Reread via audiobook and I'm a little disappointed I never did an in depth review for this book because it so deserves it. But I probably won't bother now. I'll save it for the next reread. I adore this series and especially this first book. It feels so much like my childhood. Usually when I review rereads via audiobook I only comment on the audiobook production itself and my only note here is that the narrator (an American) does an awful British accent for some of the characters, seemingly at random. It was annoying the the nth degree.

1. It doesn't make sense to pick and choose characters at random to be British. The prince sounds American, but many of the nobility raised at court sound British. George, raised as a commoner in the city, sounds American, but most of the other commoners sound British (although a different accent from the nobility).

2. It's just such a bad accent. Like so bad.

The audiobook isn't terrible if you can get past that, but sometimes it was really difficult.

***

A reread for me and one of my old favorites. I fell in love with Alanna when I was 12 and still love her today. This book is fantastic for it's character development. Some of the action does feel a little simplistic and the challenges too easy to overcome, but it's an amazing book and one of my absolute favorites.

(Tagged as both MG and YA because while this book is MG, the series as a whole is YA)

I picked this book up kind of at random because I just needed an audiobook to get through at work, and I am so so glad I did. This is by far one of the best things I've read (listened to) this year. Usually I only listen to audiobooks when I'm working or driving, but I found myself picking this up whenever I had time because I was always so excited for more.

This is a travel memoir of Samantha Allen's experience driving across America to specific LGBT+ havens in red states that went for Trump in 2016. I think I expected a bit more travel and less memoir, but I thought it was so wonderfully done. Every place she went was fascinating and it's so obvious she's a journalist. Each location almost felt like an individual article, although part of a collective whole.

One thing I liked about this book was how happy and optimistic it was. Allen definitely discusses serious topics and doesn't shy away from that. There is a lot of negativity directed at transwomen and Allen covers bathroom bills and Trump's military ban, among many others, but she's focused on the positive in this book. She's focused on houses that support LGBT+ youth and clubs where everyone is welcome and coffee shops run by caring transwomen. She showcases the positivity and support of these places that a lot of people might not expect in conservative America.

I'm struggling to get down my thoughts on this book in part because it's been a few weeks since I read it, but also because it was just good. Like this was just one of those all around good books. Well written and interesting and so worth your time. I really can't recommend this enough. It's not a difficult or dark read (although definitely trigger warnings for prejudice against LGBT+ people). It's just good journalism. Good writing. Good stories. A really, really good book.

I love Terrier, the first book in this series, but this book always felt a little flatter to me. The crime (counterfeiting money) is a lot less interesting than the serial killers and kidnapping of the first book. The investigation of the crime just drags a bit. It should be more exciting than it is in this high fantasy world with magic, but it feels overlong and tiresome by the end. I got to the point where I was just waiting for it to be over.

We also leave the original setting of Corus, Beka's hometown with all her friends and family. I liked the beginning of this book quite a bit, but after Beka leaves, I found myself losing interest. It's not just the familiar setting, but all the familiar characters. Her roommates and the other guardsman. Even her cat doesn't stick around. The only regular character who stays is Goodwin and it does feel a little lacking to me.

But I still did like it quite a bit. I actually enjoyed the audiobook reread more than I liked my original read of the book. Something about the audiobook made it drag a little less and I wasn't nearly as bored. I think it's definitely the way to go if you find this book a little more dry than the previous one.

Reread 8/23/2020

I don't think my negative thoughts are quite as strong rereading this again. The romance didn't bother me as much, although I still do think it happened a bit suddenly from the very first chapter. It easily could've have been introduced a bit slower. And I am so bothered by the age differences and issues of consent. (George in his early twenties, I think, talking about how he's waiting for his fifteen year old chosen bride to grow up is never not gross.) But I do still like it.

Thoughts on the audiobook are the same as the first one. I cannot get past the horrible fake British accents. I honestly can't believe no one told the narrator how bad they sounded.

***

I was disappointed that this book wasn't as amazing for me as the first one. Still a fantastic read, but it lacked some of the character development and charm from the First Adventure. The highlights included Alanna's unrivaled sass and the stunning climax. The weakest point for me was the romance. I enjoy romance in general as well as in this series, but there was no romance at all in the first book and it was an immediate and heavy focus of this one. It felt jarring and bit out of place.

Still absolutely adored it, even with my critiques. And this one is definitely YA, too much sex for MG.

I have rarely read anything that felt so preachy. I read issue driven books all the time and some of them are based around general messages, but this book almost felt like listening to a sermon. I didn't disagree with the message at all.

