justinlife's Reviews (916)

This was more interesting than I originally thought. I thought I was getting a silly little romance about holiday princes. I wasn’t expecting a critique of resource hoarding and in a sense capitalism. It’s an odd book and mostly light but some interesting perspectives that I wasn’t expecting. Overall though I really liked it and could see myself coming back to this one. 

Ugh. 

This was the worst of the series. It didn’t help that it was almost double the size of the others but it didn’t make sense why it needed to be. It felt needlessly wordy. The characters were cute, I guess and some supporting characters did some heavy lifting to get me to the finish line. 

My main complaint about the book is that one of the characters was British and it felt like the author was trying to get all the Britishisms in to make the characters make sense. 

I also was annoyed that with a series of books, this was the second/third age gap romance. It felt like all the authors could’ve picked a trope and went with it, but three of the five so far have had this. Ugh. 

This is a delightful graphic novel of a sweet soul who got a hockey scholarship. He’s a short gay boy who loves to bake. The chapters are done in vignettes so each one ends with a little want of more. The characters are fun and the art is expressive. 

It’s really cute, low stakes fun. I’ll probably read volume two.

I think this is an important graphic novel that everyone should read at least once. This book serves as a reminder that while all these systems and infrastructures exist, we still participate with it and use them. 

Nott does a great job of showing the scale of the systems, a brief history of how they were formed, and how we live in them. He challenges the reader to look forward, to create better, to understand that the systems aren’t stagnant and won’t ever be, and that we have opportunities to advocate for what the next iteration looks like. 

I think this book would be difficult for those who see things as stagnant, want things to stay the same or revert to the past, and those who don’t want to be accountable for how our society functions and how it can negatively impact other people and ecosystems. 

Nott focuses on systems of electricity, communication (internet, etc) and water. He uses light blues and soft colors which help make the information palatable. It’s tough information to swallow- to see behind the curtain and recognize how our society is held together.

It’s worth it though. While it’s true that most of the pollution and solutions are outside of us, we can recognize and reduce our own part and look to participate less in systems that only benefit the wealthy. We can also advocate and be a part of creating what the future looks like. We are not bystanders. 

This book calls for a need to change while recognizing how difficult that change can be. It a book that’s curious and allows those curiosities to develop. 

This is a fantastic book. 

This book really had a chokehold on American society when it came out. I never read it and figured it was time. I can see why people gravitated towards it. It was post Y2K, just after 9/11, pre-Mayan calendar ending, post x-files, W Bush era, in the middle of the Catholic Church scandal, and the internet wasn’t as immediate as it is now.  It makes sense with that context why people would find this enthralling. 

Dan Brown does a lot of lifting here. He makes the reader believe the theories and includes just enough history to make the reader be like “wait, was that right? Did that happen?” Kudos, girl.

Overall, though, I thought the book was just ok. It didn’t fully pull me in and I didn’t want to continue reading it. I had this checked out from the library so long that my account got suspended. I just didn’t want to pick it up. That’s not the feeling I want from a modern adventure thriller. 

There were at least two moments where I wanted to throw the book because of a ridiculous turn of events. My eyes couldn’t roll back far enough. 

I think, though, at the time, I would’ve been like “WHOA, that’s so crazy!” Anyways, remembering the context and the culture at the time helped keep my inner critic in check, but he still came out. 

It was fun and dumb and ridiculous and truly surprising that this had the effect it did on culture.

RIP, girl! 

You would’ve loved MySpace! 

This one was a lot of fun. 

Small town bookstore clerk has huge crush on all around good guy and leather worker with a failing business. They've known each other for years and everyone knows he has a crush except the guy. When he does find out, things get spicy. 

I was surprised at the kink play in this book. I wasn't expecting it and I feel like the author had a lot of fun with it. This was the best of the Collier Creek series so far. 

This was ok. I'm not one for work romances and age gap so it wasn't for me. 

The sheriff of Collier has a crush on the dispatcher. The YOUNG dispatcher has a crust on the Sheriff. It takes awhile for anything to happen and the dispatcher has a past that had me going "where did this come from? there's nothing in the character so far that lead to this." 

I wanted more from this and wish the sheriff fell for anyone but his own worker, but alas here we are. 

Similar to the first one, this book is about 200 pages and it's a quick read about a Max who comes to Collier Creek to visit his half sister and falls for her ranch manager Nash who is wary of him. 

Overall I liked it even if the characters do a 180 about halfway through. Nash is firm on hating him until he isn't. The swing was so hard that I missed where it happened, probably due to the brevity of the novel. The characters are cute and it's a quick read. 

So, when I look at a series of M/M romance, I'm wanting past and future characters to interact and create world that's interesting and connected. This series does not succceed with that. Because the books are written by different authors, I'm not sure all the authors knew what the others were doing. It was a bit disappointing. That being said, I'm still reading them so there's that.

This was a great start to the series and I had hoped to see more of these characters in later books. We get a single dad and a former athlete/school teacher who fall in love. It's a cute story, relatively short and enjoyable.