NJ
3,5 stars
This was a solid book. There was stuff to enjoy and stuff that gave me pause, but in the end, it was a quick, easy read, which was exactly what I needed at the time.
Every woman she meets hates her because of the male attention she gets. And the hero at one point tells her she's ‘too good' for a casual relationship and that she's not that type of girl
I woke up at 2:00 and couldn't go back to sleep, so I decided to pick what I thought would be a sweet easy book, that would leave me with warm fuzzy feelings. This was not it.Firstly, I find [a:C.D. Reiss 6896405 C.D. Reiss https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1448479589p2/6896405.jpg]'s style anxiety-inducing. Something about the sharp dialogue and the abrupt ending of the scenes really irritated me. I often felt that I didn't have a good grasp of what I had read after I was done with a chapter. Why did the characters feel the way they did? Why did they make those choices? Who knows. I certainly didn't.Additionally, I thought too much was happening in the story. Either his split band storyline or her sexual assault storyline would have been enough. But both of them at once? That was definitely overkill. I did, however, feel that her conversation with Brenda was insightful and that it treated the subject matter with some depth. However, it is literally the only thing I liked about this book and why it has 2 stars instead of 1. Finally, I could not connect with either of the main characters. I actively disliked him, and her actions made no sense to me. There were a couple of times where she told him to leave her alone or to contact her at a different time and yet he would turn up when he felt like because he just had to see her. I found that really irritating. Also, when her picture was put in the papers because she was with him, she had legitimate concerns about what that would mean for her privacy and her business' chances if she kept seeing him, but somehow by the end of the conversation with her sister that was suddenly a non-issue? Then when he found out about her 'controversial' past, he was ready to drop her like a hot potato? And she didn't point out the double standard inherent in that decision. Instead by their next conversation, she was apologising to him and then staying away for his own good. WHAT?!!!?!?!?! And then it was never discussed again, how his reaction to hearing she was abused by her boss was to ask her to cool their relationship off. I need to stop writing this review now because I'm getting even farther away from the illusion of sleep. But I just had to document my feelings so that the next time I was tempted to pick up another [a:C.D. Reiss 6896405 C.D. Reiss https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1448479589p2/6896405.jpg] book, I could come back to this and remember how irritated I was.
3.5 stars
This was so well-written that it was such a joy to read. I appreciated both characters a lot. However, the ending was a bit too dramatic for my tastes I am not a fan of the baby from an ex trope. . So I enjoyed the ending a bit less. But it was still a good book and I'm sure this is more a me-problem than a problem with the book itself.
I love this book. But it's a quiet, contemplative kind of love because the book itself is largely quiet and contemplative. Despite it's misleading title and marketing this is not a romance, I mean there is a bit of romance, but it is largely chick-lit. In that, it was centred around a woman's journey of self-discovery. My favourite relationship in this book was not Reid and Meg's but rather, Meg and Sibby's. I loved the portrayal of a female relationship which is initially breaking apart, but in the end, gets reshaped into something healthier and better. I loved that despite Sibby's less than positive feelings, she was not demonised by the story's narrative. I loved all the other strong female relationships in this book. I loved Lark, I loved Lachelle and I loved Cecilia. Perhaps the only person I didn't have a fount of love for was Reid. I liked him, he was a perfectly serviceable love interest but he was not one of the stars of this book. I loved the lettering, I loved Reid's letters to Meg. Considering the number of times I have repeated the word love in this review, it is a bit of understatement to say that this has been one of my favourite reads of the year.
Normally, I would have stopped reading this book much earlier than I did but I'm trying nowadays to not immediately dnf a book because there's one aspect of it that irritates me. After this book I might have to return to my initial policy.
My first minor irritation was that the heroine, a 30 year old woman, was waiting for her crush to ask her out and was sending pheromones his way to push him in that direction. She was then hurt and surprised when it turned out he had had a girlfriend for one year who was now his fiancé. Well, no kidding, did you expect him to magically get a whiff of your pheromones and immediately understand that he HAD to ask you out? As opposed to oh I don't know, you asking him out yourself? What was it exactly that was stopping her from making the first move again? I honestly couldn't tell you. However, in an effort to be more tolerant I shelved that issue.
