Michelle
I love Becky Albertalli's writing. I started a new book right after this one from another author and had to put it down because what comes so naturally to BA seemed clunky from this author. I had to get some distance before giving that author another chance.
I didn't like “Upside” as much as “Simon,” but that's to be expected because I like Simon even more as time goes by. Another issue is that I get a little impatient with love triangles, especially since there is no real mystery about who is the right object of affection. Every moment she was with the wrong love interest took away page space from Molly spending time with the guy she really liked.
Lots of love and embrace of the LGBTQA community. I loved that both Molly and one of the love interests have two mom – with the love interest's moms as Molly's boss – and yet this similarity took up no head space any more than of they each had one blond and one red-headed parent. Her bosses didn't even know this until Molly told them her parents became engaged to celebrate marriage equality.
I also love that among Molly's crushes was a trans boy, and this is also handled like there is nothing to handle or parse.
Becky Albertalli is one of the best YA author working today!
The Sky is Everywhere didn't take off for me fully until past the half-way point. When Lennie was specifically dealing with or speaking or writing about her grief over the loss of her sister, the story was great, but I found myself less into the love triangle angle, or at least one participant in the triangle. Lennie was still making her decisions there based on her sorrow, but I found myself not having an interest in seeing her make the particular mistake she did. As soon as the story narrowed down to one love interest and her interactions with her family, I stopped feeling like some pages were a slog. Jandy Nelson is a really terrific writer, the prose almost poetry, and the poetry something sublime. Adored [b:I'll Give You the Sun 20820994 I'll Give You the Sun Jandy Nelson https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1496659336s/20820994.jpg 11409817], and I found myself very happy I'd read this by the end. Fave quotes: “...all of a sudden the breath is kicked out of me and I???m shoved onto the cold hard concrete floor of my life now, because I remember I can???t run home after school and tell Bails about a new boy in band. My sister dies over and over again, all day long.”I've felt that, haven't you? The moment when you remember the conversation with this person is over. That you can't hear their comments or advice ... or laughter. “I start to think about all the things I haven???t said since Bailey died, all the words stowed deep in my heart, in our orange bedroom, all the words in the whole world that aren???t said after someone dies because they are too sad, too enraged, too devastated, too guilty, to come out???all of them begin to course inside me like a lunatic river.”I've also been there. Words left unsaid because the only person I want to say them too is gone!
I am now really into the series. Book 1 was a meh for me, but I wanted to support the author because I heard good things about her as a person and as a feminist. Book 2 was ... better. I really liked this one though and am invested now in continuing the journey.
There are things about Toby that are baked into the cake, or have been so far, which used to drive me mad. She is a half-fae P.I. who really kinda wants answers fed to her – she resents riddles but riddles are what mystical races do, and basically – in a less literal sense – at the heart of investigating. She is tenacious and stubborn and has powerful friends, and eventually the answers do tend to fall into her lap. Since this doesn't seem to be changing, I've learned to deal with it.
But she is told to talk to The Moon, and has someone in her life named Luna. She gave no thought to the riddle until after Luna started giving her answers – but moon, Luna, c'mon!
And I love that this book finally owns she has a death wish which is illustrated in the choices she makes. She cares, and her job is dangerous, but she tends to throw herself into danger with no real plan other than to wing it as she goes. (???Because, dear October, you???re the most passively suicidal person I???ve ever met, and that???s saying something. You???ll never open your wrists, but you???ll run head-first into hell. You???ll have good reasons. You???ll have great reasons, even. And part of you will be praying that you won???t come out again.???)
Also, she loses consciousness 3 to 4 times per book – blow to the head, blood loss, exhaustion...
That said, I've come to care about Toby and the rest of the recurring characters, and want to spend more time with them, as well as find out if she ever loses the death wish.
