I went into this book knowing it wasn’t for me, but my fiancée wanted to give it a shot because so many of her friends recommended it, so DNF at ~60%.
I went into this book knowing it wasn’t for me, but my fiancée wanted to give it a shot because so many of her friends recommended it, so we listened to the audiobook together. Neither of us ended up liking it that much, and a little more than halfway through my fiancée lost interest and we moved on. These were my thoughts on the first half of the book.
I started off on the wrong foot with Feyre and her awful family, who I was seemingly supposed to hate (and did). I was annoyed that Feyre clearly resents her family but never stands up to them in any meaningful way. Her mom’s nonsensical decision to put all the responsibility of keeping the family together on her youngest child instead of her literal husband felt like a flimsy excuse to give Feyre a tragic backstory. Feyre’s hunting abilities are talked up but seem mostly luck-based. And the robotic narration of the audiobook didn’t help endear me to Feyre, either.
Another issue that came up almost immediately was this fictional society’s treatment of women. The mortal world is ruled over by queens, so you would think this society is a matriarchy of some kind, but no one acts like it. Feyre talks about marrying off her sisters, and her sisters find time to pine over boys while literally starving, so clearly in this society women are still primarily valued for and taught to prioritize their relationships to men. There’s no consistency.
Then we end up in the fae realm, Prythian, and one of the first things that happens there is a feast. Feyre is reluctant to eat the food, but eventually does, and… (view spoiler)[there are no consequences for this action. It’s not enchanted or drugged, which we know because her captor, Tamlin, says so and the fae can’t lie. So one of the main things I know about the fae, which is to never eat their food, is useless here. (hide spoiler)] I cannot overemphasize my disappointment.
That was hardly my last fae-related disappointment. I was expecting them to be a lot more aloof, inhuman, dangerous, but other than their supernatural powers – which for most of the book were told and not shown to us – they were almost indistinguishable from humans in the ways they spoke and acted. And then we learn that (view spoiler)[most of what we know about the fae isn’t true. They can lie and iron doesn’t hurt them (hide spoiler)]. I don’t understand why SJM would make her whole book series about the fae only to strip away everything that makes them fae.
We were also told and not shown the dangers of Prythian and the blight. The only consequence we’re shown right away is (view spoiler)[the Spring Court being unable to remove their masquerade masks (hide spoiler)], which I thought was kind of a silly detail. As a result, the stakes felt very low, and even more so considering how little focus there was on action or plot compared to the mundane scenes where we’re delivered exposition and worldbuilding via lengthy conversations and no action happens.
Anyway, by the time I met the fae I was sensing a theme. Every major character in this book is kind of a bitch. In fact, it seems to be everyone’s main character trait. Honestly, I started to roll with it. I was getting used to Feyre – her initial open disdain of the fae was admittedly a little iconic – and I’d even had a brief moment of appreciation for her sister Nesta when she stood up to the acolyte in the town square. And then we got to Rhysand, and he really turned that particular dial up to the max. He was deeply, deeply insufferable. Not sure if he gets less insufferable later in the book or series, and I guess I’ll never know.
Even if I didn’t already know who Feyre ends up with from friends and spoilers online, it would have been obvious from pretty early on that (view spoiler)[it wasn’t Tamlin (hide spoiler)]. They had no chemistry. Meanwhile, the very first thing Feyre thinks when she meets (view spoiler)[Rhysand (hide spoiler)] is how he’s the hottest guy she’s ever seen, which is always a dead giveaway.
Two stars for Maas’ writing style, which was this book’s saving grace as far as I’m concerned. Because of that alone, I could have finished the book if my fiancée had wanted to. If Maas fixed her habit of telling and not showing everything from characters’ personalities to romantic and sexual chemistry to important worldbuilding details, I could easily enjoy one of her books....more
My fiancée and I have read all of Jennifer Saint’s Greek mythological retellings to date. I was really looking forward to this one, hoping it might beMy fiancée and I have read all of Jennifer Saint’s Greek mythological retellings to date. I was really looking forward to this one, hoping it might be my first five-star read from Saint. Unfortunately, as you can see, that wasn’t the case.
First off, this is very different from Saint’s other retellings, to the point where I’m not sure “retelling” is even the right word for it. I get that every mythological retelling from a modern lens requires some creative license, but too much was changed or reinterpreted here for my liking. There are so many great myths about Hera, so much excellent material to work with, and she’s such a compelling character, but Saint’s version of her feels like a completely different person.
Most of the characters depicted here were likewise different from their mythological counterparts. While that’s also often the case in retellings, in this instance it felt like such a downgrade. The character arcs, including Hera’s, were equally unsatisfying. Hera’s arc felt underdeveloped; she changed her views and behaviors over time but it wasn’t always clear why. If it was clear, the reason was told to us, not shown.
Saint’s plots have, in my opinion, never been her main strength, and this book was no exception. The quick pacing kept me reading, but I realized toward the end of the book that the story was more of a collection of vignettes strung together. I’ve never cared as much about plot as I have about characters, but with all the character issues mentioned above, the lack of plot was a glaring issue.
I’ll still likely pick up anything Saint publishes in the future, because at the very least I can always count on her for entertainment value, but I keep hoping for a truly exceptional book from her and I thought this would be the one....more
I’ll keep my review of this one brief because I think my low rating is more reflective of mistakes I made as a reader than of thDNF (for now) at ~70%.
I’ll keep my review of this one brief because I think my low rating is more reflective of mistakes I made as a reader than of the book itself, which is why I’m marking this as DNF for now instead of DNF forever.
Mistake #1: Starting off with the Tenth Anniversary Edition, which includes additional, expanded content not present in the original book. I’m sure existing fans of the book were thrilled to read this edition, but as someone reading this for the first time, I now think I should have started off with the original edition. Editors exist for a reason, and there was a lot of content in this book that felt like it didn’t need to be there and made the story overall feel like a meandering slog.
