i really wanted to love this. i read her royal highness before this and LOVED it; it's one of my favorite YA books of all time and was the entire reasi really wanted to love this. i read her royal highness before this and LOVED it; it's one of my favorite YA books of all time and was the entire reason why i wanted to read this too.
but prince charming was a royal disappointment.
i just didn't really care about daisy as a character at all. i think i would've cared more about this story if i was reading it from miles's, ellie's, or seb's POV. daisy wasn't interesting at all and felt like a side character in her own story. and the plot was so boring. there wasn't enough drama or intrigue and it had too much focus on a clueless american girl's POV of boring royal protocol. i think that was my main problem with this book. i was in this for the drama and the romance, and none of that happened until towards the end of the book. i also would've loved if it had a bit more focus on the sisterly relationship between daisy and ellie.
not terrible, just so boring. read the companion book instead....more
i liked it for the narrator's relatability and the rawness of her grief and depression. but i was not a big fan of how much depressing, boring, bleak.
i liked it for the narrator's relatability and the rawness of her grief and depression. but i was not a big fan of how much of a repetitive slog this book was.
very serendipitous that i finished this the day after 9/11 though....more
I loved this book for maybe like the first half or first third but after that I got SO bored with the plot. I loved Circe 3.5 stars rounded down to 3.
I loved this book for maybe like the first half or first third but after that I got SO bored with the plot. I loved Circe and overall I liked the characters more than the ones from The Song of Achilles, but Achilles was just easier to read. It took me four days to read Achilles while Circe took me twelve....more
It didn't feel right to give this a rating--doing so would be like if I looked through someone's private journal when ITOTAL READING TIME: 24 minutes.
It didn't feel right to give this a rating--doing so would be like if I looked through someone's private journal when I wasn't supposed to and tried to assess how 'good' it was.
But it was a beautifully designed book, filled with art, Florence's own doodles and handwriting. I felt like I was holding her in my hands....more
Everyone knows that cops are racist assholes because everyone has seen the videos anTOTAL READING TIME: 2 hours, 19 minutes.
3.5 stars rounded up to 4.
Everyone knows that cops are racist assholes because everyone has seen the videos and the innocent verdicts and everyone knows they can blatantly just murder people and get suspended on full pay or sometimes not even that. But if you set all that aside--and I get that's a big thing to suggest--then underneath there's still meant to be at least a basic competence.
Like you get brought up being told to be respectful to cops because they're the people that you're told to go to if you're in trouble, the people that will help you when you need it. And you grow up and you realize that they're not superheroes, they're actually just people, the same as anyone else, but you try to keep believing that they're useful, that they actually really do the things they're supposed to, like solve crimes and catch criminals, because that's part of how you sleep at night. It's in the social contract.
I definitely used to believe that (and yes, you don't need to tell me how much easier it is to believe in some kind of essential police decency when you're a straight white guy who lives on the Upper West Side). But now? I honestly don't think they have a fucking clue what they're doing.
Matthew Barker said ACAB.
Overall, a pretty solid read for a gimmick novel. I have never heard of Slender Man until maybe a year or two ago but it turns out he's been around for over a decade. This book wasn't really about the mythology behind Slender Man (like I thought it was going to be) more than it was a story similar to ones you would see on Creepypasta or Reddit, except in this universe he's real. I also liked the twist about Ryan in the end.
I will say I don't really recommend this book to people who are looking for their next horror read but have never heard or aren't really familiar with Slender Man, because it doesn't really clarify a lot about him. I feel like this book would be more enjoyable to people who are already Slender Man aficionados....more
The synopsis is where this book stopped being good. I thought this was going to be a YA mystery/thriller that TOTAL READING TIME: 2 hours, 34 minutes.
The synopsis is where this book stopped being good. I thought this was going to be a YA mystery/thriller that would be similar to You Owe Me a Murder where the protagonist is just absolutely getting fucked in the head and I got excited. This was a short book too and since the year is almost over, I want to read as many short books as possible.
But this was nothing like that. This book just got worse and more confusing as I read it. This was not the mystery about a boy who goes missing on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean that I thought it was going to be.
I'm trying to find the words to explain what this book even was, but I just... can't. And not in a good way. Seriously, what was this book? How did it mislead me so significantly? Why was the synopsis on the back cover of the book the most intriguing thing I've ever read, but the book itself one of the most disappointing let-downs?
The synopsis oversold this book. That's all I have to say. This book is not what the synopsis says it is. The Leaving and The Possible were better books than this one.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but... I thought this was an adorable book.
Even though I'm always wary of third-perTOTAL READING TIME: 4 hours, 6 minutes.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but... I thought this was an adorable book.
Even though I'm always wary of third-person narratives (I personally just prefer first-person), reading this was a total breeze. I didn't know I was going to enjoy a book about making ice cream and running a small business this much, and most importantly, I was actually invested in the story.
I've read some of the most liked reviews for this book, and my take on the whole feminism thing is: I don't think this book tried to advertise itself as 'feminist' necessarily. I also don't think that just because a book was touted as about 'female friendships' or had the word 'sisterhood' in the synopsis means it's going to be feminist. It's like saying every novel about People of Colour is going to or should have an explicit anti-racist agenda. The way I see it, this book was just about a teenage girl being scared of change and making decisions.
