eggcatsreads's Reviews (480)

I jokingly called it from the beginning, so I feel proud of myself for being like, "I KNEW that's how it was going to end!" at the end reveal.

The format can take some getting used to, but I personally liked it as it felt much more like I was also experiencing the show they were making, as well as the media happening around that time. I recently read a paranormal investigation book called Episode Thirteen that had a similar format, so getting the hang of it in this book didn't take long. It's written much more like you're reading the show notes and script, (as well as including newspaper clippings, phone calls, emails, and fan forum discussions) and less like a straight novel, so if that format doesn't appeal to you, I wouldn't suggest reading this book. (Also, I'm unsure how well it would adapt to an audio format.)

I really enjoyed how every single person seemed to have motive, and even with the "backstage" information we receive of personal emails and texts, at no point are you certain of the outcome. And yet, as can be a pitfall in many mystery whodunit novels, it doesn't feel shoehorned in for shock value, or like a few threads are dropped to make the reveal make sense. Even when you think you know who did it, they bring you back with "but remember these inconsistencies?"

I did really like how the book is broken up in the "episodes," as if we are also watching this show be produced and watched in real time. The "after episode" responses by fans also lead to this, as you could see the fan response and discussions as they went through the show. (Also, I liked how they were all relevant because there were a few fan comments that pointed things out that I myself hadn't picked up on.)

I think if you're looking for a relatively fast-paced mystery novel, where there are surprising reveals and many times you learn information at the same time as everyone in the book, this would be a fun book to read. It's entertaining to make your own bets about who actually was the murderer, and while all the clues fit for the ending, at no point does this book handfeed you the ending before it connects all the dots for you.

(I'd definitely flip through some of the pages first, though, to make sure the format is something you could read since it IS written very differently from a typical mystery novel.)

I also think this book would be a fun adaptation to actually doing its own 8 part true crime mockumentary. I'd watch it.

Reading this felt like it was just constantly attempting to go to the furthest point just to freak me out - because it's so "edgy" you see? It felt like the mental equivalent of talking with someone who Insists their favorite "dark" film is "A Serbian Film" (extreme content warning if you don't know what it's about).

It had such an interesting concept but the entire novel kind of fell flat in an attempt to constantly one-up itself with how "dark" it could get, rather than actually looking into the themes it tried to have. The main character is an unlikeable man who assaults a woman to "break" her, and the entire sequence had absolutely no point to it to justify it's inclusion. However this didn't even throw me because everything that happened up until that point had the same emotional impact - nothing.

The synopsis made it seem like him treating the woman he has as a person instead of food would slowly show her humanity and him working to change the world he works in or changing how he sees it, but (spoilers) the "intelligence" of the woman was the same the entire time and felt more like trying to teach a cow how to live, rather than a person. In a way, it legitimately made it seem like the people being bred and consumed WERE somehow less than human and deserved it, and in doing so kind of made the horror of the concept not really work. They're not people, they're animals who happen to Look like people.

The ending also just made the entire novel feel pointless, like what's the point of the entire time he is questioning the morality of the world he lives in - to the point of hating his sister for her not doing so as well - JUST for him to decide that it's fine, actually and he's happy to do what everyone else does.

ALSO the entire idea that the virus affecting the animals was faked, to the point where it's explicitly stated to not exist and the entire thing was created to "control overpopulation" by somehow getting every country in the world to agree on it and implement it immediately? Kind of makes me question how the author feels about Covid-19. (Even if this was written beforehand it's Very conspiracy-heavy so I feel my point stands).

And I'm not even going to bother going in-depth with the fairly racist descriptions of any character described by the main "protagonist," or that I very much got the vibe that this was the novel equivalent of those vegan "documentaries" on the "horror of how animals are treated" that the person doing so has never spoken to one single farmer or slaughterhouse employee before making.

Mostly I would just have liked someone who could gives this concept justice had written this. I'm just glad it was on KI so I didn't have to pay for it.

I thought this would be more like a murder-focused version of Santa Clarita Diet, but instead it's told from the perspective of a husband who seems to wildly fluctuate between wanting to help his wife with the murders and not wanting to know anything about them - and the decision for the switch is random. The wife is the one doing the murders while the husband chooses the targets - but once he talks to the woman once he can't choose her to die. He talks about wanting to help his wife and how he suggested the murders to add spark to their marriage, while at the same time the idea of his wife doing the actual murder makes him sick to his stomach. There's no consistency.

