clovetra's Reviews (262)

crazy i’m saying this about a book im giving a 4-star review but. i’m really surprised i didn’t like this more. i am super surprised it wasn’t a knockout for me. i think this won book of 2024 at my local bookstore. so tbf i had insanely high expectations. and most were delivered on! 

i’ve gotta say the highlight(s) of this book are the expats. holy shit gore. i love gore. not only is he funny, but he is rugged and, get this, funny. he earns double funny because i love him. he is my pookie. so what he’s like 300 years older than me????? and margaret. oh my god pookie pie. someone bring this baddie to 2025 PLEASE

LET ME LEZ OUT WITH HER!!!!!

. the other expats were alright i guess… arthur had a small role but was still baby girl, and other than those three i didn’t care about any other expat. sue me. sorry i love gore and margaret too much to allow any other room in my heart. 

the writing style of this book is fucking delectable. magnificent. beautiful. i truly cannot describe just how good this book is written linguistic-wise unless you’ve picked up this book. i don’t know what enamoured me but god damn did i love it!!!! 

now on to what i didn’t really live laugh love…. the plot. now i don’t know what i was expecting after reading the blurb of this, but it certainly wasn’t what i read. ok sure yes i knew at some point MC and gore would be dating the blurb literally tells you that. but idk i expected more scifi!!!! this is tagged first and foremost scifi and there’s barely any. most of the focus is on the romance.

which is ok like i said gore can get it. but mannnn don’t mislead me!!! i was hoping for some more interesting things related to the time travelling! and ok yes i get the in-text reason is that MC isn’t a scientist and doesn’t understand the technical aspects but like!!!! your mc doesn’t have to get it!!!! you just have to have other characters be annoying about the physics and then have mc be lost in the convo or something like that. i mean at the very least the concepts related to their time travelling e.g. can they appear on CCTV, what happens if they catch a sickness from the modern world. like those parts were great!!!! the story just needed more of them. and not only more moments, but a better pacing with the actual plot. up until 60% of this book it fully felt like i was just reading a slice-of-live novel with hints of Something going on. and then all the action is crammed into the last 15% of the book and im annoyed because it seemed interesting!!! but it wasn’t given enough time to develop, so instead i had explanations of what was going on in the background whilst the mc was being a horndog thrown at me and then wow ok its over. like what were we doing the rest of the time????? not only was the plot non-existent, but the pacing of when The Plot was actually introduced was so random. i can imagine if someone is not able to simp over gore or project onto the mc they would hate this because nothing happens except “gore finds out about something that has happened after the 1850s and so he has to be given an explanation on it” but like. repeated 70 times. it’s cute ill admit, but without anything other than the romance or the comedy tying me to the story, i was left slightly disappointed. slightly.

because look, i had a good time. i had fun. i was invested. kind of. really i was only invested in the romance if im honest. but i think this concept has such potential!!!!! i just think the scifi aspect of this book was a letdown & the pacing of the main plot felt erratic. 

in other news i wanted to let you all know even though gore is depicted as a young guy i could not stop picturing him as charles from the walking dead s1 game. was very jarring to my stubborn brain every time his Not Grey Hair was described. 

that is all.

sigh. i really really really was looking forward to this. alas, this was a tad disappointing.

i mean this in the least mean way possible but usually i don’t have many expectations for YA. i kinda just go with it and don’t think too much deeper. but at times there felt like there were points i couldn’t overlook.

i will say i did enjoy some parts of this story. for one, the slow reveal of what happened to riley was nice, especially since i thought it was going to go in a different direction. i wasn’t unsatisfied — i thought it was written well. i also enjoy how vivian was kinda unlikeable? somehow i have a feeling she was written to be sympathetic, but honestly i didn’t like her and i was fine with that. i simultaneously was rooting for her to beat the “demon” but also hoping she gets her shit rocked for all the stupid, callous and selfish things she’s done. i love with every situation she’s both in the wrong and in the right. idk i found that very realistic for a teen MC but also entertaining. 

the side characters were a bit meh. i mean everyone other than ash barely had more than one personality trait, and ash at most had two. i found them quite uninteresting and flat, but i did enjoy the direction all the characters went in.

