Not as good as Wool. I was kinda with it until Jimmy's chapters start, and then I was just very bored.
Some things stopped making that much s3.5 / 5 ✰
Not as good as Wool. I was kinda with it until Jimmy's chapters start, and then I was just very bored.
Some things stopped making that much sense. Like the conspiracy as a whole gets a little goofy and unrealistic in my opinion. Other things such as decisions characters made didn't make sense at all to me, such as (view spoiler)[Donald killing Anna, like why? That's certainly not the decision I would've made. Plus if you don't want her around, her being in deep freeze is pretty similar to her being dead. Kind of just seemed like a dumb decision for the sake of dumb decisions. (hide spoiler)]
The main character, Donald, is sort of painfully passive. He's not evil so you can't really strongly root against him, but he's so meek and willfully ignorant that you can't really root for him either.
The one good thing was that it's been like 6 months since I read Wool so piecing everything together was quite fun. Also since it had been so long it wasn't like I was desperate to continue on with the story, so the prequel nature of Shift didn't bother me. In fact I quite enjoyed getting some background on the world, that is of course, with exception to the parts where it started getting minorly goofy....more
This was probably my least favorite Haley Cass book so far, it wasn't bad, but I didn't click with it as well as I did with her other books 3.25 / 5 ✰
This was probably my least favorite Haley Cass book so far, it wasn't bad, but I didn't click with it as well as I did with her other books that I've read.
We were off to a bad start from the beginning because I saw 'Haley Cass' so I was like I don't need to read the synopsis, but then chapter 2 hit and I was like oh, oh wait, this is friends-to-lovers isn't it. This is entirely personal, but I just don't conceptually like the idea of friends to lovers, it makes me uncomfortable.
Continuing on with my entirely subjective personal issues: I experience what I would say are above average levels of second hand embarrassment and certain parts of this book were a little hard to get through because of that, though admittedly the scenes were a lil funny too. There was also the livestream thing was just a little too silly-goofy for my taste.
I never read Down to a Science (and I won't), but this book is a spin off from that and we get the MC from that book, Ellie, appearing A LOT in this book. Like, too much. I found Ellie to be.. kind of annoying, and it's not even her fault. Part of what made Ellie annoying wasn't even Ellie, but instead Riley basically constantly babying her. I just didn't like that this book felt like it was trying so hard to include her constantly. Ellie also sort of felt like a caricature to me. I understand a lot of people who are into certain fields might have certain traits, but she just felt sooo painfully 'stereotypical' that it frustrated me.
Now, onto a much more serious complaint.. why was this book fade-to-black-ing so hard?! Or alternatively it would recount that they previously had sex. Like stop telling me they had sex! Either show it or don't mention it. please. Also this book was kind of a bit too long, especially when you consider none of that page count is because of 'filler' sex scenes. Definitely could have been cut down a bit.
And then there's the flashbacks. This is not the first time I've seen a book fuck itself over with poorly timed flashbacks, and I don't get why because it's really not a hard concept to understand. If you have built up some momentum, tension or whatever, DO NOT FUCK YOURSELF BY CUTTING TO A FLASHBACK REPEATEDLY! The flashbacks have no impact on moving the plot since they are in the past, so while at first I liked reading them and getting some more information, I soon began to despise them because the second the plot started to move- zoop! FLASHBACK TIME!
Speaking of the flashbacks: I really didn't like flashback-Riley. It's one thing to want to help your friend better themselves and be like hey, I think [this] is an issue, or I think you should work on [this], or let's talk about [this], but that's not what Riley did. Quite honestly, I think flashback Riley was incredibly mean. She basically told Gianna she was just pretending to be her friend the whole time, but then later acted like she actually always liked her and just wanted her to better herself?? The thing Riley said about 'why hadn't Gianna come out to any of her actual friends' I found to just be wrong and once again mean. Sometimes it's just easier to come out to certain people because of their personality or your dynamic with them or whatever and sometimes it's easier to come out to someone who is somewhat removed from the rest of your life, such as Riley. Riley also literally pulled the "I'm sorry you feel that way" apology and I was just like bruh. Then post-argument, their relationship just felt off. Riley was treated like this perfect god-like being who corrected all of Gianna's imperfections, and Gianna just accepted all her corrections, when in reality they were both just college students.
