Christine

As with all self-help books, this has a lot of padding. At least from my point of view, I could do without the illustrative anecdotes and get down to the nitty gritty like cue, craving, response, and reward; habit stacking; (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying, etc.

Still, those specific tips on installing the habits you want are really helpful. This is information that'll go into my everyday life to help me take concrete action to progress toward my goals.

One final complaint - though I think this is well worth reading (and is perfect book to buy at Blinkist, where you get a summary of key points), it is absolutely soaking in fat shame and diet culture. Not all, but MANY of the examples use weight loss, calorie counting, and demonizing certain foods as fodder. It would be nice if authors could wake up that these attitudes are really dangerous for a lot of people, and there are so many other examples that could be used!

I didn't really know what kind of book I was reading, and I guess that's on me. I tend to avoid too much foreknowledge so I can just experience a book. All I knew was this was a horror novel about a haunting in a house under construction - clever and intriguing premise!

Only, this isn't actually a horror novel. I'd say it's an attempt at a thriller with paranormal elements? I probably wouldn't have picked it up had I known. It's not scary, creepy, or even atmospheric. And honestly while thriller is not my favorite genre, I feel like this wasn't great as a thriller either. The entire premise depends on a bunch of adults believing in buried treasure in a way only little kids or Stede Bonnet would. It's ridiculous. (And it doesn't even make sense that there would BE treasure in the first place - don't get me started on that.) There's a twist of sorts, and it doesn't make sense - this whole book suffers from a lot of Fridge Logic.

But hey, at least the characters are annoying! Olive is actually OK overall - she's a 14yo and being annoying and naive is developmentally normal. Helen, on the other hand, is almost literally Too Stupid to Live, while Nate is sort of a blank slate that does whatever the current scene demands.

Honestly, this still had enough of an interesting premise and engaging historical mystery to be rewarding, if only it had been more efficient. It was very bloated and slow. Shortly after the 50% mark, I just started reading the last paragraph of each page, occasionally jumping back to read a bit more if I needed to fill in some blanks. I was able to follow the whole plot, the twist, and the answer to the mystery with no problem.

I was going to give this 4 stars for compulsiveness of reading, but had to deduct for a couple significant problems:

1.) the constant irritation of poor writing/editing (uncounted dangling participles, and dumb stuff like “Sutcliffe and Pettigrew laughing uproariously with a drink in their hand.” Really? They have a single drink in their somehow common hand? Or “He frowns, smiling a little,” or the occasional slips from present tense narration. Come on, guys.)

2.) Turton wants you to know that fat people are so totally gross, y'all. GROSS! Don't get him started on old people - yech! (And yes arguably these are prejudices of the narrator, that Turton presents as a growth experience for him when he appreciates the hosts' good points. But it's over the top.)

3.) no spoilers, but the utter failure of the framing story when subjected to the slightest analysis. It's very, very clear that Turton thought “wouldn't it be cool to write an Agatha Christie/Quantum Leap/Memento mashup?” and then struggled to come up with a justification for why Aiden is in that position. I can't even call it Fridge Logic because it bothered me even as I was reading - the minute you think about the supposed explanation of this setup, you hit a bunch of unanswered, “But why would he . . . ?” “HOW did they . . .?” “Wait, how does X indicate Y?” type questions.

THAT SAID, go ahead and read this with the expectation that it's a fun ride, it doesn't have a real satisfying meta-explanation, but Turton did a lot of amazing work weaving and keeping track of threads, crafting characters, and making you desperate to know what happens next.

This is what it says on the tin - it's a trashy domestic thriller that doesn't demand (or withstand) too much deep analysis. It was mostly a fun read, though I think maybe the first part dragged for me because they expected the reader to empathize with Nellie and worry that Vanessa was going to do something awful to her out of jealousy. However, it became very clear to me near the beginning that Richard was bad news - a manipulative, predatory control freak - and probably Vanessa was trying to save her replacement from Richard

Still this had some storytelling tricks that surprised me, and I was curious to see how it all worked out. I think ultimately the ending was a little lackluster, and the desperation to force in yet another twist worked against the story.

