Megan

Evaristo crafted some of the most realistic characters I've ever read. After reading both the winners of the 2019 Booker Prize, there is absolutely no comparison between the quality. Girl Woman, Other should have been the sole winner. I highly recommend it.

Oh hell yes.

Here There Be Dragonflies indeed. I absolutely loved the evolution of the insects and the characters in this volume. This is by far my favorite volume of the three and can't wait to reread it.

I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a book as much as this one. Flavia is now one of my new favorite heroines. She's so smart and sassy, and I couldn't get enough of her. I thoroughly enjoyed every second of this book. I found myself smiling more often than not while reading, probably because Flavia's inner narrative is so fantastically funny (as is what comes out of her mouth). If you're looking for a thrilling and terrifying whodunit with surprising twists and turns, this isn't it. Though the mystery is good, you'll probably figure it out long before Flavia does. Some negative reviews say Flavia is too intelligent to be believable, and I yet I found many instances in the story where it was clear how young and naive she really is, despite having a good vocabulary and being a chemistry whiz. This story is more about who Flavia is, what she thinks she knows about people, and how she navigates her small world. It's done so well.

And now I have a toothache.

No but seriously, this is every bit as disgustingly cute as everyone says it is. It'll make you smile and feel all sorts of happy for the boys and their burgeoning romance.

It doesn't have any real plot or story arc like you'd expect in a traditional graphic novel, and I'd probably knock off an extra star if I didn't know this was originally a web comic. I'm not personally a fan of the art style.

It's cute. It's sweet. The main characters are stereotypes but written to be extremely likeable. I'll definitely continue on with the series the next time I need to thaw my cold heart.

This book is super problematic in a lot of ways, but I can't help but feel nostalgic while reading it. I don't recommend picking it up now, but if you read it before you noticed the bad, you'll probably still be able to enjoy it now. It's definitely a product of the late 90s/early 2000s humor unfortunately.

Very thorough on the itty bitty species, but I would've liked more variety.

Those short chapters really help you fly through this book. I really enjoyed this one and loved the character study. You can look at the story from so many different angles and perspectives to create a totally different type of experience. I really liked it! I wish certain things had occurred on the page, but other than that it was a win for me.

I think this would've been much better as an essay, or at least cut down by 150-200 pages. Some parts were definitely repetitive either in the message she was trying to convey or in actual wording. The first half and last quarter were incredibly boring. I'm very thankful for 2x audio. At the core, it's a very average person's memoir, written exactly as you'd expect an average person to write. Her descriptions of people were written in a very strange, contrived way (Ex: “we girls who shared the same color hair and eyes”). It's fairly easy, most of the time, to skip over all the religious bits or to see how those help her on her journey, though the end was a bit heavy-handed. She says, “God?” really often and writes out his “responses,” which was pretty bizarre. The overall writing voice seemed incredibly juvenile to me, made worse by a narrator who sounded like she was reading a children's book.

I was annoyed by how Kerri always referred to the female victims by what role they filled to someone else (mother, daughter, sister, grandmother). Those women didn't deserve to die simply because they were people, but Kerri seemed to mostly not understand how her dad could kill a mother with kids. I felt the way she included quick sentences of her father's crimes while recounting her childhood wasn't the best. I believe the victims deserved a little more than, “In x year, my dad killed x, a mother to 3 children,” and then abruptly moving on to a story about camping or her grandpa.

I struggled to feel sorry for her when the last straw for her for keeping in touch with her dad wasn't learning the details of the heinous crimes he committed or lack of remorse he showed. No. It was that he referred to her and the family as social contacts and pawns. To be fair though, my dad isn't a serial killer, so who knows where I'd draw the line myself.

I'm happy she found peace somehow, but this book just didn't work for me.

