Kalliope

Hard to explain why I didn't love this. The writing was very good, exactly what you'd want in a fantasy tale. It was descriptive, whimsical, very “once upon a time.” However, I couldn't quite connect to any of the characters. I found them flat for the most part. To better illustrate my point, if there was a string of dialogue with no identifiers (X said, Y said), I wouldn't be able to tell who was talking. The plot also slogged a bit. I think it's worth reading for the writing style, but there is better fantasy plot and character to be found elsewhere.

This was fine. I chose to listen to the audiobook version, and I'm really glad I made that choice, because this really isn't the kind of book I would sit down and read traditionally. In fact, I think the audio format suits the author's style and voice more than the written word. I don't find Ansari hilarious, but I laughed some throughout. The information was eye-opening in parts, especially the sections regarding international dating habits in the modern day. If I'm being honest, I listened to the audiobook in less than two days more to get it off my TBR than because I was really looking for a great read.

This book has the most grabbing synopsis I've ever seen. As soon as I read the synopsis, I ran to my library to get it, absorbing it in two nights. I went into it honestly expecting a somewhat exploitative dark comedy. And in some ways, that's what I got–but it was wrapped in a safety blanket of standard YA fare. The characters (aside from the main character, who is called Butter throughout) are largely indistinguishable from those in other YA books. They all speak in that not-quite-true-to-life-but-close-enough way. Butter, however, has quite a unique voice as the narrator. I enjoyed the fact that Butter was an imperfect character, and that Lange didn't make him an untouchable martyr. He makes mistakes, he does awful things, he's sometimes mean and a liar and misogynistic. But he's unique; I knew it was him talking throughout the story. Where the other high school characters were interchangeable, Butter stood out from the crowd in how he was written. The was quite a bit less preachy than I thought it would be. I didn't walk away thinking the message was “Don't be mean to fat people!” If anyone learned a lesson in this book, it was Butter himself. I would have given the book that extra star if it'd hadn't been so “YA predictable.” Despite its dark premise, the book isn't that shocking. It has elements of dark comedy (the other students rallying around Butter to kill himself), but I'd enjoy it more if the author had gone all the way with the humor. It's like she was trying to shock the reader only halfway. Other than that, I enjoyed the book. I'm a seasoned horror consumer, so this didn't come close to turning my stomach. But, of course, not everyone is me. It's an easy book to get through and I'd recommend it.

I took this book with me on a trip to the gorgeous Tennessee mountains. Looking at the cover, doesn't it look like it would be a perfect pick for such an environment? First of all, I LOVE the idea of summer camp. I feel that not enough books about summer camp exist for adults. From the cover and the description, I was expecting an exciting and lively adventure at camp with vibrant characters and a lush, green setting. I was so ready to dive right into this world, where young girls are walking arm-in-arm and growing up together for a summer, having new experiences and becoming friends for life. You don't get any of that with this book, by any stretch of the imagination. Instead, you get a lackluster setting that has no excuse to be lackluster (THE SETTING SHOULD BE GORGEOUS. THERE IS NO EXCUSE. IT SHOULD BE DESCRIBED OUT THE ASS BUT IT'S NOT. IT'S BORING AND WASHED-OUT, LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE IN THIS BOOK), supporting characters you can't bring yourself to care about one way or the other, a plot that just meanders and doesn't even try to get exciting beyond icky sexual encounters, and the basest, most selfish, most unfeeling and out-for-herself main character I've read about in a long time. Thea freaking Atwell, I am talking about you. Run and hide, girlfriend, because more than once I envisioned smacking you on the head with the very book you're in.

So, it doesn't take a genius to figure out right off the bat that there's tenseness in the Atwell family, probably having to do with Thea, primarily. I'm not going to tell you what happens, but I am going to say that THEA RUINS HER ENTIRE FAMILY 4 LYFE. Her parents and her twin brother, Sam, are never the same after what goes down; thus the whole sending her to camp deal. Because Goodreads lumps this book in the “coming-of-age” category, I was hoping some kind of coming-of-age would happen. Maybe Thea would grow as a person and return to her parents a shining model citizen? Yeah, no. She's the same nasty, horny brat that she was in the beginning. She doesn't come to terms with what she did wrong. She doesn't say she's sorry. She doesn't reflect on her part in what happened, or what she could have done differently. SHE DOESN'T EVEN SEEM TO THINK SHE DID ANYTHING WRONG. Being sent to camp should have been the first clue that she did something bad (actually, she should have known that what she did was wrong as she was doing it, yet here we are). That's why I can't stand her character. From start to finish, she is completely out for herself, pouty, and unwilling to even act human! Yet for some reason, she makes all these friends at camp? Are you kidding? SISSY, RUN AWAY. THEA IS A TERRIBLE PERSON. (I wish one of her horses had sat on her head and put us all out of our misery).

