paulaks's Reviews (171)

Ein guter Thriller, habe aber von Ursula Poznanski schon besseres gelesen. Das Buch hat einen spannenden Plot und interessante Charaktere, fast schon zu viele! Da viele Familien auftauchen, hätte es sich gelohnt eine Art Stammbaum zu führen, aber schlauer ist man immer danach ;) Die Thematiken haben mir gefallen, aber entwickelt, haben sich manche Storylines überhaupt nicht, was etwas frustrierend war, aber daran liegt, dass es eine Trilogie ist. Das englische Sprichwort "show, don´t tell" trifft ganz gut zu: Es wurde immer über Carolins schlimme Vergangenheit geredet, doch der Leser hat keine Chance dies zu verstehen. Trotz all dem habe ich mitgefiebert und fand den Plottwist genauso klasse, wie sonst auch immer!

This was a suprisingly good romance! I really liked the characters: You got the cliche tropes but also great diversity (disabilities, LGBTQIA+) for a romance novel ;)

Overall I enjoyed the plot and the conclusion at the end (the cutest epiloge omg). It ticks a lot of my boxes and the book finds a good balance between a lighthearted spicy read and introducing new, more serious ideas. The logic was a bit off sometimes but I had a fun time so 4 stars. 

-> Personally, I liked the Fine Print more than Throttled, so I´m probably gonna continue the Dreamland Billionaires series and dnf the Dirty Air series. 

Something that came to my mind while reading, was that this book (the way it´s written and curated) gives me major: artsy depressed feministic not like other girls traumatised literature student vibes. I do not know if this makes sense at all but in my head it does. Now decide by your reaction if you´re intrigued or annoyed. Now to my thoughts:

This book is A LOT while being quite uneventful. Being character driven, it follows 2 characters over 4 years. Documenting my life for that long would be the most boring piece of literature but Connell and Marianne are SO complicated and traumatized. That has to be my first warning: The amount of triggers that are passively talked about is worrying. Please check those before reading (I tried to list some). Overall the reading experience was quite intense. Since there are no quotation marks, the thoughts, storytelling and conversations blend in together which can be confusing but makes for a really intriguing experience. The writing style was 10/10 so no need to continue on that.

Honestly, you can categorize the people that read this novel by their rating into two groups: The group that didn´t build a connection, were annoyed or angry or aren´t empathetic (= ratings lower than 2.5). And the ones who identified themselves with character traits or are just really empathetic (= rating 2.5+). Just a little thesis of mine, don´t take it to seriously. But what you should take serious is the fact that if you can´t build any connection with one of the MCs by the 50% mark, there is little to no point in reading this. I was quite invested so here´s my experience: Their decision-making had me on my toes, even tho the way they continued making wrong choices was exhausting. But it´s definitely interesting how trauma can shape a human being. This aspect shocked me a few times and made me question my own behaviour.

Lastly, the title choice is well done. Who is normal? Are we normal people? Do we want to be normal people? At least I was trying to answer that question.

My rating right now would be a 4 star. The potential was there and maybe I´m the problem but sometimes there were illogical moments and situations that made me uncomfortable (most of the time with Marianne). As you can guess by my long review, this is a great book for a group discussion but be aware that this would reveal a lot of personal stuff since Normal people is an intimate story.

What if we drown war ein gutes Buch, hat mich aber nicht ganz vom Hocker gehauen. Der Schreibstil war sehr schön und auch das Setting hat der Geschichte das gewisse etwas gegeben.
Mit den Charakteren konnte ich mich aber nicht so ganz anfreunden. Ich fand es sehr schwierig manche Ängste von Laurie nach zu vollziehen und Sam war okay, konnte aber auch keine Bindung zu ihm aufbauen.
Sehr gut gelungen war jedoch die Beziehung zwischen Laurie und ihrem Halbbruder! Die Rückblicke und Erinnerungen waren immer schöne Szenen, besonders das Kapitel Hey Austin hat mich mitgenommen. 
Der Plot und Hauptkonflikt waren durchschnittlich, auch wenn die Themen in der Kombination selten (oder gar nicht) behandelt werden. Insgesamt habe ich gemischte Gefühle, daher recht durchschnittliche 3,5 Sterne!

I really liked this short story collection! After reading and loving the Arc of a Scythe Trilogy I was pleased to see so many familiar characters and places in "Gleanings".

Here some of my favourite stories (spoiler-free):
The First Swing - reread this poetry piece a lot, it´s so beautiful and captures Scythes really well
A Martian Minute - Neal Shustermann giving me the Sci-Fi I waited for and delivered
The Mortal Canvas - beautiful story that discusses the meaning and purpose of art
A dark curtain rises - the most iconic character comeback

Some that were a bit.. weird? (spoiler-free)
Never work with animals - the ending had me shocked in an unexpected way
Perchance to Glean - loved the world but what was the message?

