ellaellaellaetc's Reviews (494)

well yes! this is about a portuguese girlie who follows her sister to angola after the sister marries a guy and then right after the country is in extreme unrest as it becomes a republic. the sister and hubby leave and someone comes into the apartment to rob/kill them and main girl freaks out and kills him and then just boards up the door and doesn't leave the apartment for DECADES. she just lives off of some plants she has on the terrace and eats birds and shit😭😭 while the book is mainly about her, it follows the stories of lots of loosely people and tbh some of these threads/connections were a bit far fetched. I get that it's a book and it's gotta come full circle but come on man. also, I found the pacing to be extremely confusing. I was never sure whether days, months or years had passed between each scene and I kept getting confused which really took away from the story. 3 stars 

this is about all the ways the universe could end!!! but it's also about humanity!!!! I found this appropriately confusing. this was some extremely high level science and especially in the earlier chapters I found myself following (shout out to 3/4 physics!!!!!) and for the most part I got the general gist of what she was saying but if I'm being honest especially in the last few chapters I was just letting her rock and I gave up on trying to properly understand. I think she made this as accessible as possible and she used lots of helpful analogies but at some point my pea brain couldn't quite keep up. I think that it's my fault though as opposed to this book not being written well. I plan on rereading this in a few years and hopefully my mind will have expanded a bit in that time xx 4 stars

when you watched avatar the last airbender did you ever think, "what if they found oil in the southern water tribe???" well! you won't have to keep wondering because this comic answers that exact question! every time I read more of these comics I am really struck by how expansive they are. while I really loved the show, it was extremely simple in it's world politics. now it's a kids show, I never really expected it to address a lot of these really specific issues but it's interesting to see them unpacked in a format for kids! this world is just so well thought out and shows that when a 100 year war stops because you take out one monarch and replace them with another one it's not all sunshine and rainbows! this is about katara and sokka returning to the southern water tribe for the first time after the war and it's turning into a mini northern water tribe! this is lowkey about gentrification and higher powered countries "civilising" native populations and stealing their resources!!!! (also about rebel forces having good intentions but having the side effects of violence!!!) now has any of these ever happened before in the world I wonder🤔🤔🤔 this is actually crazily well done seeing as it's for kids and is actually a very unfortunate reality of what would actually happen if this was real (minus the kind of happy ending.....) cause the world is actually fucked up! 4.75 stars!

oh tea. this is a satire about a chinese girlie in her like 8th year or something of doing her PhD on a made up late chinese american poet (who in his universe is like on of the most famous poet of the 20th century). she initially does not want to do her PhD on him since he is so widely studied already and she feels like she doesn't have anything to contribute but she was persuaded into doing her PhD on him by the (white) head of east asian studies who insinuated that she could get tenure by choosing him as her subject. the book kicks off when she's a few years into her PhD and she hates her life and she doesn't know what she wants her thesis to be on. 

this sounds like the start of a sad girl lit fic novel but it ends up feeling kind of like movie?? (if you're looking for a sad lit fic novel with basically this premise I read chemistry by weike wang in jan and loved it, stay tuned for that review). I saw one review comparing this to a book version of an snl skit or onion article and I would be inclined to agree. while I did enjoy the reading experience of this, idk if I would necessarily call it good? like the commentary was extremely on the nose in ways that sometimes didn't feel intentionally funny (or at least funny in the way that I found them to be funny). to be completely honest I think that this story would have been better told in the form of a movie! 

I think what I'm getting at is that I think this book took itself a bit too seriously for what it was. anyway, if you're interested in reading a satire about white men's obsession with asian cultures (and more so, white men becoming authorities of east asian cultures), white man/asian woman couples, leftist group in fighting, right wing commentators/social media this is the book for you! 

and I will just say that my favourite moment of the whole book comes from a side plot where the main character "goes undercover" in the socialist group protesting a play at the uni. she really does not understand what's going on nor does she really understand the point of the sjw group so when she's asked to make up a slogan for her sign she goes "uh... I hate white people?" and then she's just standing outside of the theatre with a "I hate white people" sign😭😭 bro why did that make me laugh so hard😭😭 anyway. pls @studios pls turn this into a really funny campy movie😁😁 3.5 stars p.s. shout out to everyone's second favourite book recommender natasha for lending me her copy! (to be clear i'm everyon's first fav book recommender)

this is about two fucked up friends in uni who work out that if you almost die then you get superpowers! it flips between two timelines; one in uni where the two guys are besties and roommates and the other where one of the guys has just broken out of jail and is dead set on revenge on his former best friend. tbh I loved the concepts more than I loved the execution of this one. as always, v.e. schwab has fantastic prose and can really bring you into a scene (and really scare you!). I loved all of the different superpowers and how they manifested but there were just some certain technicalities in the story where I was just like huh??? my main issue was that there were way too many coincidences in this story where people just happened to be in the right place at the right time to the point where I was just constantly rolling my eyes. also this should have been gay.

