eloise_bradbooks's Reviews (801)

Uncle Rick... what did you do to my heart...?

I'll admit the first two Trials of Apollo were just okay. This one, was brilliant.
So many emotions. Too many emotions.

I have grown to care about Piper and Jason as side characters in this one book, 10 times more than I did in the five Heroes of Olympus books.
I also FINALLY care Meg and Apollo and the relationship they have. I even love them.
Don't get me started on how wonderful it was to go on an adventure with Grover again.

It feels like the brilliant Rick Riordan has once again stepped up, which I didn't know was possible.
We got more darkness, more stakes, more heart. I was shocked at how brave some of Uncle Rick's decisions were but they work. They work so well...
I can't wait to see what else is coming.

P.S. I am destroyed. Writing this review before I turn back into a puddle.

Soft and sweet and intricately beautiful.

Austin Chant is shaping up to be a wonderful author whose stories have the exact touch of echantment I look for. (enCHANTment!!!)

I don't have anything bad to say about this book.
I just didn't care for much...
Not as much ruthlessness as people say... meh.

4.5 / 5 ~ What an absolute delight.
Gradual world building which set such a charming atmosphere of magical mechanics in Victorian London; and gradual relationship developments that felt so very heartwarming.

I'll admit I wasn't a fan of Grace but I appreciated her side of the story.
Thaniel was an adorable kitten and Mori, even if very mysterious, showed how he cared so silently, but beautifully.
Special shout out to Katsu, the mechanical octopus who steals socks and hangs from anywhere with his mechanical arms. You have taken over my heart, dear one.

By the end, I just wanted to read more from them. The atmosphere of this book was right up my streets and I fell in love with most of the characters.

I can't show much respect to a book when it starts saying that making a friend or having a boyfriend suddenly cures a mental disorder...

Not only does that clearly appear in the way Petula starts not being afraid of her fears anymore, for no other reason than the fact she has a boyfriend... But there are actual phrases like "you were weird before him", "broken", "he changed you - in a good way" (I didn't read it in English so these aren't exact quotes but similar). Just because she has (had?) OCD and generalised anxiety disorder? And she doesn't have as many tics anymore? She's now a "better" person?

All this, said within a group for teenagers with mental health issues. And a professional counselor. And it was never mentioned that that kind of mentality is NOT the way to handle it? Eeerm... Nope.

I also felt angry at the fact that every single person in this group of 'Art therapy' had to explain their mental health issue based on some tragic event... Sometimes, anxiety, depression and other mental health issues exist even without some huge tragic explanation... It just exists. And it sucks, but it just exists. WHY DID THIS STORY EVOLVE AROUND A GROUP OF KIDS WITH MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES IF YOU CAN'T REPRESENT IT IN A GOOD WAY???

Okay, you want to hear good things about the book? It has cats. Loads of cats. Cat hats. Cat videos. Cats. It gets a bonus star for that.

JUNE 2018 UPDATE: The more I think about this book, the more I dislike it... Only the bad feelings stick out now and I wouldn't even recommend the book anymore... Not even sorry anymore.

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Unpopular opinion time...
Please don't hate me, everyone enjoys different things and this book left me soooo confused as to what I'm feeling... Even now I'm still not 100% sure about this review so I'm ready to discuss, but pls no hate.

Good things about this book:
- bi, fat, slytherin girl representation
- Simon and his bf being cute as fluff
- Simon and Leah friendship
- f/f romance

And yet... I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to...
At first was fun, very relatable, and it was great reading about a bi girl who was in fact my favourite character from Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda!
Buuuut... she got annoying.
I started disliking Leah... and the story changes how imagined these characters in Simon Vs... It felt like I wasn't actually reading about characters I knew.
I understand that this is a year later, and people change, but still... it wasn't a bittersweet change, only bitter.

Here's my thing with Leah.
I related to Leah a whole lot... but a lot of the ways I related to her were in the things I don't like about myself. That meant that on the one hand it was great to relate to her in a way that I rarely see in books, but on the other hand because it's things I don't even like about myself I started really disliking Leah...
Does that make sense????

