sometimes_samantha_reads's Reviews (283)

The perfect mix of delight, charm, and violence!

I read this book because it is my brother's favorite book. I ended up really liking it too! It's been so cool watching Darrow grow and I feel hisnsame struggle with some of the Golds he's met and knowing what he's ultimately there to do. I'm really interested in how book 2 is going to go. I'm waiting on the audiobook from my library. I was leary of Tim Gerrard at first but he's a great Darrow. I think if I switch to the print book now, it wouldn't be the same.

I recently got a new job and I have an hour commute one way. I'm not usually able to do audiobooks because I get distracted and I was wary of trying to follow a story while also driving, but it turns out listening to an audiobook in the car is great. 

My sister in law recommended this to me. I'm not usually into true crime, but if its paced like this and narrated by Tony Goldwyn, I'm all for it! The parallel stories of Burnahm and Holmes was fascinating and I learned so much. The story was chilling but I kept listening to satisfy the morbid curiosity. I learned that Holmes is supposedly buried less than 30 minutes from where I live, which is wild.

I think I'll try to seek out more audiobooks. I quite liked Tony Goldwyn's narration so I think I'll start there.

I was foolish and thought I could start a new job, start grad school, AND read this book all at the same time 😅🤦🏽‍♀️

I will go back to it when I have the time!

The format of this book was very cool! I loved the setting and the characters were pretty neat - of course character development was not necessarily the forefront of am "academic journal" but I enjoyed seeing the little glimpses into Emily's life. 

I LOVED when Wendell wrote in the journal. I'm looking forward to book 2 whenever it's released.

I've read ACOTAR before but I wanted my fiance to read it with me. He's not a big reader, but he likes podcasts so I thought he may like the graphic audiobook. He enjoyed it and we'll be starting book two soon via Graphic Audio.

Some things that bothered me as a second time reader (he was fine as a first time reader): the cast does not read dialogue tags, rather acts out the actions. So, if something said "Tamlin growled" in the book, in the audio he would just simply do the action. I felt like, especially in the end of the story that the missing dialogue tags left out important small details. 

Similarly, the audiobook reordered some of the paragraphs and very rarely omitted sentences of paragraphs. I think this also removed minute but pertinent details, but it was also hard to follow along with the physical books sometimes because of the movement or ommitions. 

I think the voice actors for Rhys and Amarantha were fantastic. Everyone else was good too, but could have probably communicated the desired tone better. At some points some of the actors read lines playfully when it should have been serious and vice versa, for example. This lines up with the missing dialogue tags which help indicate tone. 

That's just me being nit-picky. I overall enjoyed my second listen. I didn't realize how much foreshadowing there was!

Another Emily Henry book, another tearjerker in the best way. I felt a strong connection to this book out of all of her books. I can see myself reading this again and again.

What a cute story! I enjoyed the world building and the characters were charming. I'm a big fan of fantasy and the low stakes were a nice change. I think I'm a bit too used to the raised stakes though and I felt the plot was a little bit slow at times.

I also would've loved to know more about the Madrigal and why they operated like that.

Overall cute book. I just think I wasn't in the right mood to appreciate it this time around.