On the Same Page really grated against a lot of my personal preferences or opinions, so whilst I don't think it was entirely a bad book, it definitely is not the book for me. That being said I did have some fun reading it, especially the first half of the book. I still like Haley Cass and will still keep reading her books, just fingers crossed the next one will be a little more my style.
(Also I find it crazy that Gianna doesn't have brown hair)
(Nearly forgot to mention, it's a really small inconsequential issue but, it's mentioned that Joel's camera is a "large, newsroom camera that didn't actively stream on WIFI," so he had to connect it to a computer to stream. And like yes, that'd be true, but that'd also be true for like ALL cameras??)...more
My masochistic relationship with zombie media strikes again.. For some reason when I was a kid I fell in love with the zombie genre, and for 2.5 / 5 ✰
My masochistic relationship with zombie media strikes again.. For some reason when I was a kid I fell in love with the zombie genre, and for some reason I'm still in love with it even though it has hurt me so much by consistently only having the most underwhelming pieces of media ranging from mediocre to, usually, just straight up bad. Unfortunately, Hearts Still Beating is no exception.
As far as positives go, I liked the concept. So far I haven't encountered zombie media that focuses on a story after a (sort of) cure is found. So to me this was a unique and interesting approach. I also think the concept of the romance was good, execution was slightly forced (as discussed later), but ultimately this was one of the better aspects of the book.
Let's start this critique by addressing something I usually never bring up.. the actual writing style! I never talk about this because quite honestly I am woefully inadequate when it comes to possessing the education and qualifications to do so. So my very unprofessionally worded analysis is that it comes off as kind of cringey-edgy-'YA-y' garbage sometimes.
The biggest most glaring issue with this book is that a large amount of it is based off of the idea that everyone hates the Altered (the 'cured' zombies), the thing is, this idea makes precisely... FUCK ALL SENSE. Come here, come here, you, the author, are telling me that Carter's sister comes home and is alive again after being presumed gone forever and Carter's response is unmeasurable rage and the strong desire to kill her?! You're telling me that Rory's bestfriend and person she loved/loves comes back and her response is to want to kill her? Mmmmm ya, no. This hatred was so forced it's ridiculous. Especially because you could genuinely have an interesting arc/exploration of the conflicting feelings Carter could have towards her sibling who unintentionally killed their parents, but instead we get this ridiculous one dimensional hate. And as far as the anti-Altered behavior from the general population: that doesn't make entire sense to me either, because you'd think all of them would be hoping it'd be their partner, sibling, child or friend who came back next. Weariness I could understand definitely, but outright hatred and desire to murder them? I'm not buying it.
Speaking of outright hatred and desire to murder the Altered, let's talk about Mal. Mal is just a villain for the sake of having a villain. No specific motivations, no complexity, just the most one dimensional bad guy because the author wanted to have a bad guy.
Also the pacing was a little wonky in my opinion around the 2/3 mark it started to feel real sloooooow. And the world was a bit empty feeling. It wasn't that developed. I kind of wish areas like Daphne's were explored more or just more relevant so that the world itself felt more well rounded and like it existed beyond the Island. Especially because the island itself though wasn't really developed either.
