Harvey

OMG I BLOODY LOVE THIS BOOK HELLO !! It's so much better than the shadow and bone trilogy (full offence, i don't care). the characters are so much better, the plot was so much better and the FUCKING RELATIONSHIPS?? THEY WERE SO COOL !!! They were all like polar opposites of each other but also really similar and god the chemistry between the couples

ok probably the best book of the shadow and bone trilogy. i really really love the whole squad moment — like harshaw and oncat ?? my literal favs. tolya and tamar are, well, tolya and tamar and zoya is quite literally a comedian. I GOT RLY HAPPY WHEN TAMAR AND NADIA HAD A LIL GAY MOMENT LIKE GOOD FOR THEM !! GOOD FOR THEM !! Also Nikolai is genuinely my favourite person on earth i was so sad when he turned into a nichevo'ya

I just wanna talk about how much i love Nikolai like I literally kin him — best part of this bloody book. the rest of it was kind of boring to be honest; i don't like mal and alina and i don't really ship them either. i do like tolya and tamar tho ! i think this has a good storyline; the darkling randomly showing up was a good touch. but mal really pissed me off in this book, i just don't like him. i think he's really selfish and just annoying. he's jealous of alina because she's different and she's finally growing up and he needs to fucking realise that they can't be “commoners on the run” when alina is the bloody sun summoner. i really wish nikolai and alina had kissed tho

i love this book. i love how meaningful and impactful every single line is. when i was reading it constantly felt like i was looking for answers, like how i could find my own way out of the labyrinth, or what my great perhaps was/will be. this book just leaves me utterly curious about life, and i love it. i felt like alaska's character was so purposefully incomplete, and the mystery element of her personality really makes the book whole. no one never really knew alaska; for example, pudge started to forget things she did because he'd never really remembered those things about her. another example is the colonel forgetting what she looked like. i think those are significant things to portray how alaska was never really known, always half-seen. now if ur wondering what i think about alaska's death, i think it was suicide. i think she wanted to get out of her labyrinth of grief and hurt, “straight and fast”. she felt failure about her actions towards her mum, and felt as though the only thing she could do to make up for those actions was to die.

i am finally free of this book ! just kidding, but not really. a lot of time id no idea what was going on, but i'll try to analyse. what i got is that young heathcliff and catherine were girlbosses, and fuck everyone else. i think what they had was true love and they deserved to be together. i think after cathy (earnshaw/linton?) died, heathcliff became overcome with grief and later on, greed. i think he used his son to his advantage, encouraging him to marry catherine (heathcliff) for the inheritance. i really did like linton though, i thought he was such a sweet kid. and the way catherine described him was really lovely, too. i'm just gonna flat out say that i hated catherine heathcliff. she was this little pretentious brat who cried every time she didn't get her own way. i didn't like hareton at first, but he ended up becoming one of my favourites. catherine treated him like a literal science experiment, and she was so bipolar with with him. one moment she'd be like “ew don't touch me you're dirty asf” and the next she was like “i wanna be friends lol” like ??? it was weird, and i think hareton was treated badly because he liked catherine so much that he just gave into all of it. also the theme of death is so present in this fucking story LOL. you just kinda get used to all of the characters dying. at some points, i didn't even know WHO was dying, just that someone was gone. my favourite quote is probably, “it would degrade me to marry heathcliff, now; so he shall never know how i love him; and that, not because he's handsome, nelly, but because he's more myself than i am. whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” it's such a beautiful love confession and i just think that those two were made for each other.

This book is relatable in the sense that Elliot yearned for authenticity, to be himself, for years. My desire to be trans was unacknowledged by myself, as I hadn't even known it was possible. I did like the parts where he focused on that experience, on public perception about being LGBTQ. I just wish the book was more focused on that fact rather than his sex life (which took up about 50% of the book). I love Elliot Page and I can acknowledge all of the effort and originality he put into this book. Memoirs aren't really for me, I suppose.

i liked this book. i didn't like it as much as the first one, but it was still beautiful in discovering what love and friendship meant and how those two things are inherently intertwined. i liked the exploration of loss and grief and isolation, and how we feel as though we will never belong. CONS: someone once said that the conversations were unrealistic, and now i cannot unsee that. is it so hard to have an informal conversation? also, i almost felt as if there was bi-erasure in this book; i feel like ari was meant to be bisexual. now i know gay men can describe/love women without romantically loving women, but here's my quota: ari was sexually attracted to men and romantically attracted to women. i think the way he described people like mrs q and cassandra, he described them in a way where it made it seem like he had a crush on them. he 100% mrs q was a milf???? like ok, i get it, gay men

this book makes me feel like i can never trust anyone again. i honestly suspected all of them... the whole “aces” thing was so fucked up to the point i felt sick. i think it's so so important (esp for white ppl) to understand what poc go through everyday; i definitely think i learnt a lot from this book. also??? i loved how it had both mlm and wlw rep!!!! like i've never seen both in a book before, well, nothing that i've read, so i loved it. there's nothing to criticise about this book, really, apart from chi being a BITCH at times

oh god where to start. i can definitely say that the book was a lot better than the film. i felt the film more homoerotic, and more focusing on dorian's sins rather than dorian's madness. the book talks of beauty and we see a lot of concepts from harry. i think the homoeroticism is definitely still present in the book with the relationship of basil and dorian, and perhaps dorian and alan. basil worshipped him until his death. harry is a more complex character. when i say complex i mean he gets on my fucking nerves. team basil !!!!! the book is absolutely eerie and amazing to read as you sort of fall into this madness WITH dorian. you see how he is changed by harry's ideas, and how harry and basil are contrasted like angel and devil. basil pulls him to the surface whereas harry drowns him. eventually, dorian becomes overcome by the guilt of the murder, i suppose, among other things. he realises that eternal beauty and the boyishness of youth isn't something that he needed, anymore. this book focuses on vanity and how some, like dorian, take it for granted. it shows how one would do anything to stay looking youthful.