Bryce

This was easily one of the best books I've read in a while. The writing is moving and gorgeous and poetic, it would be enough to make me love this book even if the story and characters weren't so well-drawn and compelling. Great, great book.

There's definitely a minimalist beauty to this simple story about Ivan and his friends.

It's a quick read, though it's fully satisfying and powerful. I enjoyed it quite a lot.

I don't read this kind of stuff. “Quirky” sort-of-romance. I think it's usually cloying and tries too hard to be clever and cute. But you know what? I loved this book.

It's funny, poignant, and despite the premise being admittedly far-fetched, honest and real. I got invested in these characters, because they felt real.

Maybe it's not a five-star book. I give it a solid 4 for quality writing and storytelling. The extra star is for how much I enjoyed it.

This book is flawed. It gets pretentious sometimes. It jumps around from story to story a little too much. But you know what? It's funny and moving and entertaining, topped with wit and social commentary. I can't give it less than 5.

Every character is achingly real, distinct, and well-written. The dialogue is sharp, powerful, and often very funny. The writing is great, and it never draws attention to itself, letting you enjoy the story and characters.

There were parts of this book that I loved, and parts that I absolutely hated. It was deeply sad and sometimes bland but I couldn't stop reading.

Incredible. It's written with such attention to detail, both in the icy landscapes it depicts and the characters, that every moment is captivating. I'll admit, it is somewhat repetitive. It doesn't leave its couple of locations, and yet I never found my attention wavering.

The Snow Child is a stunningly poignant, human, and engaging novel.

I received this book for free through a First Reads giveaway.

I appreciate what she was trying to do, and I feel like she summed up many side-effects and elements of depression fairly well, but overall the book was far too shallow. It didn't have enough of a personal element, it seemed to just list symptoms like a pamphlet on “Depression & You”. This review captured my feelings about the book, which I really wanted to like more than I did.

Sometimes it works as satire, and I'm not here to say it's a bad book. I just found this, like the author's Ghost World, to be a very unpleasant book with characters I didn't like.

For the first half of the book, it's a fun and occasionally funny story about an odd and dysfunctional family (who happen to be performance artists). In the second half, however, the tone shifts. The book becomes a rumination on the effects that parents can have on their children, and the events that seemed merely fun are viewed in a new light.

I didn't love everything about it. It has moments that connect emotionally, but a lot of it ended up feeling detached. I think it's worth reading, it's a strange and interesting story.

I tore through this book. It captures the spirit and atmosphere of Victorian London (and the novels that inspired it) so well. Well, maybe I shouldn't say it captured the spirit of a time period I never lived in, but it captured what I imagine the spirit of Victorian London to be. That counts for something, right?

Anyway, this was an excellent novel that I couldn't stop reading. Great writing, characters, and a thoroughly engaging story. It's such a great feeling to be so completely wrapped up in a book, to try and guess how the characters will get out of their predicament and then be surprised by some surprising (but logical) solution. I don't think I've ever read a 500-page book so fast.

I got this book from a First Reads giveaway.

It's not an awful book, and I'm sure the right person will like it as a gag or quick diversion. But I don't even find it worthwhile as a diversion. I didn't find it very clever or funny, it was actually quite dull. The illustrations are charming, and the writing is tolerable (though there are a few typos and punctuation mistakes scattered throughout). I just didn't enjoy it.

It's a charming collection of sketches from an almost year-long trip around the world. The doodles themselves are simple and amusing, and they each have comments below that give them some background.

There are far better books of this sort, I wasn't blown away by this one.

Very nice art. Sort of fun. Had a bit of depth, in some emotional scenes related to Poe's wife.

Other than that, eh.

It has some good humor and some fun, but it's just too wordy and filled with unnecessary paragraphs.

I received this book for free through the First Reads giveaway.

If I could give a 3.5, I would. I enjoyed this book a lot, but I had a few too many problems with it to give it a higher rating. I'll start with the positive. The characters are memorable and the dialogue is great, funny and relatable, it brings life to the story. When the plot was working for me, it was a blast to read. The author has a real talent for characters and dialogue and I can't imagine enjoying this book much at all without them.

But, the plot surrounding it... Is a mixed bag. I liked the music aspect, and the romance was (while disappointingly reliant on a love triangle) sweet and realistic. The plot meanders and almost seems to repeat the same events throughout. It's a standard “girl with big dreams tries to make it in a new city” story, and it's often painfully formulaic. It feels tired.

However, despite all that, I recommend this book. If you want a fun read with a kick-ass heroine and charming dialogue, I think you'll have fun with this one. More than anything, it makes me excited to see what Scarlet Bennett will write next.

