"friends to lovers never had a bad track. “practice kissing�� SLAPS. “friendship cuddles while secretly dying inside�� BANGER. “teasing each other and holding eye contact for a little too long�� KILLS ME. and don’t even get me STARTED on “why can’t i stop thinking of you when i’m with someone else.��

“he’s more than my best friend - he’s my compass on this journey toward being the version of myself i want to be. all of this is less terrifying when he’s by my side.��

isaac and diego have been best friends since forever. fresh off graduation, isaac grapples with going to college soon, a future where diego won’t be by his side. knowing their time together is limited, he concocts a plan for their summer - tickets to a comic convention. however, an unexpected run-in with his old crush davi leaves him two tickets short of a perfect summer. as isaac and davi grow closer, diego grows distant.

there’s something about books set around graduation that just hit differently. there’s the bittersweetness, the nostalgia, the feeling of teetering on the cusp of something new - exciting and yet terrifying. the realisation that time is not endless. the uncertainty of heading down a new path - at times alone - only to turn back and realise that you’ll still have each other’s backs even if from a distance.

it’s also just. so refreshing seeing fandoms being portrayed so joyously !! i grew up in many fandoms, incorporated them into my personality, found myself in those communities, but also sometimes felt really weird about it - what’s it like to consume a piece of media normally & not hyperfixate? what’s it like to be chill about your interests?

this book shows you how delightful fandoms can be; how the friends you first know through shared passions help you grow into who you are, how these can be the friends who let you in, let you just /be/, and love you for that. and that is good. that fandoms are built on such creative minds, fanartists and fanfic writers. how so much of that shared passion overlaps with how life changing it is to finally see yourself in media.

and when the world says no, you say ��then i'll do it��. "

"I bought this book as soon as I read the premise, and the novel exceeded my high expectations. What happens to all those children in fantasy novels who come back from fantastic worlds �� when Lucy emerged from the wardrobe, or Alice from the looking glass, or Max from the Land of the Wild Things? Surely that’s got to be a traumatic re-entry into mundane reality. Every Heart a Doorway takes that idea and runs with it, introducing us to Miss West’s Home for Wayward Children, where such young folk are given a safe place to recover and recuperate after their otherworldly experiences. Some of the children have been to lands of order, some to lands of chaos, some to dark, some to light. But all have been kicked out and forced to return home, and now they long to return to their fantasy realms. Miss West tries to console them, and convince them to accept the grim reality that they can never return. The home is part school, part orphanage, part addiction recovery center. Each child has been permanently marked and changed by their experiences. Our protagonist Nancy still yearns for her time in the realm of the dead, where everything seemed more peaceful, more ordered, more comfortable. She misses the silence and the shadows. She knows the lord and lady of death would welcome her back, if she could just find the way. Then, shortly after Nancy’s arrival, children at the school begin to be brutally murdered. Who is the killer, and why are these deaths happening? The story is poignant and sweet �� a breath of fresh air in the fantasy genre, while also serving as a great mystery. It is a short read, but powerful, and I especially appreciated the way Nancy was represented as romantic asexual. I just don’t see many characters like this in fiction, and I found her portrayal believable and well-done. I am glad this book is the beginning of a series!"

"sorry, its a DNF for me. way too repetitive and a little bit cringey. it kept repeating and pushing this "forbidden" trope when he was literally just her physical therapist for 6 weeks and shes an adult? I know there was an age gap, and that trope would have been fine alone. But he kept mentioning how conflicted he was like she was 10? The FMC was pretty much infantalised throughout the book by everyone around her...I just couldnt get into what this story was trying to achieve. First DNF of 2024 I'm afraid :("