Katharine Forsyth
Eva Ibbotson's books are always good, but I didn't feel the magic and romance as deeply in this book as I have in a few of her others.
As always, a delight. Robin Stevens is so good at plotting a mystery and revealing clues a tiny bit at a time. This was absolutely worth the wait, and I'm already excited for the next book!
This was a cute story, but the writing was... not great. Not like 50 Shades level bad, but enough that it really irritated me. Things like “decisions he had taken”. You don't take decisions, you MAKE decisions. Or at one point when the two leads are snuggled up together, the main character says “a grunt fell into my neck”. What? And at least three times when the love interest moved towards her suddenly, she says “he ate the distance between us”. Wtf?? Add to that a load of grammatical errors (like using “it's” when it should have been “is”) and the result is 2/5 stars from me. It would have been 3 if the writing had matched the story. So disappointing.
Although I do have to add that the sex scenes were awkward AF and really weird and sudden.
I didn't enjoy this one. It's hard to enjoy a book where the main character is just constantly unhappy about every situation she's in. And I get why she's unhappy and confused about everything that's going on (who wouldn't be?), but it doesn't make for an enjoyable or likeable read.
I will definitely read anything and everything else by this author. That's two fantastic books in a row (Jack of Hearts being the first one). YES TO MORE OF THIS.
Started off a bit bland, but it picked up about halfway through and got much more interesting.
It started off a little dark and slow-paced, but almost immediately it picked up and then it was unputdownable! What a crazy ride. Absolutely loved it.
This wasn't bad by any means, but it had a lot more plot about mental health issues than I was prepared for. I just wanted a cute romcom with warring families and secret relationships. This wasn't that.
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.
3.5 stars.
Cute, predictable, just what I wanted (especially since it's set around Christmas!), but nothing hugely memorable.
Loved this. It was the perfect blend of important topics tackled seriously, without every becoming too grim or depressing. The musical theatre nerd in me loved all the Wicked stuff, and I learned more about Mariah Carey than I ever thought possible.
I was about to say “I don't even need to know what this book is about; I'll read anything Casey writes!”, but ... gay time-travel romcom??? Holy crap that sounds amazing! Bring it on; I am ready.
This was really sweet, but it did have a tendency to drag in the middle. So while I always enjoyed it while I was reading it, I didn't always feel the urge to pick it up again.
Young people these days are so lucky that books like this exist. I didn't “need” them, per se, since I always identified as cis and straight, and obviously every book I read as a child or teen was filled with people like me. But I still wish we'd had stories like this, about LGBT families, just to normalise it. And especially for my contemporaries who felt different and excluded, to see themselves represented. And for the bullies and ignorant people to learn from.
Almost as brilliant as the first two books in the series. The only reason I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 5 is because I wasn't that keen on the main plot (the Hollowpox disease). But it's still fantastic, clever, beautifully written, and wonderful, and thoroughly worth the read.
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.