ellaellaellaetc's Reviews (494)

 guys. finally popped my ali hazelwood cherry! and I was.... underwhelmed. this is one of her steminist novellas, this one is about a girlie who works at nasa and goes to like greenland or something to do fieldwork? idk okay. I have one main gripe with this book that I need to go into spoilers to explain and just know that it's going to sound like a stupid complaint but like take this seriously cause lowkey wtf.

anyway, there is a non-linear timeline for this novella and the main "current time" plotline is our main girl getting caught in a blizzard and it is too dangerous for anyone to go rescue her but then the main guy risks his life in the cold to go and save her anyway. aw <3 so. this is a very smutty book (like there is a scene where they fully fuck on the desk in a nasa office - before she even works there. wtf.). now. for a book like this, one would assume that there would be a scene where they have to huddle to keep warm and then they end up fucking but that doesn't happen. huh??? he saves her, he takes her to a boat and gets her warm and then they fly home and then fuck in her apartment or something. huh????? girl what was the point of creating this scenario??? like I assumed that this whole novella was written around this concept and then it doesn't happen??? it's not like this HAD to happen but if you're going to have multiple sex scenes in a 3.5 hour long audiobook you have to include a huddling together for warmth sex scene I'm sorry it just has to happen. 

disappointed. 2.5 stars. 

 ARE YOU A PEOPLE PLEASER??? IF YES PLS READ THIS!!!!!!!! IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!!!!! 

this is a self-help book and memoir about friendship! It really emphasises the importance of all different kinds of friendship throughout your life. I found this to be a great mix of research as well as anecdotes to keep me interested (it is part memoir after all). I would say, however, that this book is probably aimed at older women (author herself is in her late 40s and talks a lot of marriages and babies etc.) but I think anyone could get something out of this :) she points out lots of ways that friendships can be toxic in a non-obvious way that I really appreciated. slay elizabeth! 4 stars 

 I mean werk. eve babitz you're a star and I wish I had written this review immediately after writing this so I had more to say😭😭 these are semi-autobiographical accounts of eve doing hot girl shit in LA in the 70s. what I would give for her to be my grandma, I want to hear every single one of her stories. she is such a charming narrator and I love all of her observations on life and being a woman etc. highly recommend! 4 stars :) 

 read this on my quest to read a book from every country! going in alphabetical order and this was my pick for albania. I think this was a really good pick for me because it was essentially a personal account of the collapse of albania's communist party. because it's from the perspective of a child you don't really need to have a lot of context to understand the book! she captures the essence of herself as a child really well at the start of this memoir! especially because I didn't know much about albania's history before reading this I was really put in the head of a curious child that has been raised on propaganda. I found it similar to jojo rabbit where you have a child that grows up believing in the propaganda force-fed to them while their parents are on the other side of it but have to hide it from their kids. highly recommend! 3.5 stars 

 okay so it's been over two months, was going thru some tings but i'm okay <3 back to regularly scheduled reviews but i'll be writing these reviews about books I read months ago and i'm the queen of forgetting the plot so take everything i say with a grain of salt (as always).

okay I'm conflicted. simultaneously loved and was disturbed by this. this is a ya contemporary that is very coming of age movie vibes. main guy cam is a normal dude with an upcoming basketball scholarship to some random college when, in his final year of high school, he tears his acl at practice. yikes!
On this same day, his ex girlfriend, alison tandy (who dumped him a few months prior) gets into a car accident. 

the story starts a month or two after the accident, the day cam he gets his reconstruction surgery, and alison has been in a coma since the accident. cam gets prescribed a new type of painkiller which he realises makes him able to see and talk to alison, who has apparently basically been a ghost for the past few months and hasn't been able to interact with anyone else until now.

First off, I want to say that I did really enjoyed this. i thought it was really funny and I really grew to love cam and really understand all of his behaviour, emotions and mistakes. I think this would make an amazing movie and I would highly recommend this if you love films like ladybird, booksmart, superbad, the breakfast club etc. like this author maxed out the rubric in the vibes category, especially when it came to the humour. this book PERFECTLY walked the line of being believably unrealistic. 

there are some books where all of the plot elements are completely grounded in reality which I love, but this had really believable, fun characters in situations that were slightly unrealistic in a way that made sense for the story and made it exciting and fun (not including the supernatural (sci-fi???) element of being able to talk to his comatose ex lol). 