Mistake #2: Listening to this book instead of reading it. Don’t get me wrong, the narration was extremely well done, no notes, but my fiancée and I listen to audiobooks before bed as we’re falling asleep and that is not the right format to consume a book this trippy. I kept having to backtrack and re-listen to the same parts over and over because I couldn’t remember if they actually happened or if I dreamed them. Eventually I realized I was more than two-thirds of the way through and I couldn’t tell you, in order, what had happened.
Neil Gaiman is an incredibly talented writer and I believe I would enjoy this book a lot more if I approached it in the right way. When I eventually come back to this book, it’ll be to the original edition and I’ll read a physical or ebook copy instead of listening to the audiobook. I’ll be back with my thoughts on the actual contents of the book then....more
Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
DNF at ~50%.
Although I didn’t read Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
DNF at ~50%.
Although I didn’t read An Unkindness of Ghosts or The Deep, I’ve been keeping an eye on Rivers Solomon’s work. Each of her concepts so far has sounded so unique, and the themes she explores are so important. When I saw Sorrowland on NetGalley, I thought it would be a good place to start.
As you can tell, I ended up deciding roughly halfway through reading this book that it wasn’t for me. It actually put me in a major reading slump, because I didn’t want to read anything else before I finished it but I could hardly convince myself to pick it up and read it. I finally decided to set it aside so I could move on.
Before I talk about what I didn’t like, I should mention that I thought Solomon’s writing style was haunting and evocative. It was easily the best part of the book, and it made me want to keep reading even though nothing else about the book was capturing my attention. I would never say that this is a bad book, even though I didn’t finish it, or that Solomon is a bad writer. Again, it just wasn’t for me.
What I disliked the most was the plot. By the halfway point of a novel, I should more or less have an idea of where a book is going in terms of plot, but this book took so many twists and turns and I never fully understood what was going on. I don’t mind being kept in the dark, but I don’t like being confused. There’s a fine line between the two, and Sorrowland was solidly in “confusing” territory.
If the characters in a book are strong enough, I don’t necessarily need a strong, compelling plot. But the central character in Sorrowland, Vern, wasn’t my cup of tea either. It was confusing, stressful, and frustrating to be inside her head. I think that might have been the point, but I wasn’t enjoying myself at all, and I couldn’t keep doing it. Her young children, Howling and Feral, also played major roles in the book, but I don’t usually like reading about young children and they were no exception.
This book explores themes of race, gender, motherhood, spirituality, nature, and more, and if I was the type of reader who could enjoy a book solely on the basis of how well it explores deep themes, I would probably love this book. But I’m not that type of reader. If you are, maybe you’ll have greater success than I did....more
This book was the perfect storm of a two-star read. There were plenty of things I liked about it in theory, but put together, I was extremely underwheThis book was the perfect storm of a two-star read. There were plenty of things I liked about it in theory, but put together, I was extremely underwhelmed. It took me nearly a year to finish this book because I kept putting it down, entering a deep reading slump during which I read nothing for months, picking it back up, reading less than a chapter, and repeating the cycle.
I was intrigued by the concept of this book: an alternate political history where Hillary doesn’t marry Bill Clinton. I went in wanting to read that story. So I was disappointed that the first third of the book was all about Hillary’s relationship with Bill, their whirlwind romance and eventual breakup. I will admit, in the beginning, I actually enjoyed some aspects of the romance between Hillary and Bill, which I never would have expected. But by the time they’d fallen in love, I was deeply bored and ready to move on. I put the book down several times, entering months-long reading slumps in between, before doing something I never do: I skimmed.
Normally, if I find myself skimming through parts of a book, it’s an automatic DNF. But I wanted to give this book one chance to redeem itself by getting to the end of Hillary’s relationship with Bill and into the actual alternate history part. There was a time skip to the 90s that disappointingly focused far more on Hillary’s (view spoiler)[affair with a married coworker (hide spoiler)] than the start of her political career. Her entire Senate campaign was glossed over in a few paragraphs. Does Sittenfeld think people picking up a book about Hillary Clinton don’t want to read about politics? That’s exactly what I want to read about!
The second half of the book focused on Hillary’s Senate career and presidential campaign, and finally we got some actual politics. I wish the first half of the book had been majorly condensed and the rest had focused on this. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case, so by the time I started enjoying the book, it felt like a consolation prize. And although I enjoyed the content far more in the second half, I had an issue with the writing style throughout the entire book, which often felt more like reading Hillary’s diary than reading a book about her, complete with boring extraneous details that bogged down the story.
In addition to the political focus of the second half, I thoroughly loved the way Sittenfeld wrote Hillary’s voice. Her experiences as a woman in the legal field and, later, a woman in politics were very well-written. The related feminist themes were also explored well, woven into the narrative seamlessly. I never felt lectured to. The book touched on race as well, though far less. The things I liked about this book were enough to convince me that it had so much potential, but it needed to go through at least a few more drafts. Cut out much of the first half, trim down the unnecessary details, focus in on the politics, and it could have been at least a four-star read....more
I read this book at my therapist’s suggestion. I don’t normally go for self-help books; I know others find them helpful but I personally prefer other I read this book at my therapist’s suggestion. I don’t normally go for self-help books; I know others find them helpful but I personally prefer other methods of self-improvement. But because my therapist recommended The Four Agreements specifically, because it’s so short, and because it was only something like $6 on Kindle, I figured I’d make an exception.
My therapist warned me going in that there would be a lot of spiritualism in this book. For the most part I tried to ignore that aspect because I am very much not a spiritual person, but it did kind of detract from my reading experience. Don Miguel Ruiz brings in concepts from Toltec religion, which I won’t pretend to know anything about. You could still easily get something from this book without buying into the mythology of it, and I did. But I also felt that the spiritual language and concepts really bogged down what I felt was otherwise practical advice. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I would have preferred to read a book that gives me the same advice this book gave me without couching it in the language of dreams and nightmares and black magic and spiritual poison and hell.
