eloise_bradbooks's Reviews (801)

This book is exactly what it says it is : astrophysics in a hurry. It's for beginners.
Which is great because I ain't an astrophysicist.

I am however very interested in astronomy and astrophysics. I surprised myself with how many of these facts are already knew. it was just great hearing about them in a well constructed book.

We go to Great overview of the major things at astrophysics. It is now up to us to go and educate ourselves more by finding out about the things that interest us most.

Uncle Rick's universe is My Home, okay?
I go back to it every year and it feels freeing.
However going home every year can sometimes get... bland. Especially when the present family members aren't your favourite.

Don't get me wrong, these characters are cool. They just don't stand out. Not like Riordan's other characters. Shout out however to the lesbians who gave up immortality to grow old together and raise a kid. You. Are. Amazing.

The story is also just as fun and lighthearted as always... but we're used to that now.

I knew what I was going to get when starting Trials of Apollo: a fun adventure with laugh out loud moments in a world I have been living in for almost ten years. And yeah, that's what I got. I didn't get much more though...

Book 3 brings back one of my old faves so I cannot wait to see him, Meg and Apollo evolve more and develop more complexity and depth in their characters.
Bring. It. On.

You will never read a more heart meltingly sweet love story. Honestly these guys were the softest.
The mystery was interesting I guess but it really is the characters relationship that make the story great.

The secondary characters were interesting too although not much developed for the moment..
I wasn't planning on reading the other books in the series seeing as they followed different characters HOWEVER that ending definitely made me want to continue on so... thanks for that!

You know who Murderbot just murdered?
Me. My heart.
That's it. End message.

3.5 /5 ~ Two sections : 1. Opinion on the collection as a whole.
2. Short review of each story. All without spoiling!! Yay XxX

OPINIONS ON THE COLLECTION :

As a whole, this collection of ‘Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic’ was a great read. Delving back into the Grishaverse felt amazing and dark magical short stories is definitely My Thing.

What was so amazing was how every story felt so empowering, especially for the female characters. They may resemble fairy tales we all know, but these dark tales twist our expectations and give power to the female characters in all their beauty and darkness.

For me personally, I believe I wasn’t presented this collection in the best way. I went in, convinced it would be fairy tales that people from the Grishaverse were told. Maybe it was? I’m not too sure. It mostly felt like short stories set in the Grishaverse, which had fairy-tale-like elements to them – but not carried out well enough?
- Most of the time, I found the stories to be too long, especially the way the story was set. In my mind, a fairy tale setting doesn’t need this much detail, or even this many plot points before we get to the main one (if you wanted to give us great big backstories to every character, fairy tale form wasn’t the best choice).
I felt like I was dragging myself through some parts... Not because it was uninteresting, but because I’m not reading this for fully fleshed out worlds and backstories, Leigh Bardugo does those brilliantly in her novels.
- It also felt to me like the fairy tale writing style was well used in some parts but fell flat in others. Some parts were too novel-like.
- As great as it was to see certain characters evolve in he way they did, I can’t say I was too shocked. They were all meant to be twists but because they happen in each story, an expected unexpected event becomes expected and thus non-surprising. Know what I mean?

I mean, this is me going on about a small aspect that was how I viewed this book personally due to expectations I had. It is still a great collection I would recommend to anyone who loves dark, twisted tales that empower women.

Oh, and the illustrations were beautiful!!!
However this book should come with the warning: ILLUSTRATIONS SPOIL THE STORY SO DON'T LOOK AT THEM BEFORE HAVING FINISHED! (see: The Too-Clever Fox review below)


OPINIONS ON EACH STORY :

Ayama and the Thorn Wood: 4 /5
A great way to open up this collection of stories. It's dark, twisted and empowering. Some parts (the first sub-story) I enjoyed more than others.

