hafsah faizal

An Excellent Heist

A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal

June 18, 2024 by finnyfinfinn 1 Comment

An Arthurian heist novel featuring a tea shop by day and a blood bar by night? I’m in, I’m hooked, let’s gooooo! Arthie Casimir owns Spindrift, the aforementioned tea shop, collecting secrets from the aristocracy while serving tea while also providing a safe haven for vampires and her ragtag band of orphans. She is infamous for literally pulling her pistol from a stone. Jin Casimir is her adopted brother and right hand man. All is going well for the dynamic duo until Spindrift is threatened […]

Unique takes on age-old tales for a YA audience

At Midnight by Dahlia Adler

November 30, 2023 by cosbrarian Leave a Comment

Dahlia Adler has been pumping out YA anthologies based on familiar lore for a while. At MIDNIGHT, twists on popular fairy tales, is her most recent work. It’s also the first I’ve read, though I have her Poe remix on my shelf, and the Shakespeare remix is definitely going on my wishlist. It is a fantastic homage to favorite fairy tales. Almost all of them bring something new to each tale, but here are my favorites: Adler’s Rumpelstiltskin, which turns the gold-making goblin into a […]

Lots of Feelings Actually Works Out For Once

We Free the Stars by Hafsah Faizal

May 19, 2021 by CoffeeShopReader Leave a Comment

We Free the Stars is one of those sequels with which you really should do a re-read of the first book (We Hunt the Flame in this case) right before you pick up the second. There were a lot of characters brought back or brought up that I didn’t remember well from the first novel, and it took me a while to remember the details that would have helped their reappearance make more sense. We Free the Stars is a direct sequel that picks up […]

Too much the Chosen One

We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal

December 13, 2019 by CoffeeShopReader Leave a Comment

I made what I now think was a mistake in reading We Hunt the Flame immediately after reading a pair of light parodies of the chosen one genre. The mistake was that We Hunt the Flame is very much as serious chosen one fantasy story, and coming after entertaining mockeries of the genre, ended up feeling a little too obvious about things that were probably supposed to be reveals. Zaphira is a girl but also the Hunter whom everyone thinks is a man. Her skill […]

narfna on “There are so many ways to tell it, and all of them are important. But each way paints a very different picture and leads down a different road.”Yes, this book was so good!
Emmalita on “There are so many ways to tell it, and all of them are important. But each way paints a very different picture and leads down a different road.”This sounds like a very good and thoughtful read.
narfna on CBR Diversion: Your Cannonball StoryMy Cannonball story is kind of sad now, but here goes. Back in 2006 I started blogging, and eventually found...
Halbs on A new way into Batman comicsThank you for sharing this! I've recently been buying physical comics, as well, and there are now SO MANY different...
Jen K on This was a disappointmentSuch a great title, too! Too bad the book is disappointing.

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