A Bookish Girl

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.

3.5 stars.

Cute, predictable, just what I wanted (especially since it's set around Christmas!), but nothing hugely memorable.

Meh.

This actually had a cute story. If it hadn't been so badly written it would have been an easy three stars, maybe even four. Unfortunately the author clearly never learned how to use commas and apostrophes properly, and it was really distracting and irritating. How hard is it to find a proofreader?

Difficult to rate a book that's so personal, and that's so important for heterosexual people like myself to read to understand more about what our LGBTQ friends and family go through. But I just didn't think this book was particularly good, even though I'm glad I read it.

I really enjoyed this. I expected full-on smut from the cover, but there's literally only one sex scene right towards the end. It reads a lot more like a light romance/chicklit novel than the sexy sexy times type of romance novel that the cover suggests. I think it's been very mismarketed.

3.5 stars, always enjoyable and I'll definitely read the next one!

This was cute, but it lacked the swoonworthiness I wanted.

4.5 stars

The adorable, geeky, fluffy romance I needed right now. Thank goodness there are more!

A quick listen, full of heart and humour.

It was... fine. Not really my thing. Too many of the characters interactions with each other made no sense to me.

It's also written in present tense third person, which I personally cant stand, though I did get used to it eventually.

Badly-written. So many grammatical errors, ugh. People have got to stop treating romance novels like it doesn't matter if they're full of mistakes! We still want a well-written story while we enjoy our smut. :-)

Really rushed ending as well. Meh.

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.

Cute. 3.5 stars.

Lacking in sexual tension and any “almost got caught” fun, which to me should be a staple of a student-professor relationship story. But fine otherwise. Decently written, unlike many of these sorts of books!

Cute read, but rather too long for what it was. I enjoyed it, but I feel like it could easily have been 450 pages instead of 550.

Kind of reminiscent of “To All the Boys I've Loved before” - a cute read, but nothing madly memorable about it.

3.5 stars.

I can't exactly say “I liked it”, which would be 3 stars, because it was quite sad, and it made me sad. And since I rate according to the goodreads system, I'm going to have to give it 2 stars for how it made me feel.

It is, however, well-written and emotional and quite beautiful in places, so in terms of that I'd give it a 3 or even 3.5. I just don't like books that are this unhappy, but it might be just the thing for someone else.

2 stars = It was ok (I rate according to the Goodreads rating system)

I LOVE Bianca, but this wasn't as funny as she usually is. I listened to the audiobook, which I'd say is definitely the way to go, since you can hear her read it in all her hateful sarcastic glory. But overall something about it didn't fully work for me.

3.5 stars (somewhere between I liked it and I loved it).

I'm so frustrated with this book, because it had a really great premise, and the bits that were cute and fun showed how good it could have been if the author had just kept it cute and fun. But no. Instead, we get two main characters with soooo much emotional baggage that they can barely do anything except have internal monologues about how damaged they are (and some dialogue too). The entire book is just them convincing themselves and each other that they can't be together, even though they really fancy each other. And to fill a few hundred pages with ONLY that, means that the same basic conversations happen over and over and over and over until I just started skimming them in frustration.

And then to make matters worse, the ending is super rushed.

This might be a two star (it was ok) read, but because it irritated me instead of just making me go “meh”, I'm downgrading it to one.

This is REALLY good. It's not often you find such an open, full-on sex-positive YA book, especially when it comes to gay sex. There are other YA authors who give a positive representation of sex (Jenn Bennett is a good one), but ‘Jack of Hearts' is REALLY open about it. Kudos to LC Rosen for this!

Also, even if there wasn't any of that, the story is still great, so it's thoroughly readable and more-ish. Great job all round.

Somewhere between “it was ok” and “I liked it”.