3.5
I’m biased and partial to trees and eccentric plants, so enjoyment wise this was a 4 star+ for me but the last few plants like the Cretan Palm, Olive and Wild Olive tree didn’t have images provided which was a shame. Other than that I loved the description of the plants, their uses and their significance in mythology and present day culture.

My favorite plants in no particular order than that of which I read them in:

Cupressus Sempervirens (Cypress tree)
Cercis Silquastrum (Judas Tree)
Ebenus Cretica (Cretan Ebony)
Kritiko Kyklàmino
Petromarula Pinnata (Rock lettuce)
Dracunculus Vulgaris (Dragon Arum)

3.25
This was so fun, I loved that the focus is on a family trying to survive as they are chased across the universe by bounty hunters and royalty, who all want them dead. Who all want to break up that family unit because it represents peace, not just because Hazel’s mixed heritage signifies the unification of the horns and wings, but because families absorb all your energy and focus on chanelling love. And you tune out goals and aims other people, usually the elites wants you listen to, want you to go to war for.
I loved seeing all the different povs and I’m interested to see how things go from here now that the grandparents are in board and the Prince Robot has figured out they are traveling to Quietus.
I’m keeping this at a 3.25 until I read the rest of the series and can figure out the overall rating.

2.5
Whilst this was action packed and easy to read because of the many povs, cliffhangers at the end of each chapter and fast pace in the second half of the book, this book felt unnecessary. Too many plot lines were introduced to make rising EO rivals that were defeated in the same book. It would have been better to introduce Marcella in book 1 or at least June. Or at least extend one plot line from book 2 into 3, like the doctor kidnapping both Eli and Victor at the end of this book would have been fun. Even the characterization of characters like June were not explored, why was she so attached to Sidney, why did Jonathon decide to stay on with Marcella after getting his revenge? It was just very all over the place because new things were being introduced and concluded so important elements like characterization were left to the side. Instead nearly everything bar Victor’s episodes of death have been wrapped up, so it feels like this book was written after book 1 had been thought out and written instead of it being evident from the beginning that there was more to the story. As others have said this would have been better as a spin off. I still enjoyed this though, and whilst I don’t have an intense amount of attachment to the characters I do love the found family of Victor, Sidney and Mitch.

3.3
A warm lovely book, as one reviewer said it’s like the book version of UP the movie.
I wish we got to see more of Ove spending time with the found family as a whole towards the end. Instead it felt like the middle dragged a bit. I also think the skip to his death at the end felt unnecessary and so didn’t feel as impactful.
Tbh the teaching Parvaneh how to drive scene got me emotional during the confrontation with the drivers in the city Jeep.

3 stars
I feel like at the beginning of the book I was wondering ‘is this the book of that one episode where it actually does end up being the doctor?’ And so my two suspects ended up being the doctor and Luther (because he hadn’t died yet). I did end up thinking it must be the latter because although not so inconceivable it would make for a good shock, a story where the parent wants to kill the children. And throw in some ‘someone isn’t who they say they are’ and I thought that sort of ending would match up with the high rating of the story here.
This however was lackluster, there was only one murderer, no other side plot of some character pretending to be someone else or doing some other criminal enterprise.
This book itself also didn’t have enough Miss Marple and I didn’t really care for the ‘who will Lucy choose plot line when she needed to be free of them both. It was either she was going to have to be a maid or mother and I wanted better for her.
There was some light commentary on industrialization and the welfare system and its taxes.

Finally getting into the manga because I’ve heard the anime deviates from it and the manga is better

2.5

I don’t know how to feel about this,
I loved Rose of course, she’s literally why I even read the series along with her bond with Lissa. I did feel like Rose matured a lot compared to book 1, which I love because there was less age shaming of older women in this book.
The first half of the book with the banter between the friend group, Christian being dramatic and Adrian being the alcoholic archetype I always have a soft spot for, the reading experience was fun. Even though nothing happened apart from Rose arguing with everyone I didn’t mind that much, I actually enjoyed it. It was sooo easy and quick to read, I haven’t zoomed through a book like this since I first got into the Shadowhunters series.

And then the second half was a let down, it dragged, too much Dimitri who contrary to the popular opinion, I do not like at all, partly owing to the weird age gao I’m sorry but especially in book 1 Rose was so obviously a slightly selfish ignorant child who liked to argue, so I never understood why he liked her beyond the fact that she was bound by rules she had to follow and he had to guide her and she was a kid.
And then the whole Mana club thing was obvious along with the fact that they were the ones who broke the wars like the second Alice the feeder talked about the wards. So the plot was predictable.
And then nothing happened until the last 15%, when the Strigoi attacked the school and it seemed like the author was trying to rush through it. The action scenes were so poorly written. Like ‘here is this old and strong formidable Strigoi, it took two of us to tackle him. But then we did kill him.’ And then it moves on, it was so bad I felt literally no interest in the story, even when Dimitri got turned into Strigoi, which I’m happy happens but was also obvious since they were basically about to have their happy ending when they walked out of the forest hand in hand and it was obvious they’d have to be separated. I only like where the series is heading because Rose entering her Strigoi Hunter era as an adult sounds so iconic and her hunting down Dimitri is just fun. I also liked and felt interest in the argument between Rose and Lissa, it felt like they didn’t have enough scenes together in this book so finally seeing them actually be honest with each other was refreshing. In book 1 I honestly didn’t see Lissa as selfish, just needy but after the amount of growing Rose has done, and finally realizing she wants to put herself first and live for herself was refreshing and it made Lissa come across as slightly selfish to me for the first time which I love.

