Genre: Contemporary Fantasy

And Holly Black does it again: another pitch black faerie story – even more so than the first due to the choice of topics! It’s pretty much all about use and abuse – of power, of people, of drugs, you name it – with characters that find themselves in a very murky grey. So it’s not a particularly comfortable read, but definitely an interesting one …

Considering that I’ve read this at least twice before, albeit about 15 years ago, I remembered surprisingly little about the story apart from a few select scenes some of which were even a little jumbled in my mind. So in a way, this was like reading it for the first time and what can I say, I still really like it, though I’m not quite as fervently in love with it now as I was back then …

I fell in love with this book the moment I lay eyes on it. The cover that is. As much as I wanted to love the content, it made it its mission to drive it up the wall. This is one of the most frustrating books I have ever read. It got so bad I had to put it down a couple of times to give myself a break. It certainly had potential but it left me hot and cold in all the wrong places …

Oh dear, oh dear! Maybe I should have seen it coming since I was rather meh about the last book and it took me ages (as in: four years) to finally pick this one up to finish this series. And what can I say, unfortunately, it took a turn for the worse. While I found at least some allure and entertainment in the previous books, this one I just can’t recommend at all. It’s not only bland and anticlimactic but also highly problematic and the ending is a total cop-out …

Wow, this was a wild ride. I feel like I only understood about 10% of what I read. Still, I enjoyed reading this collection a lot – at least in the beginning. The last couple of stories unfortunately didn’t connect with me quite as well as some of the previous. But the writing is very beautiful, incredibly intricate and complex and there’s more happening between the lines then what’s on the page …

Meh. When I first read Dream On, I had no recollection of the events of this book one week after finishing it. This time around – listening to the audio book – it was almost worse and I really have to strain to remember in order to write this review. That’s how forgettable this book is. It’s not bad per se, especially if you like that kind of irrelevant fluff that is Liv’s everyday life and oh, all the relationship drama. Unfortunately, there’s just not much dream demon stuff going on …

Third time’s a charm? In this case, not really. With each read, I’m deducting one star from the rating: the first time, I giggled myself through an otherwise sleepless, anxiety-ridden night; the second time, I still enjoyed it, but it lost a little; the third time – this time – I listened to the audiobook and was almost a little disappointed. It might not hold up for me, but if you’re looking for a fun fluffy contemporary fantasy read with a very chaste dash of horror, this might just be it – but don’t expect this one to be big on character development and thrill …