Nice start to a series, but would have liked more action and focus on the competition the main character was in, as opposed to the romance angle. But I know a lot of people are into love triangles. I know who I want her with, and have read a million romances in my lifetime, but I picked this up to read about a female assassin. [b:A Court of Thorns and Roses 16096824 A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1) Sarah J. Maas https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1491595796s/16096824.jpg 21905102], also by the author, focuses on romance, too – but the cover and the plot ask for it, beg for it. I have all the series novellas, which I plain on reading fairly soon.
This wasn't a bad (Audible) book. Loved, no surprise, the cat, but I never engaged deeply with the story. I listened at 3x speed, more looking to finish than to linger. The murderer did not surprise me at all.
I liked the narration, even though it seems counter-intuitive to have a female narrator for a first person story with a male main character. It took nothing away from the story for me.
I'd read or listen to another one, if the price were right, but mostly it would be for the cat. :)
This is a reread from when I was a kid. I got so much more from the story this time – it's the difference between being closer to Danny's age or close to Jack and Wendy's ages.
Going to say better than the movie, because this focused on Jack's struggle, as if it actually is a struggle, as opposed to Nicholson being off-his-rocker from page 1. Wendy is a much stronger character. You get why a child would initially fear his parents divorcing more than he would the scary hotel. So many great moments that didn't make the movie, and made the reader care. And a different ending.
This was a pretty good read, but not too detailed. If you're looking for a lot of stories about what it was like to make various movies, this is not the book for you. I think Beetlejuice was all of a paragraph. He does talk about roles that held particular meaning to him, but nothing in a lot of depth.
He writes about his childhood, and politics, and a little about 30 Rock, his custody battle, and his assorted scandals. None of that really changed my opinion of him as a person, which is that he is a well-intentioned person with a bad temper that occasionally gets the best of him, and in those moments he's his own worst enemy. While his tone was not angry, anger did bleed through in certain passages.
What a difference a decade or more makes? The story was solid, the characters pretty likable, but fat joke upon fat joke, a sassy black women who barely refrains at one point from saying “You go, girl,” a black man named Freedman who sounds like James Earl Jones? A strong, competent female officer who wanted her love interest to protect her, because that was the natural order?
I am at an age where 2004 was pretty much yesterday, but in this case the book shows its years.
The mystery itself was pretty good except the premise was shuffled aside, which I suppose could be seen as a twist, but felt a little like a cheat since it was time for the book to resolve. The result is all the police characters, contrary to how they were intended to be portrayed, seemed less than stellar at their jobs.
Also, small spoiler, there is a dog in the book that actually lives. I hate that the dog almost always dies if there's danger.
StN is a long, atmospheric historical fiction, mystery, novel. So many of the details that initially seem just part of that atmosphere contribute to the conclusion. You are never going to know what all matters or what detail will become significant.
Not recommended for people who want a fast pace or constant action. This story takes its time, lingers on details, contains long conversations.
Matthew and the magistrate, who is a father figure to Matthew, travel to the settlement of Fount Royal, the brain child of a man named Bidwell. The town is faltering due to the belief that one of the residents is a witch. Hence, the need for a magistrate.
Although McCammon writes horror, there is no real belief created in the reader that Rachel is a witch, nor is there meant to be. This detail works more on the level of hysteria, human bias and stupidity, and circumstantial evidence. To some extent, this is funny. To paraphrase any number of exchanges.
“So, magistrate, when will we get to burn the witch?”
“The accused needs to be tried.”
“Right, sure. We have to try her before we burn her – we believe in the law – but when do you think we can get to the burning part?”
And, unsurprisingly, anything that seems like evidence against her being a witch is written off as the devil being cunning.
But the book is about more than that. It's about Matthew coming of age and separating from his father figure as he definitively becomes a man in his own right. It's also about appearances being deceiving. Beyond an innocent woman being accused of doing the naughtiness with Satan, we have Matthew step into at least 3 homes that are not what they appear from the outside. We have multiple characters who are not what they seem. We have assumptions that prove to be false.
