eliette's Reviews (51)

This one took me by surprise! It was exciting and wow the characters were fantastic. I thought the way the author tackled the domestic violence in this book was superb, incredibly sensitive and gently explored. She treated her main character with kindness and forgiveness and really allowed us to get into why she made the choices she did. Colleen really made me care about her character.

The ending made me sob, yet it managed to be realistic and honest. Fantastic, I'll be picking up more of this author's books.

This is easily the worst of the series. What a bizarre one! The characters were an odd match, and everything that happened seemed contrived.

I would also like to put, for your enjoyment, this little snippet from a sex scene. "And then, in a single fluid motion, so fast it took her breath away, he was inside her, embedded to the hilt, knocking against her womb with enough force to jolt a surprised little 'Oh!" from her lips."
Yep. That's the quote. And my review.

This book surprised me! I wasn't expecting to find so much to like about the characters but I really did. The writing was well done and the pacing was great. Overall an enjoyable read.

I always struggle to express how I feel about the series. I hate every character, and in fact this third book even manages to increase my dislike. Every action they take and choice they make is frustrating and makes me want to smack them with their stupidity. And each character seems determined to be wrapped up in misery. 

And yet. And yet, I devoured this entire novel within a day in a kind of feverish gulp. What is it about these novels, filled with people I hate doing things that make me want to bang my head against the nearest wall, so compels me? What is it about these books that is so enthralling? So consuming? 

I don’t know, but I can tell you this. I’m picking up the next book. 

Pretty fun read!  It was very slow to start, and I nearly DNF’ed it about a third of the way in, but I’m glad I carried on because the  second half of the book really picked up speed and got exciting. Overall I liked the characters and appreciated their journeys, and I thought the magic system was fairly interesting as well. 

I really should have DNF’ed this, but I guess I’m too damn stubborn. Plus, books often get much better towards the end. To spoil my review, this one did not. At all. In fact, the ending managed to make the entire miserable book even worse. I’m almost impressed at that. 

The writing really wasn’t for me. The author wrote so woodenly that I couldn’t connect to anything or any character. Despite all the suffering that happened in this society because we readers are kept at arms length from all of the characters I literally didn’t care. Not one main character had an emotion. In fact, the only characters I liked at all were a couple of very minor characters that stuck around for a page or two at max. 

Well, them and one other. The surgeon, Theo, was the only character that I liked better the more I got to know him (her? the author puts in a careful scene where Theo explicitly tells a character he isn’t a man, and that character then keeps calling Theo ‘him’?).

The plot could actually have been interesting. The sci fi elements of the ship were cool, and I wish it had been explored properly. The ending was so utterly bizarre and disjointed that not even my last hope (the world building) meant anything. 

There were so many things that could have worked. In the end, even the injustices suffered by the main characters was so minimised by those characters that the book ended up making the opposite point that I think the author was trying to make. 

Just avoid it.

Butlers writing is so easy and lovely to read. This is my favourite of his so far, I just love his depiction of small town America. All his characters are so instantly loveable and his books all seem to showcase the joy of the everyday. The relationship between Lyle and his grandson was just so sweet. This was a slow, gentle book and oh man, the ending.

I thought he handled the viciousness of cult-like religions with grace, and the POV character was especially interesting in those moments. 

Lost a star for the second half of the book turning on its head with its discussion of religion. I thought  the book would have been hugely impactful if Lyle had stayed true to his honest and gentle disbelief. The ending would have really packed a punch. 

Overall, enjoyable writing and loveable characters. Got a little preach towards the end, but worth a read.