype and smashes it against the wall.

The way Summers writes emotion and the human flaw is just breathtaking. It shows the darker side of humans and just how some of them can go.

“I can’t take another dead girl.”

I’m not sure I’ll ever be over Sadie or if I’ll ever stop thinking about it. But this is easily one of my new favorite books and I’ll definitely be looking for more of This author’s books.

TW: Pedophilia, child sexual abuse, parental neglect, mentions and descriptions of substance abuse.

Synopsis: In the house of the Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child- not obviously powerful like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power- the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and mencae the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son, Icarus; the murderous Medea; and, of course, wily Odyssues.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or the mortals she has come to love.

RATING:

“You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.”

Wow this book is utterly fantastic. It was so good I’m not sure I’m still a living, functioning, breathing human being. But was I ever in the first place?

Circe is about the Witch Circe, born from the Sun god Helios and nymph Perse. As a young child she was thought to be odd, she was not beautiful like her mother, nor did she have powers like her father, so what could she do? For most of her life she is bullied by her sibling because they believe themselves to be more than her. Until she realizes she has a knack for witchcraft, however when her father discovers it, he quickly banishes her to a lone island for eternity.

Circe is a fierce, biting, unflinching novel. But it is so much more than just a fantasy novel. It is about living your truth even if the people around you do not agree, it is about harnessing your power, and I just loved it.

And can I just talk about Circe herself for a second? Her character is everything that speaks to me, she is not necessarily likeable, she is not a nice person. Yet even through her wrongdoings, the author still manages to maintain this very real human quality to her character. She experiences things like jealousy, she is quick to judge, she gets defensive quickly. The author did a fantastic job making her regal and a Goddess but also conveying the human in her.

The moral of this story is that I’m crying.

Thanks for joining me! I hope you are enjoying your life. Here, I like to gush about books an unhealthy amount for an intolerable amount of time. I hope you’ll stick around and chat!

I would rather die on an adventure, than live standing still… V.E Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic