juneau 🥬
I initially was about to give this book 4 stars mainly because I like the writing and I was so interested by the love story of the main characters. But the more I think of it, the more I dislike it.
I was rooting for Lucy and Gabe's relationship but then things just started not working out for both of them so they broke up with each other. Then, Lucy met this other guy named Darren and I also find myself rooting for their relationship as well. But at that point, I'm kind of annoyed with Lucy because she's still obsessed with Gabe even though he doesn't care much about her anymore. Plus, she's already dating Darren, got engaged and eventually got married with him.
I didn't enjoy the second half of the book as much as I did in the first half. I'm constantly annoyed with the characters. I didn't like that Gabe just wanted to talk to Lucy just when he felt like talking to her. He would call her at random and will tell her that he misses her and that she's still his light, whatsoever, and then never calls her again for months or a year even. He's self-centered and doesn't acknowledge Lucy's feelings sometimes. I also didn't like how Lucy still thinks about Gabe all the time even though she's already married with two kids. I also didn't like how Lucy talked about how she didn't want to be a full time mom. I get that she's a career woman but she's talking about full time moms like she's degrading them. My mom is a full time mom and that scene just pissed me off. Being a career woman is no better than moms who prefer to stay at home and tend their kids. And Darren is even worse. I hate the way he treated Lucy and how he pushed his ideas and his plans towards her without asking for her thoughts and ideas on things that involves them both. I also hate that he doesn't trust her and commands her to do things with their kids when he can just do it himself.
The cheating part of the story just left a bad taste in my mouth. I didn't like how this book glorified it and made it justified at the same time and it drives me crazy. I know that these things do happen in real life but I just didn't like how the author handled and executed the said topic. I also didn't cry reading this book which is what I was expecting. Instead, I ended up not liking the characters and I felt let down by all of it.
I have very high expectations in this book because a lot of people that I follow on the internet really liked this. I can totally see why its a 4 or a 5 star rating to the other readers but I think its just average. Its just a mix of cliche mystery/thriller/suspense tropes that I think was not executed very well and almost seemed generic. This was good but for sure didn't blow me away.
I didn't know this was a thing until today! I'm a huge fan of the game back in 2015 and I loved the story and the characters so much. The graphic novel in the other hand, didn't work for me. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it, but the jumping through other dimensions bothered me a little bit knowing that it's not really Max's thing (in the game atleast). Other than that, I thought that the art style was nice, good lgbt+ rep and has an interesting storyline.
this is so beautiful! it might be my favorite of all elizabeth lim's covers and i am truly in love!!!!
I rarely give a 1 star rating to books but this one clearly deserves it. If I tell you that I hate this book, I really fucking hate this book. Sexualizing the fuck out of your friend's kid sister, calls her boobs “little sister tit” and uses “baby girl” as an endearment? Um, no thanks.
The writing style is so bad that I couldn't understand how the author explained things in this book. Trust me, Its ridiculous.
The characters, I just don't like them and I don't really care about them. The main characters have no personalities. Sure, Travis is an ex-famous-baseball player who calls his dick two bats (who even does that?) and is always hard for Georgie. Georgie is a clown and is in love with Travis since forever. Basically, they were horny for each other everytime. The side characters felt like they're just there for the sake of having more characters in the story, and they're completely pointless in my opinion.
The smut, I swear to god, it sounded so bad in the audiobook. I was cringing so hard that I felt so sorry for my ears to have experience that.
In conclusion, this is not romantic nor cute at all. It made me uncomfortable the whole time and I wished I've never read this.
The sequel focused towards the war between the maji and the nobility which I find interesting because it explored the different clans of the maji, the titans and also their magic. The downfall of the sequel for me is the writing. It became so repetitive and sometimes I just kept rolling my eyes after seeing certain phrases that are always there whenever I read a character perspective and yes, I'm talking about Amari's POV. Also, she's so annoying in this book and I'm done caring about her. I am once again not a fan of the romance. Although, the new love interest is somewhat better than Inan, I still think that its half baked and could've never existed at all, in my opinion. Overall, there's nothing remarkable happened throughout the book but I still cared about Zelie and the maji clans so 3 stars it is.
