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shane_the_reading_rat's Reviews (1.21k)
this may totally work for someone else, and i really hope it does !!! the premise is super cool, but as im a massive moodreader it’s just too hard of scifi for me at the moment. almost halfway through this teeny novella and im still so bored
in the most polite way possible, this book is probably fine, but the fact that a school shooter gets a pov is giving me very bad vibes and i just really dont want to read that.
i guess a horror story with a school shooter in it could work if given a lot of careful work and consideration, but i feel about this the same way i feel about horror stories set at conversion therapy camps: that its a little too modern of a topic to be easily handled as horror, and that it could go so insanely wrong if not given the utmost thought and work.
i guess a horror story with a school shooter in it could work if given a lot of careful work and consideration, but i feel about this the same way i feel about horror stories set at conversion therapy camps: that its a little too modern of a topic to be easily handled as horror, and that it could go so insanely wrong if not given the utmost thought and work.
when i borrowed this on a whim from libby i hardcore did not expect that it’d end up being one of my favorite fantasies of the year????
my favorite part was, shockingly, the romance!! as someone who is both ace and very much on the aro spectrum i am usually so nitpicky about romances but honestly i wholeheartedly loved this one: the slowburn was perfect (others say “slowburn”, i say “well-paced”), Zuri wasn’t a jerk (and he learned from his mistakes and learned to be better!! @ romance authors the bar for your male protagonists is so low you just have to make them not awful), and Sade was one of my favorite fantasy protags just ever. i loved her practicality compared to Zuri’s whimsy, they reminded me so much of Sophie and Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle (also just the general vibes remind me so much of that movie).
also this approaches real-world issues like class inequality and child labor with a practicality thats honestly extremely refreshing to see
loved this SO MUCH
my favorite part was, shockingly, the romance!! as someone who is both ace and very much on the aro spectrum i am usually so nitpicky about romances but honestly i wholeheartedly loved this one: the slowburn was perfect (others say “slowburn”, i say “well-paced”), Zuri wasn’t a jerk (and he learned from his mistakes and learned to be better!! @ romance authors the bar for your male protagonists is so low you just have to make them not awful), and Sade was one of my favorite fantasy protags just ever. i loved her practicality compared to Zuri’s whimsy, they reminded me so much of Sophie and Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle (also just the general vibes remind me so much of that movie).
also this approaches real-world issues like class inequality and child labor with a practicality thats honestly extremely refreshing to see
loved this SO MUCH
most confusing book i have ever read
objectively, i love the concept. KNIGHTS WHO HAVE TO RIP THEIR SWORD OUT OF THEIR SPINE??? that rocks. + i love stories based on folklore. but this felt like it needed a lot more time to establish its plot, at LEAST a page count in the high 200s. with this being just a novella, it simply has too much crammed in. i saw one review compare reading this to walking into a theater halfway through a movie, and honestly that is exactly the feeling
objectively, i love the concept. KNIGHTS WHO HAVE TO RIP THEIR SWORD OUT OF THEIR SPINE??? that rocks. + i love stories based on folklore. but this felt like it needed a lot more time to establish its plot, at LEAST a page count in the high 200s. with this being just a novella, it simply has too much crammed in. i saw one review compare reading this to walking into a theater halfway through a movie, and honestly that is exactly the feeling
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firstly i love the art style and color palette, pink and teal go together so well
i dont like though how ambiguous Boo’s imagination is, like… are these real? are these daydreams? is she hallucinating? is this magical realism? it was extremely unclear and i genuinely just wanted a solid answer
definitely a cute book but i’ll prob just finish the series (if i even do that much) on tapas rather than borrowing the next volume from the library
i dont like though how ambiguous Boo’s imagination is, like… are these real? are these daydreams? is she hallucinating? is this magical realism? it was extremely unclear and i genuinely just wanted a solid answer
definitely a cute book but i’ll prob just finish the series (if i even do that much) on tapas rather than borrowing the next volume from the library
the stars
rest
at ease
safe away from
genocide and pain
i wonder if they
also look at us
and wonder
why we are
the way we are
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
one of the comp titles (not a book but i dont care) for this is Heathers, which i love dearly, but seemingly the only thing in common is “theres a clique of girls”. admittedly i haven’t watched mean girls myself but i kinda think that that movie would be a better comparison to Bunny.
