nadia's Reviews (587)

This, my first Whitehead, is a really good book, covering harrowing subject matter. I'm not sure the narration style was my favourite though. While it started strong, I ended up finding it a little dull at times, and I often had to reread sentences/paragraphs, thinking I'd missed something. Overall, the writing quality was great and towards the end of the book the pace picked up and I was swiftly turning those pages!

As a big Zendaya fan and admirer of Law Roach, I was hoping for a lot more from this book. It was a lot more self-help-y than I was expecting and most of the advice, the main theme being cultivating confidence, was rather run-of-the-mill. I was hoping for a lot more originality and unique insights. My favourite parts were the memoir elements and some red carpet/event prep BTS. I would have preferred a book just with that stuff! Still, there were some good reminders in there re confidence, and success, and all that jazz!

Very difficult listening but I liked this memoir from Robin Brown (someone who'd I'd never heard of) a lot, and I went in with low/no expectations, which probably helped. I had no clue what a dark story I was heading into.

I really really liked this audiobook! It felt like I was having a catch-up with my friend, Chelsea, at a bar, and she was giving me all the goss, all the BTS deets. Lots of humour, emotion, but also general life reflections. Also love the story of how Devantez made it her career. The audiobook has a bonus story too!

This is a very good book. I love the writing and the way the story was told via different perspectives and POVs. It covers difficult and challenging subject matter and it definitely tugged at my heartstrings at points but there was a lil' something missing for me which prevented the book from having maximum emotional impact.

I was so intrigued by this book, but it also confused me to no end! I couldn't work out where it was going, what I was meant to believe/think, whose side I was meant to be on...while there were hints at some messages, nothing fully landed and I'm left wondering what Yuzuki wants the reader to take away from Butter.

Still, despite these feelings, there was something about the book that kept me intrigued, so I guess I found the characters fascinating to an extent, and some of the passages got me craving some proper butter, which I did go out to buy and have been enjoying putting on everything since (butter is one of my favourite foodstuffs, it's a key fact my uni friends know of me).

What an incredible historical work! I'd once heard this story years ago in an episode of the Criminal podcast, but I couldn't remember the details. The first part of this book read so much like a novel: I was gripped, tense, scared, on the edge of the seat...then we lost that narrative pull at some point. Still, I remained super engaged and the level of detail was amazing, without getting too bogged down, though there were a lot of people to keep track of! Anyway, I've learnt so much and it's wild that this story isn't more widely known in the US. Hopefully more people read this book.

I was really looking forward to this book having a massive transformational impact on me, but, that wasn't the case! I think it was too simplistic for me! I wanted more nuanced or actionable insights rather than a bunch which said the same thing in different ways. I also didn't enjoy Holiday's tone at points — again, I just don't think I was the target audience!

When this book started, it was firmly in 5-star territory! However, it got a little bogged down in details and a large cast of characters and I found myself getting a little distracted and bored. It picked up again towards the end though and I was ultimately intrigued and wanted to know what happened the whole way through. 

This was a super-well produced audiobook, down to the full cast, music, and sound effects. When it started, I was excited by the concept, but it ended up being way too repetitive and thus I kinda got tired of it and felt it started to stray a little too far to the silly side. I know that's what satire can be going for but I was hoping for something that ultimately had a little more depth or nuance in the plot and takeaways. Maybe I'm not the audience for it!