We also have this little ear worm:
Come out, come out, my dames and dandies. Come out, come out, and taste my candies.
I'm giving StN 5 stars because, after reading 800+ pages, I found myself not wanting to leave. A sense of melancholia set in at the last 10% because I knew the story was wrapping up, and I knew there would be some sadness both in the story and in me as a reader.
When I first got my Kindle, about 8 years ago, Sherman Alexie was quoted in an interview as saying the sight of a woman with a Kindle on a plane made him want to hit her. So, he has always irritated me a bit because of it – who objects to someone reading their work because of format? – but upon reading [b:The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian 693208 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Sherman Alexie https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327908992s/693208.jpg 829330] I had to admit he's talented. Flight has done nothing to dispel my opinion of his talent. His characters are real smart mouths – that's the g-rated version – so I also see how the brain that creates them could also come up with some real gems in interview. But if Flight taught me anything, it's to let some grudges go. Of note though is that I read one of his books on my Kindle, and one was an audiobook. Okay, let ... it ... go. I listened to the audiobook version of Flight, and cannot say enough good things about the narrator, Adam Beach. I actually can't separate in this case the book from the narrator who so wonderfully brought Zits to life and ably shows his evolution and healing as he lives stories of betrayal and genocide. Flight is a short novel, but packs a lot of power. If you can do the audiobook version, I highly recommend you do.
A mixed bag for me. I think the dialogue and some of the observations were great, they rang true. But the parents, in particular, were all over the map in terms of thoughts and motivations. Scenes that were great in isolation made no sense in context – the story had moved beyond the characters' reactions. They seemed to forget things they knew. There's are reasons that Jack, the father character, behaves different than you'd expect, but even beyond that he seemed to be just doing things to service the plot.
But the author seems to have an innate ability to identify what's scary. And that strong, realistic dialogue goes a long way.
Nearly every character had a name that appears in Stephen King stories, and I wonder if that was deliberate, or King is just so prolific and has had so many characters, that it would be hard not to “match” him.
As a horror fan, and an animal fan, I am sick of the animals always dying. Look, I know it's horror, and all bets are off, but the only suspense created by a dog or cat appearing in horror is when exactly it will die, and how brutal the death will be. This takes away some of the enjoyment and surprise, because I can never relax when the animal is in a scene, always completely on guard, so there is no shock, just a sense of inevitability. Pets rarely serve any other purpose in these movies or novels, unlike real life. So, here is the book for me: Wonder how long the dog will live. Oh, look, flashbacks with a cat. Wonder how long the cat will last. Goodbye, kitty. Goodbye, dog. I get that this shows the horrific force aint screwing around, but it's now cliche. Not mad at the author, mad at the cliche.
Nice read. I see a lot of people were unhappy that the book ended where it did, but the point of the book was to talk about how these characters reacted to the list, and the culmination was homecoming.
Margo realized the homecoming crown was cheap plastic, that this thing that seemed important and that Jennifer and Margo wanted so much was shoddy, as the principal tried to tell Jennifer. We find out just how damaged Jennifer is, and how she took her pain and inflicted pain on others. Bridget cannot see herself as beautiful, because she is in the grip of her disease. Sarah learns that she really is loved, and hopefully puts aside her need for self-destruction. Abby moves closer to appreciating her sister and got to see through Fern how painful the list could be. Danielle valued herself not to stay with a boy who was not ready to stand by her side, and began to see her strength was beautiful and sexy. Lauren made steps to try to separate herself from her over-possessive mother, but struggles with a desperation to be liked. Candace became kinder, because she realized she'd alienated her friends and saw that Lauren's kindness was a lot of what made her pretty.We also get to see that the list was largely arbitrary -- one person's prejudiced opinion treated like truth.
Okay, second book in the series, and I still think October is kinda not great at her job. She still stumbled a crazy amount of times. This book had fewer people needing to save her bacon, so that's an improvement. A couple plot twists seemed pretty darned obvious to me, with one of them straight out of Buffy. :)
Spike: Ben, Glory. He's a doctor, she's the Beast. Two entirely separate entities sharing one body. It's like a bloody sitcom.
