ren
I really liked the first half of this book, and I was very excited for the story and guessing what would happen. It was set up nicely with the mouse and rat who were similar but different characters and i was very invested in their stories. I lost a lot of interest during ‘book the third' and wasn't interested in Mig or any of the human characters. I felt like we were told repeatedly how much of a good person Pea was but we never really saw it. Hearing Mig say “Gor” about 2 thousand times was not very enticing but I get that this is a kid's book.
I found it a little disappointing how one-dimensional Roscuro was and he kinda just ended up being generic bad guy with a rushed redemption. I was expecting it to be a bit more nuanced so my expectations fell a little short.
I did enjoy this book though I thought it was cute and I loved the parts focussing on the rodents! There were a lot of really nice quote-able parts of this book and I'll be thinking about it for a while!
I'm still processing this book but i think i really liked it
– feb 2021
– edit march 2022. –
after a long think, i've updated this to a generous 3 stars. there were a lot of things that resonated with me in this book (as i'm sure it would for any one with mh issues) and a magical library with a sweet older librarian looking after you sounds like a dream - but ultimately it hasn't really stuck with me. the premise is very interesting but it didn't seem to go anywhere with it and was quite formulaic/repetitive. the message, while important, was a bit heavy handed to say the least. i'm usually one who needs things spelled out a bit for me and even i found it overplayed. i did like seeing the different AUs and imagining mine is always a fun pass-time of mine so it was cool to see it done in a book in this way. discussion re and act of suicide is a large part of this book, and it may be triggering if that's something you've grappled with.
in the end, it was ‘just fine'
4.5 stars, still holds up in 2021.
This reading, I listened to the re-recording of the audiobook by Tatiana Maslany which was read beautifully. She did sigh a little too much on the beginning which was a little jarring and distracting, but overall the performance was fantastic.
I wanted to reread the series in preparation to read the prequel (which i just found out about!) and figured it's a good time to get my partner to read the books which meant a lot to me. Thankfully he agreed to listen along.
Suzanne is such a talented author and i think i only appreciate this book more after reading the overlander series for the first time last year and can recognise the similar themes and the ways she's grown her voice.
I'm so drawn in to the characters and world in this story and genuinely care so much about what happens to them, even feeling attached to the minor characters. generally, I'm not one for romance or mushy feelings but I'm so invested in the tangled up relationship between Katniss and Peeta and the complexity of her feelings and the heart break when he realises she doesn't necessarily feel the same way. It can so easily be played off as ‘poor boy getting cucked by bitchy girl' but i think Suzanne handles this very delicately and with subtlety that feels very genuine. Even though it's a dystopian YA, everything just feels so real.
i liked this better than 3, but not quite as much as 2 - i think. i need some time to ponder on this one. but I'm going with 3.5 for now
against all expectation i really enjoyed Henry as a character so i thought he was a nice addition and was satisfied with the epilogue. though there were a lot of characters in this book (and the last) that just kind of felt like... thrown in there, and i wanted so much to have them be more fleshed out
throughout the series we've had about 9 antagonists and it was a bit jarring to keep switching bad guys.
lots of cute moments in this one, a few sad ones. i mostly enjoyed this because i have grown fond of the characters and care to see their story arcs complete, but I didn't find the plot too exciting. I'm glad adam became more likeable throughout this book, i was finding it hard to read about him before but the scene when he and gansey shake hands gives me hope - i hope this is a real turning point for him.
i prefered the second book, which i really didn't expect at all given how much i disliked/nothinged ronan in the first book.
i was disappointed at how the villain was foiled so easily, to have a glimmer of hope for an alternative villain, and then quickly dashed by the reemergance of who i assume to be the villain of book four. i hope the fourth can wrap things up nicely.
it's always nice when you grow to like a character that was previously lacklustre. this happened with Ronan with me in this book. excited to see what happens next.
there were so many scenes i highlighted being like... is this Ronan being gay or is this the author making a point about homoerotic masculinity?? i think it could be both
i'm reading this for the first time as a 27 year old and i thought i'd be too ‘old' for this, especially considering the odd boyband deviantart esque cover on my library copy. but age be damned, i still had my smiling face buried in my hands when blue received her flowers. i enjoyed it! the second half was a lot more exciting than the first, though i wasn't bored in the first half, i liked the setting up of the story even if it was a tad slow.
i accidentally guessed the ‘twist' without realising it. i was musing about how 60% into the book, noah - one of the main four boys had only appeared in the doorway of two scenes looming like a ghost - it never actually occurring to me that he WAS a ghost. i thought that was a nice touch, and i'm glad he came back at the end. i was grinning like an idiot when they all ran out of the church. it would have been sad to lose him. though i'm not sure what adam ended up sacrificing, if he walked out the ritual apparently unharmed. perhaps this will be attended to in further books.
i'm looking forward to seeing what happens in the rest of the books and i've grown fond of the characters. - wtf was that last line about!
moving this to my on hold, as it got auto returned today and I'm just not feeling it. i'll likely move this to dnf eventually. I've been trying to slog through it but it's just not really piquing(?) my interest. i was really drawn in by the cover so i was hoping this would turn out to be a nice little gem i just magically found from my trawling of libby. but sometimes things just don't work out yanno
this year will be the year i read a book a week. i started these challenges in 2018 after a long long bookless spell. i had this goal in 2018, before halving it a month in (hey, i started in march). in 2019, i read feast or famine style and went around 6 months without opening a book... this will be the year i read consistently.
manga, graphic novels and comics are counting towards my read count but i may change this later. there are a couple of books on here that i consider “cheating”, so my ideal goal would be around 60-65.
