I probably should have left well enough alone and just passed this book along to someone else, because while the synopsis had potential, it wasn't exactly intriguing to me from the get go. But it was available via Overdrive and I needed an audiobook to listen to while I did housework and decorated for Christmas.

This did not work for me on really any level. I didn't HATE the book, but the execution was pretty poor, in my opinion.

First, the world building. This had the potential to be a really interesting society, but I didn't feel like there was any depth. It was kind of glazed over in favor of political intrigue that was also very generic. I just had so many questions while I was reading that weren't addressed, specifically with the class system and social customs. The automae at some point adapted many social customs of humans. Hunting, eating, interest in fashion and parties, marrying for political power. My question is...why? They don't NEED to eat, so hunting for food and large dinner banquets are done merely for show and I can't understand the point. It just doesn't make sense to me that this race (for lack of a better term) would cling so much to traditions that AREN'T THEIRS. I'm assuming the author is trying to make some sort of comment regarding cultural appropriation, but it's a pretty clunky comparison if that's the case.

Next, the characters. I didn't think there was any one character in this book that was fully fleshed out and interesting. To be honest, there were many times I would forget whose perspective we were following at any given time, because despite one person being a human and the other being a being made from a literal blueprint, they sounded pretty much the same to me. None of the side characters seemed to bring anything to the table other than as plot contrivances to move things along. Kinok could have been interesting, but there was a lack of depth to him that led to a very one-dimensional villain.

I wish I could say that the characters and world-building suffered in order to set up a dynamic plot, but that would be a lie. I know that I am supposed to be captivated by the political and court 'intrigue' in this book, but I just didn't feel moved at all by it. Perhaps it's because the societal and hierarchical structure was never adequately established, but I didn't care at all about all of the power struggle shenanigans going on, and I didn't care about the human resistance either. We were told about events after the fact too many times, and there was too much info-dump via flashback and chapter intros. In fact, the first two pages of the book is a timeline of everything that happened before the events of the book, which feels like some of the most lazy exposition I've seen. That information could have (and should have) been woven into the story in a more organic, interesting way. Instead it reads like a bullet list from a history book.

And last, and least, unfortunately, is the romance. This is not a book you should read if you are looking for a good romance. I think there are many people who would disagree, and that's fine. But when I am told, over and over again, that this book has a slow-burn angst fest for a romance and all I get is lukewarm instalove...that's disappointing.
Like...I don't get why these two feel so strongly toward each other. Crier, in particular, is immediately captivated by Ayla from their first meeting. Ayla, having her ulterior motives, takes a little longer to come around, but not much.
The author's dedication to this book is: "For the queer readers. You deserve every adventure." And that is something I whole-heartedly agree with. Everyone wants to see themselves in media, and for people in the LGBTQIA+ community, that representation can be difficult to come by, specifically in SFF books. But I think they deserve better than a mediocre romance that is built on next to no foundation. Crier and Ayla have like two conversations about subjects other than the direct plot of the story. They don't spend any time together where one or the other of them isn't lying to the other. Great basis for romance, eh?

I'm going to close this review out on a nitpicky note, which is totally on brand for me. WTF is up with the name 'Crier'? Maybe it's because I listened to a good chunk of this on audiobook, but the name Crier sounds stupid especially when it's in the book 328613964 times. Sorry, not sorry.

I won't be continuing with the series. To be honest, I finished it 6 hours ago and I'm already forgetting about it.

4.75 stars

Have you ever read a book that has sat collecting dust on your shelves for months, perhaps years, and get mad at yourself for all the shitty books you've read in the meantime all while something so much better was just sitting there, waiting for you?

Yeah, that's this book for me. I bought this over a year ago and just never picked it up, even when I was in the mood for something light and fluffy. Why? Why did I pass this over time and again? I honestly don't know.

I haven't read many YA contemporary books recently that have made me feel much of anything aside from disconnected, to the point that I was actually wondering if I was getting 'too old' for this type of story. I'm happy to say that the answer to that is an emphatic NO. Good stories are good stories, regardless of the age of the characters or the intended audience. And this story by Emma Mills is Good. I would even go so far to say that it's Great.

