randi_jo's Reviews (420)

 I'm not sure if I can articulate how much I loved this book. I wasn't really expecting much but a tragic retelling of Kings Philip and Richard but instead I found something so so much better. The HEA, for starters (or maybe enders) was such a fucking relief after all the drama and betrayal, that I was in tears. The LGBT in this book was handled so well, too. Just... fact. The Christian imagery and guilt, the prose, the characters. . . it was SO GOOD. I consider this a gem that I almost let slip by. 

 3.25⭐ bc the ending was pretty lackluster and it's the part I remember the most.

At its core Boyfriend Material is a formulaic romance novel, down to the contract lovers to maybe lovers to fighting/breaking up and making up by dropping the L-word within the last 10 pages. I think the best thing it has going for it is the wit and humor that particularly shines in the middle of the book.

Unfortunately I didn't like Luc much, but he was pretty great in the middle of the book, the start and ending were a bit rough. Oliver could use more depth instead of just shoving a list of facts in at the end.

When the romance happened it was cute as hell. I'm glad this book and others like it are bringing more LGBTQ+ books into the mainstream book community.

 A great encapsulation of motherhood and how parents influence our choices but with a supernatural twist. I really liked the dubiousness of the witchcraft and how beliefs like that are passed down through a family. The ending makes me fear for when my own children are teens lol. 

 I promised myself to do more self care in God's Year 2023, so I'm DNFing this even though I started reading it in October of 22. Just thinking about this book put me in a 2 month long reading slump, and I'm just going to chalk it up to not being part of the target audience, despite the fact that I do tend to enjoy YA/New Adult fantasy. I disliked Teo and his immature choices too much to make any of it worthwhile. Good luck to him at not dying tho. 👍 

I had a lot of fun reading this one. The author has a good sense of humor, and while she has an obvious stance on animal treatment/studies/extinction, she doesn't beat you over the head with it.

Loved the different animal myths, but I also liked that it explained where they came from and how (to the best of our knowledge) they were perpetuated and, for the most part, debunked. 

Would recommend for anyone looking for some lighter, science oriented nonfiction.

I loved how each poem seemed to incorporate a piece of nature and mold it into something felt. Despite the name, this collection has an uplifting message - of living in the now, respecting the past and those that came first, loving what is.

Will probably reread again in the future. 

 This was a reread and even though the last time I read this was pre-Covid, it's still good -- and the infection story gets an extra layer added to it from recent events.

First and second to last stories are still my favorites though. 

 Still cute but there's something really charming about the different recipes and ways to make things like soaps and stuff that makes you feel the need to get rid of technology lol 

I have so many conflicted feelings about this book, and not really because of the topic itself but because it wasn't handled very well, imo. All controversy aside, I'm so emotionally exhausted from this book that I don't even know if I can make a coherent review but I'll try by keeping thoughts to bullet points.

-The prose is nice, straightforward and not over-the-top. It definitely helped drive home some of the scenes from the first half of the book, but was a bit detrimental in the second half when Vanessa became a repetitive enabler for 200 pages.

-This is a difficult topic to write about (or at least make the entire premise of a book about it) and not receive some kind of scrutiny for it. My copy has a little forward from the author plainly stating that it's a work of fiction and that it has nothing to do with herself or any of her teachers and I feel bad enough for her that enough people have badgered her that she has to have this statement out in print. I will operate on the assumption that she is telling the truth and this is a work of her imagination.

-That there are people out there that don't want to come forward after a traumatic event and that they'd prefer to restart their lives and let the past lie - and it's important to recognize them. Vanessa, I think, was supposed to be one of these people, but she is fundamentally unlike them in that she cannot accept the past as over nor function through daily life without resorting to a cocktail of pills/drugs/alcohol to get through it. Instead she excuses it all, dwells on it, and to some extent, revels in it. Adding the elements of the #MeToo movement, denouncing it as a witch hunt, that victims are just women looking for attention and validation, media looking for clickbait, while it was, I THINK, supposed to be irony, really did it a disserve and came off as abrasive and uncaring, especially at the end where the characters that did come forward ended up more jaded by the lack of "justice" they received and then made to feel like it should've been obvious that would've been the result.

-Looking passed Vanessa's constant enabling of Strane's behavior, that she was not a victim no matter the small part of her that second guesses things, says that she doesn't <i>actually</i> like what he does to her. It feels far too romanticized. That she is the Dolores to his Humbert, that everything he says/does is beautiful because he's an older man, not like BOYS. And there is the fact that she is completely, and perfectly okay with every single thing Strane does UNTIL!!

penetrative sex

. She's ok with literally everything else, even him

going down on her -- thinks that if their relationship is him going down on her for the rest of forever she'd be the happiest person on earth!!!

There had to have been something before that, but instead it's treated as a titillating back and forth where Vanessa baits an older man and unfortunately for her, he turns out to be a practiced predator. But it doesn't stop her obsession.

-Vanessa is an entirely unlikable character. Even as a teen she's naïve (although she adamantly denies this the entire book so she can take responsibility for her "choices" regarding Strane), but obsessive over people (first Jenny, then Strane, then Henry, followed by Ira although more mild), which only continues through the book as she just becomes more and more vile. She doesn't care about the other girls who are victim to Strane, only in that she is jealous and that she needs to be reassured that she is the most special of them all, that he does the most with her, reciprocates her obsession.

-My feeling that Vanessa is just a burgeoning predator/pedophile but never took the final step because she still had Strane in her life to do it for her.

If someone told me that 2 years after the ending of the book, Vanessa becomes a chatroom pedophile, I'd 100% believe it. This feeling stems from a few moments

: <i>"I'd seen teachers give students hugs before, no big deal. It only accelerated after that, once he knew I was ok with it - and isn't that what consent is, always being asked what you want? Did I want him to kiss me? Did I want him to touch me? Did I want him to fuck me? Slowly guided into the fire - why is everyone so scared to admit how good that can feel? To be groomed is to be loved and handled like a precious, delicate thing."</i> 

The scene where she is 32 and smoking a cigarette in the hotel alley when she is approached by the two teenage girls and she thinks of the things she can do or say to make them linger with her, things that Strane taught her. Even though she ultimately lets them go, she has to try VERY hard to do so.

<i>"When he moves away from remembering me and begins to talk about the girls in his classes, I follow him. He describes the pale underbellies of their arms when they raise their hands, the tendrils that escape their ponytails, the flush that travels down their necks when he tells them they're precious and rare. He says it's unbearable, the way they drip with beauty. He tells me he calls them up to his desk, his hand on their knees. "I pretend they're you," he says, and my mouth waters as though a bell's been rung, signaling a long-buried craving. I roll onto my stomach, shave a pillow between my legs. Keep going, don't stop."</i>

A few other moments: when she considers kissing Charley the day before she moves, her envy of young teenage bodies, the near-stalking other victims.

<i>"I wonder if it's possible for me to be arrested for having photos of myself. I wonder if maybe this is me turning into a predator, if the way I get excited around teenage girls says something about me. I think about how abusive people are always abused as kids. They say it's a cycle, avoidable if you're willing to do the work. But I'm too lazy to take out the trash, too lazy to clean. No, none of this even applies to me. I wasn't abused, not like that."</i>

In all: not a fan. It could've been so much more, but instead falls flat and into a worrying possible Freudian slip on the author's part. 1 star.