at any given time, i feel like i'm reading romance as a cry for help.
when i find a romance novel i love, it's my favorite kind of genre to enjoy. justat any given time, i feel like i'm reading romance as a cry for help.
when i find a romance novel i love, it's my favorite kind of genre to enjoy. just so comforting and fun and feelings-y.
but the vast, vast majority of the time, i am way too picky to bear it.
and in this case, well...this book is just bad.
sorry.
i really wanted to like this book, insistent product placement of the author's weird side quest cupcake wars-appearing bakery and all.
but it was too quirky and too much for me. there were CLIFFHANGERS in this book. like, chapters that ended with ellipses. "until he saw who was in the room..." and "she wasn't ready for what happened next..."-ass sentences. it feels silly.
this was unfortunately a not-good book on a sentence level (lots of weirdly constructed ones), on a plot level (clichéd confessions, an undue level of love interest-on-love interest obsession), or on a character level (we have a quirky gal and a boring guy, much like every romance of the last 5 years seems doomed to contain).
on top of that, this was arduous to get through. we're talking 320+ pages of miscommunication followed by 10 pages of happiness followed by, you guessed it, MORE miscommunication.
and for two people who tell each other 1100 times they'll be harmless (maybe "be harmless to each other" can be our always), they never tried to talk at all.
sheesh.
bottom line: i don't know what i did in a past life to deserve it, but this was a punishing read....more
for me, this book was love at first sight (that cover! girls falling in love at the university of edinburgh!)...and dislike at first read.
unfortunatelfor me, this book was love at first sight (that cover! girls falling in love at the university of edinburgh!)...and dislike at first read.
unfortunately, this is just not well written. that feels like the meanest criticism there is, but there's no avoiding it here. this book uses synonyms for said, is teeming with appearance descriptions, and has darlings on every page that likely should have been killed.
and this extends, sadly, to plot: everything seems to be going really quite well, and then suddenly someone does something quite unforgivable, out of nowhere and inexplicably. less than ten pages later the book ends. that's after hundreds of pages of what feels like flippant, underexplored inclusion of a dozen serious social issues.
i wish it could, but debut doesn't begin to explain it all away: this was under-edited by a lot. it feels tropey, shallow, cliched, and i came away thinking i needed more and less at once.
bottom line: if you don't have anything nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all...but i really wanted to like this book.
a little thing i like to call Too Much and Not Enough, sadly.
in the first half, i have to tell you...i hated this so much. it stole the "where are youa little thing i like to call Too Much and Not Enough, sadly.
in the first half, i have to tell you...i hated this so much. it stole the "where are you supposed to put all of it" beautiful love and mourning line from fleabag and had a going rate of one simile per sentence, as in most sentences on average had one but sometimes mercifully one would be spared, but not to worry because just as often, somehow, evilly, there would be more than one.
the second half was better, for some reason. but that's a lot to get over.
this very badly wants to be a quiet, striking, introspective book, like those written by sally rooney or brandon taylor, but it doesn't know how to do that. maybe the author will find a way!
bottom line: yipes.
(thanks netgalley for the e-arc)
------------------ tbr review
blacked out and requested books on netgalley exclusively because of their covers...more
modern life is an unrelenting nightmare <3 and so is this book.
do you know how difficult it is to get me to think a MAN is a better person than a womamodern life is an unrelenting nightmare <3 and so is this book.
do you know how difficult it is to get me to think a MAN is a better person than a woman? a woman who is our protagonist? a man who is bad?
but our main character, a woman who is addicted to internet stalking, being nosy, justifying her own behavior, and chalking it all up to a vague feminism, is so much worse. she begins at rock bottom and manages to do a sum total of negative character development, spending her days jealous of a hot dead girl who dared to date her not even boyfriend 2 years ago.
i can excuse a lot of bad behaviors in the face of the unrelenting misery of daily life — this is coming from a person who usually replaces at least one meal with a small pile of sweets on any given day, like a child who magically gained the power of self-determination — but it turns out even i have a line.
bottom line: this is monotonous, unchanging, and hard to get through. much like la vie quotidienne itself.
i really, really, really, REALLY did not need this book's hamfisted discussion of abortion, featuring a murderous wolf abortionist and the ghost of a i really, really, really, REALLY did not need this book's hamfisted discussion of abortion, featuring a murderous wolf abortionist and the ghost of a fetus' future.
