justinlife's Reviews (916)

This book was a delight. This book is the palate cleanser you need after reading something serious. It's one that's easily rereadable and the characters are enjoyable. HIghly recommend. 

This is an odd comic. That man on the cover is supposed to be forty which I strongly disagree with. This was a slow moving light hearted comic about a scientist who dies and comes back as a robot in a time when AI can support it. His former lover/protege has built a company and is shocked. 

It’s both a tender LGBTQ family story and a low stakes mystery that doesn’t get solved in book one.

This book was alright. I’m sure if you’re a fan of Scandinavian crime novels, adding a folklore twist would be fun. I couldn’t place most of the locations, so it felt like I was lost though the book. I could’ve even keep all the characters straight. The book wasn’t as tense nor as mystical as I was expecting. It’s not bad, but I know why I waited years to pick this up.  

Overall a beautiful book dealing with complicated people, grief, and family secrets. Told I. Lyric form, there are some gorgeous passages that made me think “you did that.” 

Young people need novels like this. They need to understand how grief can affect things. At times the book is very uncomfortable. Hurt people hurt people. 

It's hard to deny how well written this book is. Zevin writes characters that are believable, interesting, complicated, and ridiculous who mature and age. That's not an easy thing to pull off. This book has been all over the internet with great reviews, so when the library had it available, I figured I'd give it a shot. 

The book is a marvel for a lot of reasons- structure, timing, dialogue, meta creations, etc. It did this weird thing that I get sometimes with books where when I start reading it, I don't want to stop, but when I stop, I don't want to read it. 

At times this book exhausted me. It's to her credit that she wrote these characters with problems so real it made me realize why this isn't what I go for. Why read a book about well written, seemingly real fictitious problems when the world is full of real ones? I noticed this more with Sadie, one of the three friends, who put up with so much misogyny and sexism in order to get what she needed. I saw this with Sam, someone with a disability who refused to be considered disabled. It's so frustrating. It feels like a death by a thousand cuts. Also, people who can't communicate or misinterpret things when you, the reader, know the full story made me sigh so much. You want to see a different path, but sadly, you're not the one playing the game, you're the friend sitting on the couch, watching your friend make decisions in the game you wouldn't make. I can see why so many people like this book because it is so well done. 

There's one part of this book that I haven't seen people talk about b/c it's somewhat of a spoiler, but there's an act of violence that happens. An act of violence triggered by homophobia. It probably gave me the biggest sigh. In March of 2023, when over 400 anti LGBTQ bills have been introduced in legislatures across the US and where my home state is making a name for itself for trying to force my community into hiding, it wasn't something I was prepared for. In the book, it's not done poorly. It's fine. I'm sure if you're not LGBTQ it might not even be that big of a deal. But for me, at this time, it wore me out.

Overall though, the book is masterfully crafted. I get why people talked about. 

I liked it. I just didn't love it. 

Overall a cute story that gets boosted by the art and coloring. The story of a young recent college grad stumbling into a career at a restaurant that I couldn’t tell was ever open was charming if ridiculous. The story has heart. There was only one detail that got on my nerves and it was small so it didn’t affect the overall story. Romance is a hard genre to write. This was cute enough.

This is probably the best of the quartet. I think the Netflix miniseries did what I needed the books to do. A lot of the book is moody and b/c I don’t have the visuals, the media version worked better for me. 

In this novel, detective Mario Conde is ready to leave the police and his life as a detective behind. Before he can, his superior asks him to solve one last case. He has three days. 

Overall it’s a good book. Less of a detective story and more about the detective. As Conde gets closer to 36, he starts questioning his choices and ruminating on the past. 

The one consistent thing about the series is how it describes modern Cuba and I’m impressed it got published. It’s not a utopia. People are surviving and living, but are they? That’s the question Padura brings to the table.

This was a journey and it's hard to describe the emotions after reading. For me, it went from intense, reflection, intense, curious, and understanding. 

Even though it shouldn't, reading it feels like an affront to parents who were doing their best and trying their hardest to get by. When reading it, I felt like I needed to defend my parents and my history. Understanding that various factors, such as poverty, their own traumas, life changing events were at play made me question if they were actually emotionally immature. It gets even more complicated when maybe one parent was. If anything this book taught me how hard it is to be a parent and working to make sure children feel emotionally safe can be hard thing when dealing with the other pressures of life. 

Now that I said that, I can say I learned a lot about myself in this. I can see how childhood has affected certain behaviors that I didn't think about or consider. It was a lot to take in and I found myself self-reflecting in ways I haven't before. I appreciated that. 

I feel like the people who could most benefit from this book are people who are about 10 or more years younger. Toward the end, when the book discusses how to deal with emotionally immature parent, I didn't have as much to relate to b/c my relationship changed and the parent who's living is warm and receptive. The tools provided are very important though. I plan to use them and was already using many of them.

It was also a bit weird b/c it doesn't discuss the intersections that might have caused the emotional loneliness as a kid, such as poverty, different identity groups, etc. It keeps it very simple. It recognizes that the parents might have had their issues they were working through, but now you as the reader are an adult that has to work in with these parameters. In some ways that's very helpful- call it out, move on, no judgements. On the other, it's a hard pill to swallow. 

I would recommend to almost everyone my age. Again, not a read to the parents. Being a parent is difficult as hell. I have already recommended this to like three to four people. 

This was an interesting concept done well. Electricity goes away and everyone gets their own god. People without gods can shape them and give them power. I appreciated queer POC characters being at the forefront. I liked that their relationships were complicated. The art wasn’t my favorite but I appreciated his use of color. 

This is what I came here for. This is what I want to read. Sci Fi space saga, murder mystery, slow burn romance, political intrigue. Give it to me. inject it in my veins.  I couldn't put this down and didn't want to. It was so much fun. 

Maxwell does incredible work doing the difficult job of building a large universe with complex political systems while keeping the nuances of a small moments of a burgeoning relationship fun. It's masterful storytelling. She doesn't bore the reader with her world building. The plot moves quick and Maxwell knows the genres she's playing in and expects the readers to have a working knowledge of those genres. It's a hard balance and she manages it well. 

The slow burn is super slow though. What I love about the relationship is that their main problem is communication and mixing signals, which, I mean... is the majority of problems. There is some trauma from intimate partner violence that is dealt with, so keep that in mind. Maxwell handles that well extremely well. I think the reader can see it coming as the actions of the character felt like someone who had been through something traumatic.

Toward the end, the plot seems to buckle under the weight of it all, but at that point, I didn't care that the actions didn't seem logical. This is a space saga. What makes sense about a galactic treaty, deep space mining, and murder? 

Overall, highly recommend this book. It was so much fun. It was a delight and I look forward to exploring Maxwell's world a bit more.