Ashley

At the start, I thought this book was going to be cheesy. An alien comes to Earth and points out all these inconsistencies in human behavior and it felt like an intro to anthropology course in college. But as the book went on and the alien has to struggle more with adapting to human life in order to remain hidden and starts seeing not only the inconsistencies in human life and behavior, but also the joys in it, it becomes much more interesting and challenging. Anyone can point out that the amount and types of clothing humans wear can be silly, but demonstrating the power of love is a much different concept.

Fun and fast-paced listen. Is it breaking new ground? No. Is it diving deep into world building or a magic system? Also, no. But, I found it enjoyable and will continue with the series to see how the story and characters develop. I think listening to this with my boyfriend also helped my enjoyment, because he was really into it.

If you like Hunger Games, Battle Royale, or possibly Ender's Game, you may like this book.

Sherlock Holmes with kids and ghosts! Fun story and deeper than I expected.

I had previously put this down and just recently picked it up again and I'm so happy I did! I have enjoyed Mary Roach's writing in the past and this was no exception. She is a curious person and instead of just looking something up on Wikipedia, she goes straight to the source to answer her questions. She is also funny and makes a subject matter that may be dry or uncomfortable and makes it approachable. I recommend any of Mary Roach's books, but if you read this one, know you will never think about eating or defecating the same way again!

Illustrations were incredible. I like the idea of the story, but the dialogue was a little rough, which when combined with some editing issues brought me out of the story.

I flew through this book and wanted to know what was going to happen to the boys next. The writing is pretty graphic, so if reading about wounds and blood and the like is going to make you put this book down, don't pick it up. I usually can't handle reading about these things, but because the book moves so quickly, the author doesn't linger on these scenes for too long and I was fine. The horror is definitely something you could see happening in real life which makes it that much more horrifying.

My issues were that the characters were all stereotypes. The troop leader is a single, adult man who lives alone with rumors in town that he might be gay. There is the fat, nerdy kid who you root for. There is the dumb jock whose dad is the chief of police and you want to grow out of this bullying phase. We have the angry kid whose dad is in jail. We have the normal kid with no stand-out characteristics. And very early on, we are clued into the fact that one of the boys is a socio/psychopath who likes to torture animals and is definitely going to be a problem as the boys try to survive the horror of the island.

Putting all these flat characters together just left me wanting to know how those that didn't survive the island died. I didn't really care who survived and who died, just how they did it. That was the most interesting part. I also felt like they didn't speak like 13 and 14-year old boys actually speak which didn't help my connection to the characters.

I still think this is a good book to read if you like “gross”, realistic horror, but I wish the characters had been fully developed.

Weird, little atmospheric book. I think most people would not enjoy this story, but for the investment involved, I recommend reading it if you are interested in speculative fiction, isolated islands, and don't mind jumping from character to character. There is no real plot and it is only just over 100 pages so you are essentially getting an idea which is explored for a little bit and then quite an abrupt end! I enjoyed the writing even though there were references to a lot of Irish specific items that I had to look up.

Rounded up to five stars. My favorite type of horror is creature/monster horror, but I think my second favorite is humans who are monstrous. This book is populated with monstrous people who commit horrible acts and just get to keep living their normal lives. I think I was shocked by what was happening in ONE TOWN for the first half of the book and then just accepted that some people are just shitty and sometimes they are drawn to a place for some reason.

I think it is a strange comparison, but it reminded me a little bit of the experience reading A Little Life. Everything is a bummer, but for some reason I want to know what happens next even though I am pretty sure it is not going to end well for anyone. This book did not make me cry, though, so there's that.

The author describes the place and the people so well and in so much detail (without going on and on), that I felt I could really picture the exact place and what everyone looked like and how they walked around in their everyday life which I think kept me interested, as well.

I recommend reading it, but I don't think this is a book for everyone. It is dark and depressing, but so well-written.

3.5 stars rounded up. This was a fun read, although I did keep forgetting who was who with the large amount of characters, but I don't think it really made a difference. I think the premise was good, but I don't think the plot stuck to the premise very closely and I wish it would have brought in more of the witchiness. The conclusion was a bit of a jolt to the system, I was thinking I had accidentally skipped some pages and missed something, but it came back around in the end. I am trying not to spoil anything so this is a pretty vague review, but I liked the book and would read more from the author although I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book to most people.

Very enjoyable mystery. The surprises were excellent, I just wish they hadn't all been at the end.

I just didn't care about anything or anyone in this sequel. The quests were too convenient. The 80s trivia and references came across like I was reading a wikipedia article. The ending was a copout. That being said, I enjoyed revisiting the Oasis even if I was disappointed in the plot.

Quite a bit of build up, but it is worth it. Interesting style of writing also.

So many people have loved this book and I was afraid I was not going to be one of them at about halfway through. It was a good book and I was enjoying it, but I didn't understand what everyone was raving about. However, the last third of the book is so intense and really comes together in a way that I wanted to see. And yes, it made me cry...a lot. But in a nice way?