in fact i must ask...who is this for.
also they forgot a couple pretty crucial plot points here, it seems.
namely that these guys were supposed to be killed by a wolf.
this may seem like a beach read, but it's actually a fantasy novel about a millennial who is able to live in a major city, own a home in california, ethis may seem like a beach read, but it's actually a fantasy novel about a millennial who is able to live in a major city, own a home in california, eat takeout every night, and take luxury vacations on a copywriter's salary.
to which i say: lol.
by far the best part of this was the food descriptions.
everything else was mediocre to bad, ranging from silly characters to silly plots to silly writing (for example, trying to describe how time moves slower in this setting and saying "Everything was longer in Italy. Even time," when in fact time is the only thing being described).
on top of that, this is the perfect romance for all those readers out there who prefer their love interests to take advantage of drunk and/or weeping and/or mid-mental breakdown women.
dreamy!
bottom line: i want a cold glass of wine and a tomato-based appetizer in a seafront restaurant now, the lack of possibility of which will be the second way this book disappoints me.
once upon a time, i claimed that i would read any book that was written by lynn painter. i'd read not one, but two of her YA contemporaries — which i once upon a time, i claimed that i would read any book that was written by lynn painter. i'd read not one, but two of her YA contemporaries — which i would call my guilty pleasure genre if i had feelings and/or had ever felt guilty about anything — and, in a crazy twist for a heartless soulless hater such as myself, i'd (gasp) enjoyed both.
for someone who is literally constantly looking for even one comfort read in this cold, cold world, and for someone who constantly hates all of them, this was huge.
at no point was i able to tell where this book was going.
and at no point did i really want to.
at the very beginning of this book, you think you have mat no point was i able to tell where this book was going.
and at no point did i really want to.
at the very beginning of this book, you think you have met your male lead, due to the fact there is banter happening and an allegedly good-looking man is present. but then you read about a series of unfortunate events, of the X-rated variety rather than of the charming evil children's book category i prefer, and you're like, never mind. can't be him. he's bad at sex.
but it is.
it is him.
and the romance in question will come to fruition (if you'll forgive the disgusting and accidental pun) as our female lead teaches him how to, you know. hanky panky. get the car rockin' so you don't come a-knockin'. attend a session of sexual congress. knock boots. delight in the afternoon.
whatever you want to call it.
unfortunately, even in the face of these bizarre and frankly undesirable circumstances, i found these characters to be the unthinkable: boring. and it turns out that is kind of an important part of a romance book. or maybe a book in general.
on top of that, i found all of the morals around this arrangement to be pretty off-putting and blah. fairly immediately, because i forgot to mention that finn (the guy) is a c-list (generous) celebrity writing a memoir (okay) that we are supposed to pretend anyone would care about (they would not) and it is ghostwritten by chandler (the girl) (his employee), the ol' mind palace jumps to oh, this is sexual harassment.
no matter how shy or freckly or Old World Charming he is, your boss asking you in a shared hotel / airbnb situation to teach him how to hanky panky is...pretty high on the Icky And Illegal charts, no?
even later, once these two are In Love, their conversations veer into a new grosso dynamic i like to call You Should Follow Your Dreams And Stand Up For Yourself, But Not With Me Tho.
because don't worry — chandler decides to chase her dreams and write books of her own. she just inexplicably decides to finish this one, even though it will mean a lifetime of lying, first.
generally and beyond all of that insanity, there's a lot we're trying to accomplish here—social issues we attempt to address range from aging parents and ocd and anti-semitism to bullying and hollywood and Finding Your Passion.
none of it is discussed satisfyingly or fully, or even in a very fun or interesting or non-"what is happening what are we doing here" way.
but that's par for the course.
bottom line: not even one moment of this made sense to me.