also the fact that "supers" are theorised about but not actually proven in this world is a little silly I think. I get that saving people from the brink of death is more of a new thing in the grand scheme of the world because of medical advances and what not but I don't really buy that every single one of these people immediately went into hiding because of their power and was never found out.

despite that, I thought that both eli and victor's minds were really interesting to be in and schwab built these characters so well! 3.5 stars. also I annotated this book for my bestie ellen while I was reading and had so much fun doing it! can't wait for her to read it :) p.s. if you annotate a book I HIGHLY recommend getting emoji stickers. you will not regret it.

 hi so tbh I actually completely forgot about this. I enjoyed it in the moment but it's only been two months and I already don't remember it at all! as always with the comics I did really enjoy the humour and it fit perfectly in the world of atla (I would assume). I think that atla in general is really bad at doing romance and one thing I remember being annoyed by was the relationship aspects like idgaf.the others in the series were just a lot more memorable! 3 stars ig 

cute! this was all about finding your creativity and showing up every day. the author views creativity as "big magic" and talks about how to nurture your art and just let it be bad sometimes. similar to most self-help books, this didn't really introduce anything new but I still found it very valuable! I listened to the audiobook which was narrated by the author herself and she has a very soothing voice😌😌 I would highly recommend this to people who feel like they've lost their creative spark and are feeling a bit in the dumps about it, this was a very encouraging read :) 4 stars

 ugh. december was the month of reading romance books that I so desperately wanted to enjoy but was not able to. instead of writing my own description of what this book is about, I am just going to quote the a goodreads review from user jessica j "Imagine if Ted Lasso was about American lesbians instead of (predominantly) straight British men. Now imagine that Ted was a rookie player instead of the coach, and that he and Roy Kent banged it out." actually perfectly describes this book except it wasn't nearly as funny as the show.

unfortunately this was just not what I wanted :// my main complaint is that this just felt underedited, so many little errors and weird pacing issues. one that particularly stand out is a scene where the main character puts her phone on do not disturb and then literally the next page is "she is woken up by the buzzing of a text message" bruh. this is so stupid. 

another issue is that it didn't really take advantage of its setting. this is about two girlies playing professional soccer in the us in the year of the fifa women's cup and I thought that it would span across the whole season and include the cup, but no. it's literally just all about preseason training and then like the first 5 games of the season and doesn't even include the fifa world cup unless you invlude the team us training camps???? huh???? what is even the point of writing a sports romance. like you lose any tension you get from the sport and just lost so much interest cause I LOVE the sports aspect of sports romance. especially cause these two are on the same team and the dynamic is one of them has been playing professional soccer since she was a teenage and the other one played for her college team and is now the rookie on the team playing her first season. how are you gonna have that dynamic and then not show it on the pitch??? I'm upset. anyway. 2.25 stars

p.s. not related to my the actual reading of the book but I got a free drink bottle and had it in my bag when I was reading it and it leaked all over the book😭😭😭 fuck aascf!!! bruh actually devastating had to pay the library $23 and it was so embarrassing

pls don't read this if you have an ed but pls read this if you're actually crazy and weird. pls read this if you're lowkey a deranged sapphic stalker. pls read this is you love books about odd women. anyway... this is about a thin jewish girl who has a really horrifying relationship with food (and food restriction). she ends up meeting another girl that's fat and who works at her favourite frozen yogurt place, the girl won't stop trying to feed her and then things happen. 

guys I've been meaning to pick this up for literally years and I'm so glad I did! melissa broder is a weird little freak and I love her for it. this character's voice was so strong and idk if I would say that I enjoyed following her on her journey but I felt feelings and was intrigued which is always good. slay :) 4 stars

okay so I actually thought that I was gonna be obsessed with this and was gonna die for these characters but then I was just like oh okay sure when it ended. like I cared but I didn't really. this book (if you can believe) is about two authors and follows two different weeks in june, one in high school when they met and then when they re-meet like 10 years later. and it was just like. yeah. okay. idk guys I wanted to read this for so so long cause I saw so many reviews saying it was one of the greatest love stories and I'm upset that I didn't fall in love with this. I started reading it back in august or something but dnf'ed when I was like 25% of the way through cause I wasn't liking it and thought it was my fault cause I was just depressed and didn't like anything (I was but that turned out to be unrelated to my enjoyment of the book). I picked it back up in december (literally in summer when this book is set) but I still didn't like it :(( and I'm sad :(( I thought the daughter character was really funny though! 2.75 stars.