booksonmars's Reviews (670)

i do not understand baseball and i never will but what i do understand is gay yearning between two estranged friends turned reluctant teammates 

despite the slow start, i would 100% recommend this book for late autumn because of its rich atmosphere, magical libraries and profound relationships, particularly between the sisters joanna and esther. the plot is slightly rudimentary but it is supplied with characters you sympathise with, and end up loving towards the end. i think there could easily be another novel set in this world.

the odyssey for beginners, with some humour that kinda falls flat.

barbie island princess lovers this one's for you! this book was set in a beautiful and lush world, with two main characters you couldn't help but root for. i really loved their earnestness and steadfast characters, particularly hanalei. however, there is a lack of emotional development in relation to the plot and the romance. i felt like there was so much more that could've been portrayed by each of the characters, and despite there being a lot of depth into the magic of the seadragons, there was other magical happenings that went unsaid. a few plot lines were also left either without conclusions or with a lacklustre finish. i would recommend for a fantasy that's easy to digest and fall into. 

i was so bored 

will never read an edith wharton again what was that fuck ass ending

give authors a third chance! i'm always wary of veronica roth novels because of the divergent series; i did give her another chance with chosen ones which i didn't end up loving. however, this was really good! an urban fantasy steeped with old magic and the toll it takes on the human soul, this novel was set in one eerie, foggy night and followed three characters i ended up loving. i wish we could get more of their relationship with each other! 

at first i was really enjoying this because it had the same atmosphere as a sally rooney novel, where we followed these three siblings navigate their lives, tied together by this string of estrangement between themselves and their mother, as well as the shared feeling of being adrift. however, towards the latter half the interconnectedness that the book prided itself on took a more strange and confusing route. there were passages that i could not understand and i think were there to purport this eerie/close to magical realism aspect in their stories, but it was rather frustrating towards the end, especially when it felt like the author was connecting two random things together for the sake of the 'everything is connected' belief. the blurb also is a little misleading, the triplets don't actually reunite until the last 100ish pages of the book, but i loved their relationship between the distance they created for themselves. i would recommend but beware it is a length and meandering novel.

not just about cells and their discoveries but also about life, ethics and the author's own introspections on the world around them. informative but so human.