Sarah
Beautiful! Amazing! Lovely!
Ok i will admit it's not actually perfect, it's probably a 4.5. You can tell the author is a poet because the plot is a bit shaky and the pacing really varies BUT the writing and sentence structure is just such a joy to read (and I've read so much rubbish writing recently I really needed this). Love the concepts this explores too. Very excited for Kaveh Akbars next book!
Ok this really didn't work for me, I think because the author is a thriller writer which means the sentence structure is more thriller-y (this happened. Then this happened. Then this happened) which works for thrillers but not for this where it leave you with little connection to the characters.
Also they gave Wuthering heights a happy ending. You can't give Wuthering heights a happy ending if anything it's just OOC for these characters to be happy
Emily Bronte is rolling in her grave
A really hard book to rate because I found some of the things it discussed very interesting and well explored, and it was so emotional that in points it had my eyes teary but also realistically I was just bored half the time and it did feel like a slog. It's really annoying because I do love what Sally Rooney has to say I just don't think I vibe with her writing style
There were definitely parts of this I really enjoyed but that doesn't change the fact that this is literally half a book. It didn't end. It just stopped. So it's only getting half a rating from me.
Also the worldbuilding is really shaky. You can tell this is a fanfic author because they've never had to incorporate a world before, and having the majority of the worldbuilding in a glossary at the end is just not it
Objectively I can see that this is a good book, but I just did not have a good time reading it. I'm really not a true crime girlie. My mum would look at a book like this and say “yuck why are you reading this” and I'd say something about broadening my mind and facing
harsh realities with greater understanding and compassion, but honestly this book was just yuck why am I reading this. Made me very sad and also very disgusted and not in a good way.
Some things I enjoyed. Some things I didn't. Paolini is so good at constructing a world, this future seemed so realistic and well defined (and I love that there's a whole timeline in the back of the book). On the negative side there are some pacing issues and some parts of the book felt slow. I'm also not a huge fan of the way he writes action, I don't know why, but I found myself really enjoying the strategising and then getting bored once the explosions started lol
Felt very toned down. Like if you took a Stephen King book and just dialled it down from 10 to about 5. Everyone was there and there were a lot of murders but nothing particularly shocking happened and even Holly felt a lot less Holly-like. Every other book in the Holly series, even though they're thrillers not horror, have still had aspects that felt horrifying and this just did not deliver.
A sweet fairytale ultimately let down by its format. The length of this novella means that the plot only starts about halfway in (and when it did start I loved it) but reading a full 30 pages of worldbuilding really did drag when you don't know where it's going and you can see the end of the book fast approaching
Really enjoyed the first half of this but by the second half it just dragged as they kept repeating over and over the same problem (yes we know there's an age gap?!)
I also preferred the pining to them actually being together haha, I think Ali is so much better at writing pining that she is at writing couples
Probably a 4.5 rounded up
It's a shame that Stag Dance is the titular story (and the longest) because it really felt like the weakest in the collection and didn't really justify its length, with some pacing issues. The others were phenomenal. Huge fan of infect your friends and loved ones, I want a full novel of it pleaaaaasssee