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| 0369747380
| 9780369747389
| B0BS442Y3X
| 3.73
| 1,074
| Jan 09, 2024
| Jan 09, 2024
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really liked it
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"He's waiting for Zeke to get hit with a lightning bolt of knowledge. November is the wrong time of year for that weather pattern, though." Did I just "He's waiting for Zeke to get hit with a lightning bolt of knowledge. November is the wrong time of year for that weather pattern, though." Did I just read two romance novels in one year? My friends are bad influences. Lucky Bounce was really sweet. I think what attracted me to this book in the first place was how much it reminds me of Check, Please!, which is one of my all-time favourite comic series. If you liked Lucky Bounce, you'll like Check, Please!, and vice versa. What I loved most about Lucky Bounce was how fun of a read it was. It wasn't heavy, or super serious, despite having some serious moments in it. It was really just an enjoyable book, filled with tooth rottingly-sweet fluff. As you might've guessed, I'm not the biggest romance reader, specifically because I don't enjoy just 300 pages of fluffy nothing - but I think what makes Lucky Bounce different from some other romance novels are the quiet stakes behind it. It's a cute queer romance story, yes, and there's nothing hardcore depressing or serious in it, no, but there are still really high stakes. On one hand, you've got Spencer's career, and the looming threat that being an openly gay hockey player can be in a very cishet male dominated sport; on the other hand, you've also got the fact that Spencer is a single dad, not only navigating the fact that no one knew he had a daughter until recently, but also navigating suddenly taking on a kid, while trying to explore his sexuality and love life. I do wish that Lucky Bounce had dived in a little bit more to those stakes, and I'd really love to read a sequel about Spencer and Zeke navigating what happens when their relationship goes public. The only other thing I didn't love about this book was that, while it was very much written in Zeke's voice despite being a third-person POV, it isn't overly descriptive. It sounds sort of like a person's inner monologue, the way we run commentary about things in our own minds. That's great for voice, certainly, but when you're writing a book, you need to have a balance of voice and description. It was very 'this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened.' It spent a lot of time on Zeke's thoughts about a particular situation, without actually delving into what the situation is. There were also moments when the sex scenes dragged on for, like, way too long. I love good smut as much as the next person, but I swear, some scenes were 15 pages just for a blowjob. Again, that's a lot of Zeke's POV voice at play here, because you get to hear what's going through his mind - how beautiful Spencer looks, and how careful Zeke is being not to trigger Spencer's migraines, and how quiet they're being so as not to wake up Addie - but at some point, I ended up just skimming those scenes, because the running commentary is so irrelevant to the rest of the story. All in all, this was a really cute queer romance! I do think readers would benefit from having a little bit of hockey knowledge going in, only because Nary drops hockey slang (that I only actually know from reading Check, Please!, thank you Ngozi Ukazu) with absolutely no explanation. If you're a romance reader, I think you'd really enjoy this book! **Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of this book! Merged review: "He's waiting for Zeke to get hit with a lightning bolt of knowledge. November is the wrong time of year for that weather pattern, though." Did I just read two romance novels in one year? My friends are bad influences. Lucky Bounce was really sweet. I think what attracted me to this book in the first place was how much it reminds me of Check, Please!, which is one of my all-time favourite comic series. If you liked Lucky Bounce, you'll like Check, Please!, and vice versa. What I loved most about Lucky Bounce was how fun of a read it was. It wasn't heavy, or super serious, despite having some serious moments in it. It was really just an enjoyable book, filled with tooth rottingly-sweet fluff. As you might've guessed, I'm not the biggest romance reader, specifically because I don't enjoy just 300 pages of fluffy nothing - but I think what makes Lucky Bounce different from some other romance novels are the quiet stakes behind it. It's a cute queer romance story, yes, and there's nothing hardcore depressing or serious in it, no, but there are still really high stakes. On one hand, you've got Spencer's career, and the looming threat that being an openly gay hockey player can be in a very cishet male dominated sport; on the other hand, you've also got the fact that Spencer is a single dad, not only navigating the fact that no one knew he had a daughter until recently, but also navigating suddenly taking on a kid, while trying to explore his sexuality and love life. I do wish that Lucky Bounce had dived in a little bit more to those stakes, and I'd really love to read a sequel about Spencer and Zeke navigating what happens when their relationship goes public. The only other thing I didn't love about this book was that, while it was very much written in Zeke's voice despite being a third-person POV, it isn't overly descriptive. It sounds sort of like a person's inner monologue, the way we run commentary about things in our own minds. That's great for voice, certainly, but when you're writing a book, you need to have a balance of voice and description. It was very 'this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened.' It spent a lot of time on Zeke's thoughts about a particular situation, without actually delving into what the situation is. There were also moments when the sex scenes dragged on for, like, way too long. I love good smut as much as the next person, but I swear, some scenes were 15 pages just for a blowjob. Again, that's a lot of Zeke's POV voice at play here, because you get to hear what's going through his mind - how beautiful Spencer looks, and how careful Zeke is being not to trigger Spencer's migraines, and how quiet they're being so as not to wake up Addie - but at some point, I ended up just skimming those scenes, because the running commentary is so irrelevant to the rest of the story. All in all, this was a really cute queer romance! I do think readers would benefit from having a little bit of hockey knowledge going in, only because Nary drops hockey slang (that I only actually know from reading Check, Please!, thank you Ngozi Ukazu) with absolutely no explanation. If you're a romance reader, I think you'd really enjoy this book! **Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of this book! ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Dec 13, 2023
not set
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Dec 20, 2023
not set
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Jun 27, 2024
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Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||
| 1777348684
| 9781777348687
| B0C4KP5SX2
| 3.88
| 195
| unknown
| Jun 20, 2023
|
liked it
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"Television was blamed for making the general population more violent and detached. But the truth is that people have always been that way." "Television was blamed for making the general population more violent and detached. But the truth is that people have always been that way." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 26, 2023
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Nov 30, 2023
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Nov 26, 2023
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Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||
| 0143129546
| 9780143129547
| 0143129546
| 3.93
| 234,526
| Sep 21, 1962
| Oct 18, 2016
|
really liked it
|
"A spark from his pipe had left a tiny burn on the rose brocade of a chair in the drawing room; Constance had not yet noticed it and I thought not to
"A spark from his pipe had left a tiny burn on the rose brocade of a chair in the drawing room; Constance had not yet noticed it and I thought not to tell her because I hoped that the house, injured, would reject him by itself." We Have Always Lived in the Castle was one of my required readings in university, but I never did actually get around to reading it. I'm glad I finally gave this book a chance, though, because Jackson's writing is such the perfect combination of atmospheric and social horror. I knew the premise of this book solely from the blurb on the back, but what you get is more that what you've bargained for with the Blackwood family. I think my favourite part about We Have Always Lived in the Castle is the subversion of expectations: you never quite see any scene from a completely neutral perspective, as Merricat is the one narrating, but there are still instances of understanding scenarios from different perspectives that act as plot twists. My favourite of these came towards the end of the book, when that first townsperson leaves a roasted chicken on the Blackwoods' doorstep and a note of apology; the rest of the town follows suit, and for a time, it feels as though the town has come to a collective realization that they've done something cruel and wrong, and that this is the only way they know how to apologize. That doesn't change, really, until the last page, when some little boy taunts the Blackwoods on a dare, and a basket of fresh eggs show up with a note reading "he didn't mean it, please." All at once, you come to the understanding that the townspeople aren't truly remorseful for their actions, but simply fearful of retaliation, despite the fact that not once in their entire lives have Constance or Merricat actually done anything to any townsperson. I love We Have Always Lived in the Castle as a metaphor for witchhunts, for blaming the ills of all on some unlucky and entirely innocent woman. For the entire book, Constance does nothing but bake and cook and try to look after Merricat and Julian, and outside of her control, the townspeople have made up an entire life for her: a murderer, a witch, someone capable of great evil that needs to be appeased, despite Constance staying quiet and neutral to most things. There's something very complex about Shirley Jackson writing horror in the 1960s, particularly horror that tends to focus on women, their families, and their homes. In We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Jackson explores what it means to have a haunted space without ghosts ever actually truly being present: this book is not a supernatural horror, but rather, takes the ideas of 'ghosts' and 'haunting' and creates a different sort of haunted house. How do spaces carry tragedy? How do horror stories begin? My only qualm about this book is the pacing, but I also understand that this book is a product of the 1960s, and so language and style has obviously changed over the past 61 years. We Have Always Lived in the Castle was a really excellent read, and you get a ton of content for what is practically considered a novella by today's standards. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 21, 2023
