It's not out yet but it will be in a month or so? I haven't heard as much about this one. It kind of sounds to me like it's going to be another more mature/older age book like The Editor, and the same kind of mostly realistic but with a little magic here and there.

But also I wanted to make this thread because of the "reviews" at the bottom of the page which I feel like no one looks at except I know Arty always hid stuff at the bottom of her sites before and I want to save these before they get replaced by actual reviews because they're funny.

"This is just a darker and more grown-up version of the Dream Sanctum, prove me wrong."

"Book did not actually take place over one thousand nights, 3/5."

"You actually made breaking and entering seem like a pretty reasonable thing to do, but the house I broke into wasn't unoccupied. 5/5 will reread from prison."

"One of these days someone is going to ask you to write a book where nighttime and sleep aren't big parts of the themes and you're going to have no idea what to do."

I don't have anything else to say yet I don't think but yeah I saw these and wanted to post before I forgot. What do you guys think is coming? Anyone else going to read on release day?

Has this always been a thing? I've never noticed before. Those are funny.

If I remember right this was actually advertised as another NA novel like The Editor. I'm looking forward to that, because I did like that one, even if it didn't seem to get as much attention. Between the synopsis and the cover I'm thinking it might be darker and more grown up than The Editor, though. I'm guessing it will have something to do with trauma and maybe working through it. That or it could turn into a sort of thriller if this ex of the main character's returns (which it sounds like they probably do). I was surprised when The Editor turned into a mystery, so who knows? I haven't seen a lot about this one apart from the synopsis but I'm looking forward to it.

"This is just a darker and more grown-up version of the Dream Sanctum, prove me wrong."

I mean, sold. Do I need anything else? I'm glad I'm on vacation of sorts too, so I'll actually have time to read when it comes out. I don't remember anything else than what's on the site though, unless I missed an email about it.

I found out today how long it is! It's apparently "just shy of 139k" words. So it's now GW but I think that makes it longer than TE?

This one didn't go up for preorder unless I missed it but I'm still going to grab it asap. I think the fact that I don't know a whole lot about it is part of what makes me excited, like GS and MAF were just more of something I was obsessed with, TE had a little more news about it first, but this one is kinda flying under the radar I feel like. But it also looks like such a COOL story, I think grown up TDS makes it sound even better like hello??

Anyone else started yet? I'm a few chapters in. This is definitely different from the other books, including TE I think, at least so far. Definitely more mature and older, and it seems like the character's trauma is a lot more front and center and also serious. Even in GW where you see a lot of death the story hasn't been about their trauma exactly, it's definitely there but it's not the point, and it's usually about dealing with loss, but here it seems like we're going to outright see the effects of this guy's abuse of Tabitha.

I see already where the darker version of TDS quote came from lol. But I like it. The dream and then the note! I don't know where this is going yet but I like it. Maybe it's too soon to say but Tabitha seems like another pretty flawed character and I'm liking that too.

I started! I didn't get as far as I wanted since family stuff came up. But YEAH I got the same idea, this poor girl. And sure some of us know where Jacob came from but even if we didn't I feel like I would get those vibes from him anyway. I recognize a lot of this stuff, like it seems like he's also a physical abuser but he's also definitely a narcissist. What I WASN'T expecting was for him to be dead! I thought he was going to come back but now Nick is like uh bro he's been dead for a long time now. So I thought Tabitha's line of "I still see him everywhere" was really cool.

Also I love how Tabitha meets Precia! She's overwhelmed by how weird it is and she's like well, since I can't deal with that right now, I guess i'll just have to help this girl I saw in my dreams bake cookies LOL. I seriously love this though, like what a COOL idea, just a big house full of bedrooms where she chooses a different one each night and has a different dream it looks like? Or memory I guess?? I'm definitely gonna keep going tonight. Some of this I knew but some of it is kinda unexpected already.

