Megan
The Mistborn series was seriously hyped up for me. I was expecting it to be my new favorite book. It was very good, but it's not a new favorite. I found the magic system to be thoroughly explained, unique, and interesting, but the language used to describe it was repetitive and grated my nerves (particularly during fight scenes). I understand that's how the magic system works, but it could have been written better. I loved the diverse cast and overall story line. I found there to be an excellent balance of action and slower moments. I saw some of the “twists” coming, but not all. It was really enjoyable, and I'm looking forward to continuing the series once I get a long enough break from the words burned, flared, pushed, and pulled.
I liked this more than the first volume, probably because of the addition of such positive and strong female characters. I'll probably reread this around Christmas every year now.
100% a palette cleanser that can be useful to read in between epic fantasy or hard-hitting contemporaries. There's not much literary merit here, and Sookie is incredibly annoying.
I usually only tolerate romance in books, but I would die for Mal and Molly. I missed the old art style in this volume, but I really love the guest artists and how they captured the minds of each individual character. I found the slower pace to be more enjoyable than I would've thought, and it shows how well developed all the girls are. I feel like I know each character and what to expect from them, yet they can still be surprising in realistic ways. I can't get over how much I love every character and how they help and support each other. Every one of the girls is easily relatable in some way and candidly connects to experiences we've all gone through.
Born A Crime is easily my favorite memoir and one of my favorite books of the year. I cried from laughing. At a book. And I felt a whole host of other emotions I swore I wasn't capable of. Trevor Noah is an excellent writer and storyteller, and I'll definitely pick up anything else he writes.
I enjoyed this book more than the first in the Wayfarers series because it had a lot more focus. I absolutely loved the characters and the journey the reader takes with them.
First book of 2023 done, and I spent the first 75% of it thinking it was another book and waiting for a particular plot point to happen. Given it's almost 900 pages and I was still hooked even though that wrong plot was “taking forever” to develop, I'd say that speaks volumes for the book. I really enjoyed it. Great way to start off the year!
No, y'all are crazy.
If Donna Tartt hadn't included that prologue, I never would've made it past, I don't know, perhaps page 30. The only thing that kept me going was the curiosity of why these asshole kids killed their asshole friend. Once I figured out why, I only finished it because I was curious what the last 60% of the book included. Surely something even better than a friend group turning on one of their own, right? Nope. Not in my opinion at least. Call me stupid, but I don't understand the motivation behind the major event near the end. Just... why? I also absolutely cannot believe a college student from California would be as smart as... uh what's the main character's name again? The one who has no purpose in the story? The one who could be completely eliminated without affecting the plot? Hold on, I'll look it up... oh yeah, Richard. That Richard would be as smart as he is and allow himself to almost freeze to death. Californian's understand cold weather and death by exposure just like people in other parts of the country.
The whole thing was just dreadfully dull.
Contains spoilers
I think everyone's opinion of this book hinges on whether you like the paranormal element in it. I was super let down by that part. I was expecting some very obsessive stalker behavior that was intricately woven into the story, and I was interested in how it would all fit together. The scheming falls flat for me when the character is simply able to watch every conversation and know every little thing because Random Paranormal Element. Once it was revealed I thought, “Oh, yeah, that would do it. Guess she isn't a mastermind with a ton of skill.” I was instantly less impressed and a little bored. EDIT: As time has passed, my thoughts have gone from ‘well that's kind of dumb' to ‘ugh that book was so stupid' when someone mentions it.
Since everything else only happens because of the paranormal element, I wish it had a way better explanation than “lucid dreaming, but more” to make me believe it. I like there to be a more exploration of magical elements, and this book absolutely doesn't provide that at all. If the author doesn't give at least a sentence or two of explanation (even a vague explanation or just the characters being like “wtf”), I'm not convinced they fully understand their own world.
For me, the fun part about a thriller is guessing the twist, but not too soon and not feeling completely convinced I've actually figured it out, and feeling that super satisfied by the process. This book was just nonsense at the end and the final twist had basically no hints that could help you figure it out. It belongs with the lame ‘and it was all a dream' kind of reveal.
Oh man, this one was boring. It desperately needed an editor to trim it down. Could've been 300-400 pages easily. The beginning and end were good though.
I understand the nostalgia people feel for a series from their childhood. I was in high school when this series came out and read the first 3 books in college. Though I had fun at first, I got bored with the formula halfway through the 4th book and assumed it was an age issue. Recently, I've reread many of my favorite (and least favorite) books from childhood and have a really good grasp on what I would have liked and disliked as a kid. So I thought I'd give the series another go, almost 10 years after my first time reading it.
Unfortunately, I feel the same about the writing and plot progression as I did when I first read it. My younger self definitely would've been disappointed with it. Now, Riordan does a great job of incorporating elements missing from many middle grade stories, such as disability representation. However, I found this whole book really formulaic and lacking in tension. The kids would go to a new place, the place or host would turn out to be bad news, then they would escape. It took them far too long to be weary of new people. And considering how many dangerous situations they were in, I should have felt scared for them. I didn't though. It was very “after school special” with every chapter presenting a new problem and solving it within 10 pages. I also don't love Riordan's writing style and think it's a bit too robotic.
I really enjoyed the humor and characters and even laughed out loud a few times. I think the overall themes are great, but I feel there was a wasted opportunity to teach kids about dealing with real loss. Everything was just so very clean and easy. Kids books don't have to be that way. The action never stops, which is fantastic, but I would've loved fewer encounters with monsters and more development, more struggle, and higher stakes for those encounters.
