Because we need more Edgar Allan Poe retellings.
Song Vibe Check:
"I don't wanna do this anymore" By: PVRIS
"Still Here" By: 2WEI, Tiffany Aris
"Don't say I didn't warn you" By: VOILA, Craig Owens
It's been a while since I've touched Edgar Allan Poe's work, but given the fact that my neighborhood made a scarecrow dedicated to him and given last year's surprising interest in reading gothic lit/YA horror and enjoying the suspense and horror a bit more in its literary form (still not a huge horror movie fan but still watch them) I got recommended this one from one of my book blogging friends, thus kickstarting my 12 books by 12 friends reading challenge.
So, here we go.
Short Summary:A stand in princess crosses paths with a grave digger in a race against whether risking to go outside or face the ire of much more sinister forces than the plague.
This book is the type of horror that you can't exactly look away from, with a story that slowly pulls you in, doesn't let you go and presents itself with the opulence of royalty while dealing with hypocrisy, the decaying outside world ridded with the plague and enough uneasiness about death, about whether the plague still exists and with enough disturbing events throughout the story that keeps the morbid interest going.
Did I think cannibalism would appear in this book? absolutely. Was I expecting a child's lullaby to actually be telling people to turn into vampires? ABSOLUTELY NOT and it was such a sudden and unexpected twist that had me shocked and intrigued and as we deal with a mad king, a stand in princess who is close to getting exposed and a grave digger pretending to be a prince as their lies start to fall apart was intriguing enough as we see the story get a bit darker, more morbid and disturbing and it makes me briefly grateful that as a society, COVID didn't drag us to such questionable points on morality and what we're willing to do to survive.
Even if people did fight for toilet paper in the height of the pandemic.
Either way, it's definitely one of my new favorite of the year and it turns out I for some reason, need more gothic lit in my life and no, I swear it's not an emo phase, it's just... the genre is slowly pulling me in a bit more.
Overall: 5/5 stars
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