blewballoon's Reviews (763)

Although I liked the book, it took me a while to get through it and I was forcing myself a bit. I did predict pretty much how everything was going to go fairly early on, but I do think it was in character for the protagonists to miss what the reader would be able to put together. The characters were interesting enough; Elsie grew on me later into her character development. The book feels very much like Elsie's story despite having Bacchus's perspective, and there is a small cast of supporting characters that play into the mystery. Overall it was an okay time and I plan to read the sequel. 

This book really took me back to being in 6th grade, starting out middle school. I imagine this would be highly relatable especially for middle grade girls. There are also mentions of the covid pandemic and references to modern media, so I think this book will serve as a bit of a time capsule for this specific early 2020s time period. It takes a long time for the horror elements to show up, but they are there. The real story though is about the difficulty of navigating adolescence and an "invisible" illness.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built is one of my favorite books of all time, and yet it took me a while to finally pick this up. Like a Psalm for the Wild-Built, the sci-fi setting is both a compelling atmosphere and a mechanism for philosophical discussion. The descriptions of how non-human sentient species approach the world and each other will often lead the presumably human reader to reconsider aspects of our own culture in comparison.

The book is also an excellent example of a found family almost slice-of-life story with a diverse cast of characters dealing with a variety of circumstances with a variety of stakes. It's like Firefly, but with more focus on the "small stuff" and interpersonal relationships. The emotional experience of the characters is always at the core of the more action-heavy sequences, which I appreciated. I did cry at one point, so I certainly got invested in this crew.

The audiobook narrator wasn't my favorite, but she did well enough covering a variety of voices. 

Being very generous with my rating here because I don't think the writing is bad, there were elements to the story I did like, and I think people who like contemporary sad girl millennial books might really enjoy this despite it being historical fiction. I personally hated the main character Cecilia, but it seems like the book expected me to love her. It seems like I was supposed to find her passionate and brave, but instead I found her to be selfish and insensitive. 

She is incredibly self centered and fans the flames (haha) of whatever inner turmoil she's experiencing to the point that she can't function or manage her basic needs and has to rely on others, and yet blames these other people at every turn for any decision they make that isn't exactly what she wants. The book implies that Cecilia's sister (Margaret, I think) who is in an unhappy and difficult marriage, struggling with fertility issues, and trying to keep her sister alive and safe, is an irredeemable person undeserving of pity even when she sincerely apologizes in both actions and words for her failures.

Cecilia acts like marrying an incredibly kind and generous man with an adorable dog who wants nothing but friendship from her and who will allow her to live her life in comfort and however she wants (including having a lover!) is some big sacrifice, and the book seems to agree? It takes nothing less than

The Great Fire of London

for Cecilia to attempt to do anything for another person, and even after that she berates her working class, marginalized,

homeless

lover for the crime of

not waking up next to her in her upper class fiancé's house??!?

  I feel sorry for the poor flower seller who had to deal with Cecilia's antics multiple times without Cecilia ever bothering to buy a flower from her. 

David, the other POV character, is much easier to understand and sympathize with. Throughout the book he is living the reality of surviving in London as a working class Jewish doctor from a foreign country, grieving multiple losses, and trying to do the best he can by his family, friends, and patients. The book at times seems to imply that his caution and realism are somehow bad things compared to Cecilia's blind recklessness?

The audiobook narrators did a good job. David and some of the other supporting characters were great. I know there is a market for characters like Cecilia, but I found her insufferable and the way the book seemed to disagree with me on that made for a frustrating reading experience.

Alexandra Vasti really pulled this off. This is a fantastic historical romance. The writing style is beautiful. The characters are charming and intriguing. The plot is interesting and suspenseful. The romance was genuine. There are many hot and spicy scenes. The spicy scenes never felt like they were getting in the way of the plot or the character development. I had such a great time listening to this audiobook, I am eager to read more from this series!

I went into this not really being in the mood for another contemporary romance and also having heard nothing good about this book. I picked it up used a couple years ago because I knew Emily Henry was a popular author, but then everyone I talked to who has read her books said this was their least favorite. I put the audiobook on reluctantly in the car, assuming I'd probably DNF at some point, and then I found myself laughing within the first 10 minutes. I get why Emily Henry is so popular, it's deserved. There is so much texture to all of the characters and to the world that make them feel more like real people in a real place. The writing is clear and immersive. I thought the format of having the current events interspersed with the snippets from the vacations Poppy and Alex had taken over the years was done really well. Friends to Lovers is probably my favorite romance trope, and this book nailed it. The audiobook narrator was great. Can't wait to read more Emily Henry now if this is apparently the least good book?

I didn't like this entry in the series quite as much as I liked the previous one, but I think that's because this one centered around characters I found less interesting. I did still enjoy my read very much, and I laughed at a few bits. I did manage to solve each of the mysteries just ahead of the main characters, so I think the "clues" were well distributed in the text. I'm looking forward to more from this series, but curious how the author will be able to pull off getting the two leads together again, progressing the romance, and having another mystery for them to solve.

I would say that I recommend this to fans of Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries and fans of WWII and WWI epistolary novels. The tone is very similar to books like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Last Christmas in Paris, and the setting is a sort of steampunk water world where there seems to be a big social emphasis on scholarly pursuits such as natural science and innovation. I found the setting and tone very charming, and I was compelled along by the mystery as well. The audiobook did a good job of providing multiple narrators to keep it clear who was speaking. I enjoyed the "present day" perspectives of two people who were trying to determine what had happened to their respective siblings who had perished/disappeared sometime in the previous year, and it was interesting to follow their reactions to the letters exchanged between the missing couple as they fell in love before whatever happened to them. I related more than I expected to E's mental health struggles. Towards the end I sort of lost track of what was going on and I honestly couldn't tell you what happened. The book also ends

with the big mystery unresolved. Coupled with my general confusion, the lack of a clear ending made for an ultimately unsatisfying read. It does appear this may be the first book in a series, but I didn't know that while reading.

If I were going based on the ending I might give it a 3, but I'll stick with 4 because I think I'm partially to blame for not paying enough attention while multitasking with the audiobook on and I did really enjoy the earlier parts of the story.

I had a good feeling about this book, and I'm so glad I picked it up when it was a Book of the Month pick. I probably wouldn't have ever gotten to it otherwise, since I don't normally go for pregnancy related stories and find them hard to relate to. Something about the the way the premise was presented made me feel like there would be something special about this book that would reach me anyway, and I was right. I think the author did a masterful job with the characters. They are conflicted, complicated, but ultimately trying so hard to be good people and support each other. It is refreshing to see such a positive and thoughtful take on these various relationships that are often used like trope props to facilitate drama in similar stories. The friends-to-lovers romance is a beautiful slow burn with a touch of mutual pining. It's as delicious as the descriptions of the homemade bread Shep makes. The audiobook narrator went so hard, this was more like a voice acting performance than a book reading, in the best way! If you have any interest in anything mentioned in the summary of this book, I highly recommend giving it a try. This is a very high quality contemporary romance, and I'm eager to read more from this author, and I'm gonna see what else this audiobook narrator has done that I can listen to as well.

Rating based on how much this book made me audibly laugh. I had hoped this would be fun and maybe similar to T. Kingfisher's twisty takes on fantasy, and I think it delivered on both fronts. Predictable elements and tropes are played with and commented on without losing the sense of being an actual story with characters living in it. The stakes are high, the characters are nuanced and charming, and the humor worked well for me. I enjoyed the audiobook, but if you don't like male narrators doing female voices then you're in for a bit of a rough one.