Jessica
I have very mixed feelings about this book. Parts of it I really enjoyed, other parts really made me cringe. I'm a sucker for time traveler stories, especially those set in Europe between the Middle Ages and Victorian Era. So those parts were super fascinating. And overall, I do like both Jamie and Claire as characters. However, the romance was a bit trying at times, especially after Jamie beats Claire practically senseless, and then she somehow comes around to feeling this was justified. I mean, WHAT? Stockholm syndrome if I ever saw it. I feel wholly manipulated by the author into somehow rooting for this adulteress and abuser while at the same time being revolted by their actions. And the whole last bit with Jamie and Randall felt completely unnecessary to me. Did we need to have such brutality spelled out in detail? I think it would have been far better to just let our imaginations decide what really went on in that dungeon.
All that said, I will likely continue the series for the same reason I've continued others I found slightly distasteful: the need to know what happens next is too strong a draw!
Not your typical vampire story at all. This is a hefty book, with lots of different characters and narratives. It unfolds puzzle piece by puzzle piece, which made putting it down each night fairly difficult. With so many characters in a book, it'd be easy to gloss over some of them, but Cronin gives each one depth and even evokes sympathy for some of the criminals and monsters.
In the end, the book is about so much more than monsters or government conspiracies. It's about survival, humanity, hope beyond all odds, and other typical post-apocalyptic themes. Yet Cronin made these themes feel new.
Since it's the first book in a trilogy, it of course ends with a cliffhanger, and a pretty big open question about who Peter really is (or should I know this and I missed something?). I hope we get to read more about the colonists in the next book, before their apparent demise comes about.
I dunno. This book was really hard to get into. Nothing much happens until the final third, and a lot of the setup is confusing. I was intrigued by the world-building, but the characters mostly fell flat for me (not to mention the 3 main characters all seem to have the same exact voice; in my opinion it only fits one of them, and it's not the main guy). A gay male protagonist would have been so much more genre-busting if I thought the author did it for any other reason than to be shocking. I felt like I could see his hand a little too much throughout–everyone else in the book constantly uses pejoratives when discussing our “hero,” the hero himself is a rather one-note bottomless pit of self-loathing, and overall the sex scenes seem more about power and mastery than anything else, which makes it trope and not “twisting” (much less “taking an axe to”) “genre cliches” as suggested by the enthusiastic cover blurb.
The author takes the concept of information overload to an extreme, dark end. It took me a few chapters to really get used to the narrator's voice, but once I did, I could not put this book down. So much suspense!
Not quite as in-depth as other titles I've read. The books of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson go much further. Still, I appreciate that the author was trying to make a difficult subject (difficult in that many people still don't think animals have intelligence or emotions, or they don't want to think so because of the implications) more approachable. The photographs are beautiful and engaging.
I just can't get into this one. It's slow, and boring, and enough with the beatings and justifications for them already, Gabaldon. I'll be content to just Google the plot synopsis to figure out my one burning question–why the eff Claire didn't try to get back to Jamie for over 20 years.
I'm kind of mad I spent so much time slogging through this. It had SO MUCH hype and the premise was super intriguing, so I thought it would eventually get better, or all the terror and violence would have some sort of satisfying payoff, but no. This book was A LOT. “Brutal,” as many reviewers described this, must now be code for “contains a lot of rape and pedophilia and pseudo-bestiality,” so my bad, I guess, for opening the cover anyway. And further my bad for continuing even after the book pretty much told me in the first few pages what it was going to be. And I do mean told. This is not a book that shows you anything. It prefers long-winded, nonsensical, overly stuffed exposition at every turn, with as many mentions of penises, violent sex, and egregious bodily harm as possible. And look, I'm not usually a delicate reader and I'm rarely offended and this is not my first book set within an African mythos, but what the hell, Marlon, and what the hell, National Book Award committee?
If you've already read Kendi, Oluo, Saad, and others, there won't be much new here for you. But this is an incredibly accessible book and would be a great one for tweens, teens, and the people in your life who still say things like “I don't see race” or “All lives matter.” I loved Joseph's conversational tone, music recs, and the little callout boxes in each chapter telling folks what to Google for more info.
A very compelling read. Not without its flaws, but in some places the language is so beautiful I read it again, just to savor it.
