The story was so unique and the characters were all well fleshed out and relatable. It did deal with some heavy topics at points and I think they were handled respectfully. Pacing wise, I thought it was really good balancing keeping the story going and also giving enough time to really immerse yourself in the world created, which is not an easy thing to do. Would highly recommend this to fantasy lovers of all kinds.

The blurb intrigued me, the cover is beautiful. I thought that this book would be an easy and fun read. I turned out it was not because I really struggled to finish it.

Kill Your Darlings is about an author suffering from depression and who finds herself in the book she wrote, in the body of the main character, Kyla but without her powers.
I liked how the depression was portrayed but the rest felt flat. I didn’t connect with the story.
The idea of an author being in the book they wrote is nice, but it’s better if the book is actually good and not a basic fantasy story.

Time and again, I keep saying it: give me the stories about stories, the metafiction, all of it. Kill Your Darlings by L.E. Harper is another spin on this idea. Along with a heavy (in many senses of the word) focus on mental health, this is a story about figuring out who you want to be when everyone is telling you who they think you are. This is a debut novel, and the rough edges that often come with that show. Aside from that, I enjoyed the story and the attempts that Harper makes to go deep on sensitive issues. I received an eARC from NetGalley in exchange for my review.

An author living in New York City wakes up to find herself inhabiting the body of Kyla Starblade, the protagonist of her fantasy series set in another world. “Kyla” quickly explains to the other characters in this book what’s up, but it’s immaterial—the Shadow War that they have been fighting for the past four books will stop for no one, and it’s up to her to vanquish the dark lord and save the day. There’s just one problem: in the original ending to this story, as written by this author, all of these principal characters die. Can she change what she has written, and in so doing, find her way back home?

An author finding themselves transported into their world isn’t the most original premise, but it has been a while since I’ve seen precisely this sort of twist on it. Additionally, Harper leaves the nature of this transposition ultimately unresolved: it could be a “quantum magical” entanglement, or it could be the narrator simply hallucinating everything. Did she create this world, or did she merely perceive its events from Earth, an interdimensional clairvoyant? The ultimate answer is irrelevant because it’s the journey that is important.

This is a story that is clearly, unapologetically about mental health and in particular about depression and suicide ideation—there are trigger warnings up front, and I have to say, they are justified. The book contains graphic descriptions of a mechanism of suicide, so practise self-care when deciding whether to read this book.

This layer to the story is both thematically and narratively important. The narrator is unreliable—there are a few twists near the end that, when revealed, subtly shift the reader’s interpretation of the situation. She lies to us but also to herself. Indeed, in her role as the hero of this world, the narrator feels the pressure to win against the dark lord, who is constantly telling her that she isn’t good enough. This is all too similar to what the narrator’s own brain has told her repeatedly over the years, resulting in her withdrawing from community with the people who care about her.

We don’t get to know the narrator’s world nearly as well as we do the fantasy one. There are a few stolen glimpses, but beyond that it is entirely what the narrator divulges through exposition—mainly how some of her book’s characters are modelled after her close friends, people she has since pushed away or ignored. At first, when the book opened with the narrator already in Kyla’s body in her fantasy world, I wished that we had flashbacks to the narrator’s life in NYC. Then again, I think I understand what Harper was going for here: depression is of the mind. Although circumstances can exacerbate it, the narrator isn’t depressed because of what she has experienced in her life—she’s depressed because her brain chemistry is out of whack. So it does make sense, thematically, for Kill Your Darlings to take place entirely in the narrator’s head (whether or not it is also taking place in another reality), separate from her own external world. There’s an appealing subjectivity to this storytelling.

Similarly, I appreciate that Harper doesn’t spend chapters upon chapters of the narrator trying to dupe everyone into thinking she is Kyla. She basically comes right out and says it right away, and the book’s pacing is much better for it. As it is, I think there were moments of uneven pacing—in particular, the middle was a bit of a slog. The story is very much about the narrator overcoming her self-doubt and other inner demons. As a result, the cornucopia of external threats often took a back seat in terms of the actual threat they seemed to pose to the characters. This is the trouble when you posit that a group of people might or might not be “real” in fiction—you have to be really careful to somehow maintain the stakes and our desire to sympathize with those characters. Do I care about the Kyla as much as the narrator? Is Kyla’s survival as important as the narrator’s here? These kinds of metaphysical considerations are fun but can also distract a reader from the mental-health themes at the core of the book.

