ellaellaellaetc's Reviews (494)

slay! read this on recommendation from my wonderful friend Hannah! this was really great if you want to know more about the sex work industry in Australia! I didn't really know a lot about it so it was really eye opening to read someone's experience. this was super short so I was able to listen to it in one sitting and she basically just describes her life. it was depressing at times and funny and I did learn a lot, however, this was not a well planned out book timeline wise. I literally had no idea when anything was going on in relation to everything else. like literally wtf. I think she was trying to do a type of stream of consciousness thing and talk about her life in themes rather than chronologically but girl I was so confused the whole time, because she kept jumping around it feels like at times that she was talking about different people or something like I couldn't follow along and it impacted my reading experiences quite a lot. still would recommend though! 3.75 stars

okay I finally got around to this!!! and I don't have particularly strong negative or positive feelings about and I'm lowkey upset at that. I didn't think this was amazing but I also didn't think that it deserved all the mass hatred that is towards this book. like lowkey guys I understand the people who love it more than I understand the people who vehemently hate it ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ like I thought it was a good story and did a great job at portraying the mindset of a victim and did so with compassion. In her authors note, colleen said that her main attempt was to get people to empathize with abuse victims and get people to understand that people who stay in situations like this are not stupid or weak and I think she did that really well. I was upset but the ending like many, however, she did this on purpose! you're not supposed to like how she semi-forgives him!! but that's life!!! tbh I wasn't really that interested in atlas, I thought it worked as a way to know her back story but I don't think he really added much to the story. the friend was also super annoying, I hate it in books when they meet some random side characters and become besties after like nothing, you don't earn it. and of course... the fucking ellen letters😭😭 oh my god they were much worse than I could have anticipated. oh my god took you so much out of the story every time she would be like "and then he beat her up, Ellen it was so scary" what do you mean😭😭😭😭 everyone clowns on the writing and it's not fabulous or that sophisticated but I don't think it's trying to be. lack of flowery prose does not equal bad (I'm not saying it's good though!!!) I think colleen gets a lot more shit for her writing when it's just appealing to a wider audience and a lot of the time to people who don't usually read and I don't have a problem with it. so, I didn't love this, didn't hate this, don't particularly recommend it but if you want to read it I think it is interesting. anyway, interested to see what people comment! would love to talk about more! and even 2.75 stars

 oh😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳 this was............ oh😳😳😳😳😳😳😳 this was lowkey boy parts if it was about flo and eliza's relationship but way more insane (can you believe??) and they were annoying budding dude intellectuals instead of late twenties british art girlies who are fucked up and a little less manipulative but not a lot less. gay people are just😭😭😭😭😭 anyway guys this book was so me🤪🤪🤪🤪 at times this book felt a bit to long and sometimes a bit confusing however j feel like I really understand Julian and Paul (well paul at least!!) and a lot of the lines in this book really resonated with me. the relationship between the two guys is so so fucked you won't believe lmao but also so believable! you understand why these two latch onto each other and how they each fuck the other person up so so much😭😭 and you know what, I'll say it! this is better than the secret history!!!! (imo pls don't crucify me😭😭 I just thought the secret history was way too long and a bit boring also). I listened to the audiobook however I think this book would be better received if you read it physically, I know that I want to buy a physical copy (even though the cover is 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢) and just tab the shit out of it!!! if you're interested in dark academia and/or you wanna read about the most insane codependent toxic gay relationship that lowkey slays (literally!) I would recommend this! 4.25 stars 

 guys I have been budding reading it up!!!!!! (comment if you wanna buddy read with me!!!) I read this one with my friend bianca! she liked it a bit more than I did, I found it to not stand out from the dozens of romances I've already read and the back and forth and extremely weirdly invested and nosey townspeople got annoying. every side character had literally zero depth and acted so strange but the actual romance itself was perfectly fine. not something I'd ever pick up again but not entirely upset that I read it, just very mid. 2.75 stars 

 when I was in paris (!!!!) I went to shakespeare and co. and bought the same book as my friend ellen, we both wrote little notes for each other in the other person's book and read 30 pages a week and updated each other!! this was such a fun experiment and we're gonna do a second book soon!! I didn't add the more personal ones but it was actually so lovely to read messages from my friend months later that she had written while we were sitting right next to each other in the middle of one of the best weeks of my life🥲🥲 in that way, this was one of the best reading experiences I've had this year! now. that's all the good stuff out of the way. if we don't account any of this for my formal review (which I won't) this was literally the worst book I've read this year and is in the running for worst books I've read maybe ever😭😭 this was all over the place, I didn't care about any of the characters, the writing was nothing special, it didn't really say anything and the story was literally so random and weird but for no reason. this would have been whatever but the last 40 pages put this in to maybe worst book ever category 

: in the last 40/50 pages, the main character gets kidnapped and is sex trafficked, she tries to kill many of her aggressors, she falls in love with one of them who is a pianist and he promises to marry her after one day then he dies randomly, then she gets sold to an asexual prince and she spends her days hanging with her until she finds a magic genie who grants her a wish and she wishes for the pianist to never have died but then the genie does something weird and then she gets trapped in the genie bottle and then the genie lets her out (I think???? I'm so confused???) and then that's the end? and also her magic cat dies in a car crash and is never brought up again mind you the other 300+ pages in this story are totally different and are about her as a poor girl in a fancy school and her rich friends doing weird witchy stuff and insane sex rituals and crazy shit but then tag is just thrown out of the window and never mentioned after she is kidnapped in the last 10% of the book?????

