sarahxify's Reviews (703)

This was great. I loved the way it was written, it was very unsettling and at times hard to figure out exactly what's going on. It's told from the perspective of a child, Green, who grows up in a commune. The commune is an awful place but she is raised to think it's wonderful and that the outside world is a bad place. Because she has no knowledge of the outside world, she has no idea about how bad her living arrangements are. It's quite shocking to read her flippantly talking about "hunger days", where she gets no food, or her matter-of-fact descriptions of the punishments the children receive.

I enjoyed this. I thought all the characters were well done and I liked the setting and the general vibe of the book. I didn't really like the whole plotline about the Essex serpent though; I didn't think it was tied in very well with the rest of the story and I got a bit bored reading those bits of the book. Aside from that, a good read and one I would recommend if you're into gothic fiction.

3.5 stars

I really liked the characters in this book and thought they were quite well done. The plot was a bit unbelievable and I didn't like the way the plot was mainly driven by Monty's continual fuck ups. I thought Monty was a unrealistically bold in the way he acted in public towards Percy given the attitudes towards homosexuality at that time, but enjoyable nonetheless.

The premise of this story was unique and interesting. I liked the general idea, with the children trying to get back to their weird other worlds, but the rest of it really fell flat for me. The characters all felt two dimensional and unrealistic, especially in the way they all reacted to the murders.

I've seen a lot of praise for this book for its diversity, but these aspects of the book seemed completely contrived. It read like the author thought it might be a good idea to put some "diversity" into the book so just stuck some buzzwords in irrespective of how well it worked with the story. The girl insulting the trans character towards the end just seemed ridiculous. These kids walk on rainbows and make skeletons dance with noiseless flutes, yet a trans kid might not be "normal"? And main character's asexuality was, in my opinion, really poorly done. Why on earth would a girl who has been a human statue in a world of the dead for the past year or two years or whatever it was be fussing so much about her sexuality in the first five minutes of meeting people? While I think it's great that diversity is becoming such a big thing in literature, every book I read seems to just have these elements just for the sake of having them (or maybe I'm just cynical).

I really didn't like this. I thought the plot was confusing and senseless, I didn't like the writing style, and I didn't like any of the characters. None of them made any kind of sense. Even though there was a lot going on, I found it really boring. And there were no women in it.

This book was interesting enough, but there were many disappointing aspects to it for me.

For a start, it was just too damn long. The first third of it was well-paced, but after that (

when Nancy left Kitty and made her own way through London

) it just rambled on and on. A lot of time was spent developing problems for Nancy, and then a lot of these problems were never really dealt with

such as her never finding Grace and Mrs Milne, and Nancy being a complete bitch to her family and leaving them to despair over where she was

.

I thought the whole plot generally was quite ludicrous, particularly the convenience with which Nancy managed to bump into every lesbian in London. The way it was wrapped up was also ridiculous,

there was no closure on any of the storylines until literally the last scene in the book, where most of the characters conveniently gathered so Nancy could deal with them.

I often felt like the author had sacrificed writing a believable plot in favour of writing endless detailed sex scenes.

Aside from all that, I liked the way it was written and I thought Nancy a very interesting character, especially as I didn't find her at all likable. She really changed throughout the book though, and it was interesting to see how all the events in her life affected her.

This was interesting. I didn't love the fairy tale-retelling element of it; it made the plot feel quite predictable to me. And I thought the "twist" at the end was really obvious...

the second I read about the "lost princess" hiding on Earth, I knew it would turn out to be Cinder.

I enjoyed the story overall, but I'm not sure if I enjoyed it enough to finish the series.

This book was a little slow at times, but I loved the story and the characters.