This is the third Emma Mills book I've read, and while Foolish Hearts is still my favorite of hers, this is a close second. I honestly can't think of a YA author who writes better group friendship dynamics. I am a sucker for a 'found family' and this is a great one. The platonic love they all have for each other feels so real, and I love the way they interact not only as a group, but also in one-on-one situations. Just like with a real group of friends who have known each other for years, this group has inside jokes and traditions, and they all care as deeply for one another as they do for their families.

I also think she writes really strong side characters in her books, and the ones in this book are no exception. They're flawed and fabulous.

The dialogue in this book is also great. I just love the banter among the friends and also Sloane's relationship with her family, specifically her father. Their bonding over fan fiction and a show about werewolves made my nerdy heart sing. I liked a lot of the discussion surrounding fandom and also the idea that some people seem to have that commercial works somehow aren't valid in the way that literary fiction is. I like that she challenges that by basically saying that there is a place for 'happily ever afters' and that just because something isn't an award-winner doesn't mean it isn't good.

The plot isn't exactly the most important part of this book, but I enjoyed the search Sloane goes on to find a painting her friend's mom painted before she passed away, mostly because of the way it affected her relationships with her friends. Because at the end of the day, this book is about the characters and their dynamic as a group.

I do think the book took a few chapters to really suck me in, because there were quite a few characters all introduced at once, but that's a very minor complaint that I don't think I'll have an issue with on re-read.

I am so thankful that I finally picked this book up and gave it a chance.

3.5 stars
Trigger Warnings for literally everything.

graphic depictions of torture, rape, murder, and drug use.

This is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. I don't tend to enjoy books that are graphically violent, and this one was very difficult to get through, but I did find it difficult to put down.

I will say that I found the first half much stronger than the second half. As we were getting around the half-way mark I didn't know how the author was going to stretch the book into another 200 pages. It seemed like we were ramping up for the climax of the story. To be honest, I wish that had been the case. The twist that happens mid-way through is mildly surprising, although I admit I thought it was a possibility, but after that reveal the plot devolves into several scenes that are just repetition of one another. Claire finds out something, then thinks about how unlikely it is for about three pages, then comes to accept it because she's given irrefutable evidence proving it. Then she goes on to the next scene and learns something and is doubtful until she's not anymore and so on and so forth. The pacing was a huge issue I had throughout the second part of the book.

The plot also gets a little convoluted at times, specifically in the second half and there were times I would get a little confused with all of the characters mentioned who aren't really in the book beyond vague mentions of their characters. They're important, but they aren't actually in any scenes in the book, which is a little odd to me.

I liked the scenes between Lydia and Claire, but

once they are separated in the second half of the book

it goes downhill somewhat for me.

This is the second book I've read by this author, and I know she's beloved, but I think the other book I read (The Good Daughter) also only got three stars. I almost gave this book 4 stars, but the dragging second half and anti-climactic ending had me bumping down the rating.

I struggled with figuring out what I was going to rate this book. Most of the time, I felt like it was a three-star read, but then something would happen that would hit my emotions in a way I just wasn't expecting. If partial stars were a thing on GR, I would probably rate this between a 3.5 and a 3.75, so I just decided to round up to a four.

I didn't know at all what to expect from this book. I guess I thought there would be more of a romance between the two main characters, but that is just a very small part of this story.

I loved the friendship between the characters. Not only Laurie and Sarah, but also Laurie and Jack and ultimately Sarah and Jack. Even when Jack loses his way in the middle of the book, Laurie is there for him and I love that they obviously have strong feelings for each other aside from a romantic connection.

Aside from the initial premise of a girl finding out a boy she fell in love with at first sight is dating her best friend, most of this felt very genuine. They were relatively decent people, flaws and all. This didn't follow the same sort of tropes that other books like this do. There wasn't a 'bad guy' in the bunch. That actually made for a much more bittersweet tone than I was expecting. When a relationship didn't work out, even when it opened up the possibility for our two protagonists to be together, I wasn't excited about it. I didn't root for the relationships to end, with the exception of

Jack's relationship with Amanda. Ultimatums are never a good beginning to a relationship, and definitely not a marriage.

