Good overall addition to the series, though sometimes I was frustrated with a lack of depth or pacing concerns.

I was intrigued by Kick's fascinating story, but this biography didn't always give the details I wanted. There was a lot of repetition and a name-dropping feel rather than depth in a lot of the encounters described.

I thought this was a cool way to go about doing a biography of Jane Austen, focusing on the "small things" or crucial objects, like the amber cross, that can define her work and her life. Some of the objects definitely felt like a stretch though...There was a lot of great information, including some close reading of letters with interpretations I hadn't heard before. However, there were also moments of blatant speculation or the author's own interpretation of Austen's books that sometimes felt randomly placed. I like Mansfield too, but this wasn't the place to write a love letter to it.

Parts of this were so brilliant that I would have to put the book down and ponder; other episodes seemed out of touch or oddly placed. 

This felt exactly like the show - to the point that the book could've been written after the show and I wouldn't be surprised. The only difference was completely unnecessary - delving way more into questionable sexual exploration and a childhood rape. Did not need to read that! All that stuff could've been taken out; it didn't even have an effect on the story...

I enjoyed this without finding any specifics other than the setup especially memorable. A younger son making a directory of wealthy single women then falling for the one who confronts him about it - that's a great concept for a Regency romance. The execution was fine, but some things felt overly convenient - like Diana just instantly becoming best friends with Regina.

Morton's writing was beautiful but the pacing sometimes struggled. This family mystery had a lot of twists I didn't expect, though I did guess that

the babies were switched

pretty early on. For such a long book, I expected more nuance to the narrative characters, but they felt like the flattest ones, telling the story about the dynamic characters, which was an odd choice. I usually love intertextuality, but this time it often felt overly convenient for plot purposes - why wouldn't she read the book all at once? Why did she get three copies but not...just read it? And why doesn't anyone care that the homeowner/husband figure never comes back?

For the nature of this collection (short stories with the same airport setting), I thought this was well done overall. I enjoyed the read, especially the consideration of perceived internal and external identities. I did connect with some characters more than others.

Fascinating look into a family struggling to understand their disparate and common identities when coming from different backgrounds into today's America, told through the backdrop of vacations. This book made me grateful for the strong functional relationships my husband and I have with both sets of parents. This didn't have much plot and ended abruptly. There were a lot of powerful concepts that I thought could have been explored further.

This book didn't really have a narrative arc on its own - the ending felt particularly unsatisfying - but some individual sections worked well. Ciri is SO young and often tiresome - really, why would she, as a thirteen-year-old, be obsessed with the concept of virginity? I was surprised to see Lydia's character as Vilgefortz' secretary, as that's different than the show, but it didn't really go anywhere; the Brotherhood feels very underdeveloped so far.