My first Jane Austen, and goodness gracious me! It was so delightful, my only regret is I waited so long to read it.

For me, classics have always been intimidating. English isn't my first language, and I remember struggling in high school, trying to make heads and tails of whatever archaic passages we were forced to read with nary a success. Fast forward to adulthood, and my attempts at classics were yet again met with boredom and hardly any returns for the amount of hours spent. (I'm looking at you, Anna Karenina).

So even though there's so much love for Jane Austen, and I've been curious for quite some time, I held off. I didn't want to put the effort in, only to be bored out of my mind for tens of hours, reading and rereading long paragraphs of ideas and norms which no longer applied and quite frankly, no one cared. (Yeah, Anna Karenina really traumatized me.)

But slowly and surely, my curiosity could no longer be held off, and my questionable experiences with classics were softened in my memories with time gone by. So I braced myself and dove into Pride and Prejudice with equal parts excitement and apprehension.

And at first, I thought I'd made a terrible mistake. The writing was as impenetrable as I feared, the characters a bit silly, and the domestic drama too outdated to really appeal to a modern reader. But then, after a few chapters of really soldiering on, something miraculous happened. It was like a switch had flipped and my mind crossed over into 19th century England. The writing, the characters, the drama—they all came alive, and from that moment on, I was hooked.

Everyone's always talking about how witty Jane Austen is, and boy on boy, they're not kidding. The dialogue is just one zing after another, leaving me in wonder after almost every sentence. I often found myself lingering and savoring, just to make sure I got every bit of pleasure out that I could.

I was riveted, as riveted as I'd ever been with any contemporary book of any genre. And maybe that surprised me more than anything else. I expected a slog, one I'd have to wade through with much reluctance and under duress. Instead, I'd found that magical, liminal space between the real and the fictional, and proceeded to occupy it with such ferocity, I blew through the book and hardly surfaced for breath.

The domestic and matrimonial dramas within still felt fresh and relevant to today, even though surely we've come far in the last few hundred years. And the characters still rang true with all their strength and weaknesses. In short, I think Austen pressed in on the foibles of human nature, and I'm certain those will never become irrelevant, no matter where our society is headed.

One thing that's really interesting about reading a book like this is knowing just how influential it will come to be and thus being able to experience the story from that angle. So many books and even entire genres (hello, regency romance!) have followed in the footsteps of Jane Austen, and to see their inspiration is as fascinating as it is illuminating.

All this praise isn't to say this is an easy read, per se. After all, the book was written hundreds of years ago and the constantly evolving nature of language, being what it is, has moved past this more convoluted and restrained style. But if you're willing to put in the effort, especially at the beginning, this is one of those books that does richly reward you for your hard work.

I will say, it's a good thing I don't live back in the day. I'm such a literal and straightforward person, I can totally see myself bumbling around in the 19th century, offending everyone, embarrassing the family name, and agreeing to all sorts of marriages without any inkling of what I'd done.

If ever there was a book that could be a gateway drug to anything, it would be this book to Jane Austen for me. I feel like the floodgates have opened, the dam burst, the Pandora's box unsealed. And the only way forward is to read more Jane Austen.

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!

When it comes to vibes, romances can run the gamut. Some are funny, some are steamy. An Academic Affair felt like one big cerebral hug, and I adored every moment of it.

These days, I'm always a little surprised when I enjoy a romcom. Long gone are the days where every single one I pick up is a winner. Now I feel more like a cynic, snarling in my head about the silly characters, unrealistic situations, and forced tropes that make reading a romance more cringey than swoony. So when I find one I actually enjoy, I get pretty excited.

This story works for me on almost every single level. First and most importantly, the premise makes sense. Every book of this genre, in order to cultivate a romance between its main characters, has to come up with valid reasons to keep them interacting with each other. And the one used in here—partner hire—is such an interesting and underutilized method, I have to marvel at its cleverness.

What follows is the sweetest of slow burns, turning academic rivals Sadie and Jonah first into friends, then into lovers. Because their rivalry underpins a lot of their interactions, we also get to participate in a bunch of fun arguments between the two of them, both on the personal front as well as the academic one.

Speaking of academics, I absolutely adored the setting. I have a soft spot for studious, hardworking, smart people who fall in love, and this delivered in spades. We also got to see a lot of Sadie and Jonah's areas of expertise and research, and it was fun to geek out a bit, even in a romance. Their struggle to survive in the cutthroat world of academia made me love them even more.

And maybe all of this hits upon the crux of why I enjoyed this story so much. At a time when other books of the genre seem to come up with ever more over the top schemes in order to force their ridiculous characters together, it's a breath of fresh air to read about genuinely sweet people falling in love under sane circumstances.

