Deanna

It had its moments, but the gimmick of the changing husbands got old fast and I found the entire premise (and ending) frustrating.

DNF after 2.5 stories. The stories are short, simple, and cute and there is some nice (very obvious) messaging happening, but it quickly got repetitive and predictable. The writing felt very stilted and I’m not sure if that is how the original is written or a commentary on the translation work, which in general was filled with typos.

Gave up around 160 pages in. Despite the occasional beautiful sentence or philosophy, it too me around 50 pages to even orient myself to the world-building and narrative and overall lacked a cohesive story

I enjoyed this book overall, but since it is really a series of vignettes I didn’t feel like there was anything really compelling to drive me through reading. I overall really enjoyed most of the stories and the callbacks to earlier characters in later chapters. The final two chapters were the least compelling for me

It was fine. The first section of the book had good pacing and some increasingly tense and terrifying scenes that lived up to the marketing. The pacing in part two felt too slow and then the author decided to use sexual assault as a plot point, which was unnecessary. It turned me off the book for about a month before I decided to just finish it. The end was solid and duly gruesome with only a slight nod to some of the racial dynamics that may have been true in the 90s but probably could have been reevaluated for this story.

The book does what it sets out to do: examine women and power generally through the lens of how Greek and Roman influence got is here. A product of its time, it is a broad look on the topic and although there are nods to intersectionality, it is mostly looking at power for white, cis women. It’s a quick read that gives a general foundation and some historical information.

I really enjoyed this collection of short stories, for the most part. Each story also included a note from the author discussing which short story they drew their inspiration from and what that story and its themes meant to them, which was really interesting to read.

My out and out favorites from the collection were Neil Gaiman's “The Sleeper and the Spindle” and Holly Black's “Millcara”. I also enjoyed Melissa Marr's “Awakened” and Kami Garcia's “The Soul Collector”, but grew to appreciate them more upon reading the author's notes on the stories and their inspirations (Marr's linking selkies to feminism and Garcia's linking the themes in “Rumpelstiltskin” to the damage done by drugs and violence in inner cities).

Unlike the first book, The Magician King has a very clearly defined plot and the pacing issues in The Magicians were solved. Quentin's story was great, but I found Julia's story fascinating. It started to feel a little long towards the end, but overall I really enjoyed it.

The beginning is a little slow, but once Jane comes to Thornfield, I didn't want to put the book down. Jane is her own strong person and I enjoyed reading her story and Mr. Rochester's, although at times it was frustrating as what is so obvious to the reader is not necessarily so to Jane or Rochester.

I really wanted to like this book, but I was bored for most of the stories. I was impressed by the wide range of cultural stories told throughout the book, but many came across as an oral tradition that didn't transfer well into print. The art is all over the place, but I do think that, for the most part, it fit with the style of the story being told.

Highly readable and engrossing. I could have done without the chapters about his family life - they didn't add anything to the story for me.

Phillips's writing is evocative and emotional and gives the reader glimpses into the lives of women who are all connected to one another through the disappearance of two sisters. The book's chapters function as vignettes which could stand on their own, but, although there is a character list, I sometimes lost the thread of how all the women were connected. As I was reading, I thought the book was solid with beautiful writing, but the ending and the way Phillips' writing built suspense and anticipation and raw emotion really left an impact and bumped the book up a rating in my mind. Overall, I think the book explores the ways in which men harm women and looks at women's value in Russian society, especially through the comparison of treatment between Indigenous and Russian girls/women.

All of the women are intentionally insufferable, and sometimes this was highly amusing, but other times it made me want to throw the book. It was overall enjoyable, but probably best read in short bursts.

This is a great YA vampire series filled with engaging characters who each bring their own strengths to the story. Mead doesn't shy away from difficult subjects and it's to her credit throughout the entire series. I couldn't put these books down.

This is obviously Clarke's magnum opus and when it is good, it's amazing, but unfortunately for me there were many parts where the story dragged and the interesting and boring didn't balance out. This is a book where everything connects, even when you can't possibly see how at the time, and that in and of itself is impressive.

Solid, but not as good as the second book. While it doesn't have the pacing issues of The Magicians, the book seems to have multiple crescendos and at the end of each, I was left feeling like they weren't working together towards the ending, but rather just were vignettes (similar to how I felt reading The Magicians). It ties together in the end, but not in a seamless way. I'm not sure if it's a writing style I'm not used to or if it's, in itself, just clumsy.

I went into this expecting more of the memoir about a father taking his son's course and their subsequent voyage retracing the Odyssey (how the book was marketed . . . ), but the book is instead an academic look at the themes of personality and the father-son relationship of the Odyssey then projected onto Mendelsohn's exploration of his father's life. It was interesting to read from an academic standpoint–although at times Mendelsohn's descriptions and asides come off as condescending and pretentious–but my favorite part of the book was the final chapter where Mendelsohn abandons most of the academic reflections for the more emotional look at his dad's aging.

I was completely drawn into this book. Sorcha has a quiet strength that I found very appealing and the story mixes myth and legend with relatable characters whom I fell in love with.

Pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the book and how amusing I found it (I don't remember finding Bloodsucking Fiends that great or funny). Teenage goth girl and “vampyre” wannabe, Abby Normal, was by far my favorite and most hilarious character.

I've had a hard time getting into magical realism in the past, but the YA format definitely helped to make this accessible. The writing is lush and beautiful, but that beauty seemed to soften the emotional climaxes of the book. There's depth to the ending, but I'm not sure the plot leading up to it adequately built that depth. That said, I did enjoy this book overall.

This series is such a guilty pleasure for me, but G.A. Aiken writes engaging characters (for the most part) and sucks you into the story. The books are filled with strong female and male characters alike and a dash of humor.

A great sequel to Daughter of the Forest. Liadan shows a different form of strength than her mother, but she is just as relatable and amazing.

It was fun to read this to continue the story set up in the first two books. Marillier's writing is great, but I didn't enjoy Fianne or her story as much as I did with Sorcha and Liadan.

I could not get in to this book. I feel like I should have taken notes to absorb any of the information Tyson presented. Unlike Bill Bryson's “A Short History of Nearly Everything” which interweaves stories with its information, this book is fact after fact after fact and no matter what time of the day I read it, I could not focus on it.

I enjoyed the first half of the book and was intrigued by McCandless's story, but had a hard time getting through the second half, which mostly speculates on McCandless's state of mind. Krakauer devotes several chapters to his own wilderness sojourn to try to relate to McCandless, but I was ultimately bored by this and found it unnecessary.