Amanda
I feel like I've been in a bit of a reading slump lately - lots of things I've liked (or mostly liked) but didn't full-on love. Well, I love this book! It's old school historical but I mean that as a total compliment. There's a gaming hell and a country party and someone gets kidnapped and it's all just incredible.
Eh. Not bad, but not great. Didn't really care about the romance, and would've liked more about the characters, but not bad.
Really liked this one. It's not perfect, but it's foulmouthed and funny and definitely an entertaining read. (Um, for sensitive readers, I am not kidding about foulmouthed. But if you're a sensitive reader, why are you reading John Green and David Levithan anyway?)
Loved this book. Love how complex the characters are, even the ones who seem like they're going to be one-dimensional.
(reread 5/27/12)
This took me forever to finish, and I think it was because I wasn't really all that interested or invested in any of the characters. The Fenris is an interesting concept, but I wasn't clear on if it's every one of them that has to be a seventh son of a seventh son, or just the Potentials. In which case ... that seems like a lot of people to meet that requirement. I wanted this book to be a lot better than it was.
Loved this. It's fun, and it seems like a lot of comics are in a competition to see who can be the most dark and Christopher-Nolan-influenced. This reminded me of Stephanie Brown's Batgirl series, which is what got me into comics. Not everything has to be “MY PARENTS ARE DEAD,” and a lot of stuff is better if it isn't. This is among the reasons I'm much more into Marvel these days - that and Marvel doesn't seem hell-bent on destroying all its good female characters. I really enjoyed Jen as a character. I'd only read her in Fraction's FF (which is great) and this makes me want to continue this series. Back to the used book store it is! (I should deduct a bit for the inaccuracy of the legal stuff, but eh. If you're not a lawyer, it won't bother you, and if you are, suspend disbelief.)
I was all in on this one until the last 50 or so pages, when Harry gets knocked out and kidnapped by a character who never appears on the page at all and is just mentioned in passing because reasons? I also thought Catherine's big reveal should've happened a lot earlier, and also seriously, everyone in these books is related to each other, even the non-Hathaways. I still love this family dynamic that Kleypas is so good at writing, and I also love a good marriage of convenience/enemies-to-lovers, so I ended up about 75% in on this, which is about good for three stars.
I don't read much mid-grade, but I enjoyed this. It sort of felt more like a short story collection than a novel, but that didn't hurt it for me. I would have liked more about Callie's parents, and some differentiation between her brothers - it felt like only three of the six had much characterization.
I wanted to like this, but I overall found it pretty slow going - neither of the leads really came alive for me, and I found the other Bridgertons more interesting. I usually love the fake-relationship trope, but again, this didn't take off in the way they normally do. Things seemed to pick up, and then That Sex Scene. I don't care whether it's a man or a woman, refusing to let someone pull out or stop having sex with you (even if you believe they consented at first, which is gonna be ambiguous at best if they were drunk and/or sleeping), in the hopes of conceiving a child with them, is reproductive coercion at best and flat-out sexual assault at worst. And Daphne didn't seem to think she'd done anything wrong, and Simon's inner monologue when he's thinking about it is just about the most victim-blaming stuff I've read in a romance novel. I know it's never as easy as just switching the genders, but seriously, if it were a man insisting on coming inside a woman who doesn't want to conceive, we call that sexual assault, Julian Assange. The book somewhat recovered from that, but not enough for me to recommend this book, which is a bummer, since I've heard so much good about this series. Hopefully the next one is better.
Literally life-changing, I went from not being able to lift at all to confidently slinging barbells around and deadlifting 200 pounds in a little over six months. Could not recommend any more highly!
(4.5, rounding up.) Super intense but so good - I need to reread it because the chapters are so short I found myself reading the book faster than I wanted to, almost by accident. It's hard to say I “enjoyed” a memoir about growing up with an abusive mom, but Jennette's voice is so strong and direct and strangely funny, even when talking about horrible things. I was a few years too old for her generation of Nickelodeon shows, so I wasn't familiar with Jennette before reading this, but I'm definitely rooting for her and keeping an eye out for what she does next.
A note: if parental abuse/mental illness/substance abuse/eating disorders are triggers or difficult topics for you, please take care of yourself. This book is very good and very smart about those things, but it is also very intense.
It was fine? Too many subplots (I'm sorry to Swan's best friend, but that was simply one too many plots), sort of straddling the line between women's fiction and romance, and ... like I said, it was fine. The writing was good and I read this quickly, but it wasn't compelling in the way I usually want a fiction book to be.
Yes yes yes, more grumpy female MCs (“grumpy” is inadequate shorthand for “person who's been through ridiculous amounts of trauma and is closed off and untrusting because of it,” but we'll go with what we know). Loved the dynamic between the two MCs, didn't love how the end is kind of handwavey about what actually happened with the inheritance and the dukedom and all that and I also just didn't buy the plan for them to become a little crime syndicate with Betty, Kit, Percy, and Rob's mother, since it was so vaguely defined. Knocking off a star for all that, especially because I think this is the last one in the series so those ends are just going to stay loose. Cat Sebastian's writing just makes me happy, though.
Sweet little magical realist YA novel about a teenage baker whose foods reflect their emotions. Set in a kind of fairyland Austin and full of delicious recipes. Really enjoyed this one!
(2022 Summer Romance Bingo: superpower. Would also work for food on cover or bicycle.)
Enjoyable, but it seems to be categorized/marketed/etc. as a romance along the lines of [b:The Boyfriend Project 52211784 The Boyfriend Project (The Boyfriend Project, #1) Farrah Rochon https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1570712674l/52211784.SY75.jpg 73615834], with one guy dating three women at the same time and hijinks ensuing. I can't say a whole lot more here without spoiling, but that's not the case. The puzzle-box nature of the interlocking stories was really well-done, but this is not a romance according to the definition I usually use/see mentioned: central love story and HEA. The three POV characters make it kind of hard for any of the supposed love stories to be central, and while two of the three POV characters do end up with what could maybe be considered an HEA, I still didn't feel like either of those relationships were really all that developed. The plot was way more focused on the interlocking/multiple POVs and so especially Miranda's resolution felt pretty tacked on. Despite that, I did enjoy this! I really love O'Leary's writing - it's engaging and fun to read, and often funny. I would still recommend this, but just go in knowing that it's much more general fiction than it is romance.
This is another one where I felt like I needed to read the first book in the series in order to get the full experience - Brian is apparently a character in [b:Pregnant by the Playboy 52901471 Pregnant by the Playboy (Fong Brothers, #1) Jackie Lau https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1585873892l/52901471.SY75.jpg 79192229] and there's history/a backstory between him and Cedric's brother that is mostly referenced instead of detailed here. It's not too hard to figure out the situation, though. I liked the slow burn and how the friendship developed before any hookups - nothing wrong with the other way, but this was a nice change of pace. Loved Po-Po, Cedric's grandmother (Jackie Lau is extremely good at interfering grandparents) and Brian's new direction in his writing. Also, now I want dumplings and muffins, so read this with a snack close by!(2021 Summer Romance Bingo: date auction, would also work for friends to lovers or holiday that's not Christmas.)