tori

WHY AM I CRYING OVER A PERSONIFIED BOAT

was this plot completely predictable? yes. did any character have more than 1.5 character traits? no. did i still smile and kick my feet when the main characters finally kissed? YES ABSOLUTELY.

this book is sugary sweet and is nothing more and nothing less than it claims to be. however, in between very heavy reads, this was very very fun and an easy read. great ya beach read!!

(my one insane nitpick is that this books starts TWO WEEKS before senior prom and she STILL DOESN'T HAVE A DRESS?????? like yeah i get it's explained and is part of the story but there's no possible way ANYONE waits that long, that bugged me the entire time)

i enjoyed this!! super atmospheric and surreal. loved the author's writing style, i definitely want to check out her other works after this. the shakespeare tie-ins were super interesting, but i did get a little lost in them, trying to figure out which book character was meant to represent which shakespeare character. it's worth saying that this is NOT a retelling (like i starting thinking it was), simple a book with some parallels to a few shakepeare plays.

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?

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

i cried again

go on, you foolish boy

good lord this one wrecked me

he's my son. don't hurt him.

this was really fun!! i love modernizing shakespeare and i think this handled it really well

i enjoyed this a lot! i think there were parts of it that definitely dated the book and possibly didn't age well but there were also some that aged incredibly, such as fey making a joke about a writers/actors strike coming in the future due to not getting internet residuals. i would definitely recommend it to anyone looking to someday head into the entertainment industry.

oh my god....

i have never read an author who understands teenagers like alice oseman

this book is absolutely gorgeously written but it is also definitely a product of it's time lol, there was some serious early/mid-2010 lingo in here but the characters and stories made up for it 10000%

frances and aled are some of the most relatable characters and one of the most beautiful friendships i've seen written in a while. i saw so. much. of my best friend and i in the two of them and it was just incredible.

wow.

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!

there was a foreword that sort of let me know the ending from the beginning but honestly i didn't mind. this was incredible.

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 ;)

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.

well... this took me a lot longer than i thought it was going to.

in all fairness, i went on tour in the middle of reading this so whatever.

this was fun!! i have to be honest, it didn't draw me in immediately and it definitely had it slow parts but when it was good, it was REALLY good.

i have a few qualms, one of which being that the characters did not feel like real people in the slightest. our main character, avery, probably felt the most real out of all of them but even so, she still fell victim to a couple of corny, YA-heroine one liners that did NOT help her likability.

everyone else though? they had an aesthetic and a single character trait (maybe two if you were a love interest) and that was that.

again, it was fun! but it was like sugary cereal, you absolutely cannot have it all the time or else it'll clog your arteries lol

i'm also just a sucker for the affluenza aesthetic. love me some rich people murder mysteries!!

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.

i honestly didn't know what to expect going into this but I really enjoyed it! there's definitely a couple problems with a couple lines, being as this book was written in 1989 but honestly nothing egregious. i loved pretty much all the characters and, honestly, for a murder mystery, there was something strangely comforting about the way it was written. it felt very cozy, in a way.

i loved all the details about the fashion and the way clothing played such a huge role in the story, it worked so well!! also the way it was written was so interesting and definitely kept me hooked and reading. the way it followed so many different, seemingly unrelated characters at the same time that then all came together so nicely at the end was incredible. the ending did wrap up a bit quick for my taste but other than that, a really great read!

oh good lord

I picked up this book on a whim while looking for the evermore vinyl in target and omg im so happy I did

this book read like a DCOM, it was so fun!! I loved every single character and moment in this book, I genuinely cannot think of anything I disliked

of course, it's not perfect. you'll absolutely have to suspend your disbelief a bit, but once you accept that and just let the magic of the story take over, you are in for an wildly fun time.

it really is a touching story about best friends dealing with growing up, parental expectations, and changing friendships together, set in the awe inspiring spectacle of New York City. (not to mention, as a current high school junior heavily involved in theater, I felt INCREDIBLY seen and called out by much of this book)

I think I might have a new favorite and I can't wait to check out more from this author!!

**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!!

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

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!

oh my GODS

this book was so fantastic, and being described as “Greek mythology meets hunger games” was VERY accurate

Small warning, this definitely isn't the most accessible book in the world when it comes to the mythological aspect of the story. You need at least a basic understanding of greek mythology to understand and probably a bit of googling, at least I did lol

I'm not entirely sure what to rate this bc it toon a while to get into but the ending just has such a strong effect on me, so maybe 4.5

I enjoyed it and I definitely like the premise, but it wasn't anything spectacular. I'll definitely pick up book two, and it wasn't that bad for a first manga!

Merged review:

I enjoyed it and I definitely like the premise, but it wasn't anything spectacular. I'll definitely pick up book two, and it wasn't that bad for a first manga!

Oh. My. Goodness.

That's literally all I can say.

I just finished this and I cannot put into words how much I love this book oh my goodness.

I'll come back in the morning I need to sit with this wow

Edit: okay hello it's the next morning, here are my thoughts.

This book is PHENOMENAL. I'd heard a lot about it and thought about picking it up for a while, but when I heard someone compare it to “I'll Give You The Sun” by Jandy Nelson (my all-time favorite book) that was when I knew I needed to read this immediately. And honestly?? I really see the comparisons! Noah and Ari are super similar characters and the writing style is very similar. While Alire-Sáenz doesn't exactly match Nelson's constant flowering metaphors, this book isn't any less gorgeously written. From the very first line, before the book really even started, this book just slapped me in the face while hugging me tightly.

It was wild.

I don't want to spoil the first line but it was so painstakingly relatable and I felt understood from the first moment I opened the book.

One of my favorite quotes (aside from the first line) is:

“I knew that there was something about me that Mrs. Quintana saw and loved. And even though I felt it was a beautiful thing, I also felt it was a weight. Not that she meant it to be a weight. But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.” UGH... LOVE THAT SO MUCH!!! FELT THAT IN MY SOUL

Towards the end, I had a few ideas of where I thought it was going to go and I did end up calling one of the final conflicts, I still greatly enjoyed this.

I think this is gonna be closer to a 4.5. I'm not sure why, just kind of a gut feeling, but I'll still round up bc this book def deserves it!!!❤️❤️