Overall, fun beach read or palate cleanser if you want something a bit silly but still compelling.

Sometimes Beaton made me feel a little dim and uneducated on history and literature - some comics sailed right over my head because I didn't have the context for them.

However, the stuff that hit was a total bullseye. My favorite has to be Strong Female Characters, which deserve four stars all by themselves!

This was a fine, fluffy read. (Well, fluffy by my standards - so plenty of murder and horror, just not very deep or artistic writing.)There were some good spooky set pieces, but ultimately I found Coates undermined any true horror or creepiness by making everything thoroughly explained and understood - more like Buffy or Supernatural (though lacking the snarky humor) than [b:The Woman in Black 37034 The Woman in Black Susan Hill https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327869942s/37034.jpg 2127172], [b:Dark Matter 8350864 Dark Matter Michelle Paver https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1504563569s/8350864.jpg 13203928], or [b:Ghost Stories of an Antiquary 1556093 Ghost Stories of an Antiquary M.R. James https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1344670655s/1556093.jpg 823071]. Early on, we have ghost experts infodumping the different types of ghosts, their abilities, and what to do about them. I prefer my hauntings more mysterious and unnerving.The ending is improbable (and retroactively lowers the stakes bigtime), and the romance is pretty half-baked, but still this was a serviceable diversion. Some of the characters are memorable and fun, and there were enough twists & turns to keep it intriguing. Good airplane read!

This is a snappy, intriguing plot idea that gets bogged down by its excessive length. If you're going to write a supernatural thriller that borrows heavily from everything from Jekyll & Hyde to Rose Madder, keep it moving. And above all else, don't frustrate your readers with e-x-t-e-n-s-i-v-e inner monologues where the characters mull over their own cluelessness. About five minutes after Jinx was introduced, we all saw where this was going - skip to the further developments!I actually liked the development of Beth's character in many ways (the idea that umpteen iterations of being murdered would make you wiser and craftier, but also violent and psychopathic, the interesting take on Capgras syndrome), but she became increasingly stupid in a way that undermined suspension of disbelief. I guess some of it can be played off by her literal and figurative intoxication with having a body again, but I found it real hard to swallow her blunders like extensively keying a car *after observing there are security cameras,* keeping souvenirs of a killing and then *using the victim's cell phone from her own house,* and the cockamamie plot of the climax, which hangs together as well as the Underpants Gnomes' strategic vision statement.On top of that, Liz is such a dumb useless doormat I found myself rooting for the bad guys a couple times!To sum up: there's a very fine line between characters with Fatal Flaws and an Idiot Plot.Also, the incessant Britishisms are sloppy and distracting. “Washing up” instead of “doing the dishes,” “lounge” for “living room,” slight variations on prepositional phrases that jump out as stilted in ostensibly Pittsburghian mouths - it goes to show that “write what you know” is a cliche for a reason.Despite these irritants, I did find the story and some of the characters enticing. I wanted to know what happened next. And to be honest, I'm probably being extra harsh because this is [a:Mike Carey 9018 Mike Carey https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1334894864p2/9018.jpg], who can do SO much better than this!

This was incredibly fun - mostly it's lighthearted and funny, but it carries a certain emotional freight toward the end. Nota bene: near the start of the story, there's a characterization of folks with Aspergers as being unemotional, which got under my skin quite a bit (challenged in reading social cues is emphatically NOT the same as lacking emotions). But if that bothers you, I urge you to read on. Remember, this is a first-person narrative, and a lot of the story is about Don's assumptions about the world and whether they turn out to be correct.

I also worried that this would become your standard Manic Pixie Dream Girl trop-ish story, but while Rosie qualifies for that role, the way Simsion makes use of the idea feels fresh and earned, not cliche.

