This nonsensical, impossibly long, idiotic, and unrealistic tale is about a fascist Japan where a junior high school class of students is dumped on an island each year and forced to kill each other. The characters are insipid and behave differently from moment to moment. The violence is extreme and still somehow boring, because when a fifteen year old kid can get shot two dozen times and still run, there is no sense of urgency or threat. The writing is atrocious overall, but the most irksome was how many scenes were compared to other scenes where POV characters were not present. I am legitimately offended that someone recommended this book to me and thought I would enjoy it.

A cute but ultimately forgettable tale of two girls who become Hades' sirens. Their mishaps are mildly amusing as they slowly turn into birdlike sirens, and I enjoyed the characterization of the Greek gods, especially kick-ass Persephone.

Bryson's timeless wit shines through in this impossibly nineties book that somehow still managed to make laugh out loud. It's a collection of essays sent back to England to explain American peculiarities to the English, and his dry wit and innate American friendliness shine through in spades.

Lucie is a protagonist with no agency; every event of the story just happens to her and she never expresses any strong feelings one way or the other. The story itself is too disjointed to be interesting ; it takes way too long to reconcile the present to two years prior with the annoying alternating chapters. The basic idea of an isolated community/cult trying to rebuild is unique, but overall this story is so bland as to be entirely forgettable.

Reading this book felt like reading "Wither," which is an experience I had not hoped to repeat. It's a dystopia set in a future where the world has been destroyed because humans can't take care of the earth, so a group insisting they could take care of everyone stepped in and promised a better future but -- SURPRISE, SURPRISE -- did no such thing.

Enter Juliette, a captive because of an ability she was born with that scares people. It was so far into the story before I actually found out what her ability was that I had actually stopped caring why she was captive. That's the big problem with this book. I could overlook Mafi's obnoxiously stylistic prose style if the story itself wasn't so boring and slow-moving. She also completely lacks the ability to show instead of tell; Juliette's only redeeming qualities become apparent when someone who met her as a child reminds her of nice things she did back in the day that seem completely out of character for the way she acts in the present. Would recommend to someone who is in a mood to roll their eyes a lot while scoffing occasionally.

Max likes to think of himself as a good kid, but when he steals a cat figurine and finds a devil in his basement, his goodness comes into question as he realizes he will do anything he can to save his mother. This book is hilarious and thought-provoking in its exploration of human nature and right versus wrong. I would recommend to people who like pithy one-liners and human psychology.

I don't know if it was the narrator for the audiobook or the book itself, but I found this to be the most dreadfully dull story I've encountered in a long time. I love Yovanoff and really wanted to like this, but everything was so bland, so strangely metered, so dry and emotionless.

This book is both heartbreaking and heartwarming, and you may find yourself with tears in your eyes unable to identify if they are happy tears or sad tears. Caroline finds out her husband cheated on her with a man, and has to come to terms with the loss of her faith in him and decide whether or not she can forgive him. With a richly varied cast of characters, Chase manages to make what could easily be a trite story into an honest tale with lots of emotional depth and humor. Would highly recommend.

This is a sweet but forgettable tale of finding yourself and doing what is right. Maude runs away from her provincial father when he tries to marry her off to the aged butcher and hightails it to Paris, where she learns she has no skills and ends up working as a repoussoir (she is paid to be ugly and hang out with pretty people so they look even prettier). I really like the parts where Maude has to learn to be a friend and I love the history, and the message that beauty isn't everything is handled well. However, it felt so over the top the way that Maude was always characterizing the other repoussoirs as dejected, sad, miserable, when these girls were making tons of money to stand there and not look pretty. The romance was also super disappointing.

Exactly as the title describes, gimmick-hunter A. J. Jacobs chronicles this biblical attempt as he travels across the world and torments his family with his religious enthusiasm. This book alternates passages both humorous and cloying at breakneck speed. Some moments were charming, some felt forced, but overall it was an entertaining look at what place religion has in the modern world.