A Bookish Girl
I read the translated English version (which was called “Ring Around the Moon”) in Std 6 as a setwork. I absolutely loved it, even though I cried my eyes out at one or two points; possibly more! Ever since then I've been looking for a copy (in English) to own.
Setworks are usually boring as anything, but this book is just LOVELY. So glad they made us read it!
I'm just not feeling this one. I don't care for the characters and the writing seems a bit...stilted? I don't know, but it's not for me.
I just came across this and discovered I hadn't rated it. I remember absolutely loving it and being unable to put it down when I was 13/14, so this rating reflects that. It may not be as good a read now!
And here we go - the second Ali Hazelwood book I haven't been able to finish (the other being Deep End). To be fair, she did warn us in the forewards in both books that these would be different from her usual romantic comedy books, and I tried harder with this one than Deep End, because I thought maybe I just wasn't into that one because I'm not into kink. But...what a yawn. Couldn't care less about Rue and her life.
I'm rating this one because I got much further into it (25%), and if a book is bad enough for me to get that far and not finish it, it's bad enough to rate 1 star.
It's taken me a full month to admit to myself that I'm not going to finish reading this. Why? Because I LOVE Richard Osman. LOVE HIM. He's so witty and funny and intelligent and charming... so a book written by him would have to be all those things, right? Except it's not. sigh. I got 25% into this and I couldn't muster up any interest in who the murderer was, or in any of the lead characters, or in what was going on in general. It just felt really dry and dull.
Maybe it's just me, because this book was so well-received and so popular, but I was just bored. Back in the day I would have kept reading just in case it improved, but I'm older now, I have nearly 1000 books on my TBR, and life's too short. Sorry, Richard. I do still love you, though.
Thought this sounded brilliant from the synopsis, but the writing is so bad I couldn't get past the first few pages. Spelling and grammatical errors abound.
A classic case of “It's not you, it's me”, this book just isn't for me. I follow the author on instagram, where she posts beautiful photos, and is absolutely hilarious, so I added both her books to my TBR list. However, neither the style nor the rather unhappy subject matter are my bag. That's fine. Not everything is for everyone!
Usually when I DNF a book it's because it's bad, and then I rate it one star, but in this case I'm not giving a rating because I'm sure other people will love it - it just wasn't for me.
So bad it wasn't even worth reading for the sexy bits. Zero chemistry between the leads, really dumb dialogue, and nothing anyone did made any sense. DNF at about 40%.
Casual rape in the first chapter made me go “nope”. I couldn't face a whole book where a lead character rapes a complete stranger without thinking anything of it.
One of the two main characters in this book is an English girl living in the year 1812. Every second chapter is told from her POV, and honestly it was driving me crazy that the author didn't even attempt to make her sound like an English girl in 1812. So many Americanisms (“due to my father being away” (paraphrasing)), and current slang (“you've got to be kidding me”) that I was spending all her chapters being incensed instead of enjoying the book. I do understand that the author probably didn't want to go full-on Jane Austen, but there was barely an attempt made.
DNF at 22%
DNF at 23%. Badly-written, too many inconsistencies, and just nothing interesting in terms of plot or characters. It's a pity, because the premise was made for me! Ugh. And then all the reviews talk about how many misunderstandings and miscommunications there are in the latter part of the book, and those are my absolute WORST.
Kind of badly written with really obvious mistakes that should have been caught. How, in the entire writing, editing and proofreading process, does no one notice that “Marie Kondo” is spelled wrong more than once? It's just irritating.
I love a good forbidden student-teacher romance, but this one just repelled me. The teacher was so creepy and it all felt a bit rapey, even though the main character said she wanted it. The sex was awkward instead of hot. I stopped about 40% of the way through.
DNF at around 60%. I tried so hard, I really did.
Reasons I'm DNF-ing this book:
1) It sounds cute and fluffy, but it has a general air of gloom about it. It's just a downer.
2) I didn't get any of the fun “normal person dating a celebrity” vibes/tropes that I wanted.
3) I realised I didn't really care what happened to these characters.
4) The MC (the narrator) is an English guy, but he uses American words and phrases. This drives me insane; how did literally no one (editors, proofreaders?) pick up on this? British people don't use the word “faucet”! They don't say things like, “I don't know where my phone is at”. That's fully American. Ugh. Don't write a book from a British person's POV if you don't know how they speak.
I should have given up after the extremely awkward BJ that happened very early on. So cringe. But I really wanted to give it a chance, because it was supposed to be a gay Notting Hill retelling, and what's not to love about that? Oh well.
DNF at 59%.
I was going to plough through and finish this, since I'm so far into it, but it's so DULL and depressing. The main character is just so unhappy with her life all the time. The romance between her and the movie star felt very rushed and there was zero chemistry between them, and since they get together really early on, the rest of the book just seems to be about how overwhelming and difficult and unhappy she is in her new life.
Also the writing is...not great.
I'm really annoyed with myself for not giving up sooner, but I'd had this on my TBR list for so long, and the premise sounded so good, that I just kept trying. But around the 40% mark, what was a bit silly and meh turned into full-blown weirdness and ridiculousness. Nope nope nope.
DNF at 16%, because I couldn't muster any interest in what was going on, plus the male lead's reasons for not being able to fix the review he left the female lead's bakery were just STUPID.
The writing style bothered me, so I stopped really early on. Not going to rate it because I read so little of it; this is more of a note for me to come back to so I remember what happened.
I'm DNF-ing this. Life's too short to read a depressing account of the breakdown of a long term relationship filled with gaslighting. This wasn't at all what I wanted from a Mhairi McFarlane novel. She's a great writer, which is why I won't be rating this, as I do when a book is too bad to finish. It just wasn't what I personally wanted. Hopefully her future novels are more like the other four I've read and loved!
Had to DNF this because I hated the writing style. Really bland and simplistic, with no emotion or characterisation or ... anything. Such a shame, because the plot sounded amazing. In the hands of a skilled writer this could have been brilliant.
I picked this up in a free bookshop because it was the exact same edition as the one I grew up with and loved as a child. I had to give up a lot of my Enid Blytons when I emigrated (but at least they went to a wonderful home with an English teacher friend who has a library in her classroom). I didn't even plan on rereading it; I just wanted to have it, but of course I picked it up to glance at the first page and couldn't put it down. That's Blyton for you. She might have some (or a lot of) outdated attitudes, including classism, racism, sexism...but damn does she tell a good story.