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc / 1.5 stars)...more
sure, become a mermaid because of the weight of bigotry in the world...but do you have to be SO DRAMATIC about it.
i loved the idea of this book so mucsure, become a mermaid because of the weight of bigotry in the world...but do you have to be SO DRAMATIC about it.
i loved the idea of this book so much (satirical ish literary horror about a swimming star who chooses to become a mermaid because of the weight of misogyny and homophobia and racism), but the execution...not so much!
the language felt sloppy and imprecise in that hard-to-define underedited-debut way, and despite being categorized as a horror novel i would say only one scene really qualified as such.
otherwise it tended more toward melodrama and hit-you-over-the-head themes and arguments. here's an example, when our protagonist has recently sustained a head injury and is conspicuously refusing to answer her doctor's very normal question (how's the pain): "He misunderstood.
How was I supposed to differentiate between the pain due to the concussion and the pain due to the agony of everyday human life?"
yikes.
if i am being fully honest—and to the eternal chagrin of myself, my loved ones, and the world around me, i usually am—this was annoying and boring. in our main character, in the frustrating writing, and in how obvious and repetitive all the themes are.
i cannot stand being talked down to as a reader, especially for themes as simple as "bigotry abounds."
bottom line: my biggest, hardest NOPE in a while!...more
if you've ever wanted to read a sciencey, quirky romance filled with tumblr-esque pop culture references and toddler-age memes about a huge, serious, if you've ever wanted to read a sciencey, quirky romance filled with tumblr-esque pop culture references and toddler-age memes about a huge, serious, no-nonsense dickwad man who manages to have gleaming abs and marvel-esque biceps despite being a nerd who ostensibly lives inside of a laboratory, lifting nothing heavier than chalk and bunsen burners, as he meets a goofy not-like-other-girls Woman In Stem whose various traumas and backstories and mildly inconvenient past relationships mean she's searching for a daddy to daughter her up looking for love in all the wrong places, i.e., not looking at all because she doesn't need a man, only science, bad internal dialogue, and her own personality (read: allotted ration of problematic personal relationships, adorkable food obsessions, and single nerdy non-academic interest), plus a sex scene or two that will include at least one turn of phrase cursed to sear into your retinas for the rest of time...
i have a good feeling about this one, she says for the infinitieth time
update: well.
i wanted to like this book. in fact, i was convinced i would, due i have a good feeling about this one, she says for the infinitieth time
update: well.
i wanted to like this book. in fact, i was convinced i would, due to the following factors: 1) it seems like i haven't liked a romance in a while, which is unfair, and life is supposed to be kind and sweet and nice to me always; 2) i have liked other books by this author, or actually one other book, in the singular, which is still more than most can say; and 3) i wanted to.
but alas. apparently — and this is news to me — i don't make the rules???
huh.
regardless, this was immediately girl hatey, in an insane, like, 2000s level, toward not one but two women! the only other two women, in fact, who exist in the first chapter at all and aren't our protagonist.
which is kind of a feat, if you think about it.
on top of that, while there were moments when this was funny and even charming, it wasn't ever close to enough to overcome the terrible beginning or how unlikable our main characters are.
good god, those main characters! hallie piper (oof) is a not-like-other-girls lab-created disaster whose only two personality traits are having red hair and getting on my nerves. she is, apparently, immediately Special, not like these Dumb Other Women, and is also hot, which is where the tragedy occurs.
she attracts the attention of a straight-up nightmare monster. but sadly this not descend into a gory horror bloodbath. she lives happily ever after with the gruesome figment we meet in chapter one.
he is our love interest, jack.
he objectifies. he harasses. he doesn't take no for an answer. he repeatedly deliberately sabotages a relationship his so-called best friend is really excited about, via childish antics and blind entitlement.
he is, worst of all, boring.
i'm forced to say it. this book has a 4.04 average rating, but it's cringey, outdated, unromantic, silly, creepy, and weird.
so here we are again. here it is:
bottom line: i'm back in my unpopular opinion era.
hello, unpopular opinion regarding a beloved bestselling book that literally everyone on earth seems to love / find enchanting / desire to give their hello, unpopular opinion regarding a beloved bestselling book that literally everyone on earth seems to love / find enchanting / desire to give their firstborn besides me.
it's been a while.
and personally i can't think of a more devastating candidate for our big comeback than this, a book fitting an ideal description:
a beautiful cover that seems like it couldn't possibly contain anything but an intergenerational literary family drama (the best niche of all time) and yet is.
like did i mention the cover is beautiful. and i'm not just talking about the title!!! (pause for raucous laughter.)