I loved the behind the scenes nature of the book and getting a glimpse into a person's life who didn't choose to be a political figure, but happened to be married to someone who did. I had never put much thought into the experience of the spouses or other family members of political leaders and I am glad I got to see life from Michelle Obama's perspective. I appreciated seeing the struggles Michelle went through, not only because she married Barack Obama, the Senator and the President, but also just growing up on the South Side of Chicago in the 1970s.

I found the last quarter of the book to be more moving and inspiring than the earlier parts of the book, but I still very much enjoyed the beginning and hearing about Michelle's life prior to being Michelle Obama the political figure and I know that reading about her early life is critical to understanding how she came to be the positive, dedicated, and hardworking person she is today.

I highly recommend the audiobook as Michelle narrates it herself and I think that lends a lot of personality to the book.

I generally enjoy the worlds that Seanan Maguire puts together more than the characters themselves, but this was still a four-star book for me even though I felt the focus was on the main character rather than the world. The combination of the main character being torn between two worlds, something I became more and more invested in as the book went on, and the glimpses into a world where everything is “fair” and if it is not, there are interesting consequences, gave me a little bit of everything I wanted.

I love monster stories so we are already ahead. Then we have a woman protagonist struggling with her powers and whether she is good or evil, a setting primarily on a reservation that has walled itself off from the rest of the US after climate change has ruined the Earth, and a sidekick who is hot and clever, but hiding something? I didn't stand a chance.

I would love to go back and listen to the audiobook to hear how the Diné words are actually supposed to be pronounced.

Very similar format to The Martian, but with more heart. It also made me chuckle out loud way more than I expected.

I love the writing and the way the story is setup, just like the first book, but I didn't love the shifting perspectives on the same parts of the plot or that the focus of the story was a romance. If there are more stories in this series, I would absolutely read them and would still recommend this book to most people!

3 stars purely for the fact that I felt like the “Puritan New England” character in this novel and I will never look at someone suffering from chronic pain the same way ever again. Besides my appreciation for that lesson, I'm not sure what this book was trying to accomplish.

Easy to comprehend chapters about different topics and issues that can come up when discussing race or things to think about prior to engaging in discussions about race. I found the short and to the point chapters very valuable.

I would say this has spooky “vibes” rather than being actually scary. I really liked the explanation of the horror, it was definitely different, but somehow believable. I wish the main character had been a little more interesting; she was a rich, headstrong young woman who thought she was in control of everything until she truly wasn't and ends up learning a life lesson about love. That just seems one-dimensional. Overall, a great read, but could use more character development for my personal taste.

The entire time I was reading this book I was trying to figure out if I enjoyed it, but I kept thinking about it when I wasn't reading it and managed to finish it in three days. When I got to the end, I was still thinking about whether I enjoyed it so I am giving it three stars. This may have been another situation where I should have read more reviews to understand what this book was before jumping into it, but for some reason I thought this was a “weird” horror novel. Maybe I thought this because everyone was reading it in October along with their spooky books and the cover gives that impression as well, but, although the behavior by one of the characters is horrific, this is not a horror novel; it is an account of the author's experience with domestic violence told in short vignettes of her life and her relationship with her abuser. With all my caveats out of the way, the structure of this book was really interesting and absolutely kept my attention. I think the made-up footnotes were interesting subtext to what the author was experiencing, if a little distracting.

There are probably better summaries of the book out there, but my summary is that this book depicts how insidious, creeping, and silent domestic violence can be, specifically in woman-woman relationships. The author also ties her individual experience to the broader lesbian community throughout history and helps dispel the myth that women can't perpetrate domestic violence.

I think this book illustrated the phrase of “You put a frog into a pot of boiling water, and it jumps right out. But if you put it in a pot of nice comfortable water and then turn on the heat, the frog will complacently let himself be boiled.” The reader is taken for a ride where the author's relationship seems lovely at the start and little by little, we are introduced to issues that continue to grow larger throughout the book and throughout their relationship until it culminates into boiling water for the author and for the reader.

I recommend the book if only to read real life depicted in an interesting format and to get some insight into what “non-traditional” abusive relationships can look like.

I think my review is going to be very similar to most others. The beginning of this book is so weird and confusing, but it is so weird and confusing that it makes you want to figure out what is going on. It also makes sense that it is confusing based on the circumstances that the main character is in. As the story developed it became more interesting to try to figure out alongside the main character what was happening and how he came to be in the situation he was in. I couldn't put the book down for the last 25%.

The setting was very interesting and I have never read another book with a structure like this. If you don't mind being in the dark and slowly having the story revealed to you, I would recommend.

3.5 stars. Interesting concept if a little repetitive due to the nature of Molly's situation, but it is so short that it doesn't drag on and become annoying. I am interested in reading the sequel, but I hope it takes the story and the concept in a slightly different direction.

I thought that I would feel uncomfortable or squeamish because of all the blood references (usually a no-go for me), but I had no issues here.

Fun murder mystery on a boat!