Then the heroine's mother's staunch feminism was treated as a punchline. And while there was no overt anti feminism (at least in the portion that I read), there seemed to be a slight suggestion in the tone of the writing, that feminism was an overreaction. I think it would have been one thing for the heroine to have more traditional views of marriage than her mother and want more traditional things without her mother's views being treated as faintly ridiculous.
Also before going to Missouri, her mother directly tells her to “watch out for racists”( I want to add that this neither read as sarcastic nor tongue in cheek). What? Who says that? As someone who left her predominantly black country at 17 to live in a predominantly white country, my mum certainly never told me to watch out for racists. And now I feel cheated. After reading that line it became increasingly clear to me that this book was not written by a person of color because it seemed like an outsider's approximation of the kind of conversations that people of color have with their parents before moving to places where there are fewer people who look like them. Or maybe all caricatured biracial NYU gender studies professors tell their daughters to “watch out for racists”. How would I know?
Despite all this, I still persevered.
Then finally our intrepid heroine gets to Missouri and meets the hero's mum, who immediately tells her to distract the hero from his girlfriend(who just had a miscarriage!) by showing some boob. And guess who just went along with this idea, to the point of shopping with the mum for a whole new sexy dress? You guessed it. Our heroine (I can't for the life of me remember her name). This. This was finally the point where I threw in the towel. I realized that I was firmly in crazy town and it was only going to get worse from here. So I finally did the responsible thing and dnfed the book. I mean this is probably my longest review and I barely got 40% into the book. I would probably have written a 300 page review if I had had to finish reading this novel.
I loved Mia Vincy's first book, I really did. But as with Sally Thorne and her second book, this was a disappointment. That's not to say I didn't enjoy parts of it, because I did. However, in this instance, the good nearly outweighed the bad.
Firstly, I had a major problem with the tone of the book. I've never really liked books that have a ‘madcap humour' tone, as I feel like the authors are trying too hard to be funny. In addition, I felt like the hero and heroine had only a handful of interactions together and thus, I didn't really believe in the development of their relationship. Especially because they were in the same house together for a portion of the book, I believe the romance would have been stronger if we had felt that they interacted with each other often during that period. Instead, Vincy lets us know that they spend most of their time in the house alone. I don't even think that these interactions all needed to happen on-page, but a mention of a routine where they spend time together and really get to know each other would have been great. Admittedly, the scenes where they were together were often tender and sweet, but because they did not happen as often as I preferred, they got engaged without really discussing what those years in exile must have been for the heroine. In fact, while this is briefly mentioned it is not really explored, and I feel like that was a wasted opportunity.
I hope that her next book is much better (same goes for Sally Thorne) because I know how lovely their writing can be. I hope I don't discover another fresh author only for their next book to disappoint. That would really break my heart. And... now that I've said it, it's definitely going to happen.
I generally liked Clarrie and Simon and was very invested in their relationship.
On one hand, I felt that the portrayal of Clarrie's anxiety was very realistic. I understood her fear and the constant belief that she was going to ruin everything she touched. However, the book doesn't actually deal well with her anxiety. All the main characters know that Clarrie is not well and that she suffers from anxiety, however; she never seeks professional help, nor do we ever see her try and get better by any other means. At one point Sonny mentions CBT but it doesn't go any further. Instead, there is a general attitude of Clarrie just needs to get over herself. By the end of the book, she is able to admit she loves Simon, but it feels a bit hollow because none of her big issues have really been addressed or worked on. I guess love healed her
Another one bites the dust. And I think I can officially say I'm in a slump.
There were minor things that kept irritating me throughout the book until I finally had to stop reading it.
Did I finish this trilogy in 4 days? Yes.
Do I have any regrets? Many. I hate R.F Kuang. I'm also definitely preordering her next book.
