tori

oh wow...

the amount of times this book chewed me up and spit me back out...

the writing is the most stand out feature i'd say. it's so rich and beautiful and warm and comforting. i'll keep this section short because there's nothing i could say in my own words that would live up to what's actually in the book.

it's hard to discuss the characters, since there are so many characters who come and go so quickly. but the three that are there throughout the whole thing are immaculate. they are so well written and i'd say that henry has some of the best descriptions of battling with mental health without naming anything in particular that i've seen. i adore the metaphor and the repetition of “it's just a storm, it's just a storm”. luc was an archetype i typically see in YA but i was glad to see him here, the idea of a “dark, evil, hot antagonist who's clearly not healthy in relationships but you love him anyway” and i LOVED IT. addie... idk what words i can say about her. she's such a well written character, it's hard to put into words other than the ones in the book.

this is absolutely an immediate favorite and i don't think i'll forget anything about this book anytime soon ;)

this is incredible.

i don't know what else to say.

i want to cry and hug my mom and all my friends and dance in a field and drink wine and swim in a freezing cold river and watch fireworks.

is that too much to ask?

I like Jacob

I had to read this for school but I actually really enjoyed it!! It read very much like a movie (which was not something I was expecting from a memoir but I was pleasantly surprised!!) and it kept me hooked very easily. There were a few moments where things were a little repetitive, simply because she would restate something she had said in almost the same exact wording pages before.

Other than that, a really enjoyable, tense, and emotional read!

**3.5 stars!!

This was super cute!! I love the conversations about expectations from parents and pairing them with what you want for yourself. I feel like there's not a ton of that in YA romance. I also liked the writing style, it was simple and straightforward, but I loved how Emma Lord would relate things to food whenever she could, since that was what the two of them had in common.

The characters overall were a bit underdeveloped, ESPECIALLY the side characters. Pooja, Paul, and Paige (just now realizing they all start with P's lol) were all just caricatures of people, boiled down to 1.5 personality traits, made solely to serve the main characters. Ethan was a bit more of a character but I think that was only because Jack's main conflict revolved around him.

I feel like the ending also could've been shortened a bit, it felt like it rambled for a while.

Overall, pretty cute story with some interesting new perspectives!!

bad.

didn't like.

i saw the plot twist coming from the very beginning.

also the writing is so awkward and weird??? i don't think jessica goodman ever met a teenager.

Really enjoyed this! It was beautifully written and it was a really cool way of storytelling, telling almost entirely through flashbacks

**3.75

Oh wow. Ok.

So that wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but I also can't say I was disappointed. I wish I knew about the romance aspect more going into it because that came as a bit of a shock but I still enjoyed that part.

The writing was definitely beautiful and you can absolutely see the author's past experience as a horror author shine through. However, some of the writing was pretty unclear. For example, Tierney would be thinking about running and it wouldn't be clear that she actually started running until a couple paragraphs later when she was already running.

Also, even though the story was in first person, it felt that we weren't really in Tierney's head. We didn't know what she was thinking a lot of the time, or at least not explicitly. It's probably just a personal choice, but I really enjoy when we know a character's plan as they're executing it and there wasn't a lot of that in this book.

(Also, even though she was clever, the main character was... just a tad dumb at points lmao)

That ending, though. Wow.

Everything about the last part, called “The Returning”, was amazing. It was a like a call-to-action and, though it was rather abrupt and I wasn't that crazy about the final line, I personally really enjoyed the vagueness of the ending. It leaves it open to interpretation.

One of my favorite quotes has to be “ She's so incredibly grateful, but she shouldn't have to feel grateful for this—for being treated like a basic human being. None of us should.”

Wow

Ngl I had absolutely no critical thoughts while reading this so idk if can give it a star rating lmao

Actually wait I'm gonna give it three stars bc I gave the other two four and I didn't like this one as much bc Jacob was super manipulative and toxic to her and she knew that but she just... went with it

oh good lord

I went into this books expecting to make fun of it and hate-read it.

I ending up loving it so much more than I ever thought I would.

I don't know what I have to say that hasn't already been said.

I think this is the easiest 5-star rating I've ever given a book. From the very beginning, I knew that I was going to love this book. And I did. I adored everything from the witty narration, to the flawed yet insanely lovable and relatable characters, to the representation that made me feel seen and heard. Everything about this book is phenomenal. (Not to mention the absolutely swoon-worthy protagonists!!! Ahhhh I love them!!!

