This book intrigued me with the blurb, horror and surrealism in one place always sounds fun.
I found the plot difficult to follow at times and some extra character development would really have helped with understanding the actions within this novel.

The book has a weird formatting problem which made it quite difficult to follow!.. I couldn't really follow along with the point of view character, it felt like there was too much going on.

The premise of the book was what initially sparked my interest, since its blend of fantasy, surrealism, and horror, unfortunately, the execution fell short of expectations since it was not able to deliver a compelling and cohesive narrative.

While the premise of sibling rivalry and complex familial relationships held promise, the characterization fell short of resonating with me. I felt like Clover’s motivations remained ambiguous, leaving her actions feeling disjointed and lacking coherence. Additionally, critical aspects of the plot, such as Daisy's medical condition and Clover's homicidal tendencies, were left unexplained, resulting in a sense of detachment from the characters' struggles and motivations.

Ultimately, the book failed to capitalize on its intriguing premise, with confusing world-building and underdeveloped characters undermining the narrative's potential.

Thank you, NetGalley & the publisher, for approving me to read this arc and write this review.

I was lost from the opening gambit here, I'm afraid... I was highly intrigued by the blurb, but the book itself was very odd. It felt disjointed, like pieces were missing or transposed - and after reading other reviews, I still can't tell if that was the fever-dream nature of the story or an actual issue with the formatting! Suffice to say this one wasn't for me...

I didn't end up finishing this one.

I found the writing very disjointed and at times it felt like there were parts missing. I'm not sure if the version I have is formatted correctly, The book itself sounded great from the synopsis - I was really looking forward to it.

Thank you for the opportunity to read, I wish you all the best with the release.

I DNF'd this book because I found it hard to follow at times. But it was a good concept just the execution wasn't the best because it kept tripping itself up with the writing

To begin, I would like to thank BooksGoSocial and the author, S. M. Albalooshi, for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this novel for free in exchange for an honest review!

From the moment that I read the summary, I knew that in theory, this is a book that I would likely really love--something part fantasy, part surreal future, part horror. I love unique books like this with complex themes. With such a great premise, it is so unfortunate that in my opinion the execution just didn't quite work. However, both the name of the book and the author's name are quite memorable, just not in the way that one would think.

I am sure that this is just an issue with the kindle version, but it is worth noting that there were glaring formatting issues throughout the entirety of the Kindle Edition of this book. It seems that the headers/page numbers were not placed separately from the manuscript, as (PAGE NUMBER The Cyclamenton Teacup Poisoner) and (PAGE NUMBER S. M. Albalooshi) shows up on more or less every single page. Over time it became so distracting that it began to frustrate me, since it would always break up the flow of a sentence that had been cut in half. This often took my brain out of the flow of the story, since I had to decipher what I just read. Sometimes I questioned if I missed something or if there were sentences or even paragraphs that were mistakenly removed. I do hope that in the final version of this book and the print version that this formatting issue is resolved.

In regards to the writing itself, I would say that it was really hard to really immerse myself into the story. A majority of the worldbuilding and backstory was revealed through massive info dumps that often went onto different and very specific tangents, This particularly stood out at the beginning of the story when there was discussion on the world after humans, and what technologies the fairies adapted and why. The specificity of these info dumps seemed unnecessary and distracted from the overall plot. The info dumping paired with a whole lot of telling-not-showing ultimately serves to hinder the story that started with so much potential. The author oftentimes blatantly states things (in regards to things like character relationships) outright that could have instead been either alluded to or written in a way that allows the reader to read between the lines and context clues to come to the conclusion ourselves. I do feel that there is a need for more room for critical thinking with the relationships between the characters.

Overall, there is so much potential here and I do see what the author was trying to do, I just wish there was more of a way to convey the author's intentions and motivations behind both the characters and the world. It can be incredibly hard to create a whole new world, a whole new magic system, and a whole new dynamic from the ground up.

I appreciated the content warnings and how it dealt with the horror elements. It had a great horror concept and had a great overall feel to it, the characters felt like they were supposed to and thought the idea of whether the murders were part of Clover's imagination or real. S. M. Albalooshi has a great writing style and I'm glad I was able to read this.

DNF

Stories about sibling rivalry and sibling relationships in general are very interesting to me. One of my favorite books is Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi, which, like this book, is about a pair of sisters. One of them is brilliant, and the other is deemed a failure by society.

Honestly, I was very intrigued by the premise of this story, but unfortunately, this book could not fulfill my expectations. The main problem I think is the formatting, in the Kindle version (which I read) the formatting is a mess. In some parts, it seemed like chunks of words were missing or sentences would abruptly start and stop. Things like this ruined my reading experience. I tried to overlook these formatting issues and focus on the story, but the further I got, the less interesting the story became.

I didn't understand what motivated Clover to do what she did...was it her love for her sister, or her personal desire for murder? We also never get a definitive explanation regarding Daisy's medical condition nor the reason behind Clover's thirst for murder.

These unanswered questions, instead of making me curious, ultimately made me uninterested in continuing to read this book.

This sounded like a great book but I had a hard time following what was going on. I’m not sure if it was the kindle version I had, if something was wrong with it or what but it seemed like chunks were missing, sentences would abruptly start of stop, seemingly like there should be more words there. It didn’t make sense. Unfortunately because of this I didn’t finish the book.

DNF at 30% - I found this book incredibly confusing. The start includes a lot of advert/news stories about the world it's set in which didn't help me form an impression of it at all. Next we're introduced to twin faieries Clover and Daisy. Daisy has a condition which means she is blue (sure) and feels cold all the time and society sees her as inferior in every aspect. She ends up with frostbite on her fingers and is chewing them off herself before her mother brings a "doctor" to the house who amputates her hand. Her sister Clover is understandably upset at witnessing this but it sort of spirals from here and she decides that she needs to poison her mother and the doctor in revenge so she meets up with her possible girlfriend who she shares an interest in murder with. I didn't get it!! How/why was this the logical next step? So yeah the worldbuilding and character development just didn't work at all for me and I was just puzzled by everything I've read so far.