clovetra's Reviews (262)

Krampus: The Yule Lord

Brom

2.0

dark reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

oh how i wanted to love this. BROM HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME.

tldr; this reads like a worse version of slewfoot (even though this came out before slewfoot SHUT UP I READ THAT FIRST)

now here’s the long story: i really didn’t like much about this book. let me go over what i did like. which is mainly isabelle. simply because she is pookie pie. she is the love of my life and she could get it. also i am a sucker for “eternal being being mesmerised by things we find boring in the modern day” trope. krampus is a himbo at times i said what i said.

there were also a few scenes i really adored. namely the moment in the general’s hideout. you know the one. also the little moment with krampus at the bar???? did not expect that in this book but wow was i happy to read about it. i loved those two scenes A LOT.

ummmm and that’s about all i can say i really loved about this book. so let’s go over what i didn’t love 😟

jesse. what an asshat. yes i recognise the story is very likely supposed to give him a strong redemption arc where he goes from an unlikeable protagonist to someone the reader roots for. but i did not give a flying fart about what happened to him. honestly there were many times i kinda wished he died. and so many situations jesse got out of seemed incredibly unrealistic. like it just threw me out of it all. idk it feels like his redemption arc… didn’t exist? where was his being a good guy? oh wow he helped krampus? therefore he is redeemed? nah im gonna need more than that actually.

krampus felt very much like samson from slewfoot. almost too similar for me to not keep referring back to samson and thinking “oh he was written so much better”. like at least samson’s motives made sense there. why the fuck is krampus doing anything beyond his own goals. actually scratch that, he isn’t doing shit, which brings me to another issue — it felt like most of this book was filler. nothing ever fucking happened. and if something massive was built up, it either was incredibly disappointing in reality, or instantly reversed by the necessity of the plot, making what i had just read pointless. like yes we’re doing this massive showdown where we’re supposed to be worried for krampus….. but also he’s fucking immortal. so why do i care if he gets hurt when you’ve sent up he kind of can’t die. 70% of this book is krampus bitching, 20% is jesse bitching, and the remaining 10% is where anything actually interesting happens. the plot is literally this: krampus and gang go to a location. they encounter shenanigans. they rest up. jesse winges about dillard. krampus and gang go to another location. wash rinse repeat. and krampus’ motivations beyond “spreading cheer” and “killing santa” don’t exist, meaning you have no idea why the fuck he’s just pissfarting around for most of the story.

can you tell i didn’t like the plot?

so much of this book is just slewfoot but written by someone who has never written a book ever in their life and has also never been taught fundamentals in literature. because why do both books feature a human who is first an unbeliever and is hard on their luck when x supernatural creature appears and decides to help the main character get revenge on all those who have wronged MC,

then supernatural creature turns MC into one of them, murder murder, lots of lore dumps about their origins in folklore

hell, even the way krampus & samson’s dialogue appear are so earily similar i wouldn’t have been surprised if a twist was that they were straight up the same guy.

i am so thoroughly disappointed and annoyed. disappointed because i know brom can do better, as evidenced by my love for slewfoot, and annoyed because i wasted so much time on a book that could’ve been like…. 100 pages shorter.

i’m actually pissed what the fuck was that.

Content Warnings

Homegoing

Yaa Gyasi

4.0

challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

i have never in my life read a book where the story spans the perspectives of more than three generations. to follow seven generations, fourteen individuals, each with their own story, was mesmerising. gyasi has such a way with words, and i was enamoured.

the amount of history intertwined with stories that are fictional in nature but very likely true in facts was amazing to witness. i only know bits and pieces about history — a fact there, a war here, an eventful date occasionally. so i really enjoyed this insight into a world ive never traversed.

honestly i was on the fence hearing about this synopsis. honestly, i usually am not a fan of stories about families. i find them to be offensive contrived and generic. but this? this needs to be hung up in a museum. holy shit. i really felt like i was there. i felt like i was with H in the mines. i felt like i was there with marjorie in the water. i was able to see the scenes laid before me so vividly at times i forgot i was reading. like ofc i know im reading im using my eyeballs but like i was that immersed in the story nothing around me mattered.

the only thing holding this book back for me is, funnily enough, the format. did i absolutely adore following this family through seven generations? yes! did i also feel like almost nothing i was reading truly mattered because the next generation had to come, meaning the chapter i was reading would always have the same resolution - a child. yes hardships would occur and the events that occurred were very different between chapters. but for me i felt like the stakes were quite low even when the book was trying to tell me they weren’t, and it was hard for me to be concerned for the characters. i still felt anguish, joy, anger, etc., but i was never truly worried for the characters, as i knew they had to persevere until they had a child so the next chapter could continue and on and on.

ya gyasi is, dare i say it, one of the best writers of this generation. go and read this god damn book.

