Shy Swag
I really wanted to like this book but it fell incredibly flat. Our main character is NOTHING. Her biggest moment of
gusto is sneaking off to a party. Beyond that instance, she has no desire, no interest in anything. Even her growing reliance on substances dull the story.
The mother takes too long to be interesting. By the time her character is developed enough for me to care about her, the plot hands her answers, and her daughter, via means of coincidence.
The writing itself was good, the plot and structure was bleh.
Deeply personal story to me, felt very connected to it.
Wish it was possible to rate a book as 3.8 or 3.5, the writing was incredible but the pacing of the last portion felt off. I also wasn't particularly moved by the letter at the end. It added to my dissatisfaction with how the end portion of the book was wrapping up.
The story starts so strong, so crafted with the time it's set in, that as the story progressed I missed the first half of the novel.
This is one I suspect is lost in translation. A handful of passages and lines, showed a tender but brooding type of prose that was hard to find consistently. I also find that I was wanting more! I wanted more action, more of Crystal acting out, more of Mina, more of Minho and Crystal. Many pages of this book are doting on the philosophical sturggles that come from class and student life. I can admit that that style is not my taste, but I can imagine if read at the right time this book could leave a more pleasant impact for some.
Contains spoilers
This one was tough for me to get through. The first half is a slog, it's a repetitive, directionless, process. What process? Well of the main characters struggle with mental illness after the birth of her daughter. The main chunk of this book is all leading to the dinner party where the main character loses her grip on reality entirely and spirals out of control unable to separate reality for her hallucinations.
To me, this is another case of aiming too high. The idea of motifs associated with racism and sexism influencing this woman's descent into a post-partum paranoid breakdown is interesting, it's good, but I see two flaws with the execution; 1. Her husband 2. She is actually not that insane because in the second portion of the book we find out she is actually communicating with spirits??? (well one spirit)
My issues with her husband are complicated. Right away you suspect how the relationship will play out. As a matter of fact Disney's Pocahontas tells you! Which I see as an attempt to create tension, the reader wonders “well how is her husband another John? how does he ruin her life?” The exact way you'd expect he would. All the parts with the husband are incredibly dull, the few attempts to make the relationship dynamic compelling drag. Of course they aren't meant to be a romantic couple filled with passion, the issue is that the relationship only exists to show the main characters lack of direction and self respect.
The effect the husband has on the story can easily be achieved if the husband was not involved in their daughter's life. He exists only so that things “happen” to our main character, every plot point derives from the husband. This woman does NOTHING the entire story. One could say this is supposed to reflect one of the overall themes of the book but it's simply boring to read about a character who doesnt do anything and whines for an entire book.
Pocahontas is also a MAJOR dropped ball. The link that these women have in the story is the most alluring aspect of the book but it's not thoroughly explored. “Grandma was crazy everyone thought grandma was crazy and they'll think I'm crazy” the one thing I was looking forward to was the “do you remember Pocahontas not saying the right words?” and it didn't happen? She was used rather lazily as a reference to stereotypes and misrepresentation, I think the author could have used the Disney Pocahontas to do some funny and clever writing but it didn't pan out that way.
Messy messy book that I wanted to like.
Of note that I preferred the second narrative to the first, and found it much easier to digest.
I disagree with a lot of reviews that this book was too gruesome, strange, or touched on these high school girls sexuality without tact or intent.
Rather, the cruel hierarchy and shenanigans of these girls is completely plausible, I just had issue with the pacing and the structure of this novel, which I understand is possibly due to the translation. I feel like the jumping between times really undercuts the tension, as I matter of fact I didnt feel like there was much tension.
The two events I was most interested in were glossed over, the chats with the therapist were hit or miss in terms of prose, and I feel like the atmosphere was not as fleshed out as I wanted it to be. Still I will be reading other works from Ojeda because there was still things I enjoyed from this work. Wish I could give a 2.8 or a 2.9 star review.
Epilogue undercuts the entire novel. Most of this is repetitive information and ideas as the writing tries to get across how obsessed the woman is. Everyone keeps talking about the suspense and intrigue and how intense the book is, really I think that sells the book differently than what it is: a microscope over minute details of a relationship. That's all.
