Tried on audiobook and my brain couldn't do it. He basically jotted down a couple of sentences about random whatever every day. I might go back to this with a physical copy in the future, but I'm not sure I'm willing to make it a priority.

This was a really fun time and I get why so many people adore this series, but it's just overall not really my thing. Greek myths don't really do it for me, and low fantasy is something I've always kind of struggled with anyway. But really well written and the characters were good.

It's the kind of series I'd definitely continue if it was only two or three books, but it's just too big of a time commitment relative to my enjoyment.

Loved it, no one is surprised. Karin Slaughter is my favorite thriller author and this book didn't disappoint.

After reading so much of her backlist (I've read everything except the Grant County series at this point), it was really interesting to read her debut. It's obvious that her writing was a little rougher, but you'd expect anyone to improve after doing something for another twenty years. It wasn't bad by any means, just cool to see her growth.

I always love her characters, they're definitely the highlight of these books. I love the small town and the relationships that are built outside of the individual cases. I love the different perspectives. I love how brutal she's willing to go with her writing (and this book was extra brutal, so just a warning). I love everything.

The mystery was fine. I like the crimes in her books okay and there's nothing wrong with them, but they're generally not the reason I love her. I love everything else and the specific plots are just kind of serviceable to showcase her characters and her world.

Highly recommend if you like really brutal crime stories. She's forever one of my favorites.

I love Karin Slaughter, and so far I'm loving her Grant County series even more than the rest of her books. She's so absolutely brutal and doesn't pull her punches in the slightest. She wants the reader to feel uncomfortable and I adore that. She's so good at it.

The characters are amazing. I love Sara and Lena, and even Jeffrey's pretty okay. I love that they're all awful in such unique ways, and she does such a good job writing from their perspective. Like you'll be in Lena's head as she does something and see it as absolutely justified, it makes total sense because that's how Lena's brain works. And then you'll switch over to Jeffrey who's unbelievably upset that Lena would do such a stupid thing. It's masterfully done.

I do think the plot of this book kind of got away from her. It felt a little too overblown, like it needed to be reeled in a little more. It wasn't bad, but I definitely wasn't into this particular book for the mystery element.

I'm obsessed with this series and can't wait to get to the other four books, but I'm trying to lengthen the process and not just binge them all in a week (I could and I totally want to lol).

I adored this. I love awful characters, especially when the book is told from their point of view. Dr. Oliver Harding is a racist and a sexist, and just generally an all around terrible person. It's actually disgusting reading from his perspective sometimes. I love when you're reading from awful perspectives who are so good at justifying themselves. I want to understand their awfulness, and I want to know how their minds work. Jha did such a fantastic job with that here. Oliver Harding has no idea he's the villain of the book and it was wonderfully done.

The book is set around the 2016 presidential election and Dr. Harding embodies so much of the time. He distances himself from Trump and people spouting racist propaganda, while still wondering how a Muslim teenage boy was able to get a visa to visit his aunt in the United States, and if the government didn't do a thorough enough check. He holds double standards about his female colleagues and calls out racism ironically. It was a great portrait of the election set against a college backdrop.

The writing style is a little too pretentious for my taste, but the main character is an incredibly pretentious old school English professor so it works well. I didn't always like it very much, but I always appreciated the way it worked within the context of the book.

Honestly, the only thing I didn't really like was the ending. Not that it didn't work for the story, because it totally did, it just wasn't entirely to my tastes. I like things kind of understated and the ending leaned a bit into melodrama. It was still good, but I just didn't connect with it as much as I did other parts of the book.

This was fantastic overall and so close to a five star for me. Highly recommend if you like awful main characters and social commentary wrapped up in a thrilling story.

I liked this a lot better than the contemporary anthology, but not quite as much as the historical fiction anthology.

Honestly, it felt like a lot of these authors (from all three collections) weren't short story writers. Many of these stories felt like scenes taken out of novels rather than standalone stories, and it made me so much less invested in them. The structure is different and they can't be written the same as a novel.

I don't think any of these stories were standouts to me, but most of them were pretty interesting. I kind of wish I'd maybe just read this one instead of all three (this was the one that made me want to read the series), but I committed and here were are. They were fine. Some decently good, but mostly fine and nothing really memorable.

This book was a bit disappointing. For how much I enjoyed Two Towers, I was expecting better and this one dragged. There were a great many battle scenes, which I found dull to read. There was a lot of switching around between various kings/lords and their people, and I found it very hard to keep up with all of them. I kept forgetting who was who. 

I did like certain elements, but overall this was barely better than a two for me.

I did really enjoy the premise of the ending (The Scouring of the Shire), but I wish it had been more developed. It felt a little bit hasty. And I didn't enjoy the rest of the ending about all the marriages of characters who had no relationship and had never spoken. I just didn't care. Mostly I feel glad that it's over and I finally got these books read.

I liked this so much more than Fellowship. There was a lot of character development and for the first time I felt myself getting attached to (some of) these characters and even the story. I loved the agency Merry and Pippin were given and the growth they experienced. I really loved the role they were able to take on starting in this book as more than just the comic relief.

I also really loved the relationship between Legolas and Gimli. I do wish there'd been more time spent on it, but I loved seeing their growth into a true friendship.

I don't like Frodo. I find Frodo to be an exceedingly dull character. This book would have been four stars for the first half that focused on Merry, Pippin, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, but the second half was solely about Frodo and knocked it way down.

It's still very much not my thing, but this book made me understand why people enjoy it so much.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Moore weaves his personal story of growing up black and queer in a predominantly black and working poor neighborhood with discussions on race, class, sexuality, and gender. He discusses the violence he experienced growing up with an abusive father, and the grief he felt when he learned of the man's death after having no contact with him for years. He discusses the prejudice and self hate he experienced as a man who loved other men, and specifically a black man who loved other black men.

He's done a great deal of self reflection and you can see how much he's changed just by what he shares here. He shares not only the prejudice he experienced from others, but also his own prejudice and his growth. He was a boy who was nearly set on fire for appearing gay, and yet still mocked other boys for appearing too effeminate. And he is an adult who grew from this and works to repair the harm from systemic prejudice.

The writing is gorgeous. This is his only book and I hope he writes more, both because he has such wonderful insight and also because I love the way he uses language. I listened to this via audiobook and I really wish I'd picked it up physically to experience his written word. His speaking voice is great, but I'd love the chance to pause on particularly powerful sentences and reread some sections.

This was wonderful. I highly recommend if you enjoy memoirs or if you're looking for books on the intersectionality of race and sexuality.

I mean hey, I read it. Technically for the second time, but I may have actually retained some of the information this time. I find this book exceedingly dull. The prose is dry and the character development is basically nonexistent (speaking only for this book). They spent most of it walking and talking. The hobbits are annoying.

This book has been talked to death and I don't think anyone cares about my boring thoughts on it. I'm expecting slightly better from the next two.