Giving up on this one at page 255. I've loved his other novels, though it's been quite some time since I read one, so not sure if this was me or the book. But judging from the other reviews, I'd say it's the book. The premise is interesting, but this needed a heavy edit and I lost interest and the will to slog through overly detailed asides when my reading list is already miles long. Also, Neal, you need to forevermore stop referring to human women as “females.”
This is a really hard book to rate. Definite trigger warning for abuse, rape, neglect. Yet the protagonist is very compelling, and especially in the last half of the book, I could not stop turning the pages. One burning question, though, is why nobody tried to intervene sooner? That part was so unbelievable to me. The minute Daisy knew the full extent of what Lacey Mae went through, she should've called a social worker.
Hmmm. This series is getting worse. I didn't think it was possible for Clary to get more annoying, but this book certainly proved me wrong. And don't even get me started on Jace and Simon (why is he around anyway, other than to create useless drama?). I can't say that anything that happened in this book was at all surprising (or original), and I found myself skimming large portions of text that weren't dialogue.
Martin really likes to toy with my emotions. A few too many good guys and too few bad guys bite it in this one, and all our heroes are still down on their luck. . . .
It was quite the trip to read this as COVID-19 spreads through the US. . . . An enjoyable read overall, though I feel like some of the more interesting threads were dropped halfway through.
The premise was very intriguing, and I was definitely drawn into the overall mystery of who James really was and what had happened during his forgotten years. But this book gets 2 stars because I just flat-out hated the protagonist. Every time the self-described detective would encounter a huge clue, he'd go get drunk instead of unraveling it. I know this was part of the overall character development, but it grated on me enough to downgrade the book's rating.
I could not get into this one at all. The voices he chose for his characters really put me off. They seemed contrived, were hard to read and even harder to empathize with, and even Saunders seems to treat his characters with disdain. The overall tone of each story is hopeless and depressing. I stuck with it for a while because the stories were short and I was hoping there'd be some redemption, but I gave up by the time I got halfway through the cavemen story.
I had to give up on this one. I just couldn't get into it. It reads like an actual Dickens novel, and I am not a Dickens fan. And the narrator is so whiny and seems fairly unreliable. I am interested in the mystery about Drood, but the plot moved at a snail's pace. There are so many great books in the world, and I'm just not up to slogging through nearly 800 pages of random exposition.
An incredibly disturbing and rage-inducing book that should be a must-read for every American citizen. Palast's deep investigative reporting produces facts and solid figures about just how elections are being bought–on both sides of the aisle. He also arms the reader with ample information on how to stop this from happening. Hint: it's definitely not through armchair apathy.
It's not like I didn't already know that ballot banditry was happening and a big problem. But the depths to which it goes, who's behind it all, and WHY, well, that's what's really sick about it all. I like to believe that people are generally good and often do stupid things that they think are in their (and your) best interest. But I can't see how the Ice Man, the Vulture, the Koch brothers, et. al. could possibly be good human beings after reading this treatise.
Read this book before the election. Then send it to all your friends.
This book is a tad uneven, but it gets a superstar rating for it's heart. Jenna writes candidly about the trials of finding a farm of one's own, and she made me cry on both the first and last pages. Not many books do that! I'm sure it was mostly because I can relate so, so well to her tale, having a severe case of barnheart myself. I had an advanced copy, so I'd be interested to see if the unevenness gets worked out before publication.
Less memoir and more recipe book/how-to than I was expecting. However, I appreciated the simple staple recipes included, and how they are arranged seasonally. I especially liked her practical approach to making do each week and month, and how it didn't ever mean the quality of her meals suffered. Indeed, the quality and meaning seems to increase exponentially as she gets closer to her sources and builds community. The tips she offers are very actionable, and I hope to slowly begin incorporating many of them into my own life.
Just as unputdownable as the first one, but this time I did NOT see the big twist coming. Except for the fact that I've been predicting since book 1 that Noah's mysterious bio-chem dad is behind all this somehow, and this book definitely seems to strengthen that theory. Can't for the life of me figure out what the motivation would be, though.
The editor could have taken a heavier hand with this–I feel like not too much happened in this book, and it is a pet peeve of mine when book 2 in trilogies exist only to set up the plot of book 3. Something should happen, at least. Don't just give us a massive cliffhanger with more questions than answers.
Also, is anyone else as stupified as I am that the Dyers didn't replace all their locks when Daniel's key went missing? ZOMGWTFICE. I get it, without this handy convenience, half the book couldn't have happened. But seriously, folks, this almost ruined it for me.