Should have given up when the “Thanks to some distant Cherokee ancestor I have these cheekbones” and “She was the best looking of the children with her auburn hair and fair skin” I kept reading because I was interested in what Judy Blume, an author I associate with middle grade fiction would write and publish for adults.
The racism, classism, sexism, and negative stereotypes of just about every type of person is getting unbearable, its so bad, these are bad, they are annoying and bad and I genuinely think I am reading them to torture myself. I hate these books, the pacing is off, the mystery is dull, the romance is bland, the characters are like cardboard, this woman says “dear old bookie dad” too many times, the coffee talk is just these insanely long info dumps, everytime I read I think its the worst thing Ive ever read and I cant believe that someone would write these and publish them and then I think that its impossible for these to get any worse and now Ive read SEVEN SEVEN?????????
There were a few times the author would refuse to tell us about the torture and abuse that this girl had to endure. I cant help but think “why not do that again and again? what's the point of us looking at these scenes when sometimes you hide other scenes?”
There is something captivating about Ketchums writing. The atmosphere of town and the setting was enjoyable and played a large part of why I kept reading.
Finding out this was based on a real case? That's abhorrent. Disgusting. That thought should have been kept private this book does a dishonor. This book is not really scary, it's not really horror. This book was about voyeurism. About bearing witness to crime and abuse and doing nothing. I could see that this was supposed to be the point.
What ends up happening is this circus of abuse. I don't doubt abuse like the scenes described in the novel have happened. What I am saying is that this author makes a circus of it. A spectacle. Our protagonist is a young boy, a child himself. His view and understanding of the abuse he witnesses is ever shifting as he learns from the adults around him, but the narrative isn't strong enough to hold a character like this.
There are lines where I can see this struggle very clear. An intention just barely missed. I don't think authors are allowed grace about intentions when they are using a real life case of murder and torture as inspiration. In terms of what I think this book has done to audiences I'd say it's fucked up wanna be horror Collen Hoover with 10x better writing but just as bad execution of ideas.
This was my first book by this author, and while enjoyed his style everything was just a confusing tangle.
This book will probably satisfy a persons romcom itch. It has clear character arcs, hits all the story beats, and promotes healthy relationships, has good conversations about culture and race as well.
My low rating for this book comes from the chemistry and humor. Lina and Max were two pieces of cardboard. Not a single line in this book is funny, any attempt at humor is terribly dated and clunky. I really wanted to like this book, as I read more and more romance it is difficult to find books that aren't rife with sexism, bad communication, classism, racism, this book had NONE of that.
I think I really despised this style of writing. The sex scenes were grating, I felt no relationship between anyone in this book most of the two leads. I also cant stress how unfunny this was to me, I think that's what really turned me off from this book.
I was actually pretty indifferent about the dynamic here until he picked her up??????? That is threatening and strange and not cute or funny it's fucking weird. He's trying to buy her out of the house, make her uncomfortable enough to leave, they're still new in each others lives and he thinks it's okay to grab her???? He does this several times but the first time he does is baffling.
I understand that this genre of book is based on tropes but god every line is like a sassy Twitter recap of a TikTok book review of this book. It's not just that you know what's going to happen or what a character is going to say it's that it's exactly what words will be on the page.
Not to mention how utterly insufferable these characters are. Everything about them can be gleaned from clicking through a millennials instagram story. There is no depth, no chemistry, nothing fun or cute or interesting about them apart or together.
Novellas can be packed with interesting characters, well built relationships and good pacing this has none of that. There actually isn't any humor in this either, unless you count references to Disney movies, online comment section templates for epic burns, and celebrity name dropping as sooo silly goofy.
Also god we get he's fucking huge, if he's so fucking big and tall why isn't a NBA player.
The woman lead also suffer from some form “not like other girls” I wasn't going to post this review until I saw the title of this novella series was “STEMinist Novellas” which is insulting. What? It's feminist because she gets harassed and belittled at work? Which is a problem we never see her solve, she is actually passive about her position at work and it is the man who 1) tries to solve the problem and 2) puts her in the position to get the problem solved.
