ellaellaellaetc's Reviews (494)

 thanks for lending me this book james (not local celebrity, movie account james, a different one)! unfortunately I didn't like this (maybe if it was movie account james things would be different 🥲🥲). this is part two in the jojo series and I just could get over the ridiculous pacing😭😭 why is the first one (edition?? volume??? book??) building up to a big fight, then then the second one (edition?? volume??? book??) starts with the climax of the big fight and then a bit of the book is the healing and then another bit of the book learning this breathing technique and then all of a sudden there are zombies bodyguards?? I'm confused because I did not know what was going on 😭😭 sorry james I swear that when you lend/recommend me stuff I really do try to enjoy it but it just ends up not happening 💔💔 on the bright side I read part of this in the park when it was a lovely sunny day which was nice🤗🤗 praying that he next recommendation is good (it's not you it's me 😭😭😭) 2 stars 

 okay I finally starting reading bridgerton! I decided when the show first came out (and I watched a lot of book reviews/roasts) that I would never read the books. despite loving the show in all it's flawed glory, I knew that the books would not be for me (I was right.). I decided to read them anyway when the (spoilers) francesca female lover interest plot twist came in the show and I decided that I needed to know the tea before her season (that will probably come out in like 4 years time let's be real) but to fully get the tea I resigned myself to reading all of the books in this series. 

this is regency period romance about daphne (I just realised that this is the second romance book I've read this month featuring a protagonist named daphne lol) who is a woman on the shelf (she's in our in society for a few years but has not yet married) and simon who is a rake with daddy issues and a good friend of daphne's older brother, anthony. they have a fake courtship so that daphne looks desirable (simon is, shocker, a duke) and so that simon is left alone by ladies trying to marry him (he never wants to marry or have children even though he has just inherited his father's estate). I got exactly what I expected from this tbh. 

okay so first what I liked: I liked how they dealt with simon's stammer and I thought that him shutting down and acting all mysterious so that he doesn't have to talk was an interesting idea for a male protagonist! I also thought that colin and daphne's bond was very sweet and not really in the show at all?? also that epilogue was wild but lowkey I liked it. 

the tv show stuck the the book better than I thought (although apparently this is not the case for later seasons) however, in the show you get so much more of the side characters which is a great way to drum up excitement for the next few seasons because the audience already know the character/s but also is good because simon and daphne are lowkey boring😭😭 like they're not terrible but I don't know why they like each other?? they just randomly love each other for no reason?? also, on another note, it was also super jarring to randomly hear about simon's blue eyes and blond hair😭😭 I was def picturing rege jean page the entire time. also (slightly unrelated) I thought that violet (the mum) was so annoying when I love her in the show!

>one last thing though (spoilers), is that I don't think I could review this book without mentioning the r*pe scene that is written off as something that is not a big deal? if you don't know, simon never wants kids so before they marry, he tells daphne that he "can't" have kids and she assumes that he means that he's infertile rather than just not wanting them. daphne is a regency lady who doesn't understand sex at all so she doesn't know how baby's are actually made and whenever they have sex, simon always pulls out. daphne finally realises what he's doing and they have an argument and he comes home extremely drunk and they have sex and she forces him to finish inside her despite his verbal protests.

I don't think that it is necessarily wrong to include stuff like this in books (stuff like this happen in real life every day) but why this is terrible is that this is justified by the narrative. what daphne does is not viewed as a bad thing and it ends up being treated as simon's fault for not telling her how baby's are made and he has to apologise to her? I understand that this book was released the 2000 when attitudes were different but that's not really an excuse for rape. this conflict about the babies could have been resolved in any number of ways, this scene did not have to exist for this plot point to reach it's peak and I think it's really disgusting that this is part of the book.  </spoiler for that reason, I can't give it any higher than a 1.5 stars 

 okay so this is another entry that I borrowed from the library for my writing for children class because it was one of the most borrowed books in the children's section. was I was not expecting was body horror on like the 5th page😭😭 basically there's a cop and his dog and a bomb goes off and injures them book, the cannot both be saved so the doctors sew the dogs head onto the man's body and they become a mega cop - 'dogman'. despite the gruesome start, I found this incredibly hilarious and it says a the beginning that the author and his best friend created dogman comics in primary school and then developed them into the books they are today later in life! and let's just saw that you can definitely tell (in a good way!) I think the visual humour in this is hilarious and despite being copaganda I still thought that this was a great book. I think the art style is really cute and childlike and all the characters are hilarious! lowkey the humour was more advanced than I was expecting! this is a really charming graphic novel that I think both kids and adults (with a good sense of humour) can enjoy😊😊 4 stars. 

