shane_the_reading_rat's Reviews (1.21k)

i was once again an idiot and got too many books at once on libby. will finish this another time.

i was once again an idiot and got too many books at once on libby. will finish this another time.

i was once again an idiot and got too many books at once on libby. will finish this another time.

i was once again an idiot and got too many books at once on libby. will finish this another time.

this gets so much more intense than the cover makes it seem lmao

i think paul tremblay just is not for me.
it’s a bad sign when after reading a page of a book on libby i get bored and go start playing FreeRiderHD
i felt bad about dnf’ing this but yknow what. i read for me. and this book is horrifically boring.

•im such a sucker for a good orange and pink book cover, its one of my favorite color combos
•also this book feels like cotton candy in the best way possible, like when i want to read a romance this is the kind of romance im thinking of
•Jenny and Jaewoo had incredible chemistry!! love them both so much
•honestly loved every character, and

the scene at the end where all the boys in XOXO help Jenny get to Jaewoo

?? incredible i loved that
•also really love that Jenny and Sori weren’t pitted against each other!!! this book did not try and do a love triangle and that makes me so happy
i do wish that the ending had tied up a few more loose ends, cause this is nitpicky but i so so so feel like Ian would’ve been the one to release photos of Jaewoo and Jenny to the tabloids instead of some random girl on the school trip.
•already put the sequel on hold from the library im so hyped to read about Sori and Nathaniel <3333

•honestly if i’d realized this book was about Dami from The Wicked Bargain, i likely would not have picked this up. but it’s been a year and a half since reading TWB and i forgor and thought this was different until reading a review
•nothing against Dami or the people who love them, it’s just that constantly sassy/quippy characters annoy me immensely 
•i did like the magic system or Diablos, Demonios, etc. that was interesting enough
•this is definitely historical fantasy (i’d guess 1820s at the latest, but being a random 18 year old and not someone who studies history i could be so wrong on that), but it felt like that and the setting just wasn’t used right. ive read gabe cole novoa before, ik they can write great historical settings
•but so often it felt like things were incongruent with the time period and setting, especially with Dami (obviously im not saying “nb people didn’t exist in the past”, it’s just that Dami felt like a very modern character popped into the 1820s or whenever this is set).
•Marisol (my beloved), had a moment of this too when she mentions gender and i was just thinking “this reads as such a modern interpretation of transness”. which is not bad in itself!!! but if this book was going to lean into the modern contexts of being trans i think it should probably not have tried to do a historical setting
•speaking of marisol, i also feel she could have been used better. as much as i love her she did just get randomly tacked on in the middle of the book as another pov character and kinda just exists to solve Silas and Dami’s problems :/
•

also im sorry but the main characters were way too clueless about eve for so long

the vibes are  off with this one. i’ve loved akwaeke emezi’s books, but this one is just :/. idk if it’s a consequence of them releasing so many books within a few years but to me it just doesn’t feel right. eh no one can release a banger every time