This read more like women's fiction, which I'm usually not a huge fan of, but I enjoyed the characters and their group dynamics so much that I didn't really care.

The structure of this book is interesting. It spans about a decade of time, and we just see little bits and pieces of their lives before the story jumps sometimes months ahead in time. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it was a very quick read with short chapters that I flew through in only two sittings. One the other, I felt like there were times I wanted to stay in one time for a little longer, go a little more in-depth on some of the side characters and their impact on our main couple, but we would jump forward and kind of glaze over those situations and characters.

I also think the ending was a little rushed, and while I'm satisfied with the status of Laurie and Jack by the end of the book,

I wanted to see more of them together, because they barely had any sort of interaction in the second half of the book. But I guess that's kind of the point, that they still had this intense connection even being apart for years. But I wouldn't have minded 20 more pages of them in an actual relationship. The fact that the book ends the second they get together is a little bit of a letdown.

Also a small content warning for

cheating. It is a one-kiss sort of deal, but some may argue that there is also emotional cheating happening, so I wanted to throw it out there for people who don't like to read about that sort of thing.

All in all, I enjoyed this book but it's definitely not a favorite romance of mine. I liked it more as a story about a group of friends navigating their twenties and trying to reach their goals. I could absolutely see this being a movie. I would read from this author again.

Massive content warnings for self-harm; rape; mental, emotional, physical, sexual abuse; medical abuse; drug and alcohol abuse.

2.5 stars

I think having read three of four of Gillian Flynn's published works (The Grown Up is the only thing from her I have left to read) I think I can safely say that she writes really fucked up books. If that sort of language bothers you, you should probably skip this book, because f-bombs are the tip of the iceberg in this story.

Now, I don't necessarily mean fucked up in a bad way. She obviously has a vivid well of creativity in constructing these twisted plots and characters and I appreciate that. But I also think that the execution of these ideas can sometimes be a little underwhelming.

My biggest problem with this book is that I wasn't actually surprised by any of the twists. It seemed obvious to me that Amma was responsible for the deaths (although Adora could've been as well. Neither one would have been surprising) and that Adora was hurting her children in order to get attention for herself (I literally said 'this lady has Munchhausen's by proxy' after the first time Amma was 'sick' and being babied by Adora.) While it is disturbing that women like this actually exist, and the content is shocking in and of itself, the reveal that Adora was one of these women was incredibly anti-climactic.

I also feel like this author sometimes writes about shocking things just to get a reaction, and not because it actually serves any purpose to the characters, their motivations, or the plot. Like, I get that Camille had a messed up childhood and acted out using sex and self harm to cope, but at a certain point it become gratuitous. The gang rape that she was subjected to as a 13-year old child is brought up several times throughout the book. The first time, it is shocking and made me feel sick. The subsequent times, I started to wonder why we were being told about the same event again when it seemed obvious that it wasn't going to have any bearing on the story and also that Camille herself didn't seem to view it as anything noteworthy. It wasn't like it was some big secret. She thinks about it in passing like someone would remember a random innocuous fact from their childhood.

As a character, Camille was very difficult to get a read on. I don't expect likable protagonists in thrillers, and especially not in thrillers by this particular author. More often than not, every person in her books is just awful. But Camille was so incredibly self-destructive that it was difficult to not feel the urge to shake her.

I also felt like the ending of the book was rushed. Adora is arrested for the killings and it feels like 5 pages later (I was listening to the audiobook so I'm not sure how many pages it actually was) it's revealed that 'Just kidding! It was actually the creepy, manipulative, bullying young woman who viciously murdered two members of her clique! Who would have ever thought?!' The reveal about the teeth and the hair was, yes, creepy and macabre, but it's tacked on and not given any time to breathe.

