The Child Thief by Brom 2/5 Stars
I like the idea of exploring the origin story of a dark, true-to-the-original Peter Pan. I would have liked for the majority of the book to be about that with more details of the past and a magical/faerie way of life. Instead this book was entirely sad: bad things happening to bad people and horrific descriptions that felt gratuitous. It also jumped around in time and was difficult to follow that because there wasn’t a break or notice of any kind when that occurred. It was a pretty depressing book and I can’t say I’m glad that I read it. I do love other books by Brom, notably Slewfoot and Krampus, so don’t let this be the judge of the author if this is your first by him and you didn’t like it.

A Sinister Revenge by Deanna Raybourn 5/5 Stars
This series has been in a slump for several books for me and this one felt like a breath of fresh air. For the first seven books it was a literal copy-and-paste: Veronica and Stoker solve a mystery while working through incredible sexual tension with some sort of slight resolve at the end that is erased as soon as the next book starts. In A Sinister Revenge, they’re not really speaking after a huge fight in the previous installment so there’s a whole new exciting formula. It made me fall back in love with the series and I hope future books have more variety.

Happy Place by Emily Henry 4/5 Stars
Emily Henry’s latest deviates from her usual formula of enemies-turned-lovers. In Happy Place, Wyn and Harriet were previously engaged, currently broken up, and hadn’t told their friends or families. When they’re brought together for an annual friend’s trip to Maine, it gets difficult to pretend they’re still together. While I prefer the enemies-to-lovers story, this was still quite enjoyable, though I have a feeling that if it were coming from a writer I don’t love as much I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it. There were several parts where I wanted to scream at them to just communicate with each other, hence the lost star. Still, if you’re a fan of Emily Henry you’ll probably like this one.