Although I thought the advice in this book was practical, I also didn’t find it life-changing or even particularly new. You can tell as much from the synopsis, which lays out the Four Agreements: Be impeccable with your word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions, and always do your best. None of this advice is groundbreaking. This is another problem I typically have with self-help books: They rarely tell me anything I don’t already know. They might remind me about something I don’t frequently think about, or make me see something in a slightly different way, but I’ve never read a self-help book that changed the way I live my life, and The Four Agreements was no exception.
The best thing I can say about this book is that it did give me plenty to talk about with my therapist, and together we were able to apply some of its lessons to my life. That was useful at this stage in my mental health journey because I’m just restarting therapy after some lukewarm experiences with it in the past. It was good to have the framework this book provides in my early sessions with my current therapist to give some structure to our discussions, but on its own this book was basically more of the same when it comes to self-help.
Reading other reviews of this book, I can see I’m definitely in the minority and I’m glad others have been able to get something from this book that I didn’t. For me, it was good but not groundbreaking....more
I read Louisa Morgan’s first book, A Secret History of Witches. It wasn’t a favorite of mine, but I enjoyed it enough that when I saw The DNF at ~25%.
I read Louisa Morgan’s first book, A Secret History of Witches. It wasn’t a favorite of mine, but I enjoyed it enough that when I saw The Age of Witches on NetGalley, I thought it might at least be worth a read. I went in expecting more of what I got from Secret History: a story that centers female characters and female relationships, a charming writing style, a lackluster plot, and a hint of magic.
The Age of Witches had all those things. The narration alternated between four characters. Harriet is a middle-aged herbalist widow descended from a long line of witches. Annis is the seventeen-year-old daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur with dreams of breeding horses. Francis is her stepmother, another witch who magicked her way into an advantageous marriage. The fourth protagonist is James, who I’d only barely met before I stopped reading. It’s clear he’s meant to be Annis’ love interest.
Frances was the most interesting character by far. I always enjoy a conniving woman. Harriet was forgettable, and Annis was about as cliché as it gets: the privileged young woman who detests parties and social graces and the idea of marriage.
As I mentioned, the plot was not the highlight of this story. It was slow and not particularly high-stakes or exciting. I felt like I could put the book down at any point and wouldn’t miss out on anything major, which is exactly what I did. I enjoyed seeing magic used for a greater variety of purposes than in Secret History, where the protagonists mainly used it to attract men and get pregnant. But overall, I found The Age of Witches underwhelming.
I still think Morgan is a talented writer. She just doesn’t write the type of books I enjoy....more
I’m definitely in the minority on this one. There were some things I enjoyed, but even more things that didn’t work for me at all. I went DNF at ~30%.
I’m definitely in the minority on this one. There were some things I enjoyed, but even more things that didn’t work for me at all. I went in knowing this book would either be amazing or another disappointing young adult dystopian novel. Sadly, it’s the latter.
I read Neal Shusterman’s Unwind years ago and all I could remember was that it had a unique and fascinating premise but in the end I didn't love it. I feel very similarly about Scythe. The premise was, indeed, spectacular. Shusterman has a truly creative mind. And the pacing was spot on. I was never bored, and that counts for a lot to me. But ultimately, rather than making its way onto my favorites shelf, I decided to give up reading Scythe when it became clear that I wasn’t enjoying it enough to make up for a few glaring issues.
My first issue with Scythe was with the book’s main characters, Citra and Rowan. They weren’t given enough development in this intensely plot-driven novel and, as a result, felt lifeless and bland. I didn’t dislike them – they were both perfectly agreeable – but I also wasn’t invested in them. I expect a writer to quickly, in the space of a few chapters, acquaint me with their protagonist(s), to familiarize me with their motivations and personalities, their likes and dislikes, their histories and beliefs. I was 150 pages in and still felt like I hardly knew Citra and Rowan, and I can’t relate to or empathize with characters I hardly know.
It seemed like Shusterman was setting Citra and Rowan up for a romantic relationship, and because I wasn’t invested in Citra and Rowan individually, I also wasn’t invested in their relationship. I had little insight into their emotions, which is crucial if you’re trying to sell me on the fact that two characters are into each other. And their chemistry was abysmal. In the first 150 pages of the book, they’d hardly spoken to each other, at least on the page.
Moving beyond characters, I also had a major issue with Shusterman’s worldbuilding, which in some ways struck me as utterly unbelievable. Despite being far enough in the future that the world was governed by artificial intelligence and medical science had eradicated disease and conquered death, the world hadn’t changed that much from the world of 2019, which not only seems unlikely but also represents a massive missed opportunity. I’m way more interested in reading a book that takes place in a future that’s utterly unfamiliar to me than one that’s basically a utopian version of the present.
I also had some problems with the concept of the Thunderhead, but since I only learned a little about it, I’ll reserve my judgment. Maybe it gets better in later books. Although I’ll never find out, because I’m not going to read the rest of the series. Suffice it to say I was very disappointed by this book....more
Given this book’s cover and synopsis, I expected something dark and magical, and for the first fifty pages, it seemed promising. The plot DNF at ~50%.
Given this book’s cover and synopsis, I expected something dark and magical, and for the first fifty pages, it seemed promising. The plot took off quickly, with Tea raising her brother from the dead and journeying to a foreign land with another bone witch to learn magic. My only complaint at that point was that everything was happening too fast. I guess I should be careful what I wish for, because at that point, things slowed to a crawl. The lengthy process of Tea’s training was painfully uneventful. There was hardly any magic and the subject matter was, for the most part, light and low-stakes; not at all what I expect from a book about necromancy.