There are always a few stories you like or don´t like in collections so my conclusion: I think that if you liked the Scythe trilogy in the aspect world building, AI, Sci-Fi, philosophy or want to revisit familiar characters you should give this collection a chance! 

I had a blast reading the 3rd novel in the series! This is my favourite so far and I kinda understand why everyone loves this book. It´s not the plot, not the character conflict, it´s Aaron Warner.. Like I get it but this book shows how great everyone else is like Kenji, James, Winston and Brendan, the twins and so on.

Juliette´s character development finally starts to do it´s job and I really like her motivations and beliefs now. Someone that really annoyed me tho was Adam. This poor guy is the neglected character by his own author. I get that this book should solve the love triangle but PLEASE give me a reason to believe Adam´s hate for everyone (mostly Juliette and Aaron lmao). Especially after the novella "fracture me". I don´t know, something just didn´t add up there.
 

Lastly the plot or the character conflict. I loved the character conflict with them spending so much time together but the actual plot outside of their little HQ was really rushed. The action started like the last 40 or 50 pages and that wasn´t enough time. It was like the author just wanted to "get it done" rather digging into it. Well, now I´m left with the second half of the series but before continuing it I gotta take a break from this whole drama. 

A moral dilemma dressed up as a weird comedy. There was just so much going on in a span of like a hundred pages! Since I read it for school I wouldn´t randomly recommend it but for a "school book" it was funny, had literary motives that were intruiging and was fast paced.

Ugh, this is gonna be a tough rating.
First, this is a great sequel. Picked up where it left, develops characters and digs deeper into the secrets. Really loved that fact!

Now onto the plot. Holly Jackson did a fantastic job at crafting the mystery but I just missed that finesse and attention for the plot. It was like: you got two babies: character development and the mystery plot - both cry. Now who gets the attention?
And I know that she can do suspensful stories that keep you on the edge of your seat. Again, the plot was really good but it just fell short in really digging deep and taking its time - so being really harsh here knowing that the author can do better ;)

Maybe she focused on the character development you may think. Well, not really.. It´s a trilogy and I think she wants to spend time on our MC in the next book. Pippa is an extremly interesting but complicated character. She goes through some heavy trauma and has to deal with everything herself. We kinda explore her coping mechanisms but it gets mixed up with the mystery and the plot from the last book. There is just A LOT going on and that made me a bit sad because we tip our toe into everything but never really got the chance to explore it more.

Honestly, maybe it´s me hi, I´m the problem (never miss the chance to throw some taylor swift refrences hehe) and just have high stake because I really love this universe. I love this town with all it´s characters and mysteries, so I want to spend time exploring all of that without rushing everything. 
Didn´t expect to write such a long review lol but I just wanted to get my thoughts in order since we got left of at a really messy and dark place in the book.

Writing: The writing is quite easy even though it´s a dense book! It usually felt like a friend was telling you about his project and the results he found.
Credibility / Research: Well, obviously there is already everything found and said about habits, psychology and philosophy. With that said, if you studied this topic to the very end you probably wouldn´t find anything new in here. And that´s okay! Where this book shines is the fact how good everything is summarized and explained. Because there is so much information you have to find a way to give your text structure, read-ability and logic. I think that this book is the ultimate summary of everything "habits".
Personal impact: The quote states that expectations determine our satisfaction which is so true if you read some of the reviews on this book. "Well wasn´t life-changing." Of course it wasn´t! You read ink on paper, how can this be life-changing? I get where people come from but they suffer from high expectations. This isn´t a theoratical advice book, this is a practical adivce book. I think that if a human would live a way like described, it can be really benefical.
Problematics: The rich, white man privelege... If you read some of the pages to a poor, black woman in a developing country and say "Well it´s your fault how you live. If you really want to change you can." would be extremely harmful. That might was a bit extreme and stereotypical but same goes for addicted people or people with eating disorders. Promoting diet culture like in this book can be harmful, physically but most important mentally. So yeah, this book is advertised to an already privileged group but a little disclaimer at the beginning would be nice.
Conclusion: Honestly, the problematics relate to almost every self help book, so letting this one book suffer from criticsm wouldn´t be fair. The positives really speak for themselves. It´s a five stars for me. If you want to criticize this book based on being poblematic, please speak for the whole self help genre. 

A great balance between a simple and complex thriller! The humor, the relationships and this mysterious small town add that little extra to the book. I think we don't have to argue that the plot was well down. And yes, as the reader you can solve something but the final twist will be a suprise. I really enjoyed our main characters and I get that if you don't like them, you won't rate this book a 5 star. 
For me this was quite easy because all the boxes (characters, plot, writing, enjoyment) are ticked!