HOWEVER. one thing that is common of the genre is the characters kind of being dicks to each other as comedy. now, I think this works, especially for this age group where you're just as mean as possible to your friends (as a bit!!). 

I mean like this is basically my main form of comedy if you've ever hung out with me around the people I'm close to😭😭 (I'm sorry💔💔 it's just so funny I can't resist 💔💔). it's kind of like in sitcoms like friends or himym where they're always making fun of each other, sometimes to an unrealistic degree. it's fine, we love. my problem is that while I believed that these people were friends, there weren't really moments throughout the book where there were specks of kindness!! girl!! some of these characters were so unrealistically uncaring!! ughhhh this especially pissed me off with the mum. the mum character I thought was hilarious at first cause she would constantly lovingly make fun of cam whenever she appeared. 

I was obsessed with her because you could tell that she still loves him! but the thing is with these sort of characters, is that they don't really work if you never have scenes of sincerity where you can see the real love between the characters.

the mum has this bit where the number one rule in the house is not to wake her up before 9am or something on the weekend. cam, JUST NIGHTS AFTER HE HAS HAD HIS SURGERY cries out in surprise because of something ali did. the mum storms downstairs and yells at him for waking her up so early. like girl. he is on a million painkillers and he just had an extreme surgery and he is also a teenager.

you're telling me that as his mother (who is also a doctor btw!!) your first instinct is not to check if he's okay?? i know that this might not seem like this is that bad but this happened constantly throughout the book with all of the characters being extremely rude to each other and inconviencing each other to a degree that was a bit unbelievable. 

also the mum is a pediatrician and has seen most of the students at cam's school and she unpromptedly breaks confidentiality so so often, not just to cam but also to his friends. like they do not want to hear this information but she tells him about all the medical problems of the people at his school😭😭 not realistic or okay 😭😭

despite all this, I still did really love this. it had so much heart and really explored relationships as teenagers as you grow up and grow apart. however, before your read this, please note that it ends on a cliffhanger!! proceed with caution!!! 3.75 stars 

 uh... underwhelming, sorry. this is the second book in the stolen heir duology (which in itself is a spin off of the folk of the air trilogy). in the first book, we have wren's pov and in this one we got oak's pov! I thought that it was interesting to get a look into his head (especially cause he's talked around a lot in the og series cause he's a kid and it's interesting to see how he was affected by that) but ultimately wren's pov was way more interesting. (kind of spoilers) obviously you can't have a dual pov in the first book because oak is hiding stuff from her/because you don't understand his motivations and everything it makes the betrayal a lot more impactful when we only see wren's pov, but I think a dual pov for this one would have had me more invested.

tbh I feel like it's a theme with holly black to set up cool stories and then not be able to stick the landing with the final book (maybe that's mean of me to say but this is the third series of hers that I've read...). some of the final conclusions were just kind of meh and not really the grand ending that I felt like this was building up to. call me in two month's time and I would not be able to tell you the plot of this guaranteed. sorry.

despite that, while I did have complaints, I loveeeeeee seeing more of maddock again as well as jude and cardan obviously! I think oak's and cardan's relationship could have been further developed, I didn't fully understand why they had such weird vibes and I don't like that I was reminded that cardan is simultaneously oak's uncle and (adopted) brother in law. that's weird. also didn't like that holly black kept bringing up oak's hooves... i pretend that they do not exist.

also I thought that the love story was a bit of a flop (especially cause Jude and cardan have the special sauce, what can I say, I know holly black had the potential to make me obsessed with this, but alas). I didn't really fully understand why oak was so down bad for wren.

finally, despite all this, I had a good time! I think wren's powers (and what they cost her!) are really cool and I just loveeeeeee this world. the fae in these books cannot lie which makes for such an interesting crutch for all of the characters and it makes everyone talk in riddles and there's souch deception ughhhh I fucking love it!

