ren

4 stars!!
i don't really have any coherent thoughts about this one but i loved the creepy(?) vibes. i suppose it's ~atmospheric~ (which i had always imagined i would love in a book, as i do for movies. but i was so sorely disapointed in the bone houses which was also touted for its atmosphere i thought the genre was a miss for me. happy to see that its not and that one just didn't do it for me) it wasn't too scary but i enjoyed how it was a little dark fairy-tale esque.
i am 100% here for merin and i think she was a great character. i really felt for her and i wanted to find out everything about her history and family as she did. the twists and turns kept me interested, but the ride was enjoyable too. i wasn't just skipping ahead dying to see where it would end because the various settings and minor characters were really interesting and felt whole.
the narrator had a great voice, and it really suited the setting. but i did find it a touch quick – whereas usually i'll speed up audiobooks a little i actually had to slow this to 0.95 to pay attention properly, but that may be saying more of my current brainstate than anything else.

there are a few things i wish were explained/visited a bit more deeply (the automaton, the queen, her parents, her grandmother etc) but it works in this kind of story. i don't feel dissatisfied or cheated because its kind of supposed to be a mystery?

i liked the casual drops at same sex relationships being typical in this world, i am just sad that merin didn't run off with a mer and/or automaton to live her (my) sapphic dreams.

fuck it 5 stars :)

a cute and surreal book of little stories

4.5! really liked this one. as much as i love high fantasy and the worldbuilding/exciting info that comes with that its a nice change of pace to have a urban fantasy as a nice easy read. i still got to satisfy my love for the fantasy elements with the interesting magic system, as well as my (poor broken) magic-school loving heart. i loved how they showed all the cute dumb magic teens would get up to at school (and how much ivy hated it). I think that having a non-magical protagonist was a good choice, it meant it was simple to ease me into the magic systems with good excuses to explain stuff.

i enjoyed the romantic relationships, casual lgbt rep and surprisingly i really liked ivy's character. i think the grumpy alcoholic detective is pretty over-done, but i think this subverts(?) it well. i really felt for her emotionally and i was invested in the murder mystery.

i liked the ending and the direction it went in...

i don't have many coherent thoughts about this book lol IT WAS GOOD!!!!!

cute achillean story :)

sadly, this was a disappointing for me compared to the first book which i really enjoyed. i wasn't invested in the storyline, or even really the characters - which was hard for me to grasp because in the previous book i was cheering along for their romance pretty hard. book 1 did lose me at the end with the card games on motorcycles etc near the end but i still enjoyed it yanno? especially at the beginning, i had to really force myself to keep reading through.

there were so many nonsensical moments, i know that fantasy, and ya fantasy (don't come for me) always has those eye roll moments but ‘what if we were in the middle of a riot and are surrounded by enemies who could kill us at anytime and we kissed

parts of this were 4 stars, parts of it lost me completely. i nearly tapped out at 30%, before it picked up and got great. then from about 60% onwards it meandered between okay and bad and i was just listening along wanting for it to be over.

i liked a lot about this, and i think i would've preferred it if it was more memoir, less inspo. i didn't gel with a lot of her advice in the beginning, and found it more powerful when she spoke about her own experiences and how she overcame them. eg: being fireproof (the burning bush allegory was a nice touch) and that emotions are there to be felt.

i loooveed when she described meeting her wife, i wish to read a book simply about her gushing about how much she loves her, their relationship is really sweet.

its a very religious/spiritual book, and gets very preachy at parts even though i think she's trying not to be. she also talks a lot about 1 child and how much they are bonded in great detail and only briefly mentions her other two children - this is obviously not a huge deal but was just something i noticed.

1.5 - such a steep decline. characterisation all over the place and 80% of the book is edward and jacob fighting over bella like a chew toy.

not to forget confederate soldier jasper reveal, which no one in the story bats an eyelid at.

everyone in this book manipulates and undermines bella so much. i feel sorry for her - she tries to stand up for herself and be strong in her ideals and she's constantly thrown to the side like trash. no wonder she feels so badly about herself.

reading this as an adult definitely hit different. i got the creepy vibes from edward a little when i read this for the first (and only, before now) time as a teen, but i never got the jacob hate. this book lays out so clearly all the horrible things both these boys do to bella– and she just takes it all.

