onceuponanisabel's Reviews (1.48k)

I really wanted to like Tarnished are the Stars. I just...didn't. The writing style came off a little more middle grade than YA to me, which wasn't what I was expecting. The characters actions and motivations felt kind of...extreme? And our three main characters didn't start working together until very far into the book, which made the pacing feel really weird to me. It's like the entire first half of the book was just build-up. This is Rosiee Thor's debut, so I look forward to checking out her future stuff. I think there were some really good elements. This one just wasn't for me.

I'm just...not gonna rate this one.

Birthday was on my TBR for a holiday readathon and I'd already checked it out from the library when I came across the story about Meredith Russo yesterday. You can read about it here if you haven't seen it yet. Trigger warnings for abuse and rape. Maybe you won't approve of my decision to follow through and read the book, but I'd already done as much as I was going to do in the way of supporting her, and I'm unnecessarily competitive about readathons.

That being said, I did read the book, and I thought it was really heartfelt and good. But I couldn't help but feel like I was enjoying it way, way less than I would have without the information about the author. I would encourage anyone wanting to read Birthday to read the article first if they think they can, and then make an informed decision about supporting Russo.

You're telling me this is a fantasy where books have personalities with a bi mc and a demon who's my favorite character? Iconique

** 4.5 Stars **

I was so, so pleasantly surprised by this book. I tend to read a lot of contemporaries because they're fun but I rarely think they're as good as I think this one is.

Sick Kids in Love is the story of Isabel (and yes, I'd say I did enjoy this book just a little bit more since the main character is not only named after me but also spells it the same way which never happens) and Sasha, two teens with chronic illnesses (rheumatoid arthritis and Gaucher disease, respectively) who...fall in love. It genuinely is that simple. The pair deal with the stigmatization surrounding their invisible illnesses and problems with their parents. Nobody dies.

This book is own-voices both for the bisexual rep (Sasha is bi and the author identifies as "gay or somethin i dunno") and the illness (Moskowitz has ankylosing spondylitis, which is a type of arthritis), and you can tell. Sasha's casual bisexuality that is mentioned repeatedly and is just a part of who he is rather than a plot point was a breath of fresh air. The descriptions of Isabel's relationship with her disease were so clearly written by someone who had similar experiences. Nothing about this book felt exploitative or cheap.

I found myself smiling for almost the entire time I spent reading this. My roommate probably thought I was a little insane.

I don't have a chronic illness, so reading about characters that do from the perspective of an author that does was eye-opening and thought-provoking. But even without it, I related so heavily to Isabel. Her tendency to overthink every little thing and jump to the worst possible conclusion? I can't remember a time I read a character who did this in exactly the way I do before this book.

ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley

poetry collections reframing narratives surrounding greek goddesses is not a genre I expected to be a bit of a theme this year but here we are.

happy ace awareness week!

Alright -- it's been a few days since I finished Wayward Son and then feverishly word-vomited a review at two in the morning. I've had some time to think about it and come to some new conclusions, so I'm redoing the review. Here goes:

In some ways, I liked Wayward Son better, but then in others, I really didn't.

Carry On is a knock-off of Harry Potter. That's...the point. To be honest, it was one of the reasons I didn't love the book: I'm just too much of a die-hard Harry Potter fan to really love something that is, by design, a dupe. All the same, I didn't hold that against Carry On, because that was the point.

Wayward Son felt, to me, like a knock-off of [b:The Lightning Thief|28187|The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1)|Rick Riordan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1400602609l/28187._SY75_.jpg|3346751]. This was not the point of the book. I worried that it might just be me -- that because I reread TLT earlier this month, I was just overestimating the similarities and seeing a weak connection as more than it was. As a test, I offered a summary of the book to my sister, who hasn't read PJO in years, and her first response was "Sounds like Percy Jackson." So I don't think it's just me. I mean, come on. A motley crew of 3 magical teens of varying types (kids in PJO but) makes their way on an episodic adventure-laden road trip across America in order to rescue a fourth person? There are obviously plot-based differences but it felt tonally and thematically pretty similar. Was this an intentional call-back to another classic middle-grade fantasy of my generation's youth? I don't know, I guess, but because this isn't something I've seen talked about by anyone else, I don't think so.

