hollowistheworld's Reviews (105)

Rachel Aaron continues to reign supreme amongst all other authors for me. Her plot twists are earned, her characters are real, and anything can be overcome with some hope and a truckload of stubbornness. The epilogue was just the right amount of showing the future and leaving events up to the reader's imagination. The Heartstriker series had me feeling like I was a teenager again - eager for the teacher (now my work) to stop so I could find our what happened next. The culmination of Julius's story was everything I could have hoped for. 

The only reason I even made it as long as I did is because I was looking for another book to use for the Sri Lanka prompt. 20 minutes in and the three female characters mentioned are already Saintified Mother (nameless, of course), Pushy Whore (every time we mention this character she's talking about her secondary sex organs), and Dumb Love Interest (POV character clearly only likes her because she's too stupid to argue with him but also judges her for it). I don't care if it becomes the greatest subversion of these tropes ever after the first 30 minutes, I'm trying to purge this from my memory. And making a formal note - I HATE literary novels. 

An interesting and well presented overview of Germany's history and how it has effected its culture. Not sure I agree with his final argument though - it seems to suggest that if you ignore the far-right they'll go away. I agree with no longer trying to appease them, but ignoring the far-right has never done anyone in any minority group any good. Perhaps I am not quite understanding his argument - if all this history was leading up to a final thesis, I think that thesis needed more than the last few minutes to present itself. 

A bleak overview of a country I'm a bleak situation, but not entirely devoid of hope despite that. 

A little dry, and easy to get lost in all the specific battle details, but an informative read telling an important perspective of history.

 A solid enough mystery but the pacing was borked. Most mystery novels are primarily from one perspective - the detective. There's a reason for that. All the perspectives in this book muddied the plot, slowed the pace, and generally made me wish they'd get on with it, as it led to us constantly having to rehash things for the next character. I think the whole thing could have been written to be entirely from Emma's perspective and it would have streamlined the whole thing marvelously. I shouldn't be more than halfway through a book and still wondering what the hell the opening scene has to do with anything. The autism stuff too - I shouldn't be halfway through and going 'why are we spending so much time talking about this? What does this have to do with the plot?' Even at the end I was unconvinced so much of that was necessary. Mysteries, by virtue of their genre, typically need to be kept tight, and this was definitely not tight. It was a sizable bundle of plot ideas and glimpses of Ghana issues, but they connected poorly, when they connected at all. I could also write a sizable article about all the ways this book is an example of how men seem to be incapable of writing believable female characters. Men may stop paying attention to the creep staring at them at a party, but a woman who's recently escaped sexual assault? She's watching him like a hawk. Not quite a bad book - I wasn't longing for the end like with some I've read - but I wouldn't call it good either. 

This is almost a DNF, I did so much skipping to make it end sooner. If I'd known it was going to spend hours on this poor rich famous white 40 year old man needing to have sex with a black teenager I'd never have picked it up. There was the idea of good metaphors and supporting characters on the fringe, but the grossness of the sorry excuses for romance at the forefront kept me from caring.

I don't think I've ever given up on a book so fast. The audiobook narrator was awful, which didn't help, but the main character was TERRIBLE. Selfish and irresponsible, the worst sort of romantic teenager, and I'm supposed to buy it? It felt like the author was trying to be politically correct while also talking about why civilians didn't do more, but where she landed was a bunch of characters I couldn't take another second with.