Apparently I'm an incredibly picky bitch about time travel. You learn something new about yourself every day... And I think I clashed with the writing style, or something, cause I struggled to want to pick this book up even before the time travel. I can't really figure out why though! I'll say I loved the characters and the pinches of magic. The curse was so very Practical Magic is a good way. I enjoyed the dual timelines, which is weird because I usually don't. I really should have loved this more because the girls were great and so unique. I want to know what the next adventure is, but whatever the ‘something' is that stopped me from breezing through the first book may get in the way. I hope not cause I do want to know what happens next!

Magic Bites is a fun urban/contemporary(ish) fantasy that mostly consists of groundwork for the series, which makes sense since it's the first book. I think there are the makings for some really solid characters and an MC I could really root for. I love the magic system and find it's implementation to be incredibly unique.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is probably one of the most atmospheric books I've read in a while. I listened to the audiobook, and I highly recommend it. I'm not sure I would have rated it 4 stars without experiencing the story through Jeff Woodman's narration. My guess is it'd lie closer to 3 as some sections may have dragged a bit in the first half.

Before reading, everyone should be aware this is a nonfiction novel, reads like a novel, and the author uses artitistic license to accomplish that. He addresses it in his acknowledgements and had discussed it elsewhere as well. It's not straight nonfiction true crime that simply walks the reader the facts of the case. It creates a thorough and complete story that is very interesting. I remember reading that the book was extremely well-received by the people of Savannah.

The characters studies are interesting, and the language will be very accessible to most people (which is understandable given the author is a magazine writer). The way certain things are talked about or addressed is indicative of the time and place in which it was written, so keep that in mind.

I recommend this to anyone who likes true crime or general fiction.

A modern classic that is 100% worth your time

I received an ARC of The Storm Crow in the December 2018 Fairyloot box, and honestly I thought I wasn't going like it at all. However, I'm happy to say this was a super fun YA fantasy. The beginning was a little boring for me and the end was predictable, but I enjoyed the characters, their relationships, and the back stories. I thought the crows seemed cheesy and poorly explained at first, but I came to really love everything about them in the second half. I also appreciated the ease of the representation and consistency of depression throughout the book from beginning to end. There are some very common YA fantasy tropes throughout the story and things happen a little too quickly/easily at times, but I still enjoyed the overall reading experience. I'll definitely pick up the next book in the series.

I love Amelia and the Truth Pixie. I wish this book had a different villain than the rest, but Matt Haig found a fun way to make it work with the Easter Bunny. I think children will really identify with Amelia's struggles to fit in with the elves in Elfhelm. Definitely a fun addition to the Christmas series!

Black Klansman is a mixed bag for me, but it's definitely worth a read.

While I enjoyed the story Stallworth told, this book was badly written. It was written EXACTLY like a CSPD police report, but with a few personal anecdotes thrown in. It's written so an eight-grader can understand it, it defines many words most adults already know, and it's repetitive to drive home key points. It needed a fair amount of editing to reign in the number of run-on sentences I noticed. And couple lines really irritated me, such as “All men have a little ‘dog' in them where women are concerned”... I tabbed that with one word: Ew.

I generally appreciated Stallworth's humor throughout the book. I definitely laughed at times and feel it prevented the book from feeling dragged down by the heavy topic. I really liked some of stuff he said in the Afterword too. For example “This hatred has never gone away, but has been reinvigorated in the dark corners of the internet, Twitter trolls, alt-right publications, and a nativist president in Trump. [...] It is my belief that the Republican Party of the twenty-first century finds a symbiotic connection to white nationalist groups like the Klan, neo-Nazis, skinheads, militias, and alt-right white supremacist thinking.” This seems so contrary to what you expect a police officer to believe, especially in the Springs. It's such an interesting account that you'll never be able to find anywhere else, and it's well worth trudging through the writing and occasional bad take.

I really enjoy these characters and think the mysteries in the series are good. This one made me realize a minor formula, but it wasn't bad. I enjoyed the newest character addition too.

