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essjay

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54 reviews

These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart

Izzy Wasserstein

DID NOT FINISH: 13%

Might try again sometime, but am just not in the mood for a murder mystery rn. 

Reboot

Justin Taylor

DID NOT FINISH: 6%

Yeah, no. 

I thought "woof, this prologue is fuckin ROUGH" and convinced myself to read a little further, but got to this bit and decided I didn't need to put myself through this anymore. 

I'd be out on the town, or at home, enjoying some run-of-the-mill debauchery, and I'd get this kind of psychic prickle, like the first twinge of a hard-on crossed with the feeling of walking alone at night and knowing you're being watched. The feeling would plant its flag in me. Palm sweat and salivation. I'd wake up in a strange bed or a wrecked car. (Strange cars and wrecked beds were not unheard of, either.)

Red Sonja: Consumed

Gail Simone

DID NOT FINISH: 30%

I might come back to this at some point, but I am absolutely not in the mood for it right now. 

Interstellar MegaChef

Lavanya Lakshminarayan

DID NOT FINISH: 35%

Wow. I tried. This is why I don't read blurbs, bc if I hadn't, I might have actually enjoyed this one. But I did read the blurb, and that was the book I wanted to read. 

Too many characters that all have very similar names (after one of the "nine virtues") made it very hard to follow who was doing what. And I'm not one to put something down bc I don't like the characters, but I didn't actually care about any of them OR what they were actually doing. 

If you're going into this thinking it's going to be about a cooking competition in space, skip it. 

Comemadre

Roque Larraquy

DID NOT FINISH: 10%

I might come back to this, but can already tell I'm just not in the mood for it rn. 

Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters

Aimee Ogden

DID NOT FINISH: 15%

Not vibing with this audiobook but may try again later as an ebook. 

Queen of Teeth

Hailey Piper

DID NOT FINISH: 15%

Not a huge fan of the narrator. Might try again as an ebook since the audio was not doing it for me. 

This Will Be Fun

E.B. Asher

DID NOT FINISH: 14%

Sigh. This very much reads like someone (or three someones in this instance, I guess) who doesn't read fantasy thought it'd be easy to pull off. The twee references to modern things with medieval trappings really didn't work for me. I'm sure it will work for other people, but not for me at ALL. 

Girl Squad Volta

Maya Lin Wang

DID NOT FINISH: 41%

Woof, what a mess. This is the first bedtime book read aloud that the 14y/o has requested we stop reading. The pacing was weird. Some things that didn't require any description at all were overly detailed, the fight sequences didn't make a whole lot of sense (so many exclamations from the kid of "what does THAT mean?!"), and we were just not having a good time with it at all. 

Halo: Cryptum

Greg Bear

DID NOT FINISH: 13%

Kinda mad that my oldest was like "oh, start here, you'll love this" when I know literally none of the existing storylines. Might come back after reading the earlier stuff, but also might not.