kewlkat70's Reviews (250)

The best thing I can say about this book is that there is not enough to it to get that mad about it.

The concept is interesting but the more a reader digs at it the more it falls apart.  

The author should have kept God out of the equation.  Or make the angels to be something other than what humans expect.  Instead she kept the Revelations avenging god idea but with no philosophical thought behind it.  I am used to better writers using Lucifer and other angels in their fantasy stories.  Although his name is anathema now, Gaiman has used Gods and their tools in his novels to brilliant effect. 

The author wants the FMC to be smart.  She quotes Poe and Shakespeare and Dickinson from memory!  She coulda gone to university as an English major! (English major here,  don't have Shakespeare memorized but her Hamlet quote is misused. Hamlet is a whiny boy prince who is wracked by self doubt and inability to function.  And yet our FMC has the typical romantasy heroine of self assuredness and independence. Macbeth was also full of self doubt and unfulfilled ambition).   
I digress. 
If you are looking for some hot action and a love story it's here.    If you don't care that questions about theosophy and the nature of God and religious belief are brought up but never actually dug into too deep, then you will find this a decent romance with a unique storyline.   
If you are used to authors that dig a little deeper into the meaning of God, whether it's speculative or humourous you will find big holes here.  

Nussbaum is an engaging writer and the research and interviews she did for this book were top notch. 

Unfortunately she covered ground that any schlub that has followed reality TV since The Real World already knows.  It is an in-depth review of heavily trodden ground.  

She focuses mainly on the early creators and the workers that started on the ground floor, the camera persons, the editors, the casting reps.  

She talks about the self awareness of the reality show participants and how they learned to game the system and how Trump used the genre to build his brand from a washed up mobbed up bankrupt loser into whatever he is today.  

Meanwhile she either misses the online fandom, the watchers who love to hate, the snarkers (TWOP recaps, Gawker, the subreddits) that knew what reality TV was doing.  To her the audience is unaware and gullible, believing all along the narrative that the producers had created for them.  Sure that audience existed and more so as many went so far as to create parasocial relationships with cast members or to elect Trump.

She also stuck to the big names of reality TV and missed some of the more salacious stories, many of which I had followed and forgotten.   The scandals and when bad ideas turn really bad (like the violence of Cheaters). The humiliation shows like kitchen nightmares or Trading Spaces Or the window into mental health like Intervention or Hoarders.  Or the popularity of "nice" show like The Great British Bake off.  
I would not recommend this book if you are already familiar with the genre as it's mostly about shows you already know everything about.  It's interesting to read about the creators but in the end it doesn't reveal anything that we didn't already know. 

Looks like there are more novels coming in this series.  

I will be looking forward to them.   

The audiobook has to be AI.  The reading is so cold and  robotic and it mispronounces weird words.  It's very distracting 

I might try the actual text version but this is absolute garbage to listen to. 

I had hoped the story would be better to follow but it didn't grab me so well.  Main character a bit Mary Sue

The two main characters were very interesting and I wish there was more to the novel so we could learn more or spend more time with them 

The novel felt a bit rushed.  But i still liked it. 

This book was as near perfect as any book I've read in this genre. 

It's not a perfect 5 but that means nothing as I don't give 5⭐ to many books. 

It was an emotional ride and the writing was a bit choppy  inconsistent at the beginning but it did find it's rhythm in the last half of the book. 

The main character, Edie, is a strong FMC and relatable.  

I don't typically like stand alones and I wish there was more to the story. I wanted to live with the characters a little longer.  But the story feels complete.  

This was a tough book to rate.  On the one hand the humour and situations were delightful and whimsical and funny.  The humour reminded me of the Villians and Virtues series that was a 4.5⭐ rating over all.  

But I had to subtract points for 2 major issues I had trouble with.  Firstly, I found Lyla, the main character's best friend to be highly annoying for 3/4 if her character arc.  I understand that she is supposed to be a foil so that the FMC, Sasha, can remain openhearted  and optimistic.   Lyla overdoes the cautious, suspicious routine and it goes on for a bit too long.  It starts to drag the action as the reader knows Sasha will end up going to Between, but Lyla sticks her nose in and they end up spending an extra day of running around in disbelief.   Eventually, Lyla stops being dismissive and dragging the storyline from progressing and starts working with the protagonist. 

In other words, it's very tiresome to have a character deny and dismiss all the action that the reader has just had described to them in detail.   It can happen once but after a while it's boring and repetitive.  

However her character improves by the end of her story arc in this book. 

I mention her "story arc" because of the biggest problem I have  with this novel.  For whatever reason, the author decided to approach the narrative by telling the story through the FMC's perspective and just as the novel is about to make a major plot point, the narrative goes back to the beginning and tell the entire story from the MMC's perspective.   
So on some level this is a creative way of following both characters and does a wonderful job of building the world and secondary characters as we see their action from the POV of each protagonist.   But unlike many books that go back and forth between POV, the author is repeating everything.  I find this made the novel much longer and repetitive and at times boring.  The humour saved the story but I hate ready nearly 500 pages only to end up in the same place I started.  
There are certainly readers out there that will love this format as they also love re reading their favourite novels.    This will allow those readers to spend more time with the characters and the world. 

However, for myself it was a chore.  I already know what is going to happen and while a few questions about motivations and mysterious actions were answered when reading the event from the other POV, I don't think I needed to go through every single interaction again.  I'd much rather have the POV interspersed between each other so that by the end of the novel I didn't feel like I read it two times over. 

It's also why I don't care for novels that tell the same story from a different perspective, no matter how much I loved the series. 

I hope she doesn't plan to keep up this narrative device.  

I read this book nearly 30 years ago and I still think about it.  

The themes of conspiracy and the human need to believe, the lines we make up between truth and faith keep being relevant in today's world.