The Hyacinth Labyrinth by Jamie Pacton: Advance Reader's Copy
I was offered a free copy of this book in exchange for my genuine review, but I'm not getting paid for this. Frankly, I don't think you could pay me enough for this. I'm also not making brand new dividers for this post, so just cope with the purple roses and be glad that I at least got the colors right.
The Book & The Author
A whimsical adventure full of magic, fantastical road trips, and a sapphic slow-burn, friends-to-lovers romance—for fans of Sorcery of Thorns and Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries.
All magic begins in stories. That’s what Fae princess Hyacinth has always been told. As the unmagical daughter of Queen Mab, Hyacinth has never fit in at her mother’s court. She hopes that if she learns about her father, who disappeared fifteen years ago, she can finally learn more about herself.
When Hyacinth and her friend Chloe—a human stablehand trapped in Fae—sneak off to a riverside night market, Hyacinth learns that her father was last seen heading to a library at the heart of a treacherous labyrinth. The problem: The labyrinth was built long ago by three goddesses, and no one has ever returned from it.
Still, Hyacinth has to try.
With the help of Chloe and a tiny dragon named Coffee, she defies Queen Mab and sets off into the wilds of the Moonshadow Kingdom. Along the way they face bandits, magical creatures, a centuries-old human who hosts an Endless Ball, and Hyacinth and Chloe’s growing feelings for each other. Meanwhile, an ancient power lies in wait at the center of the labyrinth, and it is eager to write the girls’ ending.
A lush, fairycore, sapphic YA fantasy that returns readers to the Fae world introduced in Jamie Pacton’s bestselling novel The Absinthe Underground!
Perfect for readers who love Sapphic Slow-Burn, Friends-to-Lovers, Grumpy/Sunshine, Princess/Lady Knight, Bodyguard Romance, Fae/Human Relationships, Only One Bed, and Stories Are Magic!
Jamie Pacton is a Middle Grade and Young Adult author who has been publishing books since at least 2020 with the release of the YA book The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly. Despite being referred to as a Middle Grade writer, I can't actually find any books she's written on her website that fall in that category. Her focus seems to be YA Contemporary, YA Fantasy, and Adult Fantasy at this time. She has mentioned working on an MG book coming up, but as of right now, details on that one are sparse. She has a BA and MA in English literature and currently teaches English at the college level. There's a lot more to her life, as can be seen in her media kit and her FAQ page.
The Hyacinth Labyrinth is a standalone (according to the Author's Note at the beginning) but set in the same world as The Vermilion Emporium and The Absinthe Underground, serving as something of a soft sequel and reintroducing the same characters. I have not read these books because...frankly I can't be arsed to, my TBR is already 80 books strong and still growing and I didn't see the other ones at my local bookstore, and I'm less than a month out from this book being officially published as of drafting this. So I will be judging this book as a standalone to see if it holds up to that claim.
The Good
I adore how casually queer this book is. Within the first pages, we have the budding romance between our leads introduced, a gay male relationship between a frog prince and a High Fae elf, a nonbinary dwarf in a relationship with a nymph girl, and just...so much casual queerness. It is exactly the sort of thing that I was hoping for with the things promised on the back cover.
The author eases us into mandatory information about previous events in a way that doesn't take away from the narration and doesn't feel like infodumping. Likewise, important information about our characters is established quickly and naturally, like Chloe being a twin and Hyacinth not having any magic.
Our two main characters are absolutely lying to each other and they are doing it for very, very good reason. Chloe is lying because it's dangerous to be a human in Fae. Hyacinth is lying because it's dangerous to be a magicless princess in Fae. And they're so desperate to keep their own secrets and maintain their own lies that they're completely unable to notice that the other is lying their ass off too. It genuinely takes things going bad both times for both of their secrets to be revealed to the other because these teenagers get no breaks.
That and the yearning. Dear gods, the yearning. It is so palpable and on nearly every page (not even an exaggeration). There is exactly zero question that these characters are yearning for each other, none of this is left in subtext, it is loud and proud.
I genuinely appreciate how important family is throughout this story. Chloe is constantly thinking about her twin sister that she left behind in the human world. Hyacinth is looking for her missing father. We even meet more unexpected members of Hyacinth's family along the way. The story is about love in multiple forms, not just romantic love.
I enjoyed the setting descriptions of where the characters were, but I also found them incredibly short. Each time, it was the length of a paragraph or two, with enough detail to paint the broader strokes of the scene but not enough to fill in the more minor things. Character descriptions were often the same way if the character resembled a human.
The entirety of what happened in the Hall of the Mountain King was fantastic. Holy shit, talk about a twisted antagonist. Exactly the kind of villain I would make and exactly as fucked up as I would make it. I'm almost jealous I didn't think of it first. Shoutout to Hellebore, true MVP (Most Valuable Pixie) of that section.
