Wonderland Reader

Second First Impressions  by Sally Thorne Published: 7th April 2022 by Piatkus I received a copy of this e-book from the publisher via NetGalley. This in no way affects my review. I feel like Sally Thorne is a huge name in the romance genre, so I was excited to finally be picking up one of her books, and for the most part, I was not disappointed! I really enjoyed the writing style of this, and although I couldn't hugely relate to Ruthie's personality, that didn't take away from my enjoyment of the book at all, which I actually think is a huge testament to Thorne as an author, because I feel like this is hard to achieve. I thought the little community that Ruthie found herself in, with the two sisters, and her coworker, to be very endearing, and exactly what she needed. I did find the back and forth between Ruthie and Teddy to be too much at times, and once again, their huge blowout fight towards the end did just feel a bit ridiculous, but it didn't really take away from...

An Education in Malice   by S.T. Gibson Published: 15th February 2024 by Orbit I received a copy of this e-book from the publisher via NetGalley. This in no way affects my review. While not a superfan of the genre, I do enjoy a dark academia tale when it is done well, and I was hoping that An Education in Malice would be that for me. The premise of an intimate circle of female students in a small-town university interested me, but the story took a turn from this, and became much more focused on Laura and Carmilla, and their teacher De LaFontaine. The vampire twist to this story wasn't wholly unwelcome, but I didn't think it brought anything particularly new to that genre - it was mainly used as a vessel for the various love stories, and I did think it could be used for much more than that. I didn't love how Gibson introduced the older vampire's lover to the story as the main threat, and then proceeded to hardly have her in the book after that.  The writing in this wasn...