Sorry, but I need to gush about this one. Kill Your Darlings by L.E. Harper is an astounding piece of writing craft, as a self-aware story inside a subtly unfolding story, where all is not as we perceive.

But first of all, make sure you read the forward of the book for trigger warnings. The triggers are there in a big way, so take them seriously if you are vulnerable to trauma.

Our MC is a fantasy author. We learn that she is on book 5 of her wildly successful YA fantasy series, and spiraling. Her editor hates her ending. Her revision deadline is days away. She hasn’t even started them. Depression and burnout have her in a chokehold. Her one escape is in her dreams, where she drops into her main character, Kyla, and spends time in the beautiful world of Solera that she’s created. But this time it feels different. This time, as she wakes up in her fictional lover’s arms, it might not be a dream.

When I first started Kill Your Darlings, I was a little meh on the standard fantasy world and creatures, and a few slightly shaky line edits. But I really loved the meta story. I loved how the MC lampshades the fantasy genre and tropes, playing with the meta narrative and fourth wall, and breaking all the rules. It felt like a Rian Johnson film, where the subtext, background, symbolism, and inside jokes took center stage over the actual plot. Then, as the book progressed and we learned all was not as it seemed, we discover the author was pulling off a master class in unreliable narrator. Just breathtakingly well-executed. And when dreams turned reality turned back into metaphor and the darkness falls, that last twist left me completely destroyed, and unable to put the book down.

I can see why Kill Your Darlings struggled in the query trenches. The real story, the thing that makes it unique and phenomenal, is a slow, subtle burn that takes time to develop. Querying, with the pitch plus ten pages approach, is going to bury a gem like this. It’s like trying to pitch a souffle to people looking for a candy bar. But if a slow-burn meta-narrative is your thing and you’re comfortable with darker themes, this is your dessert.

I picked this up excited for queer and Ace rep. I kept reading because it was a fun escapist fantasy. I loved the lampshading and the cleverness of an MC who knows what genre they’re in. But that last dark twist lets this book live rent-free in my head for the foreseeable future. Even now, days after reading, I look back and see how small pieces fit together into that final whole, and how perfectly unexpected yet inevitable the ending turned out to be.

*chef’s kiss*

I was quite disappointed with this book. I thought it would have been up my alley with the main character having mental health struggles, but I found the main character unlikable and I struggled to get far into the book. It really feels like a debut novel that could have used a little more editing.

The first thing that you will read in this book is an extremely personal and bravely vulnerable message from the author explaining why she wrote this book and that it is based on herself. Please please read that message and the trigger warnings and make sure you are in a place to read the story - it is story of redemption and hope but is written from the perspective of someone battling depression and does contain graphic content.

"You don't win this war, you simply fight it... Some days you lose - that is the nature of war. That is the nature of darkness"

This was very conflicting for me, the narrative is written in a way where one minute you are happily reading along, invested in this fantasy world, and the next your heart is in a vice as you visit the darkness residing inside of the MC. This isn't my normal type of book, I was under the impression that it was just a "body snatchers" type fantasy plot. It's more of an expose on depression, mental health, and suicidal ideation - the fantasy (to me anyway) read as more of a subplot. It was hard to read. Especially with the knowledge that someone real went through this, experienced these thoughts.

Sooo, if you're looking for a cut and dry fantasy, this is not that. The fantasy element parallel seemed like more of a tool to tell the story. The world is described plenty, but not really fleshed out. The side characters are a little one-dimensional, you're basically thrown into a story line on the 5th and final book so there's a lot of stuff missing. But I don't think that was really the point of the book. This is heavy and bitterly honest and beautiful in it's conclusion. While it wasn't at all what I was expecting, I give credit where it is due and this was a very powerful and emotional story. I won't forget about it for a long time. And my heart still hurts.

***Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review***

I absolutely loved this book! Kyla is a wonderful protagonist and is very relatable. The book begins with Kyla feeling fed up, and then one morning she wakes in a different body and a different world she’s written.

This standalone is so powerful, and talks about trauma in an REAL way. Although I would check trigger warnings.

