Ariel

I had a hard time with this one. The Wardrobe Mistress couldn't make up its mind whether it wanted to be a romance, a mystery novel, or a theatre procedural. Instead it oscillates between all three and never achieves a cohesive theme.

I also struggled with the “romance” portrayed between the two main characters. Love at first sight is all well and good, but maybe the characters should actually like each other too? They spend 3/4 of the novel bickering or assaulting each other.
Alistair almost forces himself on Vanessa at a point early on in the book and it made me feel sick.

Things softened towards the end thankfully, but the book also got more muddled and inconsistent in tone. At time boring and with too much minutiae, at others frustratingly sparse.

I won't be reading anything else by this author.

Beautiful, heartbreaking, informative novel. I learnt quite a lot about Guernsey and WWII from this book, and the personal experiences of people in war time. I know it is a fictional novel, but it is the best example of art imitating life. It makes me want to learn more about what actually happened to the people during the war.

I cried several times during this novel, the descriptions of daily life during war time were so moving. I learnt to love the characters very quickly. I can see myself reading this book over again. It was a delight.

I really liked this book. Each essay is relatively well thought out though they do need a bit of editing.

I would have liked to see her go more in depth with each book/s, as it is the essays are very brief and left me wanting more to sink my teeth into.

The one about Monstrous Regiment was my favourite and that's mostly because she takes a deeper look at the themes and characters for that novel.

All in all, a good little book but I'd like to see a more structured and longer set of essays that go deeper.

I really enjoyed this book. The instructions and illustrations are excellent and easy to understand (with the exception of the rams head set up - which I feel is above beginner level anyway).
I read through the whole book first and will now try some of the beginner projects.
I like that there are dedicated beginner projects that tell you how you can start and then enough explanation about how to experiment after that.

The book is full of black and white photos with some coloured ones for more complicated patterns that contain a lot of colours.

All in all I loved this book and can't wait to get started on my first project.

I quite liked this book. Mayes romantic descriptions of the Italian country side made me want to visit again and eat a tonne of delicious food.

This is a slow and thoughtful book, too much so at times. I enjoyed her descriptions of Italy, her renovation adventures and general shenanigans.
But towards the end of the book there are a few rambling chapters about saints, Mary, and religion that bored me to tears.

I also felt that the last two or three chapters were totally unnecessary and the book should have ended when she finished the renovation. Everything after that seemed like she needed to meet a word count so continued to waffle on.

Over all a good read but needed a firmer hand in the editing.

This book was so so sad. Very well written and excellent characters as is normal for Emily Henry.
But it brought up a lot of painful breakup memories for me!

I really wanted to like this book. I thought it was a good premise, but I was bored the entire way through. The cover says “thrilling and gripping” unfortunately for it was neither, just mediocre.

I absolutely loved this book. The portrayal of a long friendship, one in which you learn so much about each other and the facets of their personality, was so well done.
I stayed up late every night just to keep reading it and didn't want it to be finished when I got to the end.

I LOVED this book.
The plot is interesting, the type of magic system is really inventive, the characters sympathetic and at times frustrating (for the right reasons). The story is full of intrigue, taking turns I did not see coming.

I also loved the character design, the costumes are spectacular and are seriously inspiring me to create something similar.

But most of all the illustrations are gorgeous. I spent a long time just looking at all of the art on each page. Each is rendered with so much detail, you can tell a lot of skill and love went into these.

I cannot wait to read the following books. This ends with a real cliffhanger and leaves you wanting more. Kamome Shirahama is a master craftsman, I know I will read this again and again just to see the beautiful illustrations.

I did not get into this book. I don't know anything about Norse Mythology other than pop culture references, so I found the tales hard to follow. The second half of the book was especially difficult to get through as there were so many tales, yet none were explored in depth and I got confused about who they were about more than once.

Part of the problem was the authors super dry writing style. The whole book was a bit “meh” for me.

I did learn a few interesting facts, but that's all I got out of this book.

I really enjoyed this book and can't wait for the next one. It's truly great to see such superb main characters as Safi and Iseult.

The book is very well written, fast paced but doesn't skimp on believable world building, and is basically a fantastic fantasy novel.

One of my favourites already.

10/10, 100%, absolutely LOVED this book. It was very unexpected, didn't take the twists or turns I thought it would and ended in a satisfying but also brilliant way.

One of the best books I have ever read. It goes right into my all time favourites pile.
It was enchanting, lushly described, and it left me wanting more.
If a book could ever tempt you to truly believe in magic and run away with the circus then this is it.
Love love love love.

I loved how Atwood throws the reader right in the middle of it without any explanation of who the characters are etc. it's confusing at first, but it also makes the world seem more real.
I powered through this book, the first half was a little bit slow but it picked up pace. Her choice of what to describe and what to leave up to the readers imagination was interesting. It left me confused sometimes but also made me use my brain, which is something authors don't do enough.

Really liked this book and now want to read Oryx and Crake.

I actually gave up on this book halfway through. I don't ever usually do that, even when a book is pretty boring. But this is so tedious, the characters bland, the writing style confusing, and it is so long to add on top of that. There was almost nothing compelling in this book. At times it was a bit interesting, but mostly it was a long hard slog.

And life is too short for extremely dull books.

So slow to start with. I didn't even start enjoying this book until page 53. Even after that it took almost half the book to warm up.

The romance between Diana and Matthew was not convincing. While I was enjoying the story and characters by the end, the entire first part of their story just seemed off.

I also couldn't stand how dominating, controlling, and often violent Matthew was. It gave me serious domestic violence vibes. Luckily by the end of the story he had softened a bit or I might not have kept reading.