Content Warnings

The Testaments

Margaret Atwood

4.0

adventurous dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

wow does atwood come back with a BANG. holy shit.

this book was like straight up crack to me. i couldn’t get enough. if i didn’t have a test to study for, i easily could’ve finished this in a day or two.

the shining star of this book is EASILY aunt lydia. she is by far the most fascinating character in this story. i’ve never watched past the show’s first season other than a few tiktok clips hear & there, but wow is she intriguing. i love to hate her, as it were. she is so complex and so full of character, and her chapters following the inception of gilead were by far the most gripping.

the other two protagonists…Meh. i’ll say by far daisy was my least favourite. she seemed bland and generic. agnes felt like this at times as well, making their chapters seem incredibly juvenile. which duh yeah they’re children that’s the point. but also with atwood, i expect the cream of the crop. and having aunt lydia, the perfect picture of why atwood is so good, next to agnes and daisy? it was a bit.. disheartening. i enjoyed agnes’ chapters a bit more simply because she had eventful plot points going on around her, but even though daisy’s plot did have some significant events, they felt boring and shoe-horned in for me. idk i also found daisy quite unlikeable so maybe i just wanted to dislike her 🤷 idk sue me.

the plot was great! like i said at times this book felt a bit juvenile, especially those last 20 chapters, but overall i was gripped and dying to know what was going on.

i really had fun with this book. for me, the only thing holding it back is that it feels a bit too unrealistic at times. gilead is hinged on possibilities that seem so fantastical to us in the real world but also could realistically happen to society, yet with plot points surrounding the connection between gilead & the rest of the world it felt flat, and took me out of the story. not to mention the entire climax felt almost like a waste of time? idk i wish there was an additional epilogue. i do like the current epilogue as is, but i don’t think it was strong enough to exist on its own without a final chapter fully concluding the story. but hey that’s just me.

all that is to say, margaret atwood i am telepathically kissing you for creating one of the best, most fleshed-out and realistic dystopian worlds. queen shit.

Content Warnings

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

Oliver Sacks

2.0

challenging informative slow-paced

this is my first sacks’ read and honestly i’m a bit let down. now this might be because i study psychology at uni but my god was this a drag at times.

for one, it reads like a textbook. the amount of times i wanted to cry because he mentioned the basal ganglia is higher than id like to admit. psychology is a special interest of mine but my god did i want to dnf this so many times simply because it felt like homework.

also, i sadly think sacks’ writing style isn’t my cup of tea. at times he overexplains something quite simple, with pages and pages of quotes essentially saying the same thing. it felt like groundhog day at times where i’d just keep reading the same thing but reworded slightly. i do enjoy case studies, but at some points specific cases dragged on. less is more sometimes sacks.

i’ll be honest and say i did cry reading this though, simply because of clive’s story. fuck that one hit me hard.

sadly though, me crying because one story resonated with me does not save this book in my mind. honestly i feel like i used less brain power writing an essay on the complex cognitive changes on OCD. like i’m so serious id pick this up and immediately get a headache.

i might try another novel of sacks, but my god was this a SLOG for me. i’d defo rec it to someone with a love of music and/or psychology, but this was not a fun experience for me LMAO

Content Warnings

Maeve Fly

C.J. Leede

5.0

dark tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

to think i put off reading this so many times, and wasn’t going to read it at all. thank you universe for having me read this because my GOD was this stellar.

i cannot describe just how much of a good time i had with this.

the ambiguous references to disney????? SOLD. especially in that final scene with liz, i literally burst out laughing oh my god
the bus scene too??? holy shit??!?
the gore in this book in general!!!! oh my god was it spectacular. i think this is my favourite book in terms of how the gore was written because my god. it teeters the line between unrealistic and entertaining so well
maeve herself. insane. witty. somehow relatable. i love her.
gideon too. he is amazing, i love him, i want to be him, i want to be maeve with him. Yeah.
there was no plot to this book and i didn’t care. maeve captured my attention so well i didn’t care at one point i was just following her life.
the writing. is so. good. oh my god.
the ending????? i started crying. i started crying at the ending because i loved this book so much holy shit

if you love horror, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD READ THIS. i don’t even think i have the words to describe why i adored this so much oh my GODDDDDDDD.

anyways, ill never be able to watch frozen with my niece again.

