There's nothing ground breaking about this. This story has been told in a similar variation many times before--out gay guy starts hanging out with the "straight" jock and they become friends and then the "straight" jock starts to realize that he's not actually that straight.

Is it bad? No, it's cute! I still liked it. But it didn't blow me away by any means. I find a few things puzzling, though. A few people kept calling Charlie 'really popular', yet Charlie is never seen or talked to by anyone except Tao (who makes a really big deal about him being friends with Nick) and Ben (who doesn't really count, let's face it). How exactly is he popular? Where are all these people who talk to him and are nice to him and want to be his friend? Or by popularity do they mean 'notoriety'? 

I'll keep reading and see where this goes and if it's somewhere more interesting. I really did enjoy the art! Though it took me a hot second to get used to Nick's turtle neck--he legit makes me think of a turtle every time I see him for some reason. He's got the bulkiest of necks lol 

 This gave me immense flashbacks to my boybander days and it's highly possible that it gave me rose-colored glasses for a lot of this book. I was a huge boyband fanfic writer (it was actually the first fanfic I started out writing) and that was where I was first introduced to "slash fanfic" and the queer world as a whole. Needless to say, fond memories abound.

The book itself was not bad, but I sort of wished for more build up to the relationship aspect of things as it was kind of out-of-the-gate. But I'm a big fan of will-they, won't-they angst, I suppose, so that may be personal preference. It did feel filled with real-world consequences though and not just immediate feel-good HEA which was cool to see. 

 This didn't blow me away by any means, but it was a nice little story. I liked that it was shorter and enjoyed the family-feel of it and the horroresque landscape. It felt kind of familiar in ways that I can't quite place. I might have read something similar (or maybe it just reminds me of Addie Larue?).

I liked Olivia overall; she was a decent character. But she felt like she went from loner brat to longing for a family and

willing to sacrifice herself for them

pretty quickly which didn't make a lot of sense? That is probably a consequence of it being a shorter story which doesn't allow for quite as much character development. Or that the story focused a bit too much on <i>ambiance</i> and not enough on characterization. 

 This book will definitely give you all the facts in the case, very detailed. Unfortunately as a book it comes out a little dry as if you are reading an entire court transcript word for word which makes it harder to get through than other true crime books I've read in the past. I know they were probably trying to avoid any flowery language or subjective story telling, but it is quite hard to slog through sometimes.

Still, if you haven't heard this story before, it's a good way to get all the facts in a less dramatic way than Dateline might give you (though I will never discount Dateline because they do an amazing job there too). 

 This is cute. Very feel-goody, light-hearted. Still nothing out of this world, but I can see why people really enjoy it. It's definitely slice of life, which I do enjoy, but still not feeling that sense of interest that makes these characters feel like something different and interesting than any other character in this same story that's been told tons of times before. 

 The writing on this one was SO much better, thank goodness. It felt a lot shorter than the first one, but I really enjoyed all the characters in it. I didn't care for the case quite as much, but there was a lot of financial stuff to it and I have never been a huge fan of financial crimes so it was a little dull on that front. Still a fun world to dive into, though. 

 The ideas were all here and with more manipulation and time it might have been something really interesting, but as it is now, it's hard to comprehend.

There are way too many characters POVs, for one thing. I couldn't keep up with half of who was who and then there were spies so they were going by multiple names... it was so confusing.

The plot was also sort of nonexistent. If you want to have an evil, looming empire, you need more substance than this. The rest of the world was so detached that the stakes never felt very high for anything going on. The "mystery" was also uninteresting to the point of being a chore that had to be checked off by the end of the story.

 The idea for this was interesting, but the execution just wasn't there. Also the author did the narration for the audiobook and was not really a great narrator. 

 The first thing I noticed that threw me out of this story was that the language used in it was all extremely modern. I got used to it eventually, but when you commit to a historical setting, it seems like you should commit to it fully? The one foot in, one foot out thing was really jarring.

I know some people say that it felt like two separate stories, which it didn't feel like to me--it flowed from the school setting to the war setting fine, in my opinion. I just didn't find a lot of the school setting to be very engaging. The beginning of the book I found interesting, but then once the school section started, I got bored and then like 70% through it picks up again.

I took more issue with some of the characterization transitions. Yes, Rin was a little infatuated with Altan at school, but she hardly interacted with him so it was really in passing, so the way it was treated like love at first sight once she meets up with him again felt weird as hell. Then there was the weird flip-flop with Nezha who suddenly became her best friend during the war. A lot of the characters were poorly represented in general, because I can barely remember their names or what purpose they served in the story at all.

Rin's arc is also kinda confusing. First she is in it for the power. She wants to be strong and to kick other people's asses. Then suddenly she magnanimous and wants to save the world. Then she's selfish again and just wants to be stronger than Altan. Then it's back to being the world-saver. A lot of flim-flamery goes on around her that makes her annoying and she feels like a Mary Sue a good portion of the time.

Kinda on the fence about reading more or not. Will have to think on it. 

 The atmosphere really drew me in immediately. This gave me so many Dishonored vibes; I was envisioning Dunwall the entire time. Even the narrator had a voice that reminded me of voice actors in the game. So interesting.

There was a lot of body horror in this, but considering the subject matter, it worked. It was very dark and the characters were quite flawed yet you still felt for them in a lot of ways. An interesting magic system happening, too. I think what also caught me was that it had the feeling I expected to get from A Marvellous Light (but didn't).