i expected to like a book with a 2.88 average rating because i think i'm special.
we can all see how that went.
this is a surreal book that is also poori expected to like a book with a 2.88 average rating because i think i'm special.
we can all see how that went.
this is a surreal book that is also poorly written, which means, in other words, that it was for the most part total nonsense.
someday i hope i love anything as much as this author loves adjectives. we should all hope for a muse that leads us to use over 100 adverbs in less than 35 pages.
oh well.
bottom line: turns out i am like other girls....more
at any given time, i feel like i'm reading romance as a cry for help.
when i find a romance novel i love, it's my favorite kind of genre to enjoy. justat any given time, i feel like i'm reading romance as a cry for help.
when i find a romance novel i love, it's my favorite kind of genre to enjoy. just so comforting and fun and feelings-y.
but the vast, vast majority of the time, i am way too picky to bear it.
and in this case, well...this book is just bad.
sorry.
i really wanted to like this book, insistent product placement of the author's weird side quest cupcake wars-appearing bakery and all.
but it was too quirky and too much for me. there were CLIFFHANGERS in this book. like, chapters that ended with ellipses. "until he saw who was in the room..." and "she wasn't ready for what happened next..."-ass sentences. it feels silly.
this was unfortunately a not-good book on a sentence level (lots of weirdly constructed ones), on a plot level (clichéd confessions, an undue level of love interest-on-love interest obsession), or on a character level (we have a quirky gal and a boring guy, much like every romance of the last 5 years seems doomed to contain).
on top of that, this was arduous to get through. we're talking 320+ pages of miscommunication followed by 10 pages of happiness followed by, you guessed it, MORE miscommunication.
and for two people who tell each other 1100 times they'll be harmless (maybe "be harmless to each other" can be our always), they never tried to talk at all.
sheesh.
bottom line: i don't know what i did in a past life to deserve it, but this was a punishing read....more
a friend and i joked recently that whenever someone says "can you believe ai made this," we watch every video and read every paragraph like...yeah. yea friend and i joked recently that whenever someone says "can you believe ai made this," we watch every video and read every paragraph like...yeah. yes, we can.
this book manages to do the inverse: i'm pretty sure it was written by a person, and yet it would make a whole lot more sense if it were by artificial intelligence. and it seems like the author's only other publication is the novelization of a forgotten movie, so maybe it was.
we follow alice, who is pretty. alice's best friend is sadie, who is controlling. sadie's mom is celine, a camille paglia-esque feminist scholar who alice starts sleeping with. that, in all of its cliched and cringing drama, is our plot.
it's overwritten to the point of feeling heavy. this book barely scrapes 250 pages, but it wouldn't make it over a hundred without taking advantage of a thesaurus and an innate desire to record one's own uninteresting thoughts as ascribed to flat characters. (you wouldn't believe how much time we spend wondering alongside sadie if one is supposed to apply sunscreen to one's eyelids.)
this book made me wince: at its sex scenes; at its page-long years-late diatribe to making a murderer; at its inconsistencies and errors; at the single weird voice shared by every character regardless of gender, age, or personality; at the dialogue so divided by paragraphs of internal monologue that the actual responses make no sense. it seems like even the copyeditor couldn't get through it.
and i'd say what this book needed a strong edit, but what it actually needed was one more editor saying no.
bottom line: it's not that i hated this book. it's just that it doesn't do anything well.
welcome to THE FAMILIAR, the genre-bending, worst-of-both-woleigh bardugo writes it, i read it.
for better or worse.
guess which one it is in this case.
welcome to THE FAMILIAR, the genre-bending, worst-of-both-worlds historical fantasy universe of luzia. luzia is a maid. she is also magic. she is also boring.
luzia is an orphan who works in some middle class evil lady's house cleaning stuff all day. she is obsessed with her aunt, who has a lot of money. you may be like "why doesn't she live with her aunt, then?" because she is a kept woman. you might then wonder why luzia's girlboss self is so bothered by this: she is not. she sleeps on a dusty floor instead of on, like, glamorous cushions with her dear family member because her (dead) dad thought her aunt's reputation was bad and that's the worst thing that can happen to a girl. the concept of being near a bad reputation. because of wanting to get married.
do not dwell on that too long, because we're going to ignore it for the rest of the plot.