i have mixed feelings on the plot. on one hand i think it is a unique twist on the “demon” trope, making it more modern and adding a new layer to its horror. there was tension, which i always need, but idk i felt like i could almost predict what was going to happen? and everyone’s reactions? and honestly as the story starting climbing in tension, i kept caring less and less about victoria. maybe i kind of wanted her to lose? maybe because i thought she made exclusively stupid decisions she should lose? idk, but at some point i stopped caring because i almost could predict where this was going.

the dialogue was a bit cringe at times, especially when certain games were name dropped. it felt like when u watch a movie and u can clearly tell there’s a sponsorship because the coke label on the can is always facing the screen, or they include a shot of the apple logo on a laptop. that really kept throwing me out of the story and breaking my immersion. plus as i mentioned earlier, everything victoria said or did lowkey made me dislike her, and her inner dialogue did not help that 💀💀. sometimes what she said almost felt cartoonishly dumb and/or rotted. i do like that over the text she learns to be a better person, but i think because she sucked for 80% of the book, i didn’t care about the 20% where she was a sane person.

i’ll be honest tho and say as much as i just dunked on the book, i had fun! i am always a gaming girlie at heart, and i did enjoy the moments where vivian was almost cosplaying as a twitch streamer with her speech 💀💀 i found that very funny because it was so goofy. i did enjoy the themes of grief and guilt, im always a sucker for someone working through losing someone they care about, and i also like the resolution. i did enjoy the ending as well, it felt deserved and the ending nicely allows room for a sequel or something similar with a different MC. the actions of the “demon” also felt significant, i liked that they couldn’t just be washed away and fixed, instead the consequences lingered. the last thing the “demon” does did feel a bit cartoonish, random and silly, but everything else was great so im not too hung up on that. 

i did wish this book wasn’t as clichéd as it ended up being. a lot of the story was predictable, and before a character realised something, i’d had realised that 50 pages ago, so i was stuck just reading this like “oh my god YALL ARE FUCKING DUMB!!!!!” but you know what? sometimes people are dumb. especially teenagers. and that’s ok. 

in other news i am now going to pretend i am a twitch streamer like vivian does at times and narrate me eating shit in cookie run ovenbreak. godspeed.

well, well, well. what can i say. i love me a main character who is so very clearly autistic coded. shout out emily wilde you and i are kindred spirits (re: autism).

ummm this book was. fine? like i didn’t hate it. but i didn’t love it. i think this book is extremely overhyped for what it is, which is:

fetch quest A, talk to villager B, fuck around with some fae C, fetch quest D, etc. like my girl is really doing the same shit over and over and over again. idk there wasn’t too much interest for me. 

another reason i was bored was because of wendell. oh brother. his presence made it so any dangerous situation emily was in became practically null and void because

he could pull a fae spell out of his ass and save her. like ok maybe we could’ve mentioned the fact he can slightly time travel or fucking shapeshift before he, you know, does it at the umpteenth hour before emily is completely fucked???? i honestly think the “twist reveal” (which anyone could’ve guessed was going to happen by the not to subtle hinting from emily) came way too early and almost made emily AND bambleby invincible. like that showdown with the ice king or whatever the fuck he was called??? yeah i literally was not worried at all. any possible tension in the book evaporated the minute wendell being not only a fae, but a fucking fae KING, was revealed.

also complete side note but what kind of fucking name is wendell bambleby. i don’t care about the in text reasons that is a hideous name oh my god. please lord hear my prayers and make fawcett change his name for the next book 🙏🙏🙏 (i am delusional).

i also found the dynamic between emily and bambleby to not only be predictable, but incredibly stale as well. i’m not too mad at the ending (the book is tagged romance so i can’t dunk on the book for their relationship being predictable), but their back and forth became very formulaic very quickly for me, and honestly, i didn’t buy the chemistry! sue me! regardless of emily’s notes, the tone i perceived was that she can’t fuckjng stand this guy up until like the last two chapters where emily feels like she does a full 180 on her opinion of him. 