AND GOOD HELL THE ENDING?????? Worst sex scene I've ever read. Up until the sex scene there is nothing explicit, erotic, or sexy happening in the text. He walks around their shared house without a shirt once, he walks in on her showering but those are framed more so as cute scenes with undertones of sexual tension. The absolute whiplash I got when the first smutty line dropped was crazy because it does not ease into it, saying something like “I wish he would pull my legs apart and fuck me over the counter” isn't actually a good way to transition into a sex scene????? It wasn't just clunky it was jarring.
Every line in that sex scene is horrendous.
I think that I interpeted the social clubs in the book differently than a lot of others. I found them very plausible, especially when it's paired with the climate crisis(es) that plague this book, or rather the background of this book. I can see clubs, fraternities, like this being very popular in times of such uncertainty. I do find that the whole “secret” parts of the clubs are less so about “secrets” and more about what the people in these clubs get up to when left to their own devices.
Despite this above defense I still would have rather given the book a 2.5 because of the clubs . They are the least interesting part of this book. The coupling of magical realism and climate crisis made for an interesting atmosphere. I wanted to hear what these little guys had to say so bad. I wanted to see care for these human made creatures. I wanted to know more about the magic in this world so badly.
Her relationships were also complicated, interesting, and felt real to me in their messiness, more so the ones with the other women in the book. East, is painted very slowly and I could feel the betrayal of him to her character. Still I had gotten the idea that East had used her in the creation of the homunculus and was disappointed when this was not the case, I felt like he had already committed such evil against her it would have not surprised me if he had done so. He had been shown to have more obsession with magic and the club as well I felt it would have been fitting. A relationship, in the sense that they are two humans, with one abusing the other, taking advantage is hard to write on a technical level and I didnt see Feldman quite pull it off here.
I was torn about this book. A lot of the claims that it's “trauma porn” and one of those “gay torture” books threw me from reading it for a long time. I waited until I felt a bit more comfortable reading it and was surprised to find that I really only considered one aspect of this book to be belonging in the “indulgent trauma pity party” and that is the cutting. Jude has many many many scenes of him cutting and the are sometimes too long. This is really the only thing that irked me about this book.
The way this book is talked about I was prepared to read rape scenes, but this is spared from the reader. While there are lots and lots of mention and talk of rape, sexual violence and abuse it is not forthright with the descriptions, often it's factual and short. There is also a ladder that we climb as we read, the higher we go the more the skyline of Judes past makes sense and begins to fit together.
For those who say that Judes abuse is too “spectacular” fuck you. For those who say that his friends and loved ones made the wrong decisions regarding his health, yes they did but have you ever been put into that position? It's a very terrible position to be in. My one true gripe with these characters, for how smart and talented they are all supposed to be, is why none of them ever tried to get Jude to meet other sexual abuse victims?
One of my favorite scenes is where Harold is speaking to JB in the kitchen, JB is straightforward (as he always is) and tells Harold that him, Malcolm and Willem suspect that Jude was subjected to sexual abuse as a child. I expected this to really shift Jude's perspective or have him contemplate why his friends suspected, no, knew, this so easily of him. For him to realize that he must not be alone in his struggles.
Of course my favorite relationship in this book are Jude's three closest friends. Willem, JB and Malcolm. How it stretches and changes over time, the elastic bond of titanium that some people have to each other.
But most stunning is the language, the prose, and the overall writing. It's a novel meticulously strung together. My favorite bits, that were annoying at first, are the way characters are mentioned, but they come back. Most every name dropped circles around and around making a full web of life that our main cast inhabits. It's quite an impressive feat of character.
This is the most dull writing. There are dozens of overused phrases and lines. There is no suspense, no intrigue, NOTHING. Reading this is like sticking your hand in a bucket of sludge and finding only cheap carnival toys as your prize.
I literally can not think of anything to say that's positive. The verse? Boring, choppy, repetitive. Structure? Exactly as expected and executed poorly. Characters and dialogue? Like a toddler A.I. was told to come up with something.
I do not recommend this and am baffled by its high praise when this is the worst thing I've read in recent memory.
