Tessa

4.25* (first time reading it 09/11/18-10/10/18)

Reread (07/01/19-07/15/19) went the audiobook route this time and have no regrets! Armie Hammer's voice is beautiful, relaxing and perfect. Experiencing this story a second time (book wise, I have seen the movie at least 5 times now) gave me a new appreciation for the story. And my rating is now a 5 star.
> second reread (07/31/22-08/07/22) While I still have an absolute love for this book and story I never noticed how obsessed Elio is, he needs to take a few chill pills. Other than that the writing is still amazing.
I'm probably not allowed to say it but I do think the movie is better. Less obsessive and the slight changes that were made only improved the book. 84 tabs were used in the annotating of this book. 4.5*

This book started off so strong but it lost me at the last third of the story.
I had also not expected the amount of sexism and weird comments towards women that it had.
Things like: ‘he's a corporation lawyer and she's just the little woman.'
‘It's that you've got me. So now I can be - your obedient and most loving servant.'
‘I felt her moving, rushing to open the gates of her strong, walled city and let the king of glory come in.'

3,5*

This books has it's pro's and cons. One of the cons is that it felt a little one sided and focussed a lot of the negatives in Dahl's life (mostly caning.. so much caning) that it sometimes almost became depressing to read. But on the other side, Dahl always has a funny spin to everything and makes sure you understand the time in which he was a child.

It was an interesting read and I would recommend if you are interested.

3,5*

The formatting of this book made my enjoyment of it a bit difficult and some of the perspectives/paragraphs were a bit unnecessary for me personally. But the writing was incredible and I learned a lot about women's history in Europe and about all these incredible women I'd never heard if before.

Holy shit.
Adam, (I like to think I'm on a first name basis at this point) how dare you break my heart every single time.
This book is beautiful and while it sometimes repeats itself too much it didn't take away from my enjoyment. I was filled with emotions, ranging from bliss to shock to sadness.
I am sooo happy this book didn't disappoint and I would like to buy the next heartbreaking book Adam will write for us.

Now excuse me while I go sit in a corner and process this book for the next three days, please and thank you.

I'm not a fan of short story collections, but this sounded too good not to read, so I did. (Also the title is one of the best I've seen)

The writing was beautiful and I'd love to read a full-length novel by Ifeakandu one day.

My favorite stories were
- Happy Is a Doing Word
- Where the Heart Sleeps
- What the Singers Say About Love
- Mother's love

I had high hopes for this book.. It's written by an actual couple who met in college, that sounds like a recipe for an amazing rom-com, you would think. Sadly, this book fell very flat for me.
While I am not the biggest romance reader, I do appreciate a cute rom-com from time to time.
In this case I just did not care enough about the characters. Both of the girls were very annoying to me in the beginning, thankfully this wasn't a big problem as I continued reading. I also could predict the major events, which just made me feel like I was wasting my time reading.
Instead of fully DNFing this book I decided to skip parts until I found something interesting to read.
What I really appreciated was the time spent on family dynamics. While the drunk parent has been a bit played out in the romance genre (imo) I thought it was really interesting that Molly has conversations with her mother about their heritage and how it effects them differently.
I think if the book had focussed more on their families and not a DUFF remix I would have enjoyed it more.
The reason I gave it three starts is because it's not a bad book, it's just not my taste.

This, sadly, did not live up to my expectations.
I LOVED The Martian and expected to feel the same way about this book. Unfortunately, I did not like the main character as much. He'a still a good guy, but some of the remarks he kept making about him being American and not using the metric system sometimes and him being ‘not like other teachers' was pretty annoying. (This is coming from a teacher.)
Halfway through the book Weir also repeated himself quite a lot. The book was just a bit too long.

Negative things aside, the book was still a lot of fun to read and once again a unique concept. I am Rocky's number one fan. I would do anything for that weird, little creature. It also reads very easily, even if you know nothing about science, like me.

It doesn't feel right to give this book anything less than 4 stars, so, even though I had my irritations and this this book could be edited a bit more, 4 stars it is

Maybe I will love Artemis more :)

You can tell Adam Silvera has improved from his first fantasy novel. Even though the pacing towards the middle got slower and there was some repetition the book still kept me hooked. The ending was very good and makes me want the next one asap. I can't wait to see how the trilogy (I assume) will end!

Omg, this book was a lot heavier than I expected it to be. But I thought it was handled well. While I did hope for full on fluffy cute pages for the duration of the book I was glad it took a more realistic approach to loge in general. I did almost cry twice, but let's not talk about that.

Vol 4 is now tied with vol 2 as my favorite and I cannot wait to see what happens in the 5th (and unfortunately last) installment!!

3,5*
Sadly, I did not love this book like I thought I would.
What I wanted from this book was explaining and examining Pride and all that surrounds it from the perspective of a 12/13 year old boy whose father just came out as gay.
Instead I got a third of the book where the parents are fighting followed by two thirds of people getting lost and trying to find each other, which happens to be at Pride in London.
While there are definitely great moments relating to Pride and queerness (for example pointing out that it is a protest and using a Marsha P Johnson quote), it sadly fails to examine these further.
Who was Marsha P Johnson and why is her quote used? Why is Pride (still) a protest? Why do people become drag queens and what does it mean when people use they/them pronouns?
All of these things are touched on briefly but never actually talked about, which is such a shame when you have a book for younger audiences who probably do not (fully) understand these things.

The biggest miss for me was that there is almost no bonding between the main character and his father. The whole reason he goes to Pride is to find answers relating to his dad and the situation they are in. Some of these answers are found, but with people he meets on the way. The whole getting to London and trying to find each other after getting lost takes up almost half the book and then at the end Archie (mc) and his dad have a quick chat about how nothing had actually changed and then they hug. There is no talk about how the first Pride was for his father after finally having come out, nothing about how the family reacts or what it would be like if his dad got into a new relationship.

All in all, this is not a bad book. It has a very diverse cast of characters and is a great conversation starter for young audiences. It also has the great sense of adventure and humour that suits young readers, but it could have been so much more.