Manacled by SenLinYu

Welcome to the day my life ended before 2023 even had a chance to begin.

(Please check all trigger warnings for this - specifically rape)

I have been a “traditional” book reader… since forever. I read novel after novel and classic after classic and non-fic after non-fic… always with a physical copy in hand. When E-readers became a thing, I got one and hardly used it. I wrote on Tumblr for a while and then I disappeared. I kept reading, but well outside of the literary internet community.

One of my bff’s was an avid fanfic writer, so I knew about the scene but never entered it myself. And then there was TikTok… continuously fucking my life up one way or another. Whether with a hefty Amazon wish list or having me add step after step to my night routine, it seems to have changed my life again.

Only this time, with FanFic. I finished the Harry Potter series (just to be clear, I DO NOT agree with any of Harry Potter’s authors' latest views/opinions on the trans community. I am very much in support of trans activism and rights.) about fifteen years ago (literally). Since then I have reread the series about three times, working on my fourth. This series took over my life for a while, and has continued to take over my life to this day.

As someone who is, ~7 days~ from attending her first Yule Ball, let me tell you, at 28 - I am still very much obsessed.

This obsession… oddly enough… never went past the seven Harry Potter book series. It hardly bled into Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (great movies, just never got obsessed like HP). It definitely didn’t expand in fanfic. Until TikTok, until Manacled.

Manacled annoyingly changed my brain chemistry? It opened a door to a world I didn’t know was laying in wake, shoving it open to Dramione bliss, sadness, depression, soul crushing, ecstasy.

Ecstasy. As a woman who has quite literally experienced ecstasy, let me tell you that this was exactly this. The high, the crash, the depression, the reevaluating life - all existed in Manacled. SenLinYu has written a story that recreates the experience I had waiting in line at Barnes and Noble at 10 years old. I wanted to stop reading, only to save more time within the story and with the characters.

I am bleeding for Draco and Hermione… how does one go from this to any other Dramione following? Do we ever recover? (Check all the trigger warnings for this one though.) The High Reeve will always hold a place in my (traumatized) heart, but I shall continue on my Dramione roller coaster.

This book was an incredibly well written rendition of what happens post the Order losing the war. A Harry Potter meets The Handmaids Tale horror story, it’s dark, twisted, and very dystopian… and somehow too close to real life currently. Hermione is a bad ass bitch and Draco is a bad ass ready to lose it all.

“I have warned you. If something happens to you, I will personally raze the entire Order. That isn't a threat. That is a promise. Consider your survival as much a necessity to the survival of the Resistance as Potter's. If you die, I will kill every last one of them.”

If you’re looking to tear your heart to shreds and then puzzle on how to connect the broken pieces, this is 10000% the book for you, read it, then read it again chronologically, then read it again just for good measure. If your heart and mind is still in one pieces - let me know. You are either far more traumatized than I, or never have been traumatized. Either way, I want to know and let’s be friends.

Love always, don’t die.

Jessica