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Oct 30, 2023
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Oct 10, 2023
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0751529818
| 4.18
| 1,047,340
| Aug 18, 1997
| 2000
|
really liked it
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"Outside, the sun was shining and people were going about their business. A woman ran to put money in the parking meter. Another carried groceries. Ch
"Outside, the sun was shining and people were going about their business. A woman ran to put money in the parking meter. Another carried groceries. Charlotte had a million thoughts running through her mind: How much time do we have left? How will we manage? How will we pay the bills? My old professor, meanwhile, was stunned by the normalcy of the day around him. Shouldn't the world stop? Don't they know what has happened to me ? But the world did not stop, it took no notice at all." Audiobook: Listened to the 25th Anniversary Edition, read by the author, Mitch Albom. Tuesdays with Morrie isn't the kind of book I would usually pick up - but that's where yearly reading challenges come in. PopSugar 2023, category #13: A book published the year you were born. I wanted something quick, and ideally, something I could listen to on audiobook so that I could multitask while I simply scratched this category off of my reading challenge. Tuesdays with Morrie was released in my birth year, 1997, and came in at a nice, short 4 hr. run time on the audiobook. I had no intention of paying much attention to Tuesdays with Morrie, let alone enjoying it. Lo and behold, I loved every second of it. Audiobooks are something I'm just sort of starting to get into after a while off of them, and I think I actually appreciated listening to Tuesdays with Morrie more than I would have if I'd read it. First off, the 25th anniversary audiobook edition of this book has a nice, twenty-minute segment at the end that actually lets you listen to Albom's interviews with Morrie, so you can actually get a sense of Morrie's tone and the way he speaks. If the selected interviews are any indication, Albom's portrayal of Morrie Schwartz in Tuesdays with Morrie is absolutely spot-on, and I think it takes an incredibly talented writer to be able to capture a real human being so perfectly in the pages of a book. To me, listening to this book felt less like, well, listening to a book, and more like sitting down with a beloved grandparent. It's listening to different perspectives on life, on different ways to look at love and jobs and death and everything in between. It feels intimate and personal, and despite the subject matter, it doesn't feel heavy. There were a few tear-jerking moments, certainly, but you get out of this book feeling warm and loved rather than devastated and sad, which is exactly what I think both Albom and Schwartz wanted out of this story. Albom comments several times that he never wanted Tuesdays with Morrie to come across as a self-help book, a book about 'this is how to stop being scared of death!' sort of thing, and I'm actually amazed that he achieved that. It really does just come across as two people sharing ideas and perspectives, challenging one another's thinking, and the background information about how Albom and Schwartz first met just sort of adds this magical quality to it all: there's something to be said for fate connecting the right people at the right time. This was really just a lovely read, but I'm still glad I audiobooked it, because I'm not certain I would've had the same attention span with the physical copy. I liked hearing Albom's narration of his work - and he did very good impressions of Morrie, I thought - but my only qualm comes from a certain emotionlessness that I think Albom read this story with. Would I have wanted anyone else to narrate Tuesdays with Morrie? Absolutely not. But considering that this is a very personal story for Albom, I thought he might read it with a little more emotion, and instead, some of the lines just came across... flat. Not unlike a television newscaster interviewing a stranger, when Albom and Schwartz had known each other for decades. TL;DR, this was a lovely book, and a testament to what yearly reading challenges are really about: pushing your boundaries and finding new genres you might not have tried otherwise, because sometimes, you'll find some absolute gold you'd have missed. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 13, 2023
|
Sep 21, 2023
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Sep 13, 2023
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||||
| 9781683693512
| 3.71
| 519
| Jul 11, 2023
| Jul 11, 2023
|
it was amazing
|
"Our eyes meet. I think she might blush. She pulls her hand back. Are we having a moment over a plate of cheese, or am I merely wishing we were having
"Our eyes meet. I think she might blush. She pulls her hand back. Are we having a moment over a plate of cheese, or am I merely wishing we were having a moment over a plate of cheese? This is agony. I want to stay in this room with her forever." Do you like queer sci-fi, murder mysteries, and space operas? Do you like The Penumbra Podcast, Gideon the Ninth, and Six of Crows? This is the book for you. Stars, Hide Your Fires is a queer, sci-fi, royalty-themed murder mystery/heist, and it's exactly as much fun as it sounds. This book was a really engrossing read, the pace was excellent, and the characters were so loveable and well thought-out. I think what Best does exceptionally well in this book is creates a completely unique fantasy/sci-fi universe, without it being overly complicated. I know it's a slightly unpopular opinion, but I always tend to stay away from high fantasy and sci-fi books that have universes and lore that are too complex, because I'm focused more on trying to understand how the book's universe works than on the actual plot. But Best introduces this familiar hierarchical monarchy-style political structure with some of the most interesting queer-normative societal rules I've ever seen. This book is unashamedly queer, and god, I love fantasy/sci-fi books where queerness isn't necessarily a revelation, but it's simply the norm. From the use of pronoun-indicating beads to certain speech conditions, Best creates a world where gender nonconformity is the norm, and even the most despicable, unlikeable characters are apart of that system. There's no queerphobia or homophobia to be seen, and it's refreshing to have that in a book. Aside from that, while Stars, Hide Your Fires doesn't have the most unique overarching plot in the world, it's the little things that make all of the difference. Introducing the Voyria as an intergalactic terrorist group, before slowly starting to subvert expectations and switching perspectives? Amazing. Little hints about Cass's past and her mother? Genius. The enemies to co-workers to friends to lovers trope between Cass and Amaris? So much fun. And that's coming from someone who doesn't tend to like romance as a genre in general. My only criticisms of Stars, Hide Your Fires are that, one, the ending felt a little bit rushed. Everything that happened in the last 50 pages could've easily been spread out across another 100 or 150, and would've felt a bit more natural. My only other issue here was that (no spoilers, of course), well, I saw the twist coming from a miles away. It wasn't exactly a big shock for how this book ended, and I would've liked to have been a little bit more surprised, but maybe other people had that experience and I just didn't. Still though, the murder mystery plot wrapped up really nicely, and I absolutely flew through the last third of this book. All in all, Stars, Hide Your Fires was an absolute pleasure and joy to read, and I'd recommend it to anyone in a heartbeat. I'm genuinely amazed that this is Best's debut novel, and you can tell she has experience with audio dramas and fiction podcasts. 10/10, one of my favourite books of 2023. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 30, 2023
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Sep 05, 2023
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Aug 30, 2023
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||||
| 9798985766202
| B09WZQJZJD
| 3.99
| 3,664
| Mar 31, 2022
| Mar 31, 2022
|
really liked it
|
"Whenever I see you with your pixies, I am reminded of psychopomps, who guide souls into the underworld. You as their master makes you more of a Hades
"Whenever I see you with your pixies, I am reminded of psychopomps, who guide souls into the underworld. You as their master makes you more of a Hades than I am; though I am not sure if I fit the part of Persephone very well. Pomegranate seeds always get stuck in my teeth." Lots of thoughts and feelings about this one, so bear with me! I'm just going to get some of the iffy things about this book out of the way first, but I swear, this review will get better. The first thing I wanted to unpack about Prince of the Sorrows, especially for any potential future readers, is the content warnings. Graves lists them in the front of the book (so glad indie authors do this, all authors should do this), but not all of them are equally weighted. Yes, there are warnings for mental and physical abuse, bullying, and torture (amid more general warnings like crude language and death), but I really wasn't quite prepared for this book's cruelty. No spoilers, of course, but what's most important here is that beantighes (humans) are subservient to fey in this world. They're bullied, abused, pushed around, basically slaves to the fey - but it can get brutal, sometimes. Yes, you have the occasional fey shoving a beantighe to the floor, but you also have beantighes getting their bones broken as punishment for disobedience, or having words carved into their backs, or not being allowed to have their wounds treated. There is such a harsh, abusive dynamic between the fey and the beantighes, and if you're not prepared for that going into this book, it's a little upsetting in some places. Piggybacking off of that, our main couple in this book is Saffron (our MC beantighe) and Cylvan (high fey). Naturally, because of this, there is a really unbalanced power dynamic. That gets better the more Saffron and Cylvan connect, but at the start of their relationship? Cylvan does some seriously fucked up stuff. [BRIEF SPOILER STARTS HERE] I think what bothered me throughout this book is a scene early on when Saffron is with Cylvan at a fey party, and Cylvan and Saffron have this really intimate dynamic between them. It's great, it's intense, it's fun, love it; and then, Cylvan completely knowingly and non-consensually drugs Saffron in a room full of fey who could use, abuse, and kill him, for no other reason than Cylvan thinks it's funny. It's really not addressed later on, and becomes minimal to the plot, but that one really got under my skin. [BRIEF SPOILER ENDS HERE.] Throughout this entire book, I just feel like Cylvan is so wrapped up in his own problems (and don't get me wrong, he has some really awful shit of his own to deal with) that he doesn't even spare a thought for the power dynamic between him and Saffron. Saffron is getting abused and tortured for simply being a beantighe, and even when Cylvan helps him, it's always momentary, not something in the long run. He