Edited to add:

Reading a couple of negative reviews, I want to point out that the reviewers seem to have read the story at a shallow, face-value level.

Rather than taking a “point and laugh” approach, I felt like Simsion relied very strongly on sympathy with Don, twinned with a more savvy realization of where his perfectly understandable read on things is going to get him in trouble. For example, the argument about the superiority of his technical athletic jacket over a blazer. The reason it's funny to me is that Don's position is entirely justifiable and logical, and you kind of have to agree with him, but he's still totally wrong. (Or maybe the reader needs to have some rigid-ah, I mean organized tendencies herself to really get Don? It's possible.)

Moreover, Don is an unreliable narrator, and Simsion subtly and gradually brings out details that indicate Don's characterization of his experiences includes quite a lot of self-deception. There's plenty of “anguish and humanity” in him - it's just he has sophisticated defense mechanisms against realizing it.

I wanted something pulpy and easy - a book that tells its story in a straightforward fashion and draws the reader on with an interesting plot. To some extent, this satisfied that need. But I found it a little ham-fisted. Characters are generally either all-good or all-bad, and the obnoxious ones we're meant to hate are introduced through physical descriptions that loudly, emphatically shout, “YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO HATE THIS CHARACTER!”

Meanwhile, the plot developments to come are pretty obvious, especially if you keep in mind the law of conservation of characters. Still, it's not terrible - you get to feel smart for picking up the clues, and there are enough unanswered questions that I wanted to keep reading.

But the denouement is just plain silly, and really took me out of the story. From the bizarre plan of the heroes (which is far less believable than bloodthirsty monsters terrorizing NYC) to the explanation of how everything got started, nothing makes sense.

Add in the fact that the authors completely misunderstand what evolution is, and make other dumb science mistakes like confusing scurvy and rickets, and I just can't say I “liked” this. I didn't hate it, but surely there's better easy-reading fun out there!

Just disturbing enough to be intriguing without being too relentlessly dark. The characters are richly drawn and weirdly sympathetic, and the setting is really interesting - the titular sisters are from a once-wealthy family in Lagos, now running lower on funds, but still living in their fancy (if rundown) compound and still experiencing echoes of their former life when their father was alive.

I actually listened to the Audible version, and I wasn't thrilled with the reader. Despite her facility with accents and dialects, she winds up choosing weird, jarring emphasis and pacing often enough that it was distracting.

I really enjoyed this. I couldn't wait to find out what happens next. As usual, King crafts amazingly relatable characters. In particular, I found his ability to bring life to the villains and evoke a reluctant sympathy in the reader (when you're not thinking about the terrible things they do) actually made me more engaged in hating them and rooting for the eminently deserved ass-kicking I was sure would come. Really artful, in my opinion.

I did have to skip some of the rumination on missing children because it was way too disturbing. But having a potential victim as strong and resilient as Abra made a nice counterbalance.

I feel like the constant drumbeat that AA is the Way, the Truth, and the Light was a bit grating (in part because I'm not a huge fan of the organization), but though it got a little over the top, for the most part it was a believable element of Dan's development.

I listened to the audiobook, and Will Patton was amazing. I'll be searching out more books read by him!

I'm on the edge of my seat! It looks like I'm about to be $70 poorer, because I really need to know what happens next. This has action, surprises, mystery, and humor, along with great art. It made me both gasp and laugh out loud. It also has truly strong, human female protagonists - yeah, they're all skinny and curvy, but they're streets ahead of the run-of-the-mill Strong Female Characters.

This was a charming little amuse-bouche of a book. More like an expanded blog post than a substantial book, but still fun for any book aficionado. The audio version read by Bogel herself is lovely.

Aaaaahhhh, when is the next book coming out?! I need to know what happens next!

Really interesting premise - I love that the “incident” is allowed to stay ill-defined. A big part of the creep factor is that no one even knows what happened.