Also there’s DRAGONS?? What’s not to love!!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this digital arc in exchange for my honest review.

This book was intense. I had a feeling I knew where it was going from the beginning, but I still wasn't prepared once we got there. And while it left me reeling a bit, it was beautiful and I would recommend it to anyone.
Heed the trigger warnings. This tackles mental health head on and the narrator's struggles are present throughout. But it does it in a way that is real and will touch something deep inside your soul if you have ever dealt with depression.

The story follows a fantasy author with major depression who wakes up in a dream to find herself in the world she created, inhabiting the body of the hero Kyla. But this dream is very real, right down to her being a squishy mortal with no powers. Being the author of this world, she knows what's going to happen next -- and none of it is good. If she's trapped here, she figures...maybe she can save the world and her darlings along with it.

It was a fantastic fantasy adventure with a beautifully written world. There are dragons and monsters and magic. What more could you want from a fantasy?

While the story is told from our author's first-person POV, the supporting characters are excellent, well-rounded, and three-dimensional, and take on a life of their own when interacting with our hero. The LGBTQ+ representation is also quite beautifully and casually woven throughout.

At first, I was not a fan of how it started. It jumped right into the fantasy world, with our narrator realizing that she is in the body of her hero. I wanted context and build-up and why she was there. But stick it out. Because there is a reason we start where we do, and you will learn it in the third half of the book.

The blurb calls this an "allegorical masterpiece" and it isn't wrong. There are so many allegories, but the way the author weaves the allegory of intrusive thoughts and suicidal ideation into the narrative was as genius as it was painful.

I look forward to reading more by this author in the future, and will most definitely be purchasing a copy of this paperback to place on my shelf once it's released.

An author battling depression, gets transported into her own fictional world and must fight alongside her beloved characters in a battle she knows she must win or else be doomed to succumb to the nightmarish ending that she knows awaits.


I loved this it had everything I would ever want in a fantasy novel, dragons (of course), found family, an adventure, interesting twists and turns and a MC that's not perfect she is somebody that is deeply flawed but that makes her more human to the book. This was really fun to read and so incredibly detailed, I could imagine each character and the world of Solera so deeply I felt sometimes that I was transported. I also loved that the main character didn't have powers or even an fighting ability, she could truly be any average person and, to me, it made her so much more likeable and relatable because it is the average, "normal looking" person that deals with depression and "darkness" inside them but this average person can become their own hero.

I also really loved the romance and found family it was so cute I could read a whole book of "Kira" and Valen living together in the countryside along with her friends. Overall I highly recommend this and I hope their might be another book to tie up some of the loose ends (what happened to the real Kyla).

This book had promise. Most of us read to escape the real world but what happens when it BECOMES your world? This novel tells the story of a woman with mental health issues who writes a series of fantasy novels to cope with her existence. The reader will learn upon finishing the book if they read the author's notes that L.E. Harper's real-life struggles with mental health inspired a lot of this book. While I give all the kudos and thumbs up to Harper on her incredibly brave foray into telling her truth, for me, there seemed to be something lacking in the execution. What exactly? I don't really have an answer for you. While it's not a bad book by any means, I just couldn't fully immerse myself in the storyline for some reason.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

If you want dragons! Read this BOOK!
If you want authors meeting their characters? READ this BOOK!
If you want to live a unique adventure & enjoy creatures breathing life. READ THIS BOOK!
I heard a lot of buzz about Kill Your Darlings on social over the last year, so I was thrilled to receive an ARC.

I was very blessed to receive an arc of this story.
It's fast? Yes, could I close my eyes and imagine the scenes? yep.
It has some parts where I got lost, maybe, but that was not a reason to stop reading. I didn't see some things until the end.
It is a book for an afternoon, with a blanket on top and eating a pizza or a movie in the background.
I'm glad I read it.

i really enjoyed the way this book discussed mental health (although it was quite graphic near the end) and the world building and magic system were really interesting. i found the voice of the narrator a little unliveable, but it might have just been because it’s so jarring to hear modern words used in a fantasy setting.

i didn’t enjoy the romantic subplot at all to be honest, and the pacing felt off. i only really started enjoying the book during the last third, which was when everything felt like it came together for me. the concept of an author being transported into their own world always intrigues me and i did enjoy this book, particularly with flashes between worlds and not being sure which was reality.

thanks for the free copy!