Thea is the biggest problem I have with this book. But there are other pieces of poop smeared all over this book that need mentioning. The only characters that even semi-intrigued me were Leona and Sissy (really, that's only because I imagined Leona as Daenerys Targaryen). Everyone else was bland, bland, bland. None of the characters acted like someone would in real life. NONE. I also found that the author would spring new characters on me without introducing them? I had to backpedal a couple times to see if they were introduced earlier, but nope. We're just supposed to know who they are, I guess.
Honestly, the more I think about this book, the more I hate it. I gave it 2 stars at first, because I did like the writing style for the most part. That's too generous. 1 star, bitch. Nobody should read this book. It was terrible. Icky sex, god-awful characters, and a bland setting. Really, the only good thing I can say about this book is that it had an ominous tone to start, before we discover the reason Thea is at camp. I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel here to find a tiny sliver of goodness. So glad this was from the library.

Although I don't really know what I was expecting, I was really, really disappointed in this book. I was so bored reading it, I decided to take notes on all the things I didn't like about it while I finished up the last 50 pages or so. That was much more interesting than the climax of the book.
The characters were, for the most part, terribly flat and uninteresting. They added nothing to the story. Bill was my favorite character, which isn't saying much because I didn't have much to choose from. Charlsie Tooten, for instance. She had nothing to say the entire time. I literally do not remember her character doing or saying anything. Pure filler. Lafayette, too. Sure, he was an interesting addition because he was a crossdresser, but the only thing I remember him doing was reacting to Sookie's new-found strength in the kitchen. I have no reason to dislike him or Charlsie, but they just didn't do much of anything.
Bill had the most interesting things to say, and he had a better personality than any of the other characters. Ironic, because he's THE ONE THAT'S DEAD.
I wanted to like Sookie, but some of her choices were questionable (her fashion choices aside–BANANA CLIPS, HELLO?!). I was bothered by her reaction to Gran's death. She reacted correctly upon finding her, but I would have liked to see how it really affected her afterward. There was no indication that the death of her beloved grandmother struck any kind of chord within her. Gran was one of the best characters! Poor thing.
Something else I found strange was Sookie's reaction to the cat Tina's death. She says herself that she had owned Tina for four years, but it's obvious that this incident was more profound to Sookie. Again, that's fine, but I didn't see much character development in Sookie that would indicate her sorrow for her murdered grandmother and cat. I noticed throughout the book there were sprinklings along the lines of “I'm sad, my grandma's dead and so's my cat,” but she doesn't REALLY seem to be affected by either event. It's like she's lying to the reader to make it sound like she really does feel that way, but there's no evidence for it in her behavior. I thought that was weird, and it greatly slanted my opinion of Sookie altogether.
I could write an entire review about Sam and the shapeshifting thing. I had to stop reading a couple times and just sit with my head back, attempting to perceive the circumstances that would make someone craft such a thing on paper. Short story version: Sam, you're a pervert. Sookie, you're an idiot. WHAT AN IDIOTIC DEVELOPMENT.
Finally, the line that cracked me up (unintentionally): “I thought I might watch Braveheart again: Mel Gibson in a kilt is always a mood raiser.” In what world is that not a weird thing to say?!

Like many other people, I'm sure, I picked this up because I saw the movie and liked it. The movie is quite charming and charismatic, and the book shares these traits. It has a rather Gilmore Girls feel: cozy, feminine-driven, romantic. For the most part I like how Hoffman has written this. By that I mean I like the words she uses, the sweetness and wonder with which she constructs the world of the story. But Hoffman narrates a LOT. I'd say the entire book is 85% narration, 15% dialogue. I am not talking about standard narration. And when I say she narrates a lot, I mean she explains everything you'd possibly need to know in any given scene in order to understand it. Hoffman introduces a character in a scene, and narrates what the character is doing, why they are doing it, how they are feeling, and why they are feeling that way. And I don't mean she explains it through character introspection or symbolism. She lists all the information the reader needs, and it gets very, very tedious the longer you read. Here is an example:

“Sally thought long and hard each time she hung up the phone. She thought about the girl in the drugstore and the sound of Antonia's footsteps on the stairs when she went to bed without a good-night hug. She thought about Michael's life and his death, and about every second they had spent together. She considered each of his kisses and all the words he had ever said to her. Everything was still gray— the paintings Antonia brought home from school and slipped beneath her door, the flannel pajamas Kylie wore on chilly mornings, the velvet curtains that kept the world at bay. But now Sally began to order things in her mind— grief and joy, dollars and cents, a baby's cry and the look on her face when you blew her a kiss on a windy afternoon. Such things might be worth something, a glance, a peek, a deeper look.”

Practical Magic

Got more than halfway through and decided to drop it. I don't see the similarity to Gone Girl that some reviewers are saying it has. I enjoy all of Gillian Flynn's work; she does a great job at crafting unlikable, yet interesting and breathing characters, and her story structure is tighter, making her reveals more satisfying. I found The Girl on the Train dull and uninteresting, even cliché at times.