I originally wanted to read this book because I wanted to watch the miniseries but read the source material before going in. After reading the book, I'm not sure I want to watch the series. Not because it isn't a good story, but there is no lightness whatsoever here, and I'm not sure I need to consume this story again, at least not any time soon.

Content warning: Graphic depiction of and multiple references to miscarriage.

This was twisted and weird and confusing...and I kind of loved it?

I've never read anything by this author before, so I didn't really know what to expect when I picked this book for my December Book of the Month. I'm happy to say that I was completely engrossed in the story. I read it in one sitting.

It's difficult to go into detail about this book without spoilers, but I will say that it kept me guessing the entire time, questioning what the truth was and who I could trust. It went back and forth so many times I truly had no clue how it was going to end. After reading so many mystery/thrillers with ridiculously predictable 'twists' I was pleasantly surprised that I couldn't get a handle on where this story was going to end up.

I also like that it takes place in the PNW, as that's where I'm from. It's always interesting to read about areas that you are familiar with and see if the author gets them right. I feel like the author did a nice job establishing the PNW as her setting. The fact that she lives in the Seattle area no doubt helped with that.

And that last page? Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow.

I'll definitely picked up more of this author's work in the future.

Negative Eleventy-Billion Stars

Content warnings: Multiple miscarriages (one very graphically written about),

suicide, child death, cancer.

It's been several months since I read a book that made me want to throw it across the room. That is, until I picked up this book. I just don't get the heaps of praise this book is receiving. I thought it was an absolute disaster.

I don't even know where to begin with everything I hated about this book. My thoughts and feelings are so strong right now that I know I'm not going to be able to articulate this very well, but I'm going to try my best to keep my thoughts coherent.

First of all, the writing is long-winded and overdone. I'm sure some will say the same thing about this review, but I am not a professional writer with an editor whose sole job it is to make sure that doesn't happen. IOICTY is only 354 pages, but it felt much longer than that to me. There is hardly any dialogue in the book. It's mostly inner monologue, description, exposition, and flashbacks. SO MANY FLASHBACKS. There really isn't any white on any of the pages because they are all filled with melodramatic, flowery nonsense. The author often uses multiple words/phrases to describe something when one would suffice. The dialogue that is present feels clunky and not how people actually speak to one another. It's also inserted into strange and awkward spots. Phoebe and Audrey have a heart-to-heart about 'forever love' right before they are supposed to be going on stage to perform with their choir. Mia and Jess and Phoebe and Lily have really important conversations as they are arriving at the airport early one morning. Jess randomly sees Ben at her hotel in New York City (Because that's plausible. It's not like NYC is a city of 21 million people or anything) and he tells her his life story after she's been pretty damn rude and dismissive of him throughout the rest of the book.

The structure of the book also aggravated me.
The sections taking place in the 'current' timeline (2016, but close enough) are told in 3rd person past tense, while the flashbacks are in 3rd person present tense. Also, almost every flashback is structured in it's own chapter, except several in the beginning of the book which aren't, for no apparent reason.
Also, the sheer quantity of the flashbacks was ridiculous. Perhaps if the flashbacks had actually TOLD us anything, it would've been okay, but until

Lily and Jess's dad dies

on page 114, we get next to nothing concrete in these flashbacks. They are merely melodramatic filler that makes sense after you're done reading but while reading only succeed in making me roll my eyes 23842 times. Also, I'm not sure how the flashbacks could be so vague and at the same time so overwritten, but these were just that.
There are also a couple of scenes that are regurgitated multiple times through different POVs, and one scene that is told three times: once from Audrey, and twice from Lily's perspective. Because once isn't enough?

Before I get carried away and let you think that the writing was the only downfall of this book, let's talk about characters and plot, both of which share equal blame in making this book the failure it was for me.

So...I hate Jess. I hated her all throughout the book, and absolutely nothing that happened changed my mind. In fact, once I learned what the thing was that made Jess despise Lily for so long (it was what I thought it was...melodramatic bullshit) I hated her even more. I'm going to put some comments under a spoiler tag, but suffice it to say, the payoff of why Jess hated Lily was not at all worth the setup.