But you know what? After I finished it, ultimately I did interpret this book as feminist. Because I don't think the point of feminism in literature means portraying female characters as perfect and can-do-no-wrong, but to portray them realistically and still giving them agency within the story.
This is one of the only books in recent memory where I didn't have a solid stance regarding the conflict. There were three sides to the story: Amelia's, Grady's, and Cate's. And I could understand where they were all coming from.
Being a Meade Creamery girl wasn't just a job to Amelia--she cared about the stand itself, and she was passionate about her job. While she came off as bossy and a goody-two-shoes to Cate, it was simply because she cared about what she was doing, and not because she liked going on a power trip. On the other hand, I didn't agree with her reprimanding Cate when she did stuff like trick Grady into buying them pizza or whatever, because at the end of the day, who cares? They were ice cream stand employees making $15 an hour whose boss was a rich college kid who knew nothing about running an ice cream stand; the least they could have was get free food. She cared more about spending time with Amelia and not so much about the job; from the POV of an aspiring business owner, Cate is terrible; from the POV of someone who appreciates loyalty in a friend, Cate is awesome; therefore from the POV of Amelia she was someone who needed to get her act together.
I will say at times Cate was more interesting, and she was more relatable to me personally because I, too, don't like working. A job is a job and Cate was clearly in it to just be paid while hanging out with her best friend; she was transparent about it and there was nothing wrong with that. I would be angry too if my best friend, who was the one that convinced me to even come back, ditched me for a boy she just met. However I didn't agree with her being rude to Grady for no good reason; I just thought it was unnecessarily immature.
Ultimately I didn't think Grady was good enough for Amelia. While he was a perfectly 'nice' and courteous guy--he wasn't portrayed as explicitly sexist or condescending to any of the female characters--his character was essentially the well-meaning but incompetent male character trope. It was understandable why he was stressed and that there was a lot of pressure put on him, but in the end Amelia still did most of the work and he got most of the recognition. The only reason I could tolerate him was because I don't think the reader was meant to empathize with him and look at the story from his POV, which is also why I could understand why Cate was so irritated with him. How dare this mediocre white dude steal my best friend and my summer?
I didn't completely agree or disagree with anything the characters said or did, which is what I really liked about this book; it made it easy for me to look at it objectively. And to address why I thought this book was ultimately feminist: 1) it portrayed two points of view within a female friendship where both were perfectly valid, 2) it portrayed female characters and friendships realistically, and 3) the female main character took it upon herself to find a solution to the conflict instead of leaving it up to chance or to someone else. She made up with her best friend and didn't end up throwing herself at the love interest.
But most importantly, that reveal about Molly Meade's life in the end. I'm not going to spoil it, but I thought it was badass.
Again, I don't think this book was trying to be explicitly feminist. The feminism was more subtle, but it's up to the reader how to interpret it anyway. I thought this was simply a fun and light read....more
This is my first time reading an Ally Carter novel and I don't quite know what to make of it. For the longest TOTAL READING TIME: 3 hours, 18 minutes.
This is my first time reading an Ally Carter novel and I don't quite know what to make of it. For the longest time I didn't know how to tell if a book was character-driven or plot-driven beyond an educated guess, but I definitely think this is the epitome of a 'plot-driven' novel. I have nothing inherently against plot-driven novels, but the way this book was written, the characters didn't feel fully fleshed out or developed, which the third-person narrative style only exacerbated.
My main gripe about this book was that its main plot points were just plain ludicrous. Yes, it's fiction and it doesn't have to reflect real life, but I just could not suspend my disbelief about most of the things in this book:
- A bunch of Russian gangsters try to kidnap the First Lady from inside the White House six years before the events of the novel. How in the hell did these gangsters manage to sneak into the White House kitchen when it's the most guarded house in the entire world?
- The head of Secret Service almost dies in the encounter so he and his daughter move to the Alaskan wilderness which is... the closest American state to Russia? Why would the head of Secret Service hide himself and his daughter from Russians by moving to the state closest to Russia?
- The President's son escapes from his Secret Service bodyguard a few times so they... send him to Alaska instead of just increasing his security detail? Won't the American public--hell, the entire world--wonder where their son went? Also, isn't this a bit of an overreaction?
I think I would find these details more believable if the book had just taken the time to develop and flesh out the backstories that led to these events instead of just launching into the 'Alaskan wilderness' bit too early. A lot of the reveals that I felt were crucial to making these plot points believable were revealed too much towards the end which didn't really do anything to make me care about or like the story.
The only things I liked about this book were the romance between Maddy and Logan, and I did want to find out how this book was going to end, which was enough for me to finish it. But overall this book just wasn't for me....more
This book was very sexually explicit so if you're uncomfortable reading about a teenage character narrating hiTOTAL READING TIME: 3 hours, 15 minutes.
This book was very sexually explicit so if you're uncomfortable reading about a teenage character narrating his sexual experiences, this book is not for you. I did appreciate that the sex was written in a very honest and educational way through the Jack of Hearts advice column within the book, that encouraged safe sex and consent, which I thought was very responsible of the author. It also tackled gay stereotypes and respectability politics within the LGBT community, which not a lot of queer YA books I've read have done.
Recommended if you liked Full Disclosure by Camryn Garrett, Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli, Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzales, or Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin....more