 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today, we are talking about the absolutely exceptional yellow jesamine by Caitlin Starling. I want to preface this review by saying I'm not a huge fan of Gothic horror, I'm not a huge fan of sci-fi or fantasy either, sci-fi especially not, and I've maybe finished about five science fiction novels in my life, and I absolutely loved The Luminous Dead, Starling's first book. So, but today, we are talking about her follow-up, a novella that Neon Hemlock, the publisher, and Starling were nice enough to send me. Yellow jesamine is Gothic horror, I don't read too much of it, but the reason why I mentioned The Luminous Dead, other than it being absolutely fantastic, one of my favorite reads of the year, even though it didn't come out this year. The reason I mentioned that is, I didn't like sci-fi and I loved The Luminous Dead, I don't like Gothic horror, in fact, two other books of Gothic horror this year really let me down. But this one, once again, absolutely fantastic. In fact, it'll be in my top five of the year, the relationship between the main character and her, I don't want to say handler, but the young woman that lives with her and helps her out, it's more that codependency that I found with Gaia and M in The Luminous Dead. And Caitlyn Starling does this so well, the way people use each other to hold themselves up, maybe not the best relationships, but there's always a lot of honesty in the relationships. The set pieces are amazing, I believe, I'm pretty sure there's no historical accuracy here, just like with The Luminous Dead, it's a world alternate from our own. I could be wrong, I don't think so, but I don't recall any of the names, the townships or any of that stuff. The book opens up very mysteriously with her on a ship, and then it just gets more mysterious as time goes by, there is a plague ravaging the city, and there's so much mystery and depth to this story. By the time you get to the end of this short novel, I'm almost positive you will be as shocked as I was. The writing is fantastic, just as it was in The Luminous Dead, but I really want to harp on the relationships here. Caitlyn Starling draws very, very beautifully in-depth characters that have neuroses and they have faults and they are broken people, they are ugly, they are evil, they are all these things that society frowns upon, which I actually love reading about. The book is very dark, there are some very, very creepy scenes. I don't want to talk too much about the ending, but by the time I got to the ending, my jaw was on the floor. I know that's cliche to say, but I was literally just gaping at my kindle. One thing I want to mention, the audiobook is already live, the paperback doesn't come out until September 5th, no, September 2nd, and the ebook comes out on September 5th, I believe, but the audiobook is already live. I'm reshooting my video to tell everybody that, so if you want to go ahead and grab the audiobook, I'm going to leave links to everywhere that you can purchase this book down there in the doobly-doo. I cannot state this enough, it is a fantastic story. I did read some reviews on Goodreads from people who were upset or disappointed because the book is, I guess, labeled LGBT plus as far as the themes or the genre or whatever. There is a sapphic relationship, but it's not the whole point of the story, so if you're on that side where you believe that only books that deal with those themes and what comes along with that, you're probably not going to find too much depth there, but there is a sapphic relationship in the book itself. I would hope that people can look past maybe a wrong genre kind of deal, because this book is absolutely fantastic. There's never a dull moment, the characters are beautifully written, the writing itself is absolutely gorgeous, it has my highest possible recommendation, and if it wasn't for Tiffany McDaniel's Betty, this would probably be my book of the year. So if you read Yellow Jezamine by Caitlin Starling, did you get your hands on the ARC? Let me know if you loved it or hated it down there in the doobly-doo, but until next time, I have an E, you have an U, this has been another book review, I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye!