adds
Written by a millennial woman for other millennial women. I would know; references felt targeted. The writing is mildly pretentious a handful of times and the book, with the entire premise of I'm-sad-you're-sad-let's-be-sad-together, isn't really worth adapting into a movie imo.
The female lead is an early to mid (I swear an editor missed an age consistency) 30's children's librarian who dowdily looks the part and seems to never wear makeup. We also get a smattering of adorkableness, I'm-not-like-other-girls, a huge dose of negative self-esteem, along with trust, and daddy issues. What a bundle of joy she is (sarcasm). I don't know how, but somehow, she's still “sexy”.
Her male romantic love interest is again, somehow handsome through his potheaded bearded scruffiness and self-confidence issues which stem from slowly revealed family baggage and drama (not trying to give away too much here). His personality is a massive improvement from hers and at least got me to finish this.
If you're in an airport bookstore and the pickings are slim this should do for a flight. Otherwise, life is short read something else unless you're great at skimming.
There were a few times (a lot of times) I considered chucking this book, but I actually finished.
Reasons why I almost quit:
1. Outrageous names like Six, Sky, and Dean Holder-but-of-course-he-goes-by-his-last-name.
2. Slut shaming.
3. Gay bestie trope.
4. Creeptastic and volatile male lead.
5. Teens who have dialogue that is either completely unrealistic or should be coming from the most ridiculously well-rounded adult ever.
6. The constant, and I mean freaking constant, misuse of lay/lie. It hurt. It hurt me so much. Ow...
Reasons why I kept reading:
1. Must know big twist.
2. Must see if I'm right about a possible second smaller twist.
3. Must see how the actions of the male love interest are explained away and if it's satisfactory reasoning. Verdict: meh, kind of?
4. Actually awesome sexual tension. That was intense and obviously where Colleen Hoover excels.
Focusing on Mr. Intense Dean Holder for a minute. I've read worse. He could have been way worse. I see a lot of reviews ragging on Holder for remembering small details, but I've been there. I've kind of been Holder. I'm intense. I have an uncanny memory for recognizing people, remembering names, dates, or just general info about someone. This freaks people out. I've been freaking people out for years. My good memory has traumatized people before. Poor me. And hopefully poor Holder settles with age. Man, stop punching things. Therapy will help.
I almost need therapy after how much turmoil was in this book actually. That shit was rough. Someone needs to add some trigger warnings somewhere.
Music that fits
Oh Wonder - Livewire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjgnOP8f5NU
Made In Heights - Murakami https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEy1yZwJ-ko
This is obviously not the kind of story where someone locks eyes with a dragon and ends up telepathically linked or some such. No, this is about science and study, but not in a boring way. This is still an adventure. Smugglers and murder and intrigue. Oh my!
Now in her older years, Isabella has decided to write a series of memoirs. I usually quite like memoirs. The people writing them tend to be interesting or they wouldn't have a story. Isabella has a story, and it's a good one. I just wish she wasn't so damn arrogant.
At times in the first half of the book she'd take us out of the story and talk to us, the readers, as if we're beneath her.
“You may think you see plenty of stars, friend reader, but you are wrong.”
DNF at 42% and I only got that far because I skimmed like crazy. Other reviews sum up why this is so awful. I have no clue how this is rated as highly as it is.
I love this movie, but goddamn this was like reading a textbook. This is a great example of what it's like to take a highly interesting subject and make it duller than a box of rocks. Actually, that's not fair; I find rocks to be interesting at times.
Honestly, this might just be a case of it's-me-not-you. I don't care for Capote's style. Hell, I didn't much like Breakfast at Tiffany's either. I think the real kudos go to filmmakers for being able to pull classics out of some really rote writing.
If you're going to refer to a man's penis as a “tool” during one of the many sex scenes, or mention him ejaculating pretty much straight into her “womb”, at least go all out and give readers the super-drama of her winding up pregnant. What a missed opportunity.
To me this book is straight up rape. If you're kidnapped, blackmailed, guilted, or coerced into any kind of sex act it's rape. It's ok though, the big bad motorcycle gang member with a huge dick is super hot so that makes it all alright. eyeroll
I'm surprised this book is rated so highly. Why???
While I've chosen to abandon this book it doesn't mean it was bad. It just wasn't for me. I couldn't get into it. This could have been partly due to the fact that I watched the movie before trying to read this and that the movie seemed to do a good job of following the book. Or at least what I read of it.
DNF 61.8% because if I wanted to read slower than molasses in winter slow burn YA I would. I'm pissed off the covers in this series are stupid cute but I hate that this attempts to be so meta it feels like satire. I think I'm being generous with 1 star for the covers and another for the only time I laughed.
Damien... please just kill annoyingly saccharine sweet naive no personality Amma to get your talisman back and then go on your adventure with your big bad self.
DNF 28%
Omg get over your hangups and just sleep with the guy already you angry girl.
I'm assuming the plot is the playboy reforms himself to fix the broken girl so they can fall in love. I'm more interested in playboy's sister. She seems super sweet and I bet there's something going on with her. But I'm not so interested that this is holding my attention.
DNF 9%. I was looking forward to historical fiction set in ancient Egypt as it's so rarely done. Unfortunately the writing style is not for me. I found myself skimming and speed reading just to get to the meat of the story until I realized I didn't actually care for any of the characters. The best thing I read in this book was the dedication.