also. emily. fucking emily. i beg of you. tell me why the fuck you are so dumb. ok yes i get sometimes characters need to do reckless shit in a story to have things happen. ok. but yet again, the story constantly repeats this formula: dumb thing emily can do related to the fae appears, she tells her journal she knows it’s a dumb thing to do, she knows she’ll completely fuck herself over if she does said thing, and then she does said thing. like cmon you can’t say you’re this world renowned drydologist or whatever the fuck they call it and then pull half of the stunts she does in this book. and mind you she only gets out of said sticky situations all but one time due to hail mary’s. i’ll give her credit for the festival, she did eat there. claps for emily wilde. but the rest? it felt contrived, it felt forced, it felt like it lacked reason, and it felt like she only did said stupid shit because said stupid shit would move the plot along.

wait hold up. what fucking plot. yeah. this entire book is just emily and bambleby puttering around until emily does aforementioned dumb fuck things. there was no tension. i was only reading to see if she’d stop being a dumb fuck. the answer was a resounding no.

why oh why am i being so mean to this book? BECAUSE IT HAD SUCH GOOD POTENTIAL. the lore about the fae world? amazing. emily’s cunning to work with the fae (when the story allows her instead of making her be a damsel in distress)? magnificent. the footnotes that immersed me more into the story? superb. every other character minus the two main dickheads? ate. everything i dunked on had the potential to be perfect!!!!!! but i have no idea what the fuck happened. 

i’m actually a bit mad. because i can smell how this could be amazing. more natural dialogue. more time with bambleby before Things Happen™️. more times where emily saves herself. more stakes. MORE. i can see why people love this. god i am still trying to find ways in which i did love this. because i did. i did have fun. emily is so silly at times i love her because she’s so socially inept it’s fun. bambleby is an agent of chaos and his whimsy was very entertaining. but idk, them together, mixed with The Thing™️, turned two beautiful seperate characters into poopoo sludge for me.

wow was i angry at this. anyways yes i will be continuing this series. i am hoping i am just irrationally angry at a book that probably does not deserve it but hey, how can i declare myself a hater if i do not occasionally spew vitriol in my reviews. 

this review quickly got away from me holy shit am i ok? idk i think this entire review is so mean because i wanted to love this so much more. i liked it a lot actually. but i can’t lie and say these things didn’t piss me tf off. also sometimes getting heated in reviews for no reason is kinda fun.
can’t wait for the sequel 😜

this was soo pookie pie. so cute. so touching.

i liked seeing the progression of how noah deals with his grief, and lewis almost being personified into mothman.

super sweet as well to see noah’s commentary on being trans. idk something about seeing tweens accept themselves the way they are was refreshing to read. 

i liked as well that by the end of the story, noah doesn’t just move on from his friendship with lewis, but it grows & evolves.

also ofc i have to shout of the fact that there was t4t in this book. automatically bonus points in my mind.

i did find this book to be juvenile and its commentary was surface-level, but i mean i can’t be too mad at that considering it’s audience is middle graders. i just can’t rate it highly because i am learning that is not my style. but like i said anything gay automatically is a banger book.

shout out mothman for being the queer icon we didn’t know we needed. 

oh ok. guess i’ll just die then.

this book is. so sad yet so thrilling. depressing yet hopeful. and also incredibly gay. i love gay people. 

the writing in this book is positively superb, especially when describing lily’s inner thoughts. i truly felt so immersed in lily’s character, so much so i almost felt like i was actually there with her. the writing about her inner turmoil being gay, these new feelings she has, the juggling of her life with the chinese american community versus her place in the queer community…. beautiful. reading about the intersectionality between being asian and queer, whilst also sprinkling some historical context and tensions in the background? chefs kiss. 

can i just say again how much i loved lily. god she was so well written. i really loved seeing her character development, and she was incredibly likeable and relatable. the other characters were ok… i mean ofc i loved my girl kath & everyone at the telegraph club, but nobody else seemed to pop. shirley kind of did i guess? but everyone else kind of felt a bit one-dimensional. defo not flat! but idk i could tell they were side characters. i dont know if that makes sense. 