2020:
not really my style of book, gossipy and bitchy, which can be enjoyable depending on the tone.
However, the author has a view on feminism/related topics that i don't agree with, plus she liberally uses the word dy*e throughout and says many shitty things about lesbians. it was two stars until that. not even Meryl Streep can save that.
what a shame.
this book fell a little flat for me. i listened to the audiobook and the narrator has a really unusual tone to her voice. she reads... The book... like this... and has odd emphasis on random words and it's not always clear where one sentence ends and one begins. i should've just given up and read the print book but i think the narration definitely negatively affected the story for me. her voice was great for the speaking/character voice parts.
The actual story had an interesting background, not very much seemed to happen, most of what i can remember is mc running about from place to place and her talking about her love at first sight.
i read this because on the cover it said one for fans of Neil Gaiman and i was disappointed. hopefully the rest of the author's books are more up my alley cause a few of them are on my tbr
i nearly stopped reading this because of how Petra was mistreated. The parts with the siblings and the nets were so ... boring. i felt like they really didn't add much to the story. i did enjoy this book though and it was miles better than the lost gate and it's sequel.
i didn't feel much for ender, he's very ‘Gary stu' which makes it a little hard to root for him. i wish there were more between him and his buddies at school to make us feel something. The scene with alai really stands out in my mind, it was very touching. i wish the other kids (and even ender, lbr) had more personality. i noticed this in his other books but characters, especially children, seem to be very one dimensional
and the ending... HMMMMM
i will need to digest this a bit more to see how i feel about it... i think it's a 3.5
the author tries to explain himself in the afterward but how all of the young female characters act in this book is awful. the way sex, sexuality and relationships are presented in this is... bad.
the story of wad and the power struggle with the kingdom and the Queen was the only thing that kept me going through this and i dreaded picking this book up every time. so much of it was just so boring and needless. i was so happy to be getting to the end of the book so i could cross it off and never think about this series again but then the thing with the Queen happens at the end. it's always the way. I'm yet to decide if I'll put myself through the chore of reading the last book, or just try and find a decent summary somewhere
well it's less cringy than Eragon but i concur with other reviewers in that there's odd unnecessary sexual references that just boggle the mind.
really interesting magic system and i enjoyed them figuring out how gates worked and the long descriptions of gate making shenanigans (but i enjoyed the Martian!) and i liked wad's story for the most part
Danny was a distasteful and annoying character who was presumably written to be cool and likeable (to who!!). i found the book too crass and the humour was a little middle grade for a book which discusses men's “seed” so frequently
i liked this book by the end of it. a bit of a slow start. if i had read this with no expectations i think i would have loved it, and i do really rate it for a tween read. but comparing it to thg - it just falls short for me.
i felt no emotions for any of the “bad” things that happened and my god the narrator's boots voice was jarring.
i hope the series gets a little more punchy, but overall a fun, light read.
It's a shame so many of the reviews skew negative due to issues with the ARC, something that any new readers wouldn't have any issue with. I almost didn't pick up this book due to that, so if you're hesitating - give it a go!
I really enjoyed this one, and while I for once actually guessed the suspect quite early on I kept thinking I was wrong the whole time whenever new information was given!
Very suspenseful and exciting.
It is a little confusing that the elizabeth letters are set in the future, but you can work it out from the month dates (which are given every chapter) May and June. It definitely could have been made clearer but part of the fun for me was figuring out if the letters from Aulus were written just after he got kidnapped or 1 year later.
I think the ending was satisfying, I have maybe 1 or two questions which is pretty good for a whodunnit.
I read this one by audiobook and there's an extra ‘interview' with Stancy and Tank which was enjoyable - but only gave me more questions! So I'm sad I didnt get to experience the drawings and diagrams made by Aulus, hope I can pick up the paper copy one day.
It was narrated well, I thought Aulus' voice was way, way too deep at first but by the end it had grown on me and was just ‘his voice'.
i don't know how i feel about this book. it started off worse than the first (which i wasn't a huge fan of anyway), far too long winded and boring, devolved into oddly detailed tales of horniness, even more cringey pining than before and then it actually got kind of interesting. The last 15-20% of the book hooked me and spoiler coming back is of course going to make me read the next book. though that was very predictable. but I'm not particularly happy about it.
My first Pratchett book. I started with this as an audiobook and then life got in the way and it kept getting auto-returned so I would splice in the ebook from time to time. By the end it probably ended up being about 50% read and 50% listened to. I enjoyed both. The narration was lovely for the audiobook, though a little swift. I found it easier to follow on 0.95 speed.
Being lots of little stories put together felt a little disjointed but I appreciated the world building, character development, and humour. I got a little lost at times but ploughed through and it didn't affect my enjoyment or understanding too much. Somewhere between 2 and 4 stars, a fine start to what I trust will be a fantastic series.
it started out great and gradually got worse. half way through when ‘the big thing' happens it started to go downhill. i grew very tired of eragon's cringy longings constantly being mentioned. i get he's a horny teen but keep it in your pants, son. picks up again once ‘a destination is reached' but didn't keep me interested for long.
i feel like it's mostly the accent of the narrator but murtagh best boy i will finish this series for him alone, what a babe.