Katharine Forsyth
2.5 stars
This was... fine. Not bad or anything, but nothing really to recommend it either.
Sweet story, great sexual tension, but since it never....um...came to fruition, even at the end, I was left a bit disappointed. Maybe in the sequel?
So... this book is good, and it's well-written, but it's not enjoyable. Everyone is so unhappy, and having a really horrible time in life. It's such a downer.
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.
What an odd book. I can't really explain how I felt about it - it was definitely readable and interesting at the time, but after I'd finished it just felt a bit, “Well, what was the point of that?”
I was hoping this book would be mostly about the book “virus”, where books alter themselves and infect each other. Unfortunately, it ended up being about other things entirely - to the point where the book virus played no part and needn't have existed at all.
This is such a gentle, warm hug of a book. Just really evocative of a specific time and place in the characters' lives. Kate Saunders died too young, but I think she'd be proud of this lovely story being her last book.
Meh. Average. I kept reading to see what happened, but the writing was really not great. I won't be reading another book by her.
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 She might have some (or a lot of) outdated attitudes, including classism, racism, sexism...but damn does she tell a good story.
I loved this! Really great premise, totally adorable and sweet and funny. I was enjoying it so much I didn't want it to end. This is Danielle Banas' first novel, and I'm very excited to see what she writes next!
Lots of fun and very readable, but I thought the writing could have been a bit better.
Thought it was going to be a smutty sexy read, but it was actually quite a sweet chicklit with a little sex thrown in. Really cute and quick read! Bonus points for being set in drama school.
Cute fluff, but the pacing was kind of off, so by the time anyone got together I'd lost interest a bit.
FYI: It's a lot less sexy/steamy than the cover and synopsis would lead you to believe. Much more straight chicklit with a bit of sex.
It lost a bit of steam when the main characters got together a little earlier than I thought they should have, but still a fun read.
I had no idea this was a YA novel when I picked it up, but hey, I love a good YA book, so my slightly negative review isn't based on that at all. It just that, for a story about social anxiety and depression, this book seemed far too simple. Kinsella's usual fun chicklit books have more layers than this one, and that doesn't feel right. I didn't want it to be morbidly miserable and depressing, but you hardly get any sense of how debilitating mental illness can be, since it all seems to be so easily solved in this story. It's not quite so simple as “Audrey gets a boyfriend and hey presto, she's cured!”, but it veers close to that.
Having said that, the family and Linus (the boyfriend) were really well-drawn and interesting. Kinsella's a good writer. But I had to go for two stars (It was OK) on this one because I just had too many problems with it to say “I liked it”, though I enjoyed it while I was reading it.
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.
3.5 stars - Cute romcom style chicklit. Nothing amazing, but enjoyable and definitely better than the (surprisingly) more popular novel of the same name by Jasmine Guillory.
I like stories about classic Hollywood, but this just felt somehow cold and distant. I never really cared enough.
On the up side, it didn't go into the “seedy underbelly” type stuff that these books often do, so that was a giant plus. I hate reading about sexual abuse in Hollywood, but luckily this book didn't go there.
Simon James Green does it again. While the subject matter is a little more serious than his other books, it's still filled with humour and warmth and so much heart. Everyone should read this book; a little more empathy in this world would be a wonderful thing.
I wasn't going to reread it until after the series, but then I went to a talk with Neil Gaiman, David Tennant and Michael Sheen, and it was SO GOOD, and got me so excited, that I couldn't stop myself. So here I am reading 6 books simultaneously yet again. #facepalm
Ugh, I don't even know why I finished this. Probably because I really have to hate a book to DNF it, and it was an easy read. But this book is just so LAME and badly written. Honestly, I'm shocked that it was published as a real book, because it reads like really bad fanfiction. I've read tons of self-published stuff that was better than this, and that just makes me sad for those authors.
I love stories about “normal” people having relationships with celebrities, but this was the worst of its kind I've read. Don't bother!