khyie's Reviews (267)

The more I read of this, the more tired I was off the main relationship.  They're sickeningly sweet. It's too sweet. And the side couple is almost a complete replica. The exact same personalities and just as disgustingly sweet.  There's no real variation. 

I loved the relationships between the entire band and that the author really didn't skimp on showing them interact with each other and be a full group.   I also really enjoyed Pei Tingsong, who had all the hallmarks of the stereotypical rich, arrogant gong, but was tempered and made far more real by those moments where you could tell that yep, this was definitely a 20 year old boy trying to look cool and is actually a bit of a derp.  It's still very a much a MC and ML are so perfect and so beautiful and so good at (just about) everything they do but it has a bit more depth than some of these novels do and a very strong message about pursuing dreams. 

There were a lot of funny and entrainment moments in the novel and I got pretty choked up a couple of times and yet, for some reason that I genuinely can't put my finger on and articulate, around chapters 69-100 or so, it was a slog.  I was literally forcing myself to pick this book back up.  So as much as I overall liked it and what it was doing, it's down two stars for being a struggle to read for a not inconsiderable portion of the book.

I'm so baffled.  I've read so many stories where adopted siblings marry and it's perfectly okay, even embraced, but apparently marrying the brother of your dead husband is incest...

 DNFed because literally everything about this book is a steaming pile of crap.

Thinly veiled excuse to sexualize a child, rampant pedophilia, and textbook grooming of a minor by an adult. I genuinely don’t care if the MC is a 30 yo in a child’s body. He doesn’t act like it, literally no one else is aware of it (especially the ML who gropes him constantly) and the book spends a lot of time focusing on sexualizing how cute and young and adorable he is. The ML controls every aspect of his life, to include what food he is and isn’t allowed to eat and blatantly violates his boundaries until he gives up fighting him and tbh, I genuinely felt sorry for most of the people the MC was trying to get revenge on in this life because the situation was so wildly different this time around and tbh most of the things they did to him in his previous life seemed to be consequences of his own shitty actions and they were nice enough people this time around, being punished for something they haven’t done.

Excuse me while I go throw up a little and hate myself for ever even starting this. 

 EDIT: re-read 17 Aug 2021 and upped the rating to 3 stars. While I can't say the book was stellar and it definitely was formulaic, I didn't feel quite as vitriolic about it as I did in the original review. Unobjectionable and forgettable but just what I was in the mood for at this moment.


So, full disclosure here: I read this series out of order (yes, just like the Turner series). Also, this was the eighth fluffy gay regency romance novel I had read within a five day time frame, squeezed in around an exhausting work schedule/skill evaluation in an unfamiliar climate that had me going from 5:30am to 9 or 10pm every night, while also being sick. I'm absolutely certain all of that had some bearing on my feelings for this book.
With that being said... I was bored. Guys, I was really bored. If there was conflict in this book, it had about as much bearing on it as a crack in the sidewalk has on a person's every day life. Mildly startling if you trip on it but forgotten five minutes later. I'm not saying everything has to be angst and melodrama but give me something, at least. I had zero emotional connection to anything that was happening in this book. Oh, a couple of cute, cheeky kids that are behaving exactly like kids and somehow all of the adults in the book except this one special person have forgotten how to properly interact with children. Oh, a stern grump who has a 180 on his personality because ??? He's getting laid, I guess??? There's a fiance in there somewhere for the vicar but it's okay because someone is going to conveniently fire him from being a vicar and thus all his problems are going to disappear. Hey, here's a touch of set up for the next book. HEA. 

 Honestly, I spent most of this book wondering why the hell I was still reading this crap. The worlds are VERY short and only a cursory nod is given to any sort of worldbuilding. Most of story is played out, first in the drama of the ML, Xiao Xihe, being a complete asshole to the MC, and justifying it by saying he loves him so who cares if he screws him over, and the MC disliking him. Once the MC does start liking him and they get over the hurdle of he's going to be deleted because Xiao Xihe thinks that since the rules don't really apply to him they must not apply to anyone else either, the story becomes infinitely more boring. I did like some of the MC's witty comebacks to Xiao Xihe's bull and the best parts of the story were any time Xiao Xihe was not getting his way (rarely until much later) and the content warnings are real with this one.
Honestly, I wouldn't waste your time. If you've a hankering for a QT novel like I had, go back and read one of your favorites because this one is just an all around disappointment. 

 Sweet but without any real depth. Still, it cracked me up a lot and I admit to finding Gu Wei's repeated blunders hilarious. There's definitely some super sketch stuff happening in there though with Jiang Xun's actions (the medical records! wtf, seriously, seriously wtf!) but I don't think this story was really meant to be taken seriously in any way, shape, or form. It also relies on the whole 'love cures mental illness' nonsense though maybe not quite so blatantly as some other things I've read. Still, I had a lot of fun reading this story and it made me laugh a lot. I'm excited to read the sequel because younger bro Jiang Ying has my favorite kind of energy. 

 Overall mildly entertaining. I definitely found the novel I read before it a bit more bleh. I kept forgetting this world had a futuristic scifi setting though, so every time the author would make a one off mention of something more futuristic, it threw me for a loop. Also, it dragged on way longer than it needed to. I'm not sure if it's because the extras weren't clearly marked as extras or what, but the main plot wrapped up and the book... didn't end. It turned into trope bingo, like the author had realized some tropes hadn't been checked off the list yet so they were approaching them one at a time. I wish the story had just ended after the stuff with MC's grandfather. That would've been a fine point to finish it. The s level plants were great though. Might've been the best characters in the whole novel. 

 Started off strong but then got really bland, really fast. It's been awhile since I've put my hands on a Nora Roberts book and I was kind of excited to read this one, partially because it seemed to be stepping somewhat away from the romance genre and I'd really enjoyed her detective series. Unfortunately, while the story followed a handful of characters, they were all pretty much exactly the same personality-wise, and the plot follows a pretty predictable pace. I probably should've guessed it from the title of the book but the entirety of this novel felt like a set-up for later books. So many characters and plot threads and ideas were introduced only to suddenly go nowhere as Lana, in particular, removed herself from those areas and situations. It didn't feel like Roberts was dropping those characters or threads, only that she had been introducing them so that she could use them MUCH later down the road.
I listened to this via audiobook so I'm not sure about the grammatical structure, but I can say that a lot of the dialogue felt almost... ritualistic and unnatural. Like, everyone was reciting lines instead of a natural flow of conversation. Some characters stood out as a charming break, like Eddie and Fred, but I almost cringed every time Lana or Max were speaking. I didn't even feel a real difference between Lana's prophesies and the normal way she spoke. That should be saying something.
Finally, and I really should've expected it (no, really, I should've) but maybe I've been immersed in other books for too long, but Gods, was this incredibly heteronormative. There was a nod towards the LGBT+ community at the start that I think maybe raised my expectations a bit and I really started to wonder about Fred and Arlys, and even ship them a little bit, but of course we couldn't have even somewhat nice things. Nope, gotta pair them off with some other randos so that all the ladies got a nice man to protect them.
Aaaaand that's why I left this particular area of literature some time ago. Not really my cup of tea and I am signing out.