bella613's Reviews (551)

I really liked this one!
Great writing and interesting characters. The author does a good job moving between timelines and the narrator is amazing. A lot of other reviewers mention that it's slow for a thriller but I listened to the audiobook on 4x so that definitely wasn't a problem for me. It felt like it was simple enough to be a super fast read but complex enough to keep me interested.

This one's a great comfort read. 
Loved it and found myself relating to all of the characters. Quite a thoughtful book with a lot of well developed dialogue. I'll probably read it again in the future. 

It was good but I got a little bored with it. The writing was great but there wasn't enough to it to keep me from zoning out a bunch. I really like Jack and Hannah but the rest of the characters were frustrating. 

Made me laugh and cry. Relatable and heartbreaking. Highly recommend ♡

Captures a female teenage experience very well. I liked this book a lot, although when it ended I thought my Libby app had randomly shut off for some reason. It was a little abrupt lol.

If you like this I'd also recommend Laurie Halse Anderson and Maurene Goo. 

This was not great. 
I need to stop expecting sequels to give me what was lacking in the first book. The fourth wing was good and this was slightly less good. 
It was nice that it began right where we left off in the first book,

and I liked seeing Liam in Violet's mind throughout the book.

I liked Imogen and Sloan, and I loved that we got to see Violet interact with her mother. (Hope I spelled the names right, I listened the audiobook so I didn't see them in writing). It was refreshing that we didn't fall into the romance and have zero plot movement in the sequel, as sometimes happens with this genre. That being said, the story did lose momentum and drag a bit. 
There was no character growth and the relationships between characters were just as frustratingly under-explored as in the first book. Violet didn't seem to learn much and Xaden didn't open up any more that he was forced to. We didn't get any real backstories, and very little insight into the dragons lives. 
The end was definitely a surprise. But it wasn't a cliffhanger that leaves you wanting more, it was just kind of a wtf moment. I might read the next one when it comes out but it won't be on my tbr.

This book was OK.
I'm going to be honest, it's not particularly well written. It's a little YA at times. The world building isn't spectacular and I got annoyed at some of the fantastical bits especially at the beginning, because it didn't feel real like a good fantasy story when it sucks you in. 
This was a recommendation from a coworker, and for the first couple chapters I was pretty sure it was going to be one I barely finished.
However, it's worth sticking around because the book gets better as it goes (in my opinion). Looking back, I don't know if it deserves as high a rating as I'm going to give it, but I'm doing it anyway because I did have fun listening to it. I honestly felt nostalgia for my Eragon-reading tween days. I loved the dynamic between Violet and the dragons, and I'd like to see that with more characters. I want to know more about the dragons in general. 

I think the author could do a lot better with the relationships between characters. The main romantic relationship feels too lovesick and kinda exaggerated. And the friendships need deeper interactions and better dialogue.
I also want to mention I definitely disliked the telepathy bits. It seemed unnecessary and weird and too much like the trashy werewolf stories you get on fanfiction apps. That and the fact that the sex scenes were more violent than the fight scenes LOL. 
But it's pretty easy to ignore that because there's a lot more to the story than just the romance.
I'll be reading the second book and I hope to get more developed backstories and get into the dragons' characters a bit more. This book felt very present-tense focused and didn't do a lot for story besides telling you what's happening. My favorite character was Liam, so.. well.
Anyway, the world is built now and it feels like the story is just beginning. So I'm excited to see what Iron Flame will bring. 

Ok... I originally rated 3.5 but I changed it to 4☆
I think I liked this book. I'm still not sure. I mean... it was good and creepy and then it just kind of went off the deep end. It felt like it was building up to something and then it ended. (Which, maybe, could be the entire point??) 
There are parts that just dont make sense.

Jake couldn't have been the man from the memory of the guy outside her window bc he would've been a kid then too. And he could not have been the caller because he picked up the phone at least once.

 
Obviously you're (the reader) supposed to be somewhat confused, especially during the narrator switch and the "we" narrative section. But the story actually didn't line up enough for it to be scary. I kept waiting for something to click and explain the gaps in the story. I think it did get explained, just very poorly so I didn't notice at first. 

My conclusion is that Jake is the real narrator of the story, and the Girlfriend is a part of his psyche that he uses to tell the story/ imagines the world through her for a time. That's why he says he never actually gave the girl in the bar his number. He imagined bringing a girl home to his parents and none of it happened. This might just be wrong. Or maybe it's more obvious to others who read the story. But it's the only way my brain can make sense of any of it.

Why the heck else would she follow him into the school instead of staying in the car? Why would she find things familiar about his home and school that she had never been to before? Again, maybe this was obvious to some people but I felt that it was not well explained. I didn't get this hint until thinking over it for a while after I finished. I just think there could have been a better way to wrap it up. But overall the book was good and it definitely captured my attention. 
Maybe it would have made more sense if I read the book physically instead of listening to the audiobook, but tbf I think the audiobook has more pros for this one. Great narration and if I had been reading the "what are you waiting for" on the page I would have laughed out loud. (That part was kind of silly anyway but it sort of worked in the audiobook).
I'll say when I first heard of this book I thought it was about suicide and not a breakup so at least that part made easy sense. I almost want to listen again because there really was some deep stuff in some of the dialogue.

And now thinking of it as a sort of internal dialogue may make it even better.

I like the way Murakami writes, as if he must tell a story that really happened and not as if he's creating one. 
I didn't love this book the way I loved Killing Commendatore. It was not quite what I expected, especially after hearing it was this book that exploded Murakami into fame. But I did connect with it. As it is with Murakami, there are some uncomfortable sections of the book. But there are some uncomfortable moments in life, so... it's sort of beautiful that he captures it so intensely? 

I found myself most drawn to Naoko in this story. Midori as a character is someone I would probably not enjoy spending time with in real life, but added to the story in a mostly positive way. I didn't like Toru much in the same way that one might not like oneself. Listening from his pov felt like looking back on one's own life and seeing all the flaws and mistakes and self-centered choices that were made. But he was very real. That's one thing I also love about Murakami: his main characters feel undeniably real. He's not great at writing women, but since he usually writes from a male ego perspective, this doesn't bother me nearly as much as it seems to bother others. Read any contemporary romance and you'll see that most women are terrible at writing men, too. 

My favorite part of the book was probably the long letter describing the sanatorium and the following visit to the sanatorium.