elizlizabeth's Reviews (242)

A gripping prose. Since it's first person narrative and a stream-of-consciousness style, you get to only know what Elena knows (badum tss) so it's very good at creating empathy with the character and the situation without ever letting Elena be defined by the illness alone. There's social commentary (or rather a full on thesis) on body autonomy and it's so layered that I didn't quite realize where it was going until the very end when everything falls into place. Truly an Oh moment.

This only works if Arthur loves the craft store which I felt that he didn't based off the ending on KNW. Still, I liked how some of the secondary characters got a bit more attention and enjoyed Kristy's arc especially. It was a bit preachy at times, and tried to do that 2000s thing where everyone must be paired off at the end.

This book kept surprising me at every turn! I loved the characters and the snappy dialogue. It was a nice balance to the science jargon, which was easy to follow even to someone not from a STEM background.
I did enjoy The Martian a little more, writing style wise because the whole flashbacks with information that will be useful later was a bit clunky after a while. I think it sacrifices style for the sake of plot twists (of which there are plenty) which ultimately makes it 4 stars for me.

Not usually a fan of thrillers but this one was pretty well written for the most part. It has very likable, modern characters without feeling like a parody. Whenever it touches tricky subjects it does it with a lot of tact and nuance, but not in-your-face, which I enjoyed a lot. The ending felt a bit rushed and in retrospect some of the plot lines were unnecessary, but aside from that I can totally recommend it.

I usually like SMG's protagonists but I couldn't sympathize with this one at all. There's little to no character development for anyone else too. 
It was a good premise but the plot took a very convoluted turn and the singer/song name dropping was exhausting. I don't wanna be too harsh because SMG did grow up as a writer overtime and there are much worse books in this genre but I wouldn't re-read unless I could drag someone along.

Fun concept and neat execution. A bit shallow as this is slice of life rather than plot oriented.

A little bit over the top with the old timey movie references but superb plot twists and character... development (?) as always.

There's a few turns of phrase and allegories that were very powerful but most of the poems felt like filler material. I can see how it's quotable but not that relatable which as a Mexican I thought I would feel. Then again, this is a Chicano perspective so keep that in mind (?) -look at me, 2022 and already reinventing castes ;)

It's a very cinematic book, you can imagine the characters and situations being adapted to screen in a very enriching way. The narration voice is real good in conveying bias and immersing you in the head of each character, the downside in my opinion were the dialogues as they felt too snappy and light in a way that took out from the story. In the same vein, some passages especially on Taiye's story were too concerned with getting woke points for the sake of it; it would've been nice to see the "social justice warrior" aspect play a more active part on the story rather than have it be an accessory in the background. I liked the ending (? it isn't particularly happy but I wouldn't say it was tear-wrenching which was nice given the trend in contemporary lit lately.

I was expecting something a bit different, more plot oriented than character but. As a self-help book it's ok. As fiction it fails miserably to be honest: Haig's writing it's easy to read and digest but it feels childish and immature at times. The conflict that was presented in the story was resolved from way in advance, so it never felt that it furthered the plot but rather that it molded Nora into the kind of character that would effectively push forward the book's message.