The resource management aspect was unexpected, yet I deeply appreciate it. With two non-magical characters suffering through a journey, knowing and repeating what they still have access to is helpful and prevents a later ass-pull. This book was very good at follow-through.
Coffee is perfect and I would kill someone for him. The end and reveal of his identity was fantastic.
I want Maurelle to kiss me under the moonlight. I'm aroace but I am willing to make an exception.
And finally, it felt like everything logically worked out. Sure, there were some wild things, but the four-month-later epilogue smoothed out the loose ends like an epilogue should.
The Bad & The Ugly
I know some of this is because this is an ARC and thus not fully edited, but good gods the writing feels too amateur sometimes. And I don't believe that a book being aimed at a younger demographic means that the writing should be low-quality.
The Neutral
This is a nitpick more than anything, but despite being tagged as princess/lady knight, Chloe is very pointedly not a knight. She knows how to use a sword, but that's from independent training. There's none of the devotion and oath-sworn yearning that I expect and want out of that sort of dynamic.
Final Thoughts
...Huh. Huh. You know, usually I come out of books feeling pretty damn mean about them. But this one? This one was pretty damn good. Obviously as an ARC it has some editing issues, and some of the pacing felt a bit off at times, but ultimately this was an incredible book.
But to answer the question I initially posed: Did it work as a standalone? I would say...yes. Sure, the previous books might help give context to the world, particularly the human one we only see snippets of, but I enjoyed being immersed entirely in Fae and keeping up with characters who have already been through some shit.
Would I recommend it to the age group offered on the back, which is 14+? Yes. I believe it is quite appropriate for that age, even with a 17-year-old and 18-year-old pair of protagonists.
Did this book deliver on what it promised? Yes, undoubtedly.
Let’s get this part out of the way before I start raving about this book. I was given an ARC in exchange for an honest review from Wednesday Books through NetGalley. This was the first time I’ve had a wish granted on NetGalley and I am so, so happy it was for this book.
“As the daughter of the most powerful trader in the Narrows, the sea is the only home Fable has ever known...But her father’s rivalries and the dangers of his trading enterprise have only multiplied since she last saw him.”
I had such a good time reading this book. It’s fully of pirate-y adventure and treasure and the open sea. It felt like Young knew a lot about this world and time so the reader feels grounded in the story. Also, there’s this found family aspect that warms your heart like nothing else. It takes a while for it to happen so when it finally does it feels like it was earned. Young is a master in the art of crafting realistic and believable characters. Not to mention that you feel so attached to them so quickly.
The only real downside for me was feeling like I could predict where a plot point or two was headed. I’m not a huge fan of predictability in stories so when that happened that did put me off a little. But I enjoyed reading this book so much between the setting, the characters, and the general pirate-iness of it all that I could overlook it.
This was such a fast read for me--75% in one sitting--and the plot really drives the story forward. I cannot believe I have to wait so long before the second book in the duology! This first book comes out on September 1st of this year.
Runa flew fast, and the miles whipped by. Hyacinth's dreadful fake wings caught the wind, but they stayed affixed to her back. Her enchanted compass rattled against the tiny potion bottles, and some of her curls tumbled loose from her bun, but she wasn't going to release Chloe's waist to brush them out of her eyes. Instead, she looked to the left, where the stars shone like pieces of glass flung across the moonshadow-dark marble floors of the palace. It really was lovely to be out of the palace. Sometimes she forgot how big the world was outside her mother's walls.
Before I start absolutely gushing, let’s get the standard protocol out of the way. I was given an Advance Reader’s Copy of Tweet Cute from St. Martin’s Press through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
This adorably cheesy and punny novel is about a girl named Pepper and a guy named Jack who get into a Twitter war over their family’s fast food restaurants. I would say this one is a weird hybrid of Gossip Girl, You’ve Got Mail, and a recipe book and it all works (and also makes me famished). If this doesn’t get optioned for a cute Rom-Com then all of Hollywood is asleep at the wheel.
I feel like I have a pretty high standard for contemporary novels because I love Sci-Fi and Fantasy so much. I hold them above so many other genres that it’s hard for them to compete and, yet, this one does. The New York setting feels so real in this novel which I think is rare for contemporaries. If you’re writing in this world, there’s no need for world building. But I felt like the author really tried to put the readers into New York and she does a great job of it. Which automatically puts it toward the top of my list of favorite contemporaries. Then it has so many funny and sweet moments that you can’t help but feel your heart flutter. And then to top it all off, like the cherry on a sundae, you have so many great descriptions of sandwiches and desserts that I wish I was in my kitchen right now and not writing a review.