never stands up for Saffron, never tries to help him, never tries to make Saffron's life even remotely easier; meanwhile, Saffron is enduring abuse from not just fey, but the abusive fey lord that has an obsessive fixation on him, while navigating beantighes being murdered and their deaths not being cared about, and he's taking all of Cylvan's emotional labour on, too, without being given the same courtesy in return. Saffron is carrying the entire world on his shoulders, and not being given any support in return from his love interest. TL;DR, if things like severe abuse, particularly domestic abuse, or unbalanced power dynamics can be a trigger for you, tread lightly with Prince of the Sorrows. Now, all of this being said - did I still love this book? Absolutely I did. I put off finishing it for nearly a week because I was just so sad to have to step out of the world, even though I know there are more books in this series (which, thank god for that, because I haven't had a book leave me on a cliffhanger like this in literal years). Graves is a singularly talented writer, and the way they write fantasy is absolutely beautiful. Their descriptions are vivid, their worldbuilding is spectacular, and the plot twists had me genuinely gasping out loud. I was so sure I knew where things were going, but then there were two gut-punch twists, and I had to set my book down for a hot second. I love it when books can surprise me like that. What I adore most about Prince of the Sorrows, however, is Graves's characters. They give such careful attention to their characters, and give them such distinct details that aren't necessarily plot-relevant, but still add so much to who these characters are. For me, the details I loved the most were Cylvan's allergies and Saffron's illiteracy, two things that the plot of Prince of the Sorrows don't hinge on, but knowing those facts about Cylvan and Saffron make them so much more intriguing. Cylvan's allergies, which we learn about early on, give him a vulnerability: there are things that he can't control in his life, and if he doesn't watch out for them, he can die. Meanwhile, Saffron's illiteracy could be a point of vulnerability which make him feel less-than, but really, Saffron takes it as a challenge. His determination to learn to read tells you everything about his drive and his thirst for knowledge, and how something he is teased for doesn't stop him. It's little things like that that make characters come alive, that make them complicated and interesting, and that make you feel more attached to them. I would be lying if I said I haven't gotten a little teary-eyed just thinking about Saffron, sometimes. I love him very dearly. Absolutely I'm going to read the rest of the Rowan Blood series - it's just a matter of finding out if I need to wait for Rainbow Crate editions of the others to match my Prince of the Sorrows! Without a doubt, Prince of the Sorrows is a book that you will get incredibly emotionally invested in, either for better or worse. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 15, 2023
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Nov 29, 2023
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Jul 12, 2023
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1302933698
| 9781302933692
| 1302933698
| 4.17
| 312
| Jun 21, 2022
| Jun 21, 2022
|
it was amazing
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"Yeah, I imagine for adults, the X-Men are bisexual heaven, but not when you're in a hormonal hell. Imagine trying to pay attention when Emma Frost is
"Yeah, I imagine for adults, the X-Men are bisexual heaven, but not when you're in a hormonal hell. Imagine trying to pay attention when Emma Frost is your teacher. And the first time Colossus walked into the room, it was..." Part of the Marvel's Voices collection, Marvel's Voices: Pride is a collection of short comics pulled from all different years and eras of Marvel's history, compiling some of the most important queer moments in the comic company's history. Some of them are the length of an entire comic issue, while some of them are only two or three page scenes, and I loved the way this collection was put together. Nothing dragged on too long, nothing was too brief, and for someone like me who has a painfully short attention span, Marvel's Voices: Pride was really refreshing. I know a lot of reviewers have said that a lot of the dialogue in some of these comics was too 'on the nose,' but you know what? I loved it. These are openly queer characters talking about, well, being openly queer. Because if they were any more subtle, people would miss the point. You know how the entire concept of the X-Men is an allegory for homosexuality? Yeah, people still don't get that. So unless a character says 'hey, by the way, I'm gay,' people are going to miss it. So having that lack of subtlety wasn't a big issue for me. Besides, as a queer person? Queer people love to talk about their queerness, when they're in an open and safe enough environment to do so. While most of the comics in Marvel's Voices: Pride are from more recent comics (2010s onwards), I absolutely loved that they also reached back into the archives to put in some queer Marvel moments from the 90s. Marvel's Voices: Pride is a reminder that gay people didn't just start suddenly existing in the 21st century, and that queer representation (as much as it's grown and continues to need to grow) didn't just suddenly start in the past 20 years, either. There have always been queer superheroes, queer characters in your favourite comic books, and queer writers and illustrators behind the pen. Marvel's Voices: Pride also includes interviews and essays with some queer Marvel creators who had a hand in pivotal moments, and it was so lovely to see them talking about their experiences. Forgive me for a quick sidenote, but I'm a massive fan of the MCU, right? MCU tattoos and Funko pops and collectible cups and all. But god help me, the low bar set by the MCU for queer representation gouges at me. Marvel's Voices: Pride reminds us that hey, guess what? Marvel has always had openly queer characters. Major ones, too, not side characters waiting to be killed off. Mystique, Bobby Drake, Hulkling and Wiccan, America Chavez, they're openly queer; and the MCU is ushering in an age of people getting their panties in a twist because there's some vaguely referenced gay character in the background of a scene. How many times have we heard the headline 'Marvel introduces its first openly gay character!', and then found out that that character has a 5 second scene that only ever hinted at their queerness, and was designed to be cut for overseas markets? Look, I'm not saying Marvel is the pinnacle of queer rep, or queer comic rep. It's really, really not. But Marvel's Voices: Pride reminds us of why the comic industry was so big in the first place: comics are about superheroes and fantasy, sure, but they're about us, too. They're about seeing yourself and seeing the good in the world on the page, and taking that with you wherever you go. It's about seeing POC characters, and disabled characters, and queer characters, and saying hey, if they can be superheroes, why can't I? The comics industry as a whole has always been more accepting of queerness than a lot of other industries (Google underground queer comic movements if you want some history), and I'm outright ashamed that the MCU and the DCU have taken these relatable characters and stories and made having a major POC or queer character a big 'we did it, see, we're progressive!' deal. Support comics. Support indie, queer comics. Give incel, homophobe Marvel nerds on Reddit shit for not knowing the history of their favourite comics. Is there a lot more progress that needs to happen? God, absolutely, without hesitation. But Marvel's Voices: Pride to me felt like a big 'we're here, we're queer, we've always been here, and we're not going anywhere' celebration of what it means to be unashamedly queer, and to be a superhero along with it. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 25, 2023
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Jun 30, 2023
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Jun 25, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 9798987982907
| B0C2XV9Q79
| 3.31
| 32
| unknown
| May 31, 2023
|
did not like it
|
None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 18, 2023
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Jun 24, 2023
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Jun 05, 2023
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Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||||
| 0316519146
| 9780316519144
| 0316519146
| 3.63
| 1,456
| Jul 07, 2022
| Jul 18, 2023
|
really liked it
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"I'm scared that I don't know how to be king. That I'll let everybody down. There's a pressure I feel weighing on me, like being the first Black anyth
"I'm scared that I don't know how to be king. That I'll let everybody down. There's a pressure I feel weighing on me, like being the first Black anything is too important to mess up. Even if you don't believe in our family or the monarchy, it means something for a Black person to wear this crown. So, I can't mess it up, because if I do, they'll say we should have never been here in the first place. And they already think that." The King Is Dead isn't quite what I expected it to be, but I'm certainly not complaining about it. This book definitely had more of a YA thriller/mystery feel than I'd thought, but the twists and turns are so engaging that I can't be upset about it. Every single chapter, I was so convinced I knew the plot twist, that I knew the culprits - and every single time, I was wrong. Yes, this is YA, so there were a few plot points that I saw coming (no spoilers, obviously!), but the whole overarching plot was really just so phenomenal as a whodunnit. That being said, the reason I picked up The King Is Dead in the first place is because I loved the idea of how people would react to the most powerful, white, heteronormative institution of the planet being led by a Black, queer teenager. This book was so open about the realities of the British monarchy, and after the past few years of looking at what's happened to the real British monarchy (especially with Meghan Markle), you can so clearly see how much inspiration Dean took from real-life scenarios. Quinn Buckley's avid racism and homophobia is so rampant, and you see exactly that sort of rhetoric used against the monarchy when it suits straight, white, middle-to-upper class people to do so. I think what I found really interesting about this book is the treatment of secrets and scandals in the palace. It's been a known fact going back to practically the start of the British monarchy that kings and queens are having affairs, illegitimate children, interracial relationships, and queer relationships - but while those scandals flare up and settle down for white monarchs, the same can't be said for James. The King Is Dead is a really exceptional look at the different standards that people are held to, and I think one of the most striking examples of that during James's first address as King, where he cries over the loss of his father. It's a lose-lose: for crying, Buckley calls him emotional juvenile. If James had stayed stoic, no doubt Buckley would have called him emotionless and said that he never really loved his father enough. That's such an apt example of the shit minorities have to deal with all the time. I took an interest in this book initially because I loved Red, White & Royal Blue, and The King Is Dead didn't disappoint. My only qualm is that there are points when it feels more whodunnit mystery than a character piece on James, but overall, I really can't complain. I also would've actually loved it if this book had been adult instead of YA, so you could explore some darker themes and tones, but I also think it's a really important story for teenagers to read, and to see themselves in. Definitely a Benjamin Dean fan for life, and I can't wait to read more of his works! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 2023