another thing with this book is because its a bit long, sometimes it felt a bit repetitive. and honestly i only had this issue in regard to lily coming to terms with her sexuality. not even the conflict between being asian & queer, just her accepting she was queer in the first place was repeated a bit too many times. honestly that’s the only circumstance it annoyed me in, but i mean i can’t lie and say after the halfway point of this book i was lowkey kind of sick of it. lily ruminate on something new regarding being a lesbian!!!!! maybe let’s start instead ruminating on if you are into butches or femmes!!! idk give me some variety my girl!!!!

i will say tho . fuck i loved this. i cried at the ending. i cried at the epilogue. and what about it. as much as i can bitch about minor little things in this book, the ending got to me. i just starred at my wall for a while coming to terms with this book. i think it hit even harder for me imo because although this book is fiction, for many people it was their reality. especially after reading the authors’ notes i just sat and went “Fuck”. because like yeah holy shit if i think being a lesbian is hard in 2025….. a lot of people found it 10x harder seventy years ago. it sounds stupid that i ‘realised’ that fact reading this book, but it’s more so that it really sunk in for me. something something autism makes it harder for me to put myself in someone else’s shoes until i literally live the experience myself so by reading about lily’s life i felt like i was truly watching this happen to her and it fully cemented to me how privileged i am by being queer in modern society something something. especially with seeing online everyone slowly moving towards being right-wing…. idk this book just hit me like a tonne of bricks. i probably sound incredibly naive here but hey i am owning it.

thank you malinda lo for the many book recs at the end you best believe this book has inspired me to take an interest in queer history 🙏🙏🙏  and thank you for the tears 

another day, another tamsyn muir book where once i finish it i have to read the wiki and multiple explanations to understand what in the hell i just read.

tamsyn muir u are the only author i can tolerate confusing me that much with ur books.

now nona… what can i say about nona. she’s so fucking spunky. i loved her. i kept calling her stupid when han asked me my thoughts on this whilst i was reading it and u know what i stand by it. nona is a fucking dumbass. but she’s MY dumbass. i love her and her idiocy. she is the spiritual embodiment of a child trapped in an adult’s body and it was very fun. i will say the whole “mc is a dumbass therefore the reader doesn’t know wtf is going on because the mc is left in the dark therefore the reader is” schtick in this series twice was not my favourite! with gideon i think it defo worked because it wasn’t that she was dumb, she just didn’t give a shit. but it’s almost like nona purposefully didn’t want to learn about anything going on, which was infuriating because!!!!! hey I WANT TO KNOW WHATS GOING ON!!!!! and especially because nona has the intelligence of an earthworm when she IS interested in what the fuck is going on, nobody explains shit to her because she is too dumb to grasp shit!!!! meaning IM STILL IN THE DARK!!!!!!!!! just because i am used to being lost in a first read through of muir’s novels doesn’t make it any less annoying for me. 

i did enjoy all the other characters as well. ofc i will always go fucking insane for my babies palamedes and camilla. i am so happy i got 480 more pages of those two. and HELLOOOOOO i love the concept of how pyrrha came to exist. i love the unique spin on her character being trans. iykyk. 

the plot itself was….. meh? like don’t get me wrong i adored the school chapters (hot sauce you have my heart), but everything else was weirdly paced and lowkey not that interesting? i did oddly enough really like the john chapters, but the plot behind-the-scenes with blood of eden was not interesting to me. finding out who nona truly was wasn’t interesting to me. what WAS more interesting to me honestly was nona’s day to day life. idk i oddly enough really liked the domestic chapters LMAO. which is rare for me. but once the plot picked up it was a bit… boring. because lowkey i knew everything would work out. i mean how could it not. half the fucking cast at this point is immortal, so there felt like there were no stakes therefore i kinda didn’t care. and because there was so much shit going on, as well as the fact NONE OF THE SHIT WAS EXPLAINED, i just kinda sat there being like “ok when’s something fun gonna happen again”. and im not even saying there wasn’t fun shit past day four, i’m just saying i like to complain.

at times this book lowkey almost felt like fan service, and as much as i did love kiriona, crown, paul, etc. it felt cheap almost to me. it felt like i did not Deserve it. nothing happens and then suddenly i feel like im reading a fanfic written by a teen who got excited and added every possible cool thing they wanted to happen to the story. that sounds so mean but its how it felt LMAO . i liked it but it did not feel fair. 