unfortunately, that's the only thing i found particularly appealing about this whole thing. because it is:
1) not literary, but rather the kind of gimmicky and clichéd writing i expect from books i've never heard of found exclusively at airport bookstores 2) not a family drama, really, but more like a lack of family drama, because these people don't really care for each other all that much 3) created to hurt my feelings, specifically, because i am an eldest sister and this entire thing is from page 1 to page 897 (estimating) anti-eldest propaganda.
this is a book about 4 sisters, and one of them decides there's been a rift in the family and she is going to leave forever. that is the entirety of the plot, if i'm honest. which is fine. i'm all for no story, just vibes if i like the characters.
but here is the thing...the eldest sister is evil, the sister we unexpectedly spend a lot of our time following goes from Having A Personality to simply just Being Nice, and the other two are kept pretty clearly out of our way in case we accidentally trip and fall into something happening. (don't worry. we essentially do not.)
so i do not like the characters.
and to all of this i say: sorry to the padavano sisters but i'm different. i have 3 siblings and i'm one of 3 sisters and there is just no way i would let any of this happen to us.
and also...eldest sisters are not evil 2k23.
all of the stakes in this are deeply made up, and could be overcome in about a half a second if any of these people had even a passing interest in each other, let alone the kind of all-consuming sisterly love we're told they do. but instead of doing what i like to do with my sisters, which is get drunk and watch twilight, they decide to be like "i feel this made up trauma so much i want to pass it down from generation to generation."
so sure. whatever. do what you want.
but i don't have to like it!!!
i mean, in actual fact there were moments of this i really liked. but there were also plenty of moments of this i really didn't, such as when i was forced to turn to my boyfriend while reading this (by force of lack of options while on a plane) and say (view spoiler)["oh. it's a cancer book." (hide spoiler)]
but at least i got to get some anger out while we sat on the tarmac.
bottom line: i'm so glad you all loved this book so much, and also i have no idea what book you read.
when i first saw this book, i was filled with a personality-changing, life-defining, character-destroying rage. HOW COULD THEY NOT TELL ME ABOUT THIS when i first saw this book, i was filled with a personality-changing, life-defining, character-destroying rage. HOW COULD THEY NOT TELL ME ABOUT THIS BOOK, i demanded of a THEY that does not exist. WHY DID NO ONE SEE FIT TO INFORM ME OF ITS EXISTENCE, i followed up, also of the nameless THEY that had swiftly become my enemy.
but it turns out that the enemy i thought was my enemy was actually my friend.
not telling me about this book is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. and because no one told me about this book, everyone in the world is, it turns out, actually nice.
so the good news is we can probably have world peace now.
the bad news is: this book sucks.
the first installment of this series was very fun. it had several things that made it that way — mainly a sick and lovely new-england-in-the-fall boarding-school-yay setting and a fun original mystery from History.
those things are no longer here.
over the four (!) books since that first promising start, those things have slowly faded, and they have been replaced with a series of nightmares.
the things that made this series good were not here, and the things that made this series bad — our protagonist stevie's never-progressing identical character arc, side character david as a presence, david as a romantic lead, stevie in general, the attempts at emotion — were here in spades!
and to prove it, this book, WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE FIFTH BOOK IN WHAT IS ALLEGEDLY A MYSTERY SERIES, had a cliffhanger centered around the romance that i, as indicated, ABHOR.
a cliffhanger that acts as a warning not to continue...interesting tactic.
and yet, sadly, i will probably just keep reading these, continuing to grow the hate in my heart like a reverse grinch.
bottom line: i love everyone and i hate this book.
the thing about this book is that it is, ostensibly, a romance. we are all, by reading it, agreeing to a social contract in which we will receive apprthe thing about this book is that it is, ostensibly, a romance. we are all, by reading it, agreeing to a social contract in which we will receive approximately 300 pages covering life's grandest topic: two randos deciding they like each other more than anyone else on earth.
fun stuff. just one problem:
these people do not like each other. and i do not like them either.
they're always yelling at each other in, like, various states of undress. in between taking turns completing gratuitous acts of charity-level kindness while monster people look on and criticize them and/or innocent bystanders.
it's absurdly unrealistic, but, far more offensively, it's annoying.
i read books i don't love all the time and i never have a problem finishing them. until now! this was a nightmare to get through.
bottom line: a book unpleasant enough to make me write an actual review.