Also his narrative voice is boring in my opinion. No matter what happens the tone is the same flat voice.

The story isn't bad but it was not what I was hoping for based on the description. I was hoping for more husband and wife working hand in hand with the murders, in a possibility tongue-in-cheek way, but instead it's more husband cheats on wife with women he considers murdering and then wants nothing to do with it once his wife does the actual work.

This book wasn't bad. Or boring. But it kind of disappointed me that the entire concept of the book and mind eaters kind of had no plot relevance? This book was realistically not different at all if the fantasy aspect was taken out and it was a woman fleeing a cult society to save her son. Not bad, but also not why I wanted to read this book.

Also, it kind of didn't go anywhere? She escapes with her son, but she has a whole ass daughter who she needed to abandon to do so, and is like "I'll rescue her later." I feel like making this her second marriage and second child was pointless. It would have been better if it was just her first child that all this happened to, because now the ending feels half-finished. The entire beginning of the book didn't really do much and could have been cut in half to be just her first marriage and child.

And the history of why the book eaters exist felt kind of? Not really explained. "An alien wanted them to collect knowledge so here they are." What? I feel like even just having the explanation be something like there being one being created who made all the others would have fit better. Idk it just felt like almost no explanation would have been better than the one we were given.

This book isn't Bad, per se. But it didn't do anything surprising, I felt, even with an original concept of the book eaters. I like to read a lot of historical fiction on the witch trials and other stuff, and this book, if taken out of the modern setting and made the characters human, would have fit almost to a T of those plots. The blurb was a little misleading, imo.

It might have been because I listened to it rather than read it, however I feel like I would have DNF this if I had to read it rather than let it be read to me. The characters were annoying and a lot of the conversations kind of dragged between them.

The plot felt confusing to me where I couldn't quite tell who or what was going on, and to a certain extent that was the point but it got to the point that I stopped caring. People are correct that it has a very Stephen King feel, and maybe I've just grown past the me who loved SK but I couldn't get into it past the beginning, once the plot really took a U-turn. The story took a hard veer away from where I thought the story would go, and for me the last 60+% of the story felt less cohesive than the first part. Also towards the end it felt like everything had an easy solution, the main cast was too powerful for there to be an actual climax.

The story wasn't bad, however, so I do recommend checking it out for yourself as I feel like part of my not enjoying it is me no longer loving the kinds of stories I used to.

If you're super into CoHo you won't like this review. Fair warning.

Sometimes I remember I read this and am just filled with instant regret. The 3 stars aren't because it was good, it was because it was easy to read this quickly enough that I could ignore the worst of the issues.

WHY the fuck were the two leads hooking up. Absolutely zero chemistry with the most boring people ever. I was rooting for Verity the entire time. Not to mention it being the most cringe-worthy sex scenes I've ever had the misfortune of reading. Removing this would have made the entire novel infinitely better.

This book REALLY feels like CoHo couldn't think of a more evil thing for a woman to be, than to not want kids. Like, literally everything Verity wrote was fine until it came to the kids. It was so over-the-top I thought it HAD to have been fake. It not being fake was honestly a bigger plot twist than anything else that happened in the book. Legitimately it almost felt like a Chick tract on women who aren't doing their "Godly duties" or something, I just figured there was absolutely no way this was intended at face value because it was so badly done.

I thought the twist was going to be that Lorell or whoever was secretly adding in the "evil I killed my children" parts to the "novel" and that's why it was taking her so goddamn long to read it. You mean to tell me that someone who is SUPPOSEDLY an author, can't read 19 fucking measly chapters when they're supposedly telling you that the comatose wife of the guy you're hooking up with is actually evil?? What the fuck.

OR I thought that the husband had planted the novel himself, because that guy was a creep the entire novel. I never trusted him once, and the fact that he was supposedly "innocent" and only driven to literal vehicular manslaughter because of his "evil wife"? Nonsense. He was so covered in red flags I thought it was exaggerated to make me notice (reading reviews of other CoHo books lets me know she just habitually writes the creepiest and worst men ever and then calls it a romance for some godawful reason).

You mean to tell me, that he had just HAPPENED to read this novel by this literal no-name and so he chose her to finish the books after he attempted to murder his wife, and them being together at the end is a ROMANTIC ENDING??

