fridaymouse's Reviews (29)

wish i had this as a kid. can't wait to read more of them, this is the type of diverse and inspiring middle-grade works i hope to work on one day :) 

This is pretty standard fare for an Emily Windsnap book. Predictable, but an easy read with a happy ending for pre-teens. I would have rated it higher if not for one thing: the racist stereotyping. Hear me out before you tell me I'm being ridiculous.

Emily meets a strange, cult-like group of people living on a remote island that only she can access. Her first thought is that these people are going to cannibalize her. She finds out that these people have superior intellect and senses, ranging across science and mysticism. They are inherently better than normal people due to their connection to the nature around them.

These, and countless more stereotypes of native people constantly pervade the narrative. I imagine this implicit bias wasn't noticed by Kessler or her editor at the time— but it still remains present. It didn't age well. This made the book so hard to get through because I was constantly rolling my eyes when yet another Native Stereotype occured among these characters.

I would definitely encourage anyone reading this book to note and analyze the racial biases in it. It's a fun and simple Windsnap book, but it reinforces a lot of stereotyping. There are other types of egregious stereotyping in Kessler's other books, but this one takes the cake.

Kid's are smart. They notice this stuff. More adults reviewing this should have, too.

For a revised edition, they could have fixed the typos everyone is mentioning in the reviews for the first edition. It's glaringly distracting for sentences to have confusing typos, as well as grammatical structures that make zero sense.

The comedy is few and far between and not nearly as punchy as the podcast. Sydnee is VERY funny in my opinion, but she doesn't get to shine here. She and Justin aren't playing off each other, they're writing an essay and then inserting random tidbits that are only halfway to being jokes. Justin gets much more space on the page to be funny than Sydnee does.

Speaking of space on the page, JESUS this body of text is a slog to get through. Each page is full of uninspired retellings of events with no gusto to it. We barely get a sense of a narrative voice outside of the jokey inserts. I want to feel like Justin and Sydnee are telling me a story of history, not like I'm reading a Wikipedia article.

milquetoast bland "relatable humor" with hardly any personality to it. i was bored. it feels like something i would watch on one of those kid's youtube channels where adults roleplay as disney movie teens.

the characters were pretty one-note and i didn't feel like i could get invested. the art is beautiful and the world looks interesting, but it wasn't carrying me through the story. maybe i can try it again later.

It was just okay. Reading this, you can definitely tell it was pretty much ripped straight from a webtoon comic. Great for fans of the webtoon who want a physical copy— not so great for newcomers expecting a graphic novel experience. It has the self published unedited feeling of a webtoon. The art was mostly boring.

I found myself wishing for more exposition and hand-holding, which felt weird. But so many concepts weren't elaborated on that I felt it hard to care about this fantasy world and it's people. What does it really mean for someone to order an emotion as a flavor? What does the Council do other than nebulously take care of... stuff? Why do I feel like I never have a clear understanding of Ray's personality or inner conflict, even when I'm reading her inner monologue?

I had more questions than answers, and not in the fun and interesting way. It was a light read, but not a super easy one. Felt like a slog.

Incomprehensible and with art that's hard to look at. I can't tell what is going on narratively, and the lines and colors blend together.

I was hoping it would have a similar low barrier to entry as the D20 adaptation, but with different characters to explore. None of the characters talk like "normal" people, it seems like they have an in-universe retro-future dialect that is not at all helped by being dropped in the middle of the world. 

Even with my knowledge from the much easier-to-follow D20 show, this takes too much brainpower. I wasn't planning to dedicate hours to research and side materials while reading— it's a comic collection I picked up to knock out in a couple afternoons for fun. Not what I expected, but might be fun for someone wanting to sink their teeth into the World of Starstruck with much more time to dedicate.

I loved reading this book, even as difficult as it was for me to handle all the themes. I'm pretty squeamish! But all of the theming was necessary and added to reader gratification as we watched the Iron Widow progress.

There were a few times that the romance felt flat for me, and I don't know if it was due to the titular character's perspective, the YA genre, or the fact it's the author's first book. I think if the perspectives shifted more often than in just the first chapter, that would have brought the book a lot of strength. I could see myself really loving a Midnight Sun-type work with the perspectives of other main characters.

I read one chapter. The narration doesn't feel like I'm in the MC's head even though I'm supposed to be seeing her perspective, because her personality isn't cohesive at all. It seems like a string of thoughts and actions that best service the author. She is full of contradictions immediately.

I also could not for the life of me suspend my disbelief that she would flirt with a guy that, to her, seems super weird and starts pressuring her to help his paranoid ass while she is alone on the street with him late at night. I don't care how handsome the guy is or how long it has been since you got laid. I feel like the narrator telling me Amelia was horny was supposed to be a substitute for showing me real chemistry.

I also saw that Amelia instantly prioritize his thinness and whiteness (she has a "thing" for blond hair + blue eyes) as being part of why he's attractive. I wouldn't recommend this read if you've got any body image issues, or have experienced xenophobia about your appearance.