we're hot in the middle of the SPANISH GOLDEN AGE, and it's evil to be a witch but it's very rad to be so christian it actually makes you magic. luzia sets off to participate in a god's love contest, along with her abusive employer (ignore that), her aunt's bad reputation (ignore that), a million year old creep (ignore that, he's supposed to suddenly become sexy), her aunt's boyfriend and his wife (ignore that), and a few ragtag others.
discerning readers may remember we mentioned a creepy ancient man we are supposed to find unbelievably hot about halfway through. this wannabe edward cullen makes up half of the world's most soulless romance.
somehow i'm reading about magical star-crossed lovers and their doomed soulmate status but i know couples from my high school whose stories i'm more interested in. which is maybe not a fair comparison because i love gossip, but still.
on top of being a boring romance, this is not a convincing historical fiction. that doesn't bother me really (i hate reading modern writers try to write old-timey), but the fact that it's also not a convincing teller of its own story does.
this book is not sure how our protagonist knows so much, or expects more for herself, or practices her magic. it kind of just inconsistently provides her with whatever is convenient for the scraps of plot we're navigating and hopes we don't have follow-up questions or memory of what we've already read.
the writing, too, is style-first: sentences sound good, but when you take away the drama, they don't really fit together. the sweeping gestures of characters and of wording...both of them rarely make sense.
also, for some reason our narrator is omnipotent.
yes. all of the side characters' internal thoughts and feelings pop up from time to time like an annoying bug, seeming like a shallow afterthought compared to the protagonist's, with none of it going beyond what you or the main character would assume. so why bother? who knows!
that's not the only perspective choice that left me shaking my damn head either. to have it be speaking from the future and casting opinions on the events of the story was even weirder. it's so annoying to be like "perhaps if luzia had gotten a haircut that day everything would be different." ok butterfly effect!
i can always tell i really didn't like a book if i have multiple paragraphs' worth of thoughts about a single writing element. but i force myself to digress.
in the most annoying and present sin of all, this is not a story of magic trials and sorcery.
it's about old-timey european politics.
the climax occurs when a former secretary loses his job.
unforgivable.
bottom line: this book is nothing that it said it was, and nothing that it wanted to be, and nothing when you dig into it at all....more
for me, this book was love at first sight (that cover! girls falling in love at the university of edinburgh!)...and dislike at first read.
unfortunatelfor me, this book was love at first sight (that cover! girls falling in love at the university of edinburgh!)...and dislike at first read.
unfortunately, this is just not well written. that feels like the meanest criticism there is, but there's no avoiding it here. this book uses synonyms for said, is teeming with appearance descriptions, and has darlings on every page that likely should have been killed.
and this extends, sadly, to plot: everything seems to be going really quite well, and then suddenly someone does something quite unforgivable, out of nowhere and inexplicably. less than ten pages later the book ends. that's after hundreds of pages of what feels like flippant, underexplored inclusion of a dozen serious social issues.
i wish it could, but debut doesn't begin to explain it all away: this was under-edited by a lot. it feels tropey, shallow, cliched, and i came away thinking i needed more and less at once.
bottom line: if you don't have anything nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all...but i really wanted to like this book.
eating disorder fiction is just so boring. much like having one!
there is nothing new or interesting about disordered eating, which at its core is unabeating disorder fiction is just so boring. much like having one!
there is nothing new or interesting about disordered eating, which at its core is unable to shake off the embedded falsehood that women should be small or should deny themselves. these stories can try to be new or interesting, but they'll always come off as fatphobic, they'll always tie human worth to appearance, and they'll always feel outdated and overdone.
this is no exception.
this book wanted to be nightbitch + milk fed + exciting times all in one. it wanted to have a big secret but not really, and it wanted to be stylized but only in italicized final paragraphs, and it wanted to be character-driven without the pesky character development. it wanted to empower and liberate through eating, without actually having to reckon with any of the thinking that goes with that. it wanted to be literary and unique, while covering some of the most well-covered topics of all time.
like its protagonist, it wanted a lot and ended up with very little.
bottom line: EDs have taken a lot from me, but they've also given me the chance to write this review without anyone being allowed to get mad at me. so who wins, really.