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Aug 07, 2023
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Jun 04, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 1250817633
| 9781250817631
| 1250817633
| 3.75
| 10,768
| May 30, 2023
| May 30, 2023
|
really liked it
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"She's hurting. She's denying. She's going to fucking hate herself if she keeps doing this, but I can't make her love herself. All I can do is love my
"She's hurting. She's denying. She's going to fucking hate herself if she keeps doing this, but I can't make her love herself. All I can do is love myself and hope she can get there someday." 3.5 rounded up to a 4, dropped from a 4 to a 3.5 because of the last five pages of this book alone. I think what struck me most about Girls Like Girls is the honest of this book, about what it means to come into your queer sexuality as a teenage girl. Quick note, this book really struck some personal chords with me, so forgive me is this is less of a review than trying to disentangle where Kiyoko's story ends and my own experiences begin! Before I dive into any of that, let me just review Girls Like Girls as a book for what it is. At first, I wasn't sure Kiyoko's style of writing was up my alley, but by the end of this novel, I really enjoyed it. She has a very specific voice and way of writing, something that can take a little bit of getting used to, but it sounds incredibly authentic to what Coley's inner voice is. This book is written in first-person perspective, and I think more books that are written that way should explore how their characters talk and think, rather than trying to be perfectly grammatically correct all the time. That being said, I'll admit that Kiyoko using "Curtis's" as a contraction for "Curtis is" was a little iffy, and maybe something that should've gotten dealt with in editing. [SPOILERS START HERE] As for pacing, Girls Like Girls has a really strong start and end, but the middle is a little slow. Considering how relatively short this book is, there shouldn't have been any pacing issues, other than perhaps moving through things too quickly. This wasn't the case for Girls Like Girls, and although I think every scene was important, some of them could've just been paced better. I also really loved the AIM messages and LiveJournal posts included in this book! Very 2000s, and it really just adds to the sense of the era. Now, onto the overly personal and probably TMI stuff I had with this book. From the cover and the title alone, you would assume that Girls Like Girls is your standard love story: the two girls on the cover take an interest in each other, face some challenges, but eventually get their happy ending in. And guess what? That's exactly what happens in this book. The issue? That isn't the direction this story takes. Two-thirds of the way into Girls Like Girls, I was absolutely engrossed in Kiyoko's examination of what self-love means and how it relates to internalized homophobia, and I was so convinced that this book would end with a message of self love: it doesn't matter if you love someone else, you need to take care of yourself first, because especially when it comes to queer relationships, you can't put yourself through the abuse of someone else's internalized homophobia in the hopes that they might love you back the way you deserve someday. What a great message! Except, lo and behold, (spoiler alert) Coley and Sonya end up together. I hated that. I absolutely hated it. While we don't see as much of Sonya's journey and struggle with her own queerness as Coley's, we get enough to know why she's behaving the way she is. She's under pressure from her overbearing, controlling mother, has an outright abusive ex-boyfriend that she is desperate to please despite his bad behaviour, and she's surrounded with certain friends who are outright homophobic. Of course Sonya isn't going to be open about her sexuality from day one. I went through the same sort of thing with an early relationship of my own. I get it. Sonya isn't necessarily a bad person, but Coley doesn't need to be enduring abuse from her because Sonya is accepting when they're together in private. Coley says it at some point in this book, that she and Sonya just aren't at the same place in loving themselves and understanding themselves, and that's exactly right, and that's fine! That's a common thread for relationships of all kinds, not just queer ones. You can fall in love with the right person at the wrong time, right? Coley comes to this realization, and goes through this process of self-transformation and self-love. She surrounds herself with people who love her unconditionally, has allies in queerness, friends who she doesn't have to change herself around. And when Sonya comes back into her life trying to pull the same shit as always, Coley puts her foot down. Good! Yes, she still loves Sonya, but Coley realizes that Sonya is in a very different situation than her, a far less healthy one. She also realizes that while Sonya might not be an inherently bad person, her internalized homophobia is causing her to be cruel, and Coley realizes that she doesn't deserve that, no matter how much she loves Sonya. Great! But then, Coley seems to take personal ownership of getting Sonya out of that place. I might be projecting a little bit here, because I've been where Coley's at, but she shouldn't be responsible for solving Sonya's self-hatred. I think part of it is Coley not wanting to see what happened to her mom happen with Sonya; she wants to try and 'save' someone, because there's residual guilt about not being able to save her mother. And that just sat wrong with me. Helping a loved one through challenging circumstances is one thing; enduring cruelty because 'I can change them' is something else. And then, the ending. Oh, the ending. The literal last five pages. Trevor queer-bashing, Sonya's friend group dividing into homophobes and allies, Coley getting a possible concussion and then breaking a much larger man's nose, and then falling into someone's lawn happily in Sonya's arms in full view of the entire neighbourhood. Shit. What the hell was that. Why was that squeezed into the last five pages. There was more plot in those last five pages than the middle hundred of this book, and Kiyoko just shoved it in at the end. Not to mention that it really just undid all of Coley's realizations about self-love and her relationship to Sonya. Not to mention that Sonya just suddenly stopped being homophobic and self-hating in the span of sixty seconds. So much was jammed in here that it made no sense for this book, and absolutely ruined the ending for me. I'll say it: I didn't want Sonya and Coley to end up together. Not in a heartbreaking way, but in a 'maybe after we've both learned and grown as people, we can try this again' way. Maybe they meet up again in school, and Sonya has ditched Trevor and Brooke, has opened up a dialogue with Faith, has grown without entirely relying Coley to fix her mental health. Kiyoko clearly wanted a romantic, 'happy' ending to this book, so Coley and Sonya got together, and that just ruined the intention of Girls Like Girls for me. [SPOILERS END HERE] All of this being said, I really liked the tone and the storytelling style of Girls Like Girls, and above all, I felt seen. Teenage queerness has so much more nuance than people want to give it credit for, and. Girls Like Girls really does explore that. It's so much more than just accepting yourself and dealing with homophobia from bullies at school. There's so many layers to it, so many heartbreaking and joyous complexities, and I think that Girls Like Girls has been one of the most faithful, true-to-life queer coming of age stories I've ever read. I would encourage everyone to read this, but please note that the trigger warning Kiyoko offers at the start of the book isn't really comprehensive enough: it deals with depression and suicide at length, and in no uncertain terms. Please be mindful of your own mental health when embarking on Coley's journey! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 27, 2023
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Jun 30, 2023
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Jun 03, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 125004443X
| 9781250044433
| 125004443X
| 3.82
| 620,917
| Jun 04, 2013
| Jun 17, 2017
|
really liked it
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"The girl touched the collar at her neck, the fetter at her wrist. So many men had tried to make her a queen. Now she understood that she was meant fo
"The girl touched the collar at her neck, the fetter at her wrist. So many men had tried to make her a queen. Now she understood that she was meant for something more. For the living and the dead, she would make herself a reckoning. She would rise." 3.5 rounded up to a 4. A better read than Shadow and Bone, but still a little bit lacklustre. The thing I'm finding about the Shadow and Bone trilogy so far is that it's so, so close to being something absolutely amazing, but it misses the mark every time simply because of the era it was written in. Like I said with Shadow and Bone, this trilogy is a hallmark of the early 2010s YA genre: one special, magical girl who has to choose between two boys, except she's really being asked to choose more than just love. For this trilogy, Alina is constantly choosing between Mal (a childhood friend that represents a peaceful, ordinary life she can never return to) and The Darkling (a suave and seductive taste of power that could topple Ravka if it's not kept in check). Siege and Storm was so fascinating because it introduces politics and war, classism and propaganda, so many topics that have a real depth to them - and yet, it's always reduced to Mal vs. The Darkling. Who will Alina kiss? What man will this teenage girl end up with? There's so much squandered potential coming out of the Twilight, Hunger Games, Mortal Instruments era that this series was written in, and I mourn what could've been. How many times in Siege and Storm did Alina have these moments of clarity, of 'this power is my own, it belongs to me, and no other man,' only for Mal or The Darkling to fuck that up immediately? Alina even makes that realization herself on page 292: "[Nikolai and The Darkling] may be different, I reminded myself as we headed into the palace, but they both want to use you just the same." She has these epiphanies, but nothing's ever done with them, and it's a bit of a disappointment. My other issue with Siege