I think I knew he was dead before reading that but I cannot for the life of me remember why lol. Maybe i just assumed it rather than it being stated somewhere. It didn't change too much for me though since I figured most of this would be about how she gets over what he did to her rather than him coming back but idk.

I like the other characters a lot so far, like Tabitha's roommate and coworkers. They're mostly just totally normal people but they're just interesting. Like Natalia and their pet bat lol, like wtf. And Leslie, I feel like I'm going to like her a lot, she's just so funny and sarcastic.

ALSO YOU HAVE TO LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU GET TO CHAPTER 7 because holy fuck lmaooooo. I know you're going to get it but i have to know your reaction. Specifically near the beginning. Later on there's other stuff like David showing up but we knew he would because of COURSE he does. I do like that he's got this friendship with Saroj though where they just bake cookies together and argue with each other.

Actually there's a lot in this chapter now that I think about it because Tabitha starts opening up to Precia about Jacob now and just, man. This is too good. Sad, but really good. This poor girl needs therapy. And! That very explicit ace and aro rep, I love love this. Little things like this are so cute.

DUDE LOL. I was reading this and I was like, no fucking way, this is blatant af. But it was REALLY IT. I'm laughing my ass off I fucking love this, PULL NO PUNCHES ARTY. Here I was thinking this was just a reference to one dude, but apparently not!

Leslie is great, omg when Cole is like "I'm not completely incompetent" and she goes "maybe not completely but close enough that you could see it coming up in the rearview if you ever stopped to look love," this woman, I love her and I want an entire book just made of her insults. She just doesn't quit. Her banter with Tabitha is great, I love her.

I'm ahead of you I think or maybe you made it here by now, but I have to share this little easter egg because I'm pretty sure most people won't get it, the only reason I do is because I was beta reading GW from close to the beginning and this made me scream a little lol. So there's a woman in the house whose name is Freja, and by her description I'm like 110% certain that's a Saber reference, and I'm sure people will see that. Which is cool. But THEN there's a scene later where Freja keeps looking at Saroj and then asks if they know each other, and Saroj says Freja looks kinda like someone she knows, just older. So, FUN FACT, in the very first draft of GW, there was a fourth kid along with Kim, Kalil, and Sovaan, and HER name was SAROJ. Add to that in Saroj's memory she tells her parents she had a crazy dream about being with a group of kids who explore the city at night and there's a girl with them that only they can see? This is the CUTEST little throwback that 99% of people won't get because Saroj doesn't exist in GW anymore so AAAAAAAH I thought this was fucking adorable. They found each other again!!

I have a lot of thoughts, like how Tabitha messed up with the surprise party and it made her realize she doesn't actually know anything about the people she's worked with for a year and a half and how she's self isolating and how the barriers she put up are now making her unhappy and stuff. I'll save all my thoughts for when I finish reading and processed everything but I like it so far. Yet another protagonist who needs a big hug.

Jade wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 15, 2021 2:03 am

I'm ahead of you I think or maybe you made it here by now, but I have to share this little easter egg because I'm pretty sure most people won't get it, the only reason I do is because I was beta reading GW from close to the beginning and this made me scream a little lol. So there's a woman in the house whose name is Freja, and by her description I'm like 110% certain that's a Saber reference, and I'm sure people will see that. Which is cool. But THEN there's a scene later where Freja keeps looking at Saroj and then asks if they know each other, and Saroj says Freja looks kinda like someone she knows, just older. So, FUN FACT, in the very first draft of GW, there was a fourth kid along with Kim, Kalil, and Sovaan, and HER name was SAROJ. Add to that in Saroj's memory she tells her parents she had a crazy dream about being with a group of kids who explore the city at night and there's a girl with them that only they can see? This is the CUTEST little throwback that 99% of people won't get because Saroj doesn't exist in GW anymore so AAAAAAAH I thought this was fucking adorable. They found each other again!!

WHAT. This is cute as heck! Omg I love this.