 guys... I think emily henry saw my previous review saying that if her next one wasn't good I wouldn't auto-read her anymore🙈🙈 she put her full puss in this one guys!! this rocked!!!!! I buddy-read this with my good friend amelia and it ended up being the first fiction book she's finished since high school! this is about daphne whose finance decides that he's in love with his childhood best friend and leaves her😭😭 she ends up moving in with ex-partner of the girl her fiance left her for cause she has no where to live (it sounds convoluted but I swear that it's not). this is such a charming friends/roommates to lovers and one thing that I love about emily henry is that she'll give her characters outside conflicts to deal with!! I really sympathised with both daphne and miles's personal struggles and how they overcame them to be together in a way that worked🥲🥲 I used my 15 hours of free audiobook listening hours but I ran out like an hour from the end at like 1am so I had to find an illegal pdf because I couldn't bear not knowing😭😭 idk if this was just recency bias but I think it might overtake book lovers as my new fave emily henry!! she just gets me!! I just can't put into words how much this book meant to me, ngl it had me crying in the middle of the night because I just love these (fake!) people and I just want them to be happy🥹🥹🥹🥹 5 stars!! (p.s. if you and me on vacation has no haters I'm dead) 

 this is a very confrontational book! I read this for class and I'm very glad that I did. not that I thought I was super knowledgeable on aboriginal australia but I didn't realise how much misinformation I had in my brain! as the title would suggest, this book deconstructs some of the lies that non-aboriginal australians tend to believe due the lack of information or the intentional twisting of the truth about australia's history. if you were educated in australia I would highly recommend picking this up! my only gripe is that it got a little repetitive and also that this is meant to be a little subjective. the author inserts herself into the book quite a lot; this makes sense for the type of book she wrote (title is literally called "lies, damned lies: a personal exploration of the impact of colonisation") but if you're looking for something that is just the facts, I would recommend finding another resource! 4.25 stars 

this is about a girl who falls in love with her fork (the fork is actually a secret supersoldier for the US military in WWII that got turned into a fork) and it was perfect. to understand the vibe of this book I have enclosed screenshots of some of my favourite quotes from this amazing piece of fiction. what I loved about this shameless smut was that it knew exactly what it was and it delivered on the silly factor that you would expect from a book like this!! if you don't read this genre often (why wouldn't you...) it might surprise you to find out that a lot of books like this take themselves way too seriously, like this is an antique fork that vibrates to get a lonely 21st century woman off 

  and (spoilers) can only become a man again when he is "intimate with a woman", let's be for real. i mean this as a compliment, but this is the sabrina carpenter of books; silly, goofy and fun if a little lazy on the writing sometimes.

 my one main complaint is that the author will completely gloss over really interesting (and important!) details/plot points. like I'm glad that this was very short (under 200 pages) but why does this guy join an underground fighting ring OFF PAGE??? like he gets into a bar fight (defending the honour of a helpless woman😤😤) and then this random guy comes up to him and is like "wow that was pretty cool, if you want to make some money by fighting people illegally, follow me!" and then we get a time skip to him walking out being like "cool I just made $1000 by fighting people! anyway, let's go home" and then the plot just continues??? huh???😭😭 why wouldn't you show this happening😭😭 it's funny cause while I was reading this in class we were learning about the concept of show vs tell and when to show a scene happening vs you should just summarise what happened, this was definitely NOT a time to summarise😭😭

 

I would encourage people with strange taste and a sense of humour to give this a read, but beware! the author's note clearly states that this is a work of fiction and that she doesn't want her readers forking around and finding out!!! 3.25 stars 

 BITCH!!!! FUCK!!!! SLAY!!!!! BEST FUCKING THING EVER!!!!! oh my god the way I would die for eliza clark. like, she just gets it!!!! like she gets everything. she's the best. I love her so so much. this is book is fiction but it's written as if it's a true crime journalist type book. at the start of the book there's a (fake) warning that the book was taken out of print because of mass outrage as people who gave interviews say that he deliberately misconstrued their words and because he also illegally obtained some of the materials, but it is now getting rereleased. the fake crime in the book is a murder that three girls in a small northern english seaside town commit where they set on fire to a girl.

the book is split up in "girl a", "girl b" and "girl c" sections so you learn about each girl individually as you slowly start to piece together what's happened - all the while not really knowing what information is actually true vs what the author has made up/exaggerated. and guys. this was just done masterfully. it genuinely did feel like a non-fiction book that had an agenda! The author plays with perspective in such a fun way that I was so impressed by! this book was about so many things (true crime and our unethical obsession with it, the internet, bullying, serial killers worship, brexit, female friendships, class - and so many more) but still felt focused and wove everything together so so perfectly. 

I feel like I got so much from this book and it said a lot about how we view true crime but guys... it was also so so fun! guys I loved reading this!!!!! I got so so addicted! the mixed media format was so engaging and eliza clark just creates such real characters. like I found myself forgetting that I wasn't just reading an actual journalist's book about a real crime about real people.

and another thing! eliza clark really understands the internet, at the least the niches that I'm into😭😭 it's not even just the slang or whatever, she perfectly understands the mindsets of people with different exposure levels to different areas of the internet and perfectly gets into their heads and talks through them. like genuinely I am so so impressed because that is not easy😭😭 I think this book is so so fresh and I will read it in 10 years and be like yep, this book is so 2024 but like in a positive way. 

eliza clark is genuinely such a talent and is a real mouthpiece for our generation!! she gets it, she's commentating on it, she's being fucking hilarious and she's slaying. I have not criticisms whatsoever. please, PLEASE read this book!!! (SEE TRIGGER WARNINGS THOUGH OH MY GOD) 5 FUCKING STARS!!!!!!