The critiques of this book are valid (assumptions of what someone must have felt, etc.), but I think the author made a purposeful choice to give as much of these women's lives back to them as she could. To make them as real on the page as possible, because we all know they've had that taken from them literally and then time and time again by the media for decades. I believe conjecture into how someone may have felt or what they may have done in an effort to accomplish that is absolutely fine. I appreciate that this book exists and attempts, and in my opinion succeeds, to redefine what true crime can be and how treatment of victims' stories should be done.

The stories in this book where quite interesting, and the characters were good (though I struggled to tell them apart at times). Unfortunately I think there were a few too many characters. It spread the story too thin over many themes, all of which are deep, sensitive, important topics that need focused attention. I would have liked a deeper exploration of these things, and I think the frequent perspective change somewhat hindered that. I didn't love the change in narrative style, which causes the reader to readjust too often to a new writing style. I know there's likely a reason for this that I have completely missed, so I recommend checking out other more eloquent (and academic) reviews than mine. I also recommend looking for Own Voices reviews of this book because I have likely missed very important things in my review. What I did like was the ease of reading this book. It painted a very good picture and was very accessible.

I'm sad to say that this was lacking the magic that Beartown had, but I really can't put my finger on a major reason why. I think it showed a realistic view of the continued aftermath of the events in Beartown, and I appreciated the new characters. Sure, I would have liked a deeper dive into a couple of them, but they felt very realistic and were interesting overall. For some reason, I just didn't feel for them most of the time. That's not to say I didn't cry, cause boy did I! Despite feeling a lack of emotional connection most of the time, Backman still managed to suck me in occasionally and broke me. But then there were times when certain relationships didn't make any sense to me. We were told about a powerful love that honestly wasn't shown on the page, so I wasn't able to connect with it at all nor feel the heartbreak that came with it. Most of the stuff I wanted to see happened off the page, was glossed over, or was told about after the fact.

Perhaps, for me, this book suffered slightly from feeling too much like one of those late 90s, early 2000s small town sports movies. Beartown was not about hockey, but Us Against You felt very hockey-centric. As always with Backman's books, the characters and events felt very true to life. I liked following some of my favorites from Beartown regardless of the story. I found Benji's story to be incredibly well done and feel so many things for that boy.

What I wasn't a fan of was the repeated bait-and-switch. It was like those cheap reality tv shows that leave off on a cliffhanger, where it seems like something big is about to go down, but when you return it's literally nothing. It's just smart editing that engages the viewer by promising a big scene then doesn't deliver. Us Against You didn't feel cheap, but I stopped believing that certain things were actually happening. And rightfully so. If Backman had followed through on any of these moments, I think it could have changed a lot of my current overall feelings.

The story felt a little bit less focused than what I expected from Backman. There wasn't necessarily a central plot that you could easily pick out. I'd say that's similar to Backman's other books, but there was even less of a theme tying everything together. I'd call it truly slice-of-life, since real life doesn't follow your standard plot structure.

I honestly can't decide if I'm disappointed enough to rate this 3 stars or if I still liked the writing and characters enough to warrant 4 stars. I'm going to have to think about it for a bit. I liked it more than the other books I've read so far this year but had such high hopes that weren't met at all.

Okay fine, here it is. My previous “review” is at the bottom.

My major problem with Seanan McGuire's writing, specifically her long books, is how repetitive they are (examples/screenshots below). She repeats phrases/words or even says the same sentence in slightly different ways. She repeatedly brings up the same character trait over and over again. Not in a subtle way either, not in a way that demonstrates the trait and shows it in action but in a blatant telling that it's that character's trait. It results in her smacking the reader over the head repeatedly with what she wants us to know instead of being more nuanced and allowing us to engage with the information and infer the importance of different actions and thoughts.

For example, if we know a character has a thing for donuts, and the character eats a donut or mentions donuts or walks by donuts, every single time Seanan McGuire will also write “Ashley loves donuts, it's their favorite food, they'll choose it over any other option if they have the ability” like it's not already super obvious. And then if they eat any other food we get an explanation that even though they prefer donuts they also have to eat other food to survive so that's why they're eating other food and not a donut. Like no shit.