I received this book as an ARC from Net Galley.

I found the concept for this book to be really interesting, it takes classic folk songs and details the true stories behind them. While many of them seem far too convoluted and over-the-top to be true, after reading this book I was reminded that truth is usually stranger than fiction.

As a whole, I was entertained and I learned quite a bit. I think some of the songs could have been cut out, some just aren't that interesting, or feel too similar to others in the book. A lot of the criticism laid out in this review mirrors what I felt reading this, some of these songs don't have backstories that are all that interesting to read about.

If you're interested in the stories behind American folk songs, or just think the concept is interesting, you won't be disappointed.

I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley.

I think there are only two words that really describe this book: ridiculous fun. It's silly and completely over-the-top, and even when it's trying too hard, it's a fun read. While I had a good time with it, it didn't really work for me. The main thing that I thought the entire time I was reading this was that it was just trying too hard, trying to fit so many gags in that there wasn't room for much else.

I would rate this a solid 3.5. You won't be getting a complex story, or deep characters, or even razor-sharp wit; you'll get a gleefully absurd book that only really wants to entertain.

I received this book through a First Reads giveaway.

Terrible. It tries so hard to be edgy and funny, but it's painful to read. The main character is obnoxious and uninteresting. As I read this book, I tried to think of something positive, anything that I may have liked about it. I think I may have smiled once.

The second half of the book turns into a weird sexual misadventure, completely ignoring the main plot and not even attempting coherency. If it was trying to be funny/shocking, it failed. If it was trying to be sexy, it managed to make every sex scene absolutely disgusting. Yikes.

It had promise, but overall I found myself very disappointed by this novel. It started off slow and only mildly interesting; it took a solid 100 pages to really grab me. It held my attention until the last few chapters, when it ruined the promise that preceded it with a terrible ending that felt far more like anti-fracking propaganda than any kind of meaningful closure.

I really enjoyed the character of Ruby, and there were moments throughout the book that I liked. If It weren't for that terrible ending, it would be a decent 3 stars. It had promise and fairly good writing, but I came away from it feeling like I had wasted my time.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley.

The writing is good, the art is good (if dated), but I couldn't muster up any actual interest in the story. It felt like I was reading a sequel to something, I had trouble following. The quality is perfectly good, but it just wasn't my kind of thing.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley.

This book reminded me of one of this meandering indie movies that you find on Netflix a lot. They kind of try to be different and quirky, but they never have anything actually interesting to say and you forget what they were about 20 minutes after you're done.

Fire in the Firefly is yet another book that isn't bad per say, just really uninteresting. I don't care about the main character's musings on random shit, or about allll the women who just can't get enough of his old sperm (spoiler?). Nothing made me care. Two stars because I wasn't actively repulsed by it.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley.

This is a book in which not much happens, at least in the traditional sense. Our main character, Jeremy, owns a bar. His life has complications and struggles, as do the lives of the people around him. That's as much plot as you'll find here, but it's not entirely a bad thing. Plenty of stories in plenty of mediums have made a low-key, realistic style like this work. Whitlock has an ear for dialogue, and he writes believable characters, but I never once found myself actually invested in anything that happened to them.

Congratulations on Everything is a competently-written and fairly enjoyable novel, but it all felt like a setup for something more interesting (and this isn't the first time I've had this complaint about a book). Your mileage may vary, and I'm more interested in seeing what the author will write next. Hopefully a story with a bit more substance and focus.

I received a copy of this through NetGalley.

It's hard to really judge a first issue of a comic, but I'll do my best. I love the setting, and the characters introduced already have my interest. It sets up the premise of what could become a very interesting series, but that's where the problem with this issue lies. It's an extended introduction (which is obviously fine for a first issue), so it doesn't work all that well as a standalone. I'd like to see where it goes from here, as I love noir-inspired stories like this.

On a final note, the art is very nice, with a sketchy black-and-white look that lends the story a lot of atmosphere.

I found all the characters kind of annoying and over-dramatic. So... A teenager basically. (I'm kidding, don't worry)

But yeah, I just found it to be annoying. The art isn't really charmingly crude, it's just appears poorly-drawn, to me at least. I wasn't impressed with this graphic novel at all. Bleh.

The writing is good, and the stories all have decent characters, but the collection as a whole left no real impact. The two exceptions for me are “In Western Counties” and “Train People Move Slow”, at the end of the book. I enjoyed most of the book, and I think it's definitely worth a read. But a lot of the stories, as well-written as they were, just didn't stick with me like I hoped they would.