Bryce

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.

I received this book for free as part of a First Reads giveaway. My copy was an advance uncorrected proof.

I had no expectations for this book. The premise seemed interesting, to a degree, but I just don't enjoy this kind of story (legal thrillers/political thrillers). So it was a very nice surprise to find myself loving “Saving Sophie”. The story grabbed my attention and held it up until the last page, and my issues with it never got in the way of my enjoyment.

The dialogue feel stilted on occasion, with a lot of the characters sounding alike. There were some minor plot holes I picked up on, there were a few too many stories going on at once, and some of the characters/details that weren't integral to the main plot felt unnecessary. Fortunately, the issues aren't so noticeable as to ruin the book.

I'm very glad I won this, because otherwise I might not have given it a chance.

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 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.

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.

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.

I received a copy of this book through the First Reads giveaway program.

One thing that stuck in my mind as I read this book was how hard it was to dislike. It was full of cliches, and I've read this story many times before. But above all else, it's enjoyable and unassuming and it never feels like it's trying to be more than that.

The setting, a small family vineyard in California, adds a bit of freshness. That's a good thing, as there's little fresh otherwise; it's the story of a family and all their complications in love and with each other.

I found the way some of the subplots were resolved to be pleasantly unexpected, what seemed dead-set on being trite ending somewhat differently. It would be a bit much to label anything as a “twist”, but the author managed to make the resolutions both authentic and crowd-pleasing.

All in all, don't go in expecting anything completely new. But if you're looking for a light, charming read, you'll find something better than expected here.

I received this book as an ARC from a First Reads giveaway.

The message is nice. It celebrates perseverance and drive, or “grit” as the book calls it. My main problem is that it doesn't say anything that hasn't been said in a hundred books like it.

It's essentially a series of examples, successful people that failed and got back up. Mixed throughout are stories of how the authors succeeded against all odds. These examples have a self-congratulatory tone, all in the third person, and some of their advertising triumphs (the Wendy's story struck me as particularly egregious) have a strange feeling of shilling for the companies they represent. Which is their entire job, technically, but it's not the feeling I should get when the examples are meant to inspire me.

The book is perfectly competent otherwise, it's not bad at all. Just repetitive. It could be summed up as “Hard work is what separates the dreamers from the doers, and a lot of successful people faced a lot of failure and rejection.” This, while a good message, is repeated over and over with nothing new to add.

“Grit to Great” doesn't follow its own advice. If you want to set yourself apart from the hundreds of competitors, you have to put in the extra work to make yourself stand out. Unfortunately, this book doesn't do that.

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.

Never anything less than fully engaging, this book (the first part of a trilogy) is absolutely worth reading. The plot is very good, the writing fluid and fun, but the characters are what make this story so great. Likeable yet flawed, as all the best characters are, they're what make an otherwise good fantasy adventure into something great.

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.

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.

This concept is so full of potential, so many ways it could make a rich and smart and poignant novel. Every Day gets very close to fulfilling that potential.

It's both tragic and uplifting, and the tone is balanced throughout. It's a smart sci-fi novel with the skin of a well above-average YA romance, and both manage to be interesting. The ending doesn't answer any of the questions I had while reading, but it still feels like the way this story should have ended. It doesn't quite achieve the level of greatness it has the potential to, but it's a great story anyway.

I've read quite a few coming-of-age novels, and this one starts off in pretty much the same way. Lonely teenager is stressed and nothing seems to be going right. The difference here, and it's a fairly big one, is that the main character is suffering from depression.

The depiction of an adult psychiatric hospital isn't very realistic, but it didn't matter to me. There's an authenticity to the book that made its flaws seem much less important. It's funny, maybe a little sappy, but it's also warm and honest. It's a little too happy for the subject matter, but the characters and their feelings seem real.

RIP Ned Vizzini.

It's too long, for what is essentially an introduction to the story. It drags for the first 200 or so pages. There are stupid moments and plot holes aplenty. The whole idea of this medieval world actually taking place in the future just feels like an attempt at originality that doesn't work.

Somehow i still ended up caring about the characters and their story. The last two hundred pages may have even approached 4-star quality, and I was entertained. So, overall, I hope the next two books can improve on the many flaws of this book, because I want to see where this story goes.

A very short how-to book, it covers most of the same things I've read in many other books on writing. It's repeated so often because it is good information, but this particular book doesn't bring anything new to the table.

This book got on my nerves at the beginning, and I assumed I'd stop reading it. But I kept going, and somehow it ended up charming me just enough for me to finish.

My thoughts about the book were very positive as I finished it. But I can't ignore everything I hated along the way. The humor often tried too hard, it reminded me of a weaker version of The Rosie Project, and it just had a lot of little things that grated on my nerves.

It improved, but I can't give it anything higher than 3 stars when I think about everything I disliked about it.

Well-written, inventive, an interesting take on a piece of Greek mythology.

I enjoyed the character of Atalanta quite a bit, and I found the short book very entertaining.

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.

It wasn't a book I expected to like much, but I thought I'd give it a try.

The first chapter surprised me, it was grittier than I expected. The book as a whole still isn't any dark, macabre fantasy, but it's more mature than it seems. The writing is nice, sometimes quite great, and the characters and story caught and held my interest. I really enjoyed the book, and it's one of the few times I've eagerly awaited a sequel to a random book I picked off the shelf.

Fast, stylish, very nice art, but I lost (or stopped caring about) the plot halfway through. And my tolerance for gore was pushed to the limit here.

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.

There was potential. Interesting atmosphere, nice writing. Then it went on, in detail, about the running of a mill. Then, an emporium. It went on, and on, and on.

They set up mysterious details. Some interesting bits to keep me wanting to read. But then it followed through on none of them, and when it did, it was an underwhelming yawn-fest.

If you want to read about a boring over-worked man running a company, this is the book for you. (though I admittedly question your taste a little)

This book shares quite a bit with Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (including its authors), but I found it much more enjoyable.

Dash, as a character, got on my nerves at times. I wasn't a huge fan, but Lily was warm and funny and very likable. The entire cast was pretty likable, and they added a lot of flavor and character to an already charming novel.

It's a light read, perfect for the holidays, and it made me laugh and smile throughout. And that's really all it tries to do.

The setting was what drew me in and kept me interested. The writing was pretty solid, the pages oozed with character. The book never bored me, but it felt like it should have been so much more. So much deeper, and more poignant, and more memorable. I kept thinking to myself, “You have the backdrop and the characters, do something exciting with it!”

But not much happened. The sort-of twist in the third part (act?) was a stab at making it something more intriguing, but it still felt oddly low-key. Low-key isn't bad, but I wanted more from this.

Bigger. Better.