Middlegame is very Roger=Words, Dodger=Math, but there are less heavy-handed ways to show the reader those things. You can have a character perform an action or think a thought that makes sense based on what we know about them (perhaps Dodger calculating something super complex during a party, measuring ingredients for baking by sight, kicking ass at billiards... Or Roger mentioning or quoting dense literature/famous authors, solving or spouting interesting word puzzles, or using complex words/phrases - as it stands, he talks like an idiot most of the time) and leave it at that. Because the reader can understand that their actions support what was told to us, that Roger=Words and Dodger=Math. But any time something like that happens, McGuire also writes “Dodger understands numbers, Roger knows words” (yeah, we already know). It just makes me want to rip my hair out. It's like she wants to make sure no one misses the connection she's making or support she's providing for the character trait, which leaves the reader with a feeling of being hit over the head with the information. And as my friend said, it feels like the Rodger =words and Dodger=math was so superficial in how they equal those things.

Moving on, the alchemy was surface level, mostly consisting of the hand of glory, and seemed to rely on the reader having previous knowledge from other books. There wasn't even a satisfying explanation for the Improbable Road and Impossible City. Seriously, what are those things, what's the point, and how did they come to be? Oooooh, alchemy. Got it. But, how? What does that look like???

The villians were nonexistent and cartoonish. They never felt threatening and were defeated with very little effort. And they made incredibly stupid decisions. Why did Leigh think killing Dodger's parents would make her give up and surrender? You hold them hostage, not kill them! Killing them provides absolutely no motivation to surrender. I literally laughed out loud at that part.

And just, the end, what even was that? I don't understand why Roger and Dodger were like, “Let's wait.” Ummm what?

I have always loved the concepts Seanan McGuire comes up with, and that's why I continue to read her books. But honestly, I think I'm done with her full novels.

And now, I offer you a couple of examples of the repetition that annoys me so much



Why? Seriously, why write this sentence more than once?



0:00 PST means midnight! Have some faith in your reader to READ!

A variation of “knows/doesn't know/doesn't understand the words” is used about 50 times (not kidding, go ahead and count).

I really don't want to write this review because I'm still annoyed. Go check out this review instead: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2775699939?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=3

I was so down for the whole tuatara subplot and that a whole bunch of teenagers now know what a tuatara is.

The friendship between Aza and Daisy is so realistic and nice to see in a YA book. I found Daisy to be such a consistent and detailed character that I felt like I actually knew her. Aza could have used some more distinguishing characteristics that weren't about her dad, car, or mental health.

The OCD representation is perfect. It's perfect. The ending was so good, and I'm very happy John Green didn't try to wrap up everything and make Aza seem like she was suddenly so much better. It really sends home the message that you aren't able to easily overcome intrusive thoughts with OCD.

The general plot involving the dad fell short for me. I think it's unlikely that the guy would've stayed in a tunnel while freezing to death, given he wasn't homeless and had a crap load of money. However, I completely disagree with people who give the book poor ratings because of this plot (and its lack of development). This the the side plot that gets our characters in certain situations, but the main plot is about Aza's journey with her mental health. That plot doesn't have a uber satisfyingly happy ending because that isn't a reality for people with OCD.

The Wild Thornberrys meets The Sixth Sense, with Harry Potter references.

This book accomplishes exactly what it set out to accomplish. The humor is ridiculous and the plot is just absolutely silly and wild. I connected with it more than Wizards of Once for some reason, maybe the dragons and all that. I would've found Toothless to be very funny when I was younger, so I'm bumping up the rating to 4 stars because of that.

This is one of those collection of stories that you don't want to read, hate that they exist, and recommend to everyone. I wish this didn't exist, but since it needs to, I'm glad it does. Read it and listen.

Looking at this book as an unfinished work that was completed by other people from notes and blog posts, I can't believe how compelling it is. It creeped me out more than most of the true crime books I've read.