I think it would also help if I found Greek mythology more interesting. I'm really neutral on it, so I didn't feel particularly invested in meeting all the gods and monsters. It seemed like the whole point was to pack in as many as possible to pander to readers who came in with existing knowledge of Greek mythology.
The Sea of Monsters felt very much like a filler book that followed the exact same formula that the first book already beat to death. I appreciated the characters the most, but everything else was a snooze.
I think I would've loved this story a lot more if people didn't hype it up so much. It was more predictable (for me, though I recognize I'm an oddity here) and cheesy than I expected it to be. I found the section in which the two characters are figuring out how things work to be the most interesting and compelling. The end was exactly what I expected early on, but it wasn't bad. I wish there had been an epilogue about all the people left behind because I need to know how they handle that nonsense.
It's been a decade since I first read this, and I liked Katniss a lot more this time around. I really enjoyed the whole book a lot more than expected, so I bumped up my star rating. It's a solid YA dystopian. Suzanne Collins isn't the most skilled writer, but she gets the emotions across well despite the simplicity of her words.
And a note on the new audiobook narrator... she pronounces “against” in the strangest way: aGAYnst............. and of course it's written 60 times. It's terrible.
This book is every bit as strange and weird as I wanted it to be without ever feeling like it was bizarre simply for the sake of being bizarre. The story flows well and the pacing is fantastic. Even when you think you know exactly what's going to happen in a given situation, there's a slight turn. It's not twisty and turny to the point that you feel like the author was deliberately misleading you though. It was never obscure in a way the compromised my comprehension (a problem I find with a lot of fiction similar to this). I had a general feel for the overarching plot pretty quickly, and, though I guessed some of what was to come, I felt like the journey was totally worth it and delivered much more than I predicted.
This is definitely a book I will reread in the future, but I wouldn't recommend it for everyone.
Like everyone else has already said, nothing happens and these characters don't really experience any growth, but I sure did love them. They felt like extremely real and distinct people. The world building was fantastic too. This is a pretty low 4 stars because of the serious lack of plot though.
This is one of my favorite novellas from The Expanse series. I found the tight little character study really interesting! It's not a necessary read but it's a fun time.
I was extremely aware of Jay Kristoff's presence throughout this entire 427 page book. It was like he was standing over my shoulder, watching me read, and stopping me every 3-4 minutes to say, “Omg this part. I wrote that. Don't you think it's clever? Do you get the joke? I made a joke.” It made me so annoyed. Every time I saw a footnote, I'd tense and roll my eyes, knowing a super lame attempt at a joke was incoming. The whole time I could just imagine Kristoff typing out the story on his computer and congratulating himself for being so clever, funny, and edgy. It was so try-hard, and so much of it felt tired and/or forced. I recommend checking out other reviews for examples of the absurd metaphors and similes because some of them were absolutely atrocious. And holy men-writing-women, or rather men-writing-16-year-old-girls.
Despite all those things, I loved the world and enjoyed the plot. I wanted to like all the characters more than I did, but I'm basically neutral on all of them. I think they were very inconsistently written. I predicted almost everything that happened really early on, but it didn't hinder my enjoyment (the writing style overshadowed that). I really want to know what happens next and will likely pick up the second book. I've heard Kristoff improves his writing and characters, and if that's true then I think I'll love it.
Hunger is an extremely raw memoir with many passages that have stuck with me almost a year later. I probably think of this book weekly, at the very least, if not more often than that. Gay is incredibly honest and straightforward. She doesn't shy away from any uncomfortable fact.
Speaking of comfort... it's incredibly uncomfortable to rate a book like this. I think the subject matter is very important. I think anyone who has never carried extra weight needs to read this book. There are things you would never consider that are on the minds of fat people every moment of every day. To rate the topic is wrong, in my opinion. I'm rating the organization and writing. While I think it was good, I think people will find it a little bit repetitive and maybe start to glaze over the importance of the message after a while. That being said, I have no idea how to improve it. I think it was great and powerful.
At first I thought it wouldn't be fair (ha) to rate this based on how good of a true crime book I thought it was, being that it is more heavily weighted toward a historical fictiony non-fiction account of the World's Fair. But then I remembered the title, The Devil in the White City, which suggests more time would be spent following H. H. Holmes than the architects of the World's Fair. The writing jumps back and forth between these two things, with a little extra here and there, and never brings them together. Larson is a fairly (ha again) skilled writer and would have done better to separate these into two books. Apart from that, I could've done without the heavy foreshading at the end of every chapter. I found the architect talk incredibly boring, but that was simply due to finding architecture boring and not Larson's writing about it.
Nice short story that accomplishes pretty much everything you could want for 35 pages. There were a few quotes I loved, but I can't believe the writers still managed to cram a primate reference into such a short story. Seriously though.
What a dark and harrowing origin story for Father Christmas. I loved it, but definitely be warned when purchasing this for young readers. It deals with some very heavy topics, but it does so in a fairytale-like way. I think my favorite thing is that everything isn't made perfect. Sure, the magic makes some things convenient, but the sad events don't magically fix themselves. Dealing with neglect, abuse, abandonment, loss, etc. is difficult and I think some kids need to see representation of that, even if that representation is more unrealistic due to the fairytale vibe, to feel less alone. But, I'm not a parent, so maybe I'm overstepping with that statement.
This book made me feel quite a few things, but mostly I was just grossed out and exhausted. I can see why a lot of people love it, but it wasn't for me. I didn't need graphic descriptions of things everyone already knows are wrong to feel bad for a character. I felt bad for him already. I liked the writing style but felt it could've been trimmed down by 100-200 pages.
