jamgrl's Reviews (197)

Based on the summary, I went into this book expecting a fun, romantic romp. That is not at all what this is. This is much more an exploration of identity, mental health, and support networks. Grace is going though it in this book and her emotions are very real. 

There are moments and characters that sometimes come off as caricature, which feels out of place in this otherwise pretty serious book. The romance itself was bland for me and there were too many characters in my opinion- there were several extra characters that it appeared we were supposed to care about but with whom we just didn’t get enough time with to distinguish them, let alone care about that. 

All that being said, I enjoyed this book. It is very reflective and relatable. 

This is honestly such a perfect summer slice of life  YA book. Our MC, Ari, is a loner who makes friends with eccentric Dante and together they spend their summer becoming close while trying to understand their parents and the world. It is really emotional and moving. The two main characters are really distinct and well characterized and they each have unique character development that is is really beautiful to go through as they each come into their own identities. I listened to the audiobook by Lin-Manuel Miranda and he is, naturally, a great reader.

I know this is a well loved book and series, but I just kind of didn’t like it. I am having a hard time pinpointing why, but I think it is a combination of the following: 1. I struggled to connect with the characters, which may be partly because of the frequent pov changes between a lot of people. 2. The political/social commentary missed the mark for me. I kept feeling like it was superficial or inconsistent and the end failed to make a clear message/felt contradictory to earlier messages. 3. I was expecting more adventure- I don’t think I couldn’t enjoy slice of life, but with the above issues, I just found myself very bored and like nothing happened. 

This was a sweet, witchy story which I enjoyed but which had the unfortunate habit of hitting the reader on the head with its foreshadowing. There is a nice amount of darkness and witchy family lore, which is enjoyable to read, the setting is interesting, and the romance is sweet. There is some mystery, but it is mired by the excessive signposting before mysteries are revealed. The resolution is also a bit unsatisfying.

I have not read the previous Cider Bar Sister books- I just picked this one up because I wanted a short holiday romance and I love fake dating stories. It is able to stand alone- I did not miss anything from not having read the other books- and it is just tremendous fun. It is inspiring me to try my own hand at a from scratch gingerbread house! 

This novella steps it up a notch. We already know Murderbot, now we get to see what it does when it has agency. We are introduced to ART, whom I entirely adore, and we get to care more about the new human characters introduced. I enjoyed this one more than the first one and it really cemented my interest in this series. I also switched to audiobook for this one, and it is excellent! (Same narrator as Carl in A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, which was exciting for me.)

This short story is fantastic. It is smart, incisive, and haunting.

My feelings on this book are mixed in that there were parts that I really loved or connected with and other parts that just didn’t work for me. I think the choice to have 3 POVs was odd- why did we need two for the modern story and only one for the historical story? 

Rosella’s sections felt out of place on that they either didn’t feel connected to the other stories or they felt repetitive to Lala’s story. There were aspects of Rosella’s character and references to heritage that I loved, since she is the Latino one of the three, so I want to love her, and I kind of do, but I also got her confused with Lala and Lala’s story was much more interesting to me.

I think the weakest part of the book in general is the modern part. The location is ambiguous, the magical realism is cool but not relevant, really, and Rosella and Emil’s relationship was… okay? I absolutely love friends to lovers and their backstory as childhood friends was very sweet, I was rooting for them, but the romantic or intimate scenes largely felt unearned or strange, which was jarring in comparison to Lala and Alifair. I like that Emil is into science and a genuinely sweet guy, but that was kind of as far as it went. “Teen thinks history isn’t important and changes his mind” isn’t a super compelling arc and it felt like he was just there to connect dots for us. However, I did love the misdirects we got in the present and I would keep him if I were to cut one of the POVs because his direct connection to Lala and the uncovering of her story was actually interesting and did add a little something. That said, the historical part of the book could have stood alone. The modern part could not.

I adored the historical part. I love Alifair and the relationship between him and Lala felt really natural and earned, even with the mysteries surrounding Alifair. I loved the conversations around Alifair’s transness- it was really exciting to imagine a trans character in a historical setting, but McLemore also didn’t dwell on it, building Alifair into a full and dynamic character. I loved Lala’s conversations about passing and being exoticized. Although of course my experience has not been as extreme as hers, I directly related to some of the feelings she had.

the ending of the historic part felt so triumphant, with the town coming together and ending with the wedding- I cried at how beautiful it was.

I definitely like McLemore’s writing style and I like how they handle queerness and how they weave in magical realism and Latinx-ness. I enjoyed this book, but it felt much weaker to me than Wild Beauty (which also had a lot of ambiguity, but which didn’t particularly suffer because of it).

I highly enjoy Murderbot as a character! This is fast paced and fun. The biggest flaw in my opinion is there is a large cast of characters that we don’t get to know that well, which is too bad. It is justified by the narrative in that Murderbot doesn’t care about humans, but, Murderbot DOES care about humans… I think perhaps being novella 1 in a series left this novella a lot of character establishment to do in a short period for our protagonist, which left less space for investing us in the other characters. Even with this issue, this is so absolutely worth the read, especially to open the door to this series.