sarahxify's Reviews (703)

27/01/2018 - This is about a group of Aborigines (the Noongar people) returning to the land of the people and visiting a taboo site, where a massacre took place many years ago. This idea is very interesting and I was eager to read this, but unfortunately I felt that the book was not well executed. For the most part it was quite slow and boring. When something did happen, it did not feel cohesive, but rather random and inexplicable. I thought that Tilly's trauma was very underplayed and that she was a very poorly done character in general.

31/01/2018 - The twins both being called Gerry really irritated me, mainly because I felt they were basically the same character and were indistinguishable.

I like this a lot more than the first one. The plot is a lot more involved now, with more characters and layers to the story. Alina is still quite a cliche character, but it is interesting to read about her personal battle with her new power.

I can't praise these books enough really. They're just brilliant. The characters are all wonderful and beautifully fleshed out. There are so many POVs are this point, but they are all very distinct voices. There must be 15-20 "protagonists" in this, but it is so easy to keep all of them and their unique storylines straight. These books are completely transporting and absorbing, and they have a perfect mix of drama, humour, happiness, and tragedy. I cried in quite a few parts of this one! The plots are amazing, and I love how this one ended.

Really liked this for the most part. It's beautifully written and I thought she did a wonderful job of portraying how a tragic event affects our everyday lives.

I didn't like the parts with the cathedral and Adam's father so much. Although the parts with his father were interesting in places, I thought that the book returned to him and to the cathedral a bit too much. I also found Adam and Emma's relationship extremely frustrating;

they clearly have some major communication issues (e.g., Adam resenting how much time Emma spends on her phone but never says) and towards the end of the book it seemed like they were supposedly getting "better", although they hadn't actually done anything that might lead to this aside from having sex.

Really liked this, but it was a bit long for what it was and really dragged for the last 150 pages or so.

Short and powerful. This is a beautiful story of loneliness and how we affect and are affected by others. It was refreshing to read from the perspective of two elderly people.

I have seen a lot of criticism about the grammar and punctuation in this book. I listened to the audiobook and found it extremely easy to follow, so I would recommend reading it that way.

Plenty of shortcomings in this book (particularly, I thought the characterisation and setting were very weak), but a good story with a unique perspective. I thought it was a shame the book ended where it did and the opportunity to explore more aspects of assisted suicide was missed.

Nice end to this series. It unfolded pretty much as I thought it would, but Lirael and Sam are great characters and I enjoyed reading them. I'm glad Nix kept this third book focused on their storyline.

This trilogy doesn't really feel like a trilogy - it reads more like the second and third are a duology and the first is a prequel. The stuff that happens in the first is really inconsequential to the second and third, whereas the second and third basically follow the same story arc. The characters in the second and third books are also a lot better than the ones in the first. They're more developed and their personalities are more consistent throughout the story.

I flew through this in an hour or two. I was surprised at how complex the characters and story ended up being for such a short little book that I thought would be a simple contemporary story.