acozyreaderlife's Reviews (408)

‘They All Fall Down’ is a retelling of Agatha Christie’s, ‘And Then There Were None.’ It follows the same premise, strangers are invited to a private Island. Where soon one after the other is killed off. It pretty much follows the same structure and plot of Christie’s book, but this is a more modern take on it. I didn’t like this book at all. The writing was terrible. The only reason I was able to get through this book was that I sped read it. It could have used another round of editing. None of the characters were likable, not even our protagonist Miriam. I think retellings are a fun thing that has been happening recently but only when they are done well. I was already skeptical about reading this because the original by the Queen is perfection. This book really solidifies the fact that Agatha Christie is the Queen of Mystery for a reason. This was a sad attempt at reworking a classic that honestly should have been left alone.

A problem that I ran into while reading this book was the lack of ‘murder’ in this murder mystery. It took until page 158 for there to be a body. Considering that this is an unacceptable murder mystery. The murder mystery should happen way earlier. We spent the first half of the book watching the characters as if watching a terrible reality tv show. This book reads more like a soap opera than a murder mystery. None of the characters were fleshed out. What Agatha Christie was so talented at was creating a puzzle in her books, and the fun was trying to figure out who did it. The main character, Miriam, was such a pain. I hated her. I honestly couldn’t wait until the end of the book because then she would be dead. The writing style itself was really jagged and became a distraction from the story it was trying to convey. There was also so much swearing in this book. I read Harry Bosch, I’m used to swearing, but this was just A LOT. I also couldn’t sometimes tell if this book was serious or satire. An interesting attempt at a retelling but it completely missed the mark for me. This just wasn’t as clever as And Then There Were None. If you’re considering reading this book, read the original instead.

I tried reading this book once before and DNFed it around 30%. This time around I really did try and give it a fair shot. The prose of this book is so overly written, it completely takes me out of the story. I honestly wish I had just left this book in the DNF pile. This book was so boring. I hated the relationship between Agnieszka and the Dragon. (Honestly what kind of name is that?) The Dragon was an asshole. He was really abusive to Agnieszka, he made her live in a tower and he kept grabbing her arm and hurting her. I keep seeing this in a lot of YA books and its completely glossed over. Why do all these male characters in these books get away with hurting the MC? The Dragon was so pissy the entire book, I guess he’s just an angry old wizard who likes to stay away in his tower.

Agnieszka is the Mary Sue character. She somehow managed to have magical powers, and the Dragon realizes that she’s “special”. Not only is she special but she is so clumsy. Again, why do all these YA books have to make the women characters clumsy? I honestly don’t get it, but it became pretty annoying throughout the book. Agnieszka is supposed to be a witch but her magic barely does anything. She just says magic words that are never explained, and we don’t know what they mean.

Also the whole premise of the book is so cringe. A dragon steals a girl from the village every ten years. Why is this a thing? WHY? Can I just have a YA book that doesn’t objectify women? Seriously, most of these books are written by women. I don’t get it at all.

I also thought the Dragon being the love interest was so odd. Agnieszka literally snuck around the castle and randomly found the Dragon’s room and slept with him. I really don’t get why this book is so hyped.

I received this book in a past owl crate box. The premise of this book intrigued me, but I knew in the back of my head that it reminded me of ‘Six of Crows’ by Leigh Bardugo. I rated that book 5/5 stars, but unfortunately, this book just didn’t hit the mark for me. The writing itself was your basic YA writing. “Zofia’s eyes snapped shut.” EYES. DO. NOT. SNAP. This is becoming an epidemic in YA books, way too much eye snapping, it’s physically impossible for your eyes to snap. And if they do snap, then you should seek medical help immediately. But this book had way too many ways of conveying emotion through the eyes of a character, it’s very cliche. There are other ways to convey emotions. Every time this happened was taken out of the story, and it became pretty annoying. Another example of a cringey cliche, “Silence fell like a heavy blade through the air.” SMH. I have to give the author credit though, she was really good at describing the dresses that the girls wore in this book. It had a lot of dress descriptions.

I found in this book that the villain wasn’t evil enough. I felt that the author was trying to go for a Moriarty/Sherlock vibe, but it missed the mark completely. Hypnos felt more like Dr. Horrible from “Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog” if you haven’t watched this, you are really missing out on something amazing, and you should youtube it. Hypnos was trying so hard to be evil, but he just came across as a joke. If you’re going to write a villain give me a villain, get on Voldemort’s level.

One point that I did really like about the book was that the character Zofia is a very brilliant scientist. It’s nice to have female characters be portrayed as smart, but unfortunately for Zofia, it was in a very stereotypical way. She was so smart that she can’t understand humor and she took it all literally.