But just like the last time, I want to read on, and that means there's a lot of good here. And I love the image of all the cats gathering together at the end to see justice done.
Sometimes the language was too modern. Sometimes the tone shifted too much and felt a little 50 Shades, which I theoretically have no issue with except tone shifts are jarring. The action is slow to build, and then Blammo.
But I have to confess I gobbled this up. Part of me really wants to call this 3 stars because of my various issues, but there was tons of good as well. So, 4 stars.
I liked this, but found my attention wandering now and again. 3 stars represents both my enjoyment and my wandering attention, as well as I'd read the first 35% before, and had so much trouble remembering it that I went ahead and read it again.
But I plan on listening to the podcast Phoebe does with Jessica Williams.
The New Normal had a strange rhythm to it. Plot developments I expected to be explored never were.
For instance, Tamar gives her late sister's guitar to a drug dealer to pay off a debt her sisters – they were twins and died together – has incurred. For the whole book, I was expecting her parents to confront her about the guitar's disappearance. Never happened.
What I did like is that I'd never read a book before with a heroine who had to deal with hair loss. That's a new story for me. And a girl in high school? Whew. But it turned out to be, like much of the story, not explored as much as I would expect or watch.
Tamar's parents also seemed quote real to me. Her love interest and that story was told in a really low key way, and I sorta loved that. Here is a guy who is her best friend, accepts her who she is, and they make sense together.
I suppose I'd just have to say that the muted quality of the book lead my reaction to be a little muted as well.
These sorts of stories are important right now to help people understand the issue better so that the kids are less likely to suffer, not just in their own households but in the greater community. That said. for a child that we're told is so vocal about who he is, the book had very little of his actual voice. I think the adult Whittingtons are very strong and loving in standing up for their children, but I felt mom had so much of a voice, and the rest of the family so little, and at moments the tone seemed somewhat self-c0ngratulatory.
I don't have children, which I joke makes me an expert on how other people should raise theirs. This really is a joke. I realize I'm not in the trenches. But I must confess the Whittingtons were from a more conservative background than it's easy for me to understand. Ryland liked a pair of Star Wars underwear, and the family – extended family included – took this crazy hard. I mean, when they understood Ry was trans they were all in, which confuses me if Darth Vader briefs sent everyone into a panic, but much of the book is about the parents not just insisting Ry wear girls' clothes, but the most stereotypical, complete with bows in his hair, version of it. That might have even been a tough one for a child who identified as a girl.
But in the end, they're strong and loving parents who made the decision to be vocal advocates for their son and others like him, which I admire so much.
“All I ever wanted was to be perfect. That sounds like a pretty big ask, but ???perfect??? means bland, inoffensive, likeable. I wanted other things too. I did want to stand out, be smart, be nice, but I tried so hard for those things that it wasn???t really like I was asking anyone for them. Really what I wanted was to be something more than the sum of my male and female parts.”
I appreciated this was a new story for me – a story featuring an intersex character. However, my frustrations significantly marred the experience.
Before I get to my gripes: As is almost always the case, I'm glad I read this book. It furthered my understanding of being intersex and expanded upon knowledge I'd gained reading about trans issues. A lot of kids are born outside of the perceived norm, with ambiguous or otherwise “unusual” genitalia, and yet most people are so ignorant of this. If we all knew more, it might change the conversation when we talk about what makes someone male or female. God or nature doesn't always fashion a baby to be one or the other, body development and brain development are separate, and so how can a bar stool philosopher opine that the matter is clear cut?
Anyhow...
Max is intersex. He is both male and female. I use the male pronouns because he and everyone else does. He is sexually assaulted early on, with the rapist using his female anatomy. The book is about the emotional and physical repercussions of this, as well as what it does to Max's perception of himself and his family.