1.5
------------------ pre-review
warning: reading while hungry
(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
a little thing i like to call Too Much and Not Enough, sadly.
in the first half, i have to tell you...i hated this so much. it stole the "where are youa little thing i like to call Too Much and Not Enough, sadly.
in the first half, i have to tell you...i hated this so much. it stole the "where are you supposed to put all of it" beautiful love and mourning line from fleabag and had a going rate of one simile per sentence, as in most sentences on average had one but sometimes mercifully one would be spared, but not to worry because just as often, somehow, evilly, there would be more than one.
the second half was better, for some reason. but that's a lot to get over.
this very badly wants to be a quiet, striking, introspective book, like those written by sally rooney or brandon taylor, but it doesn't know how to do that. maybe the author will find a way!
bottom line: yipes.
(thanks netgalley for the e-arc)
------------------ tbr review
blacked out and requested books on netgalley exclusively because of their covers...more
modern life is an unrelenting nightmare <3 and so is this book.
do you know how difficult it is to get me to think a MAN is a better person than a womamodern life is an unrelenting nightmare <3 and so is this book.
do you know how difficult it is to get me to think a MAN is a better person than a woman? a woman who is our protagonist? a man who is bad?
but our main character, a woman who is addicted to internet stalking, being nosy, justifying her own behavior, and chalking it all up to a vague feminism, is so much worse. she begins at rock bottom and manages to do a sum total of negative character development, spending her days jealous of a hot dead girl who dared to date her not even boyfriend 2 years ago.
i can excuse a lot of bad behaviors in the face of the unrelenting misery of daily life — this is coming from a person who usually replaces at least one meal with a small pile of sweets on any given day, like a child who magically gained the power of self-determination — but it turns out even i have a line.
bottom line: this is monotonous, unchanging, and hard to get through. much like la vie quotidienne itself.
i really, really, really, REALLY did not need this book's hamfisted discussion of abortion, featuring a murderous wolf abortionist and the ghost of a i really, really, really, REALLY did not need this book's hamfisted discussion of abortion, featuring a murderous wolf abortionist and the ghost of a fetus' future.
in fact i must ask...who is this for.
also they forgot a couple pretty crucial plot points here, it seems.
namely that these guys were supposed to be killed by a wolf.
this may seem like a beach read, but it's actually a fantasy novel about a millennial who is able to live in a major city, own a home in california, ethis may seem like a beach read, but it's actually a fantasy novel about a millennial who is able to live in a major city, own a home in california, eat takeout every night, and take luxury vacations on a copywriter's salary.
to which i say: lol.
by far the best part of this was the food descriptions.
everything else was mediocre to bad, ranging from silly characters to silly plots to silly writing (for example, trying to describe how time moves slower in this setting and saying "Everything was longer in Italy. Even time," when in fact time is the only thing being described).
on top of that, this is the perfect romance for all those readers out there who prefer their love interests to take advantage of drunk and/or weeping and/or mid-mental breakdown women.
dreamy!
bottom line: i want a cold glass of wine and a tomato-based appetizer in a seafront restaurant now, the lack of possibility of which will be the second way this book disappoints me.
once upon a time, i claimed that i would read any book that was written by lynn painter. i'd read not one, but two of her YA contemporaries — which i once upon a time, i claimed that i would read any book that was written by lynn painter. i'd read not one, but two of her YA contemporaries — which i would call my guilty pleasure genre if i had feelings and/or had ever felt guilty about anything — and, in a crazy twist for a heartless soulless hater such as myself, i'd (gasp) enjoyed both.
for someone who is literally constantly looking for even one comfort read in this cold, cold world, and for someone who constantly hates all of them, this was huge.
at no point was i able to tell where this book was going.
and at no point did i really want to.
at the very beginning of this book, you think you have mat no point was i able to tell where this book was going.
and at no point did i really want to.
at the very beginning of this book, you think you have met your male lead, due to the fact there is banter happening and an allegedly good-looking man is present. but then you read about a series of unfortunate events, of the X-rated variety rather than of the charming evil children's book category i prefer, and you're like, never mind. can't be him. he's bad at sex.
but it is.
it is him.
and the romance in question will come to fruition (if you'll forgive the disgusting and accidental pun) as our female lead teaches him how to, you know. hanky panky. get the car rockin' so you don't come a-knockin'. attend a session of sexual congress. knock boots. delight in the afternoon.