Now, spoiler time as I dissect just how brain dead certain moments in this book were:
- (view spoiler)[The attack on the school was witnessed by like, what, 15 kids? (some of which were pretty old, like 10 year olds aren't dumb) I don't know why we are pretending kids can't speak because I can kinda guarantee several of those kids would've talked to their parents about exactly what happened. A lot of parents actually believe their children (wow big surprise) which would then make it pretty obvious that the Altered weren't responsible and in fact one of them saved the kids. Also I'd image the relatives and friends of the Altered would be on their side and also talk to their relatives and friends about like hey these are some false accusations. (hide spoiler)]
- (view spoiler)[I don't even want to talk about this, it was so painfully badly written: The Carter Hospital Scene. So how does someone who is lying down with only one functioning leg overpower someone who standing over them who supposedly has pretty incredible strength and speed? The answer of course is that it happens off-page! This shit pisses me off to an incredible extent with how remarkably fucking RIDICULOUS IT IS! But wait it keeps on going.. A few minutes later when she now only has one leg and only one arm, dumb and dumber manage to let her get to a gun they had previously removed from her possession! And then they literally manage to lose a 2v1 against someone with only two functioning limbs! Very impressive(hide spoiler)]
- (view spoiler)[How did none of the Island's inhabitants notice the ENTIRE FUCKING SCHOOL BURNING DOWN? or the boats all being burnt? (hide spoiler)]
- (view spoiler)[Mara went from barely clinging onto her humanity in the pit to being completely fine, functional and fully present whilst not being injected with Dyebucetin for another whole hour (estimated as we are told they leave the pit after waiting 30 minutes, then they walk to Fatimah, do blood testing, theory discussing and finally have some predictable and dogshit discussion with Carter). The author didn't even try to make this believable, like seriously not one single unit of effort was put into this aspect. Oh, and I almost forgot, the immunity thing was fucking stupid and there was no need for it to exist :) (hide spoiler)]
Small non-spoiler things:
- In chapter 13 Rory makes a remark that it's the first time she's called Mara by her name and... that's just not true (this may be an ARC thing though). - They hide in a building that apparently has no windows. Now I'm not saying it's impossible for a building to have no windows, but really? You're telling me someone made an entire building with no windows? - This isn't a critique, and I apologize to all the Auroras out there, but I truly do not like that name.
I'm not mad, just disappointed. The zombie genre has once again failed me, when will I learn that maybe it's just not a good genre.. Umm, that being said if you have any recommendations for good zombie media, please tell me. Look at me, I'm an addict. I'm not even disappointed in the book, I'm just disappointed in myself at this point....more
I didn't finish this book, I could have forced myself to finish it like I've done with books in the past, but that kinda just ma2.5 / 5 ✰ DNF at 53.3%
I didn't finish this book, I could have forced myself to finish it like I've done with books in the past, but that kinda just makes me dislike reading. So instead I gave But How Are You, Really a fair shot (I read over half), and when I still didn't feel motivated to keep reading, I just quit.
This book has decently vast representation. There are plenty of characters of different genders and sexualities, so if you want a book with a lot of queer characters, BHAYR definitely provides that. The author also manages to create all these queer characters in a pretty authentic feeling way, unlike some authors.. so points for that. (One thing I will say is the MC is bisexual, but this is a romance with a man, so idk why it has the lesbian tag). This book also isn't just a romance, it puts a fair amount of effort into other things (sometimes to its detriment) such as exploring life after college. I actually think this aspect was done well and I enjoyed the realistic imperfections and exploration of insecurities with comparing your life to others.
But.. this book draaaags. Out of the 8 chapters I read, Reece wasn't even in 2 of them. About the aforementioned putting effort into non-romance things that is sometimes to the books detriment: BHAYR spends a lot of time giving commentary about queerness and other progressive topics and trying to be hip. I just find that to feel cringe, and also I'm not here for that! I'm here for romance! You might like that in your books, but personally I don't need references to 'baby gays', 'imposter syndrome', 'setting boundaries', 'triggers' and 'masculinity stuff to unpack [in therapy]' . None of those are annoying to me by themselves, but when there is a constant stream of them it feels more like I'm scrolling through TikTok rather than the thoughts/conversations of people in real life.
Adjacent to this is the fact that you'll struggle to get more than a few sentences without hearing a reference to Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande or some other musician or piece of media. This is something I personally despise in books, but that is of course very subjective.
Finally, let's talk about Ben. Ben is the MC's ex-boyfriend. He gets talked about a lot and it seems that Charlotte and him had a very toxic or abusive relationship, but it is so goddam vague. Now I fully admit that having only read half the book this could get explored later and then be okay, but so far, this aspect just rubs me the wrong way. The thing is it's been over 5 years since they were together and Ben is heavily brought up in the book as something that still strongly affects her. Now I'm not saying that an abusive relationship can't have effects lasting 5 years down the road, it definitely can, but my problem with this is that we aren't really told how abusive or what her relationship with Ben was. This issue isn't really actually explored at all. Details about Ben are super vague, their past relationship isn't fleshed out and the potential abuse isn't really elaborated on it's just repeatedly brought up that she has bad memories from him, so my question is: did the author really want to explore the lasting effects of an abusive relationship? or did they just want to have a progressive checkbox they could tick? To me, the 'abusive relationship' kind of gets too close to just feeling like a gimmick, which really puts me off.