I wasn't a fan of the way the narrative was structured, with alternating chapters showing us the present, when a seventeen-year-old Tea is recounting her story to an unnamed bard, and the past, when a younger Tea is learning to be a bone witch. It made for a choppy reading experience and disrupted the flow of the story. And seventeen-year-old Tea was insufferable. On the other hand, the bard’s chapters offered the only hint of true darkness in the nearly 200 pages I made it through, so I’m hesitant to suggest cutting them entirely.
I agree with other reviewers about Chupeco's overuse of descriptive language. The plot was bogged down by detailed descriptions of Chupeco’s characters, world, and magic system. I don’t always need to know everything that everyone is wearing or every detail of every object in every room. A skilled writer will direct their readers’ attention only to the most important details and trust that we’ll use our imaginations to visualize the rest. That’s half the fun of reading.
I also didn't connect with the characters of The Bone Witch as much as I would have liked to. Tea felt like a cardboard cutout of a young adult female protagonist: curious, outspoken, and powerful. Prince Kance was equally cliché: agreeable, gracious, and handsome. Fox served mostly as a Yes Man who supported Tea in everything she did, rendering him utterly uninteresting. Lady Mykaela was your standard aloof and distant fantasy mentor. And I had no interest in the book’s romance after Chupeco hinted at a love triangle early in the story.
I think Chupeco had a solid concept here. Her worldbuilding and magic system were detailed and complex; if they'd been backed by a stronger plot or stronger characters, they would have provided the perfect backdrop for an epic fantasy trilogy. Unfortunately, this book suffered in its execution, and I'm unable to commit myself to a series that doesn't draw me in from book one with an interesting plot and compelling, dynamic characters....more
Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
DNF at ~40%.
I wasn’t sure what to exThank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
DNF at ~40%.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from Catherine House, and it ended up being very different from the types of books I usually read. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; I think it’s important to try new things and expand your horizons. But it also might partially explain why this one wasn’t for me.
The synopsis of this book compares it to Never Let Me Go. The two aren’t exactly the same, but I think it’s a fair comparison. Both take place in isolated boarding schools where something sinister is going on behind the scenes. Both elicited similar emotional reactions from me, a sort of melancholy feeling that’s hard to escape. And both were memorable and left an impression on me, even if the reading experience was unsatisfactory.
The protagonist, Ines, was the main drawback of Catherine House, which is another similarity to Never Let Me Go. I was not a fan of any of the characters in that book, nor was I fan of any of the characters in this one. But Ines, in particular, was an unsympathetic, closed-off, wishy-washy protagonist and I didn’t always enjoy being trapped inside her head. Her narration fit perfectly with the overall tone of the book, but that didn’t make me like her any more, and I can’t get through a book with an unlikable protagonist.
I would say the main draw of Catherine House is that it is a dark, unsettling, mysterious, and deeply atmospheric read. At first, I was intrigued by the house’s secrets and wanted to know more, which kept me reading. I was worried the development of the story would suffer due to its short length, but Elisabeth Thomas had plenty of time for vivid descriptions and the slow build of a general sense of unease. On the contrary, it was too long; the plot dragged, and at a certain point, I knew I’d go crazy if I tried to read this book all the way through to the end.
I don’t think this is a bad book and I don’t think Thomas is a bad writer. Her use of descriptive language, her ability to evoke emotion, and the way she builds an immersive atmosphere are all hallmarks of a very talented writer. My problems with Catherine House are entirely subjective. If you enjoyed Never Let Me Go or if you like the idea of a slow, weird, unsettling little book, you might love this one. But I didn’t....more
Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
DNF at ~50%.
I got halfway through thThank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
DNF at ~50%.
I got halfway through this book only to realize I didn’t care about what was happening or how it would end. It wasn’t a bad book, necessarily, just not a very compelling one.
The Lucky One stars two female protagonists. Alice Fine was kidnapped as a toddler and now works for her father’s construction firm and spends her free time identifying missing persons on a website called the Doe Pages. Merrily Cruz was raised by a single mother and now works a boring office job and has a lucrative side gig as a cam girl. They’re both connected to a man named Richard, or Rick, and their stories intertwine as they try to find Rick and figure out who he is/was.
Unfortunately I thought the characters in this book were mostly weak and underdeveloped, from Alice and Merrily to the modest cast of side characters that consisted of their friends, family, and coworkers. There were moments when I felt a tenuous connection to one or both of the protagonists, but it wasn’t enough to get me fully invested.
The plot, meanwhile, had a slow start, with not much happening for at least the first half of the book, and I was never fully invested. I kept reading mostly out of habit; I wasn’t even that interested to find out how it ended. At most, I was mildly intrigued. It was at that point that I decided to stop. This is a mystery, after all. If I didn’t care about solving the mystery, why keep reading?
I would be open to reading more of Lori Rader-Day’s books in the future, because I think her writing has promise, but only if she upped the suspense and engagement factors....more
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’ Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
DNF at ~30%.
My one-sentence review of this Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’ Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
DNF at ~30%.
My one-sentence review of this book would be: Lobizona is a four-star contemporary novel and a one-star fantasy novel. In other words, I have very mixed feelings about it. But let’s start with the positive.
Lobizona stars Manu, an undocumented immigrant whose mother brought her to the United States from Argentina when she was very young. She is bilingual, she loves to read, and she aspires to one day work for NASA as an astronaut. Particularly in the first section of the book, Lobizona explores the challenges undocumented immigrants face in America, as well as questions of identity regarding Manu’s physical differences and her father, who she knows next to nothing about.
If you strip away the fantasy elements, Lobizona is a well-written, modern young adult contemporary novel about the immigrant experience. It effectively communicates the alienation, the fear of discovery, and the unrelenting hope that defines Manu’s life as an undocumented immigrant, and it does so in a way that is both accessible to teenagers and enlightening for adults.