whatever you want to call it.
unfortunately, even in the face of these bizarre and frankly undesirable circumstances, i found these characters to be the unthinkable: boring. and it turns out that is kind of an important part of a romance book. or maybe a book in general.
on top of that, i found all of the morals around this arrangement to be pretty off-putting and blah. fairly immediately, because i forgot to mention that finn (the guy) is a c-list (generous) celebrity writing a memoir (okay) that we are supposed to pretend anyone would care about (they would not) and it is ghostwritten by chandler (the girl) (his employee), the ol' mind palace jumps to oh, this is sexual harassment.
no matter how shy or freckly or Old World Charming he is, your boss asking you in a shared hotel / airbnb situation to teach him how to hanky panky is...pretty high on the Icky And Illegal charts, no?
even later, once these two are In Love, their conversations veer into a new grosso dynamic i like to call You Should Follow Your Dreams And Stand Up For Yourself, But Not With Me Tho.
because don't worry — chandler decides to chase her dreams and write books of her own. she just inexplicably decides to finish this one, even though it will mean a lifetime of lying, first.
generally and beyond all of that insanity, there's a lot we're trying to accomplish here—social issues we attempt to address range from aging parents and ocd and anti-semitism to bullying and hollywood and Finding Your Passion.
none of it is discussed satisfyingly or fully, or even in a very fun or interesting or non-"what is happening what are we doing here" way.
but that's par for the course.
bottom line: not even one moment of this made sense to me.
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc / 1.5 stars)...more
sure, become a mermaid because of the weight of bigotry in the world...but do you have to be SO DRAMATIC about it.
i loved the idea of this book so mucsure, become a mermaid because of the weight of bigotry in the world...but do you have to be SO DRAMATIC about it.
i loved the idea of this book so much (satirical ish literary horror about a swimming star who chooses to become a mermaid because of the weight of misogyny and homophobia and racism), but the execution...not so much!
the language felt sloppy and imprecise in that hard-to-define underedited-debut way, and despite being categorized as a horror novel i would say only one scene really qualified as such.
otherwise it tended more toward melodrama and hit-you-over-the-head themes and arguments. here's an example, when our protagonist has recently sustained a head injury and is conspicuously refusing to answer her doctor's very normal question (how's the pain): "He misunderstood.
How was I supposed to differentiate between the pain due to the concussion and the pain due to the agony of everyday human life?"
yikes.
if i am being fully honest—and to the eternal chagrin of myself, my loved ones, and the world around me, i usually am—this was annoying and boring. in our main character, in the frustrating writing, and in how obvious and repetitive all the themes are.
i cannot stand being talked down to as a reader, especially for themes as simple as "bigotry abounds."
bottom line: my biggest, hardest NOPE in a while!...more
if you've ever wanted to read a sciencey, quirky romance filled with tumblr-esque pop culture references and toddler-age memes about a huge, serious, if you've ever wanted to read a sciencey, quirky romance filled with tumblr-esque pop culture references and toddler-age memes about a huge, serious, no-nonsense dickwad man who manages to have gleaming abs and marvel-esque biceps despite being a nerd who ostensibly lives inside of a laboratory, lifting nothing heavier than chalk and bunsen burners, as he meets a goofy not-like-other-girls Woman In Stem whose various traumas and backstories and mildly inconvenient past relationships mean she's searching for a daddy to daughter her up looking for love in all the wrong places, i.e., not looking at all because she doesn't need a man, only science, bad internal dialogue, and her own personality (read: allotted ration of problematic personal relationships, adorkable food obsessions, and single nerdy non-academic interest), plus a sex scene or two that will include at least one turn of phrase cursed to sear into your retinas for the rest of time...
i have a good feeling about this one, she says for the infinitieth time
update: well.
i wanted to like this book. in fact, i was convinced i would, due i have a good feeling about this one, she says for the infinitieth time
update: well.
i wanted to like this book. in fact, i was convinced i would, due to the following factors: 1) it seems like i haven't liked a romance in a while, which is unfair, and life is supposed to be kind and sweet and nice to me always; 2) i have liked other books by this author, or actually one other book, in the singular, which is still more than most can say; and 3) i wanted to.