like always i will adore my love tamsyn muir. i did have a lot of fun with this. and i eagerly await alecto the ninth. but idk this book felt like it was a bit all over the place. can’t lie and say i didn’t have a good ol time tho!!!!

lowkey i had no expectations going into this. but this book was perfect for the week ive had LMAO. i will always love my dark gritty gorey horrors but sometimes you need a book where a good called poopfruit exists and there are two kaiju named after twilight ❤️

the only “issue” i had with this book was one ill always have within the scifi genre, which is that the world confused my simpleton mind too much even after explanations. jamie is the perfect main character because he is the everyman in a location where literally everyone has a PHD so i thought the explanations of how the world worked would be explained simpler for jamie in-universe and therefore me but…. not really. like only really at the end did i get the core mechanism of how the kaiju earth works and the “barrier” concept. like i could not work it out in my head. that kind of goes for…. well every other sciencey thing in this book. 

the plot at times also felt a bit…. Meh? not bad, but not engaging. if this book was not as humorous as it was i could defo see myself not having fun because the plot was a bit basic & predictable. but honestly im not too mad because i had a great time. 

the cast of characters were fun. i really liked jamie’s inner circle, they were all super engaging. special shout out to niamh the resident they/them 🔥🔥🔥🔥 ugh i love books where a character is lgbt+ and nobody gives a shit. “ok niamh uses they/them pronouns who cares we’ve got literal fucking kaiju on our hands”. I LOVEE ITTT. i will say having *everyone* be this goofy on the job did throw me out of the immersion a lot, and at the award ceremony thing i defo was cringing from the facebook-esque humour. but that’s literally like 4 pages so can i really be that annoyed? nah.

i do think this book wonderfully toes the line between explaining the “magic” vs not over explaining it and making it stupid, but i fear i am just too stupid. i could nawt fully go with the flow because i still was trying to work out how the fuck kaijus exist. yeah i probably would’ve liked this more if i could just let go and go along for the ride but im autistic. sue me.

honestly with how fun this was scalzi has easily pushed himself into one of my favourite authors of the year. and all his books are now at the very top of my tbr. i had such fun with this, i can’t wait to see what his other books entail

gonna be honest! i don’t have much to say for this!

the concept is really interesting, but i still struggle to tell how tf penny remembers her job, but yet people come to the store asleep? i might just be dumb tho

each chapter kept expanding on the lore of this world & it was super interesting, but the characters all felt flat and generic. 

idk im not really the biggest fan of slice of life novels. i mean i like them in the moment! this was relaxing as hell! but they usually don’t stick with me and i find the genre at times to be a bit repetitive. i’ll say tho out of all the slice of life novels i’ve read, this would be my fave simply because it put a unique spin on the genre.

i don’t want to be a dick because this memoir was very clearly needed & its premise is good. tbh even calling it a “premise” seems scummy of me because a real human being had to be raped in order for this novel to exist. so i do think ito’s story needed to be told to audiences outside of japan who may be unfamiliar with her story. god knows i was.

there are points of this novel where the text became repetitive. i don’t mean in any way shape or form “repetitive” in terms of her writing about her feelings surrounding her experience. but certain things were repeated a lot, for example, her questioning the arrest warrant was extremely drawn out. i imagine it was very true to life in that as the thought kept repeating in her head, she repeated it as often in the book. but as a reader it almost became… dare i say boring? kind of? after a while it almost lost its meaning to me because it was repeated over and over again.

i do think the statistics were important and needed in this book. it put into perspective for me, a non-japanese person, the true state of the japanese criminal justice system. like my god that story about the fucking golf student. absolutely horrifying.

what else was horrifying was the entire way her case was handled by the higher ups in the police…….. holy fuck. i actually had to pause and put the book down because i was so mortified that this is actually a true story, and not only did someone have to go through this mishandling of her crime, but the fact that the people “supposed” to protect us were corrupt in ways i thought weren’t possible. jesus christ.