Finally, I of course have to comment positively on the portrayal of a queernorm world (which is pretty subtle) and the narrator as an asexual character. The latter part is important given that Kyla is not asexual—Kyla has a very lusty love interest indeed, and some of the conflict comes from the narrator feeling romantically drawn to this character despite feeling no sexual attraction. I really liked how Harper is careful to establish that the narrator’s asexuality is not part of her being “broken,” despite what her brain might tell her. Her asexuality is wrapped up in her loneliness and isolation, which I think is an appropriate commentary on how the discrimination and erasure that ace people face in our society can converge with mental illness. This is just one more way, in other words, that the narrator feels isolated, even though her asexuality is in and of itself a valid experience.

All in all, Kill Your Darlings has its engrossing and interesting moments. Harper definitely made me want to keep reading and find out what happens next, both to the narrator and this fantasy world that she has created. I also like its very overt commentary on mental illness. While the writing itself—particularly the pacing and the challenges of pathos given the story—could be improved, it’s still a thoughtful and worthy story.

This is an emotional story of finding yourself when you’ve lost yourself to the darkness. What does that mean? I’m guessing for everyone it’s different, but for me that darkness was anxiety and depression.

I had a feeling this story was going in the direction it did because the thoughts of the main character mirrored my own in a scary way for awhile. The main character, Kyla, wakes up in a world of her own creation, or so she thinks. She’s an author who has been asked to rewrite a large chunk of her book by publishers and she is resistant to doing that. She planned to Kill her Darlings and that’s what she’s going to do. The publisher disagrees that most of the main characters need to die at the end. She uses a lucid dream to join the world of Solera and then discovers she can’t wake up - but why?

There are some pretty severe triggers in this book and the biggest one is attempted suicide. I do not at all recommend this if that’s a trigger for you since it’s in here with enough detail to allow us to know exactly what happened. However, if you do your due diligence and find that the triggers in this book won’t bother you, I definitely recommend it. It’s a glimpse into the mind of someone with depression and it’s really good.

I know my story is powerful, because it already saved one life. How many more lives might I save if I shed my fears, walk in the light, and own my scars?"

I confess that this paragraph of Kill Your Darlings made me feel something, and I don't care at this point about the story of the book or the writing or the characters. Kill Your Darlings is extremely heavy with the triggers, and I would say that please be cautious in reading this book. Heed the triggers mentioned at the beginning of the book.

Having said that, as a trauma survivor myself with a history of depression and a reader, many times in my life, I have immersed myself into the fantasy worlds of the characters I read. I connected with the author in so many aspects. There are dragons, shapeshifters, and so many other mystical characters in this book. Is it perfect, no. But is it relatable, absolutely yes. It's an autobiographical take of the author's life and the courage it takes to write a book like this is commendable.

I hestiate to be too negative about the actual content of this book, as the author explains that this is somewhat based on her own life, however I will give some overarching thoughts on how I felt about this book.

Generally, I felt like the pace of the book was a little bit all over the place, and very up and down. It felt like there was a lot of filler.

I wasn't a fan of the romance at all - mainly because I felt a little bit uncomfortable with the age gap, that never seems to be addressed outside of one of the cuff comment from the main character, unrelated to the difference in age between her and the male mc.

I did think the portrayal of depression in this book was VERY realistic, and the journey the character of the author goes through is an accurate representation of what people who have mental health conditions go through.

Overall, this book was a very raw read that you can tell Harper put a lot of herself into, however it wasn't really for me.