  1 star😭 

if I wanted to read about how sad it is to be a queer woman in stem I would just read the news😭😭 or just experience my life 😭😭😭 I liked the premise of this and it was an okay story but I just found myself drifting off and not caring for a lot of it, like this was just fine. I think I'm realising that I don't enjoy romances that aren't rom-coms if it's a romance book (like if there's a sideplot romance maybe I will enjoy fits not funny but if the romance is the centre of the book then idc). also maybe historicals just aren't for me idk :/ I'm hesitant to rate this too harshly because if I knew it wouldn't be funny and would just be more dramatic/sad and also had the couple get together early and focus a lot of the story on them trying to translate a physics book idk if I would have picked it up 😭😭 I just don't like it when romances are marketed as romances and then they just focus on something else entirely (unless it's a single pov romance, then I love that!!!) and also them getting together so early was boring, 2.75 stars 

 if a book is good enough to put me in an existential crisis for a solid week I would have to say it's pretty good!!!! this was a really frustrating read because wow the world sucks for women way more than I thought (and I already knew it was pretty bad!!) this should be mandatory reading for people existing in the world which is my way of telling you to read this asap. this is such a well researched and articulate explanation of what's going on and why it's bad. like seriously guys it's so bad😭😭 my only complaint would be that every now and again the author would not really dig deep into intersectionality which I think was a major loss for the book ESPECIALLY when we're talking about data gaps, like sometimes she would just tack "and it's even WORSE for black women!" or "for poor women it's actually really bad too!!!" or "and yeah ig trans women are also affected by this!!" but then would leave it at that😭😭 either way, a great entry way for new readers of feminist non-fiction but also recommend for seasoned readers as there wasn't really theory so much as just information and stats so I learnt a lot! 4 stars 

wow wow wow this was stunning!!! I mean the obvious thing was the writing, just... wow. like I was honestly fully blown away. like seriously wow! like I knew it would be good but!!! eeeee!!! wow!!!! the scenes from leah's perspective managed to be so eery and really evoked that sense of believable dread in me while the scene's from miri's perspective had just such amazing views on grief and loss it really spoke to me🥲🥲 also the exploration of sapphic relationships was just beautiful. I recommend this to everyone! my only problem was the ending, I expected to have a bit more answers than what we were given. I guess that wasn't the point of the story and all the weird stuff that happened was like a metaphor or whatever but I just felt a lack of closure due to the questions I still had, I think if I went in understanding this a bit better I would have enjoyed it fully though, 4.5 stars!

perfectly pleasant! how I love reading unrealistic queer stories set in different times🥲🥲🥲 tbh I think j liked the concept of this more than I actually liked the execution (two children of monarchs that hate each other are betrothed since birth, but they're both gay and pretend to be in love to appease their parents... um hello????) there was a month time skip which just felt unnecessary as nothing changed in the entire month, why couldn't it have been 2 days? also gwens plotline of standing up for people could have been developed a lot more, there should have been more instances where she had to make choices before the final thing she does. also the whole battle came out of nowhere! wtf! I found the politics quite boring and the culmination of it felt very out of place. I did love the friendship between gwen and arthur and also I was so glad that agatha called out gwen's not-like-other-girls-ish behaviour! I was pleasantly surprised! so while this was great in principle, there were a few things I took issue with but overall a fun story, this would make an excellent movie! 3.5 stars 

yikes. I really wanted to like this, I really did but oh my. this was just underwhelming and cringe in so many ways. if you're going to do the time loop story you have to make it your own and if you write a romance the characters have to have chemistry. I thought them being in a physics class was fun and I liked the twist revealed like 70% of the way through, I didn't see that coming! a believable 3rd act break up! slay! everything else however... this didn't stand out from any other time loop story. I didn't like how her setting fire to the frat pretty much every day was not brought up again or a significant plotline, that was so funny! and the brother plotline didn't really go anywhere either. I didn't think the plotline with her roommate (already forgot her name) was that believable with the loop resetting every day. omg all the sex mentions I HATED. literally felt so so so uncomfortable as well whenever the main character (forgot her name also) would out of the blue mention how she never realised that miles' scrawny nerd arms were actually sexy or some shit 😭😭 and if happened so much😭😭 1.5 stars