And speaking of creep factor, this does creepy so well. The concepts are eerie, and the art is amazingly macabre. It all ties together to create an amazing mood. This is an excellent contribution to weird fiction, all around.

I do like stories about misfits and outsiders finding an unexpected place in the fabric of humanity. Is this story one of those? Yes. And no. I found a great deal of intriguing tension here about what it means to “fit in” to the human fabric. I felt ambivalent but mostly sympathetic to the narrator, who is perhaps best described as a very pro-social sociopath. If someone is very different and didn't get hard-coded with society's operating manual, what are they to do? This contrasts a couple different approaches which enable examinations of ape-derived social norms, capitalism, sexism, and personal freedom.

I really, really wanted to love this. I adored Cantero's other English-language novels, and I pre-ordered this figuring it would be a sure winner.Unfortunately, this just didn't work for me. The characters are either two-dimensional, or so extreme I couldn't relate to them. I think I see what he's going for - this should be like Sherlock Holmes having to share a body with John from [b:John Dies at the End 1857440 John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End, #1) David Wong https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1189289716s/1857440.jpg 1858059], and how they somehow wind up saving the day, despite their conflicting styles. Only, for me Adrian and Zooey came across as less subtly drawn than either Holmes or John! I guess Cantero's hyperbole fell flat for me, while it clearly worked for other people. The plot also didn't quite gel for me - but I can see how this may be more about my dislike for Noir overall than a specific failing of this story. The solution to the mystery is pointless and impossible to predict. That's just not my bag.I will say that there were some laugh-out-loud moments, and there were some interesting themes around gender, siblings, Noir tropes, and fiction in general - I just felt like Cantero merely touched on them, opting to focus more on zany action.I'll definitely check out Cantero's future work. I think my enjoyment depends a lot on what the genre is, so hopefully the next one will be more in my wheelhouse!

This is ok for a middle grade book - pretty simplistic. I admit I bristled as a Sherlock Holmes fan at the depiction of Sherlock and Mycroft, which bears zero resemblance to the original characters. But that's nit-picking. The art has a certain charm, but at times looks sloppy rather than whimsical, and it could be hard to make out what was happening. Still, this was short, free, and fulfilled a Popsugar prompt as I come down to the wire!

Pop some popcorn and get comfortable - this is irresistible! I'm agog at how these people kept up a fraud for so long, and how many high profile and some otherwise intelligent people got sucked in.

Couldn't put it down! Went and bought a hard copy because reading this on a Paperwhite is decidedly suboptimal.* (And decided to just buy [b:Gemina 29236299 Gemina (The Illuminae Files, #2) Amie Kaufman https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1480097137s/29236299.jpg 44560442] right then, since I was thoroughly hooked.)What genre is this? I see elements of: -Hard science fiction-Space Opera (meant non-pejoratively)-Military science fiction-Action-Adventure-Character study-Romance-Feminism-Horror (FTR, it was shelved at B&N under “YA Fantasy.” Wut? No.)While some would style this a teen romance in a science fiction wrapper, I think it's a lot more sophisticated than that. My perspective is that Kady is the protagonist, and her character development and motivations to become a hero are tightly linked with her romantic relationship, but there's a lot more to it than that. Kady's journal entries reveal that Ezra means a lot to her as an individual, but maybe even more as a symbol about her life and her identity.There are lots of engaging characters, desperate fights for survival, cunning military tactics, noble sacrifices, and food for thought about what it means to be a human, to be alive, to be conscious, to relate to others.Highly recommended - just make sure you have some free time so you can binge-read it once you get addicted!*The formatting is at times immersive and evocative, and on occasion gimmicky and a little annoying. Overall I liked it though. And I really need to see Super Turbo Awesome Team vs. Megapanda rightnow.)

