Taylor Brooke

This is a densely, richly atmospheric YA witchcraft/witches story. It's part one, but I enjoyed it quite a lot and will very likely read the next book. It is above average in prose. And it is far above average because the protagonist is unremarkably trans - just a fact, nothing more. The beautiful worldbuilding overlays everything.

I don't know if it's true of the print version, but the ebook could use a line edit. There are some wrong words (editing fails). And I think the cat familiar is mis-gendered in one scene. (There's a sentence I never expected to write.) Most people won't care, or maybe won't notice. This one's well worth a read.… (meer)

Ordinarily, I balk at paying this much for a romance novel.

But this is ART.

Before I got even a quarter of the way in, I bought the sequel. This author's prose is watercolor sketches bursting into stunning 3D and startling mindscapes ART. The Acknowledgments at the end indicate the team behind Brooke's work, but we know how that goes. Without the author, novels don't happen at all.

This is a version of the enemies to lovers trope immediately intriguing. The Camellia Clock may be a dorky premise, but I swiftly didn't care, then admired how the author presented it The personalities in this novel are powerful, complicated and complex. The rep of anxiety and depression is lovely. Not simple, not easy. Lovely. Grief does damage left to fester - a visceral truth for more than one of these people. The pillow fort scene is among my favorite in all of fiction. Intense, surgical, powerful. And sweet, eventually.

This story remains strongly artfully great to the last word. I am so glad book 2 is available.… (meer)