A decently creepy but largely dull book that tends to ruin the scary parts with flowery, yawn-inducing language.

Me: God this is so boring all these stupid politics why do I even read this series

JR Ward: *sex scene*

Me: Oh, yeah, that's why I read this series

Unfortunately this book was too heavy on politicking, and between that and Phury's inability to lose his virginity, I spent this novel feeling more annoyed than aroused.

A remarkable, fascinating, informative book. Aslan places the narrative of biblical Jesus into a factual historical context, showing the reader what the world was like at the time of Jesus’ preaching. This book can be enjoyed by religious and irreligious alike, in my opinion. It’s a very eye-opening (and, especially the bits about Paul, a particularly depressing and horrifying) look at the origins of the myths that many of us take for granted nowadays.

The writing is lyrical, and despite being critically dull, there was just enough mystery to keep me reading until the end, so I’ll give it two stars. This book was strange, because it was not very deep (there was only one plot, and the ending was garbage) and it felt like it should have been a young adult novel, but the nonstop sexual creepiness of the father and brother as well as the author’s inability to know basic things about teenagers (no phone has ever made you hit “refresh” to get new text messages, for starters) forced me to put it in my adult shelf.

My biggest problem with this book is I didn’t feel much about anything. The father and brother were creepy, and Deenie was slow-witted and had bad taste in friends, and I couldn’t find myself caring about any of them. There were tons of monologues about life being hard and growing up being hard that it got to the point where I wanted to shake all these characters and tell them to get over themselves.

If you want to know what happened, I’ll save you the trouble of reading it:

Spoiler

Lise was poisoned by Gabby because Gabby thought Lise hooked up with the boy she liked (Lise did not). The other sick girls got sick because, a la The Crucible, which is not so subtly referenced in the book, they were all so obsessed with Gabby that they experienced psychological episodes that made them sick. Yeah, I’m rolling my eyes too.

This strange and mythical-feeling book is more than a little frustrating at the outset, but settles into a rhythm of sweeping generalizations, specific happenings, thoughts on love, and moments in a person's life where everything changes, or maybe nothing does. I liked the way the characters with the repeating names might be the same people, or might be completely different from story to story. I'm frustrated that I never found out what happened to the girl in the woods with the boy who may or may not have hurt his leg. I liked that Handler made himself part of the story, which he is always so very good at.

I read A LOT of YA fantasy, so I'm pretty familiar with all the tropes. So when I saw that this was about a badass lady assassin and there were two men in love with her, I was still interested but I wasn't expecting much.

Maas, however, manages to cram so much depth and dimension into this story that I was truly impressed. Celaena actually has a female best friend who is AWESOME, and while there are two men who love her, you totally get why because Celaena is ALSO AWESOME, and she spends zero time dithering over which man she loves more because SHE HAS TO GO BE AWESOME AND ALSO KILL THINGS. Also, Celaena has a dog.

Highly recommend.

A cute picture book about facing your fears.

It should never take a book 81% of the way through the story for the main character to realize the main plot point, especially when the reader figures it out almost immediately.

Spoiler

The whole "I'm Persephone reincarnated" thing, which was poorly executed in every way possible, to add insult to injury.

Piper spends this entire book crying, whining, or both, and fails utterly to have an ounce of agency for a single sentence. Her mother controls her, her best friend talks her into getting a tattoo, Hades and Ares throw themselves at her like neither of them has gotten laid in centuries, and the whole plot centers around Piper figuring out who she is, which she doesn't because she's an idiot.

One of the worst Greek myth retellings I've ever encountered.

A surprisingly good interlude in the BDB series. I loved watching Z overcome his past to work on a good relationship with his daughter.

God, this was so boring. It felt like reading the diary of the Most Boring Man Alive.