(flopping between a 2 and a 3 star)
I thought I would love this. I too am a young girl in my twenties who finds myself in the art scene. While the dialogue is impressive I found that the main characters own dialogue was utterly unbelievable which was a contrast to her inner dialogue which I found funny. She goes back and forth between simple honest observations about class, life, art, to shallow, naive, self-righteous lines, this jump is usually pretty quick and I huffed in laughter a few times at the jump. I consider this part of what the book was trying to accomplish, not quite a child but definitely not an adult.
Isa and Gala were irritating to me, they squandered their months in New York by not using the network of people they had set up. They wasted money and time, which is another symptom of being young. They never used their strengths, this bothered me most in Isa. Every character looks down upon Gala but I do not see how Isa and Gala are different. Isa annoyed because she was never shown this, or never understood. Nothing ever came of her friendship with Gala in terms of depth, action, or meaning, or in storyline I should say. Her and Gala are friends because they understand each other, are alike, and have known each other a long time, but what else?
This book does not rely on plot it is carried by conversation and characters but I found these characters boring. I never wondered about their relationship, if it would end or change. I never wondered about any of these relationships.
So why did I keep reading? Because of the prose. The writing lulls you into it, it sets atmosphere well, has a strong consistent tone that does not question or doubt itself.
Typically I would give a book like this, this being issues I consider it to have, two stars. But Katy does do something well with her characters. Especially her leading woman, who in this book actually has a personality! Something I'm running into on my quest to find romance books I enjoy, is that the woman is often plain. She is average and this is her defining quality. Meg in this is an artist, she loves, she has a skill, she knows she's good at it and she tangles it.
Reid and Meg's number v letter talk was also fun. Most romances come with a cute gimmick like this that I feel is often dropped or played too much, but the prose while talking about art and math was some of the most enjoyable parts of the book. It gave it extra flavor.
So now I bet youre thinking, “why it sounds like you enjoyed the book why only three stars? Dare, you said two!”
The pacing felt a little strange to me. The last half of the novel was overly dramatic, which I do not always mind, but it felt a little too silly for the tone of the rest of the book. I liked the FBI coming and the raid but I think it could have been done better. Also god that letter was soooooooooooo long. Had to skim that part. It really brought down the entire book for me.
Every now and then I pick up middle grade books. When they are good they are powerful and moving because its pure simple clean story telling. Sparrow Rising is that.
The characters are crafted well. The pacing is tight and sturdy the whole way through. I was a bit shocked to find a good amount of violence, this violence is justified in my opinion. The messages of these books are to communicate dangers of authority, class divide, the importance of knowledge, and the effects of racism.
The violence and harsh lessons are paired with typical adventure antics, charming characters, the fun fantasy setting and the mystery! Little seeds of a bigger mystery are planted in this book and I am so excited to read the next ones in the series.
This is an excellent thing to hand off to young readers who crave fantasy or adventure books.
This took me longer to get through because the content is so gross. This is lessened by the style of writing, the craft here is incredible.
Looking through the reviews, and by other comments Ive heard, there is a lot of talk of “feeling sympathy for a pedophile” as I've read the book now, I can say I never felt this.
When are we supposed to feel sorry for him? I never do or did while reading. At anytime he was put in danger, or felt loss, even in his recollection of childhood, I simply did not care for such a characters well being.
It is strange reading about such a grotesque character. Who does irredeemable acts upon a child. Which is not even his only flaw. He is classist, he is racist, he is so so many terrible things. He is unaware of himself through the entire book while us the reader can see him in his pathetic totality.
I do not suggest this book to anyone who is weary of it. Its masterfully put together, its crafted so well, it does, after so many years, still have something worth hearing within its pages. Its about Dolores. I wanted to know her so desperately, who she was away from him. Her favorite candies and her secrets amongst friends. I wanted to know that she still had a shiny little marble of herself tucked away from this vile evil man.
Of course we only get glimpses of her through his eyes as he does not care about Dolores person. He does not see her as a person, he's come up with a terrible name for girls her age and deprives them of any humanly respect.
What made me decide to read Lolita finally was seeing that Nabokov had asked for the cover to not be of a girl. Not have any resemblance of a girl on the cover. His request had not been heeded.