Ywa

I can understand why this book is considered a classic. The world-building and the innovative concepts introduced are certainly ahead of their time, making it a groundbreaking read when it was first published. In the story, an envoy is dispatched to an alien planet to assess their interest in joining the interplanetary cooperation he represents. What's truly fascinating is that this planet is inhabited by non-binary/ambisexual humanoids who adopt male or female appearances only during specific times of the month. Their lives exist beyond the confines of gender expression, and it's a unique and captivating aspect to explore. However, the absence of gender-neutral terminology made it somewhat challenging for me to fully immerse myself in this world.

On one hand, I relished the opportunity to accompany the envoy on his journey as he delved into the intricacies of Winter's society. On the other hand, the writing style felt rather dry, akin to an unsalted wholewheat cracker, leaving me with mixed feelings about the book.

“I know we're fucked up, alright? I'm impulsive, and hot tempered, and you get under my skin like no one else. You act like you hate me one minute, and then need me the next. I never get anything right, and I don't deserve you...but I fucking love you, Abby. I love you more than I loved anyone or anything ever. When you're around, I don't need booze, or money, or the fighting, or the one-night stands...”

This pretty much sums it up.

This wouldn't have been my favorite even if it didn't feature the multiple and graphic sexual assaults (which have left me traumatized by the way). The artwork is pretty okay but the story was a convoluted mess. On top of that, it's quite preposterous he though it was a good idea to make the main female character a sex addict and have her be “cured” of said addiction by being gang raped by people and then by some half-fish-half-human creature. Of all the things he could do with this story, he chose this?

“I think I missed my window.""What window?""My get-a-life window. I think I was supposed to figure all this stuff out somewhere between twenty-two and twenty-six, and now it's too late.”

I really needed this after something as depressing as “Forbidden” by Tabitha Suzuma. I thoroughly enjoyed the second half of the book, the first half was a “wee bit” too slow. I loved the characters, they were so quirky and fun. If they'd been real people, I would want them as friends, except for Lincoln's mom, I hated her. I just can't handle these overbearing mothers, I've got no patience for them.

I wasn't wholly satisfied with the ending. I hate it when you spend an entire book waiting for the characters to finally get together and then the book ends just after they do. I just hate it. I want to see them interact. I want to see them getting to know each other, in depth. I want to read their conversations. I just want the whole experience. Regardless, it was sweet enough. Definitely adding them to my “favorite fictional couples” list.

“If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.”

Why did it take me so long to pick this up?

Very addictive book, I read almost all of it one sitting (I had previously gone through only the first chapter). I was close to giving it 5 stars, but it wasn't quite there for me though. Overaall it was suspenseful story. Not as creepy/dark as I was expecting it to be, so I was a little disappointed there. Nevertheless, I still savored it.

I also enjoyed the characters despite the fact that they're all such terrible people, including Mrs. de Winter, the second, dear God, what-a-doormat. Fun to read about though. This is what I call unlikable characters done right.

I wish I had buddy read this. It's one on those books that provides plenty material for debates. The ending made me realize the parallels Jane Eyre which ignited in me the desire to read it again.

Let's start with the pros:

The setting:
I loved the setting of the book, an isolated town in rural Canada (Canada's Pacific Coast more precisely). There's just something about it that gets to me, every time.

Enjoyable, normal romances:
None of that obsessive, angsty, borderline creepy romance that's frequently portrayed in YA. No brooding, abusive, stalkers for love interests here.

The characters:
I really enjoyed Maya's and her friendships. She starts out a little judgmental but there is character growth and she becomes better throughout the book. I also appreciated that rest of the characters had all a distinctive voice and none of them bothered me which has not been the case with YAs for a good while. I also enjoyed her relationship with her parents, I just wish it there was more of it.

I also liked that the the supernatural element was based on Native Canadian mythology but it would've been great if it had been explored even further.

The only thing I was not overly sold on was the plot, not exactly where I thought it was going.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book.

“Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.”

I liked the last half more than the first, but, overall, it was an engaging story about both coming of age and overcoming grief.

It was very realistic the way it was handled, though I did find her family infuriating at times: her mother completely vacated and left her kids to be raised by her overbearing sister and her control-freak of a husband while she dealt with what had happened. On one hand, parents are humans with feeling and they go through traumas like everybody else, on the other hand, kids don't ask to be born into this world and being a parent is a 24/7 job so you can't just tune out like that and leave your children at the mercy of people who were a little better than strangers just a while back. I appreciated how it was all concluded though.