but alas. apparently — and this is news to me — i don't make the rules???
huh.
regardless, this was immediately girl hatey, in an insane, like, 2000s level, toward not one but two women! the only other two women, in fact, who exist in the first chapter at all and aren't our protagonist.
which is kind of a feat, if you think about it.
on top of that, while there were moments when this was funny and even charming, it wasn't ever close to enough to overcome the terrible beginning or how unlikable our main characters are.
good god, those main characters! hallie piper (oof) is a not-like-other-girls lab-created disaster whose only two personality traits are having red hair and getting on my nerves. she is, apparently, immediately Special, not like these Dumb Other Women, and is also hot, which is where the tragedy occurs.
she attracts the attention of a straight-up nightmare monster. but sadly this not descend into a gory horror bloodbath. she lives happily ever after with the gruesome figment we meet in chapter one.
he is our love interest, jack.
he objectifies. he harasses. he doesn't take no for an answer. he repeatedly deliberately sabotages a relationship his so-called best friend is really excited about, via childish antics and blind entitlement.
he is, worst of all, boring.
i'm forced to say it. this book has a 4.04 average rating, but it's cringey, outdated, unromantic, silly, creepy, and weird.
so here we are again. here it is:
bottom line: i'm back in my unpopular opinion era.
hello, unpopular opinion regarding a beloved bestselling book that literally everyone on earth seems to love / find enchanting / desire to give their hello, unpopular opinion regarding a beloved bestselling book that literally everyone on earth seems to love / find enchanting / desire to give their firstborn besides me.
it's been a while.
and personally i can't think of a more devastating candidate for our big comeback than this, a book fitting an ideal description:
a beautiful cover that seems like it couldn't possibly contain anything but an intergenerational literary family drama (the best niche of all time) and yet is.
like did i mention the cover is beautiful. and i'm not just talking about the title!!! (pause for raucous laughter.)
unfortunately, that's the only thing i found particularly appealing about this whole thing. because it is:
1) not literary, but rather the kind of gimmicky and clichéd writing i expect from books i've never heard of found exclusively at airport bookstores 2) not a family drama, really, but more like a lack of family drama, because these people don't really care for each other all that much 3) created to hurt my feelings, specifically, because i am an eldest sister and this entire thing is from page 1 to page 897 (estimating) anti-eldest propaganda.
this is a book about 4 sisters, and one of them decides there's been a rift in the family and she is going to leave forever. that is the entirety of the plot, if i'm honest. which is fine. i'm all for no story, just vibes if i like the characters.
but here is the thing...the eldest sister is evil, the sister we unexpectedly spend a lot of our time following goes from Having A Personality to simply just Being Nice, and the other two are kept pretty clearly out of our way in case we accidentally trip and fall into something happening. (don't worry. we essentially do not.)
so i do not like the characters.
and to all of this i say: sorry to the padavano sisters but i'm different. i have 3 siblings and i'm one of 3 sisters and there is just no way i would let any of this happen to us.
and also...eldest sisters are not evil 2k23.
all of the stakes in this are deeply made up, and could be overcome in about a half a second if any of these people had even a passing interest in each other, let alone the kind of all-consuming sisterly love we're told they do. but instead of doing what i like to do with my sisters, which is get drunk and watch twilight, they decide to be like "i feel this made up trauma so much i want to pass it down from generation to generation."
so sure. whatever. do what you want.
but i don't have to like it!!!
i mean, in actual fact there were moments of this i really liked. but there were also plenty of moments of this i really didn't, such as when i was forced to turn to my boyfriend while reading this (by force of lack of options while on a plane) and say (view spoiler)["oh. it's a cancer book." (hide spoiler)]
but at least i got to get some anger out while we sat on the tarmac.
bottom line: i'm so glad you all loved this book so much, and also i have no idea what book you read.
when i first saw this book, i was filled with a personality-changing, life-defining, character-destroying rage. HOW COULD THEY NOT TELL ME ABOUT THIS when i first saw this book, i was filled with a personality-changing, life-defining, character-destroying rage. HOW COULD THEY NOT TELL ME ABOUT THIS BOOK, i demanded of a THEY that does not exist. WHY DID NO ONE SEE FIT TO INFORM ME OF ITS EXISTENCE, i followed up, also of the nameless THEY that had swiftly become my enemy.