and Storm is that, well, it's the second book in a trilogy, and it reads like it. Not enough happens to make this book ravenously page-turning, but too much happens for the plot of Siege and Storm to have fit into either Shadow and Bone or Ruin and Rising. A lot happens in the last two or three chapters, but the rest of this book? It felt pretty low-stakes. Now, I watched the Netflix adaptation of this series before I actually read it, and the friend I was watching it with told me that the Netflix show had condensed the events of Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising into a single season. "They spread Shadow and Bone out over all of season one, but jammed two entire books into season 2?" I'd said, "Surely they must've done the plot of Siege and Storm an injustice by cutting so much out!" No. They didn't. Nothing happens in this book. They find, kill, and dispose of the second amplifier in the first 150 out of 400 pages. All of this being said, I did actually enjoy the reading of Siege and Storm more than Shadow and Bone, simply because Shadow and Bone had to introduce a ton of characters, concepts, and world-building, whereas Siege and Storm got to enjoy doing some character development and complicating some dynamics. It felt like a smoother read, with so much less content forced into it, and considering that 200 pages of this book was just war prep and politics, I actually really enjoyed a lot of that. Siege and Storm also has some absolutely banger lines, and I think this is where I can see more of a correlation between Bardugo's early writing and her later writing - she really got to understand her characters more here, and did some absolutely beautiful description, and it's cool to see how much she progressed as an author between the two books. Even though a lot was packed into the last chapter of Siege and Storm, the cliffhanger at the end was really interesting, and I'm excited to see what happens in Ruin and Rising! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 08, 2023
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Sep 16, 2023
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May 28, 2023
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Paperback
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| 1250063167
| 9781250063168
| 1250063167
| 3.99
| 534,010
| Jun 17, 2014
| Jun 2017
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really liked it
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"None of them were easy or soft or simple. They were like me, nursing hurts and hidden wounds, all broken in different ways. We didn't quite fit toget
"None of them were easy or soft or simple. They were like me, nursing hurts and hidden wounds, all broken in different ways. We didn't quite fit together. We had edges so jagged we cut each other sometimes, but as I curled up on my side, the warmth of the fire at my back, I felt a rush of gratitude so sweet it made my throat ache." Easily the best book in the Shadow & Bone trilogy, no questions asked. Having read the Six of Crows duology first (and having loved it), you can quite literally see exactly where Leigh Bardugo found her writing groove for the Grishaverse, and it was in Ruin and Rising. Both Shadow and Bone and Siege and Storm were... well, fine. They were mediocre in a lot of ways, neither awful nor extraordinary, but Ruin and Rising was genuinely very good, particularly as far as ending the initial trilogy. I think that even for the best authors and the best series out there, endings are hard. Finding an ending that satisfies the reader and the characters equally, something that feels good without being too cliche or bland, is a real struggle. And having been not terribly impressed by Shadow and Bone or Siege and Storm, I didn't expect Ruin and Rising to be much different. But quite honestly, the ending of this book (and of the series in general) was easily one of the best parts of the Shadow and Bone trilogy. It wraps up so perfectly, and conveys what I think one of the most important messages of this series is: you don't have to be the 'chosen one' to be powerful. There are so many kinds of personal power, of small kindnesses and confidences that can make all the difference. The trilogy felt like it touched on that point so briefly in so many places (see my reviews for Shadow and Bone and Siege and Storm), but never actually really delved into that topic of Alina's personal autonomy. So colour me stoked when the ending of Ruin and Rising did exactly that. For as genuinely beautiful as I think the latter third of this book was, there were some parts of it that just... dragged. The several chapters of the journey into Shu Han? Boring. Dull. Drawn out. Could've been a whole lot shorter while making the same point. That's a trend I found with the first two books in this series as well: if you cut out all of the extended travelling sequences, this series could've been an entire book shorter. We get it, Mal can track good, and there's a whole lot of walking. Please, please, don't make me read another several-chapter travelling sequence. Despite this being a classic 2010s YA book (which you can still tonally tell in this third instalment), Ruin and Rising feels like it's slightly more mature, and deals with a lot of dark and heavy topics with a deft hand. I have so many pages tabbed in this book just for how Bardugo talks about death and grieving, for how beautiful the descriptions of the complications surrounding grief are. Alina grieving for The Darkling was handled so genuinely well, because she never forgives or absolves him for his literal war crimes, but even Mal acknowledges that grief is just something you have to feel sometimes, even if it's complicated or you didn't have completely positive feelings for a person (page 393, "Loss is loss. You have the right to grieve."). I'm a bit surprised at myself for this, but I'm glad that Ruin and Rising marks the end of Mal and Alina's story. Not because they died or because there's no more story to tell (clearly, there's plenty more, if the size of the current Grishaverse alone is any indication), but because it feels right for them to stay as anonymous otkazat'sya. There's something so very beautiful and intricate about the Shadow & Bone trilogy being told entirely and completely from Alina's POV, and then getting to finish the series with her not having to tell her story anymore. Yes, she misses the light, and yes, there are things about being the Sun Summoner that she will always grieve, but she doesn't want to have to have such a noteworthy life anymore. And Bardugo putting a full stop on Alina's story, while continuing others like Nikolai's, is such a perfect way to conclude this series. Also, I'm exceptionally glad I read this series in 2023, with King of Scars and Rule of Wolves having already come out, because Volcra!Nikolai was quite literally my favourite part of this book. The golden prince dealing with darkness and monstrosity in his veins? Absolutely I want a series about that, and Bardugo has already delivered. Very excited to delve into the last Grishaverse series! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 22, 2023
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Sep 29, 2023
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May 28, 2023
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Paperback
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| 1250027438
| 9781250027436
| 1250027438
| 3.93
| 978,337
| Jun 05, 2012
| Jun 2017
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liked it
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"I called and the light answered. It surrounded me, blazing with heat, more powerful and more pure than ever before because it was all mine. I wanted
"I called and the light answered. It surrounded me, blazing with heat, more powerful and more pure than ever before because it was all mine. I wanted to laugh, to sing, to shout. At least, there was something that belonged wholly and completely to me." Oh, boy, this book was quintessential 2010s YA fantasy series, huh? First-person, 'chosen one' girl POV forced into a love triangle between two incredibly mediocre, if not outright terrible men? Oof. I went into Shadow and Bone knowing full well this was something I would've read (and adored) in high school, and I know hindsight is always 20/20, but I think that there was just so squandered much potential in this book. First off, sorry, this love triangle sucks. Not just because both Mal (the childhood best friend who doesn't deserve Alina) and the Darkling (the man who sold Genya into sexual slavery and spent the rest of the book making a literal collared slave out of Alina) are awful love interests, but because there was so much room for there to be no romance whatsoever. Part of Alina's whole storyline in suddenly finding out she's Grisha is about personal power, about her abilities and her capabilities not being tied to anyone other than herself, let alone a man. But she's always either one-hundred-percent relying on Mal, or relying on the Darkling, and those scenes of 'I'm coming into my own power' are dented and damaged by how quickly she'll sacrifice all of that power to kiss a boy. Fine, yes, she's a teenager, and fine, yes, this book is written for teenagers, but still. My other thing with Shadow and Bone is that I really didn't like that it was written in first-person. I think there's definitely a time and place for first-person POV in books, but in the case of Shadow and Bone, it was detrimental to the story. There is so much going on around Alina - a literal entire war, Mal trekking into Tsibeya to hunt down the stag - that she doesn't actually witness first-hand, and because she doesn't, we're missing out as readers on critical parts of the story. I would've much rather read about whatever Zoya's deal is or what Genya is enduring because of the Darkling than a hundred sustained pages of Alina's daily routine at The Little Palace. This book would've been so much more interesting if it switched perspectives, or even just followed any of the other characters for a few chapters: but in the end, we just get hundreds of pages of Alina's get-ready-with-me routine, and so, so, so many pages just about travelling. We get it. Tsibeya is far away from Os Alta. Move on. What I really did love about Shadow and Bone, though, is that Leigh Bardugo has created some really interesting and unique fantasy elements, here. The whole idea of Grisha is really fascinating, and it's written in a way that doesn't make you feel overwhelmed. I often stay away from adult high fantasy novels because they're so enriched in new-world lore without explaining it in layman's terms that it's just exhausting to spend time learning about how an entirely different universe works. But Shadow and Bone is written so that you understand the equivalences to our own world, while still constructing something unique. I also really enjoyed that the different countries in the Grishaverse take cultures and languages from our own world (Ravka being Russia, Kerch being Germany, Fjerda being Scandinavian, etc.), and molding it into something more fantastical. Now, I've already read the Six of Crows duology (fav books of all time), and I found Bardugo's writing style to be a lot more descriptive and in-depth in the duology than in Shadow and Bone. I think it just took Bardugo some time to settle into the Grishaverse and to find her footing with how she wanted to write this universe, but honestly, I think Six of Crows just proved how much more effective a third-person POV vs. a first-person for this world. There's too much going on to just see one person's perspective. Still, I'm going to read the rest of the Grishaverse if it kills me, so onto Siege and Storm! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 25, 2023