The beautiful cover has claimed another victim. So much promise, so much left to be desired.
Pestilence is a solidly average book. It was good enough for me to finish, but I feel no great desire to pick up the next one in the series.
The four horsemen of the apocalypse is usually biblical and steeped in religion. Thankfully, there's no proselytizing. So, there's that to be grateful for as an atheist/agnostic.
I think the writing style wasn't for me, and I needed more from Sara, the main character. Literally plague made flesh is wiping humanity from the land, yet there's Sara, almost not even bothered by it all because Pestilence is a McHottie with abs. Where's the soul crushing anguish? The guilt? The grief?
As for the writing style...
He knows exactly what she's forgiving him for, and he's covering up the fact that he-is-shook.
Solidly young adult. It's dark, but still YA. If this hadn't been labeled as adult on Goodreads and pushed as such on TikTok I might not have wasted my time with it. Probably should have stopped reading when I was slogging through the second part. I'm not at all motivated to keep reading this series, which is a bummer because the first part was very good. Impressive premise and scope from the author but this needed more editing and shaping. As it is this is somewhat over-hyped.
I've got such a jumble in my head about this book and I can't really put it in any decent order. So I'm just going to wordvomit a little bit.
If the Mad Max, Terminator, Matrix movies, and Waterworld (without the water) had a baby it would be this.
I need this to be its own movie. Maybe a miniseries because there's a lot going on here.
Holy shit I love good robot scifi.
Why hasn't a Goodreads librarian changed the synopsis to show that Brittle thinks of herself as a female robot?
Would robots really care about gender once humans are extinct? Was it just programming and voiceboxes that had them holding onto gender? I know Cargill tried to explain this but I still think robots might have thrown off human genders. It's a social construct they have no need for. Humans are people but robots are persons so why not a distinct robot pronoun?
I wonder if there's going to be a sequel to this. It wasn't a cliffhanger but it was still pretty open ended. What happened to Brittle was cool. What happened to Mercer was not cool. If there's a sequel we'd better see him again.
DNF at 38%
The premise of a sexually-transmitted plague is pretty interesting and the writing was fairly good. I just couldn't figure out what this book was trying to be. Is it a zombie book? Maybe. Is it erotica? Definitely not so far. Is it horror or thriller? There were a couple scenes of tension, one of them pretty unnerving, but the rest of the time I just wasn't feeling it much.
I honestly got tired of everyone asking the main character what's going on, like she's supposed to know. She doesn't know anything either! Stop hounding her just because she leaves to go check on a friend or overhears something you all somehow slept right through.
There was no connecting with the main character either. In fact, I kind of disliked all the characters except for her brother-in-law. Everyone's either a stereotypical asshole, slut, or having a quarter life crisis. What a mess. I'm just going to hope they all die in the plague while the brother-in-law saves his wife and two kids and gets out of small town hell.
This book is a freight train. It might take a little while to get up to speed, but chum, when it does you're going for one hell of a ride!
Make sure you've got a few hours of uninterrupted time for the last 2/3 of the book. If you're like me you won't want to put it down because you HAVE to know what happens. And um I wish someone had warned me to have a tissue handy. I was so into the story and characters that I wasn't trying to analyze anything so it sort of socked me a little hard.
The formatting was superb. I don't think I've ever seen a book done quite like this. Very curious to see if they keep the same style. I don't want to rush the authors for the 2nd book but... no, I'm rushing them. I NEED IT!
If you want to read poetry and blurbs that seem like they're written by a 13 year old then this is totally for you. We get it: you fell in love with someone, had your heart broken, and you like to write and draw. Can we move on now?
Holy hell that was god awful. I slogged through this and it was so hard. This teetered on actually being great but then it would just slide back into blah blah snooze fest so many times. It took me a long time to get through this because it kept literally putting me to sleep. I'm not interested in the 3rd book now. I can't risk torturing myself some more.
Someone let me borrow their small child please. I need a little person to read this treasure to. I promise I'll creatively skip over the swearing bits if you want.
I've known for years that the best advice I've ever gotten came from my father when I was a teen. He really only said it once, but he told me to try to use my head AND my heart equally in love and relationships. I got a lot of good advice from him, but this goes through my head to help me navigate every relationship I've been in. Thanks, Dad.
I devoured this book in a little over three and a half hours. I thought I'd just get in 20 minutes of reading before bed. Totally figured this was going to be another not-so-great YA/NA romance I'd read as fluff. Nope! I'm writing this exhausted today because I lost a lot of sleep from not wanting to put this down. Don't regret it a bit.
I laughed, I cried, I loved this book.
DNF at 39% because the insulting comments about women and marital rape make me want to set my kindle on fire to purge it of this.
His name fell from her lips, and in the recesses of her blurry mind, she realized this was the first time she'd used it.
DNF at 15%. Disgustingly insulting stereotypes abound. Rape, almost rape, just rape everywhere all the time. A main character you can't stand. She goes from desperately wanting to escape to literally saying back to back "I'm your virgin!" and "Hurt me! Hurt me as I want to be hurt!" in the span of a few pages. Him ejaculating is what causes her orgasm. Sex doesn't work like that.
I physically tossed my kindle aside while saying out loud, “Ewww get away from me.”