At first I thought that maybe their father had been sick and Lily helped him end his life. This was before we learned that Zoe was even a thing. After she was introduced, I thought that Lily perhaps did the same thing for Zoe, and it's obvious throughout the story that Jess believes that to be the case. It made no sense to me that she would hate her sister for that long, even if it were the case that Lily technically killed Zoe because she didn't want to see her sister in pain any longer. Then Jess says "if it hadn't been for Lily, her dad and Zoe would still be alive today." Um...nope. She had fucking lukemia. She was dying and it was obvious. So, they try to explain this away by saying that Audrey and Edward didn't tell Zoe or Jess that Zoe was coming home to die, so Jess assumed that she was getting better. This is such horse shit. First of all, Zoe and Jess were 10 years old. The author seems to think that a 10-year old wouldn't be able to see the fact that someone they love is in pain and not healthy and not getting better. As a woman with a 10-year old son, I can safely say that they are a lot more intuitive than you might think. And even if she wasn't at ten years old, to think that not once in the past 30 years had she taken a second and realized that her sister was dying, I just don't believe that. It doesn't make sense. It also doesn't make sense that her mother never talked about Zoe and her illness with Jess. Maybe she tried and Jess brushed it off like she did everything else she didn't want to listen to, but the lack of common sense among these three women just astounds me.

Jess was also a selfish hypocrite. Her mom's literal dying wish is for her daughter's to reconcile, but not only will Jess not even consider the request, but the threatens to cut her mother out of her life for bringing it up. But then later says she couldn't hurt her mother by telling her what Lily had (allegedly) done. She also has a petty reaction when finding out Lily's daughter is in choir with Audrey. "Her mum had been heading off to choir rehearsals twice a week for the past five weeks and had not seen fit to tell Jess that Phoebe was going with her." Ummm...why on Earth is that any of your business? And also, every time Audrey brought up Lily and Phoebe, Jess would act like a child sticking her fingers in her ears because she didn't want to acknowledge what her mother was saying.

I wasn't overly fond of Lily and Audrey either, but I didn't have the same vitriol for them that I feel for Jess as a character. She is the WORST.

I also wanted to say that I wish the story would've focused more on Phoebe and Mia and their relationship with each other and their mothers rather than this ridiculous 'secret'. None of their stories are resolved in any way. In fact, the end is rather rushed for how long it took to get to that point, and the final chapter is, again, full of melodrama and contrived to pull at your heartstrings. Apparently I'm cold-hearted, because I wasn't moved by this in the slightest.

Other Random things I disliked:
1. Lily thinks she is going to be laid off of her job as a marketing whiz. First of all, I'm supposed to believe that she is so successful that there are news/magazine articles being written about her, but her company is going to lay her off so they can move that part of their business to the U.S.? And also, the story ends without any sort of anything about this subplot. It serves literally zero purpose.

2. Phoebe comes out to her mom on the way to the airport and it's treated like a plot twist and a reason for conflict between mother and daughter. Phoebe gets angry that her mom is never around and didn't know that she was gay, but her grandmother, who we're supposed to believe is always taking care of Phoebe, didn't know either. She thought Phoebe had a crush on a boy they were in choir with. Also, they never have any sort of follow-up conversation, so again, a conversation that has no point being in this story. It would've been the same exact book with or without this scene.

3. The Ben and Jess relationship is given no real foundation. They have one real scene together and then when we skip forward at the end of the book they are together. Okay. Again, same book whether they are together or not.

Mostly, I just hate that I wasted my time with this book. I stuck with it because there are so many reviews gushing over it and saying it was so heart-breakingly beautiful and I just want to know what book they read, because I'd love to get my hands on it, but I can't believe it was this schmaltzy garbage.*


*I know I'm being harsh. I'm truly happy for anyone who enjoyed this book more than I did. I wish I'd liked it because, believe it or not, I don't like to read books I don't think I'm going to like. I especially don't like PAYING for books I don't think I'm going to like. Hopefully whoever ultimately ends up with this copy of this book loves it. It just won't be me.