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I’ll be up front from the outset here: I was dreading writing this review. It’s always an abysmal feeling writing a negative review knowing that the piece is deeply personal to the author, and especially when the piece is utterly well-intentioned, clearly hoping to be a guiding light for individuals with creative aspirations, mental health issues, and in this case, internalised ace/aphobia. My thoughts on this book are not intended to downplay these struggles and if I hadn’t agreed to review it, I would probably be holding my tongue on this one entirely. But here goes:

I was extremely intrigued by the premise of Kill Your Darlings, and especially the promise to explore mental health themes through a queer lens, but unfortunately, I found the execution to be extremely lacking. I would love to tell you what I enjoyed about Kill Your Darlings first, but it has little to recommend it. The prose is bog-standard, with overreliance on tired metaphors that, in my opinion, really cheapen the protagonist’s mental health struggles (we get that depression feels “dark,” and “hollow.”) I wasn’t fond of the protagonist’s voice: lampshading tropes is only funny when used sparingly, and coupled with swearing, it seems to be the only source of humour in her arsenal. The pacing of the narrative is all over the place, and the narrative itself is overstuffed with identical, cookie-cutter fight scenes with poorly established (or non-existent- we’ll get to that) stakes. The world of Solera feels dime-a-dozen, with very minor creative flourishes, such as reptilian elves, to try and differentiate itself: it was not believable for a second that this was a bestselling fantasy series (again: we’ll get to that). Most egregious for me were the characters, the emotional lynchpin of this book. The characters were utter ciphers with tired dialogue, who often lacked internal consistency. And that’s putting aside their dubious actual role in the narrative (I swear, we will get to that!) Whilst reading, I was merely bored by how predictable they felt, but upon reflection, I wonder if Kill Your Darlings doesn’t stray into a few unfortunate stereotype: the black gay best friend is fine on his own, but when a character has no depth beyond standing around and smiling encouragingly, he becomes less palatable.

Okay, we’re getting to it: Kill Your Darlings keeps returning to a central question: whether or not Solera is real, or just a figment of the protagonist’s imagination. It desperately wants to have it both ways, and comes up with several plausible-ish explanations about how it could exist and how the protagonist might be here. I’m 100% okay with this approach in theory, and I’d say I even prefer it: some of my favourite portal fantasy type stories leave the question of whether the adventure really took place hanging unanswered. In this case, however, I think the narrative itself simply isn’t strong enough to withstand it. Firstly, it’s introduced early enough that things sort of… Stop mattering. Character’s actions become insignificant as their consequences are thrown out the window in favour of hand-wavey wish fulfilment powers. The question of reality can be immaterial when the journey the character went on has changed them so significantly and tangibly that it no longer matters- because the change is real. Kill Your Darlings doesn’t convince me that the protagonist has changed, it just tells me she has. Perhaps its largest problem is that overreliance on “tell not show.” We’re told that the protagonist has found the will to fight her darkness, but there’s not really a meaningful difference between how she acts at the start of this narrative and the end. She just has a tendency to list pleasantries about Earth towards the end- hot chocolate and movie nights with her friends. At best, it’s shallow, at worst, it’s very NHS CAMHS rhetoric: “have a cup of tea and a bath and you’ll feel better.”

(I’ll briefly note here under a spoiler tag: I hated the twist that the protagonist was not a bestselling author, but an unpublished nobody working retail. Not because I think that there’s anything wrong with that, or because I believed for a second that Solera felt like best-selling fantasy novel material (it doesn’t) but because it’s totally unnecessary. It would have been genuinely interesting to have a highly successful novelist still struggling with depression: unfortunately, depression doesn’t really give a fuck about whether you’re personally successful or not. It was also an interesting source of tension between the protagonist and her editors that her depression was affecting her work and had led her to make cynical choices and end her series in a grimdark murderfest which was going to tank her reputation- and that source of tension totally evaporated the minute this was revealed to be false. Why did the protagonist even believe this in the first place? This twist takes away more than it adds.)