when looking at this from the lens of “it was compared to Heathers”, there’s really no JD equivalent, and therein lies the problem: theres nothing driving forward the plot. this is basically just “samantha has weird experiences with a group of girls, end story”. in Heathers, JD’s existence drives the story forward. (just pulling from Heathers: The Musical, as thats the version i prefer: he is why Heather Chandler dies, he is why Kurt and Ram die, etc while veronica is an awesome character, JD is the catalyst for almost every major plot point and he is why the storyline doesn’t drag.) and whatever is driving the plot doesn’t have to be a person!!! just thinkingof JD as an example, since this was compared to Heathers
also while the Heathers are a fascinating sort of awful, the Bunnies are just,,, meh. they’re weirdos who turn bunnies into men.
also im sorry but samantha was very boring and this book trying to be self aware about that doesn’t make it better
ive tried so hard to like “””weird””” books but i think it’s just not gonna happen. sorry guys
A THIRD EDIT NOW CAUSE APPARENTLY I CANNOT SHUT UP ABOUT THIS BOOK: part of what makes Heathers so awesome is that its this absurd comedy that somehow also takes itself seriously. it will say something ridiculous and all the characters will be so earnest over it. this felt like an extremely hollow version of that.
when looking at this from the lens of “it was compared to Heathers”, there’s really no JD equivalent, and therein lies the problem: theres nothing driving forward the plot. this is basically just “samantha has weird experiences with a group of girls, end story”. in Heathers, JD’s existence drives the story forward. (just pulling from Heathers: The Musical, as thats the version i prefer: he is why Heather Chandler dies, he is why Kurt and Ram die, etc while veronica is an awesome character, JD is the catalyst for almost every major plot point and he is why the storyline doesn’t drag.) and whatever is driving the plot doesn’t have to be a person!!! just thinkingof JD as an example, since this was compared to Heathers
also while the Heathers are a fascinating sort of awful, the Bunnies are just,,, meh. they’re weirdos who turn bunnies into men.
also im sorry but samantha was very boring and this book trying to be self aware about that doesn’t make it better
ive tried so hard to like “””weird””” books but i think it’s just not gonna happen. sorry guys
A THIRD EDIT NOW CAUSE APPARENTLY I CANNOT SHUT UP ABOUT THIS BOOK: part of what makes Heathers so awesome is that its this absurd comedy that somehow also takes itself seriously. it will say something ridiculous and all the characters will be so earnest over it. this felt like an extremely hollow version of that.
loved one of tori bovalino’s books before but i kinda cant stand the romance in this, tristan being the lord of the wood and leah falling in love with him is so weird but to be fair i just generally hate the “teen/young adult girl falls in love with magical boy/man of indeterminate age” trope with a PASSION
rip me, went like a week without listening to this and i remember almost none of the plot
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
this definitely did some interesting things with its format (some of them i liked, some i really didn't). it doesn't help that i am, chronically, a bit of a mystery hater. they tend to annoy me.
absolute highlight of this book for me was Karen's relationship with her family (my favorite character overall being Deeze, he fascinates me). it's why i liked the final 15% of this book so much, it delves much more into the emotional core of the book whereas all the mystery bits previously i was mostly just tolerating to be able to get to Karen's family interactions.
this book honestly tried to tackle too many topics at once, and was also just quite the downer without any breaks from the sadness. i know it's the sixties, a lot happened in America in the sixties, but that doesn't mean everything from the sixties needs to be jammed into one book
i'll probably read the sequel seeing as it looks like it'll lean moreso into Karen and Deeze's relationship which is what i'm really interested in, but overall i wouldn't really say i enjoyed this read or got much out of it (also, unrelated but the way the panels were formatted/arranged made the progression on each page incredibly hard to understand and kept pulling me out of the story).
damn this is my first review i'm writing on my computer instead of my phone and i think this is what i'll switch to regularly doing reviews on, i'm finding it much easier to format my thoughts this way. + keyboard go tappity tappity tap
absolute highlight of this book for me was Karen's relationship with her family (my favorite character overall being Deeze, he fascinates me). it's why i liked the final 15% of this book so much, it delves much more into the emotional core of the book whereas all the mystery bits previously i was mostly just tolerating to be able to get to Karen's family interactions.
this book honestly tried to tackle too many topics at once, and was also just quite the downer without any breaks from the sadness. i know it's the sixties, a lot happened in America in the sixties, but that doesn't mean everything from the sixties needs to be jammed into one book
i'll probably read the sequel seeing as it looks like it'll lean moreso into Karen and Deeze's relationship which is what i'm really interested in, but overall i wouldn't really say i enjoyed this read or got much out of it (also, unrelated but the way the panels were formatted/arranged made the progression on each page incredibly hard to understand and kept pulling me out of the story).
damn this is my first review i'm writing on my computer instead of my phone and i think this is what i'll switch to regularly doing reviews on, i'm finding it much easier to format my thoughts this way. + keyboard go tappity tappity tap