I was absolutely waiting for the twist to either be,
a) the Lauren or whoever person was implanting the "evil" parts to the wife's novels to turn her husband against her so she could take him for herself, and had somehow orchestrated him choosing her as the writer fill-in and/or him finding the original edited copy which drove him to attempt to murder his wife as well as her planning on integrating herself into his life later;
b) the husband orchestrated the "evil" wife parts into her diary and attempted to kill her, and was stalking our main lead and this was him using all his manipulations to get her to choose him by planting the "evil wife vs good husband" narrative in the fake diary; or
c) both of those are true but they were working together and the reason it took her so long to "read" them was because the rest of the novel was a written log of her "reading" the novel so she'd have plausible deniability when they murdered the wife or set her up to take the blame or whatever.

Unfortunately for me, this was the first CoHo book I've ever read and I wasn't aware she wrote for people who never moved past their "Wattpad One Direction during the Purge" phase and so I thought it was intended to be this badly done to set up an obvious twist of one or both of the main leads being secretly behind it all, and not a legitimate thriller with the only twist being "lol was Verity actually evil????". This is the "thriller" for people who don't read thriller or horror I guess, lmao. I mean, you do you, but I'll never get over my coworker suggesting this book to me and then acting like her hating her kids to this cartoonishly evil was, like, the worst thing she's ever read.

Kind of a disappointing book ngl. The description made it sound much more interesting and fun but this was a pain to finish.
–

It starts off taking place in New York City of all places, which is the most boring setting for a fantasy I’ve read and I really wish people would stop going “oh modern fantasy - NYC it is!” It isn’t until the literal halfway point that we even GET to the Hazel Wood.

The main character is the worst person - she’s rude, she’s violent, and she’s just plain mean to the ONE SINGLE PERSON who is going out of his way to help her. She has it in her head that she’s the one person in the world who has ever suffered, even ignoring her mixed friend saying that hey, racism isn’t solved by money. AND HER RESPONSE IS TO BE UPSET TO THE POINT THAT SHE INTENTIONALLY TRIES TO CRASH THE CAR INTO THE TREES??? I wish I was joking. He tells her hey, don’t argue with cops while I’m there because it’s dangerous to me, and her response is to try to kill them both. Great.

She also treats him like him GOING OUT OF HIS WAY TO HELP HER is like, an imposition on her or something because she’s so dead set on being “independent” that it circles right around back to her ignoring legitimate offers for help.

Finch is the best character in the book, hands down. And he’s treated extremely poorly - which is concerning considering he’s practically the only person of color in the book. Every other second the main character gets she calls him ugly and insulting him - DESPITE THE FACT THAT AT NO POINT IS HE EVER DESCRIBED UGLY and it REALLY feels like the author wanted a mixed kid in her book (for “points” maybe) but ALSO wanted to be sure that he would NEVER get with the white main lead. The only reason I’d ever be glad that there isn’t a romance between the two is because Finch deserves better. I finished the book for him and for him only. He practically dies and I had to finish to make sure he lived because if he didn’t I was going to throw this book at the wall.

It’s honestly kind of insulting how often the main character insults Finch for being a “fan” of her grandmother’s work, despite him never treating her poorly AND THE FACT that him being a fan is the entire reason she even has an INKLING of what is going on, OR the fact that he is literally the only one helping her. Going out of his way to do so, and putting himself in danger for her. And the entire time she’s either insulting him to his face, in her head, or “upset that she needs to rely on him” or whatever.

Despite also growing up poor, she has very cruel observations and thoughts on a woman who went into the woods and came out mentally unstable - about how messy and disgusting and dirty her place is, when I’m fairly certain she just had a slightly messy apartment. Seems like even though she hates her rich stepfather she still adopted some of his classist views.

Listen, I finished the book. I get “why” she’s so angry and everything, but that doesn’t excuse her being a terrible person and it being annoying to have to live in her head the entire book.
–
I don’t think there was a single time I liked the main character, hands down. Finch deserves better than her and honestly, he should have stopped helping her when her stepfather pulled a gun on them both. (ESPECIALLY CONSIDERING SHE ALMOST GETS HIM KILLED)
-
“And who uses a car game as an excuse to brag about having sex with some bitch in a park?”
“Some bitch? She was my girlfriend for eight months. It’s so ugly when girls call each other that.”
“Oh, my god, Finch, go get a liberal arts degree.”
In a perfect world I would’ve had headphones I could put on right then, and a cigarette I could smoke in his airspace, but this was not a perfect world.

