blewballoon's Reviews (763)

I enjoyed this more than I expected to! I honestly only picked it up because I was interested in listening to the 2nd book in the series on audiobook because it's narrated by one of my favorite narrators Moira Quirk. I actually really enjoyed the narrator of this book as well! I was worried at the start, since the main character who is the POV for the whole book seemed insufferable, but he and his companions (who were much more to my taste) were dragged on quite the adventure with a lot of growth along the way. There were many twists and turns, just when I thought I had figured out how the story was going to go some other mini adventure would pop up and some new characters would come into play.

I bought this book a couple years ago after I finished watching the latest season of Call the Midwife at the time. It's one of my favorite shows and I wish I had read the books sooner, it's a lot more of a faithful adaptation than I expected. It was nice to revisit the stories I remember from the early seasons but get a more in-depth midwife perspective on them, along with more information about how the characters from the show were presented in the memoir. Honestly, I feel like the show should get a reward for how good of a book adaptation it is. My biggest criticism is that the opinions of the author herself can be a little outdated and touch on racist/sexist or generally problematic. The book also feels incomplete, some things are set up or hinted at and then don't reach a conclusion as if they were setup for sequels, which I didn't expect in a memoir.

This is a good book, for someone else. I listened to this on audiobook and Ginnifer Goodwin absolutely nailed the narration. I loved Nothing to See Here by the same author, so I grabbed this one without even looking at the synopsis. I found that book to be grounded, creative, funny, and hopeful. It dealt with darker subjects delicately. The dialogue and characters felt real and natural while also being unusual. I think this book also has most of those qualities, but it didn't have as much levity and hope. I felt a sense of dread the entire time I was reading it, waiting for things to go bad and then worse. I also found it harder to connect with the main character, it was more difficult to understand why she did what she did. I did really appreciate the Author's notes at the end about how this story came about and how it connected to his own life. I think this was just a little too somber for what I wanted, but I would recommend it to those who appreciate that more.

This was a really good story, definitely one of those types of books that is written for people who love being around books. There were a lot more plots and characters than I expected, and I think they all were given just enough time, but maybe could have had more? I wasn't as emotionally impacted by the emotional parts, but based on the tone of the book I'm not sure I was really supposed to be. The book felt more about the general ups, downs, and surprises of life in a way that I don't think was meant to be super heavy. 

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes the Bridgerton books, but also to people who are frustrated with the Bridgerton books. This offered the tension, pining, mild spice, and historical romance tropes that make the Bridgerton books fun to read, but it also weaves the actual historical events of the time into the narrative, and offers representation for the diverse people who lived during those times. I'll definitely continue with this series, I want to know how the story continues for Ana Maria's sisters and the matches that were set up in this book.

I was worried to start this one, because I knew it had a lot to do with a father/daughter relationship and thinking of anything bad happening to my dad usually brings me to tears pretty fast. I thought this would slam me in the gut and wreck me, but it didn't. I had a hard time getting invested in the story and really sinking into the feelings of the main character, Alice. The whole story is from her perspective and she spends most of it kind of just whining about not being younger, richer, or more successful. She has a stable job that she likes, her own apartment in NYC, and a father and best friend who are devoted to her, that sounds like a lot to be grateful for to me.

When she first goes back in time, a 40 year old mind in a 16 year old body, her main idea for improving her life is to sleep with a teenage boy she had a crush on who she just saw was married with a child in the future.

It's well written, and the audiobook narrator was very good as well. I just didn't connect with it as much as I had hoped to.

I struggled with this one. I really wanted to like it, I went to Catholic school and I knew some pretty cool nuns. There was a lot of potential in the premise. I thought this would be a fun time, despite being a murder mystery. It wasn't fun, it wasn't funny, and it didn't have anything new or interesting to say. It was just a series of awful people either doing awful things or having awful things done to them while the author describes how hot and humid it is every other sentence. (Do check the content warnings, there is a lot of dark stuff here.) The book is written in a stream of conscious sort of way, so I would be in a scene and then three paragraphs later the narrator was still musing, reminiscing about the past in a vague way, and talking about how hot it is, and I would have forgotten what was even happening. This was made worse by listening on audiobook and not being able to just flip back or skip over, but I do think Mara Wilson did a good job narrating the material she was given. Sister Holiday makes incredibly bad choices, is selfish and hard to root for, and doesn't really figure anything out that isn't completely obvious. The word "sleuthing" is heavily overused by her, especially considering that she doesn't actually do any. I would say the diversity is good, but because the diverse people are flat or terrible, I'm not sure the representation does anyone a service. 

This sort of like.. vague poetic writing and storytelling isn't my favorite, but I know it hits the spot for many people. For me, I found myself skimming a lot to get to the important bits. An interesting concept. I liked it overall. 

I was a little worried going into this. I knew there was a TV show based on this series, but I've never watched it. The writing is very fast paced, flying through events so quickly that sometimes I had to stop to double check the grammar and sentence structure. There's a fun cast of characters and more diversity than I expected.

Though, I really didn't appreciate the unfortunate  implication that asexual people are amoral, immature, and power hungry.

I don't think I will continue with the series, but I am glad I read it and it was a pretty fun wacky ride. 

The premise is fine, but I feel like all of the most boring and predictable choices were made with everything from the characters to the world building. I listened to this on audiobook and didn't care for the narrator's style, it made the already fairly whiny protagonist sound even whinier. I zoned out for chunks of the story, but the whole story was such a basic interpretation of its premise that I could just fill in the blanks of whatever I missed. YA Dystopia color-by-numbers, basically.