Speaking of how the protagonist acts, because we know right away that Solera might not be “real,” it encourages the reader to be especially circumspect of the characters: how they act is one of our biggest clues here. And the characters simply don’t respond realistically to the protagonist’s presence in their life, and their professed outlooks don’t align with their actions. They profess a distrust of her, but go along with all of her ideas. They have very little time to bond with her, but they’re proclaiming themselves lifelong friends at the end of just a few days. You could excuse all of this with a simple “Well, they’re not real,”- but then why should the reader care about any of the goings-on of Solera, or any of the relationships in this book? It’s important to remember that from the Soleran characters’ perspective, the protagonist is a parasite infesting the body of one of their dearest friends, who just so happened to be the key to winning the years-long military campaign they’re waging against the BBEG. I’ve got to take a moment here to mention her love interest- the tension between them is extremely bizarre, and I personally found it really uncomfortable. Firstly, the protagonist writes YA fiction: this character is, if I’m remembering correctly, early 20s at the oldest, and the protagonist is both ten years older and also, arguably, kind of his mother, because she made him up? The protagonist even makes an Invasion of the Body Snatchers joke with regard to their relationship, yet within a few days, Mr. Right is proclaiming that she is not like other girls, because she can chat science with him. I have not personally had the experience of the love of my life being replaced by an alien consciousness inhabiting their body, but I think it would take me more than a few days to fall in love with them- much less look at them without feeling a mountain of grief and cosmic horror. At the start of the narrative, there is a question about where the character the protagonist usurped, Kyla, has gone, and whether she is okay and can be recovered. Kyla is entirely forgotten by everyone by the end of the narrative. Perhaps because the author wants us to have decided that Solera truly isn’t real by that point? The characters are really just props for the protagonist to learn about the magic of friendship here, but by their very nature as props, they undermine their own purpose. They have to be real people to impart the need for real human connection, and they’re not real people. It’s a catch-22.

I hate that I hated this book. Whilst I’m very fortunate to be healthier now, I spent a very, very long time struggling with treatment-resistant depression. I was fully expecting to connect to this character, but I really couldn’t whatsoever. I’ll also mention under a spoiler that while there is a content warning at the beginning of this book, there is an extremely detailed and graphic scene of a suicide attempt that I don’t personally feel was necessary- especially details regarding how the protagonist sourced objects used in the attempt. I actually think this is potentially dangerous information to include and I don’t see what would be lost by scrapping at the very least that line.

I’m giving this two stars because I really respect what it’s trying to do, even if I feel like it failed. If you want a book with a similar focus on mental health, exploring the premise of a fantasy world and the argument of escapism vs. bleak reality through a queer lens, I would beg you to read Peter Darling by Austin Chant, which, whilst not a perfect read, is in my opinion a much stronger and more careful exploration of these themes.

The story had a strong premise and competent writing, but the pace made it difficult to connect with the characters which made the deeper themes of the story fall flat and leave a soar taste in my mouth later in the book. Part of it was that none of the characters felt like a darling to me, and the themes and setting of the characters felt more explained than experienced.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an ARC for an honest review.


An author battling depression, gets transported into her own fictional world and must fight alongside her beloved characters in a battle she knows she must win or else be doomed to succumb to the nightmarish ending that she knows awaits.

Kill your darlings is a standalone fantasy that is more than just magic dragons in battles. It is a story that takes the reader on a profound journey through the dark sides of battling depression and its many traumas while simultaneously weaving into a fantastical world on the brink of war.

We’ve all been there, wishing we find ourselves in our favorite magical story among our favorite characters in this story offers such a fun and different concept of just that.
Even though I was thrown off a bit, and how quickly we were thrust into the magical world at the beginning of the story, I still found myself fully immersed in all the drama that followed right after.