This all lead me to feel bored and slightly annoyed. Reading through paragraphs and paragraphs that had nothing to do with Reece, Charlotte's job or moving the plot forward at all left me very unmotivated to keep reading. As another reviewer (Sarah Obermeyer) put it, the target audience are "people who would go berserk to be featured in a Buzzfeed video". And ya, that just isn't me. There are a lot of other romance books out there, I think I'd just suggest reading one of those....more
Good book, I have a few issues with it though. First off, massive respect to the author, he obviously put a ton of research and effort into 3.75 / 5 ✰
Good book, I have a few issues with it though. First off, massive respect to the author, he obviously put a ton of research and effort into this book and making sure he actually knew what he was talking about, I love that, very cool! I think The Martian also just has a great concept in general.
Unfortunately, I had a propensity to zoning out every time Watney opened his mouth. There was a lot of science and math talk, and although I enjoy those topics more than a lot of people, I could not stop zoning out every time he started talking about science shit. I significantly preferred when the book focused on the other characters, which is kind of goofy considering Watney is the main character! But, hey, I seriously did enjoy those chapters, so credit for that.
I also found that The Martian lacked some emotional depth. It's a very happy, positive book considering the extremely dire circumstances. That's fine, but I kind of wish there was a bit more of an exploration into the very likely mental strain a situation like that would provoke. There was never a moment in the book where I thought that everything wasn't going to be 100% fine. It just lacked that tension for me.
All that being said though, I did enjoy this book and think it's pretty great and pretty impressive. I definitely plan to keep reading Andy Weir books....more
I don't even know what this book was trying to achieve.
The one good thing I can say about An Education in Malice is that I felt it successful2.5 / 5 ✰
I don't even know what this book was trying to achieve.
The one good thing I can say about An Education in Malice is that I felt it successfully procured a sort of gloomy, gothic atmosphere.
Other than that.. it was surprisingly bland. Not much really happens. I've never read dark academia before, but this didn't feel very 'academic'. At the start of the book there is definitely an academic component incorporated, but then it just sorta disappears. Then there's the matter of De Lafontaine: I never felt the supposed allure of her character that was apparently so present and compelling to Carmilla and Laura. De Lafontaine just seemed like an annoying and overly controlling bitch, so it was hard to understand the other character's decisions and infatuation regarding her. As far as the plot that randomly appeared half way through: there was no urgency or tension, the characters didn't seem to care at all. It just seemed like eventually they were like ah shit ok I guess we better fix this issue. There aren't really any characters either. Laura makes some friends in the beginning, but ultimately these characters are so underdeveloped and irrelevant they end up just disappearing.
It also felt like the author tried to force kink into the book and I don't know why. It was never really explored properly and instead there were just weird, jarring and out of place lines in Laura's internal monologue.
I don't think I got anything out of reading this book. Although not painfully bad, it was scattered and unfocused. At the end of it I'm left wondering what was the point?...more
The simple existence of a fantasy book where women get to actually do important things and queerness is accepted as normal was enough to make m4 / 5 ✰
The simple existence of a fantasy book where women get to actually do important things and queerness is accepted as normal was enough to make me read The Priory of the Orange Tree. This aspect of the book shouldn't necessarily count as a positive, but to me, it does. Aside from this I'd say the book finds it's strength in the relationships between it's characters. Despite 4 POV characters, Ead clearly stands out as the strongest, and it is with her story and connections that I personally found the most interest and enjoyment.
The start of the book throws a lot of names, places and things at you. I listened to this as an audiobook while doing stuff so I didn't have the ability to go back and check things, and for the first day/several chapters I was thoroughly confused. Fortunately by the second day everything clicked into place. All I'm saying is be prepared for the possibility that you might be initially confused, and trust that it will get better.
The Priory of the Orange Tree isn't perfect. I found the big, climactic final battle to unfortunately fall flat. Which kind of sucks after such a long build up, but I'll just cling to the fact that at least I enjoyed the buildup. Other than that, the magic was a little too vague for my liking.
