Joined in 2023 
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This situation could been a constructive conversation about the quality of a book, privileges, the highly commercialized state of publishing, the influence of tiktok, or false advertising, and instead we’re having NONE of those. Do not invalidate anyone’s identity. This is unproductive and invasive speculation. Focus on actions, on stuff that’s actually happening. C’mon, be real.
i dropped an early bad review of lightlark. i found it to be pretty shallow and silly, sparse in its worldbuilding and preoccupied with romance but. i guess that has a place. looking over that review, i stand by it and am here to report that the prose was less try-hard lyrical and adverby. the rest of the book however?
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It hits shelves on 23 August, and BookTok – a thriving sub-community of avid readers on TikTok – is going crazy for this story which hits the sweet spot between the deadly competition of The Hunger Games, and the “romantasy” of Sarah J Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses. It is gloriously overdramatic and passionate, just how BookTok likes it. Isla’s first meeting with Grim, the Nightshade ruler with a “cruelly cut face” and a voice “dark and striking as midnight” finds his “eyes all over her” and her skin feeling “inexplicably electric”. There are fireworks ahead for sure, and teen readers will love Aster’s intricate details about the different realms that make up the world – Wildling, Starling, Moonling, Skyling, Sunling and Nightshade. Isla, we learn, is a Wildling – one of a race that has “always been proud of their bodies … loved wildly, lived freely, and fought fiercely”. Their curse is an unfortunate one – to kill anyone they fall in love with – and to “live exclusively on human hearts”. And despite my misgivings, I’ll probably read the sequel. I want to see how this messy, strangely addictive story ends 😂
Oh right let me break down this timeline: 100 days on Lightlark; can't kill anyone until after the 50th day. By day 25 or 50 (I think) the rulers pair up to solve the prophecy to break their curses. It's so dumb this entire book is about searching for relics. First Isla and the Starling ruler, Celeste, are searching for this thing called the Bond Breaker, then Isla and Oro are searching for the heart of Lightlark. I think day 50 also has some kind of banquet while day 75 has a carnival event? Genuinely, none of the things that happen are important; it feels like Aster is trying to contrive situations where Isla can be hot (in a revealing dress), fierce (holding a knife to someone's throat), or whatever. Grim (bootleg Rhysand - seriously, he comes from a night themed realm/court and can read minds - but somehow, 13239x creepier. Every time he's mentioned he's "raking his eyes over Isla's scantily clad body." Not at all swoony. I would not trust this man to hold my drink.) I knew very little about this book’s origins before I started reading it. All I knew was that it had blown up on TikTok and was being made into a movie.
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SPEAKING OF DATE, y'all...the ACOTAR really jumped out. Remember when I mentioned the 6 realms, let me repeat them for you: Wildling, Skyling, Moonling, Starling, Nightshade, and Lightlark. If there's a villain (as the author has heavily hinted at "villain gets the girl") guess where he's from. Let me make it worse, his name is Grimshaw LMAOOO.
Publishers, again, said “no thanks”. “People were saying: ‘Oh, I really like it. But I don’t think it will sell,’” says Aster, who believes the book industry was slow to wake up to the power of BookTok. (No longer: every YA publisher worth its salt is now working with “book influencers” on the platform, after watching them send sales through the roof). “There’s such a big disconnect between the people making decisions in boardrooms and the readers who are hungry for these types of books,” Aster says. this book was REPETITIVE. i thought i was listening to the same chapter SEVERAL times ffs. if i see the words "centennial" and "100 years" again istg- LIKE OKAY WE GET IT. it felt like i was studying for the book the way you study for a test, repeating everything until it's buried into your brain. im tired okay? i don't know what im saying either. at least im not saying stupid shit like "she glared at him meanly". HOW ELSE WOULD SHE GLARE AT HIM? CHEERFULLY??? KINDLY???? glaring itself is an act of meanness dear and if it's an oxymoron of some sort, you're overusing it <3
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lore concerning the realms is so silly, it's as if she heard that people were critical of how poorly thought out the curses were and then wildly overcorrected. it's still nonsense, there's just more of it. where were these wild beasts before? why is nightshade exclusively populated by lascivious, hostile unnamed weirdos? what do these rebels think they're actually going to accomplish?
BookTok phenomenon and award-winning author Alex Aster delivers listeners a masterfully written, utterly gripping YA fantasy novel. Isla Crown is the young ruler of Wildling—a realm of temptresses cursed to kill anyone they fall in love with. They are feared and despised, and are counting on Isla to end their suffering by succeeding at the Centennial.” Isla Crown es la joven soberana de Wilding, un reino de mujeres guerreras que no conocen el amor y que confían en ella para ganar el Centenario. you know when something is so bad that you just can’t look away? yeah, that was me with this book. and yes, it was as terrible as everyone said. Diversity? An attempt was made. As we learn more about the world, we see more people, and they're more diverse than in the first book. I have my criticisms about how in books like this, race only feels skin deep, but an attempt was made. Is it a successful attempt? It was a step in the right direction that's for sure.
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Sequel is called Nightshade (duh, Isla is half Nightshade because her dad was some Nightshade general and all signs point to Isla x Grim endgame) Update: I was kindly given access to an audiobook on NetGalley and can now divulge a full, honest review! Fair warning, I was right about this being an ACOTAR ripoff with terrible prose. I feel thoroughly validated lmao I mentioned in my Lightlark review that I listened to an arc on audiobook. I read Nightbane with my own two eyes, so... I do think that made a lot of the structural issues and prose issues more relevant. But before I get into the negatives, I'd like to discuss the positive Miss girl was honestly very dumb, but she and Oro were the most interesting characters in this whole book. I don’t really get too invested in most book romances, but since people always ask about them I will include some of that in my review. There is romance, plus a few popular tropes, though I feel like revealing the specific tropes may be considered a spoiler, so I will refrain. I think because the events are spread over several months the romance(s) don’t appear to be an insta-love situation but instead something that has developed organically. My understanding is that all of the characters involved are adults (some have a kind of Edward Cullen age thing going on), so though Aster doesn’t take it as far as she could, none of their interactions feel sanitized for a younger audience.
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