Thank you to NetGalley and Sungrazer Publishing for the e-ARC of Born Into Night!

“Dedicated to myself, because I did this for me.”

Born Into Night is a dark academia straddling two worlds - one like ours, one with inexplicable magic - in a style reminiscent of His Dark Materials but with an older audience. Overall, I enjoyed reading it, but I was occasionally thrown by the frequency of constructed words for concepts and magic in the “other” world. Some of them felt natural, but too many of them felt clunky.

The magic system was interesting, the worldbuilding was sufficient, and most of the characters were likable. I liked the protagonist and a secondary character named Blair, but often felt like the characters acted immaturely in ways that didn’t seem appropriate for their age or character. One character was frequently flirty in a way that felt trite instead of attractive.

3.5/5 stars

Thank you NetGalley and Sungrazer Publishing for the opportunity to read this ARC!
Dark Academia meets fantasy and I was here for it! This was a great read, I enjoyed getting to know the characters. The magic system was pretty unique, and the two worlds were something you don't see much in today's fantasy!

There were a lot of characters, so buckle up for that. I do wish there was maybe a map, or a glossary for a lot of the magic/world that was introduced was extremely intricate and this book was under 400 pages long.

Overall I did enjoy it and can't wait to read more from Emily Bisbach!

I absolutely loved this book. The magic system is really interesting and original, and I really enjoyed the ties with original artworks and world religions, which shows true dedication from the author.

The characters are well written, both main and side characters are quite vivid which help you get invested into the story quite early on.

I honestly cannot wait to see where this series is going.

I am honestly obsessed with this book. I love it. It's such an interesting magic system and gorgeous writing style, plus the story itself and the character development! Incredible!

I struggled a little bit with the first quarter of the book or so, but I got the feeling that it would pick up. And it did, very quickly. Once it really got moving, it never stopped long.

Just overall a gorgeous story that I really enjoyed!

This book is beautifully written with a complex magic system. I however could just not get into it. I wasn’t investing myself in the characters or following the plot at all. I found myself skimming a lot and just didn't connect.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read the ARC!

This book is beautifully written with a complex magic system. I however could just not get into it. By the time I hit 20% I realized I was skimming pages without retaining any information as a lot of the language was complex and just going completely over my head. I really wish my brain would cooperate, but I did unfortunately DNF. I hope to come back to this in the future!

3 stars for the writing and the originality as it is beautifully written, it just isn’t the book for me!

I really enjoyed this book, once I started reading it, it was hard to put it back down, I was so eager to find out what would happen next.

Emily Bisbach does a great job in writing a dark academia element, it had that overall feel that worked in the world. I enjoyed getting to know Evie and the rest of the characters. I thought the clue element worked and was enjoying the overall concept of this world. I thought the art element was great and enjoyed the overall feel of this world.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for the arc!
Hmm, I don’t think this book is for me. Unfortunately, I had to DNF pretty early on. Here’s why:

The pace is way too fast. There is no room to breathe, or to get to know the characters. Things just keep on happening, and we have no time to linger on details, and especially details that could help make everything more comprehensible. Reading this book is like being yanked offstage with one of those wooden poles from Looney Tunes.

Because there’s no room to breathe, I don’t care about the characters at all. I don’t care about what happens to them at all. I don’t care about the plot at all. I saw on instagram that the author cut the word count for this novel in half. Maybe she shouldn’t have.

As far as I was able to read, I still found the world building to be muddled 20% in. Yes, I threw in the towel early, but I’m a fantasy reader. World building is my shit. Usually, in a better written book, I would have some semblance of the world by now. I don’t here. It’s a confusing book for sure, but not in a good way.

So, in sum, the towel has been thrown in, and I have given up. I really wish I had more positive things to say about this book, but unfortunately I don’t. I’ll give the author the benefit of the doubt in my rating, as I didn’t read beyond 21%. Still, there were just too many issues I couldn’t look past. -2.5 stars rounded up.