yumna π
"Each time a survivor resurfaced, people were quick to say what does she want, why did it take her so long, why now, why not then, why not faster. But damage does not stick to deadlines. If she emerges, why don't we ask her how it was possible she lived with that hurt for so long, ask who taught her to never uncover it."
this was a very emotional read for me. as a victim, there have been times where trauma is minimized and internalized, and chanel very eloquently described these deep-seated emotions that are hard to express. i am forever thankful for this book, for giving survivors a voice and validating the injustices they face. thank you chanel, i am so grateful for your courage <3
Man I've been getting so lucky with my book choices, third 5 star in a row! I loved every second of this book. I love Darius, I love his family, I loved Yazd. Having grown up away from my home country and having to experience the cultural differences really hit home, especially the stigma towards mental health outside of the West. Amazing, amazing book, definitely one I'll be rereading in the future
4.5
what the hell this was so good?? ali hazelwood has really done it. my fave by her that i've read so far!
first read jan 2019guys this book was just..... so good. i'm so happy my friend emily forced me to buy this book because otherwise this would've just stayed on my tbr forever. everything was AMAZING - the whole EO thing was interesting and very intriguing. though to me that is just a side plot the the main event, which is victor vs eli. for some reason, their toxic and competitive friendship reminded me a lot of elise and anna in [b:Dangerous Girls 16074758 Dangerous Girls Abigail Haas https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1356513050l/16074758.SY75.jpg 21869436], but with less, well.... love. the two of them admired each other which turned into jealousy and contempt. my favorite parts of the book would be when victor would give his opinions on eli from his years of observation and vice versa. REALLY need to get my hands on vengeful now - hoping we hear more from eli in that book! oh, and did you guys picture victor as a hot psycho boy bc i did :)second reread sept 2023i wish i could read this again for the first time bc there nothing like the SUSPENSE in this book. didn't hit as good as the first time but i still love this story sm
reread jan 2021
holy SHIT this book is still amazing. i smiled so much & also shed so many tears while reading this. i can't believe i didn't immediately grab acowar after reading this the first time. yo, i'm so much more invested in this series than i realised. 5 stars forever, god.
july 2019
actual rating: 4.5 stars
oh my GOD what is WITH the acotar series and their CRazy ASS ENDINGS i did NOT expect that gonfeknlfdnkl definitely going to read acowar rly fkn SOON i am hella SHOOK
reread jan 2019: still one of my faves :') so fun and heartwarming, will reread forever
bought this book on a whim and i gotta say i am so pleasantly surprised!!! it was so sweet & emotional but also shows the realities of falling in love with someone outside of your social norms. loved it so much abby jimenez rly knows how to write a story that has me blushing and crying. can't wait to pick up another one of her books <3333
this was a... very difficult read. jennette is a great writer and i was hooked by her storytelling, but man, has she gone through a LOT. i commend her bravery because i can't imagine how daunting it is to allow one's self to be vulnerable and write about your traumatic experiences for the world to judge.
this audiobook was actually read by her, and there was one chapter where i could hear her crying through her narrations and it really broke my heart. hugs to u jennette <3
this was a delightful read. the basic plot of the novel is that the protagonist, jenna, goes on a trip to her grandmother's, evelyn's, hometown of hereford, massachusetts.
she's up to no good is told in two perspectives: the first by jenna in the present day, whose husband has just left her for another woman & is in the process of getting her life together. she goes on the trip with evelyn for a change of scenery (she had just moved back into her parent's house after the separation) and to accompany her grandmother. here, jenna finds out a lot about her grandmother's past β especially the decisions made that determined the current course of events. the second perspective is evelyn's, starting in 1950's when she meets her forbidden love, tony.
the highlight of the book by far was evelyn's character. in both perspectives i enjoyed her smartass comments but also the intense love she had for her family. she has dealt with much grief & sacrifice, about which she can be annoyingly cryptic about. she is just overall a little heathen and it's very fun to read.
this being said, i definitely enjoyed evelyn's storyline more than jenna's. jenna came off very childlike to me, which could be due to the rut she was in. if this book was only told in jenna's POV, i don't i think i would've enjoyed the book as much as i did. it felt like her POV existed mostly to show the outcome of the decisions made in evelyn's POV. she and her love interest have a bit of insta-love going on, but i think they developed a lot of chemistry towards the end of the book.
actual rating: 3.5 stars
pretty good build up, engaging, but repetitive and had an underwhelming ending
i didn't realise erotic thrillers were a thing, and to be honest i'm not mad about it. i appreciated that the erotica tied in neatly with the thriller aspect rather than it being a thriller with random sprinkles of erotica. i did think, however, this book could've been executed a little better. the different POV's got confusing - some labeled and some not - and i feel like we could've gotten more out of deanna as a character. the plot also felt pretty half-baked and quite predictable in the last third of book. despite this, the girl in 6e has some good bones for a great story, and i hope this comes through in the next book.
this was surprisingly good??? rly didn't expect that!!! 100% rooting for u celestine!!!