A lot of this book focused on Islamophobia and racism, with a secondary issue of veterans not being taken care of once they return home. I definitely agree with all of that. But it was so painfully heavy handed and that was the entire point of this book existing. The story and character development didn't matter nearly so much as the Message, and I'm not reading this book to be taught what is honestly a very basic lesson. Maybe it would have been more interesting had it delved deeper into these issues, but it was a bit surface level.

I would've understood this book better had it been intended for a much younger audience. Like maybe if she'd written it for eight year olds, the preachy-ness would have made more sense and been more appropriate. But it felt like geared toward 15 year olds, and they don't need the same message driven into their heads every other page for an entire novel.

One specific issue I had was with the main character's best friend, Farida. I believe (although I'm writing this review weeks later so I'm basing this on other people's reviews) that Farida is an Iraqi-American who also happens to be Muslim. Her entire role in this book is to call out Stella for her white privilege. Here's the thing, it's great when characters are able to call out each other for privilege and great to see characters accepting that and learning from it. But that was Farida's entire role in the book. That was the only thing she ever did. I don't know pretty much anything about her character because every conversation she had was just pointing out Stella's privilege and everything Stella was doing wrong. This was true even when Stella's brother was in jail and going through a mental health crisis. Even when the (I think) candidate for governor was calling for Stella's brother publicly to face long time in jail. Even when Stella was being bullied and harassed and her home vandalized. Farida still took this time to inform Stella how bad that was for her. Normally I wouldn't be so critical of this because I am white and I wouldn't want to talk over any people of color discussing their experiences, but the author is also white. And Farida's character felt so poorly done and tokenized.

I just get so irritated being preached to constantly. A few points I don't mind too much, or if the book has a vague general theme it's pushing, but in this book it was constant and heavy handed and shoving it down my throat. If I hadn't already been so on board with the messages themselves, I don't think this would have even managed two stars.

At the end of the day, a novel has to tell a good story. That's what it is. This didn't feel like a story so much as a painfully drawn out after school special. It dragged for me and I really couldn't find myself recommending this to anyone.

I don't have a whole lot to say about this book. It's been two weeks since I finished it, and it was one of those books with absolutely no staying power. At the time I read it, I was bored. It was about Burroughs' father's abuse, but at the same time, it felt like Burroughs had very little interest in his father as a person. So it felt almost like his father was some vaguely ominous presence constantly hovering in the shadows, rather than being explored by the story.

It felt a bit meandering and pointless, which I think may in part be his writing style, but I wasn't a fan.

I'm not really sure of what else to say. It didn't feel like this book was saying anything. I don't read nonfiction to learn some kind of lesson or moral, but I always feel like there needs to be a point in telling a nonfiction story. I didn't get that in this book. Perhaps some of his other memoirs are better. I know he has several that are more well known than this one, but I don't have any desire to continue on with his works.

I always feel a bit strange reviewing classics, especially classics I enjoyed. (If you would consider this a classic at under forty years old, which is questionable. It's such a sketchy definition.) Something feels a bit off about singing the praises of a book that people have been widely discussing for literal decades in every form imaginable. Everything I have to say has already been said a hundred times, and a hundred times more eloquently than I could ever say it. But I mean like why let that stop me.

I loved this book. I haven't had the greatest of luck with my reading this year so it's been a long time since a novel pulled me in so deeply. I was utterly entranced and couldn't put it down. I was fascinated by Celie and her story and her life. My favorite aspect was how this book is essentially just a character study. Plenty of things happen, but the main point of the story is just following Celie's life from childhood through middle age.

I loved the epistolary format. The book is told through letters Celie writes to god and then eventually letters she shares with other people. It's a bit more like diary entries than letter writing for the most part, but I really enjoyed that. It gives you the chance to see the story solely from her eyes for most of the book. No narration, just Celie and her own words.

Towards the later half, the book kind of takes a turn and starts focusing a little on life in Africa which was strange to me. I don't want to talk too in depth on that because it gets a little spoilery if you care about such things, but I don't think the second half worked as well for me as the first half in that regard. I don't think it was bad necessarily, just that I was much more interested in Celie's small life than the outer world as a whole.

I also struggled a bit following the timeline, but I nearly always do when we aren't given exact dates and the passage of time is a bit ill defined. It makes sense for Celie's character and the way she experiences the world, and it didn't bother me too much, but this is just kind of a normal struggle for me.

I dunno. This is a great book. It's pretty widely accepted that this is a great book. Go read it if you haven't already because it's just great.

