mahamreads's Reviews (365)

I fell in love with this book in the beginning. Schwartz's writing is lyrical and elegant, and the references to Sappho's poetry makes it even more so. Reading about the (reimagined) lives of famous lesbians was very very interesting, and the way the author writes by mixing up the various narratives keeps it from getting tedious.

However, after the 25% mark the book did begin to get a bit tedious and perhaps a bit too slow-paced. The addition of new characters was a welcome one, but after a while they all started to get jumbled up together in my brain. I adore literary fiction and don't really care much for plots, but it was difficult for me to connect with this book in the way I wanted to because it began to get borderline boring and monotonous. 

That being said, the author's writing style is absolutely lovely, as is the idea behind this book.

Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. The author had a brilliant idea but unfortunately the execution was a bit off for me. The writing style was a bit too convoluted and all over the place and while reading it, there wasn't a clear sense of direction, which ended up being quite frustrating. I'm extremely disappointed 

*Received an ARC courtesy NetGalley*

Kibogo is an absolutely gorgeous novella. Set in 4 parts it deals with the clash between Rwandan traditional beliefs and the Catholic beliefs that missionaries are intent on spreading. Each part reveals a little more about the beliefs and stories Rwandan people held dear to them, such as the martyrdom of Kibogo (my personal favourite). All in all, this was a very interesting book to read.

*Received an arc via NetGalley in exchange for a fair review*

I really liked how this book managed to find the perfect balance between humour and sadness; there were times when I found myself cracking a smile at Violet's quips at Max and Sasha, and then there were times when I just wanted to give her a hug. Toxic relationships are messy and difficult and Buchanan (the pseudony is very iconic i think) has managed to shine a very realistic light on them in an engaging way.

However, I did find that the last few chapters were very rushed.

im very happy sasha and violet ended up together but the way they got together made it seem like violet was projecting her mommy issues onto sasha more than anything else

I wish the ending had been a bit longer and the smut scenes a lot shorter

As someone who isn't particularly fond of romance novels, I was forced to read this by my friends and expected the worst, but I was pleasantly surprised. Henry is not a typical romance writer in the sense that her characters are not one-dimensional or overly perfect/dumb, which was honestly a breath of fresh air. I did find myself skipping through a few of the romance scenes, but that was only because I'm not the biggest fan of romance in general and is not the author's fault in any way. Overall, im happy that I chose this as my first romance book to read in over 6 years and if I ever feel like reading one again im sure to pick up another Emily Henry novel.

I thought this book would be right up my alley, but it turned out to be more style than substance. so disappointing

so boring

This was not a BAD book by any means, but I had such high expectations for it that the fact that Case Study didn't even match up to them by 50% was very disappointing. The start was quite interesting and I loved the way Burnet blurred the lines of fiction and nonfiction, but after the 40% the book started to drag on for no reason. Furthermore, I love myself an unreliable narrator, but this narrator was, quite frankly just unstable and annoying. 
Overall, this was an interesting book but near the middle it just started to feel like a cop out