inlibrisveritas
Written on Oct 20, 2018
This year I've been doing something I never do, which is to read books that fit the current season and one of the first one I decided to tackle this October was Toil & Trouble! I love reading about witches and magic because there are so many ways you can explore those topics, and this anthology provides a fun little diverse read.
Like all anthologies, this has some hits and misses in it, and since there are so many stories I'll only focus on those that stand out for whatever reason. The One Who Stayed by Nova Ren Suma, is true to her style and has that signature eerie yet almost ethereal style. I love how twisty her stories are and how even if you see the major twist coming she'll definitely get you with the delivery and unique character voices. Daughters of Baba Yaga by Brenna Yovanoff is a witchcraft that is on the edgier side with one openly larger than life character who can work over people in sly ways and one that is all teeth. I totally dig angry stories like this and it just worked. Death in the Sawtooths by Lindsay Smith is more of an urban fantasy type story and I would read the hell out of a longer series if it existed. It has a really cool magic system and a pretty stellar MC to follow. Only one of the stories included in this anthology fell below 3 stars, which was The Moonapple Menagerie by Shveta Thakror. It wasn't' bad per se, I just didn't mesh with it for some reason. I thought the imagery was great and I really loved the South-Asian influence on the story, but I just felt somewhat bored by the overall idea I suppose.
Many of the other stories were enjoyable and fairly varied in nature too. There is plenty of romance to be had, a few that run on intense emotions, and some that dip into horror as well. In addition to that, there is some great diversity in terms of characters and cultures represented. There is some great LGBTQA representation (lesbian, bisexual, and trans to be exact), and some great racial diversity (latina, south Asian, black, & native American).
Overall Toil & Trouble was a fun read with a great variety to choose from, and certainly more than a few authors I"m interested in checking out the backlists of.
Thank you to Harlequin Teen for providing me with a copy to review. All opinions are my own.