I legitimately reconsidered my life choices that brought me to reading this book at this point.
-
“...but you’d have to be dumber than Persephone to drink anything in fairyland.”
Rude, Alice.

I can readily admit this series wasn't for me. The first book didn't captive me, the talking animal companions made me want to rip my teeth out, and the over use of povs made any flow impossible. But the second book gave me SOME hope. Some. For it being less of a pain to read.

However, I think this book was more painful than the first.

This book could have been about 200 pages shorter if we didn't rinse and repeat the same actions at every junction OR if we didn't introduce a side plot that went nowhere and made the book end feeling unfinished. The ending legitimately made it feel like it was setting up for a fourth book, which isn't ideal when dealing with a TRILOGY. The whole side plot of hunting for the swords could have been cut without losing anything in this book. Even the other characters are like "the empire is falling apart, and you're doing THIS instead????" And there's not even any justification for it!! Pointless.

Also the romance between Lin and Jovis, as I've stated before, isn't there. It's uncomfortable. They have no chemistry or anything. Jovis had more chemistry with the lady from the Ioph Karn (spelling? I barely got through this book even as an audiobook) than Lin. Their entire "romance" is told, not shown or felt, and damaged the overall book. Also Lin had more chemistry with the construct of the emperor in the first book. Them I could believe. Honestly what should have happened is Lin either tried or succeeded in bringing him back and that's the cause of the internal struggle of "am I my own person and/or a true emperor and should I even BE an emperor?" or whatever.

Also, the internal monologue of the characters could have been edited a bit better? Why is Jovis focusing on the embarrassment of the apparent romance between him and Lin, or thinking shit that doesn't even matter, while trying to Avoid Directions Making Him Murder People. What? And the same with Lin like you're the emperor you have bigger issues here than your failed barely-there no chemistry romance. Like lives are at stake here what are you even doing.

The entire beginning of this book is the same thing happening over and over. Lin gets into fight with whatever enemy is there. Lin tries to convince them to her side. Lin, an idiot, thinks she's successful. The enemy, obviously, using this as a distraction to get what they want. Lin loses something important and feels foolish for trusting so easily. And then repeat like 5x or so to extend runtime.

The plot twists of the islands and the witstone and the ossalen were interesting, but not enough to save the rest of the book. The ending just...happens? Sand/Nisong decides to turn good out of nowhere and that's what saves the day? The ending is setting up for Lin doing stuff at the end along with her own internal moral ambiguity of how she feels about the counsel vs her own power as emperor.

ALSO WHAT WAS WITH THE MAGIC WATER. THAT'S NEVER EXPLAINED. WHY DOES SHARK FREAK OUT ABOUT IT AND WHY DOES IT TAKE MEMORIES??? A little less "oh yay the romance that doesn't exist isn't dead" and a little more plot please. Something for me to hold on to.

I had this book as an audiobook and it STILL took me about 2 weeks to read. Which, considering my normal rate of reading/audiobook combination, is an ETERNITY.

I had never heard the original story and so every plot point was fascinating to me (and the mild reveal of the hybrids got me, I loved it).

The only thing making this 4 instead of 5 stars is I didn't enjoy that every single thing that happened had to be repeated in the next chapter from the other character's pov. It really slowed down the narrative and that's the one thing with multi-pov books I don't enjoy - even when it's only 2 povs doing it. I love her writing and it's strong enough to give an idea of what a character thinks even when we're not living in their head - but it was aggravating that every little thing that happened we had to go back to the beginning of the day essentially to relive the chapter, just with slightly different thoughts behind it.

The only other issue I had was the romance/not romance between the two leads, as there wasn't really any reason for Montgomery to be so attracted to Carlota when she was 20 and he was 35, and he knew her since she was 14. It wasn't so much the age difference, but him working there since she was so young made it kind of iffy to me - especially since the book itself felt like it couldn't decide if he was a legitimate or good choice, and so it never really resolved it. I liked Montgomery, and I think if Carlota was older when he started working it could have worked, even with it not being resolved - but instead I spent the entire novel almost afraid and expecting them to get together, and trying to decide whether I wanted them to or not. It was kind of distracting. I get the idea of having another person be like, hey Carlota is attractive and worthy of it despite [spoilers] but I don't think him being sexually attracted to her necessitated him still caring for her.