"🎧 2nd read, Nov. 2021 — 5 stars

no words, just more feels. <3



📚 1st read, Aug. 2019 — 5 stars

#1 Dance of Thieves — 5 stars

im so overwhelmed with emotions rn. all of them culminating to one, indescribable something. the one that feels like you just walk through the gates of heaven after braving a rollercoaster journey through hell. not that reading this book in any way felt like being in hell. things were just so twisty & turny, intense, violent, and bloody engrossing. the ending had me joyously sobbing.

i know this is such a generic response readers tend to have upon finishing a beloved book. but i spoke of the truth. i felt greedy when i was reading it. like i wanted to know everything asap, and i was racing through it with one sweep of my eyes across the pages. despite all the chaos of emotions i had to juggle during my reading of this book, i want to experience this duology all over again."

"

I made a promise. . . . I said I would never do this again, never play the detective, never again lose myself.

Pip has sworn off solving mysteries for good. Now she's just following the trials from her one and only bout of sleuthing and updating her podcast with all the latest developments. But when a friend goes missing and the police refuses to do anything, Pip knows she'll have to step up again, even if it costs her everything.

Sometimes I read a book, and it so far exceeds my expectations that I wonder afterwards if maybe I'd hallucinated. That's how I felt about the first book in this series. It was young adult, yet it was so smart, sharp, gritty, and utterly unputdownable. Now that I've read book 2, I know it wasn't just a fluke because it yet again exceeded all my expectations.

I'm one of those people who grew up reading Nancy Drew (and The Hardy Boys, of course, but Nancy was my main jam). And so I'm always on the lookout, hoping some new, smart, spunky teen detective would pick up the mantle and delight me once again. And I've found exactly that in Pip.

One of my favorite things about this series is the way the investigation unfolds. Clues are collected and followed up, which then leads to the next set of steps and clues. It's all very logical. And the dossier format of interviews, articles, maps, notes, etc. is so masterfully done that it feels like I'm in the middle of a real investigation.

Just a word of warning: this isn't one of those mystery series you can read in any order you'd like. This book contains crucial information on the resolution of book 1, something I'm very thankful for because I have absolutely terrible book-memory. But it means you must read the books in order or risk being completely spoiled.

As I'm getting older, I've noticed that I'm slowly outgrowing YA, but this series still speaks to me. Its mysteries and the way they expose the darkness of human nature, but also its cleverness and resourcefulness through its teen detective, appeals to all ages. I cannot wait for book 3!

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See also, my thoughts on:
#1. A Good Girl's Guide to Murder
#3. As Good As Dead
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"4 stars

We were either the bad kind of right or the good kind of wrong. It was hard to distinguish the two. We had a reckless love and perfectly awful timing. We were impossible to describe, and that’s why every time I tried to put us into words, it made no sense.

Jewel E. Ann really brought the feels with this one. I cried so much the last 25% of Sunday Morning. I enjoyed the romance a lot, but there were other aspects that didn't quite work for me. Jewel's writing is fantastic and I'm curious about the next one because Eve was a hoot.

"