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crispycritter's Reviews (516)
What an absolute EXPERIENCE it was reading this book (about a bully who terrorizes a girl he wants to bang because ~sad backstory filled with abuse and neglect and inability to express fee-leengs~) at the same time I read The Will to Change by bell hooks (a book about the devastating impact of patriarchal masculinity on men, but particularly on young men, and the transformational power of love).
Is it weird bell hooks made me appreciate this book more? Somewhere bell hooks is rolling in her grave. Maybe it’s not that deep and I’m just a horny idiot and PenDoug stan.
If you’re going into this book thinking it’s going to be dumb revisionist history like ACOMAF Ch 54 (that’s a SJM diss, girl it’s called character fidelity) and explain away Jared’s mistreatment of Tate let me gently suggest that PD may have written a male POV retelling that makes our hero look worse. Far, far worse. 🫣 Honestly good for you, Pen Doug. Doing Bully Romance / enemies-to-lovers justice. Some of these authors claim the trope for marketability but aren’t willing to back that shit up in the text.
Five stars for Jared’s wallet chain.
Is it weird bell hooks made me appreciate this book more? Somewhere bell hooks is rolling in her grave. Maybe it’s not that deep and I’m just a horny idiot and PenDoug stan.
If you’re going into this book thinking it’s going to be dumb revisionist history like ACOMAF Ch 54 (that’s a SJM diss, girl it’s called character fidelity) and explain away Jared’s mistreatment of Tate let me gently suggest that PD may have written a male POV retelling that makes our hero look worse. Far, far worse. 🫣 Honestly good for you, Pen Doug. Doing Bully Romance / enemies-to-lovers justice. Some of these authors claim the trope for marketability but aren’t willing to back that shit up in the text.
Five stars for Jared’s wallet chain.
Pride and Prejudice if Darcy was a Wall Street brotato. The yearn in this was 👌 top tier.
Had to deduct a star for the overwhelming amount of cringe in the last 10ish pages.Our guy freezes an engagement ring into an ice sculpture shaped like a chessboard piece. It's a nice callback cause they play chess together. They're both wicked smaht and in lurve. He proposes. She says yes. He says, “Checkmate.” Our gal looks up at him and asks, “Really? What did you win?” And he says, deadass, “Your heart.” MOTHER FORKING FISH NUGGETS WE WERE SO CLOSE to five stars.
Had to deduct a star for the overwhelming amount of cringe in the last 10ish pages.
This book started off as a tough sell by using my biggest trigger warning as a plot device/subplot. Add in interstitials that did nothing and a really jarring campiness on top of Super Trauma subplot? I dunno. I think this book is both Not For Me and also Doing Too Much.
Updating this review about a month after DNFing to say it's now the second book I've read recently with an editorial-style content warning. I love content warnings, but beware - if you are telling readers you hope x trigger won't bother them and that the tone of the book will be y . . . this is now the second book where I've not agreed with your own assessment of the book's tone. I hope this trend doesn't continue because I'm not a fan of authors intruding on that subjectivity that is readers layering their own perceptions and experiences into the text. Once the book is out there you really shouldn't be telling readers how to interpret your work.
Updating this review about a month after DNFing to say it's now the second book I've read recently with an editorial-style content warning. I love content warnings, but beware - if you are telling readers you hope x trigger won't bother them and that the tone of the book will be y . . . this is now the second book where I've not agreed with your own assessment of the book's tone. I hope this trend doesn't continue because I'm not a fan of authors intruding on that subjectivity that is readers layering their own perceptions and experiences into the text. Once the book is out there you really shouldn't be telling readers how to interpret your work.
Filing this under “books I read in 2011 and loved that are significantly more problematic in 2025” 🤡
Soft DNF. This is a repackaged Sweet Home Alabama. The prologue gave nothing, and I will 99% of the time defend prologues. Referring to the unknown person as him *dramatically* after we know y’all got married in Ch 1 made me eyeroll a lil.
A couple annoying continuity or clarity issues this early on?
A couple annoying continuity or clarity issues this early on?
- First, and this could be me not having the requisite mathematical knowledge, we start Ch 1 with “Seven years later.” And then “it’s been six years.” Since? I thought we said seven. Did y'all try to make it work for a year? The burden of clarity is not on the reader and this just took me out of the story so I could do some quick finger math.
- Second, talking about how the subdivision you lived in had saplings that needed supports when you moved in because things were new (seven years ago). It was a whole paragraph about the baby trees. Then mentioning that the backyard had a big, mature tree (also seven years ago). Could make sense? But I was just kinda confused.
Look, I just finished a PenDoug book that was entertaining-as-heck hot garbage she self published. I’m sorry but I am gonna have to hold a trad pub contemporary romance to higher standards. Things are allowed to not make sense in PenDoug land, where there is a Divorced Dad Rock soundtrack gently playing in the background and the teenagers run wild and free committing crimes without consequences. Things should probably make more sense in a book published in 2025 by Penguin Random House. Don’t make me work to understand basic facts.
I had no idea what was happening but boy was this silly and fun. What an absolute PenDoug fever dream. It was like all her previous novels rolled into one.
Did the urban legend subplot make sense? No.
Did the whole Green Street gang politics make sense? No, not even by CSI Jacksonville ER SUV standards.
Were teenagers just running rampant, truant as heck, committing crimes for no reason, getting tattooed underage? Of course.
Was there still an overwhelming amount of Nu Metal on the book playlist? Heck yes there was.
