Shannon

4.75 - of particular interest to me was the biographical essay, but i would've loved to see more annotations for the more adult-geared tales

this gives me the same feeling as speak does...which is to say: good

hi i'm emotionally compromised but my gay little heart is so happy

2.5 - this was an interesting concept but something about the way it was written just didn't grab me :/

interesting concept but honestly? for the repetition of the same phrase (‘formal elegance') and appalling number of times the slur ‘g*psy' was used in a modern context and the switching between adoring and making digs at millennials....gonna have to give this a 2.5 :/

I'M IN A GLASS CASE OF EMOTION

retroactively bumping my rating down a star bc i just now remembered how...obsessed with any POTENTIAL for an innuendo the author was. not everything is a sexual reference, my dude

(not saying that it never is, but that it doesn't happen as frequently as he seems to think it does)

holy moly this was unexpectedly painful to the emotions

at the start this read on the younger side of ya which is fine but now? after finishing it? let's just say i'm uncomfy and will be thinking about that damn cat story for a while

i'm gonna be thinking about the gray boy's work for a WHILE now trying to figure it out

4.75 - A U G H now i need to reread the bartimaeus series because i love having my heart curbstomped

4.75 - that_part_in_the_heathers_musical_at_the_beginning_of_fight_for_me_when_they_sing_HOLY_SHIT_over_and_over.mp3

WHY did no one put this in my hands sooner

4.75 - well........now what am i meant to do with my life?? my local libraries only carry so many gay historical romances and i don't have money to purchase ebooks...

tl;dr adele doesn't watch the crime shows with her grandpa and it shows, the author seems to have gone on without sensitivity readers or a group of teen early readers and it REALLY shows

3.25 - i'm not quite sure i like any of these characters and i've definitely been in some high school crap in my life :/

edit, shortly after writing the first review: after determining that 3.25 was far too generous, this gets a .5, MAYBE a single star - that's Really Not How Mental Illness works, generally speaking if someone goes off their meds for whatever reason the brakes on the brain train stop working and things go off the rails; one of the very first things to go (at least for me) is the inability to distinguish between reality and hallucination or fantasy. i definitely don't feel clearheaded for very long, if at all, and i'm just...incredibly disappointed because the dual plot points of ghost-talker and ghost-who-can't-remember-the-death is interesting enough to build a really good story on.

the characters in general were either unlikable to begin with or flipped back and forth between being somewhat okay and downright terrible to read about and adele herself was...really not a great portrait of someone who's trying to pass as a grieving friend while trying to solve a murder. charlie was just about the best character in the book, and we don't even get to know him terribly well! somehow we're supposed to believe that he just sciences the hell out of things and figures out that adele is telling the truth when he barely even knows her? and then they somehow fall in love at the very end? really? none of the high schoolers are believable as teens even though yeah, okay, teens have parties and get drunk and terrible things sometimes happen, but we're also supposed to believe that every single teen swaps sides so quickly?

i'd sooner reread dodger boy, which i gave something like 2 stars for its bland characters, tokenism, and disjointed and boring narrative, than probably pick up another book by this author...kind of a shame, really, since the writing style itself wasn't terrible; my main issues are with the characters themselves and the portrayal of perceived mental illness

this is super minor and maybe i'm missing something or i don't understand how spy pens work, but.........if charlie had the USB portion of adele's spy pen, how was it still able to record a voice at an indeterminate (i'm assuming large) range?? where was charlie while adele was off gallivanting at the park, the police station, and the cemetery? portland isn't some tiny city and we never find out the distance between the apartment complex and the police station or even where the school is

4.75 - this was?? really good?? similar vibes to spin but way less hand-hold-y and a lot less focus on the violence

(show me where sadie is an unlikeable character. show me where she's anything but a grieving teen whose grief takes an incredibly reasonable shape and motivation.)

3.5/5, mostly because some stories were incomprehensible and a couple just didn't really have endings at all...or plots really

if you don't have full authority to arrest anyone, then by god you at least have the authority to sit on their unconscious body while waiting for the cavalry to arrive

(this review is for the Illustrated Kairos Mechanism, the 86-page PDF format)

hi and welcome to my review where i just yell about how much i love simon coffrett, it involves a lot of crying and a sincere wish to be transported into this world

the one line that made me lay down emotionally and scream because of who said it: “I'm very proud of you. And it's true, Natalie; you are precious. To me, and to all of Arcane.”

patrick ness: releases a book
me, picking it up from the library: just fuck me up

me, reading this, every time i see tomie: WHAT ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU?

i have yet to watch the movie (movies? i have no clue) but i'm either gonna love it or hate it or take it at face value

anyway junji ito is a genius and i love him

EXTREMELY late review since i just remembered i read this, but...this just wasn't for me. felt like it was trying to do too much and we didn't really get to connect with any of the characters but i really really liked the concept :/

this felt like i was reading a goosebumps book but like...one of the mediocre ones even though i did really like the whole control-a-deadly-spider-with-telepathy-and-a-flute thing and the fact that mr crepsley doesn't give a single hoot about anything. whatta mood

there were a couple decent passages, like the ones about dorothy gage and the ewing manor, but on the whole this focused much less on the history of each site (like the introduction and foreword purported it would) and more on the author's psychic impressions in the places which really wasn't what i wanted at all :/ this, uh...really could've used an editor and some more cohesive storytelling, as well as a lot of fact-checking

source: history nerd living in bloomington-normal (who has internet access so can check up on discrepancies found in this book)

did i read this almost entirely because peter cushing (aka Dad Helsing) wrote the foreword? pretty much. did i thoroughly enjoy it despite that? absolutely

i'm not emotionally compromised, YOU'RE emotionally compromised