blewballoon's Reviews (763)

As witty and eloquent as you'd expect from Jane Austin. I didn't enjoy it much because the characters were all awful, but their awfulness is basically the point to illustrate the social commentary and humor.

This book along with Northanger Abbey were at the top of my list for Jane Austin books to actually read. I was pleased with both. While I loved the honest & open communication and ease of the lead couple in Northanger Abbey, in Persuasion it is all about the PINING! SO MUCH PINING! It's a bit more somber of a book in general, but there is still humor, sharp social commentary, and great characters (to love and to loathe).

This story is exactly what I wanted and expected from this book. Excellent dose of wholesomeness and found family. I don't play D&D, but I know enough and the references were enjoyable. Plot is fairly predictable and slice-of-life for the most part, nothing epic happening here, but that was refreshing for me and I was more than satisfied with spending time at the cafe with these characters. 

I actually like low stakes slice of life books, so the lack of tension and action in this wasn't a problem for me but might be for some. The problem for me was that the characters were flat and their behavior seemed to be arbitrary.

This reads like a dream that some young average guy might have about getting a hot girlfriend who works at google, having a super rich best friend who pays for whatever they need, and being the first person to solve a huge big mystery, that other people have been trying to solve for ages, by just thinking about it for a little bit.

I've watched all the Jane Austen movies and miniseries, so I figured it was time to actually read one. The writing is so, so witty. The omniscient narrator has a bit of a presence, feels like we're hearing commentary from Jane herself. The writing also has great examples of showing rather than telling. Rather than telling you that Catherine had a bad time riding around with John Thorpe and found him unpleasant, you get to be annoyed yourself by long passages of him talking about himself and how he knows so much better than everyone else about horses and driving them. Henry Tilney is gonna be hard to beat for leading men. I love how he and Catherine just immediately like each other and communicate openly and honestly from the start.

There's a lot of stuff here that normally makes it hard for me to get through a book. Check the content warnings. Many of the characters are unlikable and make terrible decisions. Despite all that, I actually enjoyed reading this. I found myself mostly focused on figuring out who had been killed and who had killed them, so I was reading the chapters hunting for clues, not necessarily for immersion in the story, and that helped keep me from being too affected by the heavier stuff mentioned in the content warnings. The alternating perspectives helped keep me from getting too frustrated with the more unpleasant characters. I figured out the victim and killer a bit sooner than they were revealed, so that was satisfying as well. Good atmosphere and tension building, thematically appropriate for cold weather. I was worried I'd regret picking this up when it was on sale at my local bookstore, but no regrets at all actually.

This book is very cozy and the magic elements are fun and creative. I think the magic lessons and potions were my favorite parts of the book. The cast of characters is small, but they make a nice found family and the young girls are very sweet. There were some twists I saw coming, and some I didn't. I feel like the last part of the book does get a bit "wtf?" There were some events and discussions towards the end that really threw me off.

They just buried the body in the garden and tied the lawyer up in the barn? And somehow the lawyer was in the wrong for trying to make sure his client was alive and being angry that he was assaulted? I feel like there had to have been a less insane way to both set up and deal with the death situation. I understand that you want to say homophobia and racism are wrong (with the lawyer) and you want to have Primrose involved to help (with the dead sister), but this was not the way?

The romance was fine, but it wasn't the most compelling part of the book and I don't know if it was meant to be.