I absolutely blazed through this in about 30 minutes because I was loving it. First off, the artwork and the use of framing is gorgeous and engrossing. I love the choice to use blue ink throughout rather than the standard black. There is also a great sense of atmosphere and nostalgia: the beach of your childhood, long stretches of afternoon, no responsibilities, the slow-moving beach town with both enough and not enough to hold your attention.
My one complaint is that the story cuts itself short at every turn. Every storyline could have been richer, deeper, more detailed, yet whole scenes end too soon, leaving the reader feeling, for lack of a better word, cheated. I would have read 50 or even 100 more pages of the story had it kept going because the art is so soft and childlike in the best way. I'd still recommend it, though, because the reviews are so widely varied.

This was a fairly entertaining little book in the same vein as Lemony Snicket. It's dark enough to be striking and mysterious, yet it isn't overly macabre. It deals with topics like death and loss in a mature, optimistic way. Something was missing, though. The characterization was missing that special quality that would help me remember these colorful folks after closing the book. It also lacked suspense, an important quality in a story about murder, ghosts, and graveyards. It is clear that Gaiman is skillful with prose, and I would probably enjoy some of his adult works much more.

This was my first Austen book, so the writing style took a bit of getting used to. However, I really grew to enjoy it! The story and characters really represented the time period and setting Austen chose, and it was easy for me to become immersed in the world of the story. I've been told Pride and Prejudice is the “worst one” of Austen's books, so I'm definitely looking forward to reading others! Now I'm off to watch the BBC miniseries. :)

I listened to this book on an audiobook from my library. I don't know much about Roxane Gay, but I must admit I went into this expecting something similar to Yes Means Yes, which I liked but was hotly, fiercely written and chock full of rather tiresome rhetorical questions related to feminism. Bad Feminist surprised me in how gently and wisely it was written. It isn't just a book about Gay's insights on feminist topics; it is also about her forays in competitive Scrabble and her first year as a college professor. Interwoven through these stories are her opinions on race and gender issues. She has attitude, but is not hard to swallow. She has personality and a distinct voice. I liked this book a lot.

I liked this! Sweet, nostalgic, and introspective are a few words I'd tack onto it. Unpredictable it is not. You don't have to be a genius to see where this story is going from the synopsis. But that's okay! I enjoyed the ride.
This book is in the John Green vein, but with one clear distinction: the characters (for the most part) talk like real people, not trendy smug philosophers. It has the sweet wistfulness of a John Green book. Is it stereotypical? A little. Is there obvious symbolism? Yes. Is it still a good book? Yes!
The characters are likable; the story is compelling. I liked the romance quite a lot. It's written sweetly and intelligently, taking note of the little things in a young person's experience. This book makes me want to read–is that weird to say?
My biggest complaint is the writing: Yoon slipped into the “tell, don't show” category more than once. She was trying to cram quite a lot of happenings into a small amount of space. There wasn't enough room for feelings to be felt by the reader. The introduction of emotion in the main character is rushed at times. Look, if I'm going to read a story about a girl who has been cloistered for eighteen years, I want to really experience it. For example, surely she has some social hang-ups, having only been in the presence of a few people in her life? Why is Maddy so perfect in this story? Why is she so composed, intelligent, and articulate? She doesn't even really struggle with her illness much. Olly serves as the catalyst for her yearning to escape the bubble. Before that, though, she doesn't seem to struggle with any character flaw. The only thing I can point to is her complete lack of regard for how a credit card works. Because, wow. :P
I will commend Yoon on her use of illustration and non-traditional text in the story. She includes emails, tickets, receipts, drawings, and notes, which I thought gave the story more style and character where a paragraph of text may not have had much punch. Who doesn't like to look at pictures? :)
I'd totally recommend this! Like I said, it's sweet and romantic. I like how it deals with illness and relationships between people.

Ooky spooky! This was such a creative and chilling collection of short stories! A commonality with collections like these is that there's generally at least one not-as-good story in the bunch. Here, however, they're all equally compelling! My one complaint is that the stories were all too short and felt incomplete. I do enjoy an ambiguous ending, but some of them were too ambiguous and I felt we moved on to the next story too abruptly. I may revisit this in the colder months. :)

Pretty much what I expected, given the first two. I liked this one more than the first two, however (I think it's mainly because Aspen was hardly in it). Was entertained by a couple plot twists, but that's basically it. Still the same maddening protagonist that we love to hate.

No, I will not be reading the fourth one. There shouldn't be a fourth one at all, in my opinion.

3.5

Having just finished the book, I can say that I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It initially reminded me a lot of Ella Enchanted, yet the further into the story I got, I found that it truly stands on its own as an original tale. My favorite components are the characters, who are all vivid and lifelike, and the plot twists, most of which I did not see coming and found quite gripping. At times the story did drag a bit and I found myself losing interest, but on the whole I enjoyed The Goose Girl as a charming young adult fantasy.