Kyla, a fantasy author, loves her characters, her darlings and loves creating the world that they live in. But, to shock her readers, Kyla decides to kill all her characters except for her namesake. But that decision to kill her darlings off is made while Kyla is in the midst of a horrible depression. On the verge of giving up, Kyla goes to sleep one night and wakes up in her make-believe world. Knowing what she has written and realizing what she has left behind in the real world, Kyla is desperate to save her new friends and return to the ones she left behind. But with a villain who spawned from her mind tracking her, Kyla needs to make a plan fast. Because things aren’t what they seem, Kyla must return to the real world before something horrible happens.

I will start with trigger warnings before diving into the review. It is essential to read these. Even I got triggered by what the author wrote, which doesn’t happen often. The triggers are:

Mental Illness: Kyla suffers from severe depression and anxiety. Both have colored her life in ways that she never expected. Her depression and anxiety are carried over into Solrea, and Kyla uses that time to understand why she suffers. Her aha moment was pretty sad, and honestly, it got me so upset for her.
Suicidal Ideation: During the book, Kyla often wonders if the world would be better off without her. Again, her time in Solrea shows her how valuable and wanted she is.
Suicide: I can’t get into this, but yes, there is a suicide attempt, and it is rather graphic.
Self-harm: Kyla uses self-harm to soothe her anxiety.
If any of these trigger you, I recommend not reading this book. If you are struggling with your mental health, please dial 988 and connect with someone who can help. You are worth it, and you matter.

The author included a forward where she explained that this book was semi-autobiographical. After reading this book, my heart went out to her. If she was like Kyla, then she was in a bad place.

Kill Your Darlings is a fast-paced book mainly set in the fictional world of Solrea with brief (very brief) glimpses into Kyla’s life in New York City. The book did drag a bit in the middle (and I got very frustrated with Kyla at one point), but the author got the book back on track.

Kill Your Darlings main storyline centered around Kyla. For a reason explained later in the book, Kyla has swapped places with her fictional namesake. She wakes up in Solrea. Convinced she is lucid dreaming (having trained herself to lucid dream), Kyla realizes she is in her book with no way out. After a wise dragon explains that something is happening with Kyla’s body in the real world, she starts on a quest to figure out how to get back to it. I liked that the author had Kyla come to terms with some things that were causing her to have suicidal thoughts. I also liked that Kyla was committed to getting the fictional Kyla back where she belongs and not in Kyla’s body in the real world. But an undercurrent of something with this storyline made me slow down and read. And once I figured out what was going on with Kyla (because she was having effects), I was rooting for her to get back quickly.

As a character, Kyla was very complex and was often hard to like. That was fine with me. I liked having a character that made me love and dislike them simultaneously. I did think that her behavior, once she started to get to know fictional Kyla’s friends, began to change. She became more open and more friendly to these characters. She confided things in them that she had never told another person. Some of those confidences were gut-wrenching. By the end of the book, Kyla grew into herself (for lack of a better word). I wish I could tell you what happened with her, but it is a huge spoiler.

The secondary characters made this book. They added extra nuances and depth to the storyline.

I loved the fantasy angle of Kill Your Darlings. It was well written, with unique characters that came off the page.

There was a romance angle in Kill Your Darlings. While I expected it, I wasn’t expecting Kyla’s reaction or what she told her wanna-be lover. That threw me for a loop. But, at the same time, it was also an aha moment for me.

The end of Kill Your Darlings was interesting. Again, I can’t get into it except that Kyla did what she had to and defeated the villain.

I recommend Kill Your Darlings to anyone over 21. There are no sexual situations. There is graphic violence and no language. Also, see my trigger warnings.

Many thanks to Shivnath Productions, IBPA, Member’s Titles, and L.E. Harper for allowing me to read and review Kill Your Darlings. All opinions stated in this review are mine.

Let’s start off with the book cover, eye-catching! Beautiful artwork that adds to the mystique of the story. Okay, now the premise of the story, an author who travels to her own written fantasy world. I am all in. We follow Kyla’s journey through her mental health issues and her adventures in the fantasy world. Amazing world building skills, a fast paced read, and marvelous characters. A must read for YA fantasy fans.

