dlrosebyh's Reviews (773)

The first night Wendy Darling spends in Chicago, a boy named Peter shows up at her window. She decides to accompany him on a night out since she finds him to be fascinating, alluring, and gorgeous. 

Wendy believes they are going to a party, but they soon begin racing through the city's underworld. She makes friends with the lost guys Peter looks for as well as Tinkerbelle, a punk girl. And as Peter's deadly secrets begin to surface, she begins to develop enemies, including the scary Detective Hook and maybe Peter himself. Can Wendy muster the fortitude to make it through this evening and ensure that everyone else does as well?

I adore traditional tales that have been given a dark twist. I like the suspense element of this story, but I felt that everything happened far too quickly. I hated the majority of the characters, but the plot thankfully kept the book alive. Reading another thriller with dimwitted people was intolerable.

Alex Volkov is a fiend with an angel's face who is also imprisoned by his history. His merciless ambitions of achievement and retribution, motivated by a tragedy that has plagued him for the most of his life, leave little place for issues of the heart. But when he is made to take care of his closest friend's sister, he begins to sense a crack, a meltdown, and a fire that may destroy his entire life.

On the other hand, Ava Chen is a free spirit who is constrained by dreams of an unremembered childhood. Despite her troubled past, she has never ceased seeing the beauty in everything, even the heart that beats underneath a man's cold exterior who she ought not to desire. Her neighbor, her rescuer, and her doom were all her brother's bestfriend.

I did NOT enjoy how possessive Alex was at the beginning of the book. He particularly creeped me out when he began following her all the way to London. He is the epitome of an alpha male, which makes me laugh occasionally, especially when others use terms like "growling" and "snorkeling" to describe him. And he says the funniest things ever while he's trying to be sexual. They are so absurd.

It's disappointing because it's a romance book that I couldn't feel any chemistry at all. Ava fell for Alex far too early, and I think Alex didn't grovel enough of an effort to win her over (which is quite unpopular because people label him as the groveling king). Lastly, I had to put the book down after the singing scene because it was so embarrassing.

At a South East London bar, two young people meet. Both are Black Britons who received scholarships to attend exclusive institutions where they battled to fit in. They are now working as artists—she is a dancer and he is a photographer—and are attempting to leave their imprint in a community that alternately accepts and rejects them. They fall in love tentatively and lovingly. But even when two people appear to be meant to be together, fear and violence have the power to separate them.

Open Water explores what it means to be a person in a society that only views you as a Black body, to be vulnerable when you are only appreciated for strength, to find safety in love, only to lose it. It is at once an achingly beautiful love tale and a powerful look into race and masculinity.

I adore this book to the fullest. I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into at first. The writing style is unique, the pacing was slow, and it was told from a new viewpoint. I was wary to read this since it has received so much attention; I didn't want to be disappointed again. I'm delighted to report that I had a great time. It's really lovely because it conveys the truth and such raw feelings, especially when it comes to love—and how things can still go wrong even when you believe two people are perfect for one another.

It's 1962 in America. Slavery is once legal again. The few remaining Jews remain secretive and go by fictitious aliases. The I Ching is as prevalent as the Yellow Pages in San Francisco. All because the United States lost a war some 20 years prior, and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan.

This novel exemplifies the phrase "great plot, terrible execution" well. The pace was so sluggish, and the manner the sentences were spoken was so monotonous. I had such high expectations for this book, and I am sorely let down.

Four college friends are followed in the novel A Little Life as they relocate to New York in quest of fame and money. They are broke, lost, and supported only by their friendship and ambition. The men's dedication to the bright, enigmatic Jude, a man damaged by an awful childhood experience, keeps them together as their relationships, which are tainted with addiction, success, and pride, develop through the years. Hanya Yanagihara's breathtaking novel is about the families we are born into and the ones we create for ourselves. It is a hymn to brotherly relationships and a magnificent portrait of love in the twenty-first century.

This book is 800 pages of sheer suffering, so how can I claim to have loved it? Am I even still sane? I can't say anything right now because I'm still trying to catch my breath from crying so hard, holy shit.

Hanya Yanagihara spent around 75% of the book developing the characters and attempting to make us feel connected to them, only for her to totally demolish them and make us suffer alongside them? I adored every single character, with the possible exception of JB; the way it handled trauma was AMAZING. The story does a fantastic job of capturing how trauma from childhood influences a person's adulthood. It was difficult not to fall in love with the characters since they were all so realistic and beautifully written.

I found Jude to be quite relatable (don't ask), and I was crushed by the finale. I've never had such a strong connection to a character as I did with him. Despite the awful nature of his conclusion, I'm still delighted that he was able to find the love he deserved. He has gone through hell and back, and I WILL protect him at all costs >:(.