Kate
I loved the characters. Uncle Earl and Simon were fabulous. I especially loved the scenes where the ex-husband calls and Kara doesn't give a shit because there's much worse stuff going on.
I felt like the other world was a letdown. I would rate this a three if not for the characters and Kingfisher's writing. Creatures that want to kill/eat you and can know where you are if you think about them. That's overdone.
I read The Twisted Ones in a tiny studio in Kyoto on the eighth story as a typhoon raged around me. That book scared the pants off me. This one wasn't as scary. I'm not sure why. I know the willows are a reference, but willows that change position aren't particularly scary. Things whose danger is known because Simon says so aren't particularly scary. I think what was missing was a feeling of malice - if new characters who could have been saviors actually were evil, or the item that caused it all had been more alive/humanoid. It's hard to attribute malice to willows.
I loved the personal anecdotes! I think I would have enjoyed it better though if fewer psychological studies were referenced. Many of those can't be replicated, so I'm not sure they're very useful.
3.5 stars.
This is Sherlock Holmes fanfic, and with fanfic as the baseline for judgment, it's delightful. Crow, the Holmes character, makes so much more sense as a non-human who is puzzled by the basics of human life. Whereas Holmes (at least in my memory of the original) might be offputtingly brusque, Crow has an alien-like curiosity and interest in people. It's a nice change from the anti-hero House-type main characters that are currently popular.
[Spoilers below]
Putting fan-fic aside, I don't think there's enough framing of why Crow is an angel. There's a hint of an overarching narrative that could be neatly tied up, but it never really happens. A lot of questions go unanswered.
I loved the earlier books, but I didn't have an emotional connection to this one. It seemed like there were (unintentional?) red herrings in the plot. For instance, Fiona seems like she is going to affect some large change during her stay in the temple, beyond capturing the blackmail material. Yet, I don't think we ever find out what the actual purpose of that festival is.
I always love a book with a character that lives and breathes something that I know nothing about. I loved being introduced to the world of the gymnastics. The romance seemed to be secondary but that was fine with me.
ehh, I didn't really believe the main character was an artist, even though we're constantly reminded of such. Not very believable.
The reader is told a lot, not shown. I guess that's somewhat required for brevity, but I didn't enjoy it
There was a surprising amount of depth to this book. I loved the two main characters, and how realistic they seemed.
Really loved this, with a few reservations.
This book is so cozy and cute! I loved the characters and their friendships. I identified a lot with the concept of leaving home for the wider world, and the people at home not quite understanding (people at my parents' rural conservative church call me “Berkeley girl”
I think I always assumed that “fun” reads must be badly written, but this wasn't. It was delightful.
A fun read that is surprisingly accurate (though exaggerated) in its assessment of tech culture. A few nitpicks:
* A computer science degree doesn't mean you can code.
* It's easy to get a 415 area code through Twilio and other sources.
I loved this book. It's more like literary fiction than fantasy, but don't let that dissuade you.
I could see myself in the protagonist, Barrie Anne Blythe, which I usually don't find to be the case.
The book opens mid-story (as it should). Barrie has a small farm and survives by selling produce and eggs at the market. Her competence and the joy she takes in farming reminded me a bit of Andie McDowell's character in Green Card. If you like gardener protagonists, this is gonna be your jam.
Anyways, the farming is interrupted when Barrie's dog brings her something, something so unusual that it will change her life forever. So Barrie calls in support, in the form of her Aunt Charlotte, a artist (with her own strong backstory) who raised Barrie. (I loved the Aunt Charlotte character and I thought her interaction with Barrie rang true.)
As Barrie deals with the fallout, we learn more about her life through a series of well-situated flashbacks set during her high school and college years during World War II. We find out how she met her now-missing husband, Will. The backstory is woven expertly until it and the current day meet in an exciting climax.
I usually don't really like literary fiction, because it seems to be depressing on purpose, and who wants to read that. But the characters were so true in this book, and the writing so good, that I didn't feel like it was a meaningless suffer-fest for the critics. It felt like a study of what it means to be a woman, and what it means to forge your own path, regardless of the evitable hardships. Highly recommend.
Edit: saw that other reviewers thought that Will, the husband, was an unrealistic character. All I can say is, lucky you. If I had married my first boyfriend, I'm not sure it would have been that different.