I'm not a huge middle-grade reader but I enjoyed this a lot. This was cute and a little spooky. I really liked the atmosphere that this book has and the plot is very interesting especially for a spooky middle-grade book. I will definitely be picking up the next book in this series because its that good.
First Read: ★★★★★
Second Read: ★★★★
I still liked this as the way it is but after I read it for the second time, I realized that I didn't like the romance between Zélie and Inan. I don't even know how I overlooked it when I first read it. Besides that, I'm still excited to pick up the sequel because I need to know what happens next.
This was fine but I didn't care much about the plot, the characters (except for Isaac) and what was going on in their town. I also think that the conflict in this isn't profound for me to care. But I do appreciate the bi representation in this book since it's realistic and is done pretty well. I'm not sure if I'll continue on with this series though but I might pick up the second book in the future just for my boy Isaac.
2.5 stars
This is very painful and hard to read but with a beautiful story about a parent's battle of not giving up with their child's drug addiction. This book made me feel as if I'm also experiencing the experiences that they had in their family and for me that's a great thing when it comes to non-fiction books. However, I was not a fan of this writing style. The constant references of quotes from movies and songs were kind of info dumpy that my brain can't quite process. But, I still appreciated the studies and the researches that are included in this book which made me learn a lot of things.
i went into this with great expectations, finished it, and those expectations were not met. i will say that the story started strong. i was creeped out, i cared for the characters, and i wanted to know more about the unknown entity. i can totally see the potential. however, as the story progressed, everything fell apart, and i wasn't so interested in the mystery and the horror anymore. it became repetitive that the thrill or horror i felt whenever the monster was around was gone. and the ending, it was so unsatisfying and left me thinking, “is that it?” i wanted more from it but it sadly fell short. i'm just sad that it ended up being a dud for me because i really wanted to like it.
I was so intrigued when I first started reading this book but then I found myself not really invested in the story. The writing is good, not bad for a debut author. It has a strong premise but I guess its poorly executed. I didn't really feel much about the twist because all through out, the story felt anticlimactic.
This book is so sad and dark. I picked this up thinking that this is another mystery thriller book but its actually more focused on the main character's love for her sister. This didn't quite work for me because I've expected different things from it. However, I still think that this is a good book. The writing style is beautifully written and the idea of telling the story from the perspective of the main character and a podcast is very unique. The audiobook is also phenomenal and its highly recommended. My only issue from this book is the ambiguous ending, but its just a personal preference. Overall, I still enjoyed it but I'm not blown away by the story.
This was better than the first book, in my opinion. I loved the characters even more in this one because I finally felt connected to them and I also loved the new characters that were introduced to us. I read this while I was listening to the audiobook and, once again, I fell in love with Libba Bray's writing as well as January LaVoy's voice acting that it made me fully immersed in the story. The reason why I took off a star is because the first half was a bit slow for me but when things started to pick up, it was a swell time.
Leah is one of my favorite characters in Simon Vs. and I was so excited to read this. However, this book disappointed me.
What I liked:
I appreciated the diversity in this book especially because the main character is bisexual and it also has characters who are gay and are people of color. I also liked Abby Suso's character. I really liked her personality and she honestly deserved better.
What I disliked:
I didn't like Leah's personality in this book at all. She's so rude, she's self-centered and she's making everything about her. I just couldn't get past on how negative her character in almost everything. It saddens me because this is not the Leah that I liked in the first book. It seems like she's a completely different character. I also didn't like how she didn't apologize to Abby after she came out to her. Its just frustrating. The romance, at first, I thought it was very cute but now that I think of it, it felt very rushed for my taste and the timing was just off. And the ending? Psh. The way this story ended is pretty bad in my opinion because we didn't get to see how their friend group was affected after what happened. Except we're just told through an epilogue email which is very brief so we didn't get enough information. I also didn't care much about Simon and Bram which is surprising but I feel so bad for Nick and Garrett though.