But Lobizona is also a young adult fantasy novel – a genre I have a fraught relationship with – and unfortunately, in that respect, it did not live up to my expectations. Although I will say, the one thing I appreciated about Romina Garber’s fantasy world was its basis in Argentinian folklore. I’m always on the lookout for fantasy novels that stray outside the typical Western European sphere of influence.
The novelty wore off quickly, however, once it became clear how utterly cliché the rest of the fantasy elements in this story were. Manu is special: the first ever lobizona (female werewolf), an only child with powers that are usually reserved for the seventh son or seventh daughter in a family. She has golden eyes with silver, star-shaped pupils (yes, seriously). Her werewolf powers include super strength and super speed, no exercise required, as well as super senses. Her transformation began at puberty and brought with it mysterious dreams of a magical world.
I decided to stop reading when the fantasy and YA clichés started to pile up about a quarter of the way into the story. Manu’s first interaction with Tiago was also incredibly off-putting. I have a policy where I quit reading at the first sign of instalove. Since I didn’t finish the book, I don’t actually know if they end up in a romantic relationship, but my YA spidey senses have rarely steered me wrong. I think I’m too far past my YA days to appreciate this book. Teen readers might enjoy it more than I did....more
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Children’s for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
When it comes to romance, there are tThank you to NetGalley and Random House Children’s for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
When it comes to romance, there are two types of people. You have your Emmas, your diehard romantics who believe in happily ever after and have fallen head-over-heels in love with love. And then you have your Sophias, who roll their eyes at rom-coms and take a more jaded approach to the whole concept of love and relationships.
I am a Sophia. I don’t hate all romance, but it does take a lot more for a fictional romance to impress me, and this one didn’t quite hit the mark. It was fun and light and entertaining, and I think the Emmas of the world will truly enjoy it, and that’s great. The world needs more lighthearted gay romance. But I have to be honest and say that I was hoping for more: more maturity, more complexity, more depth.
Maybe I’m just too old and cynical for teenage love stories. And this one was very teenager-y. Emma isn’t just a diehard romantic; she’s so preoccupied with love that it’s practically her only personality trait. She’s melodramatic and her actions are selfish and juvenile. Everything is about her: her feelings, her ideas, what she wants to do. I should have been able to relate to her subplot of not being out to her parents, having gone through exactly the same thing, but it didn’t get enough attention and development.
I liked Sophia more than I liked Emma, first, because I related to her a lot more. Her story combined many different threads, all of which I found interesting: the aftermath of her parents’ recent divorce, the failed relationship she left behind in Paris, her struggle to reintegrate with her friend group. But even Sophia had moments when she annoyed the heck out of me. It’s no wonder she has trouble fitting back in with her friends; she won’t shut up about Paris around them. And while I, too, have a cynical view of romance, Sophia took it to an extreme.
Also, this book had way too much heterosexuality for a book about two girls falling in love. I couldn’t have cared less about Kate and Tom or Myrah and Peter. Come to think of it, this book had way too much going on in general: friend drama, family drama, side relationships. I like complex and multilayered plots, but only if each subplot gets enough development to keep you invested, and there isn’t so much going on that it distracts from what should be the main focus of the story: in this case, Emma and Sophia falling in love and making movies.
As a result, the development of their relationship felt rushed and sloppy. The foundations of Emma and Sophia’s dislike for each other were about as petty as they could get. Their constant bickering wasn’t flirtatious, it wasn’t cute, it was immature and irritating. And the different schemes in this book to get people together by lying to them? Also not cute, completely cliché, and definitely not a solid foundation for a healthy relationship.
This book wasn’t all bad. Emma and Sophia had a few romantic scenes together that warmed even my cold heart. But the good moments were bogged down by all the unnecessary teenage drama and immaturity. I wish I could give this book a higher rating, but given how much time I spent rolling my eyes and skimming through subplots I didn’t care about, I just don’t think I can....more
Thank you to NetGalley and Candlewick Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
DNF at ~30%.
For a long time I’ve assumed theThank you to NetGalley and Candlewick Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
DNF at ~30%.
For a long time I’ve assumed the reason I dislike most fictional romances is that I’m a bitter lesbian sick of having heterosexuality shoved in my face everywhere I turn. That may still be the case, however, The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea proves that I can dislike fictional lesbian romance just as much as I dislike fictional straight romance.
Because that was my number one problem with this book: the romance. It was poorly developed and cliché. First, a quick background: We have two protagonists, Evelyn and Flora. Evelyn is a wealthy member of the Imperial ruling class shipped off to marry a man she’s never met. (There’s our first cliché.) Flora, called Florian, dresses as a boy (edit: as Isabel kindly informed me in the comments, (view spoiler)[by the end of the book Flora identifies as genderfluid (hide spoiler)], which I love to see) to fit in aboard the Dove, a pirate ship that masquerades as a passenger ship to lure in captives and sell them as slaves.
Evelyn and Flora’s relationship begins with what I’m officially labeling the world’s laziest attempt at enemies-to-lovers. Flora hates the Imperials, and she tells us as soon as she meets Evelyn that she’s determined to hate Evelyn too. This doesn’t happen because Evelyn is “not like other rich people” (cliché). Cue insta-love, or something very close to it. Their feelings for each other have so little development I had to squint to find it. The only meaningful interactions they have before falling in love consist of Evelyn teaching Flora how to read (cliché).
So I didn’t like the romance, and I didn’t much like the characters either. At first, Flora seemed like a well-developed and interesting character, a morally gray young woman determined to make her way in the world… until she met Evelyn. Evelyn bulldozed Flora’s convictions with the slightest effort, transforming Flora into a completely different person, one who only cares about Evelyn, who always does what Evelyn wants, even if it isn’t in Flora’s best interests. I was far more interested in Flora’s relationship with her brother, Alfie, or her mentor, Rake, both of which were sidelined to focus on her relationship with Evelyn.
