bumblemee's Reviews (258)

I get why everybody and their mom loved this book when it came out. In recent years, I've seen a lot of ppl say something along th lines of "well, it was a novelty backt hen, but if you read it today/read similar things beforehand, you'll guess the twist." And yeah, I did, at least an important part of it. But not all of it. And even if I did, I think I'd still been happy with this.
The execution was very well done in my opinion. The atmosphere was very tense and dense - maybe helped by the fact that it felt like summer while I listened to the audiobook (listened to it in German, was very happy with the narrator). This family of very priviledged people, Cadence trying to reflect on that, the whole mystery surrounding the summer a few years back... captivating to listen to. Even the thing I saw coming didn't change that, instead I wanted to understand the how and why and witness the reveal.
Not gonna lie, my heart was at least a little broken by this book. Not in a "I will think of this forever" kind of way, but it made me feel a lot. 
I also feel like this could be an important read for teenagers, because while being a well done mysterious, it also deals with questioning elitism, which I liked.

and it's downfall of a family, which is just fun to read about in a morbid way

I understand why so many people love this book so much and see it as the blueprint for stories with morally gray characters. If I read this as a teenager, this would've blown my mind, I think. Now, I simply really enjoyed it. These two highly ambitious people becoming corrupted by their own hunger for greatness, it was entertaining and harrowing to follow.
The dual timeline was well done for the most part, it was interesting to see the developments in the past time line that lead up to the current one. Still, I felt like I didn't need all of them and sometimes the time jumps were a little too fast for me - don't get me wrong, they always make sense to include and have specific things they want to tell, but Idk.. sometimes it just felt a little off to me.
I also hoped it would go a little deeper into the research part - but I guess it's my fault I expected that to happen, beause I went in at least half-blind, only following booktubes recommendations.

Really glad I read this. I learned a lot while also being invested in a love story. This book made me want to be a teacher and discuss it in class. 
I also highly recommend reading the author's note, I learned a lot from that as well and it was very interesting. 

Süße Geschichte auf jeden Fall, war angenehm zu hören. Ich glaube, wenn ich sie als Teenie gelesen hätte, hätte ich sie geliebt. 
Ich finde es gut und wichtig, dass Tonis Geschichte erzählt wurde, weil ich denke, dass sich viele  Menschen wiederfinden können in dem Gefühl, sich nicht anvertrauen zu können, niemanden belasten zu wollen und sich hinter einer Fassade zu verstecken. Es ist gut, wenn jungen Menschen in den Medien, die sie konsumieren, vermittelt wird, dass Hilfe annehmen am Ende der richtige Weg ist, auch wenn es sich zunächst gruselig oder falsch anfühlt. Das ist in diesem Buch auch ein sehr zentraler Punkt, dennoch werden diejenigen, die gern Romance lesen, definitiv auch abgeholt. Von der Seite aus also alles richtig gemacht.
Der Schriebstil ist im Großen und Ganzen angenehm, allerdings wirkten die Dialoge manchmal etwas gestellt, ebenso wie ein paar sprachliche Bilder (für mich z.B. die Einbindung des Titels). Allerdings empfand ich das eher als minor inconvenience, nicht wirklich als störend und auch da muss ich sagen, dass mir das mit 14 oder so wahrscheinlich nicht weiter aufgefallen wäre.

Außerdem bin ich so happy über Tonis Musikgeschmack <3 

Feels very similar to the first one: characters are intriguing, their relationships complicated, the setting is cool af and there's a lot of intrigue and secrets in the air.
Still, it is too slow for me to fall in love with it completely. I like character driven stories, but it still feels like I'm observing too much character interaction while a plot is waiting for me in the periphery. Don't get me wrong, there is plot, but the balance between character exploration and plot is off to me personally. 

I have to say that with this second book, the characters grew on me more than they did during the first one. As of now, I like them all (except for Parisa, Idk, she really isn't the type of character I enjoy). And just like the first one, this one ended with a bang. I'm excited to listen to the third one once it's available in the German audio version. (If you understand German and are reading this: I really recommend the audio books, Tim Gössler does an impressive job in my opinion. His voice suits this book perfectly.)

I don't know how to rate this, because while there is a lot to love there are scenes/images in there that I disapprove of strongly. 
I didn't need to read/see these weird sexualizing scenes centering children. 
Some of them might be meant as the embarrassment older children/young teens might have around sexual topics, one was probably meant to be funny because Riko sees Reg as a robot and not a person she interacts with

still, why tf would she think "i wanna see how this robot works compared to humans - for this reason, I need to insert something from behind" ...?!?!?

