ellaellaellaetc's Reviews (494)

i was unfortunately underwhelmed by this. the first one is still the best (and most unhinged) in my mind however it still had some good moments and the drama was so much fun, I will definitely still be continuing with the story!!

this was so so weird. kooky. quirky. odd. i loved it though??? ok the surface this sounds like a book that would not be good and would not have a message, trying to explain the plot of this book is so weird (literally explained the whole thing to Natasha and I felt like am idiot the whole time for saying that I enjoyed it) and despite it's weirdest it had so much heart?? this is a quietly heartbreaking story but it's so fun? and weird? yes there are

two 11 year old cousins having sex on top of their freshly dead grandpa's grave

but this was a good read. and yes I was moved and have a new perspective on life. slay. (also her more popular book convince store woman I actually did not enjoy, i would more highly recommend you read this one!!!)

 this was literally psychotic. deranged female friendships, grief, insane girl times, gay gurls doing gay things, obsession, narcissism, female rage, literally all my favourite things in one book. my main criticism is that it took a long time to get started, it took me like 5 days to read the first 2/3 and then only one day to finish the last third, writing was also nothing special, very plot heavy which isn't that big of a deal to me but also slightly impacted my rating 

 i don't even know how I can review this, it is amazing how much love you can feel that went into this work. so devastating but so beautiful and I saw a lot of myself and my relationship with my own mother that the author talks about. i just can't even explain it guys you just have to read it to understand, i was so cathartic to read and you can tell that writing this helped the author process her own grief as well, 

 okay tbh I picked this up thinking that it was a book about fast fashion and sweatshops because of the name (the the actual physical cost of the labour of creating things) but this was actually a book about pregnancy (like that sort of labour😭😭) i think j got it mixed up with the documentary called "the true cost". anyway, despite walking in prepared for something completely different, for the first half of the book I was certain this was a 5 star read. it lost me a bit towards the end and it started to become a bit more ramble-y which happen when books are intially an essay and then get turned into a book (which I'm pretty sure was the case for this). while it may not be my no. 1 favourite of the year, this is such an important book and really opened my eyes to a lot of issues and clarified them astoundingly. this was also written by an Australian woman so what this woman went through and what she talked about will probably be experienced by lots of the women around me in the upcoming years. i really really urge people to pick this up, so so informative and engaging and aware, pls pls read! 

okay slay but tbh I think this would have made a much better movie. i don't think before this I'd ever read a book in a 1800s western setting so that was cool and the hunt for the dinosaur bones was fun! i liked that some of the characters were based on real life historical people and finding out what they did after the events of the book was fun. however, I didn't like the format of this as a fake autobiography, if they were gonna take this direction they should have taken it all the way and it's my pet peeve when there's heaps and heaps of dialogue in diary entries which this book did a lot of for expositions. either way, I enjoyed and recommend if you're into the Jurassic Park movies cause this was written by the author of the books their based on as like a pre-curser to the novel which is kind of fun

 cool i guess?? this was just normal. mediocre. regular. not bad but not particularly good either. yes it was a great portrayal of real people but it kind of began and ended there, where was the analysis???? the only character I was really interested in was Alix (not saying I agree with her or that she was a good person but I thought her character was interesting!!!), the others didn't really have layers. I liked the

weird obsession that Emira had with Briar but why was it not explores either??? it was so interesting but it was never explained!! also there was no development for kelley and Emira's relationship either like I didn't understand why she liked him, made the weird behaviour and seeming betrayal less impactful.

great potential but was really stunted by the lack of depth, once again the characters were extremely real and I loved that aspect, this a debut so hopefully her next book will have more analysis and I'll like it more!!!! 

okay guys..... confession time... I enjoyed this🤭🤭🤭🤭 OKAY OKAY HEAR ME OUT!!! I'm still not too sure how I feel about the ending (gonna go into spoilers btw) but like, it felt a bit too safe,

like if they wanted her to go fully insane they should have taken it there, i thought her being so weird and obsessive with jeremy was going to lead to her becoming crazy too but alas :/// and the letter that verity had left I THOUGHT was like going to happen but I hoped it wouldn't, very upsetting. if we pretend that the ending doesn't exist however, this was the perfect level of disturbing however I feel like the beginning scene was unnecessary and I hate it when people have two chance encounters it's just frustrating. also why was the ex boyfriend/ agent not utilised more? I feel like he could have added drama.

okay despite all that i have criticised it for i still did really enjoy this, it was a very gripping story and I loved the middle chunk so much and it was extremely entertaining!!!! i think i will try some other colleen hoover later on but I'm not sure I'll like them as much cause I think they're more romances rather than thrillers. while I enjoyed it tbh it seemed a bit like a worse and more psychopathic version of gone girl so you can just read that instead 3.5 stars

finished this yesterday but I gotta say... I'm disappointed. like it wasn't bad by any means but I really had high hopes for this one, i thought this was gonna be a new fave but I fr didn't even cry, wtf. i liked the beginning but I started to get bored by all the war parts which makes sense cause I've never really been into war stories but I thought this would be more emotional. idk if this was meant to be this way but the whole patroclus and achilles thing felt very one sided, I liked that it was single pov but more should have been done to develop their relationship especially cause the writing felt very detached (which I usually like with literary fiction but it doesn't really work when you're trying to show romance). the writing was fabulous though and when I get home from my holiday I'm going to tab it! maybe i just had the wrong expectations from this book cause ik that it's literary fiction and not a romance but because the whole book is about their relationship there should have been more. i feel like that would have made achilles' short of like "downfall" or whatever a lot more impactful if you could see how he used to be a lot more rather than just patroclus saying that he's so great and does all this great stuff without us really seeing it??? idk, still amazing writing though