bella613's Reviews (551)

This was ok but not my favorite. It was recommended to me by someone I really care about so I wanted to like it more than I did. If I'm being honest, I don't think the story was actually that compelling (for me). However, the writing was fantastic and the world building is very well done. The narration is good in the audiobook too.

It took me a while to get into the atmosphere of the book. The characters are believable but very self-focused and I didn't find them pulling me in. 
The queer representation is good.
I'm not sure exactly what it is but to me the relationships in this book felt very off. It was settling and situationships at best, and a little lusty but didn't feel like love at any point. Yet that lacking love does seem to become a focal point toward the end. I think most of this book was developed in a way that I didn't connect with, but I think that's different for each reader. 

This was crazy but I knew that going into it so it didn't feel too surprisingly off the wall.
It actually got a bit redundant towards the end and took me a while to finish. But I think its very well done.

This is inspiring!
Tara Westover is a courageous person with quite a story to tell. 
It's not my favorite ever but I think it deserves 5 stars. 

I liked this book a lot! It's good writing and quite compelling. I find the topic interesting but I haven't read a ton of this take, so a decent amount felt fairly new to me. 

However, what I like about it is also what I don't like about it. The mix of philosophy and science is fun and thought provoking, but it also creates an atmosphere that allows a lot of factually incorrect statements because of language. Philosophy uses a lot of extrapolated theory (and tests these by assuming them true) which science and medicine cannot. The author uses the words "cause" and "explain" in many cases when "correlate" and "hypothesize" might be better. The sections on autism in particular bothered me because it was portrayed in the same "affliction" light as alzheimers and psychosis. I appreciate and enjoy listening to theory with both human anecdote and experimentation, and found the sense-of-self focus highly interesting. But it made me a little uncomfortable that things were boiled down a little too far and simplified to exaggerate that focus. 
Overall I liked this book a lot and would recommend a read/listen, but please don't let this be your only source of information on things like autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, dementia, and psychosis.

This is very good. Super quick read but it packs a lot of emotion in!