I love how the FMC found herself battling not only real demons but her inner demons as well. She quickly discovers that the outcome of the war and the survival of not only the world she affectionately built and the lives of all the characters she came to love, but also her life as well, is all determined by whether or not she can overcome her own darkness that’s inside her.
It’s a RAW and emotional journey that she goes through, and you, as a reader, get to experience and go through a journey of self-discovery of your own.

I love how Harper intertwined each of the FMC’s characters in her fantasy world with her (FMC’s) earthly life, along with some lessons she must learn.
You can tell how much love Harper put into writing each character. Because of their personalities, backstories (no matter how fleeting), and different motives for fighting this war, I also grew to love each one. The relationships between one another, especially with FMC, felt so raw and intimate and easily stirred many different kinds of emotions as they each continued to reveal themselves more to us readers,

I truly loved this book, and even with all of its triggers, dealing with suicide and depression, this definitely may not be for some; however, the message, in the end, is so beautiful; I genuinely feel that this book could help change some lives.

“Though the darkness may be infinite, it is weak, because even the smallest light has the power to shine through it.“

✨Have you ever dreamed of getting into your favorite book?

An author who suffers from depression, takes refuge in the darkest moments, in the pages of her fantasy novel.
She would like to live in the place she created, in the magical world of Solera and get to know the characters she considers family.

But if she can’t be happy, why should her story be?
So she creates an apocalyptic ending.

The problem? She doesn’t know that she’s about to enter in her book and take the place of Kyla, the main character and she will have to change that ending.
Between dragons, found family, powers and ironic dialogues, L.E Harper gives us something innovative that will keep you hooked.
The stories, the characters we love can lead us to heal, to take refuge when we think everything is bleaching on us.
And that’s what happens to our protagonist, just not through words, she really lives it.
Everything that will happen in Solera’s world will lead her to completely re-evaluate her way of being in our world.

I loved that books are seen as portals to other worlds that only ‘the chosen one’ can bring into our world.

This book is a massive metaphor for escapism, depression and suicidal ideation, the main character is shown struggling with her demons from the start, progressively gaining confidence within her written world until she faces the main villain in the story, her own negative thoughts.

I ended up not liking this book very much despite really being intrigued by the concept of an author fallen between the pages of her book and mingling with her characters.

This has a similar feeling to inkheart and inception with a really interesting premise of a multiverse.
Though I wish the magic systems had have been fleshed out more, it became confusing and fell short of the mark at times.

This book wasn’t for me but I know many of my friends would enjoy it.

:/ sorry - I don’t think this is well done, which is a bit awkward since in the author notes she says it’s basically her autobiography and deals quite heavily with depression/suicide.

GOOD THINGS:
I liked the ‘final battle’ scene that was happening in the ‘real’ world a lot - I thought that was really well done

I think the world has the potential to be interesting.

BAD THINGS

One of the biggest flaws this novel has is that there is sooooo much telling, not showing of the narrative. We are told by the narrator about her life outside her created world, about the culture and history of the created world, about what plot is meant to happen. And it really should have been shown instead.

As a result of this, I think, this clearly well thought out complex world in the authors mind doesn’t seem to me to have much detail, or be memorable in any way. I think the detail probably is there in the writing in parts, but it’s briefly mentioned a lot as sort of an aside to the reader to understand whatever scene they are currently in, and it just isn’t memorable. I can’t remember much about the world.

Because of the telling, there’s a lot of spoonfeeding to the reader of plot points.

“I note Valen is no longer calling me Kyla, but I’m too exhausted to register the implications of this” - good example. Let the reader do some work and work out what’s happening for themselves, we don’t need to be spoon fed.

Another issue I had is that the language used felt like the author had written something in plainer English, then used a thesaurus to run through every single word so that it was more complex. The result is some very flowery, overly complex writing that gets in the way of telling a good story.

The plot was a lot of MC saying ‘go do x’ and the other characters, despite there apparently not being a lot of trust… going and doing x with no argument. It felt like a bit of a contradiction. This may have been on purpose, and does make sense with the reality of the world? But just felt a bit weird reading.

