I didn’t like this book as much as the first one, but I still thought it was great. I think that Dani and Carmen are equally compelling point of view characters, and I’m glad that this book let us spend so much time with Carmen.

I think a lot of the negative reviews I’ve seen of this book were from people who wanted more of a romance focus, and that’s a little odd to me because the first one was very balanced between revolution and romance and I thought that this one was too.

My only real issue with this book is the plot. Too many things happen too quickly, and they’re often not connected enough to what happened in the first book. I think this is because the author was trying to wrap up the story in two books. 

The overly fast-paced plot along with the addition of two new major characters who couldn’t have appeared in the first book kind of makes me wish that this had been a trilogy rather than a duology. That might just be personal taste, though. I never love it when major players are introduced in the final installment.

But overall, I still loved the characters and the world and I really loved what this book did with Alex, and I would highly recommend this duology to anyone who, like me, is a fan of sapphic forbidden romance and also revolution.

This book is definitely for someone, but that someone is not me. I knew it wouldn’t be for me going in because I don’t really like dark romance OR Hades and Persephone retellings, but I was hoping that it would at least be queer because queer people on BookTok had been recommending it. It really did not live up to that promise. Yes both main characters are bi, but this didn’t feel like a queer book whatsoever. There is also SO MUCH explicit smut, which is fine but a lot of it was public sex and I do NOT like that and was not prepared for it. Didn’t like what it did with Zeus and Demeter either. The general premise was interesting, but it didn’t really live up to its potential at all. There were a few moments that were fun or good, but yeah, overall this book disappointed even my low expectations of it.

First-person present tense is also my least favorite point of view choice in general, and I did not like it for this book at all.

ALSO: why were only some characters given a race? Felt very messy.

This book was fantastic. I loved the characters. It made me desperately want tamales. Aiden Thomas’s writing style is gorgeous and the way they delivered character details was so skillful.

It was pretty easy to predict the plot twists, but I didn’t mind cause I’m fine with knowing what’s going to happen in books. I just want another book where Maritza gets to be sapphic.

I read most of this for school. There are sections I haven't read, but I've heard that they're pretty repetitive. I guess you might like it if you're a fan of long lists of genealogy.

 THERE ARE PEOPLE BEFORE ADAM AND EVE.

Where are the lesbians? Like we have David and Jonathan. We have Jesus and his disciples. There are plenty of queer men, but there's not really any sapphic representation, which is disappointing for such a long book with SO MANY CHARACTERS.

Also, is no one talking about how the only way there can be people after the Great Flood is if there's a LOT of incest? The authors just don't seem to have considered the long-term effects of this particular plot point.

I liked this book! It wasn't as good as Six of Crows by a long shot, but it was still enjoyable. I just don't like Alina as a first-person narrator. There are very few stakes because we know that our narrator will come out of everything okay. A lot of the side characters are only sort of interesting. Genya is the exception, though. I love her.

This is my least favorite of Taylor Jenkins Reid's three novels about fictional historical celebrities, but it is still EXCELLENT. I got completely drawn in by the story of Daisy and the band, and I loved a lot of the characters (especially Camila and Karen, who both felt very REAL). Billy and Daisy were both believable tortured artist characters. It was a fantastic exploration of the creative process and what it means to be a creative person, but it was also VERY focused on the specific phenomenon of rock bands in the 1970s. Clear Fleetwood Mac inspirations (that's a good thing!). 

The whole premise of the book as a series of interviews worked well, though I think it mostly worked because I listened to the audiobook. It might be less successful in a different format.

Minor spoilers:

I'm so glad that I didn't go into this book expecting a twist. I think it's good that I read Malibu Rising first because that one didn't have a twist. This book is much more similar to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo in that way. I also didn’t love the twist itself because I think it colored a lot of what came before without actually reckoning with that at all.

Favorite quotes:
"Art doesn't owe anything to anyone."
"Loving somebody isn't perfection."
"You're all sorts of things you don't even know yet."

I enjoyed this book, but I should not have read it in the context that I did.

Let me explain.

The Education of Little Tree is a novel about a child who goes to live with his Cherokee grandparents. It has been marketed as a fictionalized memoir since it was first published. That's the information I was given when I read it for my ninth-grade English class. That information is not true. The author wasn't just a white man. He was a white man who FOUNDED AN INDEPENDENT KKK GROUP. This book should NEVER be taught or recommended to anyone without that knowledge. Do better.