While reading this book, the overall feeling of the whole story felt so underwhelming. This is a book about epic heists, and there was nothing epic about them. I felt a huge disconnect to this book which is a shame because the cover is so pretty. And the book description sounded amazing. I think that if this book had gone through some more edits, it could have been a lot stronger.

The Hazelwood by Melissa Albert

I have heard so much hype about this book, but sadly it isn't worth the hype. I remember seeing this book everywhere on bookstagram last year. I must have picked up this book over thirty times in bookstores just to read the book description. I can tell you that this book was extremely basic.

Alice grew up with her mother, and they never stayed long in a town before her mother would uproot them and move them away. Alice was always curious about her grandmother, Althea. Her grandmother was a famous author, she wrote the book 'The Tales of the Hinterland', but no matter how hard she tried, Alice could never get her hands on this book. Or get her mother to tell her about Althea. Soon she became friends with a kid, Finch, at school. He happened to be an obsessed fan of her grandmothers. He agrees to help her track down the book.

I thought it curious that in one of her grandmother's stories, "Alice three times," that the character was also named Alice. It turns out the Hinterland is real, and they kidnapped Alice's mother. I thought the plot was pretty intriguing, but the characters themselves were boring. Alice sounded like such a bitch. She was rude to Finch, she was mean to her 'stepsister,' and she was pretty mean to her mother, but she justified it that 'she had to be the adult in their relationship.' The characters were underdeveloped, and one dimensional.

That being said, it was an interesting book to listen to on my commute to university. I'm glad I didn't purchase a physical copy of this book. There was zero world building, and this book is almost like a knock-off version of Alice in Wonderland. Except Alice is all grown up, and it's set in the present day. I really don't understand the hype that was around this book. I think that compared to the YA books out there when this came out that it is pretty different, it feels very contemporary in the way it was written yet it is set in a kind of fantasy world. I wish with this book that the author had gone all the way and made a real 'Hinterland,' describe it to me, give me some characters that I can care about. Sadly this book fell flat for me, and I can say I would have been fine with this book if I had skipped it.

TRIGGER WARNING: THIS BOOK HAS ABUSE IN IT.
This book had so much hype around it. I wasn't planning on reading it, but then I got it in an Owlcrate box, and thus, I had to read it. Silly me didn't know that this book was about abuse, there is a warning of it in the first couple of pages, but I usually skip them and go straight into the story. This book is centered around the objectification of women. The plot is pretty much for our main character "you have pretty eyes; you'll be great for the King as a concubine". Even then Lei is being used as a pawn for a soldier to get higher ranked in the king's eyes. That being said, after suffering through reading about abuse for about 100 pages I found the disclaimer, about abuse so there, is one. I think it's good to have issues like this addressed in YA books, but I don't think this was executed well enough. To the plot itself, Lei is taken from her home and forced to be a concubine for the king, who she hates. She is trained as a concubine and becomes one; there she meets Wren. The whole relationship between Wren and Lei felt so one-sided. Half the time Wren was forcing herself on Lei. The best part of the book is when they get revenge on the Demon King.

To the actual writing of the book itself, it was pretty terrible. I'd like to point out again the overuse of using eyes to convey emotion in YA books. “Under wet lashes, her dark eyes spark.” No, they didn't. The world building in the book was terrible. There was just a cheat sheet in the front listing what all the different races were/the magic used. Come on, if you're going to attempt to write ya fantasy at least world build! This book was so underwhelming and boring. I don't understand at all why this book got all the hype. The only reason I can think is that the love story is f/f, but there are plenty of well-written f/f books that are way better than this.

I was so excited to read this book! The back cover mentioned magic; I love fantasy books. But right when I started reading this book, I noticed that the writing is flowery and was full of so many cliches. I know some books have cliches, but this had more than one on every page. For example, “Shock strung my bones at hard angles. My heart shuddered against my ribs.” and My ribs clenched as her cool, soft hand circled my wrist” Whateven. These are everywhere in the story. The main character could be anyone! She has no personality at all. Selene had a pretty interesting world set up, but because this is told in the first person I don’t understand any of the other characters and since the protagonist is so stubborn and just gets angry at everyone there are no clear rules to society. So when there was the revelation that this snarky girl is Sunder’s sister, it’s like “Who cares?”There is way more overly descriptive prose than actual plot in this book. It's almost like she just wanted to hide the fact that nothing happens in this book with way too many descriptions. There is a gay character in the book which is cool, but it’s almost like she threw him into the story to have it in the story. This straight up feels like an afterthought. And then if that isn't bad enough, she killed off the only LGBTQ+ character! He was the only character with personality, that pissed me off. At that point, I was only reading the book for him, and she killed him. Also the love interest, Sunder is mildly abusive. EVERY time he and Mirage interact he hurts her wrist. EVERY.SINGLE.TIME. Then if that isn't enough after her old bf tries to assassinate the Empress, Sunder whisks her off to his palace in the snow, and then it’s revealed that Mirage is an heir to the Empire. Of course, she is. But only bad boy Sunder knew this. Then, in the end, we find out that the Queen had killed her father so she could take the throne, (HELLO HAMLET). Mirage fights with the queen and somehow beats her with her magic powers of illusion, and she becomes the new queen. This book was all over the place. I honestly couldn't get past the horrible writing and lack of character development, but I did finish the book as part of the OwlCrate readathon. Otherwise, I would have DNFed this book.