The ‘tense’ battle scenes didn’t read any different in pacing to the rest of the book and it felt like they didn’t matter.

There’s very little detail about the outside world, which I think is done on purpose, but just feels weird as the story is told in a way that we are meant to have the ‘real’ world as background to this fantasy one, but we don’t have any of the details apart from snippets. The MC repeatedly says she is not the same person as the body she is inhabiting in the fantasy world, but we readers don’t know the MC.

Character set also felt v cliched. Gay male best friend, hot love interest, angry female warrior bestie that is mean to everyone except her friends, talking animal, sad heroic MC.

🚨kinda spoilery🚨

Some things don’t make sense. A character whispers to the MC while riding on the back of a dragon during a storm. How the heck would she hear him?? Also the MC fluctuates between ‘I created this world’ and ‘I’m connected through my soul to this parallel universe which I have simply transcribed’ many times without any logic behind which one she’s thinking about, and no explanation provided.

The MC’s grief over a lost character just takes over her and she seems so much more upset than the other people who actually knew and were close to the person and she puts it on them to comfort her? Like she just goes to pieces. And does all this ‘I suck’ manipulative stuff. It was pretty yikes to read.

🚨end of spoilery bit🚨

MC was generally unlikable.

Ultimately this feels like a book about depression in a fantasy universe backdrop, not deep lore fantasy book which it seems to be trying to be.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Kyla's on the verge of giving up on everything when she wakes one morning in a different body, trapped in the fictional world she’s written. Now she's with her most cherished characters: the friends she's always yearned for, the family she's never known. Yet the world she created, Solera, is at war, and she’s on the losing side. She should know: she wrote the book.

I was desperate for magic to come to me, like it does in the stories, but it never did. I used to sit in front of my parents' microwave as a child, hoping the radiation would turn me into a mutant, to no avail.
Huh. Come to think of it, that probably explains a lot of what's wrong with me.

People in the real world, the mundane and tragic world, say authors have a God Complex. I wouldn't disagree.

This was such a fun concept. Many of us as readers and writers have undoubtedly dreamt of travelling to another world with our favourite characters. Or as children, imagined we were the chosen one, the special one who would discover they had magic, or were secretly a princess or prince or knight being hidden away.
I felt Harper’s joy in these characters, in this world. It echoed my own deeply held feelings. It felt intimate, piercing, and revealing.

The way she wielded depression against the life of a magical world, one where suffering is caused by greater things - actual demons - yet comparing them to our own problems, our own inner demons was clever and powerful.
I don’t want to go into too much detail, but this is a powerful standalone fantasy where you at once transported into a faraway magical place and, simultaneously, into your innermost turbulent sense of self and trauma.

This was an extremely personal and brave undertaking for the author and I can only imagine the amount of pain and suffering she overcame to write this. So thank you.
(Please check the trigger warnings which are also included at the start of the book)

The concept of this book kept me interested - as an author trapped in her own story, knowing how things were supposed to play out, and doing all she could to change the outcome - it was a refreshing perspective. The world the author created was beautiful and engaging. Lovers of fantasy and mythology will love this story and should enjoy the writing, which was easy to digest. I will recommend Kill Your Darlings by L.E. Harper to others, in the future.

Kill Your Darlings starts off as a fun YA fantasy read, where our author finds herself in the magical world she created, with her found-family, and the evil Zalor to be defeated. As the story continues, it becomes more and more personal, we find that the big bad our heroes need to fight is the sum of our authors personal demons, her struggles with depression, self-worth and her ace identity.
This book felt like I was viewing the healing journey of someone coming back from the deepest despairs, and reminding herself that while reality doesn't bring a happily ever after, there is hope for a happy now.
With the deeply graphic nature of a few later scenes toward the end of this story, I wouldn't be recommending this to anyone under 18, but it was an interesting read, and gave a deeper perspective to the realities of depression.
Though it's difficult to give a rating to something that felt so personal, overall I'd have to say 3.75*

I loved the idea of this book however I felt this dragged a bit longer than it needed to however it all wrapped up nice and the obstacles the main character had to go through were intense at times!