Actual rating: 3.5 stars
I picked this book up at a book fair, not knowing anything about it. What attracted me to it was that it was a novel/graphic novel hybrid which I've never seen before. The story itself was an easy read - nothing groundbreaking, but definitely enjoyable. Characters were pretty two dimensional, especially Lou and Rory who seem to have minimal reasons for their shitty actions. For some reason the characters reminded me of the TV show Daria, probably because Lou and Rory were both caricatures of a theatre girl and the hot, bitchy, manipulative girl, similar to how every Daria character is a dramatic version of a high school stereotype. The art in the book really added to the story, especially when the whacky sculptures came in. This was by no means the best book I've ever read, but I did really enjoy it!
reread jan 2021rating: 3 starsi actually enjoyed this more the second time with the help of audiobooks. somehow knowing what happens in acomaf made me a little more excited to pick this one up. some plot points still seemed a little meh & cliche the second time around. jan 2019rating: 2 starshonestly, if i wasn't so set on reading [b:A Court of Mist and Fury 17927395 A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2) Sarah J. Maas https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546406996l/17927395.SY75.jpg 25126749] i would've dnf'd this less than halfway through. the last 50 pages were really good but the rest was way too slow. it felt like it took forever to read this book because i kind of dreaded picking it up lol. i did like all the characters that were introduced and like they were all significant to the plot. overall i thought this book was decent but not amazing. really excited to read book #2 tho!!
HELLO BEST CHICK LIT IVE EVER READ HANDS DOWN THANK YOU EMILY FOR THE RECOMMENDATION THIS BOOK WAS A FUCKING RIDE
reread june 2019
damn this book was still sooooo hot the second time. listened to the audiobook this time around and i loved it!!!! now gotta find some other enemies to lovers books to fill this void π« so excited for the movie as well, i think lucy hale will make a great lucinda!!!
i wanna take this book and hit anyone anti-lgbt over the head with it and make them read it and EDUCATE THEMSELVES. although this is a work of fiction, it gave me so much insight in the real world. so many lessons that good people should learn embedded in the point of view of the protagonist that has lives thousands of different lives.
i LOVED the romance aspect of this book. forbidden love is always fun to read but an almost impossible love bc idk what body i will be in tomorrow and where i'll even be??? AMAZING. this was a very easy but emotional read, the ending had me in tears.
read until mid-chapter 17
the more i read this book the more i didn't like it. thought it was going to be a super interesting read especially with the WWII tie in. the characters in the book were all so two-dimensional. you would read about βkafka' doing things but not really how his internal monologue was developing throughout the story. nakata was a more interesting character due to his disability that had something to do with the incident on the hill. that incident was probably the most interesting part about the book. maybe i would've liked the plot and characters more but the journey was definitely not worth getting to the destination.
the cat torturing scene was the last straw. i started it and skipped a few pages but i genuinely didn't care what happened to these characters or where the story was going. oops, sorry. maybe i'll try reading another murakami novel in the future, but this book has kind deterred me from reading more of his work. i guess time will tell!
As someone that isn't really into the whole dystopian craze, I actually really enjoyed Divergent. The plot was the epitome of a young adult/dystopian novel where a βnormal' girl lives in a world with a totalitarian government that figures out she is actually an outcast, falls in love with a similarly out of place boy and they save the day. Despite the typical plot and chain of events, Divergent was very engaging; I found myself losing track of time and reading until 5am. I understand why people love this book and Veronica Roth, without a doubt, deserves all the praise she's been receiving. Definitely one of the better dystopian type novels I've read!
was this the best ya contemporary i've ever read? no, but i 100% see myself picking up the rest of the series for an easy, trashy read. if you're looking for a west coast gossip girl-esque story, pick this up.
Okay. So, this book broke my heart. Not because it was bad though, because this book was so fucking amazing. I read it in around two days only because I stayed up until 4am reading even though I had uni early the next morning - for some reason I was just so fucking committed to this book.
The thing about this book is that from when Ezra meets Cassidy you assume the whole book is a love story, which it is for a brief period of time when Ezra is falling in love with her in a few chapters. This novel is so much more than that. It's about individuality and how no matter what your interest are or what you're good at, you are under no obligation to be confined to a specific clique or social status.
Ezra's character was beautifully written with drastic character development which was relatively subtle throughout the book considering that his live HAD to drastically change due to his accident. Ezra was always βdifferent' when he was friends with the jocks because he was smart, witty and his main priority wasn't doing keg stands. Although he didn't know his true potential until his accident his character development seems to flow so naturally.
What made me really love this book was the very last chapter, where he is in college and wonders what has happened to Cassidy. I love the reality of this. Cassidy's character was one of the most realistic in the novel (and of course the most unrealistic being Charlotte, but I mean you can't have a book about high school without vapid, materialistic, social climbing cheerleaders); her decision to keep away from Ezra after figuring out his car had collided with Owen's instead of going back to him was the most realistic anyone would have made. She knew that realistically, love wouldn't fix everything. And ALSO realistically, you don't keep in touch with someone that has broken your heart and I love that he had no idea where she was or what she was going. There was some sort of beauty in that I can't really explain.
Ugh. There's so much more I love about this book I can't even begin to articulate everything else. It's amazing, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I think anyone that is a fan of realistic young adult fiction HAS to read this. Right now.