I enjoyed [b:The Flatshare 36478784 The Flatshare Beth O'Leary https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1552471375l/36478784.SY75.jpg 58189559] a bit more but this was a perfectly lovely book. O'Leary finds inventive ways for her characters to meet and share each other's lives and it's always a treat to read the character development that comes along with it. THis book was just a sweet ball of fluff.
I really hated Assasin's Apprentice and I was fully prepared to write Robin Hobb off forever but I have to concede that this trilogy was good . I felt so emotionally invested in most of our characters and I was gratified by their growth at the end.
I just find that there are still some aspects of the book that I find troubling and that's why despite enjoying it I couldn't rate it five stars. I'm going to try more Hobb now that I know they are not all like Assasin's Apprentice.
The first few chapters are just Severin dealing with his hurt lashing out and punishing the people who care about him. I have no interest in reading that or continuing the series
This was excellent. Westover has a strong narrative voice that grips the reader from the first sentence.
A friend recommended this book to me because she was fascinated by Westover's ability to overcome her lack of primary and secondary education to earn a PhD from Cambridge. Thus, I went into this expecting to be intrigued by Westover's survivalist upbringing. While that part was certainly interesting, I think the most potent aspect of the book, is Westover's portrayal of abuse and the ways in which families often protect abusers in the name of ‘family loyalty'. Something I found powerful about her portrayal of Shawn's abuse, were the tender moments interspersed between the more brutal ones. Even though I hated Shawn, there were times I had to remind myself that he was horrible and whatever niceness he was showing Tara at the moment could disappear at the drop of a hat. Despite familial neglect and abuse, Westover portrays her parents and siblings in a nuanced, balanced manner. Nobody is all good or all bad. But she does not make any excuses for their behaviour either.
Throughout the book, Westover contrasts her own memories with those of others who experienced the same events. She sometimes mentions that there are gaps in her memory regarding certain key events. In my opinion, these choices, rather than making her an unreliable narrator serve to highlight the questions Educated raises about who gets to tell history and why. Westover prizes her education because it allowed her to read multiple narratives and construct her own, when before she had been forced to accept her father's narrative as truth. Therefore, by highlighting her own fallibility, she does not force the reader to accept her own narrative as truth either.
I probably won't read (or listen) to the entire book again because I found some scenes difficult to get through but I will definitely be thinking about this book for a long, long time.
In order to be ready for the October release of [b:Return of the Thief 40650301 Return of the Thief (The Queen's Thief, #6) Megan Whalen Turner https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1531866321l/40650301.SY75.jpg 16439607], I have been rereading this entire series.The Thief starts off slowly and definitely picks up towards the end. However, it is nowhere near as good as its sequels and that's ok. It doesn't necessarily need to be. It does, however, serve as a wonderful introduction to Eugenides and to the lands of Eddis, Attolia and Sounis.
More chick-lit than romance. Had a few good moments but I felt myself skimming a good chunk of the book because it was all over the place. Also like a lot of chick lit, the mcs didn't spend much time together on the page yet by the end they were proclaiming their love for each other?
I think the book had potential though and I'll likely try another book of hers just to see if some of the above mentioned issues get resolved.
I know I'm in the minority here but I'm going to have to break up with Lisa Kleypas. I fell in love with historical romance primarily because of LK and JQ but in recent years I haven't enjoyed any of their books. Take for instance this heroine and hero, although I liked their interactions, they barely had any throughout the book and they were months apart. I didn't leave feeling like either of them truly loved the other. If anything I felt the book would have done better to devote more time to developing their relationship. It's a shame because I really wanted to love it, I just didn't.
Really sweet. There were a few comments based on gendered stereotypes that made me roll my eyes but overall I liked it.
3.5 rounded up to a 4.
This was so sweet. I would have liked it if we got the see about more of them in a relationship though.
I'm leaving this book unrated because I don't think I really gave it a fair chance. After a brutal 2021, I am finally in a semi-good place mentally so the discussion of depression and anxiety in this book was too much for me. It understandably coloured my enjoyment of this book and it was a bit too heavy for me.
I might reread this when I am more solidly in a better place. It might be everything I want in a romance, but at this moment, I can't tell.
