Tyler

3/5 • A book that has spent years on my TBR.

After probably 5+ years on my TBR I finally read Holes. I enjoyed the story and the relationships between the characters. As a high school teacher it's a book I can now confidently recommend to my junior students. I've watched the film several times and they did an excellent job with the adaptation from paper to on screen, so much so that I don't feel the need to revisit this book anytime soon.

Sometimes I think, “I could write a book.” Then I read a book like Hamnet and it humbles me as I think “I could never tell a story this well.” This book was perfection, the writing - incredible, the story - incredible, the emotions - I felt all of them. The way Maggie O'Farrell captured the grief of losing a child had me SOBBING! During part 2 I had to put the book down because I couldn't read through my tears. Everybody has to read this book once in their lifetime! I'm now on my historical fiction journey.

3/5 • “Maybe the best way to cope with the loss of the people we love is to find them in as many places and things as we possibly can.”

While this book was overall enjoyable and had me quite emotional in parts I felt parts of the writing to be a tad cringy and the relationship between Kenna and Scotty to be too intense for their short relationship. I was picturing the characters to be older than they were due to the nature of the storyline, however, due to the characters being young there was a lot of immature moments lending this book to a more young adult audience. Overall an enjoyable read but not very memorable.

Things were looking up! Not a single cringy scene in over 250 pages! I found myself thinking “here's a cute Ali Hazelwood romance book I would actually recommend to people”. But then, we get to chapter 19. Our first spice scene enters the chat! Cringe Factor 1: the scene lasts for over 20 pages. Cringe Factor 2: the film Twilight is playing in the background of said spice scene. Cringe Factor 3: they bring up the fact that he was jealous she was fake dating his brother, maybe don't discuss siblings in a spice scene. I will now and forever think of this book as a 4 ⭐️ before chapter 19 and a 1 ⭐️ after chapter 19. The cringe factor continued throughout the remainder of the book. Also after sleeping together one time the characters are already discussing moving in together, like slow down you're only in your late 20's. To me a good romance book has hundreds of pages of yearning and banter, then in the last 10 pages they get together and that's the end. Once the couple is happy and stable I lose interest, to be honest this book could have ended 100 pages earlier. Overall, I think this was my most disappointing read from Hazelwood as I was tricked into thinking this book deviated from her usual writing style and book reviewers rate this as their favourite of the three STEM focused novels. The reason I decided to pick up Love on the Brain and Love, Theoretically this month is because I was so intrigued by her new novel Bride, but I think I'll have to give it a miss for now as I can conclusively say Ali Hazelwood's writing style isn't for me.

When a book starts with the following historical note “In 1560, fifteen-year-old Lucrezia left Florence to begin married life with Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. Less than a year later she would be dead, rumoured that she had been murdered by her husband.” You know that you are in for a wild ride! I had really high expectations going into this book after just finishing ‘Hamnet' and falling in love with Maggie O'Farrell's writing. Her immaculate descriptions were again present, however, I found the pacing of this book to be much slower than her other work. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and loved the jumping timeline from past to present between chapters. Unfortunately, some of the chapter were over 100 pages and I personally felt were dragged out too much and not adding all that much to the story.

4/5 • Worth the awards!

I really enjoyed this unique perspective into game development in the early 90's, it's actually incredible how the games written in this book don't exist as they are recounted with so much detail. I enjoyed the character relationships for the first half of the book but found the shifting in dynamics in the second half to be frustrating. Not normally a book I would pick up but worth the read and would recommend it.

A mixture of brilliance and frustration - I really appreciated the character development of Nesta, and how she grapples with her demons from her childhood and the war in order to seek redemption from her family and the ‘inner circle'. The pacing of this book was less than desirable, and certain plot points felt underdeveloped. I believe the romance storyline of this book overshadows other potential storylines, leaving some aspects unexplored or rushed (there was spice scenes that went on for 15+ pages but a pivotal enemy was defeated in 3). While it has moments of brilliance (I can't believe my favourite new character was a house), the book struggles to reach the heights of the original trilogy.

5/5 • Worth the hype!

As someone who grew up not watching iCarly, and was unaware of who Jennette was when this book gained popularity I still immensely enjoyed this book. It was honest, raw and shocking at times and I would highly recommend it to anyone as it sheds some light into the turmoil child actors can face growing up in the spotlight.

4/5 • I was hooked by the first 20 pages, however, the story dried up a bit up until page 150. Almost DNF'd but I had read so many amazing reviews that I persisted and I am so glad I did. I read the final 50% of this book in one day. There was twists I didn't see coming and the overall message and correlations of the British colonisation was so moving and eye opening that it should be on everybody's TBR.