Disclaimer: Thank you NetGalley and Shivnath Productions for this review copy and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Thank you to NetGalley and Shivnath Productions for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

In Kill Your Darlings, we follow a fantasy author who writes her stories as a means of escape from her depression. She has been sucked into her fictional realm in what she thinks is a Freaky-Friday-esque plot device. There she meets in person all of her "darlings": the characters she's written based on loved ones in her life as well different aspects of herself and what she wants out of life.

This book is an ode to fighting depression and to winning that fight. The big bad is a line for line metaphor of her depression. Side characters are different aspects of how she deals with it. Sometimes the metaphor can be a bit "hit you over the head". Occasionally the writing gets a bit flowery but I think that really works for a book where the main character is a fantasy author. Overall, I really liked this book and I'm glad that it exists in the world.

However, I have some issues with the pacing of the book. The first mention of the main character's asexuality, a pretty main character trait, doesn't occur until 70% through the book. Similarly, while I understand that this is a story about depression and that dealing with a mental illness doesn't usually happen in the timeframe that you want, this is still a book and as a reader I have expectations around the pacing of a story. Our main character didn't really have any character growth at all around her depression, how she thought about it, how she dealt with it, how she talked about it to others all stayed relatively static until about 85% through the book and then it felt like a switch was flipped.

I would only recommend this for adults and older teenagers because of the topics it deals with.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ (3.5)

Content Warnings: suicidal ideation, self-harm, depression, anxiety, character death

#KillYourDarlings #NetGalley #OwnVoices

I loved the way the book was marketed but unfortunately it didn’t meet the mark for me, I didn’t make it all the way through the book, but it wasn’t for me. I was excited about it as an adult fantasy, I heard the marketing pitch that it was for depressed millennials and thought it would be perfect, but it read more YA than adult. The characters didn’t really capture my attention or my empathy.

The premise of this novel is fascinating since it follows a YA Fantasy author who ends up being transported to her own book series. We have no idea of her past except for the snippets of memory she provides the reader with throughout the novel. Instead of interacting with the author on Earth, we are thrown into the world of Solera, when the main character is preparing to battle the villain in the fifth book.

I enjoyed how the author uses this setting and unique main character to show the joys and difficulties of the writing process. One example is the connection authors have with their characters and its not unusual to put them in challenging scenarios that could lead to their death. Harper also is very self-aware of the common YA fantasy tropes, and at times the writing felt a little cheeky, since it understood how absurd these tropes can be. Even without the author’s forward, I can sense how personal and emotional this book was to Harper. I found the dark themes (and potential triggers) added to the overall story, where you can’t help but believe you are reading the author’s memoir.

Despite all of this, I found this difficult to get into, because I never became attached to Harper’s characters. Similar to other YA fiction, the characters felt one-dimensional. Another issue I had was visualizing battle and traveling scenes. Harper was great at setting the atmosphere and character placement, except for when they were flying or in a battle. I found myself becoming confused on where characters were in a scene in relation to other characters or monsters. Lastly, there was one scene, where I was shocked none of the other characters questioned their squad mate’s tactic to obtain a needed item. He does something out of character, but his reasoning is never explained. The rest of the characters accept it his action and move forward on their mission. For some reason this stuck with me, and I never could accept how the situation ended up being conflict free.

Overall, I found this to be a deeply personal read and was amazed at Harper’s bravery. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t enjoy reading this, however, I definitely see an audience for this novel. I would recommend this to readers who enjoy reading the common tropes you find in YA fantasy but can also relate to the dark themes Harper includes. I truly believe this novel is unique because of how personal these themes are to the author, and I have never read an adult book like this. Please be mindful and read the trigger warnings before you decide to pick this up.

Thank you L.E. Harper and Net Galley for giving me the opportunity to read such a distinctive and intimate read. Please note I did receive a free ARC but all the opinions listed above are my own.

Happy Book Birthday to Kill Your Darlings by L.E. Harper! Today I am so excited to share my review, I received a gifted E-ARC of this book by L.E. Harper in exchange for an honest review, thank you so much!

I loved the concept of this book so much! I think nearly every author must dream of being able to meet their actual characters! Plus, Inkheart is one of my favourite films so as soon as I saw the comparison for this book I knew I had to read it!