but it turns out that the enemy i thought was my enemy was actually my friend.
not telling me about this book is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. and because no one told me about this book, everyone in the world is, it turns out, actually nice.
so the good news is we can probably have world peace now.
the bad news is: this book sucks.
the first installment of this series was very fun. it had several things that made it that way — mainly a sick and lovely new-england-in-the-fall boarding-school-yay setting and a fun original mystery from History.
those things are no longer here.
over the four (!) books since that first promising start, those things have slowly faded, and they have been replaced with a series of nightmares.
the things that made this series good were not here, and the things that made this series bad — our protagonist stevie's never-progressing identical character arc, side character david as a presence, david as a romantic lead, stevie in general, the attempts at emotion — were here in spades!
and to prove it, this book, WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE FIFTH BOOK IN WHAT IS ALLEGEDLY A MYSTERY SERIES, had a cliffhanger centered around the romance that i, as indicated, ABHOR.
a cliffhanger that acts as a warning not to continue...interesting tactic.
and yet, sadly, i will probably just keep reading these, continuing to grow the hate in my heart like a reverse grinch.
bottom line: i love everyone and i hate this book.
the thing about this book is that it is, ostensibly, a romance. we are all, by reading it, agreeing to a social contract in which we will receive apprthe thing about this book is that it is, ostensibly, a romance. we are all, by reading it, agreeing to a social contract in which we will receive approximately 300 pages covering life's grandest topic: two randos deciding they like each other more than anyone else on earth.
fun stuff. just one problem:
these people do not like each other. and i do not like them either.
they're always yelling at each other in, like, various states of undress. in between taking turns completing gratuitous acts of charity-level kindness while monster people look on and criticize them and/or innocent bystanders.
it's absurdly unrealistic, but, far more offensively, it's annoying.
i read books i don't love all the time and i never have a problem finishing them. until now! this was a nightmare to get through.
bottom line: a book unpleasant enough to make me write an actual review.
We all know the phrase "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
But is there an equivalent phrase about when you read a booWe all know the phrase "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
But is there an equivalent phrase about when you read a book and rate it 3 stars only to come back a little over a month later to realize you actually, in point of fact, don't have anything nice to say?
I'm looking for advice.
I don't know why I initially three starred this. Maybe I was just so slumpy that I assumed it was an "it's not you, it's me" situation?
How many human-interaction-based clichés can I fit into one review.
Anyway: This book seems like it has a lot going for it. Mainly in that it's a rom com with a cute cover and the idea of a boyfriend project is cool to me, as a project obsessive. (Don't even look at how many of my Goodreads shelves have the word "project" in.)
But take that promising feeling off the table entirely, because...
There is no boyfriend project.
DUN DUN DUN.
Literally nothing at all that could qualify. I'm furious even thinking about it.
And even worse, this is one of those rom coms with SO MUCH ELSE GOING ON that the actual rom is a weird afterthought, and there's no com to speak of at all.
For example: These two and their work.
The male love interest is a deep-undercover tech-based US government secret agent for, like, money laundering, so you just have to accept that as a normal and reasonable thing if you want to continue with the book without screaming or throwing things. Fine.
But if you can believe it, that's not even the most distracting part?
Our protagonist, who is just a normal human woman doing tech stuff, makes SO MANY bizarre and inexplicable work decisions - not calling out a coworker even though she herself is beloved and respected, in spite of the coworker undermining her and taking credit for her work; turning down an opportunity that sounds like a once in a lifetime chance to better herself and the world for something she could do at the same time - that I wanted to tear pages and/or my hair out.
I felt the chemistry between these two at the beginning, but both characters' insane work plot lines took up all the page time and my patience.
AND, on top of everything else, our protagonist is in a viral video mocking a previous date that led to her making a new group of friends, which I almost forgot about in spite of the fact that it also takes up more time than the romance.
There's too much going on.
Bottom line: I wrote myself into dropping this to 1.5 from 3. What a day.
----------------- pre-review
instead of a "boyfriend project" i'm continuing romance novel quest.
they both result in disappointment, but only one of them helps my reading challenge.
review to come / 3ish stars
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reading books by Black authors for Black History Month!
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