To quote Julius Caesar (as played by Dom DeLuise), “Nice. Not thrilling, but nice.”It was cute. Lots of horrible puns, which you would think would be to my taste, but somehow having them come at you one after another, it just gets grating. (In my opinion, a pun or dad joke truly shines when one spontaneously seizes a happenstance opportunity during a normal conversation.)I pretty much agree with Patrick Rothfuss's review - nothing actively bad, but it was hard to care. Hard to feel energized about reading further.As an alternative, I highly recommend the picture book [b:The King Who Rained 616032 The King Who Rained Fred Gwynne https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1297893384s/616032.jpg 990347], which does a better job of avoiding over-saturation (heh - see? I did not plan that) with puns. (Plus, I only now realized that it was written by Fred Gwynn, of Herman Munster fame! How cool!)

I'm really glad my reading challenge led me to this! It's suspenseful and engaging, and the art is great!

I'm also really mad my reading challenge led me to this! Because evidently the story has been left hanging. It's been over 4 years since the last issue was published, and no sign of further content, but from the reviews, it sounds like the mystery wasn't wrapped up! I can't decide if I want to read issues 6-17, only to be left in suspense. But then again, I might, because this was an entertaining ride.

Reading this book is like being cornered at a cocktail party by someone who's self-absorbed and not-overly-bright, while they explain psychology by massively oversharing their own experiences.

This gets two stars from me because it does have a few lessons about cognitive behavioral therapy that could help a reader who is totally unfamiliar with that approach. However, there are manymanymany better resources on the subject (I'm putting a couple links at the end of this review).

Maybe Brown's style will work for some people, but she came off rather unprofessional and self-centered to me. For every useful sentence about human psychology, there are paragraphs of personal anecdotes from Brown's own life. There are also quite a few name-drops and sales pitches related to her coaching business.

I also found it off-putting that she starts off by explicitly rejecting the scientific method, calling her approach “qualitative research” or something. Basically that means she cobbled together preexisting ideas from philosophy and actual science, did a bunch of interviews, and pulled common threads to write about. And of course instead of citations, she has famous quotations - everything from Walt Whitman to the movie Gremlins (?).

Overall, this comes off feeling really padded and contrived to me. My advice is skip the tome and look up a summary if you're interested.

https://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-cognitive-distortions/
https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/cbt-cognitive-behavioral-therapy-techniques-worksheets/

This was a lovely story. It starts out simply amusing and engaging, and then gets ya right in the feels later on, but with enough bristly, rough-edged Ove to balance it out and prevent it from going maudlin.

I guess the basic plot is pretty familiar and tropy (crusty, rigid person reluctantly opens their heart due to wacky acquaintances), but it's executed so beautifully, and has a substantial (even dark) emotional core that keeps it from being merely silly or saccharine.

I listened to the audio book and the performance was great - very well matched with the subject matter.

I usually avoid stories that will make me cry, but this one is totally worth the tears, and doesn't leave you on a down note at all.

Well, this was lovely. Do yourself a favor and sit down for 2 hours to read it. Useful things I did not realize until I had the book:
1.) It's incredibly short
2.) It's not fiction. These are real letters Hanff collected and published.
3.) 95% of the books discussed hold no interest for me, and that didn't detract in the slightest.

Sometimes Hanff would annoy me with her sass, but then I'd remember that she was a lady living on her own in NYC in 1949&c, and making a living as a writer. Sass. Earned. And her actions make abundantly, touchingly clear that she was kind and giving, so mock-irate messages about the quality of a Latin Vulgate are completely excusable.

This also gives an eye-opening window into post-war conditions in England. That people would be so grateful for even powdered eggs speaks more poignantly than any history book ever could.

An enthralling take on an old fairy tale, that keeps the feel of a folktale, but with language and characterization that feel comfortably modern. I don't care if this is based on 100% authentic Polish folklore, or an amalgam of various folk tales, filtered through a Polish-American family's bedtime stories - it has a lot of heart and charm.

I don't want to spoil anything - I had a ton of fun just picking this up and going for the ride. And I'm putting Novik's other books on my TBR pile!