I think Ahern is underrated. Her books keep getting slapped with the chick-lit tag, but they lack the frivolity that accompanies a lot of the books in the genre. On the contrary, they're insightful and go quite deep into the human condition. I'm always amazed by how she's able to grab me with her storytelling right away, from the first few pages and make me empathize with/root for characters that aren't particularly likable and that have quite a lot of flaws. But they seem real. Real people, living next door. People with whom you enjoy spending time with even if can be unlikeable and flawed. People that become more mindful about their existence, that go through changes and become better, wiser by the end. Her books make me look around me and think “Why don't I have people like Cecelia Ahern in my life?” I love her mind, the worlds she creates. I would just love to pick her brain over a cup of coffee.

I'm a chess piece. A pawn,' she said. 'I can be sacrificed, but I cannot be captured. To be captured would be the end of the game.

I had a really hard time deciding the rating for this. It was so close to being spectacular, but I felt it didn't reach its full potential. It lacked that emotional punch I was expecting after reading the first 100 pages or so, however it's still one of my favorite books as it's one of the better dystopian books out there.

The prose was splendid. I was hooked from the first pages. You know you're really loving a book when you wake up in the morning and the first thing that pops into you head is how much you enjoyed reading that book before you went to bed the previous night. The novel is a fast-paced, nail-bitting coming of age adventure story. Just the thought of this gloomy future where most of the resources are gone and most of the people live in extreme poverty while risking their lives constantly by facing mega storms and doing awfully arduous and dangerous jobs is nerve wrecking.

I was fascinated by the universe of the ship-breakers on Bright Sands Beach. The cast of characters was neatly composed by people in all kind of sizes, colors and mentalities. No one in this book is a particularly likeable character, but this doesn't take away from the story. The novel explores quite well how people lose their sense of humanity in the face of adversity. They are all willing to do awful things to survive or get ahead, but each of them has a different breaking point. Out of all the characters Nailer was the most humane. Throughout the entire novel, he is torn between doing what's best for him and what is right. Prima is very loyal, but only to the people she considers crew. She and her mother are more family to Nailer than his drug addict abhorrent father ever was. My favorite character was Tool, the half-human, partially because he was mysterious, but mostly because he was proof that your life is not decided only by your “Fates”, yet also by your choices.

This captivating novel lost some of its pull on me after Nita came into the picture. I didn't feel her character had substance. She's described as pretty, delicate and rich many times throughout the book, but nothing else. I just wish there was more to her that would justify people risking their lives for her, repeatedly. She didn't need to live so the world could be saved from the villain. She just needed to not be captured. Therefore, I wanted some better reasons for why all those people (especially Nailer) were so loyal to her. I didn't like that, at about three fourths of the way through this story, the focus shifted from Nailer to Nita. Suddenly it was all about saving her and not about Nailer's transformation, which I didn't expect. The ending was also not as satisfying as I'd hoped.

Nevertheless, I think Paolo Bacigalupi is a talented writer and I'm excited about reading some of his other books.

I read once that water is a symbol for emotions. And for a while now I've thought maybe my mother drowned in both.

I'm not sure how I feel about this book. Kirby's prose is quite beautiful yet dry, at the same time, if you can imagine that. It's like looking at a pretty picture locked up behind a dusty, thick glass, from afar. I never really got the chance to connect with what was going on in there. There were a few moments when “this is good” was at the tip of my tongue, yet I never quite got there. Which was a bit frustrating.

I did enjoy the setting, the descriptions about living by the shore and the mermaid mythology. I haven't lived anywhere near the sea or the ocean so this was definitely something very appealing to my imagination.

The pacing was almost painfully slow for the first 70% of the book. It was all about how Anna gets involved in the track team, how she walks on the beach, how she flirts with lifeguards, how she goes to school, how she fights with her dad, how she almost breaks down while thinking about her mom etc. It was, basically, about how she keeps herself busy while running away from her feelings. I didn't like that we only got a clue, here and there, about what was going on with her, for the most part of the book, and then we got almost the entire puzzle in the last 30 pages.