Feels like cheating to count this as a ‘book read’ when it’s really just a bunch of little poems bound together. But, still counting it.

4.5 stars

I am wavering in my rating between a 4 and 5 stars because while I did love this book, it didn't quite leave me as impacted as I thought it would. That being said, the way Neal Shusterman was able to weave all of the threads of this world together in a satisfying conclusion is just amazing.

I don't usually say this, but I wonder if this series wouldn't have benefited from being one book longer. There is SO MUCH going on in this book. New characters are introduced in addition to our core cast, and I wish we could've had a little more time spent in developing those characters. Also, we hardly see Rowan at all in this book. In reality, he spends most of this series

in some form of captivity.

To be fair, no one character in this book is the 'main character'. This truly is an ensemble series.

I didn't have any clue where this book was going to go before I picked it up. Thunderhead ended on such a crazy note, and I had no idea where it was headed.

I love the overall structure of the book. Neal Shusterman likes to play with structure and insert a mixed media feel, which I think he does better than just about anybody. It makes for an interesting reading experience, aside from the actual plot of the story. I really enjoy authors who are able to create visual interest in their books. The way he does it is really interesting, because it's mostly expositional, but never feels like an info-dump.

I also love the way he introduces threads into the story that seem random and unconnected to the main action, only to have them come to mean something in the grand scheme of things. He did similar things in his Unwind series, and it works just as well here. It really gives the reader a sense that there is so much more going on than just the small bit we're seeing.

There is definitely a lot of social commentary being made in this story that is applicable to today. At one point, a character says something to the effect of "Only an idiot would build a wall." Most of the time it isn't quite so on-the-nose, but it's still there.

I feel like I'm leaving so much out, but I just read this 625-page book in less than a day and my brain is broken. Suffice it to say, that this is absolutely a 5-star series. One of my favorites. And I can't WAIT to re-read.

Thank goodness for this book. After a couple of really crappy books earlier in the month and two DNF's back-to-back that I'd invested a good deal of time into, I was so glad that my turn for this book came up when it did. I needed something fun that doesn't take itself super seriously. The fact that it revolves around a group of actors putting on a play based on Jane Austen's characters finding themselves in the middle of a murder mystery? Yes, please and thank you.

I can't be the only one who would pay money to see this Jane Austen meets Clue in real life, am I? The idea is so fun and absurd (in the BEST way), and is made even more so by the twist that the audience would get to vote in real time about how the plot progresses.

I really like this kind of disdain-to-lovers trope and the fact that the characters already know each other a little is also something I like, because they have a basis for some sort of relationship. Their scenes together are great. They've got a nice chemistry with one another, along with a healthy respect for each other as people that is sometimes missing in these 'hate-to-love' type stories. Also, the love scenes in here feel authentic. It's not cringey and awkward like some romance novels (*cough, Fix Her Up, cough*) where characters have conversations that would be too cheesy for actual porn, much less a novel about real adult people falling in love. Instead, these characters have real conversations about actual intimacy. Consent is brought up a couple of different times in a way that feels organic. (Spoilers for people who don't like talk about sexy times and maybe a little bit of TMI)

at one point in the book Freddie tells Griff that she doesn't want to have penetrative sex because at the point she's at in her monthly cycle it gets uncomfortable. For someone who has that same issue and has NEVER read about it in a book, I appreciated that.

There's a later scene where they try to have sex in the shower and it's NOT SEXY AT ALL because real life isn't a porno and sometimes things are awkward and not every sexual encounter is going to be 100% knock-your-socks-off AMAZING. It was really refreshing to read.

There is a little mystery/historical element to this that I kind of wish we could've seen a little more of in a flashback or something, but at the same time the book isn't exactly short, so I'm not sure it would've made the book better.

This is the first Lucy Parker I've read, and technically the fourth in a series, although the series seems to be more like companion novels where characters from previous books may pop up, even if they aren't an actual part of the plot. Now that I've read and enjoyed this, I want to go back and read the previous books in this series and the other books in her backlist.