The characters all felt very cookie cutter: The spunky newbie MC who stumbles her way through life until she finds a group to help her, the “by-the-books” love interest who has a secret that keeps them from being together, the supportive best friend who might have a secret, but you'll never know! Also, there was no build up to the twist at the end, so it didn't feel satisfying at all.

However, I read this in between some very heavy books that required a lot of thought and took some time to process, so it was a nice refreshing break. Something I could read in my free time without having to pay too much attention to. A summer read.

i wasn't that crazy about this book. it felt like it was almost entirely dialogue and i couldn't tell that the characters cared about each other aside from them saying “i love you”. it felt like there wasn't a lot of emotion in the writing and it was incredibly fast-paced. also the synopsis on the back and what was made out to be the main conflict didn't happen until the last 40 pages of the book. wasn't crazy about it but it wasn't awful!

I read this for school but don't get it twisted; the fact that this was required reading had absolutely no hinderance on my enjoyment of this.

I really really loved the writing style. It was so beautiful and seemed to romanticize every aspect of life. But there were so many plot points or lines of dialogue that just had me asking “why? But... but why?” I really couldn't get into the story, and that might be because this just wouldn't have been something I would've picked up on my own.

Also, there's definitely something to be said about how schools have us read stories about racism from a white character's POV and by a white author.

it was a little slow getting started but i really enjoyed it overall! super atmospheric and reminded me a lot of agatha christie, with the victorian air of it all.

there's one detail that really confused me towards the end but it's a spoiler.

however, while i feel that the book did wrap up rather well there is something that is bugging me that i can't wrap my head around. a good portion of the plot hinges on the idea of dark eyes versus blue eyes and who has which. on page 149, harriet is looking at a picture of a girl she presumes to be her mother, a girl named maggie. we know for a fact that this is maggie, as it's confirmed by someone who was also in this picture. the book reads, “Hal looked at the girl sitting on the grass, at her unflinching dark eyes.” then, much later on, on page 332, when hal seems to be uncovering the final parts of the mystery, there's a passage that says, “Maggie who had written the diary. And she wasn't looking at the camera. She was looking at Ezra, with her blue, blue eyes.”so.does maggie have dark eyes like hal? or blue eyes?? because in the first passage, maggie's dark eyes are what led hal to realizing that maggie was, in fact, her mother.

I'M SO CONFUSED

BUT I ENJOYED IT THOROUGHLY NONETHELESS EXCEPT THAT ONE BIT

**3.5 Perfect September read for that period right between summer and fall!!

I really enjoyed this! The plot was really intriguing! It was super atmospheric and it felt like the ocean and the island were their own characters. I also really liked the characters and “quaint, small town with something to hide” vibes.

However, it was also pretty predictable. I guessed almost every plot twist except for one VERY early on. Also, some bits of the writing style did leave something to be desired. There were some scenes that were supposed to be pretty high-stakes and dramatic that just fell a little short.

There were some absolutely beautiful gems within though, including:

“Love is an enchantress—devious and wild.It sneaks up on you, soft and gentle and quiet, just before it slits your throat.”

and I think my personal favorite:

“I fell in love. What's more human than that?”

Overall, good spooky vibes

i really enjoyed this!! i loved how real all the characters felt and i especially enjoyed the flashback chapters we would get from lily's parents and her aunt judy. it's also incredibly clear how much research and thought malinda lo put into these characters and this story, truly a peak into what life was like for a queer chinese american teen girl in a time where one half of who she was made her an outcast to the other half.

Cant process everything rn, just gonna jot down basic thoughts:

-love writing style, def gonna check out more TJR
-ADORE the aesthetic, esp at the beginning (I know it wasn't the point of the book but I also wish we got a little bit more setting writing, setting up the places and the aesthetics of the time)
-would've enjoyed a bit more on set things (but I understand the reason that was more prominent in the beginning and less towards the end)
-wish it was longer, if we're gonna cover someone's entire life, the book should be minimum of 450 pages. I felt like I didn't get to know the characters enough and form meaningful attachments with a lot of them
-the ending.... wow

This book is absolutely amazing!! It's so beautifully written and has so many clever metaphors intertwined throughout the story. One of my favorite quotes from the book has to be “Sometimes I feel like a guest in a house full of loving people I barely know, and I see a wide-open yard out back, and think, ‘That's where I want to be', and so I walk outside. But standing alone in the empty yard, I look back inside at a house full of loving people, and I think, ‘Why did I come out here?'” It takes one of the most overdone, overused tropes and turns it right on its head. There was a moment when I was reading it when I really believed that this amazing book was going to fall victim to a classic cliche, but it 100% did not. There are so many great twists and turns in this and all the characters are so unique! Each of them have something that makes them different and unique, none of them are cookie cutter archetypes at all. Overall, just a really great book!