In the small, the writing is lovely. Arch observations and very funny scenes. But our main character manages to travel the entire world without living in it once.It has to be purposeful, but every time Arthur has to deal with something emotionally difficult, it's at arm's length: a hard conversation with someone who is dying happens over Zoom. A hard conversation with someone Arthur wronged, just never really happens. Arthur never talks to his best friend/arch nemesis apart from a few sentences. Yes, he's literally running away from his problems (that's the premise), but surely over the course of the novel something has to break.What would it be like to have to struggle to take care of a child? To take care of an elderly person? To stay committed to a single person for your whole life? To build a house with your own two hands? To revitalize a town, to save someone's life, to care for a rescue animal, to say what needs to be said, no matter how difficult? To pull the plug on someone, to accidentally hit someone with your car, to confront a rapist, etc etc. Arthur's story is devoid of most everything that makes life actually hard, so one of his biggest challenges is not being as attractive as he once was, and that makes the force of the novel quite weak, even if the writing is well done.I realized that perhaps this isn't entirely the fault of the character or the author. Among Arthur's friends, people are worn like clothes and are equally disposable. One must be young, attractive, fun at parties, not old and a bore. There's not really a sense of community through thick and thin, or room for disability or age (very young or very old). In some sense, Arthur's preoccupation with his age is a problem for him not because he is unusually vain, but because of the very real danger that he might be abandoned if he's no longer sparkly. I was disappointed that it ended with Arthur's boyfriend returning to him, since it seemed like the wrong thing for Arthur to learn. If it were more heterosexual, and a old superficial man was rewarded at the end with a hot young woman, I'd think that was awful. “Still got it!” is the wrong lesson. I would have liked to see Arthur stretched to become a larger person, like the protagonist in [b:Senlin Ascends 35271523 Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel, #1) Josiah Bancroft https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1502224161l/35271523.SX50.jpg 24467682].
I started off not wanting to like this. It seemed like one of those adaptations where you change a few dates, change the character's occupation, and voila, you have a book.
But I'm glad I persevered, because I actually really enjoyed it. It was clever and funny. Lydia and Kitty are jobless and into Crossfit, which made me snicker but fits perfectly. Mrs. Bennett was believably awful and high-strung, and into online shopping. Darcy is a surgeon, and Bingley is loveably daft.
After finishing this, the author still sounds like kind of a terrible person, and book sounds like the product of his own get-rich scheme. “Read this detailed how-to book to find out to make MILLIONS by... selling detailed how-to books!”
That said, there were some helpful things:
First, by reading about how he manipulates other people (e.g. telling a long winded colleague that he (Ferriss) has a phone call in 5 minutes) you'll learn how to recognize it when it's done to you. Secondly, the details of how to organize an autonomous company and how to live abroad cheaply actually seemed like good information.
So, I would recommend starting half-way through where these details begin and to check out the book from your local library, lest you give Timothy Ferriss more of your money.
I loved this. We start with priggish headmaster Thomas Senlin and his young bride going to the center of civilization on their honeymoon, and things start going wrong for Tom quickly. I had entirely forgotten how delicious an unlikeable protagonist is, and Tom is pretty unlikeable!
This book is almost as if Jasper Fforde or Nick Harkaway wrote Piranesi. It's zany, horrifying, sweet, and action-packed.
A fun read. I was especially in awe of Anjeli's politicking. The whole romance angle got old very quickly though. The love interest had a reputation for being unfaithful, and that reputation seemed to be warranted, so why the main character was interested in him and why the reader would want them to get together was beyond me.
This was very well-written, but after learning that Annie Dillard's story about the tomcat never happened to her, I'm pretty suspicious of memoir.
It's hard for me to identify my problem is, because all the pieces are believable: manic abusive visionary father who distrusts the government, abusive brother, mother who does nothing, family who bows to the father and brother's influence. Religion that makes people do crazy things. That all makes sense.
But something doesn't feel right.
My guess is that Tara had to dissociate as a child, to play a role, and continues to do so as an adult. That probably contributes to a feeling of distance in the writing. But I find it odd that we don't know what she currently believes about religion, or how she came to have a real boyfriend without dealing with her views about women. A lot of inner thought is left unexplored.