aislinghelen's Reviews (1.01k)

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this one. I went in with the impression that it would be more essay than memoir, and it was kind of the opposite. 

There are some good points and discussions within the book, but as soon as she gets into deeper analysis, she pulls out of it and comes back to a surface-level point. For example, the whole book ends with saying that capitalism is the problem, so individuals can’t be held responsible. It seems like she is getting somewhere, but then just copes out instead. I wonder if she was more concerned with marketing the book rather than actually making a point or discussing it. She does talk about funding monsters by buying their art, and she discusses many different kinds of monsters, but she doesn't stick the landing. Maybe she would have written the ending differently today with the recent JKR-funded anti-trans legislation. But I'm sure there are examples like that from before this book was out.

When I first started reading, it also felt very “not like other girls,” and at points it goes one step further and seems like she is describing feminism as just man-hating or pointing fingers rather than doing any real work. I think the author needed to unpack her views of women/feminism a bit more before writing this book, or, if this isn't what she meant, it needed to be better edited. 

Overall, I'm not sure where I stand because I’m not actually sure what the point was. In my opinion, this needed to be cleaned up and clarified rather than left open. The book has some good points, but overall, it's just surface-level without enough substance. I wouldn’t recommend reading it.

On the surface this is about grief, but really it’s about how we appreciate life. Hilarie talks about her grief after an overwhelming period of loss throughout this book, and it points I had to take a break from listening because it was bringing up old grief for me too. But she talks about things so positively, remembering the people and sharing snippets of their stories and advice. She celebrates the lives of her friends, both living and not, throughout. This really feels like a memoir of many people and their memories, which is very like how she describes her grimoire. She talks about collecting things, advice, memories and her past selves, in order to pass them down to her kids and I love that. 

It’s spiritual and religious in many ways too. I consider myself an atheist but I do also like to think there is something like fate out there. Because of the religious mentions there were parts of this book that made me a bit uncomfortable but not in a bad way. This doesn’t feel preachy or self righteous but rather exploratory and open. It’s more like talking to a group of your friends about their beliefs. I really liked it. It offered new meaning to everyday things.

I really recommend picking this up, but only if you’re in a space to do so because there is a lot of discussion of grief throughout.

This was interesting but I was kind of expecting more

Thank you to Stephanie and her team for the advanced listener copy of this book. This is my honest review.

And honestly, I loved it! The characters were fantastic and felt really real. Once again, I loved the side characters. There were old favourites and new favourites (hoping Walker will be an MC soon and cant wait for Ward and Jordan). The found family dynamics are one of the best things about this series and this book made them even better than they were. 

I did get a bit of second hand embarrassment at points, which I don't like. Mostly the points were they were trying to act married but also insult each other. It was funny but uncomfy, especially because I'm bad at dealing with awkward stuff in books.

The narrators were also fantastic. Its duet narration, so it sounds like you are listening to their convos (man voices the men and woman voices women). It makes it feel so much more real and I love it.

good but short

I unfortunately ended up DNFing this at about 15%. There was a couple of reason for this, one being the format (PDF on the netgalley app with the abhorrently large margins), the rest were book related. I read the prologue and wanted to give up because it was really clunky but I kept going. The rest of it flowed a lot better but the plot and characters kind of lost me. One thing that made me give up was the fact that the MMC (male main character) was repeatedly said to be a “low rated F2 driver”. For those who don’t know, F2 is the feeder series to F1 but most F2 drivers won’t make it unless they have team connections, money, a really great F2 season or a combination of all three. So basically, the MMC isn’t going to be great and is repeatedly called kind of useless. I don’t want to read about a highly qualified woman with a guy whos jsut kind of there. I mean I know its a book and he’ll probably end up being great but I just couldn’t. Then theres all the American/British stuff. This was written by an American with a bit of awareness of american stereotypes but it still felt king of uncanny valley (I don’t know if thats the best way to describe it but I can’t think of anything else).

Anyway, wasn’t working for me for a number of reasons. Maybe in a different format I would have read longer and fallen in love with it but as an avid DNFer I think its unlikely. If a book doesn’t start good I don’t think it’ll get better.

I was enjoying it enough for the first half. The “positively and wellness influencer” thing threw me off a bit, I didn’t love that. But it was pretty good for the first half. Then when they got together his personality just kind of changed. His grumpy evaporated. Then come the third act and it was just stupid stuff, after stupid stuff. I genuinely couldn’t like her after that point, she was just acting so dumb and I hate saying that about a woman.

Her ex shows up and ‘apologises’ and she just forgives him. Then lets him stay on the ranch because he has a lot of followers so he can promote the resort. Despite the fact that Wyatt has objected the whole time and even punch the ex (over dramatic but whatever). Then she walks in on him being kissed by his ex, and gets pissed and runs away (that’s fair tbh). BUT THEN HE HAS TO GROVEL AND SHE DOESNT??!

It was sitting at 4 stars for most of the book but from ~70% on it was closer to 3. It’s a cute, everyday sort of romcom that I think went too far. There were just too many storylines.

Ember was terrible at communicating and it was one of the things that really brought the book down. She kept lying about ridiculous things even when Danuwoa repeatedly asked her not to. She also tried to present herself as a badass who could stand up for herself but then refused to listen to her intuition or tell anyone when things that clearly shouldn’t be happening were happening. I know it’s a realistic thing but it didn’t feel realistic because of what was happening. 

I enjoyed the cute moments, the side characters and community in the book and the representation. There are a lot of great points made throughout this book. But it just felt like it was trying to be to exciting and cover everything, when it couldn’t.