#belladeservedbetter

this was a trip

lots of cute moments in this one, a few sad ones. i mostly enjoyed this because i have grown fond of the characters and care to see their story arcs complete, but I didn't find the plot too exciting. I'm glad adam became more likeable throughout this book, i was finding it hard to read about him before but the scene when he and gansey shake hands gives me hope - i hope this is a real turning point for him.

i prefered the second book, which i really didn't expect at all given how much i disliked/nothinged ronan in the first book.
i was disappointed at how the villain was foiled so easily, to have a glimmer of hope for an alternative villain, and then quickly dashed by the reemergance of who i assume to be the villain of book four. i hope the fourth can wrap things up nicely.

i liked this better than 3, but not quite as much as 2 - i think. i need some time to ponder on this one. but I'm going with 3.5 for now
against all expectation i really enjoyed Henry as a character so i thought he was a nice addition and was satisfied with the epilogue. though there were a lot of characters in this book (and the last) that just kind of felt like... thrown in there, and i wanted so much to have them be more fleshed out

throughout the series we've had about 9 antagonists and it was a bit jarring to keep switching bad guys.

it started out great and gradually got worse. half way through when ‘the big thing' happens it started to go downhill. i grew very tired of eragon's cringy longings constantly being mentioned. i get he's a horny teen but keep it in your pants, son. picks up again once ‘a destination is reached' but didn't keep me interested for long.
i feel like it's mostly the accent of the narrator but murtagh best boy i will finish this series for him alone, what a babe.

i don't know how i feel about this book. it started off worse than the first (which i wasn't a huge fan of anyway), far too long winded and boring, devolved into oddly detailed tales of horniness, even more cringey pining than before and then it actually got kind of interesting. The last 15-20% of the book hooked me and spoiler coming back is of course going to make me read the next book. though that was very predictable. but I'm not particularly happy about it.

great bedtime or lazy sunday stories.
i listened to the audiobook narrated by Martin Jarvis. He did fantastic voices, i was nearly in tears with his rendition of Toad's ‘poot poot'
very cosy book which kept me smiling and contented.

i nearly stopped reading this because of how Petra was mistreated. The parts with the siblings and the nets were so ... boring. i felt like they really didn't add much to the story. i did enjoy this book though and it was miles better than the lost gate and it's sequel.
i didn't feel much for ender, he's very ‘Gary stu' which makes it a little hard to root for him. i wish there were more between him and his buddies at school to make us feel something. The scene with alai really stands out in my mind, it was very touching. i wish the other kids (and even ender, lbr) had more personality. i noticed this in his other books but characters, especially children, seem to be very one dimensional
and the ending... HMMMMM
i will need to digest this a bit more to see how i feel about it... i think it's a 3.5

this book fell a little flat for me. i listened to the audiobook and the narrator has a really unusual tone to her voice. she reads... The book... like this... and has odd emphasis on random words and it's not always clear where one sentence ends and one begins. i should've just given up and read the print book but i think the narration definitely negatively affected the story for me. her voice was great for the speaking/character voice parts.

The actual story had an interesting background, not very much seemed to happen, most of what i can remember is mc running about from place to place and her talking about her love at first sight.

i read this because on the cover it said one for fans of Neil Gaiman and i was disappointed. hopefully the rest of the author's books are more up my alley cause a few of them are on my tbr

well it's less cringy than Eragon but i concur with other reviewers in that there's odd unnecessary sexual references that just boggle the mind.
really interesting magic system and i enjoyed them figuring out how gates worked and the long descriptions of gate making shenanigans (but i enjoyed the Martian!) and i liked wad's story for the most part
Danny was a distasteful and annoying character who was presumably written to be cool and likeable (to who!!). i found the book too crass and the humour was a little middle grade for a book which discusses men's “seed” so frequently

not really my style of book, gossipy and bitchy, which can be enjoyable depending on the tone.
However, the author has a view on feminism/related topics that i don't agree with, plus she liberally uses the word dy*e throughout and says many shitty things about lesbians. it was two stars until that. not even Meryl Streep can save that.
what a shame.

the author tries to explain himself in the afterward but how all of the young female characters act in this book is awful. the way sex, sexuality and relationships are presented in this is... bad.

the story of wad and the power struggle with the kingdom and the Queen was the only thing that kept me going through this and i dreaded picking this book up every time. so much of it was just so boring and needless. i was so happy to be getting to the end of the book so i could cross it off and never think about this series again but then the thing with the Queen happens at the end. it's always the way. I'm yet to decide if I'll put myself through the chore of reading the last book, or just try and find a decent summary somewhere

this book flew by, i couldn't tell you much of what happened but i enjoyed it.

i liked this book by the end of it. a bit of a slow start. if i had read this with no expectations i think i would have loved it, and i do really rate it for a tween read. but comparing it to thg - it just falls short for me.
i felt no emotions for any of the “bad” things that happened and my god the narrator's boots voice was jarring.
i hope the series gets a little more punchy, but overall a fun, light read.