Anna was tough to like. She was very bland, despite being seriously troubled. At times she seemed like she was dead inside. She sounded like a robot or a zombie that had never felt joy or pain. Other times she seemed totally the opposite. When it came to boys, it was like that's all that ever interested her and she was so shallow in her her monologues about Tyler. This side of her was so odd compared to the “vampire” girl that we were introduced to at the beginning of the book. If she would've been a real person I'd be concerned about her having her mother's illness.

Then, I wasn't fond of her relationships with the people around her. She was quite judgmental towards Ashley yet became her friend, which would've been ok if she showed any signs that she actually started to like her . She was very hard on her dad, yet in a completely useless way because she never confronted him about the elephant in the room. Her dad seemed completely clueless, but I'm not sure it's reason enough to dislike him, because we're simply not given enough information about him. And then her puppy love with Tyler is such a puzzle to me. She never talks about herself, her hopes and dreams, her troubles. He does't seem the brightest rock on the beach. What if they ran out of abandoned cottages to explore? This love angle was so pointless that the book would have been better off without it.

Coming back to Anna, she's just not the type of character I like to read about. I mean I like characters overcoming traumas,facing adversities and coming out stronger, but I don't think she fits into this category. She was so frail from start to end. And all she wanted to do was run away and hide. Up to the point she almost got herself killed just so she could stop herself from feeling pain. I don't like that type of people. Who would rather walk on burning coals than face what they're feeling. Who would rather stay in the dark rather than find out the truth. I get that she's had a horrible experience when she was a child, however she could've started the healing process a lot sooner if she stopped being so stubborn and talked to her dad about what happened. Only when life pushed her from all directions she did this. I also didn't see in her the need to understand why that event happened. Even when the answers came to her, on a sliver plate, she just pushed them away. I just couldn't connect to her character because of this.

The ending provided a rather unsatisfactory resolution, but I guess it's better than nothing.

I wouldn't say the experience of reading this book was unpleasant. I've had some issues with it, but it did get me thinking about some things, so all is well.

“There's something nice about the silence of a car ride in the dark, going home. When you were tired of the radio and conversation, and it was okay to just be alone with your thoughts and the road ahead. If you're that comfortable with someone, you don't have to talk.”

Not quite a favorite, but still enjoyable nonetheless.

Grayson looked at me again. This time his gaze traveled from my hair down, and he let me see that he was looking. What he meant by this was that he thought I was beautiful, it was not just my miraculous hair, and we shouldn't be distracted from our true love by the pesky detail that he was blackmailing me into dating his brother.

‘nuff said.

The writing was pretty bad. It felt like I was seeing everything from the perspective of a prepubescent teenager's diary. Anna was an immature, shallow and boring nimwit. It was so hard to picture her as a 30-something woman. TJ might have looked like a man but he acted and sounded like a 15 year-old which made their relationship quite unsavoury. The survivalist plot was laughable. I can't even begin to describe just how ridiculous this part was. Everything was so convenient that it totally annihilated any sense of suspense and plausibility. There was no character development. No spark between the characters. Just mindless small talk and incessant descriptions about their daily routine. And just when I thought it can't get any worse, they were rescued and the plot got even more ridiculous. This wasn't a cute, adorable beach read, this was plainly moronic.

The first quarter or so of the book was quite good, very engaging, despite all the clichés. Based on the prose alone, the book seemed like a promising beach read. Then it all went downhill. It felt like the author got bored of writing and decided to make everything so convenient just to be able to tie all loose ends in a spiff and then garnish it with a huge pink bow.

The cute beginning of what seemed to be a generic, yet sweet romance between Caymen and Xander, turned into a drab, chemistry-lacking relationship. I can't say I was crazy about Caymen's character, but she sure was more interesting than Xander, whose personality was so faded that I couldn't figure out why she would ever be attracted to him.

I couldn't bring myself to care for what happened to them. The occasional bumps they encountered on their way to happily-ever-after were total lacklusters. The love triangle was pointless, it was there just to fill in the pages.

What I also disliked very much was that their relationships with their parents were so underdeveloped. The book mentions that Caymen has this strong bond with her mother, but we never see any of that. Xander's family is brought up just so we could feel sorry for him, but hardly anything is explained.

Overall, this book was just a big, dry mess. This snippet pretty much sums it up:

Is that your subtle way of saying you missed me last week?I've missed my hot chocolate. I just think of you as the guy who brings it to me. Sometimes I forget your name and call you hot chocolate guy.