Bryce
I received a copy of this book for free through Net Galley.
I liked this one! It's a good start to what could be a very good series. I liked the mystery, I liked the characters, and I liked the slightly odd but lovely art. I definitely want to see what happens next, as this volume stops very suddenly.
The Night Gardener felt like an extended Grimms story, and that's just about the highest compliment I could give a book like this. It has an excellent creepy atmosphere combined with quality writing and a decent amount of heart, all coming together to make a very enjoyable dark fable.
Unpleasant but fascinating and witty in its own way. I didn't particularly enjoy it, but I'm glad I read it. Hard to summarize my feelings about this.
It feels very cliched in some ways, but the very dark subject matter at the core provides some mystery and an interesting angle. I didn't love it but I'm interested in reading more.
Horrifying and ugly with a rough, sometimes messy art style that felt so appropriate for the story it was telling. There are no shortage of horror stories/cautionary tales about the modeling/fashion/entertainment industry, specifically the ways that they manipulate and dehumanize young women, but I thought this one was particularly effective and visceral. Not a fun read, but it's a smart mix of commentary and horror.
I read Elizabeth McCracken's Thunderstruck right after finishing [b:Beneath the Bonfire: Stories 23014607 Beneath the Bonfire Stories Nickolas Butler https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1416846902s/23014607.jpg 42580746], another collection of short stories. My main problem with that book was that, despite the good characters and writing, very few of the stories made an impact. With Thunderstruck, the opposite is true.Almost every story was memorable, engaging and poignant. Every one of them had real weight in addition to great writing, and the collection never felt random, it made sense for these nine stories to be together. Highly recommended.
A fun, charming graphic novel based in folklore. The art isn't all that attractive, something about it turns me off. But it works to tell the story, and overall it's a fun read.
I loved parts of this and really didn't enjoy other parts, I love Ortberg's writing but this collection was a bit too inconsistent for me.
I don't want to give this 3 stars. It's suited to my interests, it's funny, it's charming. But it feels so slight. I kept waiting for something deeper to come, and it didn't.
It's a small book with a small plot. That's not bad at all, if you can fit a lot of depth and substance. Unfortunately, this didn't. It had the setting and characters, it just didn't do enough with them.
I've liked all the volumes of Sex Criminals that I've read, but this and #3 kind of lack the spark of the first two. Still funny and enjoyable, this volume feels like filler at times. Hopefully things will improve from here on.
Well-written and at times very moving, just a little dry for my tastes. It felt too much like a play-by-play of everything the central family went through rather than a naturally flowing story.
4.5 rounded up because man did this book hit me like a ton of bricks. The sort-of sci-fi premise is just the framework for a genuine, moving, human story with characters that I loved. I felt like it toed the line between sappy and sincere with enough authenticity that the “message” never felt preachy, and I also loved how LGBT representation was so casually included throughout the book multiple main AND side characters (is that a spoiler?) without feeling like it was just trying to tick boxes for diversity.
They Both Die at the End is just really good.
There's a sense of sadness in this book that's present in both the art and text of every page. It's not depressing, necessarily, it's just a light sadness that feels authentic and natural when telling a story that tends to have a fair amount of sad moments. Like some other reviewers, I wish the author had spent some more time exploring the themes that she brings up here, but it's hard for me to fault the natural way the story is told. Like Walden says in the afterword, this is a story about ice skating, but Spinning is also about growing up, coming out, and figuring out what you want.
Reminded me of [b:Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic 26135825 Fun Home A Family Tragicomic Alison Bechdel https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1440097020s/26135825.jpg 911368] a little bit. Sweet and honest with nice, expressive art.
As strange and fascinating as the first book, but feeling more “complete” as a novel. It explains some things without spoiling the unnerving mystery of Area X, and I'm even more excited for the third book now.
I love the art, don't really like the characters, but there's something intriguing about the whole thing that makes me want to read the next volume. I think it has the potential to be genuinely good, right now it feels like a mostly solid but still kind of shaky blueprint for the series. If nothing else, it is very nice to look at.
Wow. This is a good, weird ending to good, weird trilogy. I'm not sure how to process it just yet. I think I'm satisfied.
Really well-written period mystery-romance set in Victorian London. The romance elements are more prominent than the mystery, but both are excellently-written and populated with three-dimensional characters. I had fun with this one.
Wow, this took me forever to read. I liked a lot of it (the art, some of the characters, overall atmosphere) but I had some trouble following what was happening. Maybe one day I'll read it again and it'll click.
It's hard to deny the imagination at work here. Every story takes an odd idea and runs with it. Some work wonderfully, poignant and hilarious. Others fall flat, pointless and underwhelming. But those stories that really hit the mark make all the rest worth it.
Vol. 1 is a sweet (but dark), atmospheric beginning to a story that I'm eager to keep reading. Right now everything is so shrouded in mystery that it's hard to really judge this book on its own, but I like the way it sets things up.
A fascinating, upsetting, truly weird book. Difficult to forget and even more difficult to explain.