By the way, is it me or does it seem like Jodi McAlister is setting up for Chessie and Elias to each have their own stories? If so, I can't wait.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

I'm normally a huge sucker for locked-room mysteries, but The Wasp Trap didn't quite do it for me.

Based on the sheer number of famous authors who blurbed for this book—Lisa Jewell, Ruth Ware, Alex Michaelides, Steve Cavanagh—you'd think this would be the best thing since sliced bread. So I settled in for what I assumed would be the mystery/thriller of the year, and let me tell you, the disappointment was real.

From almost the very first page, it felt like I was being sold a story instead of shown one. The characters in here, their interactions, the dialogue, all of it just wafted of inauthenticity. Real people don't behave like this, they don't talk like this, they wouldn't react like this. And so slow but surely, this slightly awkward and stilted representation sucked away any semblance of reality from the tale.

It is blatantly clear that every element in here exists solely to manipulate the story into revealing a predefined set of twists. And while I like a good twist as much as the next mystery-loving gal, the twists cannot be the only glue holding a story together.

It becomes a problem if the characters and the rest of the plot are relegated to such secondary nonimportance, I find it hard to even care. All the characters feel interchangeable, so what happens to one might as well be happening to another, for whatever is the difference? So much crazy stuff occurs in this story, yet my reaction to each and every single one is a shrug of indifference.

Even the premise in which this whole mystery is based upon—the dating app and the wasp test—did not ring true. There was no way such a generic app would've made anyone rich and the test is of such dubious moral and ethical ground, not to mention unsound science, it came across as a bunch of handwaving hocus pocus more than the gospel it was taken to be.

Also, I can't tell you how much I disliked our narrator Will. He is sniveling, meek, and paranoid, probably the most unappealing combination in a character ever. He spent the entire time (in both timelines) lusting after Sophie, expecting it to be reciprocated simply because he stared at her long enough. It honestly creeped me out. I really thought (spoiler: the twist was that Will was the psychopath, but alas, the test did not oblige).

I'll give this some stars for the twists, but as a whole, the story was pretty middling.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

I don't read much fanfiction these days. In fact, it's been more than two decades since I've last indulged. But I still remember vividly the joy of finding stories that bring to life characters and worlds I thought had reached their conclusion and of which nothing more was forthcoming. The chance to experience everything one last time and to have it develop new multitudes never before seen is a thrill beyond compare. And Manacled totally delivered, surpassing even my wildest expectations.

I went into this not expecting much. I'd previously never read any Harry Potter fanfiction. In fact, until this story crossed my awareness, I'm not even sure I'd ever contemplated their existence. And it's certainly never crossed my mind that Hermione and Draco could be a pairing. So the emotional force with which this story hit me really took me by surprise.

I loved that this story made Hermione front and center. As a bookish gal myself, I couldn't help but love Hermione in the original series. And if I were being honest, I think the one thing I found lacking there was that it didn't feel dark enough to me. Yes, bad things happened, but by and large, everything worked out for everyone. So this story took my favorite character and moved it in a direction I'd been secretly longing for.

And make no mistake, this was dark. When you think about what being on the front lines of any war, let alone a war with magical capabilities, would mean and what sort of sacrifices would be required of everyone, I feel like this book captured it. Probably every trigger warning you can think of is in here, so please tread carefully.

But the darkness didn't snuff out the readability and addictive nature of this story. Even though this was such a long read, I absolutely inhaled it. It had the sort of immersiveness that made the imaginary world within feel so real, the actual world outside dimmed in comparison. I thought about the story constantly, perpetually waiting for next moment I could forsake my responsibilities just to read a few more pages.

I was left in awe. This was so well plotted and so well written, taking not just what already existed in the series, but also adding to the lore and fleshing it out to such a degree, I don't think I will ever look at the original series the same way again.

My only complaint is that this is a bit too long, especially towards the end. The epilogue went on and on for what seemed like hundreds of pages, spelling out in excessive detail how everything turned out for everyone. It even included scenes decades later of children growing up, which was ridiculous in the original series and is still so in this one. But since this is fanfiction, I understand the appeal. If the goal is to revisit a beloved world one last time, then some wallowing is to be expected.

Fanfiction has always been a bit looked down upon, as if being the original creator of a lore somehow equates to being the best and only storyteller of it. But I scoff at such a notion and this story proves why. Fanfiction can help elevate the canon they are based upon to more lofty and imaginative heights, and I'm all for that.

I can see why this story got an offer to be traditionally published (with all the Harry Potter elements removed and reworked, of course), and I'm definitely adding Alchemised to my TBR. I'm going to wait a bit until this version isn't so fresh in my mind, and then I'll dive into this tale again from a fresh perspective.

Readaroo Rating: 4.5 ⭐