Thanks for all the CRYING, Alexie. God. Whatever. Love his grown-up books, love this. Love his (and, OK, the general native culture's) ability to laugh at tragedy. Junior is a great narrator, smart and brave and funny and sad. Oh and I loved Ellen Forney's illustrations.

I really wanted to like a lesbian Cinderella story but it was just okay in my book. I still really like the idea, and Ash does some things well. I like that the stepfamily is much better developed, and I like the concept of magic/fairies in this world. I just felt like it was kind of draggy.

I really liked some aspects of this book. The commentary on high school, the commentary on Salinger, and the whole code/mystery thing. And it's definitely funny. The way the protagonist talks about girls is kind of annoying... but then, the way most teenage boys talk about girls is kind of annoying. Overall, pretty funny, but not my fave. Probably teen boys would like this book more than I did.

Hmm. I think I'd give 3 stars to the first half and 4 stars to the second half of this book. I couldn't get too into the whole "war games" aspect of the book. But I really liked the ~backstory screenplay~ although it took me awhile to figure out what was going on.

OK so I frequently induce seizures in YA book people by telling them that I've never read a Robin McKinley novel. Welllll, I read one! It was pretty good. I had the sensation that I had read this before? But I think maybe that's just because I have read, uh, Beauty and the Beast before. I got pretty caught up in this even though I already knew the story. Whatever, apparently everyone else in the world has already read this book so I'm done reviewing it.

I really enjoyed this. I liked that Carrie read her own book. I liked her honesty about her weird life and her honesty about the weirdness of writing so honestly about it. (Sorry if you have to re-read that sentence.) Also, I will be honest and say I loved all the Star Wars gossip.

Wow, I could definitely tell that Robin McKinley has improved and matured since writing Beauty. (Which was 20 years before Rose Daughter, so, you'd hope that would be the case.) I did wonder how someone could write two adaptations of Beauty and the Beast, but this one is much more fleshed out and, well, magical.

I tried reading this book before bedtime and it gave me horrible anxiety and I couldn't fall asleep for ages. It's not even that it's a very graphic war story or anything, but the book is just imbued with so much tension. It's really well done. Buut I can't say I especially enjoyed the experience of giving myself a panic attack for 200 pages, so I'm filing this under "well-written but I'll probably never read it again."

I really enjoyed this. It's hard to balance humor, magic, good characters, and an actual plot. (I know I'm going to get shit for this but I'll say it: I feel like Terry Pratchett often misses the balance by being too funny and not plotty enough. YEAH I SAID IT) But I think this book pulled it off pretty well. Love the characters, love the ~magic~, and loved the laughs. I will definitely be getting the next books in this series.

OK. First of all, I'm pretty sure this was an homage to P.G. Wodehouse, and I have never actually read anything by Wodehouse. So I'm sure I was missing out on some of the humor. This was a pretty funny book, with a lot of clever lines. Overall, though, it mainly felt clever, and I didn't feel particularly invested in Alan's alcoholism or his creative struggle. I did get pretty into the action of the last few chapters, but overall, not my cup of tea.