It's a shame so many of the reviews skew negative due to issues with the ARC, something that any new readers wouldn't have any issue with. I almost didn't pick up this book due to that, so if you're hesitating - give it a go!

I really enjoyed this one, and while I for once actually guessed the suspect quite early on I kept thinking I was wrong the whole time whenever new information was given!
Very suspenseful and exciting.

It is a little confusing that the elizabeth letters are set in the future, but you can work it out from the month dates (which are given every chapter) May and June. It definitely could have been made clearer but part of the fun for me was figuring out if the letters from Aulus were written just after he got kidnapped or 1 year later.

I think the ending was satisfying, I have maybe 1 or two questions which is pretty good for a whodunnit.

I read this one by audiobook and there's an extra ‘interview' with Stancy and Tank which was enjoyable - but only gave me more questions! So I'm sad I didnt get to experience the drawings and diagrams made by Aulus, hope I can pick up the paper copy one day.
It was narrated well, I thought Aulus' voice was way, way too deep at first but by the end it had grown on me and was just ‘his voice'.

nothing hugely wrong with this book, I'm probably just about 20 years too old to enjoy it.

i enjoyed this book and the characters were really well written. it throws you in at the deep end and i was completely lost. i had to reread the first 2.5 chapters to have any semblance of what was going on, and parts of the more actiony scenes i found hard to follow which was a shame. but this was a great read which kept me on my toes the whole time! looking forward to seeing what comes next

this year will be the year i read a book a week. i started these challenges in 2018 after a long long bookless spell. i had this goal in 2018, before halving it a month in (hey, i started in march). in 2019, i read feast or famine style and went around 6 months without opening a book... this will be the year i read consistently.
manga, graphic novels and comics are counting towards my read count but i may change this later. there are a couple of books on here that i consider “cheating”, so my ideal goal would be around 60-65.

2020:

I listened to the audio book, and I was taken for A RIDE. GOOD GRIEF. I Knew nothing about this book, just saw that the author of convience store woman had a new book out, and it had a cute hedgehog on the front and an interesting name. It's been on my TBR on libby since its release and yesterday I decided to pick it up.

i'll start out with (minor spoilers) a CW for abuse of all forms. this book is not for the faint hearted. I think this bait and switch is part of its appeal, but I wish i had known before getting into it. It doesn't stop there.

then there's BIG SPOILERS CW for CSA, rape/abuse, parent neglect/abuse to children, sex between children, victim blaming a CHILD, murder, murder again, murder again AND EVEN BIGGER SPOILERS CW - seriously this spoils the ending, read at your peril and cannibalism and LIVE CANNIBALISM. this isn't just a little cannibalism as a treat, this is EXTENSIVE DESCRIPTIONS OF EATING DEAD AND LIVE BODIES/PEOPLE.
I really should have looked up the first genre on this page as HORROR and not read this book. Horror is typically not a genre I like in any media. I don't even watch scary movies with friends. But I didn't know, and once I popped I could not stop.

I was enjoying immensely the little odd chuuni girl talking about her cute hedgehog friend and her magic mirror. and i really vibed with the parts of the books where she described her powers, the fictional planet, and appreciated the allegories around disassociation/protecting oneself from abuse and how that shows up differently in different individuals etc. it was horrifying, and the abuse was harrowing. But I was incredibly drawn into Natsuki's story. I found an odd vindication when she killed "the witch" - being her paedophile teacher. and the imagery around this was really interesting to read. I wish all abuse surviours a very murder your abuser, so it hit home for me. The parts describing the pink walls, blue blob, golden liquid were *chefs kiss* And when she couldn't put two and two together, when later it was revealed that he was murdered with a Scythe 'just like the one i used to kill the witch!'

The abuse descriptions/general theme of this book were heavy, and hard to get through. Sayaka does not pull her punches with being extremely graphic with this. (The period pad scene!!! BRO!!!) It's so unsettling and creepy. It took a real turn at the end and MAJOR ENDING SPOILERS: during the whole eating people section I found it really hard to get through, and I'm not sure if any of that even happened. How were they there chomping on each other's shoulders, index fingers, thighs, eyelids and internal organs and still able to stand/walk around the next day. Time to go and watch some youtube analysis and wash my ears out with bleach.

I really don't know how I felt about this book, It was not enjoyable or pleasant, but parts of it were really gripping and I couldn't put it down. its the classic ‘like watching a car crash'
But the ending really tipped it over for me and I couldn't handle it. Jeez this book is gonna stay with me for a long time