I know he won’t actually be killed and will probably be healed into becoming a human again once Lissa discovers spirit users can heal Strigoi or something but I kind of wish he was. I also want Lissa to descend into more of an antagonist role throughout the series but idk if that’ll happen.

All in all the first half was the best probably because of Adrian being part of the crew, Rose is my fave, the second half was so lackluster and they really should have handled the Mason ghost plot line thing better because him just disappearing after doing one thing to help them felt like a waste.

1.5

I think it's ironic that if felt like it took me 323 years to finish this book.
I understand repetition to make us feel the ennui of Addie's life, but the readers didn't make a deal with the devil so idk why we had to suffer with her too.
I also think that the repetition should have been tastefully done, once here, twice there and not every flashback being some other person she spent the night with who forgets her because it served no purpose to her arc. The only characters she meets in the flashback that was noteworthy was Remy; after him she began to learn languages and read.

I enjoyed Addie's character and her motives the most at the start of the story when she was most 'alive', as the years and chapters went on, that feeling withered away.
I do appreciate the story of her meeting Henry and how she makes a new deal to free him of his own curse, but instead of that being the climax of the story, I would have much preferred if that was at the 25% or 50% mark and we followed Addie trying to exploit that semantic in the new deal she made with Luc and gaining her freedom.
And in doing so maybe she could actually do the exploring she so desperately wanted to do at the time she made the deal, instead of the revisiting of her own misery and woes. And maybe in that time she could learn to care about others and the world more, could actually visit more than 4 countries, travel out of Europe without having to fear being thrown in prison so long as she exploits Luc. Actually learn that much like her life, the human race repeats its mistakes, cruelty and experiences. Could idk have something to say about the happenings of history like the slave trade, or idk the colonisation France was doing at the time she was admiring the new Eiffel Tower made with the steel of France's colonized countries.

Her obsession and love of art felt vapid, only because it could reflect her, and not because it can translate and express all the different experiences and happening of the world that didn't have to do with her.

I felt like there was something missing from both romances or affairs with Henry and Luc, one because it calls into question whether it wasn't just a romance out of convenience in both situations; only she and Henry were not affected by each others curses, and only she and Luc kept living whilst the rest of the world died. The second reason being that I felt like there was no one Addie loved more than herself and that's good for her, but it just felt like if Luc/Henry didn't bring her to dine or to meet Bea and Robbie, she didn't really ask or wasn't really curious about the other person if it didn't tie back to herself. She didn't ask about Henry's upbringing, his parents, his dreams, his goals. She didn't ask Luc where he came from, his past, why he did what he did, if it was a job etc. I think because there was no one the author loved more than Addie in this story and it showed.

Despite all this, the most fun parts of the book where the Addie and Luc interactions, they had the most chemistry, and whilst I don't think they could ever love the other until they were on equal footing, a toxic war of him trying to get her soul vs her trying to get her freedom and Luc's soul too, with a little interlude of the Henry arc, would have been much more fun and quick to read than what the story ended up being.

The writing was beautiful and sort of gave of the nostalgic lyrical writing you read in really good fanfics, but alas the story was not entirely my taste.

3 stars
A cute retelling of Cinderella, I grew up watching the movie a lot so it was nice to get to read this.
I do think that the whole letter writing and making Char hate her was silly when she could have gotten Mandy to explain the curse to him and then they could have worked together, backed with royal resources to break it. Also if the fairies weren’t so stubborn the happy ending would have arrived a heck of a lot earlier.
But they were cute even if they seemed younger than 12 at times (I think that was mainly because of the narrator). And I loved knowing in the epilogue that Olive seems to have truly won, getting paid every day and getting given cake too, I love women in business.

3.25 stars

Beautiful beautiful writing, reading this felt like running across a river, once I started I couldn’t stop. Compared to Beloved which took me ages to get into, this was so easy to get into.

Gorgeous writing aside, I feel like I liked the concept of the book better than the execution. I wish we had more Pecola povs and that we followed her into adulthood instead of just learning she went crazy. I understand from the afterward that because Pecola wouldn’t have the vocabulary to understand the violence done to her or its context we get the pov of Claudia and how she and her sister Freida observed what happened to Pecola. And whilst I did love Claudia’s pov and it was my favorite to read I really wish we got more Pecola povs precisely because I wanted to see how she wouldn’t understand what had happened to her and how she’d process it in other ways, beyond childhood.

Also all the men in this book were bottom of the barrel trash and I understand in the afterward that the author didn’t want to dehumanize the characters that contributed to Pecola’s suffering and demise, and I think especially for the time it was written and published that was important to do. But reading this now as someone who grew up learning that such violent cruel acts are in fact very human and more human than monster, the Cholly povs, the Soaphead Church povs, they were all excruciating to read. Precisely because I was thinking this is so typical of human beings, especially men, to react in that way, to deal with being oppressed by racism out on women and girls of that same race.

And I probably should have looked up trigger warnings because the amount of pedophilia from the men in this book didn’t work for me, especially since I was hoping to see a time where Pecola grows up and I had to read about some pseudo psychic who makes her kill a dog and writes a letter to God about his pedophilia.

The structure and arrangement of the POVs I enjoyed and liked, but again I wish we had a look into her adulthood maybe where she’d go to work or live a life telling others she had blue eyes etc. But I guess from the beginning it was clear that the story would start and end with the awful SA her dad did to her.

Overall the writing was gorgeous, but the particulars of how the story went didn’t work for me but I’ll definitely be reading more from the author.