Content Warnings

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop

Satoshi Yagisawa

3.0

inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

this was cute!!! i had a good time reading this.

takako was a good protagonist, she was relatable enough to be likeable, yet had her own ambitions. she did feel like she lacked depth and often at times felt flat, but she was nice enough that i didn’t mind too much

satoru was…. fine? he kind of felt like he lacked any depth. and that can almost go for all the other side characters. i mean this isn’t even 200 pages so im not surprised the side characters felt boring.

the setting was honestly the highlight of this book. i mean cmon what reader wouldn’t love to live in a bookshop. part 2’s setting was also quite pleasant, and added to the dream-like feeling of this book.

the plot itself was……. Meh! i mean i liked part 1, as it felt like it had a point, delivered it well, and was structured nicely. but part 2…… i didn’t like as much. like i said the setting was enjoyable, but the actual story felt like i was reading a completely different book. the tone felt like it did a random 180 and suddenly became incredibly depressing????? it wasn’t what was advertised at all. i was promised wholesome book loving not Depression.

i don’t really have much more to say. i mean this book is barely 150 pages. obviously a short book is going to have issues to do with pacing and fleshing out its cast, but everything felt like it was missing something. plus the ending felt like it was purposefully unresolved to set up a sequel, which just left me annoyed. the ending was not satisfying. i mean i know you can only do so much when your setting is just a bookshop and the plot only surrounds that, but i would’ve preferred that! or keep part 2 but actually…. include that in the blurb!!!!!!!

i defo think ill read the sequel, if only to satiate my need to be a completionist. this was a perfectly average book. i am neither in love nor do i hate this. it was Fine

Content Warnings

Misery

Stephen King

4.0

challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

holy shart. for my first stephen king book that was fucking NUTS.

i’ve read my fair share of horror, but i can say this is defo one of the best. god damn.

now i do have some teensy tiny gripes with this and tbh it holds it back from a 5-star for me.

for one, god this book drags at points. i do think the pacing overall is good, as for this story to be “believable” it needed to take place over a large span of time. but at some point the story kept repeating itself, and not only was i slightly bored at times, but i became disillusioned. this book teeters the line between horror and trauma porn quite closely, and at times i felt it was very much horror for the sake of horror you know? like at times there felt like there was a lot of filler, and the pacing was probably slower than it needed to be.

also, i have to say, paul is not a likeable protagonist, at least for me. i think he defo starts out with the goal of being unlikeable, but by the end you’re supposed to be rooting for him. but at some point i kind of wanted him to die? like just free me from the hell that is this book’s pacing my god. and that’s the thing with annie too — the character that’s been set up almost seems paradoxical. i know that’s intentional because she’s ~mentally unstable~ but at some point she has to have some level of logic and consistency. like really i get why she doesn’t instantly kill paul, but by the end there…. really what are we waiting for. what are we doing here. idk. making annie unstable defo works for the horror-ness of the book, but almost makes the book fantastical in nature because she is not realistic.

and now we come to the overarching issue - annie herself. at some point the book stops feeling like it’s plausible in any nature and i am just annoyed. like seriously how did she get away with all that shit. be so serious. idk like i said at some point the book almost feels like a caricature, especially with annie’s character. it seems like king just made up a mental illness and went with it. cmon now at least make it seem believable please i beg.

other than that, whoo did i have a hoot! this is probably some of the best written horror ive read. the trials and tribulations paul goes through are made so vivid by king, and the motifs and themes he employs are so…. chefs kiss.

the ending was a bit… Um. but hey they can’t all be winners!

overall i had a great time with this book. i really think king is just a fun writer. his charisma oozes through the page and it makes for a really enjoyable experience.

please next time tho i beg speed up ur pacing sire i was ready to just look at litcharts because it felt like it was groundhog day 🙏🙏

Content Warnings

Girl, Interrupted

Susanna Kaysen

3.0

dark informative tense fast-paced

i fear i may have been too dumb to understand this book.

a lot was going on, and i had a really hard time following some chapters. when we were in the ward discussing kaysen’s life, i could follow that. but when there were chapters where it was just discussing things, such as velocity and viscocity, i had no idea what was going on. i really felt like i was reading a journal by someone in psychosis. which yeah can be argued to be powerful, but for me it created a text that was so manic in nature i felt lost as kaysen ran away from me with her concepts.

this isn’t to say i think this book is “bad”, on the contrary. i really think i just couldn’t grasp what was going on due to those weird in-between chapters.

i did really like the chapters within the ward, such as the chapters about ice cream, and alice & daisy’s stories. but overall it felt like something was missing — i can’t put my finger on what; it’s just a feeling i have.

i hope to come back to this some day and fully grasp what i had read, because currently, this felt extremely disjointed.

