If you enjoy Ellen Hopkins, Beloved, The Color Purple, Born Blue, I would recommend this novel. The prose is beautifully written in a Shoshoni dialect through the mind of a child and changes as she grows and learns other languages. This novel is brutal and not for the faint of heart.

DNF at 85%. It started off okay, I enjoyed the stalker/smut but the dialogue, side plots, pretty much everything was reminiscent of wattpad. Having written fanfic myself I was okay with it but 2/3 of the way through everything was a struggle. After the carnival I was ready for it to be over. The writing was full of pointless comments, too many f bombs even for me, and once they started talking about reincarnation I was out.

3.5* rounded up because I would've loved this as a teenager. I enjoyed reading this as my 3rd Poppy Z. Brite novel because I already love the author and this is very much his interests plus a mix of popular 80s/90s vampire media. It definitely has that first novel feel.

I enjoyed the plot but this was a sloooow burn, the atmosphere wasn't really there for me, and it felt very YA.

TLDR: I preferred Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events."

Read this 20 years ago when Joanne wasn't openly bigoted. I think I enjoyed it then but I stopped reading after the 4th book. I pretended to read the rest because I was a child/preteen and wanted to impress my mom maybe. I don't remember anything about them and I didn't want to reread them even though I owned them all and reread all my other books a lot. Now I want nothing to do with JKR and it's sad that these are popular again.

This was def written to educate allistic people but I enjoyed learning about the history of ASD. I related a lot to the author and am glad he talked about the intersectionality of gender, sexuality, and race that can come with Autism.

I think I found my favorite book and author ever. This has the perfect amount of horror, gore, queer sex, drugs, etc for me and I felt a lot of myself in the MCs. I didn't want it to end but couldn't stop reading. I can't wait to read all of his other books. 🖤

The dialogue made this feel like "cozy" horror and the romance felt one sided. I enjoyed the plot but expected something darker.

The mushroom women are essentially faceless sx slaves and the MC has mommy issues. I enjoyed the "gender-bending" and minor gore but it wasn't what I would describe as horror. The end was just okay. It was all just okay.

I read this as a teen and it has stuck with me since. I'd love to reread and see how I feel now.