The story throws you straight into the action as our main character Kyla realises that she’s woken up in the world she’s created. It’s fast paced and great fun to meet all of the characters that Kyla has imagined as they journey together to change their fates.

I really liked the asexual representation that this book has as well as the other queer representation that was included! Plus, what great timing as this has published just before pride month and will be great to add to your tbr! However, this book deals with many heavy topics that could be potentially triggering so if you are interested in the sound of this book please be sure to check the trigger warnings before reading!!

Kill Your Darlings is a profound story about rediscovering hope, your inner strength and finding the light!

Content warnings:
Depictions of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidal ideation.

Review:

This book felt like an adult version of Heir Apparent by Vivian Vande Velde, which was a favorite book of mine growing up.

I think most bibliophiles can relate to the dream of meeting your favorite characters and spending a day in their world; and many have used books/writing to regulate symptoms of depression.

This book, however, takes that desire and turns it real while also delivering an exciting fantasy adventure, beloved cast of characters, and a gut-wrenching personal mental health journey.

I could not put this book down - and have been thinking about it ever since. Fantasy readers, check this out!

i'm in the anime community and i just LOVED how isekai this was. got me addicted right from the start!!!

Kill My Darlings is a blend of fantasy and mental health journeys. It’s not an easy read at times as it does deal with the tougher topics that come with depression, so please take care of yourselves and read the content warnings.

As an author Kyla is struggling with real life and escapes into her fantasy world for a break. However, even these fantasies are built upon truth and reality. This showcases how words and worlds are blended, and how our make believe worlds are built upon our real ones.

If you go into this one wanting a full fantasy, you will be let down. This book is one heavily dependent on and written around depression and its companions. Fantasy is juxtaposed with gut wrenching thoughts and darkness that at times becomes hard to read. It exposes the darkest parts of depression and the constant fight to get back to the light.

The fantasy portion of the book may seem underdeveloped because as a reader you are coming into the last book of a book series Kyla has written. I feel like this was not a deal breaker for me since the fantasy story was used a device to support the mental journey, and maybe was not necessarily suppose to stand on its own. We are told many things about this world instead of ‘shown’ because to Kyla they are things she knows and in the end this world is for her not us. Hence, my emphasis on this being more about a mental health journey than a fantasy book.

Trust me, I really wanted to like this. The author wrote a heartfelt note in the foreword and talked in-depth about her depression, which can be eye-opening for readers who've never experienced depression firsthand.

The story started out well enough. It has portal fantasy/LitRPG/alternate reality vibes, which is everything I love. But the longer the story went on, the more it fell apart for me. As much as I don't want to invalidate someone else's experiences with mental illness, the themes of chronic depression felt extremely heavy-handed and all of the plotlines suffered from it. The snarky references to novel writing and the hero's journey were funny at first, and then fell flat pretty quickly after that. The novel tries way too hard with these inside jokes.

Characters other than Kyla/the author/the MC felt like they were only there to validate her and her actions. Maybe it's because the MC kept dismissing them as figments of her imagination that I didn't bother to take their existence seriously. Even when they became "real" in the second half of the novel, I still viewed them as NPCs in a LitRPG setting.

Also, maybe I'm reading way too much into this, but how the hell did the Solerans trust the author in like two weeks? She warps into Kyla Starblade's body, first they're totally suspicious, and then they just get over it? And start trusting her? In two weeks??? I know there's a war going on and they're probably shorthanded, but like what.

And somehow the commander general of the military is some 23-year-old guy? What.

Anyway.

While the writing is easy enough to read, the words that the author chooses to use are overly flowery and obscure, as if she decided to google the most difficult SAT words and used those in lieu of more common words. So it feels like the author's trying way too hard to sound literary. It's honestly unnecessary. Or maybe it's just the way she writes. Ymmv, so maybe someone else might like it. Idk.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

I don't understand how the MC/Kyla/the author, managed to overcome her depression and self-loathing enough to find the inspiration to live (in the real world) and triumph over the Big Bad (in Solera, the fantasy world). She just suddenly decided to be the hero after bringing back a dead character to life. I'm also not sure how she was about to perform that resurrection spell. That part of the story called for something inspirational, and she just did it.