And Evelyn… I get that she’s a sheltered rich girl, but even that doesn’t justify her lack of common sense. She’s supposedly caring and kind, and in a way she is (to a fault), but she’s somehow simultaneously incredibly self-absorbed. She doesn’t consider how her actions will affect others, not even the people she supposedly cares about. She does what she believes is the right thing even when doing so is stupid and dangerous. And I know I already mentioned her “not like other rich girls” personality, but I have to mention it again because it is so grating.
The worldbuilding was completely flat. Each of the various nations is clearly meant to resemble a real-world culture. The Empire is Japan. Tustwe, where Flora’s mother is from, is Africa. Quark is Europe. You’ll notice that both Africa and Europe are whole continents made of many distinct cultures. I know that. I’m not sure Maggie Tokuda-Hall does. She cherry-picks easily identifiable features of these geographical regions: kimonos and tea, antelope and braided hair, pale skin and sunburns. There’s zero nuance. If you’re going to borrow real-world cultures, do some actual research! Otherwise, exercise your creativity and come up with your own fictional cultures.
The fantasy aspects of the story were equally disappointing. This book is called The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea. I expected magic! And there were traces of it, but not nearly enough to satisfy me. Maybe there’s more magic in the latter two-thirds of the book, but I’ll never know because nothing in the first third convinced me to keep reading. I was over one hundred pages in and the plot had barely started moving.
The only reason I give this book two stars instead of one is that there were moments of inspiration when Tokuda-Hall explored themes of imperialism, identity, and gender. If she’d coupled these themes with more nuanced worldbuilding, I might have kept reading simply to see the concept fully realized. And I did like Flora, as long as Evelyn wasn’t around. I would read a whole book about Flora. But I didn’t want to read one more page about Evelyn....more
Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit Books for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
DNF at ~40%.
I tried to read this one and DNF’d arThank you to NetGalley and Orbit Books for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
DNF at ~40%.
I tried to read this one and DNF’d around 30%. I felt bad, picked it up to try again, got another 10% of the way through, and decided that this book really isn’t doing it for me right now.
This is a really tough one to review, because it’s hard to put into words exactly what I disliked about it. It was just sort of… underwhelming. I went into it with high hopes. I’m a huge X-Men fan, and The Obsidian Tower’s protagonist, Ryx, sounded like a high fantasy version of Rogue, with powers that prevent her from getting physically close to anyone else. Unfortunately, the story didn’t fully deliver on its interesting premise.
I’ll start with Ryx herself, who was a far cry from my expectations of “Rogue from the X-Men, but high fantasy.” She lacked development and her personality was ill-defined; honestly, she could not have been less compelling. She was passive and obedient and I can’t come up with any other words to describe her. She had so much potential: a bisexual mage, the warden of a castle, a woman with warped magic that kills everything she touches. She should have been awesome, which makes it even more disappointing that she wasn’t.
Many of the supporting characters were equally two-dimensional, particularly the Rookery. I should have loved the Rookery – a diverse group of friends-slash-coworkers who work together to neutralize dangerous magical objects and individuals, which sounds awesome – but I just wasn’t connecting with any of them. Ryx’s family also had enormous potential, except that the only family members who got any meaningful page time were the annoying ones. Some of the supporting characters were so stupid and impulsive I had a hard time believing they’d made it as far in life as they did.
Ryx’s relationships with others were all telling and no showing, and as a result, I wasn’t invested in any of them. Her relationships with her family weren’t explored in enough depth for me to care. Her romantic interests went undeveloped, and there were also three of them, which is too many in an already crowded book. And any of the relationship “development” between Ryx and any character she already knew took place before the book began and was relayed through memories, which was an ineffective storytelling method.
Aside from the characters, The Obsidian Tower’s other fatal flaw was that it didn’t seem to know what, exactly, it was trying to be. Is this young adult fiction? Is it adult fiction? It falls awkwardly between the two, with none of the excitement of YA and none of the maturity of adult fiction. The characters, including Ryx, were very YA. But the plot, which was heavy on politics and diplomacy, as well as dark magic and hellfire, seemed better suited to adult fiction.
Speaking of plot, I don’t know if the problem was that not enough was going on or that it wasn’t happening quickly enough, but I was bored out of my mind, and that’s ultimately the reason I couldn’t make it any farther and had to stop reading.
I will say, though, the worldbuilding was complex and interesting, and if I do go back to this book one day, that’ll be why. I guess The Obsidian Tower takes place in the same world as Melissa Caruso’s Swords and Fire series, which I haven’t read and which I didn’t know when I picked this book up. If you read and liked that series, maybe you’ll like this one....more
This review contains spoilers for Stillhouse Lake.
Stillhouse Lake is actually the first mystery/thriller series I’ve ever read. Before this, I’d only This review contains spoilers for Stillhouse Lake.
Stillhouse Lake is actually the first mystery/thriller series I’ve ever read. Before this, I’d only ever read standalone mysteries and thrillers. I enjoyed the first book so much that I immediately bought the second and started reading it. Unfortunately, my issue with Killman Creek is a classic sequel misstep: Many of the things I liked about the first book were no longer present, while the things I disliked about the first book were front and center.
Protagonist Gwen Proctor was the sole narrator of Stillhouse Lake, but in Killman Creek, Rachel Caine added three new perspectives: Gwen’s two children, Lanny and Connor, and her love interest, Sam. Lanny and Connor’s perspectives were valuable additions to the story that further explored the trauma and emotion of having a serial killer for a family member. Sam, on the other hand, I couldn’t care less about. He was fine as a side character, but as a POV character, he distracts from the central narrative. And I’m still underwhelmed by Gwen and Sam’s romantic relationship. Their cringey sexual tension had me rolling my eyes.
