Rebecca Doctor

This book comes in hot and I found myself doing my best Alissa Edwards impression and saying ‘What the fuck is going on in here on this day?' several times over. I even checked if it was a sequel (it's not). So much lore dropped in expositional dumps whilst a shit tonne of action and semi erotica happens; maybe I'm just stupid but I found the opening hard to follow. The rest is basically just erotica with a bit of cowboy stuff thrown in so if you're into that then you'll probably like this

I bought this book when work was scarce with the intention of swatting up on my ‘days off'. One week later I was offered one of the longest jobs running in London. Lately, we've had some slow days and I have been keeping it on the liner. The team keep asking me what I've learned. I intend to read it, cover to cover.

I tend to find the sort of review I'm about to write attention-seeking and reeking of ‘I'm not like other girls'. Unfortunately, this book does not apply to me, and I figured that this review, wanky as it may be, might help you decide if it is for you.

Recommended by a dear friend who thought it might be of help to me (a person who routinely suffers from major burnout) I was determined to give it a fair go. However, it failed to move me in the first half and I don't think I will make it to the second. I didn't feel that the proposed societal pressures on how to look and what kind of woman I ought to be really translated to my life, and I found the suggestion of ‘human giver syndrome' somewhat obvious and reductive. Overwhelmingly, I didn't find much actionable advice.

I generally work 10-14 hour days, and this year I have really pushed it. I love my job and that keeps me going, but right now I'm a bit burned out. Listening to a chapter about how the ‘bikini industry' is lying to women, I decided to give this book a rest. There's a large amount of pop feminism interspersed with basic self-help stress management, and for me, I think I would have found a less targeted book less irritating. I am a feminist myself, but I find the sort of rhetoric found here very 2015, basic, and unhelpful.

I remember Anna Biller announcing that her next feature would be a Bluebeard picture on twitter years ago and I don't know what happened that it morphed into this but I truly enjoyed this as I would one of her films. I feel because I'm so versed in her visual style I could further imagine her intent and whilst it was a lot to get used to, I did end up loving the strange, transatlantic idiolect and imagined current day England.

I've never read anything like this before and despite living my teens and early twenties in a house with two Samaritans in leadership roles I've never considered suicide in the way that this book made me. I'm going to do my damn best in future to stop using the outdated term ‘commit' suicide and will be replacing it with ‘taking one's own life'.

I didn't resonate with any characters until towards the end, and in fact I found many of them quite vapid and tiring to be around. Honestly if this hadn't been on Libby and I didn't fear not being able to pick it up again on my own timeline I would have quit early I think. Those days ticking down are a great motivator.

Feyre has a repeated Stockholm syndrome and it took me until book 2 but now so do I. With that ending, I am locked in. Brainwashed. I will be reading the rest.

Recommend the audiobook- missed something whilst driving? Don't worry, it'll repeat itself pretty soon. Worried about too much action being hard to follow? Don't worry, it's largely exposition dumps followed by lengthy scenic descriptions and then a lil bit of sex, which goes on way longer than expected in most cases. If you like to read fast and loose, here's the series for you.

I would like to know how many times Feyre pukes in this book total. I think she vomits multiple times per chapter, and this is a long book. At least now SJM has stopped describing her watery bowels though.

Didn't love that when F&R first got it on she was covered in paint, bit reminiscent of the first book when he was abusing her. His whole character being rewritten in a big dump as well, don't super love that but I do love a tattooed bad boy with a heart of gold so count me in.

I wanted to read this because it's popular but a friend said this series doesn't ‘get good' until book 4, so audiobook it was. Thank you to my public library, I'm glad I didn't pay for it. In some ways I can see why it's popular; it repeats itself a lot, leaves no room for interpretation and every point is really hammered home. In some ways this made it deeply frustrating- with a good editor it could have been half the length and much more exciting, but as it is it makes it the book equivalent of ‘second screen' worthy; I didn't have to worry about missing anything whilst I was driving or if someone interrupted to have a chat whilst I was washing dishes etc. All those pages though and the romance was still subpar? I don't buy their chemistry, they're both wet weekends and she had little choice in a partner because she was stuck there. You'll notice I use no character names here. I know from a previous attempt to read a Sarah J Mass book that all of the names are probably spelled stupidly, another reason to listen if ever I heard one.

Picking this book up from the communal bookshelf in a friend's shared house to find it intensely annotated, with brightly coloured tabs on many pages, I was intrigued. I downloaded the audiobook for the drive home and found myself completely compelled by Chris and her journey, her honesty, her relationships and her tangents. As a filmmaker (though I make little of my own work, instead committing my time to assist others in making sunday night television and rap music videos) I like to think I have something in common with Chris, or at least we have a lot of shared interests. Her reflections on art and polite society were greatly entertaining, and her draw toward this mysterious academic man being so intertwined with revitalising her fading relationship with her husband made for a complex and fascinating story.