Tess

I read this book with my mind constantly a bit ahead of the text because moreso than the previous one this is where the multitude of things you can do in the game over multiple loops have to be distilled down into a single narrative, and I really enjoyed the way this was done. There are some pretty big deviations here for people who have played the game but I think most of them serve the story's themes well (though honestly the ultimate fate of Renba is a little silly after all that) and I loved the ending.

It took me a while to get into this because the archetype of young disaffected worker most of the characters fit into isn't that interesting to me (for a lot of the book they're doing drugs ostentatiously, having bad sex or being sad - I had a similar problem with early parts of Severance) but once things became a bit more sinister at the mall I was hooked. What an ending.

I've been intrigued by the idea of women's secret writing ever since I'd first read about it, and this book does a great job of immersing a reader in the culture that would make such a thing necessary. A tragic, beautiful and fascinating story about the lives of women and the way they can build each other up, even when constrained, or tear each other down.

This is a varied collection of works related to Canada150 and Indigenous Peoples. Formats vary from standard essays and legal reviews to compilations of tweets to descriptions of art installations (one even included a link to a youtube video of the piece being performed) and screenplays. There was also great regional representation - I am from the east coast originally and it's rare to see our issues highlighted in volumes that cover the whole country.

It's always hard to give one comprehensive rating to an essay collection by various authors but I do feel like I learned a lot from it.

I really liked This Poison Heart, so rating the sequel this low is really disappointing. My favourite things about the first book were the mysterious gothic atmosphere, the sense of discovery with Briseis's powers, and the family relationship and all of those things are basically abandoned in book 2 for a boring Greek mythology inspired adventure story. The romance is so bland that I kept forgetting the two characters were together but then they'd kiss and it was a bit jarring. The members of Briseis's birth family were not well integrated into the story, and the ending the LI gets didn't feel earned to me.

Interesting short story about a woman who gradually loses her mind over the course of her mental health “treatment” in the countryside after the birth of her child. The prescription seems to involve a lot of being talked down to by men and not being allowed to do anything. The introduction in my copy mentions that the author underwent a similar treatment that made her issues worse (though not as bad as in the story) which is what inspired the writing.

This was a quick read and had some fun ideas, but the protagonist was so smarmy and unlikeable that if it wasn't so short this book would probably have ended up on my dnf shelf.

I liked the more realistic aspects of this book but the mystery aspect was disappointing and somehow I liked and disliked the ending in equal measure.

The main characters are a group of Asian American students at an exclusive private school, brought together through a mutual friendship of sorts with a popular girl and through what the pov character refers to as “The Incident”: something that they had all participated in two years before and sworn to secrecy about. It's obvious what the thing was and the way the narrative dances around it is annoying. The popular girl dies suddenly, and suddenly the friends are being threatened via social media using secrets only the dead girl knew. The resolution to this is ridiculous and some of the secrets are a bit silly.

The better part of the story is the focus on the characters themselves, especially Nancy. As the daughter of immigrants who gave up everything to come to America there is immense pressure to perform, be strong, and reach that elusive American Dream. The way this plays out in Nancy's relationship with her mother was really well done. The other characters are less three dimensional but do illustrate this in various ways.

I liked the ending in the way that it demonstrated who Nancy was at her core - this isn't a game but she's going to win it - but it bugged me that the reader never gets to find out what the big secret is.

This book was fine, but I didn't like it as much as the first one. Trillin's point of view was what really captivated me in the first one and way more of this one was focused on Sian and her relationship hangups.

I was really excited to read this book, but it just didn't work for me. Most of the characters were thinly drawn and annoying, especially the main character Sophia, who doesn't seem to live in the world she comes from and constantly makes stupid decisions. Sophia's entire quest is based on how much she loves Erin but she doesn't seem to actually like her very much, the insta-love with Constance who has exactly one character trait bugs me, the plot twist involving the king is so obvious, and I couldn't believe how easily escaped a cell in the castle dungeon apparently is. 

The twist with the fairy godmother was interesting, and I liked Luke even though he was only in the story for like ten seconds, but that's about all the good I can say about it.

The early chapters of this book lay out the author's interest in physics with a palpable enthusiasm, while the later chapters discuss the ways that the dominant culture manifests in academia and the physics “community” that work to dim that enthusiasm. I hadn't really considered the ways that science as a discipline and idea are socially constructed so there's lots to think about.

(I did dock a star because I found the chapter on gender a bit reductive - I hate the narrative that nonbinary people exist because they are the only ones who object to traditional gender roles and this chapter skirts pretty close to that. Overall though a great read.)

