aislinnerin's Reviews (104)

Even more perfection ♡ 
I love seeing the start of Nana and Hachi and their wholesome day of shopping. (I know the wholesome wont last so im clinging on for dear life) 
So glad we had less Shoji in this one and more Yasu..

Perfection. I love Ai Yazawa ♡
Every character in the Nana universe is so painfully human and it makes their storylines that much more painful because you can relate. Their flaws make them real. Yasu is the dream man and I will die on that hill. 
Vol 1 had too much Shoji for my liking but sometimes you gotta put up with these awful men for the sake of the plot ya know. 

This series is so cute! I loved the romance between Zero and Ginger and their development and I also loved learning more about twitch! He might now be my favourite character~ 
Again, the plot wasn't groundbreaking, just a simple high school love story with edgy teens. But, it was cute and entertaining and I loved the art style. 

This was a really fun and quick read that got me out of a reading slump. The characters are lovable little shits and the art style was very aesthetically pleasing to me. 
The story was nothing groundbreaking but it was easy and a nice palette cleanser. 

The True Blood show is a big guilty pleasure for me, I love it. So when I go into these books I don't expect groundbreaking literature. However, this one fell a bit flat, especially after watching season 2 of the show. 
One thing the show did really well was slowly uncover some of the other beings later in the series to give the viewer time to wonder and guess what was going on. In the book it's all just nonchalantly revealed in the first 50 pages. She gets attacked and we find out right away that it is a maenad, she arrives at the hotel and instantly meets Barry the other telepath. It feels like there is no room to speculate because you are having everything told to you. 

While on the topic of comparing to the show…
I AM SO MAD THAT GODRIC WAS ORIGINALLY A NONCE. 
He is one of my favourite characters from season 2 :( 

Godfrey, as he is called in the book, just adds to a list of unlikable characters. The only character that really keeps me reading is Eric, and I feel guilty about my love for him because he is the worst. Pam, on the other hand, best character. I love her and need more Pam content pronto. 

Annoyingly, I found this really easy to read in a mind numbing kind of way and I will almost definately keep reading the series for that reason but I think the plot of this one fell a bit short. 

I’m so torn about The Thursday Murder Club. I really wanted to love it and while I did love the characters and found some moments hilarious, the actual plot fell a bit flat for me. It was difficult for me to get throught the book in a sense that, while I was reading it I was mildly amused but after a few pages i would put the book down and not be drawn to pick it up again. There were also a lot of characters suddenly introduced late in the book that it started to be a bit hard to keep track. 

I am very fond of most of the core characters, like the murder club and Stephen, and there are some quotes that made me laugh out loud. 

Aside from this I feel very lukewarm about the book and even in the end, when the mystery was revealed, my reaction was a bit like “oh…ok”. 

TW: a lot of focus on weight and ED behaviours
(is integral to the whole message of the book imo)
 
This book is pure camp

While there were moments where I found myself rolling my eyes and saying “girl..come on” I think that is exactly the point of the novel. Bridget Jones is supposed to be satirical. Bridget is extremely contrary. One moment she is spouting pseudo feminist ideals and the next sentence she is obsessing over a man calling her back and I think the point, aside from the switch up being hilarious, is that you are supposed to constantly be like “girl..get a grip” because no matter what she says she is supposed to always be in the wrong from a viewers perspective. She is a flawed character.
(Not only that but her constant shifting perspectives are real asf.. “hate everyone…actually nvm i’m fine…actually decided i am a strong woman…actually i’m upset with everyone again”)

I also think its important to note the characters internal misogyny that often comes out in the novel. The part where Bridget and her neighbour are giggling over a Valentines Day card and who should open it and Bridget says “I love girls” was very wholesome to me as well as her constant insistence that her friends shitty boyfriends do not deserve such amazing women. But this paired alongside her obsession with men, being a “good pure thin” woman and occasional misogynistic take on women in her life, make her a caricature of women who could benefit from refocusing on her own learnt misogyny and male-centred mindset before blaming it all on the men, such as Shazzer does (love her tho). 

While Bridget’s main focus is on her love life and appearance, the majority of the book actually focuses on the mundane everyday life things like her job and her relationships with her mother and friends, with actually very few pages focusing on her relationships outside of her internal monologue. This kind of breaks the expectation that you are going into this book to read a romcom and then theres actually very little rom in the com at all. I think this is really important to the character because it tells us that while she may be fixated on these things, there is a whole life going on outside of men and her appearance. She weighs herself daily (and is if anything underweight, which further comments on the beauty standards of the 90s) and then goes and has fun with friends and drinks and eats and actually, doesn’t obsess over these things while she is out living her life. Then she comes back to the diary and scolds herself for not sticking to her goal. What we read in the diary is a small snapshot of her mind while she is sat alone in her home and I think that can be relatable to many.