I literally had to put down the book and just process for a couple minutes after I finished.

Every book in this series changes genres, just a little. While the first one felt a bit like a spy story, and the second more an adventure, this one was an odd mix of the two! The perspective switches were (almost always) super interesting and the diversity and representation was awesome!

I do feel like this book fell a little flat simply because there were a couple chapters that dragged a little long. While in the beginning, we got Mare and Cameron's perspective, I thought that once Mare got out of imprisonment, we were going to get Evangeline's as a replacement of Cam's. While there was only one more chapter from Cameron's perspective, I still felt it was a little unnecessary.

But, considering that was the worst part of the book says a lot!! I adored the subtly of the writing and I loved the twists and turns of the characters backstories we got. Not to mention the fight scenes were so fast-paced and action packed! They also paid off so much more because of how little there were.

Even though I docked this book a star, I still think that it is phenomenal and I can't wait to read the final installment of the series!!!

Oh.... uh.... alright.

Well then. I don't really know how to articulate my thoughts on this well, so I'll do it in the simplest possible terms.

I thought the story was enjoyable and interesting but the characters were extremely unlikable. I really only liked one (and a half) character(s), but he didn't even get a happy ending. None of them did really, and my dislike of this book might also be due to the fact that I'm finishing this the day after Christmas and I've simply been in the mood for something upbeat and warm.

The writing style was dense and definitely and acquired taste, but I personally really, really enjoyed it. However, the timeline was a little messy at times. There was this one thing Tartt did an astonishing amount where she would have the characters say “Remember when {this thing} happened?” but it wouldn't be something that had previously been explained to the reader. The characters would have a conversation about it, AND THEN she would explain the event to the reader, instead of just letting us know when it happened in the first place and calling back to it later.

Not to mention the fact that the last 100 pages or so where very repetitive, but then there was the final couple pages and the epilogue that was sort of a reprieve.

It was alright. There were a few things I really enjoyed but there were too many flaws for me.

Honestly I really preferred the show over this. While I tried looking at this as just a book, I couldn't help but subconsciously compare the two. The book felt a little rushed and none of the characters really felt like characters. I get that they're supposed to be superheroes and they're not supposed to be entirely realistic, but they all felt very one-dimensional.

oh...
I'm done...
That's it...
That's the end...
...
...
...
i wasnt ready


Okay but in all seriousness, I genuinely really enjoyed this. Aveyard's storytelling and writing was still amazing as ever and I stand by my statement that she just has a way of making you love and care for characters, even if you don't want to...

cough cough MAVEN cough cough

However, there were just a couple things which I wish were written a little differently.

I wish that there was a little bit more trepidation on Queen Cenra's part before just turning around and retreating. I get that we were in Iris's perspective and that getting Cenra's also would've just been over the top, but I think Iris would've been able to read her pretty well, at least well enough to understand her hesitation and convey that to the reader. Sort of watching her go back and forth between deciding whether to stay and fight or to retreat and get home safely.

Also, I do sort of wish that Kilorn was with Mare just a little bit more throughout this book. Considering that he's her best friend, I think that her feelings towards him should've been stronger. Ya know, a platonic love, platonic soul-mates. I think that the scenes he was in were sort of brushed over and he didn't matter a ton.

Another thing was that parts of the final battle did feel a little underwhelming. I don't mean between Maven and Mare, that was wild. I mean the BIG battle. I feel like a lot of the scenes were a bit slowed down and could've been written w a bit of a faster pacing. I also think that the writing was focusing on the small parts of the battle as opposed to the mass destruction that was happening around them.

But those didn't really take away my enjoyment, though.

Also, I was thrown for a loop w the amount of people that died in this book. And I don't mean that so many characters that I loved died, I mean almost no one died. I was seriously expecting a massacre of all the characters I loved.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this and I liked this as a conclusion to the series but it fell just a little flat for me, especially the last ~100 pages of the book.

But the first ~500 were still phenomenal, right on par with the rest of the series.

.......what