So, I finished it tonight and have thoughts! I just really liked this book, it was obviously such a personal story, and it got a little deeper every time I'd start thinking about it, like this whole entire thing is basically a giant metaphor. Unprocessed trauma, finding an escape instead of dealing with it properly, how it ends up coming into every part of your life even the ones you thought were safe, how it affects your memories, messes with relationships, it was just really good at showing that. Sometimes it was specific, sometimes not. The way that it tied in to that other Thousand Nights story too, and the connecting point of them was her one passion of music? That was so so cool. As soon as Tabitha explained the backstory of her violin's name, the name of the book made a lot more sense and I was just like ahhhh I love this.

I know it's kind of a running joke that most bad guys/antagonists in books by this author aren't actually people, but this one came pretty darn close lol. And I wasn't surprised that Jacob was written so well the way he was, like we already saw Rahu, but it just came out extra hard in this one. The gaslighting and emotional abuse and little trigger phrases and stuff, the way he told Tabitha she made him kill himself, the way he could hurt her but she couldn't hurt him... Also what is with the bittersweet endings lately? Jeez. It was really satisfying and definitely a happy ending, but ugh, I thought the end of the last chapter was full of feelings and then the very LAST line of the epilogue got me choked up.

There was more, like the characters I really liked and quotes I thought were great but I'll wait on that lol. I loved this. It was definitely unique compared to the others and i think it worked.

I finished this one late last year but Christmas kept me occupied from writing many thoughts about it. I did want to point out some references I think might have been missed. Since you guys mentioned chapter 7 specifically I thought I'd point out the antagonist's initials. I'm not sure if that's on purpose, but I'm assuming it was. The place where Tabitha works, the Hook and Claw, is the name of a restaurant Adelaide and her officers go to after their meeting with Vanhanen and the others in MAF. And one of Tabitha's dreams I'm PRETTY sure was a TE reference with Emilia and Alex. Those were the big ones. I was not expecting something as straightforward as chapter 7 though so now I'm seeing the reactions I completely understand it lol.

I'm with Hannah though. This was very clearly a metaphor for trauma and the recovery from it. Half of it wasn't even metaphorical. I did like how it went a few layers deep though, because the house and the memories inside it and the music and the way they all kind of intertwined definitely was. It being so straightforward was great. I liked to see something this explicit rather than it just being a byproduct or just a character trait. I liked how messy it got too in that she had her self destructive behaviors, how she was sometimes dishonest and stubborn and frustrating to deal with, but it didn't stop her being a likeable character. Her relationship with her brother was so nice to see. It made me realize there haven't actually been a lot of sibling or otherwise blood family relationships before, so this was really cool. Especially when he was trying to help her through her struggles but it was clear that he didn't completely understand them, but at the same time he also had some clarity that she didn't because she was stuck in the middle of it and being self destructive as she was.

I also wasn't expecting the antagonist to have been dead. I thought I knew what direction the book was going and then there was that line and it threw me off. The fact that he ended up being a memory made him even more dangerous and it changed the way she had to fight him. We were kind of right in that this is like TE in terms of its magical realism, so it was really cool to see how what was basically a metaphor for trauma was capable of causing physical damage in the real world. And how the fact that Tabitha could see other people's memories was genuinely real and something she had done her whole life that had nothing to do with the house.

I liked it a lot. This one got serious in a way the others haven't and it worked really well imo. A lot of the language was really good at describing her feelings and history and struggles. I should have written down some of the quotes I liked but there was one that was something along the lines of "better her parents knew the lessons she'd learned and not how she had to learn them" which should ring a bell for some of you lol. I'll go looking again sometime, they were some of my favorite parts of the book.

Rebekah wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 03, 2022 10:13 pm

Since you guys mentioned chapter 7 specifically I thought I'd point out the antagonist's initials. I'm not sure if that's on purpose, but I'm assuming it was. The place where Tabitha works, the Hook and Claw, is the name of a restaurant Adelaide and her officers go to after their meeting with Vanhanen and the others in MAF.