This isn't a critique of the book really, but it did annoy me when reading. Niclays. I actually despise this man overgrown rat, and the audiobook narrator wasn't doing him any favors either lol. I don't think Niclays actually understands how science works. Generally you'd have some sort of understanding of the properties of certain substances, a hypothesis to work with and then go from there. But Niclays is like a 5 year old just combining random ingredients he found in his kitchen with some random debris found on the ground outside. He doesn't even know/care what part of the dragon he wants to use!
Finally I want to talk about how firmly irremovable my jaw was from the floor as it was revealed that (view spoiler)[Kalyba (hide spoiler)] was an incestuous-groomer-raper-furry-motherfucker.
"A friend helped me escape . . . but I had to leave my Sabran. My little princess."
GOOD!! Your weird ass would've probably tried to fuck her too!!!!...more
Wow. This book really surprised me in a good way. Wish You Weren't Here is a light and easy read, which was exactly what I needed right now 3.75 / 5 ✰
Wow. This book really surprised me in a good way. Wish You Weren't Here is a light and easy read, which was exactly what I needed right now since I'm currently in the middle of a much more intense, long and complex book, so this provided a nice break.
First of all, I really like the initial dynamic/relationship between Juliette and Priya. It's not the typical 'enemies' dynamic where they are just like "grrrr I hate you". I also found myself actually connecting with Juliette's struggles at times. For example I thought the stuff about feeling invisible was quite well done and realistic. Wish You Weren't Here is firmly YA and although I often find myself not wanting to read YA because sometimes I find it cringe or the characters to be unrelatable and fake-ly immature, this book was actually fine for me (mostly).
Okay, so about that "mostly", this is my biggest complaint and the only thing that really detracted from my experience reading this book: Galahad. Or rather the lack of backlash against Galahad. I mean.. I'm sorry, but any person acted and spoke that way towards me when I was any age above 12 and I would've been a massive asshole to them and severely ruined the next 5 weeks of their life. But, okay, perhaps I can understand that Juliette may not be that type of confrontational person, but you cannot convince me that no one else on that camp wasn't firing back! As someone who has gone through school I've seen exactly what happens when adults disrespect teenagers, and it is not what happened in this book! This really started to annoy me, especially since we are told that Lucy is the confrontational type, but apparently she won't stand up for her friend? And really remember these are 17 year olds! they are not babies! Okay, Okay, though. All that aside, (trying to stay spoiler free), even if Juliette didn't want to be confrontational there was nothing making her uphold her end of the promise she made to Galahad. Me, personally, I would've been like fuck this bitch, I'm going anyway and you literally can't stop me. So in summary, that particular dilemma felt a bit.. forced, or annoying, or just unrealistic to my experience?
That out of the way, I do wish there was a bit more to the romance aspect. I understand they were going a bit more for the slow burn route, which I love, and it's YA, which I respect, but it just felt like there could've been a little bit more *something* with the romance. Perhaps it's more tension I'm looking for? I'm not quite sure.
Those complaints being said, I really did like this book! It was a short, refreshing read and exactly what I needed (I read it in a day) and I really enjoyed Juliette as the narrator (most of the time). I 100% recommend checking out I Wish You Weren't Here if you're interested, and I personally will be looking out for future books by this author :)
(fun fact: i have also sprained my ankle on a camp)...more
It's 2024 and I've read The Hunger Games for the first time. There is really nothing that I could say about this book that hasn't already bee4.5 / 5 ✰
It's 2024 and I've read The Hunger Games for the first time. There is really nothing that I could say about this book that hasn't already been said, so I'll just talk about my experience with it instead.
I went into The Hunger Games hoping to like it, but thinking I probably wouldn't. Goddam though I've never been happier to be wrong. I loved this shit. I suspected that I wasn't going to be a fan of the romance storyline, and ya I was right it was not my favorite, but what I didn't know was that the romance was actually such a great way to explore the idea of monetization of people and sponsorships. I really fucked with that exploration. In my opinion it was the only realistic way to even have a romance in a literal murder game situation, because otherwise I would've just been sitting there like bruh why are you kissing you're gonna die! But the sponsorship angle and using the romance to make them more appealing to the viewers was literally perfect.
This was also the first audiobook I've ever listened to, and like the book I was skeptical about if I would even like audiobooks at all. Once again though, I was wrong. Tatiana Maslany of Orphan Black narrates the audiobook, and holy fuck she is amazing. If you're into audiobooks you might want to check it out.