i don’t want to invalidate this book. honestly i think everyone in the entire world should read it. but i am someone who is an enjoyment-rater first and foremost, and i can’t lie and say this book was enjoyable. because it wasn’t. it was fucking nauseating. but i think i will recommend thid book to everyone in the world ever. 

thank you netgalley & hachette australia and new zealand for providing me a copy of this book in return for a honest review 🥰

this was such a powerful book and i was not expecting that at all.

bat eater follows cora zeng, a wasian twenty-something trying to navigate her life during the covid-19 pandemic. cora lives with her sister, until she’s tragically pushed in front of a train right in front of cora’s eyes. suddenly her life is upended, and she becomes a crime scene cleaner. but suddenly cora witnesses an uptick of murdered east asian women, and as she becomes entangled with something living in her home, cora seeks to find out what’s happening to her fellow “bat eaters”.

cora is an amazing protagonist. she feels realistic in so many ways, such as how she approaches the “roommate” she has, but also in general. all her decisions feel like they make sense, and she doesn’t do anything out of character just to further the plot, which i really appreciate. also!!! hello!!! cora is great ocd representation!!! yes yes it’s the ‘cLiChE’ contamination ocd, but still, cora’s paranoia felt so raw, especially compounded during a pandemic. i was very much like her (until i caught covid for the first time) so i very much related to cora, which always adds extra enjoyment to a book for me. the character development she undergoes throughout the story also feels very natural, and honestly i forgot at times i was reading a work of fiction and that cora wasn’t a real person. that’s how natural she felt. 

speaking of covid, im usually one who hates when books mention it. it completely breaks my immersion and honestly im not a fan….. usually. this book does not follow that pattern for me. the entire plot hinges on covid-19, so it’s not just some stupid throwaway line which is what i hate, but instead its immeshed in the plot flawlessly. and i mean the entire plot DOES follow covid-19, because without that, we wouldn’t have delilah being killed due to being a “bat eater”, or the bat carcasses found at the east-asian women’s crime scene, or even the rise of anti-asian hate in this book make any sense. i liked seeing the steady progression of these plot elements, and the book didn’t feel fantastical because what it was talking about *did* happen to asians worldwide during covid-19. i really enjoyed how the themes of racism surrounding the pandemic were explored, and the character’s actions and reactions to it mimicked reality, which i liked. because events did mimic reality, i didn’t feel like they were being exaggerated in this book. 

i’ll be honest and say i didn’t care about most of the side characters. maybe because i loved cora so much, who knows. but yifei is a queen. not only was she integral to the plot in, yet again, a way that felt natural, but she was funny, caring, knowledgeable, and mysterious. i also liked that yifei didn’t take any shit, and she felt like a great foil to cora — one woman too scared to do anything for fear of being targeted, and one woman who’s doing whatever she wants because she’ll never know when her time is up. i really liked that. the other side characters i kind of didn’t care about. i mean the only other significant characters were harvey & aunt z, and they were ok, but didn’t pop out to me like yifei did. 

now honestly, i only have one “gripe” with this book. it’s not even a gripe. i just wanted more horror. this felt maybe more like magical realism to me? idk. there defo were some horror elements, but i expected not only more horror, but for the horror to be more. you know?

also, ill be honest, the plot is… difficult. it was for me, but i can see it not being for everyone. i was able to latch on to cora so quickly, i straight up didn’t even care what we were doing plot-wise. cora was so engaging to me honestly i forgot about the entire serial killer plot for a while 😭 like only at the end i was like “oh yeah that plot! omg!” not to say i didn’t like it! i did like the serial killer plot! but there is a lot going on story wise at times, what with the hungry ghost festival, the serial killer, the crime scenes, the pandemic, hate crimes, cora’s ocd, cora’s feelings towards delilah, etc. not to say i felt like it was too much going on, but i feel like people looking for a book focused mainly on one of those elements or plot points won’t enjoy this, as cora is the anchor, and everything else kind of works around her. i still enjoyed it tho! 

bat eater is a horror book in many ways. but the true horror in this book is found not only in the treatment of asian people during the covid-19 pandemic, but in the horror of death, the afterlife, and achieving justice for those wronged in life. it’s not only a novel with mystery and gore and death, but a novel about learning to be your own person, and letting go.