Firstly thank you to NetGalley and psychopomp for this opportunity! This book is available TODAY!

Holy mother of Pearl but this book to me is 20 billion stars. It is unique, strange, lush and dark. It’s a weird dystopian fantasy with memorable characters in a wooden whale. Bryony was the perfect narrator for this story. I am actually buying it.

Lovely Creatures wrestles with grief and loss of love, independence, and freedom, the dissonance between outer appearances and inner feelings, and the desire for reunions. It is filtered through first and third-person POVs that has you questioning who is narrating and when in time. We are confronted with death throughout the story, most particularly the residues of the past and having to leave it behind to move forth. A fine novella.

Thanks to Netgalley and Psychopomp for providing me with the e-ARC/DRC in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this story! This novella has a unique style that mixes fairytale retelling and dark themes with a dust storm ridden land and a traveling circus act. I enjoyed the prose, as well as how it changed slightly between the different narrators. I also enjoyed how the pov shifted with symbols — it was a unique and fun way to keep the readers on their toes as to who was narrating. The cast of characters was interesting and their stories kept me reading until the end in one go. The story is sad and dark but ultimately bittersweet and wholesome, about grieving and moving on and finding a family of your own. Overall I definitely recommend this quick and enjoyable read! Thank you to NetGalley and Psychopomp for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Lovely Creatures by K.T Bryski is a unique novella, unlike anything I’ve ever consumed prior.

Written during the pandemic, Bryski’s piece feels like a psychedelic fever dream. I do think there is an audience that will relish in this creation. I enjoyed the zany cast of characters we meet in this twisted fairy tale.

I applaud the author for putting their energy and effort into such a peculiar piece of literature during a time of collective isolation and despair.

Thank you to Psychopomp & NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

LOVELY CREATURES is gritty, surreal, and spectacularly whimsical novella that interweaves fairytales, deliciously twisted, yet recognizable, in a warped wonderland, unravelling how all the stories and characters are all interconnected by the thread of death.

Bryski explores how death becomes a spectacle, how desire interweaves with grief, about who controls the story of the characters' lives and the difficulties in reclaiming themselves.

This was a really unique and well written novella, however it wasn’t necessarily the sort of writing style that I prefer. It definitely had an interesting cast of characters and I enjoyed the fairytale retelling aspects and the surprising reveals. Bryony’s search for her missing sister was quite sad and a little dark but there were bright spots as well - Bryony’s refusal to let someone else decide her story and the found family she gains along the way. Overall not something I would revisit, but I can appreciate what the author did with it.

Thank you to Psychopomp for the ARC!

A gorgeously wrought, dark, and unsettling twist on fairytales where the Devil stalks a storm-whittled landscape, and where Bryony searches for her long-lost sister. It's written as a weave of tales, and Bryski's prose has a magic all its own. A woman finds her sister sleeping in a glass coffin. There's a wolf and swan-maiden, and a man who holds everyone in thrall with his stories. Bryski delves deep in heartache and guilt, love and friendship, and the landscape of the story is tightly intertwined with the people traveling through it. Beautiful, strange, and profoundly moving.