Tessa
Finished it for the second time (16-8-22/26-8-22) and holy fuck. This book simultaneously breaks and heals my heart. Wade is superior and I have no choice but to stan❤️
3,5*
The tell-tale heart - 3 stars
The fall of the house of Usher - 3,5 stars
The cask of Amontillado - 4 stars
This is not what I had expected. I had heard so much about this book and kinda expected it to disappoint in some ways, because it is/was so hyped up. There were many twists, most of which I didn't see coming. In short this book is smart, unique and full of action.
I read along with the movie 1996 movie adaptation featuring Leonardo DiCaprio. It's really interesting to see what they skip and decide to keep in.
3.75*
I understand why Stephen King liked this so much, characters with a lot of background story, ‘unnecessary' details and lots of plot (relevant or not). Some parts of this book I absolutely loved and other parts I had trouble dragging myself through. In the beginning of this book I was very excited and hopeful, this lasted during most of the Las Vegas parts, but soon after my interest started going down. I did like the parts with Hobie and a lot of the time spent with Boris but even they weren't enough to keep me really excited. This review might not sound too satisfied with the book and in some ways I'm not, but what I value a lot in this book is the style of writing and the story overall. That is why I rounded up to 4 stars.
(I have also seen the movie. It's pretty accurate but was not all it could have been.)
4.5*
This book was a bit slow in the beginning, but definitely picked up its pace. Even though I would have loved to see Mark adjust to Earth again and see how the media treated him after he god back, this book still had an amazing ending!
A friend of mine read this a couple of years ago and hated it. Now I had to read it for class and had very low expectations. To my surprise I fell in love with this book and couldn't put it down. It had some twists and turns, but also kept it simple enough for younger readers. Loved it!
I really liked the book, the only downside was that the main character could be too caught up in self-pity from time to time and that bugged me a little. Aside from that I have no negative things to say. It was nice to have a background story on Carry On (which you should read first, there are small spoilers in this book for Carry On) and the pacing was great!
Ik had nooit verwacht dat dit boek zo'n impact op me zou hebben. Toch wist Francine Oomen mij weer mee te nemen in de bizarre en heftige avonturen van deze personages. Ik hoop dat er nog meer boeken in de serie komen!
4,5While the first half of the book was 5 worthy I was a bit disappointed that we didnt really get to see Dorian's corruption and actions a bit more. I also loved the dynamic between the three main characters that was mostly absent after the halfway point (partly for an obvious reason, but still)
But this book did live up to the hype and it was as funny and witty as I had hoped!
3,5
Overall I think this book was very good, the writing, the plot but I did give it 3,5 stars.
the reasons are:
- not as funny as I thought
- too many plotlines
- I had a different expectation if how the story was going to be told
Obviously two of those are on me but I had those expectations due to the advertising for this book.
So the reason why the humour wasn't for me is all my ‘problem'. I did think many parts were funny but none had me laughing out loud, but oh well.
The next thing, about the plotlines. I think this book would have been just as good with half as many characters and side stories. They did not ruin the reading experience for me but they did confuse me at some times because so much is already happening and if a new character/side plot is introduced it confused me a little and took me out of the story a bit.
And lastly, I though the whole story was going to be told from the perspectives of Crowly and Aziraphale, which it did in the beginning. The parts with them were the funniest and most pleasant to read but they are mentioned a lot less after the first third of the book. I do think the perspective of Anathema, Adam and Newt were important and relevant to the story but the rest I just did not care about as much.
One other negative of this book was the ending, even though it was a complete and satisfying end, it went by too quickly and I felt like I missed most of it.
To end on a positive note: I loved the friendships and overall bonds in this novel and the writing styles of the two authors match very well.
If you are interested in reading this book I do recommend it so you can check it out for yourself!
Friend of My Youth: 4,5
Hold Me Fast, Don't Let Me Pass: 3,5
I only had to read these two for class.
Pretty cute, this was not really what I expected it to be. I thought the love interests would have met sooner and more of a meet-cute. Having said that, I am glad with the way the story went. I really enjoy the e-mail style mixed with the perspective of the main character. In short: sweet, interesting and fun.