I liked this better than Checkout 19, and it did seem to have more of a “plot” (if you can call it that), and there were some truly banging and hilarious lines (see: I put everything I don’t like in my fridge together in a stir fry so I could throw it away). But I reallyyy lost the plot with this, even (and especially) while I was reading. Which I suppose you could say was the point (stream of consciousness, form without form, wandering thoughts, etc), but it made for an unsatisfying conclusion. When I reached the end I wanted to go back and re-read the whole thing because I felt like I had missed something. Either way, reading Miss Bennett makes me feel very #literary, for better or for worse 

This was hard to rate so low, but after the triumph that is Ninth House, it would’ve been hard to follow regardless — I just had hope that Miss Bardugo could’ve done it! This book read so much more YA-y than the first and really felt gimmicky: irrelevant extended metaphors, awkwardly scripted dialogue (“Let’s give them hell” felt too much like a Freeform TV show), and caricatures of characters

(I’m looking at you Tripp)

. I loved the use of Yale and its architecture, but the plot repeated itself simply too many times over. Unsatisfying, I fear. 

I don’t want to read a memoir. I want to know about how ppl get through winter!!!! 

Wow. Somehow this book (really more of a novella/short story frankly) contains multitudes. I literally said “oh wow” out loud when I got to the last page. Small things like these INDEED. This should be a modern Christmas Carol — a Christmastime must-read. 

This book was a fun read, but I tended to drag through it -- which might be a function of the fact that I simply took too long to read it and it would've been better as a winter break book rather than one I tried to slog through during term time. I really loved how explicitly Dickensian this was; it fit perfectly into the "London story" genre (TW: London Stories English class that I dropped), and I liked how I could see the literary precedents Waters was speaking to. Points off for the random insertion of

the erotic books business. Super interesting as a historical phenomenon, but felt randomly plopped in? Like something Waters had come upon in historical research and tried to write a book around but didn't integrate it enough.

and the fact that I never ended up rooting for any of the characters. Very twisty winter London book, though, which was what I was looking for. ALSO! I have a bone to pick with calling this a sexy lesbian book.

They hook up ONCE and then don't seem to really like each other very much aside from that? Where's the yearning!

This was fun. A love letter to the act of reading and writing and knowing and discovering. Very cerebral and borderline experimental (I can envision this in a creative writing classroom easily), in ways that were rewarding (mostly) but also (sometimes) difficult (I’m looking at you beginning and ending chapters). This book felt like I was talking to a friend about what I had read and how that connected to what I was going through at the time, so in a way, this book was like a conversation. My only (meta)critique is with the fiction classification on this — surely this is giving memoir? Perhaps in an Annie Ernaux way (which the author is self-conscious of). But that has nothing to do with this book specifically, merely a thought!

This was, like, fine. Great premise and lots of fun themes to play with (magic during the Spanish Inquisition hello?? Diaspora and language!), but felt flat throughout. Formulaic (poor girl finds out she can do magic and must compete in trials to escape her fate: been there) and dare I say uninspired. Luzia was uncompelling I fear.

Also, I think the Luzia-Santangel romance was supposed to be slow-burn but mostly it was just sudden (negative) and unexplained.

This didn’t read like a normal Bardugo book (which I tend to blow through normally, despite the relative cheese factor). Sadly disappointed in this

I’ve been struggling to review this because it was much more experimental and atmospheric than I was expecting, and I can’t tell if my dissatisfaction stems from inaccurate expectations or problems with the genre or just not liking this book. I will say that this was hardly “autumnal,” as I had hoped (most of it takes place after the Brexit referendum (ie. June)) and then skips to November at the end while never actually dwelling on autumn. I grew to like

Daniel’s near-death dreams once I put together that they were about the old man in the story,

but jumping in that way was tricky. I think (I fear!) I could’ve done without having read this book. 

Flop! Which is a shame bc I was ROOTING for this book, esp with its spooky Halloween-y vibes just in time for October. Instead, tell-and-no-show o’clock. Not compelling (and with such a great premise? Perhaps a greater fault). Can’t tell if the writing is bad bc of itself or the translation. Either way, with so many other good books on my list rn, I couldn’t bear to stick with this. 

Wow. I ended up devouring this book. Miss Rooney does not miss, though I was (very) worried at the start. This does not read like a “Sally Rooney novel”. I found the prose dense and stilted and hard to slog through, and starting with Peter’s perspective specifically made the novel reallyyy inaccessible. It took me a few days of reading (and almost to the halfway point) to come to terms with what this is: a departure from the Sally Rooney we know in terms of style. However, as I read (and talked) about this book, I realized that in many ways it’s the inverse of her younger, earlier prose; Rooney still notices and chronicles the tiniest bits of life (picking up cups of coffee, telling someone how you feel when they kiss you, making dinner in a casserole dish, meeting friends at the pub) but in a new way. Whereas before these were mentioned without any elaboration in her earlier work (very Hemingway iceberg-esque), elaboration and overthinking and over-analysis is the name of the game. I liked the stream of consciousness, once I could access it, and I can’t wait to annotate a physical copy of this with Rooney’s allusions. She’s done it again, but this is a new, older, more life-loving and self-doubtful Rooney: in a good way.