“Sea Witch” by Sarah Henning is an origin story for the sea witch, Ursala from the ‘Little Mermaid.’ After her best friend Anna, drowned, Evie has been shunned by her town and is considered an outcast.

The premise of this story is excellent. I was intrigued and wanted to read Ursala’s origin story; unfortunately, this book was not executed well enough. The book read like a high school love triangle. For a book that has ‘Witch’ in the title, there was very little magic in it or a magic system to speak of.

The writing itself was very one-note. It wasn’t very well written and did a lot of telling rather than showing. In YA literature fashion, there was a love triangle, and it featured “Insta Love,” which is fine but there wasn’t enough character development to fully understand the characters. The issue I had with this book was that if I were handed a copy of this book without a title on it, I would have missed entirely the fact that this is a ‘Little Mermaid’ retelling and that it is supposed to be a fantasy book about a Sea Witch. The only mention of the MC really using magic was in the last one hundred pages. I also couldn’t tell the two Prince’s in the book apart, they merged into one person when I was reading.

My other issues with this book was the fact that this origin story didn’t suit Ursala at all. I just don’t buy that Ursala would become this great powerful sea witch that everyone under the sea fears because she was scorned by a man? Based on the cartoon I watched growing up, I think for her to become Ursala there has to be more to the story than she was shunned by two princes.

That being said, I would be interested to see where this series goes. The most exciting part of the book was the ending where Evie finally became the Sea Witch, and it ended where ‘The Little Mermaid’ starts off.

'Black Wings Beating' was a slow burn book, on the jacket you are promised an adventure for power, a story about a town that will soon be war-ravaged. Not on the book, but I was told that this would have LGBTQ+ rep in the story.

This book is really about siblings Kylee and Brysen. Brysen is in love with another boy, and that boy is impoverished, and for Brysen to save him, he has to catch this mythic bird. Brysen is a character that has been physically abused by his father, and his sister is living with the guilt of having done nothing to try and help him. Brysen sets off on his own, away from the little town to hunt down this bird to free his lover. I did go into this book thinking that this book was going to have an lgbtq+ rep and that it would be part of the story, but it's barely mentioned.

I was very intrigued by this book, and it was a mystery of a book wrapped up under that gorgeous cover. Brysen sets off into the mountains by himself to hunt this bird. Unknown to him, his sister Kylee is following him to make sure nothing happens to him. We later discover that Kylee has a magical connection to birds and can somehow control them.

Where this book went wrong for me was that there wasn't enough character development. I spent over 400 pages reading this book, and I could tell you nothing about these characters other than what is state above. There also was no world building aside from the info dump at the beginning of the book. The characters weren't likable. I'm disappointed with this book, one of my favorite authors had hyped it up, so I bought it. This would have been a better book if 200 pages were cut out, it still would have gotten the point across, and it wouldn't have been such a slow burn of a book. It's a shame that the plot, characters, and world-building fell flat because London's writing was pretty decent as far as YA goes. If the plot and characters had been developed, I would have rated it higher.

This is one of the most hyped books I’ve read this year. The problems I find with this book the more I think about it is that every character is unlikeable, underdeveloped, and didn’t feel real to me.

I listened to this as an audiobook, and the performance was amazing! But when I step back and consider this as a book, it was a huge letdown. Since this book is interview-based you’d think the characters would be raw, we’re learning about the rise and fall of the hottest band in the 70s, and all we get is your basic sex, drugs and rock and roll. I would have liked more character development.

What compels Daisy and Billy to be drug addicts? They are huge rockstars. What brings the band together besides LITERALLY sex, drugs, and rock and roll? I didn’t care about any of the characters, and the novel fell flat for me. If I had read the book instead of listening to the audiobook, I probably would have given up. The more I think about this book as a whole, the less I took from it and the less I liked it.