There was a lot of melodramatic narration and dialogue that read like something out of a bad action movie. And while I don’t expect a fictional novel to be one hundred percent realistic, the plot of Killman Creek stretched my suspension of disbelief just a little bit farther than I would have liked. There was so much going on – (view spoiler)[Absalom the hacker collective, Gwen and Sam’s quest for vigilante justice, Mike the rogue FBI agent, Rivard the reclusive billionaire (hide spoiler)] – and I wasn’t buying any of it. It was such a departure from book one. Because I had such a hard time immersing myself, I kept wanting to put it down and read something else, but I knew if I did, I might never go back and finish it. I skimmed the second half.
The ending was exciting, but not enough to bump my rating up to three stars. Otherwise, man, what a disappointment. I had high hopes for this series, but after this book, I’m going to have to call it quits....more
I had such high hopes for this book. The description sounded like everything I need in my life: women taking down rich men in Hollywood who take advanI had such high hopes for this book. The description sounded like everything I need in my life: women taking down rich men in Hollywood who take advantage of other women. But even though The Lady Upstairs was a fast, fun, easy read, it didn’t live up to my expectations.
First, and this is entirely my bad for not paying closer attention to the blurb (which seems to be a running theme in my reviews… oops), I didn’t realize the protagonist, Jo, wasn’t blackmailing rich men on her own. She works for a mysterious figure, the titular Lady Upstairs. The Lady Upstairs runs the show and chooses the targets, Jo instructs the girls who sleep with the men they blackmail, Jackal captures the photo and video evidence and collects the blackmail, and Lou oversees Jo and Jackal and is the only one of the three employees who actually knows and interacts with the Lady Upstairs.
This setup was a huge letdown. I thought Jo would be running a badass one-woman operation that she herself had masterminded. I thought she would choose the targets herself, seduce them herself, and blackmail them herself. The actual story was a lot less glamorous. Jo is the newest employee at the Lady Upstairs’ blackmail operation and from the looks of things, she’s not very good at her job. She doesn’t have any say in which men they target or how much money they demand. And she’s in debt to the Lady Upstairs for botching a previous job.
Jo’s main responsibility is recruiting and coaching wannabe-actresses to have sex with creepy rich dudes in return for a cut of the blackmail money. This, to me, seemed exploitative, especially since the only one of these women we meet, Ellen, isn’t at all enthusiastic about her part in the scam and in fact repeatedly tries to get out of it, only for Jo to convince her to keep going. And after these women successfully deliver on their part of the job, they don’t have anything more to do with the Lady Upstairs or her operation. They go back to their lives of trying and failing to make it big in Hollywood.
It didn’t help that, despite making a point early on in the book that one of her personal rules is not to trust women who don’t like other women, Jo doesn’t seem to like most other women. She’s extremely judgmental of Ellen, and of any other woman who would sleep with a man just because he’s rich or famous. The only person she shows any affection toward is Lou. Their relationship was actually really interesting in the beginning, infinitely more interesting than Jo’s hate-sex with Jackal, but once it became clear that Lou didn’t care about Jo half as much as Jo cared about her, all I wanted was for Jo to leave Lou and Jackal and the Lady Upstairs behind and go do something else with her life.
I will say, the best part about this book, for me, was its plot. It was twisty and suspenseful but never unbelievable and it succeeded in making it difficult for me to put the book down. But I didn’t like any of the characters. They were all bitter and cold-hearted and mean. The premise of this book made it sound like it would have some sort of feminist message, women taking back power from men who deserved it, but instead it was just women (and Jackal) coercing other women into having sex with gross men and then blackmailing those men for relatively low amounts of money. (Fifty thousand dollars from a major Hollywood producer? These people could do better.)
As for the ending, I saw it coming a mile away, but at least it made sense. I think this is an unpopular opinion, but I prefer a thriller with a predictable but believable ending over one with an ending that comes out of nowhere but doesn’t fit with the rest of the story. But it wasn’t enough to make the rest of the book worth recommending....more
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I, like many other people, love true crimeThank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I, like many other people, love true crime podcasts. They make my one-and-a-half-hour commute (yes, you read that right, and yes, it sucks as much as you think it does) bearable. So when I saw that The Night Swim was a mystery/thriller about a true crime podcast host, I requested it immediately. Unfortunately, I think my experience with true crime podcasts made this book less enjoyable, not more.
There were a lot of little inaccuracies that bothered me. Rachel Krall’s podcast episodes are very short and contain far more speculation than fact, and she doesn’t have that natural, conversational way of speaking that podcast listeners enjoy; her words read as very obviously scripted. She’s the only host, which I can only imagine is very boring to listen to and is certainly boring to read (there’s a reason most podcasts have at least two hosts). She records one of her episodes outside, while walking, which would be an audio nightmare. And her podcast is supposedly so universally popular that Rachel is a “household name.” The only podcast hosts I know of who are household names are celebrities who were already famous for something else.
There were even more details that damaged the book’s realism. Everyone Rachel speaks to is conveniently quick to open up and share plot-relevant details that most people wouldn’t give up so easily to a stranger. The wrongly convicted man who was the subject of the first season of Rachel’s podcast is released in short order after she reveals new evidence that exonerates him, which I find hard to believe; the American justice system will do anything in its power to keep people in prison even if it’s obvious that they’re innocent. And Hannah’s notes to Rachel are so riddled with flowery, unnecessary detail that I spent the whole time I was reading them rolling my eyes and thinking, “Who writes like this?”
I fully realize that I am being incredibly nitpicky and that most of these details may not even faze the average reader, but each one took me out of the story and prevented me from immersing myself. An even bigger issue was Rachel herself. I had no sense of her personality, unless you count “true crime podcast host” as a personality trait (I don’t). What little I learned about her was told, not shown. She was flat and lifeless. And I hated Hannah. You want justice for your sister, so you stalk a true crime podcast host who’s just trying to do her job? Even more frustrating, Rachel does exactly what Hannah wants and investigates her sister’s case, and even lets it distract her from her work.