Clearly, our little Slytherin doesn't like feeling strong emotions. She gets angry very quickly and for reasons that aren't always valid. She's moody and becomes mean when people try to be nice to her. She doesn't give second chances and oftentimes won't even give someone a first chance...

Throughout the book Leah is upset with one of her best friends because she said something mean (okay, it was something racist so it was pretty bad but she also realised that it was a bad thing to say and apologized). Except I can't help feeling like Leah says mean things to people all the time and never apologises... it was pretty ironic that one of the things that people commend her for - calling people out for being mean - is actually completely turned against her in my view of her.
She's mean to her mom, who clearly deserves the world. She's aweful to the man her mom loves even though he's only shown himself to be caring. She says she loves her friends but never does that show in her actions.
She's never called out for being mean. Well, her mom does call her out but Leah completely dismisses her...

Also, she calls out someone for calling themselves "a little bi" because clearly they're questioning and not 100% sure of a label. Leah tells them they shouldn't call themselves that and then storms off without leaving the person any chance to even discuss the apparent issue. You don't decide other peoples labels just to make yourself feel better!!!

"But... the romance was good, right?"
Well... the good thing about it was that it was about girls. Confident bi girls, questioning bi girls, kissing bi girls. All of that was great to read about.
But honestly? I wasn't completely shipping it...
My dislike of Leah made me wonder how the love interest could possibly be interested in her, especially as Leah is nothing but mean to her all the time.
The attraction also feels pretty physical from the get go, which is totally fine, just not what I enjoy most.
They start to spend more and more time together, which could be interesting but it wasn't enough for me to like them together as much as I would have liked to see both of them with other people...
(Not Garett, because Garett deserves the world and someone who'll treat him so much better than Leah did.)

I feel super bad saying this, but if it weren't a queer pairing, I probably would have hated it.

It feels a little odd rating this..
I didn't enjoy it that much... but only because it's not my kind of read.
I don't normally go for mystery-murder reads because I don't feel interested in the WHO-DID-IT stories. But I'd heard nice things from people with similar interests in books to me so I thought I'd give it a try.
Didn't work.

I wasn't interested in the mystery, I wasn't interested in the 'suspects'. It all felt like they were keeping things for no reason and revealing them ESPECIALLY when we needed to hear them so the story would move on to the next questions!

What I WAS interesting in was our main character and his story with his ex boyfriend. I kept reading because of that and I enjoyed it because of them. Their story isn't surprising, it was exactly what I thought it would be, but i'm okay with that.

So... I was okay with it. Just okay.
If you like mystery murders then maybe you'll enjoy it more than I did though!

3.5 - You'll read this. Even though it's about sports, it's not really about sports.
It's about a bunch of (diverse) guys at a footie (soccer) training camp, guys who are each other's families, guys who had lost touch, guys who love each other.
You'll read it because it's soft.
You won't read it because of the writing, because you'll find it too fanfiction-y.
You'll read it because it's sweet. And a nice short soft read to break from you're intense huge novels.

So.. the moral of this ending is "If you buy me stuff it means you love me"? ...
That's really not even the most problematic thing in this book...

The whole story is about a girl asking a guy to do sexual things to her because she's really uncomfortable. Basically they both agree that, and I quote, he'll "seduce [& fuck] her out of her anxiety"...
And it works.
She is autistic. But many of her autistic traits fade away when he's around... I mean... this is an ownvoices (autism) book so I wanted to believe in the rep but the fact that the symptoms just go because of a love interest? Really?
I picked this book up purely because I wanted aspiegirl rep (bc we don't get enough autistic girls in books), but everything else was the worst... I should have DNFed but I had faith it would get better...

Oh and I hate their relationship dynamics. I understand that some people will like this. I don't. The strong man knows life and teaches the vulnerable woman how to behave... Thanks to that he becomes overly possessive and she only feels safe in his arms.
(Kinda sounds like 50 shades said like that...)

Gimme more Gimme more