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Aug 31, 2023
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May 28, 2023
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Paperback
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| 1774880970
| 9781774880975
| B0BP6P5VKY
| 3.64
| 302
| Sep 05, 2023
| Sep 05, 2023
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liked it
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"The house wasn't merely haunted. It itself was a haunt. A ghost of its former self." Thank you to Penguin Teen Canada for an ARC of this book! 3.5 roun "The house wasn't merely haunted. It itself was a haunt. A ghost of its former self." Thank you to Penguin Teen Canada for an ARC of this book! 3.5 rounded down to a 3. No matter what you go into House of Ash and Bone expecting, you're going to get something different. This is the kind of book that has layers to it, the kind of book that has meanings on top of meanings, and the kind of book I would've loved to dissect in my university horror WGS class. Unfortunately, I think House of Ash and Bone misses the mark for me purely because there's too much going on at once: there's a ghost, but the ghost is actually a witch, and there's a family moving into a haunted house, also one of the kids is sort of psychic, and also she has a friend that sometimes haunts her, and there's fairytale references, and also a kid in the woods who might be dead, and also Salem Witch Trials lore. It's a lot. And, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I almost wish Josephine didn't have psychic powers. House of Ash and Bone would've been a much more compelling haunted house story if Josephine and Dorcas didn't both have some sort of magic on their sides. House of Ash and Bone is a really nice, easy read, but I think it also slightly misses its tone when it comes to audience. This is a YA book, but it reads as middle-grade, and the gore factor could almost be considered adult. It's well-paced, but Sutherland packs way too much information into dialogue where it doesn't fit, and that took me out of the moment more than once. If you're going to use character dialogue for backstory or for explanations, at least do it in their voices - there's a big piece of dialogue for Lawrence in chapter 18 that I understand the purpose of, and could have been really effective, but Sutherland wrote it as though he was writing exposition, and not dialogue for a child. There were similar tonal issues with Dorcas, who switches between 1800s English and modern vocabulary, and I couldn't quite get a feel for it. That being said, I loved Dorcas as a villain, especially as the villain in a haunted house story. Usually, when you get ghosts or demons or witches in a haunted house story, they're largely silent scares, using timing and their appearance to frighten. Dorcus definitely does this, too, but because she's also given so much dialogue and a distinct personality, you get the horror of her playing mindgames with Josephine too. It's another layer to House of Ash and Bone that I loved: yes, the things in the dark are scary, but at the end of the day, it's always people who are the real monsters. Also, just one quick little note (and slight spoiler warning): Josephine is queer (hooray), but her queer awakening ends up being mild incest (boo)! Yeah, didn't love that. All in all, to me, House of Ash and Bone felt more like a Blumhouse horror movie than a solid horror story: it was more about jumpscares and easy, predictable twists than anything else, but there is so much potential to this story and to Sutherland's writing. I think it's a really solid debut for him into YA fiction, and I'd definitely read anything else he comes out with in the future. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 26, 2023
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May 30, 2023
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May 26, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 4.59
| 658,949
| Sep 27, 2016
| Sep 04, 2018
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it was amazing
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"What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordi
"What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren't chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway." I'm still stuck trying to decide if I loved Crooked Kingdom more than Six of Crows. Typically, series have their highs and their lows; even in duologies, I find one tends to be better than the other. But with this series? Nope. Both are hits, complete bangers, and I'm so mad I didn't read this series earlier. Also, Crooked Kingdom made me cry in three separate places, so. Whereas Six of Crows is the story of one complete heist, from start to finish, Crooked Kingdom feels a lot more like small, insignificant pieces that fit together until you can finally see the entire puzzle. Even the most seemingly irrelevant scenes or snips of dialogue have a greater purpose in the total narrative, and that's something truly spectacular for any book, let alone a YA novel. Looking back on it, I do sometimes wish Crooked Kingdom had... less in it, maybe? Not from a length point of view, but more in terms of pace. It feels a little start-stop, over and over again, but it certainly keeps the reader engaged, I'll give Bardugo that. And then, on top of all of the thrilling action sequences and jaw-dropping twists, Crooked Kingdom gives you this immense, beautiful character development. Kaz is my favourite character, but I'll admit that I think Six of Crows focused more on his backstory and his trauma than anyone else's. But in Crooked Kingdom, you get a really even spread of development for everyone: you get Inej's complex history with her own body and her own freedoms, Jesper's gambling addiction and his relationship with his family, Wylan's relationship to personal and familial shame, Nina's parem addiction and her connections to Ravka, and Matthias un-learning deeply embedded lessons of hatred. Everyone feels very fleshed out in this book, even the villains. Fuck Pekka Rollins and Jan Van Eck, but damn, if they're not well thought-out and given intricacies of their own. I think that one of my benefits of reading Crooked Kingdom in 2023 is firmly knowing that Bardugo intended for this series to be a duology, and being able to look at the ending a little different. I know for a fact that if I had read this when it first came out, I would've been begging and pleading for another book, because there's certainly plenty of room for Bardugo to write more about the Crows. However, there's also a really good sense of finality with the Crooked Kingdom ending, and I rarely feel so at ease about the ending of a series I'm deeply attached to. But I really love that both Six of Crows books ended with the same perspective, but with very different tones. It was a nice little way of wrapping the series up neatly and cleanly, and I think that speaks to Bardugo's phenomenal writing and planning abilities. I know that the Six of Crows series is Bardugo's most beloved in the Grishaverse, but I'm going to venture into Shadow and Bone and King of Scars next - because, even though I'm really not all that interested in Ravkan politics, Bardugo's pacing and writing style have sold me on pretty much anything else she's ever written. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 15, 2023
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May 25, 2023
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May 15, 2023
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Paperback
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| 1435129733
| 9781435129733
| 1435129733
| 4.02
| 1,294,202
| May 26, 1897
| Mar 01, 2011
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liked it
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"How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dream
"How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams." Finished a few months behind the actual end of Dracula Daily, but we still got there in the end! The thing about Dracula is that, for me, it's full of very high highs and very low lows. On one hand, you have this incredible, genre-defining premise, and on the other, you have a book with some of the worst pacing of all-time. I say this knowing full well that pacing was different in the era in which Dracula was originally written, but this book could have been half the length it was, and still told the exact same story. I love the diary entry format, because you get so many unique POVs, but some of them are outright pointless. Some of Mina's early entries about her talking to locals were such a slog to get through, and I wound up just vaguely skimming them, because they don't contribute anything to the plot. Past the slowness of the poor pacing, however, Dracula is genuinely a very good horror story. I know basically every version of Dracula is technically considered horror, but it really just comes off more as Gothic fantasy than anything else in a lot of adaptations. Stoker's original, though? It's genuinely fucking scary in some scenes. The death of Lucy's mother? Lucy being stuck in a literal haunted house surrounded by bodies? The immediate cut from that to unread letters to Lucy from Mina? It's bone-chilling, and it's so cleverly written. I will say that I have endlessly mixed feelings on the end of Dracula however, because for once in this entire damn book, Stoker absolutely raced through Dracula's death. The lead up to it was a thousand pages long, and the actual defeat of Dracula was, like, half a paragraph. I will say that I really do enjoy the epilogue: the 'seven years later' part is the original "no one will ever believe our story, but it's okay, because we know it happened" trope, and it gives me chills every time I read it. Also, just a note for anyone considering reading Dracula, but Dracula Daily is actually a really wonderful way of reading this story. It immerses you in the world as the characters experience things, and it also breaks up the longer, drier parts into manageable pieces. I think I might do Dracula Daily next year again, just because I had so much fun with it this year (and I'm going to keep up with it in 2024, I swear!!) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 05, 2023
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Dec 30, 2023
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May 05, 2023
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Leather Bound
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| 1627792120
| 4.48
| 978,319
| Sep 29, 2015
| Sep 29, 2015
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it was amazing
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"The knowledge that they might never see each other again, that some of them - maybe all of them - might not survive this night hung heavy in the air.