This book was pitched as "what happens after the adventure is over, when you're no longer the chosen one with a big bad to fight." So, I expected it to be more of a contemporary drama rather than just...another fantasy adventure. Which it absolutely was. Perhaps this was foolish of me -- even the Goodreads summary of the book makes it clear that it will be a magical adventure. But I think I would have been less disappointed if it had retained any of the drama I was expecting from that contemporary drama.

In the first few pages, we are made aware of two big problems in our hero's life: 1) that he has become depressed due to his drastically changed life, and 2) that because of this, and because of their changed situation, there are significant issues in Bas and Simon's relationship. This 350+ page book makes no headway in resolving either of these issues. Just as we might get some discussion about them, Penny hops in with her road trip idea, and both the characters and we as readers are expected to be so completely distracted by the shenanigans that we won't be frustrated that no headway is made on either throughout the entire book. Simon and Bas have no significant discussions about their relationship. Simon does no introspection, comes to no realizations about his mental health, and has no conversations about it with any other characters.

Fantasy is nothing but a backdrop because, at their core, all books have to be essentially about the characters. If your fantasy book is only about fighting dragons and has no relatable, human problems, it will fail. It is this balance that Rowell got wrong. A highly shippable pairing is not enough to carry a fantasy novel.

So, if you've gotten this far, I applaud you. I'll take this last paragraph to go through some of the things I liked. Road trips! They're a fun trope, and Rowell did a good job with it. Even more fun was the idea of a couple of clueless, isolated British teens road-tripping through America. Watching them discover and experience parts of a new culture was delightful. Secondly, I really liked the growth of Bas and Penny's friendship. Platonic friendship is, as a rule, underused in YA fantasy, so you've got to savor it where you can get it.

I really have absolutely no idea how to rate this in a way that's fair, but it's come to my attention that ratings are never fair and always depend on the biases of the reader, so instead I think I'll just do what I always do and rate it however I want and then explain why here in the review.

1) I think it's important to note that I read Goblet of Fire yesterday. Literally yesterday, and my heart is never so big as it is when I read Harry Potter. It was utterly impossible for me to read a book that was basically a retelling of Harry Potter without making the comparison and without that book (or rather, this book) losing.

2a) I am extremely susceptible to hype. And the hype surrounding Carry On and Simon/Baz is massive.

2b) I think that because of this hype (and also just partially due to the story itself), I was invested in the Simon/Baz part of the story. I enjoyed the development of their relationship. A lot. Unfortunately, though, it was pretty much the only part of the story I did like.

3) While, admittedly, many parts of the actual magical plot of Harry Potter is ludicrous, Carry On felt like an exacerbation of that ludicrousness.

Spoiler

The people (and most importantly, the villains) in Harry Potter are people. They act recognizably as people, and that is part of what makes fantasy worth reading. The notion that through the fantastical, you can tell a story that is utterly human, and demonstrate the universality of those stories. The villain (and by this I mean the Humdrum, as I suppose needs explaining) of Carry On is a non-human creature who exists as a weird loophole in the magic system and offers no moral to the reader. Rowell's reach for this human element is The Mage as the villain, but to be honest, this, to me, felt underdeveloped. Because of these opinions about the villains of Carry On, I honestly felt like the main plotline was a bit of a waste of time. I was bored by it.

4) I am aware of the controversy surrounding Rainbow Rowell and it took me a while to decide to actually read this book. Although I did, in the end (obviously) decide to read it due to the excess of hype and the recommendations of some friends and family, I would be lying if I said that that controversy wasn't at all in the back of my head.

You know what...

I’ve been thinking a lot about this book recently and I think it deserves the last star.