If you haven't read The Hunger Games yet and you're someone who thinks they might not like it because you're not a teenage girl, don't generally like YA, and hate love triangles.. you might be wrong, give this book a shot....more
The Soul of Chaos isn't a bad book, in fact there are great lines such as "Unauthorized my left testicle!", I just didn't perso2.75 / 5 ✰ DNF at 58.2%
The Soul of Chaos isn't a bad book, in fact there are great lines such as "Unauthorized my left testicle!", I just didn't personally gel with it (the book I mean, that line is great). I would say give the book a shot though since a lot of people seem to have enjoyed it.
I found the start of the book to be incredibly confusing, and maybe I'm the problem and wasn't paying attention (I do do that), but I still can't quite figure out what the fuck a 'rune' exactly is. This book really likes to just through you into it and not explain anything, which some people may enjoy, but it just lead to confusion and not the most great experience for me.
Other than that, there are a decent amount of characters introduced and I was doing okay keeping up with all of it until one point. I hadn't read a Rurik chapter since the day before and finally got to his POV and then for the life of me I could not remember who one of the characters was and I had to go and search his name to figure out who he was again.
My main issue is one that's kind of hard to explain, but I'll try. Things in this book just sort of happen, nothing is established to the reader about the world/the world's systems/characters. This leads to everything feeling like it just spawns out of nowhere. This character I've never heard of before randomly shows up and is evil and is tutoring the MC, ya okay I guess. Would've been nice to at least of heard of them before though. The MC has magic ring that can do things that help them repeatedly, I mean ya why not? I was never told what the limits of this world are, so I guess it makes sense. There are a lot more examples (but I don't want to spoil things), in fact pretty much everything that happens in this book I felt like this about. Just like, oh okay, never heard of that before but sure! I wish some details about the general world or people were fleshed out a bit more, or even just established to any degree at all.
Anyways, some combination of these factors made me lack the desire to keep reading. I DNF'd at 58%, and although this book doesn't do anything egregious and I could have finished (and have finished worse books), I just didn't have any motivation to keep reading and didn't want to force myself. All that negative jazz aside, there was one thing I really appreciated..
Often I'm hesitant to read books similar to The Soul of Chaos because they so frequently follow some path of fantasy = medieval style = sexist + homophobic, but I'm really happy to say that this author did not do that! I actually really loved this so much, maybe it's a small and irrelevant detail to some, but to me it really mattered. I love that Arkalis gets to be just Arkalis.
My other positive actually has nothing to do with the writing, but I just want to say I really like the art on the cover. Whoever drew it is very cool.
Thus concludes my probably too long review, all to say: I didn't love it, but maybe someone else would. I want to emphasize that The Soul of Chaos is not a bad book and the author seems like a great guy. I think there are sequels planned, so although I probably won't be reading them, I wish the author the best of luck.
(side note, how could Sahira possibly have smelled of citrus? They were in a goddam explosion and like 2 separate fights, probably hadn't showered in a while.. and she smelled of CITRUS???)...more
I first heard about The God of High School years ago, but I never read it. Then the anime adaptation came out and I also didn't watch it. But3.5 / 5 ✰
I first heard about The God of High School years ago, but I never read it. Then the anime adaptation came out and I also didn't watch it. But then I saw the first volume on Netgalley.. and now I've finally read some of it!
The first volume of TGoHS is a light-hearted and fun introduction to the manhwa. It's a self-aware, at times funny, constantly over the top and unrealistic, fast-paced manhwa with good art, not the best I've seen, but very still very solid. Definitely an enjoyable read, but ultimately this is just the first volume and is mainly setting everything up for the later volumes. Nonetheless, it's a good start.
The very, very start of this volume was a little confusing, and also rather irrelevant so far, though I'd assume it's further elaborated on in later volumes. Other than that, this is a manhwa, which in my experience means that usually women aren't represented in the best of ways. It's not egregious by any means, in fact I'd say it's on the better side of what I'd expect from a manhwa, manga, anime, etc. Few underwear shots and like only 2 women characters, oh and one of those 2 character's goal seems to be entirely based around men so... pretty standard and about what I'd expect.
So far TGoHS has been fun to read and I'm inclined to read more....more