"The knowledge that they might never see each other again, that some of them - maybe all of them - might not survive this night hung heavy in the air. A gambler, a convict, a wayward son, a lost Grisha, a Suli girl who had become a killer, a boy from the Barrel who had become something worse." This was my first Bardugo book, and my first entrance into the Grishaverse, and it was so, so, so fucking good. I get why all the youth on TikTok are really into Six of Crows, because whatever hype you've heard about it, it meets those expectations. No, exceeds those expectations. Considering that this is considered a YA book (which I have mixed feelings about, but that's where you'll find it in a bookstore regardless), Bardugo fleshes out some of the most intricate, detailed, and complicated characters I've ever seen in any work of fiction. What Six of Crows does really well is gives you a cast of heroes who aren't heroes at all; protagonists who are likeable, but sometimes, not necessarily the good guys; characters who are very real, who have good traits, but who have openly bad traits, too. Misfit, found-family stories are always a favourite, but this is what I mean when I say I want a motley crew: everyone is so entirely unique, so different, and has such a distinct personality that seeing them all work together should be nothing but a chaotic mess, but instead, it works. Every single character in Six of Crows has a completely unique relationship with every other character, and there's always layers to their interactions. There's never anything as reductive as "x and y are in love," or "y and z are enemies" - much like in real life, no one's connection to anyone else is purely black and white. Real-life relationships are intricate and messy, and so too are the relationships in Six of Crows. Bardugo's writing style was genuinely impressive to me, especially for a YA author. That's not a dig at YA authors - I love YA, especially YA horror. But writing for teens can be difficult, because there's a need to use language that doesn't skew too simple or too infantilizing, while finding a way to tell a story that doesn't become so dark or complex it becomes adult. Six of Crows is an easy read, but it's immaculate, detailed, and has some absolutely beautiful lines and descriptions. Bardugo knows how to give clear, descriptive images of her world, without spending too much time on any one thing to keep the reader's interest. Really, Bardugo's writing style alone has convinced me to try the rest of the Grishaverse after I finish Crooked Kingdom, even though I don't have a particular interest in Alina's story. My only concessions with Six of Crows are pacing and dark content. With pacing, yes, I think every chapter and every scene moves along well, but it takes more than half of Six of Crows for the Crows to even step foot in the Ice Court, and I think the set-up just dragged on a little bit too long. Content-wise, I can't really blame Bardugo for this, so much as I blame how female fantasy authors are treated: I really don't think Six of Crows should be a teen novel, because damn, this series gets dark sometimes. There's gore (even though I absolutely love the scene of Kaz ripping a man's eye out, I think it's genuinely important to show the blunt brutality that he's capable of), and at length, there's discussions of child sex trafficking, sexual assault, and rape. I'm not saying that Inej should've had a different backstory (in fact, I think seeing her journey from being sold in the slave trade to rediscovering what personal autonomy means for her is an incredibly important story to tell), but to have that sort of thing shelved alongside books meant for anyone 13 and over is a little questionable. I had this discussion with a friend, and we talked about how Six of Crows and some of Bardugo's other Grishaverse books likely could've been intended as adult novels, but publishers push female fantasy authors to write YA instead, because they think it'll be more profitable. You see the sort of hatred Sarah J. Maas gets from rabid sexists, and there's a reason that so many female adult fantasy authors go by acronyms of their names (V.E. Schwab, R.F. Kuang, S. A. Chakraborty). Anyway, that really doesn't have anything to do with Six of Crows itself, but that was definitely something nagging on my mind while I read this. I'm so immensely excited to read Crooked Kingdom, and even though I probably should've read Six of Crows a long time ago, I'm glad I didn't, because the cliffhanger at the end would've killed me. Bardugo knows how to tell a good story, but as equally important? She knows how to leave you wanting more. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 02, 2023
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May 14, 2023
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Apr 28, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 1534312595
| 9781534312593
| 1534312595
| 3.58
| 4,455
| May 08, 2019
| May 14, 2019
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liked it
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“I’m finally taking control of my life. Magic is real. I was right all along. It may be scary, but it’s beautiful too. It’s where I belong.” 2.5 rounde “I’m finally taking control of my life. Magic is real. I was right all along. It may be scary, but it’s beautiful too. It’s where I belong.” 2.5 rounded up to a 3. Disclaimer, I read through Blackbird while I was in hospital pre-surgery, so this might not be the most comprehensive review I’ve ever written! Like many other reviewers, I’ll start by saying that where Blackbird lacks in story and dialogue, it shines in art. The art style is absolutely gorgeous, I love the bright, neon colouring style, and the whole thing has a very 80s-themed air about it. Unfortunately, the beautiful artwork is the only major notable thing about this graphic novel. That’s not to say Blackbird is bad, by any means - it’s just not spectacular, either. The plot of Blackbird is… really nothing new. In complete honesty, it seems like a big re-hash of Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments series: girl discovers she’s magic and that her family has been lying to her about being magic to keep her safe, magic-adept boy ‘saves’ her and brings her into the magical world and they fall in love, but they're both a little scrappy and badass and conventionally attractive and constantly stylish. Nothing new under the sun, I get that, but this graphic novel was uninspired to the degree that I’m surprised any publisher thought it was unique enough to be sellable. Though, I guess it was, since the art style made me buy it in the first place! If you’re not looking for something spectacularly original, but you’re a lover of art and a neon art style, I’d say give Blackbird a shot! It might not be the most inspired work out there, but it also wasn’t as confusing or terrible as I’ve seen other reviewers say. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 29, 2023
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Mar 29, 2023
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Mar 27, 2023
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Paperback
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| B0BR8J8JHD
| 3.78
| 2,347
| Feb 14, 2023
| Feb 14, 2023
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it was amazing
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"Crowded houses rarely make themselves known to strangers. They waited, courting their regular occupiers with budding tension and tested boundaries. C
"Crowded houses rarely make themselves known to strangers. They waited, courting their regular occupiers with budding tension and tested boundaries. Colin hadn't earned his place yet, but he typically didn't have to: haunted places never failed to recognize haunted people." Fuck. Me. Do you ever read a book that you know will stick with you forever? The kind of book that you'll return to once a year, every year? That's Heart, Haunt, Havoc. The blurb on the back cover doesn't even begin to do Moon's writing justice, and whatever fun little queer horror story you think you've signed on for, it's so much more than that. It's so much deeper, so much more substantial, so much more beautiful. This is my first time reading any of Freydís Moon's writing (and it certainly won't be my last), but I'm quite literally in awe that this book wasn't put out by a major publisher, and that Moon isn't a bestselling author. Their writing style is completely unlike anything I've ever read before: it's beautiful, it's haunting, and it's intricate, without sacrificing realism or character tone. When you have an author so good with description, the dialogue can often suffer in comparison, but that isn't the case for this book. Really, there isn't a single weak part of Heart, Haunt, Havoc. I'm typically a little bit wary of shorter books (anything under 200ish), because I think it's genuinely difficult to do a short book/novella well. It's either too fleshed-out and felt too short, or it's too brief, and didn't give the reader time to sink into the world of the story. Heart, Haunt, Havoc was exactly the length it should've been - though, well, Moon could've made this book 900 pages, and I still would've read it cover to the cover, but that's not the point. Reading this felt like watching a favourite television series come to an end when the writers felt like the story had run its course: they put exactly what they wanted to out into the world, and didn't stretch things insufferably long to get a few extra bucks. Moon knows exactly what they're doing with writing The Gideon Testaments, and I'm so immensely fucked up over it. On top of all of this, the queerness in this book is so beautiful. This book is horror, is haunting, is broken people having suffered through unimaginable trauma, but it's still beautiful, in the both the breaking and the healing. Honestly, maybe the bar has been set low for me in the horror genre, but it's nice that even the demons in this book use people's correct pronouns. I'm so glad I read this book on the heels of Wolf, Willow, Witch's release, because this series has so much incredible potential, and Moon could make a thirty-book series if they wanted to, and I'd read every single volume. Reading Heart, Haunt, Havoc was a genuinely moving, profound experience, and I wish Freydís Moon all of the success that they deserve. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 06, 2023
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Sep 07, 2023
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Mar 16, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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| 1803362111
| 9781803362113
| 1803362111
| 4.16
| 291,017
| Apr 11, 2017
| Nov 02, 2022
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it was amazing
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"The thing about Shakespeare is, he's so eloquent... He speaks the unspeakable. He turns grief and triumph and rapture and rage into words, into somet
