too repetitive. brings up interesting points then squashes them by repeating them until the words are drilled in you brain or by relying a little too much on freudian theory. i can't emphasize enough how far up freud's ass this is. it's outdated (duh) so it'd be cool to see a modern take on the subject, will have to look into that. 

in all fairness, i didn't understand a good part of what was brought up. the vocabulary isn't the most accessible, and as a non-native speaker i struggled for most of it. perhaps with a translation i could gain a better perspective on this, but even then it'd still read like a love letter to freud. 

knew i wouldn't like this from the cover alone but i needed something to fill a challenge prompt. too corny to see it through. we need to end the harry potter reference industrial complex

i might be the only person in the world who didn't know what rosemary's baby was about but i can't say i cared for it tbh

well. i read that, i guess. i had high hopes for this but i was incredibly bored for most of it. the story's a slow burn that seemed to emphasize the "slow" part for its majority; once we get to the long awaited climax — which i genuinely enjoyed as i really didn't see the twist coming — it isn't given the focus i would've expected, seemingly lying in other aspects of the book i didn't care for. that's most of my gripe with this book tbh, i just didn't care for a lot of it, blomkvist's entire character included. i thought salander was really cool and i wanted to see more of her pov, but even by the end of the book i was kind of over her, and her

sexual & romantic involvement with blomkvist

irked me from the moment it began. i understand what the central theme of the book is, but it's drenched in a male perspective i can't get past, especially in regards to

salander's rape and consequential revenge

. i hate to judge things as superficially as "you can tell a man wrote this" but my god, you really can tell a man wrote this. really disliked the constant descriptions of lisbeth, too. 

this was really not for me, idk. i was holding out hope it'd feel gripping at some point but after 20 chapters of vague interest in the story i just couldn't wait to be done.

i like the plot, the characters are interesting, it was cool seeing the story unfold but it's just too short. i LOVED if we were villains and was excited to read more from the author, but from the moment i saw the page count i had a Bad Feeling about it. really wanted to enjoy this more than i did but novellas don't do it for me, which is more of my flaw than the story's.

i struggled to pick a rating for this. there's a lot i adored about the story and quite a few things i was dissatisfied with. ultimately my rating might change in the next hour and once more tomorrow and so forth.

the story starts out almost painfully slow, but once it picks up it hooks you in. i switched between the ebook and the audiobook so i could continue until i was only picking up a few words per sentence and i knew i'd have to re-start the chapter in the morning. 

i really enjoyed the worldbuilding. i haven't read many vampire stories so forgive me if this isn't a new concept but

a vampire's bite eliciting different memories depending on the body part

was one of my favorite aspects of the story. still, there's certain things regarding both plot points and the world itself, that i wish had been expanded on a bit more. i don't think uxlay was utilized to its full potential as a setting, but this could be righted in future sequels.

despite the general negativity in people's opinions of kidan, i really enjoyed her as a character. she did annoy me in certain moments, but overall i thought her moral compass and the violence, the bloodthirst she fought to suppress were refreshing. the more i read the more i wanted her to unleash that inner darkness and see the lengths her ambition would take her.

sort of in relation to that last part, i have my gripes about her falling for

susenyos.

i guessed upon their first meeting that things would take the enemies-to-lovers route, and while a fan of that in theory, i'm much less of a fan of it put in practice, as i feel it's rarely well executed. i enjoyed the darker aspects of that dynamic, but when things started to change between them there were times i thought the story slipped in terrible modern YA romance territory. ultimately, i do find the dynamic appealing, just wish kidan's internal conflict regarding susenyos hadn't been overpowered so easily.

the ending felt kind of anticlimactic, in my opinion. it happened too fast, and everyone's actions didn't seem to have all that much weight on the story by the last few chapters. my distaste for the abrupt ending dissipated a bit when i saw this is a planned trilogy, but i still wish there had been something more to it. 

i wish i'd written down my thoughts as i read because this isn't half of what i wanted to say about the book. i'm still not sure if i've given it this rating to desperately cling onto the 4 stars i wish i could give it or because i think it's deserved, but i did enjoy this for the most part