sspaghettiboness's Reviews (138)

Absolutely engrossing and enthralling. I connected so deeply with this because I was born super close to the same years as the girls, the references to fandoms and internet culture hit close to home. I was a total Violet (but my fascinations were in other areas) - but it felt like I knew every character. They were so well crafted and real.

The plot, structure, and syntax exceeds five stars. It’s perfect. I never felt bored or unengaged - the book took me so long to read because I had to find special pockets of time where I could just read, otherwise I’d abandon responsibilities.

I love how different this is from Boy Parts - and calling myself a super fan of that novel is an understatement. It’s just so fresh and… Eliza just. Gets dark feminism, to me. She gets women supporting other women, but she also gets feminine rage directed at other women. It’s not for everyone, I don’t think she’s trying to write for everyone, and I think that’s the best kind of writing. 

I love, love, love an unpredictably unreliable narrator. I love how she held on to that reveal. Completely changing absolutely everything at the end and letting the reader just sit with that as they close the book. Is. Madness and genius.

I’m frothing, fully rabid to see what Clark writes next. What I wouldn’t give to get a coffee with her and just talk about life and people experiences. 

It’s an amazing book, I’ve just been really having a struggle mentally and put it down for too long to remember anything. I’m definitely going to come back to it, but need to read some novellas and shorter pieces to get back into the habit before I go for longer books. 

Stranger Things fans, consider reading the spoiler.

This book is undeniable pure poetry. The word choice and sentence structure gave me flashbacks to reading Fight Club for the first time, in awe of his sentence structure. The hard stops, the drop dead gorgeous sentences that come out of nowhere. You could flip this book open to any page and find a sentence to highlight. Not to come across as arrogant, but this writing style overall reminded me a lot of what I do in my own work, so it deeply resonated with me. The shifts in viewpoints was very dark and satisfying, I liked those chapters the most.

The gore and horror was well executed (this from an avid extreme horror reader). Sometimes “creature feature” authors spend too much time trying to convey how the being looks that it’s appearance becomes confusing and loses its impact. Sort of like when an author over describes the clothing their MC is wearing.

Mid-tier - some people are going to love the coming of age, figuring out your sexuality, and internalised homophobia of it all. Some people aren’t. I was indifferent to it, even though it really is the defining plot. I am the kind of person who reads for the style, structure, word choice, devices, and dialogue. Obviously, a weak plot or one riddled with holes is something I’ll pick up on; the same can be said about a very strong and unique plot presenting a story or viewpoint I’ve never experienced before. So he gets all the points for style, but not many for substance. 

But I have to give this book 3.5 stars because the opening narrative was not strong. Dries comes out hot with that first chapter, but what follows is incredibly dull. Maybe he was trying to pull the rug out from under the reader? But the pacing and build wouldn’t be indicative of that. Some of the character building made sense, some of it was just filler and did not reflect or connect to who each character is revealed to be. There’s a specific scene in the beginning with the protagonist, his sister, and his best friend that could’ve had so much more to offer the novella if he just changed one thing. 

Slight issue - I caught 3 grammatical errors in the book that shouldn’t have slipped anyone by. 

I don’t know if this was intentional, because I do not know when this book was written, only when it was published. There was a lot of Stranger Things happening, and I’ve never ever seen beyond the first two seasons. Yes, this felt like an elevated and intelligent version. But so many comparable things. By the end, it was impossible to deny, just way too many similarities. Dad in the basement like Barb in the pool. The creature being tied to the protagonist. The homosexuality reveal. The tunnelling and overall appearance of the neighbours house. The way the creature looked. The aunt like Hopper. 

I don’t mind reimaginings, but I’m actually shocked they didn’t mention it on the back cover. I wish I’d known before going into reading, it would not have stopped me, but it annoyed me to discover on my own.

Overall, the prose is the strongest feature of this book. The narrative itself left more to be desired and would’ve been more interest with some reworking or speeding it up. I will certainly be reading more of his work. 

I’m going to do my best to begin with some compliments, mostly because I think my complaints will err on the side of spoilers. 