BECKY. How did I not get the name of the damn restaurant! I need to return my fan card until I learn this better there's no way you should be doing better than me on anything about that series LOL. Also like this makes me think, for all the people that seem to get written into these books it's usually only nice people? Or friends or whatever. I'm just used to that which is why for a while I was second guessing myself like, there's no way this chapter is about what I think it's about. I'm not used to the books going so hard lmaoo.

The whole thing WAS great though, it went in such different ways than I thought and I can still see this being TDS all grown up lol. I'm curious what you guys think but my impression was that the house did that to her on purpose. Precia said the house is what she needs it to be and maybe what she needed was a kick in the right direction, you know? She was stuck and she wasn't going anywhere and she needed to make some progress or she'd be there forever, so it took her there, built her up with comfort and safety and everything to give her the part of that stuff she was missing, then brought in the difficult stuff so she could finally face it down. She was mad at the house in the end because it and all its magic couldn't beat one bad dream, and I kinda agree, so I feel like it was probably on purpose. And like that doesn't have to mean the house was sentient after all or anything but just that it felt that she needed to make progress, which isn't a shock like even her brother was telling her to do that. Maybe it thought she would get there on her own once she had new friends and safety and everything but once she started using it as an escape instead of a way to be productive then it was like ok I'm gonna have to do something different now.

Also don't make fun of me but I didn't realize this was super metaphorical until a while after I even finished reading LOL. I knew there was SOME but I thought it was like individual things like the specific dreams she had or whatever not the WHOLE HOUSE and everyone in it and everything.

I was catching up on Kay's books and started with this one since it was shorter lol. I liked it! It really went in a way different direction than the others and like Rebekah said it was a few layers deep so I kept thinking about it after, like, what's supposed to be metaphor and what's real, how much of it was. Like the part at the end where the other characters show up to help Tabitha I feel like that could have been a dream or part of the illusion stuff? Based on your reactions though I feel like i have missed out on some more serious details lol.

Jade wrote:The whole thing WAS great though, it went in such different ways than I thought and I can still see this being TDS all grown up lol. I'm curious what you guys think but my impression was that the house did that to her on purpose. Precia said the house is what she needs it to be and maybe what she needed was a kick in the right direction, you know? She was stuck and she wasn't going anywhere and she needed to make some progress or she'd be there forever, so it took her there, built her up with comfort and safety and everything to give her the part of that stuff she was missing, then brought in the difficult stuff so she could finally face it down. She was mad at the house in the end because it and all its magic couldn't beat one bad dream, and I kinda agree, so I feel like it was probably on purpose. And like that doesn't have to mean the house was sentient after all or anything but just that it felt that she needed to make progress, which isn't a shock like even her brother was telling her to do that. Maybe it thought she would get there on her own once she had new friends and safety and everything but once she started using it as an escape instead of a way to be productive then it was like ok I'm gonna have to do something different now.

I don't think the house did it on purpose. I can SEE that, since the house was what she needed it to be and she definitely needed to get started on processing, but I think the point was more about like, how there is no safe space when you've got that kind of stuff sitting in your head. You can find new things and think you're safe but eventually it will start creeping into every part of your life, even the parts you think are immune to it, and even before you even realize it's happening. The house starting to go dark I think was supposed to be a mirror of what was happening in her life, and I think Jacob even said it to her at the end that he was walking through the halls of her mind. When he was alive he only did it figuratively but now he was doing it literally I guess? So the house is just like a manifestation of her brain and the trauma got in there and spread through everything.

BUT THEN there was that little tiny bit of magic that had nothing to do with the house, or like it only influenced the way the house worked for her, which is like.... I need to know more about that. Precia had some kind of power when she was alive, Tabitha does now, and maybeeee Nick does? I wasn't sure if I read that right but I thought it was cool that there's this super subtle magic that people can totally have. I wonder what the house would have been like for her if she didn't have that power.

Also also that fake review was right and this made me almost want to start breaking into empty houses lol