"The thing about Shakespeare is, he's so eloquent... He speaks the unspeakable. He turns grief and triumph and rapture and rage into words, into something we can understand. He renders the whole mystery of humanity comprehensible. You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough." Wow. I can't believe BookTok was actually right about this one. If We Were Villains is not only a love letter to Shakespeare, but I think in a lot of ways, an exact, modern translation of Shakespeare's work. There are so many facets to it: you have the obvious, of course, being that our main characters are all specifically studying and embodying Shakespeare's works for their academic career; you have the language in which they speak to each other, which is not Old English, but rather Shakespearian exactly, communicating through references and lines across all of Shakespeare's work; you have the overall plot and theme of the book, which is, of course, a Shakespeare play reincarnated. But what I think is most remarkable about Rio's writing is that, as both an actor and an academic, Rio truly understands Shakespeare's significance. Shakespeare gets a bad rap because, completely fairly, high school curriculums beat the Bard into the ground. Everyone has to learn a new set of linguistics while trying to identify with characters and plots from hundreds of years ago, and it's more torture than education. But what I think the most important thing about Shakespeare is, which lower education curriculums gloss over, is that Shakespeare wrote his plays for the common man. We consider Shakespeare to be high art now, yes, but back in his day, he wrote things that average, uneducated commoners really enjoyed. Studying Shakespeare now should be an analysis on timeless themes, on common slang and updated parallels, and that's exactly what If We Were Villains gives us. Rio takes lines from Shakespeare's plays as homages, and sets this book with Shakespeare's works as colour and parallel, while still getting across everything Shakespeare himself set to get across with his own tragedies. Yes, I won't deny that If We Were Villains is infinitely more enjoyable if you're already a Shakespeare fan, but even if you aren't, I genuinely think this book teaches Shakespeare more succinctly than any high school course ever will. On top of that, something else I loved about If We Were Villains is the way the book is formatted. You could replace the 'Scenes' and 'Acts' with chapters and parts easily, but it's just one of those little things to help you become more consumed by the world Rio is creating. The way dialogue is phrased, the back-and-forth between modern English and Shakespearian in the same conversation, it's all such amazing worldbuilding, and I'm still in awe. If We Were Villains was, for me, one of those rare, unputdownable books. The 'just one more chapter' trend rarely resonates with me simply because I have a short attention span and generally can't read more than 50 pages in one sitting, but there were days I did 100 pages at once because I couldn't bear to stop reading. Also, just to touch briefly on it, If We Were Villains has one of the best endings to any book I've ever read. I won't spoil it, of course, but the last page is what separates If We Were Villains from being a Shakespeare retelling - that subversion of expectations, that shock, that tragedy and that hope all wrapped up in one? It's entirely unique. I would read another ten books in a series set in this world, but at the same time, I think that I like leaving If We Were Villains were it lays. Some endings are best left to the imagination. My one issue with this book - which isn't even really an issue, so much as something I'm going back and forth on a lot - is the queer representation. [SPOILERS START HERE.] Right off the bat, you have Alexander as an openly gay character, which is great. I have no issues with Aleksander, or Colin, or any of the canonically, openly queer characters. Where I start to wonder is when it comes to Oliver and James's relationship. I go back and forth on this, because I think there's a very fine line that separates homoeroticism and yearning, and queerbaiting. Oliver loves James, and James loves Oliver, that much is obvious, because Oliver says as much - and yet, there's something about the way If We Were Villains frames their relationship that makes it seem like one of those 'in a thousand years, historians will call them really good friends' kind of way. I go back and forth on this because on one hand, a character doesn't need to come out as queer in order to be in love with someone of the same sex. The feelings aren't in the saying of the word. That, combined with Rio's homages to Shakespeare's plays - which are fraught with homoeroticism and queer readings - make it feasibly clever that Rio wants to replicate those readings with how she wrote Oliver and James. On the other hand, however, Oliver and James's relationship isn't treated like any other relationship in this book (the rest of which are heterosexual), and it shows. It feels at times like a 2000s TV show: we want these characters to be gay, but censors and critics won't let us do it, so we'll just have to allude to stuff in such a way that we have plausible deniability if it gets called out. Clearly, queerness isn't an issue in-world, because Alexander is out and open, and there's zero homophobia in this book - so what, then? Even James and Oliver's kiss tiptoes around 'brotherly.' I struggle a lot with the queerness in If We Were Villains, but that didn't take away from my enjoyment of the text in the slightest. [SPOILERS END HERE] All in all, If We Were Villains is easily one of my favourite books of 2023, if not of all-time. What a worthwhile, fulfilling, and engaging book. BookTok actually had my back on this one. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 02, 2023
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Nov 10, 2023
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Mar 11, 2023
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Hardcover
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my rating |
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| 3.73
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really liked it
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Dec 20, 2023
not set
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Jun 27, 2024
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| 3.88
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liked it
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Nov 30, 2023
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Nov 26, 2023
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| 3.93
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really liked it
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Oct 30, 2023
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Oct 10, 2023
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| 4.18
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really liked it
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Sep 21, 2023
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Sep 13, 2023
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| 3.71
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it was amazing
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Sep 05, 2023
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Aug 30, 2023
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| 3.99
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really liked it
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Nov 29, 2023
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Jul 12, 2023
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| 4.17
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it was amazing
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Jun 30, 2023
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Jun 25, 2023
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| 3.31
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did not like it
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Jun 24, 2023
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Jun 05, 2023
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| 3.63
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really liked it
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Aug 07, 2023
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Jun 04, 2023
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| 3.75
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really liked it
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Jun 30, 2023
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Jun 03, 2023
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| 3.82
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really liked it
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Sep 16, 2023
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May 28, 2023
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| 3.99
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really liked it
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Sep 29, 2023
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May 28, 2023
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| 3.93
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liked it
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Aug 31, 2023
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May 28, 2023
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| 3.64
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liked it
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May 30, 2023
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May 26, 2023
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| 4.59
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it was amazing
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May 25, 2023
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May 15, 2023
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| 4.02
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liked it
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Dec 30, 2023
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May 05, 2023
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| 4.48
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it was amazing
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May 14, 2023
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Apr 28, 2023
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| 3.58
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liked it
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Mar 29, 2023
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Mar 27, 2023
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| 3.78
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it was amazing
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Sep 07, 2023
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Mar 16, 2023
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| 4.16
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it was amazing
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Nov 10, 2023
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Mar 11, 2023
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