The Too-Clever Fox: 2.5 /5
There was once a girl, who flicked through the pages of her book. Of course she did. With illustrations as beautiful as those in the book, how could one resist?
The problem, however, was that by flicking through those pages, her eyes stumbled upon the illustration that revealed the ending of this story, before she had finished reading it.
The girl was ashamed of herself. If only her eyes had not been so impatient, she would not have been spoiled the major plotpoint of the story.
As an obvious punishment, the girl was unable to enjoy the story, cruelly waiting for the revelation to arise.
Luckily, the tale itself was not too long, and what she took out of it, was a lesson well learned

The Witch of Duva 3.5 /5
Aaaah that ending was great! Amazing even. It's a shame the rest of the story didn't grip me enough. I felt pretty "meh" throughout most of it."

Little Knife: 4 /5
YAS! That's how you write a good fairytale. Short, straight forward, kick ass ending.

The Soldier Prince: 5/5.
Clearly I have a thing for non-humans who aren't quite sure what they are. Especially if those non-humans are on fact inanimate objects that humans use and abuse.

When Water Sang Fire: 3/5.
Ulla is probably my favourite character out of all of the characters in this book (Slytherin INTJ girl) and the last paragraph gave me chills. However the story itself didn't work for me. Because it was the last story in this collection, I couldn't forgive it's length - especially when a lot could have been cut out or shortened to keep only the most interesting elements. This is one I dragged myself through the hardest.

Opal's adoration for Adam Parrish gives me life.
Yeah, the rest was cool too.

I'm aching. Everywhere.

Suki Fleet has a way of writing complex characters that are going through shit but manage to love each other even through the harshest lives.
It's really quite beautiful. But oh how painful it can be...

This book was particularly painful to me at the time I was reading it.
It's constantly sad (with a few rays of light here and there but otherwise mostly sad). I would have picked this up at a different time, my feelings toward this book would probably be different. Having read it now however, I'm just sad. There was an attempt at making me feel better with the prologue but I painfully read through 260 pages of sadness.
I didn't want to feel sad.

One thing that bothered me was that the sign language didn't feel used fully. It's great to see sensory disabilities represented (mute, deaf), however knowing a bit about sign language, I felt like the way it was written into this book was too simple, not fleshed out enough.
I would have loved to read more about how Romeo was signing, what their signs were for each other (each person has a sign that replaces the spelling of their name). I also felt like the fact that anyone could just read his lips if they couldn't sign felt a little unbelievable.

Anyways. Suki Fleet is still a great author whose characters and stories will probably forever rip my heart out.

4.5 Well, wow.
I didn't expect reading this in one go, but I just couldn't take my eyes off the pages.
It's dark, meaningful, a little heartbreaking.
Jeez my heart's going to need to find a way to calm down because I felt the anxiety of that elevator descent in a way I didn't think I would ever feel reading a poetry book.

Suki Fleet always delivers heart-wrenching stories about sad boys struggling through hard lives. But always leaves us with a bit of hope and optimism and beauty and... love.
The Glass House was no different.

Even if I felt the end was quite sudden and I would have liked to have at least a couple more chapters to resolve a few more things, the story as a whole was really quite beautiful and made my heart palpitate a lot more than a normal heart should.

Suki Fleet, number one author of hurt-comfort romances that make you happy to read stories about sad boys.

Dark and beautiful and sad and happy and social anxiety and foxes and love and hope and mental health and London and prostitution and eating disorders and grief and love and foxes and Oh... I love them so much.

These characters - all of them, not just the two main guys but every person mentioned in here - deserves the world.
Maybe I feel this way because I read through Danny's POV and that guys is the sweetest person ever to have existed, he wants the best for everyone. In many ways I relate to him (has scars on his face causing social anxiety and an inability to speak to people which leads to bullying. How could I not feel attached?), but I was so touched by his capacity to be so loving and willing to help others, despite what he's going through. PROTECT HIM AT ALL COSTS.
Someone else who needs protecting at all costs? Micky. Talk about going through shit and just wanting to be free...
Gosh, I could write on essay on how these two deserve all the happiness in the world.

The book is beautiful, not only in the way you adore the characters, but also because of the way it deals with important themes in a brilliant way, such as mental health (social anxiety, eating disorders, ptsd), grief, prostitution, homelessness, love and friendship and yes, foxes.
I already want to reread it...

~2018 UPDATE
I can't stop thinking about this book.