This is I believe my second David Sedaris book (plus a number of random essays I've read online) and I was the tiniest bit disappointed in this book. For starters, it wasn't bad. It definitely wasn't bad. Sedaris is a good writer and even when I don't like his stuff as much, I still think it's well written. But I just wasn't all that interested in this book.

I think one of my issues was how short the essays were in this book. They felt much too short, like they were too short to have much purpose. And short essays aren't inherently bad, but half the time I felt like I was getting a quick overview of a story with no discussion or depth. I always felt like I needed more than what I was given.

Also, perhaps because I read this book so quickly, it felt a little over the top. Like there's no way all of these ridiculous and somewhat absurd situations could have happened to one person in a lifetime. Either he's lived quite a ridiculous life, or a number of these are made up/exaggerated to some degree. And considering in one of the essays he talked about how his friends/significant other were complaining about how he exaggerated stories, I'm kind of leaning toward the latter there. Which I don't mind super much. It honestly doesn't bother me that much when I get the vibe that the nonfiction book I'm reading isn't a hundred percent sticking to the truth (unless it's meant to be informative/academic/science based/etc). But for a subjective memoir, sure tell an interesting story. It was just that these stories weren't all that interesting.

This book is fading quickly, which is disappointing to me. I'm hoping to continue reading Sedaris and hopefully this one was just a bit of a fluke.

This was a book that sounded fascinating to me in premise. It's about a fictionalized Manson family, and the murders they committed, narrated by a fringe member of the group who wasn't involved in the murders. I thought it would be an interesting psychological look into cults and the time period. But honestly, everything about the execution bored me.

It's not that I disliked much of anything about this book specifically. The main character was fine. The cult was fine. Her parents were fine. The world was fine. But I was so bored. I wound up pushing myself through just to be done with it. It's not a particularly long book, and six days for me is quite a bit of time. But nothing in the book made me care.

One of the biggest issues for me was that the stakes didn't feel very high. We know from the beginning that the main character (whose name I have long since forgotten and can't be bothered to check) was not involved in the murders. She reiterates this fact multiple times throughout, just in case you forgot. And that's fine in theory. I've read plenty of books that are about larger events narrated by bystanders. Those can be fascinating, a smaller life with larger events going on around it. But nothing about it worked for me here. Like the climax itself was the fact that the main character wasn't involved in the murders. Which we already knew. But that's kind of the height of the story, the big dramatic moment. To me it didn't feel like anything else had any real development, but the cult almost felt like the background to her home life.

The other thing I didn't love was the writing style. I swear Cline tried so hard to say everything in the most roundabout way possible. It was everything from describing a dog to the events taking place. I only bothered saving one quote though because just looking at it made me roll my eyes. “His permissive equations reduced these concepts to hollow relics, like medals from a regime no longer in power.” Like I dunno, I'm sure there are people who like that kind of writing style, and certainly plenty of people love this book, but there can be such power in saying things simply. Just write what you mean. I found it frustrating.

I don't really have anything else to say. Mostly I was just bored, and also not a fan of the writing style. I almost considered giving this book three stars because I didn't really actively dislike it, but also I'm not entirely sure it did enough for me to be considered mediocre. It was forgettable. And I'm a little astounded that a book about cults and murder and growing up in the 60s was quite so boring and forgettable.

I swear I only finished this book five days ago and I can't think of a single thing to say about it.

The one thing I remember liking was the main character's relationship with her husband. She was kidnapped and raped as a young girl and that's something that influences her character and her relationships, and it's allowed to influence her marriage too. But her marriage is still healthy and has good boundaries. I just really liked the way it was written.

But that was kind of it for the positives. Everything was boring. Even the things that were poorly done and pissed me off in the moment were boring. Like I really can't remember any of the things that irritated me anymore, although I do remember there being quite a few of them while reading. I've written a number of reviews quite delayed, especially lately, and it does impact the quality of the review/how much I remember, but not to this degree. And especially not after only five days.

The one negative I can remember right now is being vaguely disgruntled by the ending. I remember thinking "that was it? what was the point" when it was all over. It felt like this book didn't accomplish anything, like there wasn't any growth or development from any of the characters. We just reached the end and everyone shrugged and kind of continued on.

This book probably wouldn't stop me from reading Laura Lippman again. I doubt I'll remember that she's an author I've read. In fact, this is probably the kind of book that I would potentially pick up again in a few years and think "huh, this premise sounds interesting. might give it a go" completely forgetting that I've already read it.