There were just two things that I feel didn’t necessarily match with the rest of the novel and are pretty standard fare for contemporary novels so I can’t complain too much. One is that while the parents are more involved in this novel, they also feel a little unrealistic at times. Pepper’s mother in particular doesn’t seem to be an authentic portrait of a mother who loves her daughter. There were times when Pepper came to her mother with issues and her mother either blew her off or acted like Pepper was the problem. The second one is the usual “this problem wouldn’t exist of the characters weren’t idiots.” Now, for 95% of the book I don’t think either of the main characters seemed like idiots. But there are a few moments in the book when I felt like Jack should have caught on before he did. In comparison to other main characters in contemporary novels, Jack is a Rhodes Scholar, but it does take away from the story when it happens.
Overall, I think this one is a cute story for almost everyone. Don’t read if you don’t like cuteness, will-they-won’t-they, food, New York City, or feeling all the warm and fuzzy feels. Do read if you want a quick contemporary novel that really makes you care about the characters. All kidding aside I don’t know that there is a reader out there I wouldn’t recommend this one to.
Holiday Ever After by Jill Shalvis. Averaged Story Rating: 2.83 Stars.
Read from July 1st to 2nd.
Before I get into the actual review, I need to say a quick thank you to Harper Collins Publishers and NetGalley for giving me an e-proof in exchange for an honest review. This is an anthology of three of Jill Shalvis’ Christmas novellas. All are second chance romance and all equally Christmas-y.
My favorite story was Holiday wishes which I rated 3.25 stars. My least favorite was One Snowy Night which I rated 2.5 stars. Right in the middle was the final Christmas story Mistletoe in Paradise which I rated 2.75 stars. I think there were two things that drove these ratings down for me. First, there was a lot of moments where logic just did not factor into the story. People were acting in ways I really don’t think people would in those situations. On top of that, there were moments the author specifically stated something happening and then a paragraph later something in the story contradicted it. Second, the things that caused these couples to need a second chance at their romance were all things that they got over so quickly. It’s like when you’re reading a hate to love and they get to the love part too fast. These people have seriously hurt each other in the past and I think there needs to be time to really show the growth and change that has happened in the time between.
I will say, however, that the author did a good job with the steamy scenes in each novella. Normally, a novella like this has way too many sex scenes. Not so with these. And also normally anthologies or novellas like this get way too graphic for me in particular. Some smut is okay, but going all erotica in a romance novella isn’t for me. And I think the author did a good job of riding the line there between the two. No fade to blacks and nothing that made me want to hide the ARC under my pillow from embarrassment. I also found the character to have a lot of depth and contradictions which I appreciated. I think it’s easy to make characters flat when you’re writing a short story/novella and the author did a good job of driving away from that problem.
This was a great start to my Christmas in July week/week and a half that I’m doing to celebrate my birthday next week. I’m so excited to see what other Christmas shenanigans characters can get up to.
The Code for Love and Heartbreak by Jillian Cantor. Rating: 4.0 Stars.
Read from August 11 to August 12.
First, I have to say a big thank you to NetGalley and Inkyard Press for giving me the ARC for this book. I was given a copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own. The Code for Love and Heartbreak is out on October 6th, but is available for pre-order now.
In this Emma retelling, Emma Woodhouse spends her senior year in Code Club working on an app that will help the team get to Nationals as well as get her into her dream school. The Coding for Love app helps find the perfect romantic match for the kids at her school. But math and love don’t mix. How do you calculate for the look in someone’s eyes, for their sense of humor, for their passion?
As someone who isn’t into classics, isn’t into math, isn’t into technology, I still really loved this story. For me, it takes a lot for any contemporary I read to get 4 stars (I blame all the fantasy and sci-fi I read), so I hope when people see my rating they realize that this book is a top tier book for me. I think all of the characters felt like real people with their own problems and hopes and dreams. And, even if Emma can be a hot mess with trouble relating interpersonally to other people, the reader still feels a closeness to her and wants the best for her. I also really enjoyed George and Mr. Woodhouse. I think the author did a good job asking the questions about what creates a good romantic match, about what makes someone fall in love, and what makes supposedly perfect couples fall apart.
The two main problems that I had with this one were the usual ones I have with contemporary novels. One: the book felt too short. I felt like the resolution was over too quickly after the climax. I enjoyed the way the story resolved in the end, but it felt like it happened so suddenly. Two: not enough romance at the end. I guess this complaint is pretty similar to the first one. I think I struggle here because you saw Emma display her jealousy pretty obviously throughout the novel but then when she finally gets some resolution to those feelings the reader doesn’t get to enjoy it before the novel abruptly ends. Another thing I would have liked to see are more sweet moments between Emma and her father. I think it would have allowed the reader to bond more with the characters.
Overall, it was a quick, easy, and sweet read. Perfect for fans of retellings, contemporary enthusiasts, or people who love math/coding.