Content Warnings

Heartstopper Volume 5

Alice Oseman

4.0

lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

me before opening this book: haha since i read the first volumes ive changed a lot and im almost 20 years old and i don’t think ill like this as much because im older and it’ll be weird reading about teens haha:
me reading this book: stimming wildly the entire time

Content Warnings

Babel

R.F. Kuang

4.0

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

ok. i gotta say it. least favourite r.f kuang book right here. which is crazy to say seeing as i haven’t finished the burning god but whatever.

first let me dunk on this book very briefly. i think this book has four issues that hold it back from a perfect novel.

one, rf kuang has set my expectations so high any imperfections seem so glaring when i adore her other works.

two. this book is repetitive at times. when you have 546 pages, i imagine there would be some repetition. but at some point after hearing about how lovell sucks, about how babel sucks, about how colonialism is bad, how exploitation of the lower class for the profits of the upper class sucks, and how racism sucks… i wanted more. which kind of brings up the issue of this book not going deeper with its analysis. ok yes i get it white people are perpetrators of colonialism and racism to the highest degree. now let’s add some more depth to this conversation. Nope! let’s instead

make lovell an almost cartoonish villain, make letty turn on her friends when she had a “redemption arc” coming her way, and have no depth beyond how white people are racist. after a while it felt like every white character became a mythic antagonist. i’m not saying humanise the racists! they can get fucked! especially letty you can eat dog shit at this point. what i am saying is let’s go beyond these fundamentals. rf kuang i know you can do this.

. i don’t think i properly explained what i mean here and i don’t think i actually possess those words. idk i just wanted a deeper analysis of the points kuang raises in this book. and this seems to be the issue with all themes in this book. the theme is explored in a surface way, and then fail to dig deeper and instead we get the same line rewritten every 20 pages. RF KUANG YOU CAN DO BETTER.

this also leads me onto the fact that there is no nuance in this book. everything must be black or white. britain is good or britain is bad. lovell is good or lovell is bad. babel is good or babel is bad. i expected MORE than just surface-level conversations that i’d expect to see on twitter.

robin sucks. robin swift the character isn’t a bad guy, he’s just badly written. at points he goes from the most obvious audience surrogate in the world, to someone with wants dreams and aspirations, to yet again as fleshed out as cardboard. at points robin felt so raw and honest, and other times he felt like he was just doing and saying shit just because the plot beckoned him to, not because that’s what his character would do. because he has no character!!!!! gun to my head other than listing characteristics of robin (e.g orphaned, chinese, a babbler), i could not name you 3 traits he has. i mean i could say he’s a good friend and that’s it.

and let me just say - this book is boring at times. straight up i did not care about this book until The Big Thing. like before that ok i was into this book, but i wasn’t gripped. there is no plot. there is no tension. and don’t sit here and tell me “oh it’s a school story at that point of course there’s no tension” SHUT UP. the poppy war’s school setting ate AND had a good plot. i don’t know what happened here shorty but it wasn’t great! it was fine. passable. tolerable. but not truly interesting.

ok now ive shit on this book let me tell you what i DID i like.

the linguistic side. idk it made this book feel more real. plus you could tell it was interesting and deeply researched
ramy. my love. my dear. you are babygrill. 🫶
after canton 2: electric bugaloo, the book REALLLLYYY gripped me. like i was HOOKED. i think from there i literally finished the rest of this book in one day.
the first half of this book was great in terms of atmosphere ! i actually was really digging it ! but after a while i realised the points raised weren’t really going to go past the basics i became a bit disillusioned

ummm otherwise idk what to say. i mean i very clearly had a good time reading this. i was invested and will always adore rf kuang’s writing. but this? this is a fall from grace compared to the beauty that is the poppy war trilogy.

i’m such a hater oh my god

Content Warnings

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