The book employs multiple POVs, most felt unneeded. Also, since I felt such antipathy for Max's mother, even with her mental processes, I'd say her POV was unwanted, and really lowered my enjoyment. I believe the author, admirably, wanted Karen – the mother – to be sympathetic, but I just could not arrive at a place where she didn't make me grit my teeth.
One of the POVs is the doctor Max meets when he goes to get help after the assault. Being England, Max's clinic trip had a lot less red tape than had the book been set in America. All the medical aspects throughout the book followed suit. The problem with the doctor is she seemed to exist to explain the intersex aspect and to brush right up against betraying confidentiality when the failings, sometimes passivity, of the characters left the story at a crossroads. The doctor never felt natural.
Another POV was a potential love interest. No real complaints there, except the general sense that most of the voices were similar.
Yet another POV was Max's younger brother, Daniel. This kid was something else, mostly in a good way. While he would be trying to live with, he was also bright and funny in a book that needed a little humor now and again.
???Poltergeists are real,??? he mumbles from behind my hand. ???No they???re not.??? I frown at him. ???And neither???s Santa.??? ???Ouch,??? he says, and half-laughs, even though this is totally inappropriate because it???s disrespectful to the memory of Santa, who was real when we believed in him.
Ultimately, I spent the whole novel frustrated because the parents could see their kid was in distress and did nothing concrete to alleviate it. Their POVs were filled with thoughts of love, about how you'd do anything for your kid, but no one worked to build rapport, create a situation conducive to Max laying down some of his burden. When Max does make the first tentative steps to reach out, the mother instantly burns any bridge to communication, making wildly ignorant assumptions, and further traumatizing a child in pain. Any question she asks is then in the context of shame, judgement, and antagonism.
Max is established early on as a sweet and accommodating kid. Eventually, some of this is attributed to seeing from an early age the consequences of stressing out his mother. Which means he is prone to masking his pain, keeping secret his plight. And so with neither parent seeking to do more than handle the practical stuff, leaving the emotional and psychological dimension largely unquestioned, I pretty much just wanted to scream. Again, the doctor had to just about betray confidentiality to get Karen to give a second thought to her assumptions. And Karen is allegedly a successful attorney.
So, this is how I ended up at 3 stars and wanting to yell at some fictional characters.
Heartbreaking and inspirational. I cannot begin to imagine what Rosemary thought and felt when her family were taken out of her life for several years when the book makes clear pleasing her family, particularly her father, was so much a part of her.
She inspired so much important research and legislation by her being a part of the most influential, and at times powerful, families in America.
???They are beyond me.
These humans.
With their brief lives and their tiny dreams and their hopes that seem as fragile as glass.
Until you see them by starlight, that is.???
Wow, wow, wow!
Let me get my issue out of the way. Several characters, particularly early on, had the same glib, sarcastic voice, and it became annoying. Not because they weren't funny – very funny – but they were the same.
Apparently there is never not a good time to do a “I'm nailing your sister” joke.
I also have to warn that the style of the book is entirely reports, records, surveillance tapes, and similar, and they're formatted accordingly. Reading on a Kindle was a bit challenging, and I spent a lot of time with my nose almost touching the screen to make out some pages. But it felt worth it, somehow, to see all the creative uses and to marvel at how well the authors did this.
Now the good stuff:
The book was always entertaining, and when it really got going – the second half! – the story was exciting, suspenseful, and surprising. “You've got to be kidding me,” I muttered more than once. “This book!”
Kady was complex. Not unafraid, but willing to do whatever needed doing anyhow. Ezra was sweet, but the lead sister-nailing jokester, so that good old. But on so many occasions I found myself caring about the lives of minor characters because the authors did their work well.
Perhaps the best character was Aiden, the ship AI. Crazy, but strangely noble, and poetic, and compelling. Not evil so much as damaged. Reminded me sometimes of Morpheus in the Sandman graphic novels.
Highly recommended!