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chantaal's Reviews (2.32k)
DNF @ 33%. this book is "what if godzilla halo jump but mOrE" with shit world building and meh character work and lame social commentary and nothing but action and while it was fine to listen to while building a lego set, i have no desire to continue. audiobook narrator was great.
This turned out to be a very cute and cozy slice of life manga about a sort of magical cafe that shows up when people need it most, staffed by a cat barista who makes the drink that person needs in that moment. Each story features someone who has an issue they're stressed out about, and the cat barista makes them a drink while giving them some good life advice. It's cute, but I don't think I'll go on in the series.
This was engaging and absolutely a page turner, but I felt it sort of jumped the shark around the 70% mark. It went from weird mystery to incredibly hard to swallow conspiracy-like theories, and my disbelief was not suspended enough as this train went fully off the rails.
Officially throwing in the towel on this one at 17%. I've tried my hardest but I can't seem to bring myself to care enough about the characters or the plot setup to go on.
This has a promising premise: our main character Ophelia is a psychologist specializing in ERS, which is a space-based condition that can cause people to go mad and possibly murder their fellow crew. Ophelia is assigned to a ship that just lost a crew member in an attempt to help them process and hopefully prevent ERS. The ship docks somewhere and I presume that horror ensues from there. I didn't get far enough to even get to the horror bits, which is a shame.
The main roadblock for me here was the characters and the plot setup. Ophelia is part of a billionaire corporate family, and she's escaping some sort of big dust up that her family is involved in when she accepts the assignment. The crew on the ship don't appreciate her coming into their space while they're mourning, and the tension from the outset just feels so...contrived. It feels stupid. It made me absolutely dislike every single person in this book, especially Ophelia.
I love the idea of space horror, and I want more of it. I just wish I could have gone on longer with this one, but I just couldn't.
Many thanks to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.
This has a promising premise: our main character Ophelia is a psychologist specializing in ERS, which is a space-based condition that can cause people to go mad and possibly murder their fellow crew. Ophelia is assigned to a ship that just lost a crew member in an attempt to help them process and hopefully prevent ERS. The ship docks somewhere and I presume that horror ensues from there. I didn't get far enough to even get to the horror bits, which is a shame.
The main roadblock for me here was the characters and the plot setup. Ophelia is part of a billionaire corporate family, and she's escaping some sort of big dust up that her family is involved in when she accepts the assignment. The crew on the ship don't appreciate her coming into their space while they're mourning, and the tension from the outset just feels so...contrived. It feels stupid. It made me absolutely dislike every single person in this book, especially Ophelia.
I love the idea of space horror, and I want more of it. I just wish I could have gone on longer with this one, but I just couldn't.
Many thanks to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.
Oh boy I loved this so much. I loved all the characters and their friendships. I loved the constant thread of facing and dealing with death and grief which is inescapable for characters of this age. I enjoyed the murder mystery and the sleuthing. But really, I loved Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron. And Chris and Donna. I can't wait to start book two and rejoin them and Coopers Chase.
DNF @ page 67. Felt way too literary for my tastes, and was also incredibly boring.
If I'm remembering my reading of The Devotion of Suspect X many years ago correctly, it seems like Higashino is way more interest in the how and the why of a murder mystery than he is the who, and I love that for him.
Malice has twists and turns in a way that isn't quite for shock value. It's more meticulous in unraveling the various threads of the mystery, leading you down paths that are dead ends or branch off in totally different directions. After the first third of the book, I had no idea where Higashino was going with the story or how, I was just along for the ride and enjoyed it immensely.
The only let down for me was the audiobook narrator, my man was way too American to be hired for this. If you don't understand that <i>tsu</i> is a syllable in itself and has a specific pronunciation (eg. it's Ha-tsu-ko, not Hat-su-ko), then don't narrate novels translated from Japanese! Hire people who at the very least will actually pronounce Japanese names properly! I WILL die on this hill!
Malice has twists and turns in a way that isn't quite for shock value. It's more meticulous in unraveling the various threads of the mystery, leading you down paths that are dead ends or branch off in totally different directions. After the first third of the book, I had no idea where Higashino was going with the story or how, I was just along for the ride and enjoyed it immensely.
The only let down for me was the audiobook narrator, my man was way too American to be hired for this. If you don't understand that <i>tsu</i> is a syllable in itself and has a specific pronunciation (eg. it's Ha-tsu-ko, not Hat-su-ko), then don't narrate novels translated from Japanese! Hire people who at the very least will actually pronounce Japanese names properly! I WILL die on this hill!