We all know the phrase "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
But is there an equivalent phrase about when you read a booWe all know the phrase "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
But is there an equivalent phrase about when you read a book and rate it 3 stars only to come back a little over a month later to realize you actually, in point of fact, don't have anything nice to say?
I'm looking for advice.
I don't know why I initially three starred this. Maybe I was just so slumpy that I assumed it was an "it's not you, it's me" situation?
How many human-interaction-based clichés can I fit into one review.
Anyway: This book seems like it has a lot going for it. Mainly in that it's a rom com with a cute cover and the idea of a boyfriend project is cool to me, as a project obsessive. (Don't even look at how many of my Goodreads shelves have the word "project" in.)
But take that promising feeling off the table entirely, because...
There is no boyfriend project.
DUN DUN DUN.
Literally nothing at all that could qualify. I'm furious even thinking about it.
And even worse, this is one of those rom coms with SO MUCH ELSE GOING ON that the actual rom is a weird afterthought, and there's no com to speak of at all.
For example: These two and their work.
The male love interest is a deep-undercover tech-based US government secret agent for, like, money laundering, so you just have to accept that as a normal and reasonable thing if you want to continue with the book without screaming or throwing things. Fine.
But if you can believe it, that's not even the most distracting part?
Our protagonist, who is just a normal human woman doing tech stuff, makes SO MANY bizarre and inexplicable work decisions - not calling out a coworker even though she herself is beloved and respected, in spite of the coworker undermining her and taking credit for her work; turning down an opportunity that sounds like a once in a lifetime chance to better herself and the world for something she could do at the same time - that I wanted to tear pages and/or my hair out.
I felt the chemistry between these two at the beginning, but both characters' insane work plot lines took up all the page time and my patience.
AND, on top of everything else, our protagonist is in a viral video mocking a previous date that led to her making a new group of friends, which I almost forgot about in spite of the fact that it also takes up more time than the romance.
There's too much going on.
Bottom line: I wrote myself into dropping this to 1.5 from 3. What a day.
----------------- pre-review
instead of a "boyfriend project" i'm continuing romance novel quest.
they both result in disappointment, but only one of them helps my reading challenge.
review to come / 3ish stars
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reading books by Black authors for Black History Month!
i requested an ARC of this on netgalley with great haste and love in my hearthello mtv and welcome to insanity.
this is THE WEIRDEST book of all time.
i requested an ARC of this on netgalley with great haste and love in my heart, because it's set partially in the boston public library, otherwise known as the single greatest place in the world.
i am a dramatic person with a flair for believing everything to be a sign from the universe, so i thought my liking this was ordained.
au contraire.
but let's back up.
this is a book within a book, kinda: an author is writing a murder mystery. half the book is the murder mystery (which follows four lame, boring friends, 2 in college and 2 grown ass people who should have something better to do, who witnessed - except not really - a murder in the BPL) and the other half is emails the author is receiving from her writing buddy, a full on loser.
the full on loser in question is based in boston, whereas our dear author is in australia (?), so a big part of this is that every chapter ends with an email intended as an unsolicited consultation on All Things American.
this would be kind of boring and weird even at the best of times, but it is truly made one of a kind in that the loser friend has a roughly 50% accuracy rate on his advice and corrections. "americans say cell phone, not phone!" he says in one email. (i always say phone). have your character say "i'm on the subway!" he adds in the next sentence, when it's (FAMOUSLY) called the T in boston.
i was waiting for this to be made a part of the story - turns out he's a freak who was never in america at all, or something! - but no. it was just error after error, as it turns out.
anyway. this has the pacing of a cozy mystery with the darkness and goriness of a thriller, derogatory. it's a combination that absolutely won't work for me, and the amount of ham-handed social commentary from immigration to US politics to the pandemic that's thrown in doesn't help.
worst of all, these characters are unbearable - oddly flat while omnipresent. there's no excuse for each of the friends having 1-2 personality traits when there are fewer sentences they don't show up in than do. they read cartoonishly, and their insta-love fixation on each other is bizarre to witness.
don't even get me started on the actual insta-love.
add in a lame reveal and a silly villain and we have a true nightmare on our hands!
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