shane_the_reading_rat's Reviews (1.21k)

this was super fun <3 very escapist, ngl i’ve been having a rough time lately and this is what i needed

frankly one of the most atmospheric books i’ve ever read, one of my favorite historical fictions ever, and one of my favorite fictional pairings ever (god i love Ursa and Maren. i love them so much i want them to be happy)
this started off very slowly, but once Ursa and Absolom are introduced it picks up.
i know ive already said this but THIS BOOK IS SO ATMOSPHERIC it feels like i was there in norway by the ocean with these characters

i wanna address the elephant in the room first: no, this is not a sapphic romance. yes, that is despite how the cover looks. yes, i completely believed it was sapphic when taking it home from the library. now, to be fair, it’s not just a queerbait cover with a straight romance!! Perley never quite read as cis to me, and in one of the final panels (it’s extremely easy to miss, honestly) he’s wearing a he/they pronoun pin :) i was pretty weirded out for a while by this being a straight romance with a very queer-looking cover (like come on, look at the colors, it’s literally the bisexual flag), but i feel a little better now after finishing.
anyways, other things i want to yap about: the art style felt stiff in places, and sometimes honestly looked like wikihow art, but it worked when looking a little more sketchy or in close ups. also Grumble is the best man ever, i love him dearly
still 2.5 stars cause i honestly just didn’t enjoy this much (except for Grumble my darling)

i think When My Ghost Sings could work, but i’m just really not the right person for it. felt very disjointed and out-of-order (which, given that this book is about recovery from a stroke, could absolutely work! but here it was not in a way that benefited the style. it just became confusing).

MAN it feels good to have finished a book that is definitely longer than what i usually read!!!
the book itself i felt a bit meh on, but it was interesting!! gonna be honest it felt like a total fever dream but i enjoyed it anyways

read this for the disability readathon! as someone who doesn’t read much poetry, i thought this was interesting, but the poems felt very disconnected/disjointed from each other. as far as i can tell, the theme is fairy tales and girlhood, but that was difficult to understand. favorite poem was ‘The Woman’s Private Looking-glass’.

i really like this!! many of the stories leaned more into literary sci-fi than i had expected, but overall this was a great collection. Darcie Little Badger’s story was my personal favorite

sorry to say this, but i feel like im not smart enough to fully understand what Katie Mack is discussing. so many paragraphs have completely flown over my head, and i’m just not enjoying this book.

im a little biased towards this book, because 1: i hardcore relate to being queer and growing up religious, and 2: Cassie is incredibly relatable to me (i am also a perfectionist who has major self esteem issues lmao). i loved the conclusion/ending

,the fact that Ben isn’t queer honestly adds so much

. my only issues are that i didn’t like Halle much (though she improves) and i dont like how some of the lets-gay-up-st-lukes missions affected innocent, uninvolved people (

examples, kids being made to clean up the mary statue and mr reyes getting in trouble for rainbow stickers on books

). i’d consider those fairly minor issues though, overall adored it :)