2019: THEY HAVE KNOWN EACH OTHER FOR 7 HOURS and the whole thing could have been prevented if the lawyer didn’t have an afternoon delight quickie with his secretary? PUH-LEASE

2019: This was another in a string of novels that I thought was good, but not great. I was never truly invested in the story, and the way the book jumped through time and space meant that I still am not sure the exact trajectory of this person’s life (I say this person because she is an unnamed narrator, which does nothing to help the case of me getting invested in the story). The vignettes were interesting, but overall, it fell short of my expectations.

2019: This was a mess of a book. It was all over the place, with many, many plots and perspectives that overlap but seriously don’t work together. It contains too many items and it was so complicated. Not enough of the characters’ actions and motives were revealed early enough for me to want to care about them. Also, I’m really not a fan of work that pits women against each other. Would not recommend.

2019: Wow wow wow what a waste of time. This was by no means a terrible book; in fact, I rather enjoyed large sections of it. But Rubin does not stick to the rules of the world he's created, he spends tons of chapters largely describing things that he does not explain, and the ending is one of the cheapest tricks in the cliff-hanging book. I would have thrown this book across the room when I finished it, if I had not been listening to it on my phone and that would have caused severe damage. I have no interest in reading the sequel.

2019: So, I really have nothing to say to this besides JUST TELL PEOPLE HOW YOU FEEL. Which I guess is the whole point Ng is trying to make. But as a ridiculously extroverted human, I just don’t understand how they could work themselves into this mess. And Lydia honestly didn’t think she’d drown?!

2019: Originally, I came away from reading this feeling like I had very much enjoyed this book. It’s a terrible shame the way it all worked out and a brutal tug at the heartstrings, but it was a well crafted narrative by Sixsmith.

Unfortunately, as these things always seem to go, it doesn’t seem like anyone involved in the story is super pleased with how the book turned out. It includes a huge amount of fabrication (literally every line of dialogue). Susan Kavanaugh has been a vocal critic of many elements of the story that did not happen in real life.

One criticism that I had was the imbalance between Philomena & Michael’s stories. The book is titled Philomena (or the bastardized movie version that I read is); why not tell more of her story then? Yes, Michael was a cool big shot Republican lawyer, but it felt unbalanced and like the main character was being left out of the story. Perhaps I was biased, as I’ve seen the movie trailer, but that’s the story I was expecting, and not the one I got.

2006: GAH AWESOME

2019: Wow there are so many layers to this book. It holds up though. It’s primarily setting the foundation to the best part of the story (Amber Spyglass!). Excited to reread in preparation for both The Book of Dust and the new HBO show. Hopefully it turns out better than the movie with Daniel Craig (although that was a pretty perfectly cast movie).

2019: This book follows an extremely well read and well thought out stream of consciousness, which was actually quite difficult to read because it kept prompting my own brain to go in a million different directions. I’m not sure I had the time to give to this book it deserved (it’s due back to the library today) so perhaps I’ll try again in the future. Overall, it was a lot of rambling that I enjoyed, but did not feel engaged with.

2019: So here’s the deal: this was a better story/mystery than book #4, but I’m still frustrated that Lisbeth & Mikael are not working on solving problems together! I also felt like I spent a lot of this book reading information that I already knew as it was passed between different characters and that is BORING. I was confused as to why I was following two different mysteries that never seemed to overlap, and I was also frustrated that Mikael was finding out all of this info about Lisbeth’s life without her. Like, let the lady learn about her own past and be in charge of her own story. Also it needed 85% more Erika Berger. The end.

2019: So this was a great and engaging story and I loved following the multi-dimensional characters of Beartown around and learning about their lives. The only thing that really annoyed me was the constant “cliff-hanger-inspired” sentences that ended chapters and interspersed changes in POV. It seemed very early-2000’s Jodi Picoult and totally unnecessary in what was otherwise a well crafted, multifaceted story about a very difficult topic. (Actually, it’s not that difficult, #believewomen)