There is a silence so great that I can hear the ice crystals cracking and falling from eyelashes of girls who will never blink again.

Did you tell freedom hello for me?

Words like 'unputdownable' and 'irresistible' are simply not enough for Cat Winters's In the Shadow of Blackbirds. Days after finishing this story, it remains the first thought I have in the morning, and the thing that haunts me until I sleep.

Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.

We figure out what death means when we're born, practically, and we live our whole lives in some kind of weird denial about it.

We accept gods that don't speak to us. We accept gods that would place us in a world filled with injustices and do nothing as we struggle. It's easier than accepting that there's nothing out there at all, and that, in our darkest moments, we are truly alone.

Humans are the absolute worst thing to happen to this planet.