matmatmatty's Reviews (128)

A very sweet sapphic love story!

I went into this a little blind, and spent the first few pages a little confused and struggling to get into it.

Once I did though, I could not put it down. The mystery of the house and who the narrator is, it really drew me in.

It's difficult to explain without spoilers but a very good book and would recommend!

Talia Hibbert never fails to disappoint!

This is a spicy story with a lot of depth and I'm really glad I listened to it! 

There are a few serious topics covered so I would really recommend looking at TWs before reading!

But overall, this is a very sweet (and spicy) love story, and story about family.

I think this book suffered from poor advertising.

From what I've seen, this was originally published under the title "Waiting for Wind" (in Swedish), and the blurb I read for that book seems more accurate to what I read.

This was described as a summer coming of age romance with focuses on family. Which is wasn't really.

This is about a girl who feels out of place in the city she lives and whose family is falling apart. She travels to spend summer with her grandfather on a remote island, which is where she feels a peace. The story is about her coming to terms with what's happening on the mainland (with her family and her life) whilst being out in her safe place.

I don't think I was the right audience for this book - I found our main character confusing, I found her mum's actions confusing, I found why Ruth was included in the way she is confusing.

I understand what the story is about now but when I picked this up, it was the complete opposite of what I was expecting which means I struggled to enjoy it.

If you are a young teenager and you're going through a difficult time, maybe pick this up, with the knowledge that it's not a romance, but it is about overcoming challenges and coming of age.

A cozy, adventurous fantasy tale from the point of view of an academic researching faeries.

Lots of fairy folk tales, lots of human stories - I absolutely loved this!

I honestly am struggling to rate this as I don't necessarily think I am the target audience.

This book has a number of writers of colour talking about an aspect of their childhood/teenagehood and kinda what they would say to their younger self now. So if you are a teenager of colour, I think this would be really useful (I think I would have done well reading this book when I was 15 or 16)

Now I'm about the ages of the writers and this has helped me think about a lot of things in my childhood, it hasn't given me any advice that I could use right now. I would class this as a book for young adults, as I think they're the group thst would benefit the most from this book.

That being said, some of the stories were fantastic and gave me a lot to think about, especially those that I had no personal experience with (for example there's one that talks about a trans woman's experience which was really interesting).

This seemed really interesting but I found it quite confusing and honestly boring.

The main character is meant to be young (she's like 9) but she is very whiny and yet acts like a 5 year old and an adult at the same time. She can manipulate men but also wants to play and has tantrums when she doesn't get her way.

All the reviews I saw said that this was not historically accurate at all, so if that's something you care about, I'd Skipp this one.

Overall, I hated this. Xoxox

This is a bit of a strange book, I do need to start with that.

But the stories that it tells are so important.

This covers a wide variety of topics - gender expectations/roles, racism and xenophobia, war and the ways it can change lives, toxic relationships both romantic and familial, and tonnes more. And from the perspective of two different people - a mother and her son.

I loved the character of Emine - there were points where my heart bled for her and I wanted to jump into the story and save her. Her story, from growing up as a young girl with her father, to living alone in Finland and slowly but surely rebuilding her life the way she wants, it is wonderful to see.

Bekim, on the other hand, was very different. Some of his actions confused me (but I imagine there were a few metaphors that went over my head and potentially some context that I'm missing) but overall I could relate to him - as a person of colour who grew up in the UK, I experienced a lot of what he did. I just had the fact I was born here to protect him, which he didn't.

If you are a fan of complex stories, I would absolutely recommend this (but absolutely check out the TW, One scene in particular made me needing to take a break from listening to this.)

When I started this, I wasn't giving with it - honestly I'm too old for stories about how great college is and I'm not a huge fan of typical coming out stories. So really wasn't enjoying the start.

But once Immy returned home, and started interacting with Gretchen in person, that's when it kinda flipped and I couldn't put it down.

I've definitely met people like

Gretchen - who gatekeep and question others "authenticity" and I'm glad none of my friends were like that when I came out.

 

Overall, this was a sweet story and I'm glad I gave it a chance.