so ig you can technically read this duology without having read the main trilogy but I wouldn't really recommend it. the main trilogy had me so gagged and I felt a level of obsession I haven't felt in a long time 😭😭😭😭😭 I would really only recommend this if you loved the folk of the air and you NEED more of the world. 3 stars 

 okay firstly as a sister it was really fucked up how well this book perfectly reflected my own sister and I's dynamic. like I was actually a little uncomfortable. until we got to the love square between involving the sisters cause I would actually rather kms than involve myself in a situation like that with cinty😭😭

this is about lawyer (or something) eleanor and her younger sister charlie who is trying to get a career in theatre (which was going well until covid💔💔) and is set in sydney! the book starts with eleanor's uni bf breaking up with her cause he cheated on her with a stripper at a bachelor's party😭😭 then eleanor goes to her sister's show. charlie (the sister) sleeps with (and falls for) her show director and roommate but then eleanor starts sleeping with the roommate so the roommate breaks it off with charlie and starts seeing eleanor. the ex bf gets involved and guys it's messy. once again I am crowning diana reid as australian sally rooney so I think if you like her and you love complicated sister relationships I would recommend this to you! 4.25 stars 

 if you want a philosophy book pretending to be a fiction book look no further than the unbearable lightness of being! this book is just about people and relationships and it really is crazy to me that these are not real people that I was reading about.

this is about the relationship between four people across the span many years and i would recommend having a basic knowledge about czech history before reading this cause ngl I had to stop and do some context reading multiple times😭😭

I'm not gonna lie to you right now I did not read this book critically and I kept confusing the characters for each other but I'm not sure if that was mine or the books fault (leaning towards my fault...) sorry😭😭 I'm not really at a time where I'm able to read difficult books right now, I'm in my no thoughts head empty genre fiction era. I only read this cause my grandpa gave me a bunch of random classics he wanted to get rid of rather than reading it voluntarily for pleasure so... maybe 3.25 stars but don't take my word for it. this could be amazing or terrible and I wouldn't know🤷‍♀️🤭 

 guys. this is exactly what it says on the tin and it was amazing. I listened to the audiobook for this and finished it in one day. i don't even need to give a synopsis but this is about a girl who is getting kicked out of her apartment and is getting desperate for a place to live. she finds a place on craigslist that seems really dodgy but is only $200 a month. she goes in for the inspection and all of the decor is really old fashioned and the guy living there is really weird but it's a beautiful place and so cheap so she moves in!

this was just perfect. like guys, I cannot stress this enough I was obsessed with this. it was just so light-hearted and fun!! I think the characters played off of each other super well and this book has me literally laughing out loud😭😭 the third act conflict was a bit stupid but I don't even care because this book was just so fun!! sometimes I just want to read a fun book okay!! and this was it!!! ugh guysnyoj don't understand this book was so funny😭😭

tbh I don't have a lot to say, my only real problem is that I thought her art was a bit stupid (I'm sorry😭😭) basically she paints beautiful oil paintings and then pastes "found objects" (ie. random pieces of rubbish) onto it. which is fine and all but you're telling me that that is the only kind of art that you do?? girl.

this is perfect if you just want something silly and fun!! I feel like this would be the perfect plane read??? anyway. not a lot of substance in this review because I'm already forgetting the actual plot but I will always remember this as the silly goofy book of my dreams. 4.5 stars 

 from what I've seen people saying, this is quite a controversial book! this is about addie who is a girl living in a small french town in the early 18th century. on her wedding day (to a guy she doesn't want to marry) she makes a deal with the devil to live freely forever. however, after making the deal, she finds out that the catch is that no one will remember her, she cannot say her own name and she can no longer write. she will live forever but as soon as someone leaves the room she's in, they'll forget that they've ever met; she cannot leave a mark. 

first off, I will say the obvious, this is beautifully written. ve schwab is a very talented writer! this was gorgeously written and you can really tell that the author had a very clear idea of what she wanted to say and she NEEDED to write this book. however, I do not particularly care. other reviewers have touched on this but I think it's a bit ridiculous that she lived for 300+ years and was obsessed with travelling the world but only stayed in western europe and then the united states?? i understand that it's very difficult for her to travel (especially in the modern age) but girl you're telling me that you wanted to become immortal to see the world and you don't even mention asia one time. 

I also thought it was ridiculous that she would constantly run into all of these random artists and historical figures just by chance and that she inspired all of this random art. i think for a book that constantly talks about how hard it is to be a woman in the 18th century, she never even brought up racism, slavery or even homophobia when the character is literally queer? like you cannot have a queer character that lives through all of these time periods and not touch on this stuff at all?? like what do you mean???

despite this, I still did enjoy this story, I think henry was such an interesting character and I really understood him. (spoilers) but his curse was an interesting twist that I didn't see coming (although I probably should have...) and the way that the author played with it was cool!

the ending was a bit on the nose but what can you do, I still liked it and I've seen people online being down bad for the demon but tbh he was kind of boring and not hot. 3.75 stars