It was really heartwarming to see the characters in the Fall Away series grow up to be bad parents too. We've come full circle, y'all. Also NOAH FROM CREDENCE IS IN THIS BOOK?!?!? Someone mentioned maybe a character from MISCONDUCT is gonna get a book?!?!?! WHAAAAAA I am excite.
My only disappointment is that this was an age-appropriate somewhat vanillamance. No step uncles, step cousins, or boyfreind's dads here. My flabbers were not nearly as gasted as much as I expect from a Penenlope Douglas book.
Did the urban legend subplot make sense? No.
Did the whole Green Street gang politics make sense? No, not even by CSI Jacksonville ER SUV standards.
Were teenagers just running rampant, truant as heck, committing crimes for no reason, getting tattooed underage? Of course.
Was there still an overwhelming amount of Nu Metal on the book playlist? Heck yes there was.
It was really heartwarming to see the characters in the Fall Away series grow up to be bad parents too. We've come full circle, y'all. Also NOAH FROM CREDENCE IS IN THIS BOOK?!?!? Someone mentioned maybe a character from MISCONDUCT is gonna get a book?!?!?! WHAAAAAA I am excite.
My only disappointment is that this was an age-appropriate somewhat vanillamance. No step uncles, step cousins, or boyfreind's dads here. My flabbers were not nearly as gasted as much as I expect from a Penenlope Douglas book.
I DNFed Weather Girl last year thinking it was a right book wrong time situation. Unfortunately I think it’s an I don’t care for RLS situation. 🥲
Lots of stuff I don’t care for:
Lots of stuff I don’t care for:
- Poor mental health rep: Chandler's anxiety. Chandler has anxiety, which we know because she says "my anxiety made me . . ." "I painted my nails and picked at them because my anxiety." Chandler ALMOST had a panic attack one time. I feel like I was told throughout this book that Chandler had anxiety and was not shown. Did she not travel because of her anxiety? Because she also said her parents had already traveled a ton before she was born and she's super broke. So little clarity on how her anxiety impacted her (other than cuticle picking) and how it limited her. Was her anxiety part of the reason she mother henned her older parents?? We'll never know.
- Poor mental health rep: Finn's OCD. I really needed some more information on how constant traveling and sleeping in hotel rooms and eating out all the time impacted his contamination OCD. We're to assume he's "fixed" from therapy and medication by the time this book takes place? Traveling basically full-time, our dude is just bulletproof? This made it feel like it was a convenient plot device to add character "depth" and to signal who the "bad guy" is. Finn's only meditation on this constant travel seems to be about how it's a lil lonely. Not how difficult it is to manage the lack of control over his food and sheets.
- Constant references to millennial ennui which made my millennial ass constantly embarrassed
- The ‘ole I’m embarrassed by this job because it's beneath me schtick which I do not relate to because it always makes our FMC sound bitter and feels like it's passing a moral judgement on that job. Another author may have had the skill to clearly communicate that ghostwriting is not inherently beneath their character, RSL wrote like ghostwriting IS beneath "real" writing. It reminded me of Pickleballers, where the main character wants to make "real" art but is roughin it in the craft world, because crafting is not real art. Stop it, you guys.
- Taking the Teach Me trope and making it clinical. Jail. Seriously how did RSL make this so unsexy?
- I did not buy into Finn's character. He didn't know where the clitoris was or what an orgasm looked like BUT he was also a nice dude who genuinely wanted to please his partners and was not defensive about being told he was bad in bed. We are to believe this specimen has been in multiple long term relationships, is still close with one of his exes, and is still licking ladies’ pubic bones (not a joke) until our magic FMC comes along? And all these ladies were just waiting for him to bring it up years later to confess their unhappiness? Chandler is just SO SPECIAL she is the only woman to actually ask for what she wants? Just no.
- Brand naming all the time for no reason. Why did I need to know your sheets were from Bed, Bath & Beyond???
- Stupid & irrelevant epigraphs. I almost universally love these. RSL seemed to forget these must add or illuminate something. They felt like they were just included because she thought they were cute? This is the second book I can think of where this didn't work for me - the other was The Book Eaters, and only because there were already cutesy chapter names in addition to try-hard Princess Bride quotes.
- Writing about my hometown so poorly it made me think RSL looked it up on Wikipedia and said that’ll do
- Eyeroll-inducing third-act conflict.
Overall, I think RSL just tried to do too much. A lot of the stuff she tried to discuss, particularly mental health, just didn't have the space to fully develop. So much of this book felt performative and hollow, which is unfortunate. It was her "spiciest" book maybe in the sense that there were more on page explicit scenes, but boy did it feel like I was taking a really awkward sex-ed class.
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It feels a little icky not rating this book five stars. This is a story that everyone should hear but I don’t think Kate Moore was the right person to tell it. Moore had the opportunity to highlight the systemic failures that led to these womens’ HORRIFIC suffering and deaths but dropped the ball. Instead, Moore offered a chronological accounting of each woman’s illness and death. Stylistically she took a narrative approach that bordered on melodramatic. We were told of every woman’s suffering in detail and it got to the point where it felt tedious and repetitive to read about yet another woman’s jawbone falling out while she was still alive. That’s a pretty wild sentence to type. But I read articles about the Radium girls that nearly brought me to tears while this book felt like something to be endured. I wish Moore had found a way to write this story in a more compelling way. My god, it shouldn’t have been hard given the facts.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Misogyny, Terminal illness, Medical content, Medical trauma
Moderate: Miscarriage, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Classism