Mercer

I feel sad that I no longer want to read books like these. I love the retellings of mythology from the perspective of underrepresented women in the stories. What I don't love is the demonization of the men alongside them. We do not need to emphasize the weakness of men to draw attention to the strength of women. The women can be strong just because they WERE strong.

All of these books fall into this same pit: every man is terrible, every woman is cunning and smart. That's not true in real life and it's not true in mythology either. I feel like it cheapens the story of the women to have it so heavily focused on how all the men around them are terrible. It also makes me trust the narrative less, as none of use are perfect.

It doesn't help that I already know all of these stories as a scholar, so I know what is coming down the line.

I'm giving this three instead of two because it was well-written. The story was accurate, which some others of this genre are not.

This was very sweet! I'd never read a “cozy mystery” book, so this was a sweet, pleasant surprise.

I love these books and wish I could live inside of them!!

This book was pretty whack! Torn between three stars and two, but honestly I don't think I would ever do anything besides tell someone not to read this.

I read a review that called the love interest “discount Rhysand” and tbh, cannot unsee.

This book was trite, predictable and poorly written. The characters were one dimensional, and the romance was uninspired. The way that death was dealt with was shocking—very little energy or attention given to it despite the fact that it was EVERYWHERE in this book.

Beyond that, there was zero “show don't tell” in this text. All exposition happened in conversation, nothing left to be inferred. The twist at the end was equally predictable and telegraphed.

As a YA/academia novel: the setting lacks exploration. As a romance novel, it lacks good romance, or well-written meaningful scenes. Truly it delivers on nothing. Read dragon riders of pern instead. :)

The dialogue in this book is overwrought and unbelievable. Hated it. Giving it 2 stars because I didn't finish it.

Meh. Truly nothing groundbreaking here.

A study on the fragile male ego from the perspective of the women that need to do the emotional labor for it. Very good, very different!

This book was layers upon layers—and I loved every bit of it. Truly everything one could want from SF/dystopian fiction, and so much to take in. There are some deeply triggering topics, but that shouldn't come as a surprise in this genre. I need someone to scream about this book with, so if you read it and are on my friends list, please talk to me about it!

This was a sweet book. It took a bit of time to pick up, but in the long run I ended up enjoying it. Don't know that I would recommend it to anyone though.

This was between a 4 and a 5 for me. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone because the content is deeply challenging and potentially triggering, but I do think that anyone who parents children should read it, whether they are fat or not.

This definitely shook my perspectives on some things and challenged what I think “effective” parenting is.

I do not know how I feel about this book. Part of me wants to give it a 1, and the other part wants to give it a 5. I'm not going to rate it.

As a person who currently lives unmedicated and with bipolar disorder, this book did an excellent job of allowing the reader to inhabit that space. I really felt brought a lot with Regan's moments, which I think is invaluable in a book about mental illness.

But also because of that experience, I found the relationship with Aldo to be problematic and codependent. It felt like something really unhealthy being broadcast as something desireable or “sweet.” I can't in good faith rate that well.

I also don't think I'd recommend this book to anyone, unless they really want to know what it's like to live with BPD. there are no big takeaways other than an excellent depiction of that.

I love Burroughs, but did not think this was his best work. While some of the essays were top-notch, others felt self-serving and childish. I also found myself doubting the veracity of some of the conversations–a thing which I've never done before with his writing.

This was excellent! Sooo funny and well-written.

It is pretty bonkers how different this is from the show. Both are enjoyable in entirely different ways.

I want to believe that this is a brilliant book and I am just not in a place to receive its brilliance. A...dating story (?) set in a US mid-second-civil-war. It feels like it was meant to be a commentary on how second-nature terrible things are nowadays that the main character perspective couldn't even focus on the war at hand and instead was recounting her dating escapades. I want to believe that it was intentional, but I'm not sure it was done artfully enough to get it all the way there.

I stopped at about 90% done because I felt I had better things to do and it didn't feel like it was ever going to nail the point home.

Very sweet. I didn't appreciate this one as much as the authors other work, but it was a lovely, sweet, sentimental book.

A third book is coming! I am...not sure about how I feel about the major plot point of it, though. That said, I really enjoyed this book. I loved the little references to actual New Haven (I worked at Blue State Coffee!), and the funny historic references through the artifacts. I am giving it 4 stars instead of 5 because I do feel like it jumped the shark with one specific plot addition which I won't mention to avoid spoilers.

I think I will just need to read this another time. I've tried twice and I just can't get into it. The tone is so different from Sandersons other books. Maybe it's the narrator? I don't know. The magic is great. The premise is great, I just can't get into it.

DNF about halfway through this time. A quarter of a way through the first time.

Each of these poems was a little gift.

This gave me dark tower vibes for sure. Less conclusive than I might like, but I loved the world building. I feel like it was set up to have more in the series, but we shall see.

Overall, less impactful. A few threads of meaning and a good story, but nothing that's really going to sit with me forever.

This book was a hard, sad read. It's because of that that I wasn't sure if I wanted to rate it a 4 or 5. I wasn't sure if I would recommend this to everyone given just how sad it is. That said, upon reflection, it deserves the 5 stars. This book kept me in its clutches the whole time, which is so surprising to me given its length.

The real excellence, though, is in the craft of the story. As an addict, much of this was familiar to me. The slow creep. The excuses. The “how did we even get here?!” Thought process as you move further towards rock bottom. This book brings the reader along in that journey—engaging them in the hero's journey and making something that may not be as familiar to everyone very accessible. Scarily so.

So many of my childhood friends are dead due to overdose, heroin and fentanyl. This book was relatable, touching and made something that disgusts so many (drug addiction) much more approachable.

Written by a friend, so of course I loved it—handing it off to my younger cousin, a competitive cheerleader who has watched Bring It On “for literally every cheer trip,” tomorrow.

I learned so many fun facts from this book and didn't want to put it down. For instance: did you know that Sufjan loves Bring It On? Did you know about the mass amounts of effort that had to go into even convincing a studio to take the project on? Did you know that there is a theory that Missy is just “handing Torrance off” to the male version of herself (my shitty paraphrasing)? All this and more! I loved it.

I went back and forth and back and forth with this book. There were times where I thought it was just a silly superficial werewolf book, and there were times that I thought a very specific, very triggering aspect of the book was what the werewolf story was an allegory for. I'm choosing to believe the latter, and rate this 4 stars, rather than assume that the author would be so unaware. As an allegory for [redacted] this book shines, a la the Babadook. As anything else, it is terrible.

There is nothing that I did not love about this book.

DNF. Read about 40% of this book before deciding to stop. I'm a big fan of “cult books” and have read tons of them. Perhaps that was what turned me off of this one. All of the stories seem to bleed together in these survivor tales, and they are all written in the same style.

I want more from them. To me, despite it being incredible what these people have survived, I want more than just a retelling of what they went through moment by moment.

I think this was the straw that broke the camels back, and I'll be staying away from survivor stories for a while.