***END SPOILERS***

The entire ending felt like a bunch of deus ex machinas were thrown together hastily. It literally made no sense. And that inception style twist near the end? I think it devalued the MC's story.

Thank you to Shivnath Productions and NetGalley for this arc.

This book was not my cup of tea and I found it really boring. It was hard to follow the writing and I noticed several errors that need to be fixed in the editing process.

Our narrator here is the author of a YA book series, who uses her fantasy creation to escape from the real world. Debilitating depression has isolated her from her friends and family, so instead she has the fantasy ‘darlings’ in her work and her dreams. Until one day, the ‘dream’ doesn’t fade, and our author realises that she’s actually in her novel!

She finds herself occupying the body of main character, Kyla, and this is the only name we ever get for her. Unlike the real Kyla, the author can’t wield ‘lightmagic’ – which is a bit of an issue given she’s written an epic final battle between Kyla and her allies, and the dark lord threatening the whole world. Can she overcome her crippling self-doubt, gain the trust of the characters she loves so much, and figure out a non-magical, hand-wavy way to face the darkest of foes?

As appealing as the idea of this sounded, I did rather worry that it’d be quite derivative – author ends up in own novel seems like it’s been done before. But hoooo boy, could I have been more wrong – this book is absolutely nothing I’ve read before, it’s raw and real and dark and comes with a pile of trigger warnings even as it walks you through very real very dark moments ultimately towards a lot of hope.

Because for all this is a fantasy setting, the ‘meat’ of the book is not-Kyla’s mental health. I admit I was a little bit ‘hmm’ at the beginning, thinking “Oh, we’re spending more time in the narrator’s head listening to her woes than exploring this wonderful fantasy land” – and it hit me that, yes, that’s rather the point! This is a book about depression, anxiety, self-harm – and it really gives the reader a tiny sliver of what that’s like: surrounded by wonder and loveliness, but stuck in your own blinkered darkness.

Before that realisation, I did perhaps feel at times that it was getting repetitive, all the ‘woe is me’, but while it might stray a little in that direction, it is for a point. Perhaps slightly more irritating was the constant use of the term “my darlings”, which felt a tad overused.

So, Kyla must battle not just her own demons, but the growing realisation and guilt that her fiction has had consequences for characters that did nothing more than be needed for narrative drama. She acknowledges early on that, as the writer, every single character is at least in part her – and sometimes seeing that isn’t comfortable for her. The interweaving of real psychological concerns with a fantasy overlay worked very well, both as metaphor and for understanding.

Overall, then, this was a familiar-ish trope absolutely spun on its head and given just a huge amount of depth and meaning and pathos, due to a very personal and raw (and autobiographical) content. The story took a few turns I wasn’t expecting, including some great representation for asexuality (actually explaining it more to me than I’d ever seen before, I’d say), although I did rather guess part of the underlying premise almost from the beginning. Still, I’d say it absolutely captures what it sets out to do, and while it’s not always an easy read, it is a very worthwhile one.

I finished this book on Sunday evening and I'm still between giving it 4 or 5 stars, so I'll keep it at 4,5 ;)

Let's start with the fact that I'm not really familiar with depression or self-hate, but reading this story, it still felt recognizable on several occasions. Because who always thinks the best about themselves? Who never has doubts about themselves, their choices, or doesn't have insecurities?

As the author tells us at the beginning and the end, it's her story. And knowing that, I think it read differently than when it would have been a full fantasy story. It still was a fantasy story, a dark one, but still also not so much. And it made me sad, knowing there are many out there who have to fight with their darkness.

The story about Kyla, the author, shifting places with the main character, Kyla, in the book she is writing, was compelling. I loved reading it and my heartstrings were pulled more than once. It was gripping and I loved all the characters. Who were all connected to their creator. I think the fact that they all were a part of her, the author, also made them a bit one-dimensional. Put together they made a complex person.