. One was up until now unexplained recollection of trauma. As you can see, there's ways to explain why these things are there, but it's still more than questionable. It grossed me out and I really hope it was put in there "accidentally" (how??).

Other than that there's a lot of cool ideas in there. The illustration style is beautiful and the abyss is fascinating, magical and horrifying at the same time. I didn't mind the worldbuilding aspects interfering with the plot so much, because learning things about the abyss was one of the most interesting things to me.
Sadly, I will probably never know what else there is to explore and how the plot continues, because I don't think I want to read scenes like the ones mentioned above any more.

I am very glad I finished this book instead of DNFing it halfway through. I knew before starting this that I wouldn't be a fan of the writing, since I tend to not like overly "beautiful" writing. But I wanted to read it, because it was one of the first sapphic books I was aware of. So yeah ...

Exactly as predicted, I had a very hard time with the writing style - for the first 50% of the book, I struggled so much to understand what was going on, because the writing made it hard to pinpoint what was happening. I guess this is a me problem and maybe people who don't get confused by too many pretty words have a different experience, but I sometimes felt like I was not intellectual enough to understand this book (was not helped by English not being my native language, but most of the time I  have no problem reading in English). It was such a weird experience, because I understood the individual words and sentences, but in sum they didn't explain anything to me.
Somehow that changed halfway through and I started to get things. The second thing that this kind of writing does for me is it keeps me at arm's length from the story. While it might make it more emotional to other readers, for me it just makes it harder to feel for the characters. While I was interested to see how everything developed and what route Red and Blue were going to choose, I didn't connect with their yearning in a way that made me emotional. Still, I got somewhat invested.
And then came the twist and I was like "omg, this is SO well done and clever!!"

At first I thought the "seeker" consuming all he letters was the one watching them. But that seemed like such a weird choice, because why would you simply tell the reader that they're in danger this whole time without doing anything with it.. like, it doesn't feel more dangerous with each time it happens, at some point I was like "yeah, I know they're watching them, I don't need the reminder, thank you". And then it all made sense.

I didn't care that a lot of the surrounding world stays very vague - the war, the time travel mechanics etc. This is not the kind of book that wants you to understand its world well, so if you seek that from a story, you might be disappointed. 

War süß, hat Spaß gemacht. Die Idee der Glücksbäckerei fand ich super kreativ und schön umgesetzt. Ich glaube, ich hätte diese Reihe sehr gern gemocht, hätte ich sie als Kind gelesen.
Nett zum zwischendurch hören, wenn man was Entspannendes möchte.

There's a lot to like about this book. Most of all, I loved the atmosphere. The writing style fits it perfectly and paints a picture of 1920s London that feels very alive. From the very first scene I was very immersed. The author also did a good job with the bad guy, he really was terrifying. In general the mysteriousness of everything was well established through the writing style, very cool. 
I also liked the characters, I don't think there's anyone I disliked. Sure, we see most of Evie and she's a little pain in the ass sometimes - you can just see her making decisions without thinking a single thought beforehand - but she's a seventeen year old teenager and I do think there are a lot of teenagers like her in this world. She and the others were fun to follow and I'm excited to get to know them better over the course of the series. 
One of the reasons why we get to know the characters enough to care was because we spent a lot of time reading how the relationships between them form. I understood why they clicked or didn't click with eachother, which is always a good sign for well fleshed our characters. However, this aspect also contributes to this book being quite slow paced. A lot of things happen, but it still feels slow, because while there's a good amount of mystery and murder, the tension takes its time building up. So if you're someone who wants a lot of action and moving fast towards the solution of the main mystery, I fear you might get frustrated over the course of these over 500 pages. I personally was entertained enough the whole time, especially because of the atmospheric writing.

Still, I was a a bit confused by the way the story was told - and I think that might be a frustrating aspect for some readers: The reader knows a lot of things before the characters do. You can pick up different pieces and put them together to the point where you're sometimes like: "Oh my god, can these two please meet and then stumble upon this one topic somehow?? It could be so much easier!"
Sometimes you read about characters figuring something out that you already put together or were told about upfront. It was a little much.

I still don't get why there's a scene from Ida Knowles perspective when her diary is found later on and everything important is in there as well?

Even the knowledge the characters gained over the course of the story never felt surprising, nor were there any plot twists (in my opinion). Everything just fit together. That doesn't mean that the story wasn't exciting to me, it was just not as exciting as it could have been.

All in all I liked this book a lot and read it surprisingly fast for its slow pace, the book being over 500 pages and me being a slow reader. That is a good sign and I'd definitely recommend this book to people who are fine with the flaws mentioned above.

I really liked it, but the audio book isn't on spotify anmore so I can't continue listening at the moment :(