I did like that Megan Goldin seemed to draw from real-life cases to inspire the ones she mentions or focuses on in The Night Swim, which added back some of the realism the book lost. As far as I know, neither the Jenny Stills case nor the Kelly Moore case were direct copies of any real case, though, so there was still room for creativity. I liked the trial scenes. I appreciated the commentary on rape and victim blaming that we got from the Kelly case, and I enjoyed slowly discovering the details of the Jenny case. And the ending was decent, though not unexpected.
I have to stress that I really don’t think Goldin is a bad writer, or that this is a bad book. I’m clearly in the minority here. I’m between two and three stars, but because there were so many instances when I wanted to put the book down and give up on reading it, I have to go with two....more
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
DNF at ~50%.
This review contains spoilers Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
DNF at ~50%.
This review contains spoilers for Trace of Evil.
I read the first book in Alice Blanchard’s Natalie Lockhart series, Trace of Evil, last year when I received an ARC on NetGalley. I enjoyed it – it had a cool setting, a good protagonist, and a few different interesting mystery subplots all going on at once – so I was pleased to get an ARC of the sequel. Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to my expectations.
I had a few complaints right off the bat. The Wicked Hour takes place about a year after Trace of Evil, and a lot has happened in that time. Natalie was in the news for catching a serial killer in Trace of Evil, Brandon hates her for the role she played in his wife’s death, and she’s grieving the loss of her sister, which gave her depression and anxiety and led her to push her love interest Luke away. It was a lot to adjust to in the first few chapters and it left me feeling like I missed a lot of interesting plot and character development.
I also noticed a lot of little aspects of Alice Blanchard’s writing in The Wicked Hour that I don’t remember noticing in Trace of Evil. I can’t be sure if they were more present in this book than the previous one or if I just didn’t notice them in the first book. Whatever the reason, this time around, Blanchard’s writing struck me as somewhat repetitive and sort of awkward. Much of the dialogue felt unnatural; everyone always had something clever, deep, or insightful to say.
And there were little details to all of Natalie’s relationships with other characters, the sort of quirky habits you’d expect from characters in a sitcom or a family movie. Natalie kept remembering cliché platitudes her deceased father used to say that were relevant to the situations she was in. Her friend group in high school called themselves the Brilliant Misfits and they hung out in an abandoned theme park. Luke and Natalie apparently have a thing where, instead of hugging, one of them holds out a thumb and the other squeezes it? Weird. I think these details were meant to add life to the characters but instead they took me out of the story.
And Natalie was a far less compelling character in this book than I remember her being in Trace of Evil. I understand that grief changes a person, but her emotions would come out of nowhere. One minute she was trying to solve the mysterious death at the center of the story and the next she was thinking about how in love she was with Luke and how he makes her want to settle down, get married, and have children. There was plenty of room for Natalie to solve the case, grieve her dead family members, and try to reconnect with Luke, but she bounced back and forth between those three tasks with no rhyme or reason.
The plot of The Wicked Hour was the highlight for me, what kept me reading. I think Blanchard would make a good true crime author, because she excels at writing the details of a case and the process of solving it. But eventually it reached a point where the plot wasn’t strong enough to make me look past everything I disliked about this book.
I always feel guilty when I don’t finish a book, especially one like this that isn’t exactly bad but that just has a lot of little flaws that rub me exactly the wrong way. But every time one of Blanchard’s characters said something faux-deep and out of place, or every time Natalie leapt from one emotion or thought process to another with no connecting thread between them, all I wanted to do was put the book down and never pick it up again, and around halfway through I decided to do exactly that....more
My first thoughts upon picking this book up: “Hooray, another Russian-inspired fantasy series!” But The Winternight Trilogy this was not.
I can understMy first thoughts upon picking this book up: “Hooray, another Russian-inspired fantasy series!” But The Winternight Trilogy this was not.
I can understand the Leigh Bardugo hype. Her writing style is really something else. She paints a picture with her words in a way not many authors have mastered, but her descriptions and imagery never drag on or distract from the plot. And I did read the whole book in a day, which is rare for me, although to be fair, I skimmed parts of it.
I was lukewarm about Alina. Her characterization was inconsistent, and she was very much your typical young adult female protagonist: stubborn to a fault, stupidly talks back to authority, initially doubts herself, and, of course, has rare magical powers that set her apart from everyone else and make her special. Have I mentioned I’m so sick of Chosen One stories?
The side characters were a mixed bag. Mal took a while to grow on me but eventually I came to appreciate him. I didn’t like that Alina was pining over him from the beginning, so we couldn’t see her feelings for him develop. Hands down my favorite character was the Darkling. I would have enjoyed the story far more from his perspective.
Parts of the plot dragged: Alina’s training, any part of the book where she was traveling (which happened a few times). This is pretty typical for me. I tend to get bored of fantasy books that spend too much time on training or traveling. If I had borrowed this book from a friend or the library, I wouldn’t have finished it, but because I actually paid for it, I felt invested.
The worldbuilding was disappointing. It just wasn’t as Russian as I wanted. It had a Russian aftertaste, but mostly consisted of classic YA and fantasy tropes. I am begging YA authors to stop sorting their characters into groups (in this case, the three types of Grisha: Corporalki, Etherealki, and Materialki). The Shadow Fold was a neat concept.
Like most readers, I hate (view spoiler)[love triangles (hide spoiler)], so that was another disappointment. The reveal of (view spoiler)[the Darkling’s true intentions (hide spoiler)] felt very rushed, which made it unsatisfying. The ending, though, was unexpected and thrilling. If only the whole book had been like that, I would have loved it.
I know I’m in the minority on this one. Even though I didn’t really enjoy it, a part of me wants to keep reading the series just to find out how it ends, so that’s something I guess....more
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