A quest to defeat the darkness, that what's it is all about. In the story, but also in real life.
Dreams, reality, it all shifted and mixed. And was luckily brought to a hopeful ending. I hope that is not considered a spoiler, as it still doesn't tell that much ;) And it does get quite dark before that. So I understand the warnings completely.

If I have to mention one thing that maybe bothered me a bit (at first), it was that a few of the names reminded me of the characters in another book. Not the same, but alike. But did it make this story less good, no it didn't.

It was hard for me to decide if this book would be helpful or triggering if you suffer the same, or similar, illness. But I'm leaning towards helpful.

In a Nutshell: A YA Fantasy covering some really dark topics. Took me some time to get into it, but I loved the ending. Will work better for YA readers. Check out the triggers.

Story Synopsis:
Our protagonist is an author who escapes from the pain of her real life by writing a YA Fantasy series set in the imaginary realm of Solera. Her books include interesting larger-than-life characters including shapeshifters and dragons. She loves all her characters, or as she calls them – her ‘darlings’, but knows that she can even kill them if it is right for the story.
But one morning, she wakes up in Solera without knowing how or why, with her beloved darlings thinking that she is Kyla, their leader and the main protagonist of the Solera books. The real Kyla is nowhere to be found. The author has entered their story at a point just before a major war. Now she must put her writing chops to real use, trying to figure out an ending that works for everyone.
The book comes to us in the first person perspective of the author, addressed as Kyla for most of the book.

I want to begin by admitting that this is a YA Fantasy, a genre I am not a huge fan of. I picked this up primarily for the premise. Imagine an author meeting her characters! What a wonderfully bizarre idea! While I have read books about fictional characters interacting with real people (the most popular one being Jodi Picoult’s Between the Lines), none of those involved the creator of those characters. So it was interesting to see how the author interacted with people who are supposedly a figment of her imagination and yet so real in her new universe.

At the same time, it is not exactly a fantasy but more of an allegorical take on mental health. There’s a strong theme of depression and suicidal ideation, which is present throughout the book in varying levels. Our narrator’s thoughts often get too dark and her inner monologues help us see the turmoil in her mind.

The writing is quite fast-paced and the book doesn’t digress much from its agenda. What truly elevated the book from above average to good were the final few chapters. I wondered how the portal swap would be explained, but it was done marvellously. These chapters generate a bittersweet feeling, and because of the somewhat graphic scenes, become tough to read. But they are the highlight of the book and bring the whole plot together neatly.

However, the book did have all the elements I dislike about YA fiction. The characters other than the narrator are quite unidimensional. There is a lot of first person rambling. And of course, there’s the expected romance. (As the author-character says in the book, a YA Fantasy must have romance!)

The world-building left me with mixed feelings. While I loved the various characters of the “fictional” world of Solera, (Who doesn’t love dragons!!), I found it quite difficult to visualise the place well. There is plenty of action but also plenty of talk, and the action sequences too are filled with conversations. The middle section gets especially repetitive.

I think I would have liked the book better had it begun in the author’s real world, and transitioned after a few chapters to her waking up in Solera. In the current format, the book begins with her being in Solera, and we get no glimpse of her backstory or the whats and whys of the strange swap. It was almost like a story within a story, but you get to see only the inner story. The main one is what you need to figure out when the first person narrator gives you little clues about her life on Earth.

For a debut indie work, this was a brave topic to tackle. I don’t know how I feel about the author’s confession that this is almost an autobiography. It made me quite uncomfortable, to be honest. (And also curious to know where the truth ended and the ‘fantasy’ began.)

All in all, the writing needed a little bit more finetuning, but regardless, it is a brave book that explores personal demons and the road towards redemption and healing in an unusual way. YA lovers might possibly enjoy this more as the writing style is typical to this genre.

3.25 stars.

My thanks to author L.E. Harper, Shivnath Productions, and NetGalley for the DRC of “Kill Your Darlings”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

Content Warnings: Depictions of mental illness including depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and self-harm. The suicide scene is pretty graphic; proceed with care.