Source: Illumicrate

What if it was just you and me, in an eerie library, with a demon haunting our hopes and dreams, not two but three? More successful than my poor excuse for poetry, the Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino is a YA fantasy book that mixes and matches a variety of inspirations from across various genres. Part dark academia fantasy, part psychological suspense thriller, part paranormal horror, this book blends together its different elements to tell a story about two private academy lone wolves who accidentally unleash a demonic presence while navigating the challenges of their family life. Set at a prestigious private academy, the overall story revolves around the unexpected release of a demon-like entity from the depths of an academy library that Tess and Eliot work and study at respectively. When taken at face value, the Devil Makes Three sounds like it’s going to be about occultic research and evading said devil. While the book certainly follows this expected storyline to a certain extent, the rest of the book revolves around Tess and Eliot’s personal struggles, conflicted home environment, and familial difficulties that had led to their attendance at the school. For Tess, her story is about her…

Part Grimm fairytale retelling, part historical fiction, and finally part original fantasy story revolving around witchcraft, Kell Woods’s debut novel After the Forest is an expansive dark fantasy book with an ambitious narrative to tell. Rather than directly retelling its source material, After the Forest instead follows the difficult life of Greta following her and her brother’s experiences trapped by a witch and her gingerbread house. A tense story filled with distrust and suspicions in a rural village, contrary to its classification as a retelling, Woods’s story is largely an original one that merely uses Hansel and Gretel’s fairytale for contextual framework. Creatively constructed with fitting prose, this book was a case of expecting one thing and getting something entirely different that wasn’t for me but was nonetheless an intriguing read outside of its frequent issues of pacing and unfocused plot. Books classified as retellings tend to follow one of two different scenarios that largely determine how the story will be read. The traditional form of retelling is one that mostly retells the original story with a unique spin, modernization, genre-swap, or similar. The other form uses the base story as a launching point for framework purposes only and uses…

A cute sapphic second chance at love via exes forced to professionally collaborate, Love In Focus by Lyla Lee is an easy and light-hearted read perfectly pitched for cozy romance readers. While the overall story is nothing groundbreaking for the genre, the novel’s plot mechanism of ex’s artistically working together on a personal interest piece involving the meaning of love is an excellent premise. Unfortunately, despite having a great foundation and numerous interesting storylines to work off of, I found Love In Focus to repeatedly disappoint at every opportunity, the overall execution being sub-par and quite dull to read. One of the most intriguing elements of Love In Focus is its focal plot mechanism, the photojournalism project “Modern Love In Focus”, featuring six couples of different ages and backgrounds sharing what love means to them. Some couples being queer, some interracial, spread across young, mid-age and senior couples, quantifying and reflecting on the different meanings and interpretations of love is a great concept. In addition to having a compelling reason to unexpectedly reunite college ex’s Gemma and Celeste, the novel’s other highlight is the story’s setting in the romantic and misty (or not depending who you ask) San Francisco as…

Is there such a genre as romcomantasy? Despite being a mouthful fitting for this book’s very long title, Brigitte Knightley’s traditionally published debut novel is a light-hearted, nonserious romantasy that’s a lot of fun. Marketed as enemies to lovers, slow-burn romance, the Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy is exactly that in addition to incorporating the recent romcom trend of women in STEM within a romantasy wrapping. True to its synopsis and blurb, this book is full of amusing banter by lovable idiots, though much of its advertised romance is purposely left off for its planned sequel novel. While the pacing occasionally drags and its narrative material outside of the banter is inconsistent in quality, the Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy is a pleasantly comedic read for those looking for something less serious, passionate, or steamy than the romantasy genre norm. Before I get into my review for this book, there’s an important note to highlight about this book and author. While Brigitte Knightley is well-known for her fanfiction writing, specifically the Harry Potter fanfiction Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love, I’ve seen a lot of confusion and booktok readers criticizing that this…

An ambitiously creative and well-rounded sapphic retelling of Swan Lake, A Treachery of Swans by A.B. Poranek is a wonderful low fantasy story featuring a great mix of storylines and elements. While many retellings either struggle with adhering to their source material or end up predictable given their well-known general plots, A Treachery of Swans makes the concept look easy. Gracefully following Swan Lake’s premise faithfully, this book adds a considerable amount of new context, details, and unexpectedly solid new storylines to the iconic tale, all within a PG-rated scope for YA readership. I didn’t have much of an expectation going into this one, but I was pleasantly surprised and consistently thrilled reading this book! As I walk by them, their faces blur together, artificial as theatre masks, lifeless eyes and painted lips and too-sharp teeth glinting as they seethe their congratulations. They think I will be an easy meal, I realize, the Swan Princess of Auvigny, pearlescent and pure-hearted and ripe for their devouring. But they’re wrong… I’m the darkness of cold gutters and merciless nights, the bruised shadows beneath a thief’s desperate eyes. I’m nothing but a lie, a twisted reflection, a black swan. As evident from the…