This book really interested me as a historical fiction based on women in a setting that hasn't been done to death but I just don't think the end product was very good. All of the characters were surface level and only had a couple of traits each, and the narrative didn't seem to respect most of the lower class characters very much. I would have liked to see more depth in the relationship between the sisters and their other family members, and a bit more pov for some of the other characters. The stuff with the general near the end was well executed though.

I really liked the blurb for this one but didn't realize that the book was going to be paranormal. Overall the book was okay but some of the action seemed a bit over the top (the part with the knives was like, ...) and I didn't connect at all with the main character.

This is a book about family and trauma. The violence that's warned about at the beginning mostly lurks around the edges, but it colours everything that happens. A very heavy read, but it does end on a bittersweetly hopeful note.

I didn't enjoy my time with this book. The writing style was weird (one character talked like Yoda for no reason, the slang annoyed me) and there were a lot of typos. I found the setup of telling the characters' backstory to a couple of teens ridiculous if their country really is as homophobic as it seemed, and the politics felt very strange and muddled. All of the characters seemed terrible so I didn't really care what happened to them.

Another bittersweet but upbeat story. New things are still being revealed about the setting, which is neat, and it was nice to see what happened to some side characters in the first book. The gang stuff was a little heavy-handed but it's nice to see something positive in YA.

This was a breezy, super fast read but also a sensitive portrayal of grief and how that changes people. The Scrabble content was actually really fun and exciting - I have no idea how the author manages to pull off high tension while describing Scrabble plays - and most of the characters were interesting. Some of them made very over the top decisions but they are teenagers so I'll allow it. I did think the amnesia was a bit silly and things got a little convoluted toward the end but overall I really liked this.

I think the author tried with this book but it just wasn't very good. The main character makes a lot of stupid decisions with basically zero consequences, the romance is goofy, and the mystery felt boring. It's set in frontier-era British Columbia with no mention of indigenous people at all, which feels like an oversight considering the rest of the content. The inclusion of the Chinese and transgender characters seemed well-meaning but was written very clumsily and mostly falls flat.

This book was okay. Sort of a techno-thriller for the YA set. Most of the characters are pretty thin and the romance is ridiculous, but I respect what it was trying to do.

Normally I don't like romcoms but something about this really charmed me. The plot itself is a romcom mainstay (the characters are forced to spend time together for a ridiculous reason) but the characters are designed well enough that it feels like something they would do, and the character growth throughout was great.

This book was fine, but it left me feeling disappointed.

First off I will say, I loved the concept of a 1920s Shanghai Romeo and Juliet retelling. The descriptions of the city and events surrounding the characters are great, and you can tell that the author is passionate about this history. The monster story does the job and some of the horror writing is great.

The story and characters were another thing, unfortunately. The book takes way too long, with characters meandering around monologuing while nothing much happens for large amounts of time. Juliette is an interesting enough character (a little too stock YA heroine for me but she's fine) but Roma is like a block of wood. This is a shame because in the play you can call Romeo a lot of things but “boring” isn't really one of them. The enemies to lovers romance is so bland and uninteresting. The word “thudding” is used so often that I want to erase it from the author's brain.

Things finally come to a head at the end and the final confrontation is exciting (though there are definitely some stupid things that happen because they sound cool, like firing a 1920s pistol underwater) but the author takes a big risk and then immediately backtracks it, which bugged me.

It was fine, if you like YA enemies to lovers and/or historical you'll probably enjoy it, but I don't really care too much if I read the second one or not.

I bought this because the blurb talked about body positivity, but the book is actually just a kind of shallow person saying mean things about other women and blaming everyone else for her own shortcomings. It was brave to publish something so vulnerable but it might have been good to do a bit more work in therapy first.

This is a small short story collection, featuring three short stories, an introduction by the author, and a scholarly essay about the direct provision system in Ireland. The stories are great (I particularly liked “Under the Awning”) and I found the essay really informative as this isn't a system I'm familiar with.

This is a fictionalized account of people affected by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Each chapter is the account of a different person from their point of view. I liked the ways the characters connected and saw one another, and the variety of experiences that are included. Unfortunately to me there were too many similar characters (though I loved Sonia and I liked Anne's perspective) and I wasn't a fan of the first person POV, especially for characters who died during the story.

This is a series of short stories about life in Gaza. Each story is woven together really well and feels complete. The characters feel realistic, and the sometimes terrible things that happen are related in ways that don't feel overly voyeuristic or sensational.

My favourite stories: Black Grapes; The Long Braid.