I’ve had an unfortunate rash of bad books this week, and none of them needed a full review for one reason or another, so here’s my set of this week’s mini-reviews!

I received each of these books as eARCS from Edelwiess and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, courtesy of their publishers.

Breaking up is hard to do… but you could have done better by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell

Reading this was like scrolling through the r/relationships subreddit with cute illustrations. It was not a great experience for me.

Walking on Knives by Maya Chhabra

TW: non-graphic rape, warned for before story starts, as well as questionably consensual sex near the end.

This novella was interesting. It is a f/f twist on the little mermaid, with two sea witches, which was neat. There was some great writing shown, but I think this story suffered because of how short it was.

One thing that bothered me was the way sex and physical touch was used as a bargaining piece in this novel, without any other option or discussion of the bargain. I really wish it had been explored more than the passing conversation that happened with the sea witch’s sister.

If you want a copy, you can pick it up on Amazon

The Asperger Teen’s Toolkit by Francis Musgrave

I noped out on this one. It’s written by a clinical psychologist and uses person-first language and functioning labels, which is not at all what most of us autistic folks want used. It’s also, funnily enough, published by the same publisher of another book I DNF’d with rage in my heart for the same reason, Trans Voices. I wish this publisher would work to actually have some people writing for them that actually experienced what they were going through.