This book was much, much stronger than the first in the series. The character growth and development showed great improvement. One of my big complaints regarding the first book was the utter lack of world building (fascinating choice for a fantasy romance series), and this book dealt with a lot of that. Which is great, because the world and power dynamics are the most interesting part. I am still confused about some pieces, but based on how my past issues were addressed here, I am optimistic that the next book will give more explanation. 

The writing was objectively better but I still have the same complaint about overuse of words (apex, vanish, hurtled… I have more but. I digress), way way too much with the ‘…’ and ‘-‘. Also, as a reader, I genuinely have never cared to know the way certain fabrics of certain dresses behave when worn every single time. It felt like filler. To an extent, I appreciate an author describing the clothing a character is wearing, but at the same time it’s important to know when you’ve over explained something. 

My spoilers are not wrapping correctly and I don’t want to ruin this for anyone because I know this series is popular. So I’m going to sum them all up by saying that Feyre gives massive Mary Sue energy and I find her overall unbearably unlikeable and the victimisation of herself super annoying. 

Overall: I’m ready to start the third book and put together more pieces. I very much look forward to whatever comes next, and I am rooting for one of these to change my opinions.  I’m also excited to be done with the series and shed my guilt at mocking them without fully understanding them. 

I know that if you don’t have anything nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything. But. Wow. 

This was the most predictable mess of a knock off fairytale I’ve ever read. This was “Why buy Beauty and the Beast at the store? We have it at home”. All of the interesting characters were ancillary and painted as villains. The main character never takes any shred of responsibility for her actions, nor does she have any actual struggle. I kept reading, hoping to find some modicum of a fully realised person, but nothing emerged. She felt more like a lackluster plot device than anything else. Feyre was only cunning when she had to be, only resourceful when she had to be, only fearful when she had to be. There was no consistency to her emotions or reactions. At times, she was this emboldened warrior and provider, yet when trouble came around, she tucked her tail between her legs (save hurling dumb insults their way) - unless she tried to stand up against a struggle, and ultimately was saved by a man. Every. Single. Time. 

The concept of the faerie courts was interesting, and never well explained. If only the author hadn’t wasted so many paragraphs describing which flowers grew where, we might’ve spent some time learning more about the fae world and how it works. The different kinds of fae and creatures, again, seemed so cool. Yet we only focused on the “hot” ones. Boring. 

The author seems to cling to certain words and motifs, not in a stylistic way, but in a “this is the only way I can describe that, but isn’t this word great!” way. Additionally, the use of - and … was so - so… overdone. Words such as: growl, snarl, hissed, crunched underfoot, feral. I have a list, but brevity is the soul of wit (and I’m not very witty, judging by how long this review has become). 

Oh! And there’s a great blink and you miss it moment where Feyre points out there’s both men and women at the fire party, and implies with a flustered blush that the possibility of men having sex with men existed. Her fears were quickly righted by Lucien basically saying the guys would have sex with the girls. Not each other. Because, Cauldron forbid, anything outside of heteronormativity would be an affront to their precious court. I assume. Based on how it was presented. 

I’m unsure if these are real spoilers, but:

the whole thing about Feyre being illiterate was so insensitive and dumb. The way they mocked her for wanting to learn (I guess Tamlin didn’t, but he also wasn’t really nice about it), and how she beat herself up for being illiterate, I found to be excessive and elitist. But, luckily for our precious MC, not even being illiterate is her fault! Because Mummy died and no one had the time to teach her. 

I solved that riddle as soon as I read it. It wasn’t hard or groundbreaking or special. It was LITERALLY the same thing she’d made Tamlin suffer over for years. Was that supposed to be a twist? Awful.

 

I’m just gonna stop here. This was terrible. I was spurned on to keep reading the same way I can’t help but rubberneck a car crash. In fact, I can’t wait to get the next book and eviscerate that too. 

I am always in total awe when I read Murakami’s works, and this novel was absolutely no exception. The way he unfolded the story of a man going from widower to head-over-heels in love was well paced, and littered with painfully accurate descriptions of those feelings. The way you first meet someone and become completely enamoured, the way a person will dig so deep to quell any possible notion of them being anything other than perfect. That heart fluttering moment of trying to decide when to best touch their hand for the first time, or when do you go in for the kiss? 

But this is not a love story. 

It was extremely painful to read, at many points. So many other characters were constantly pointing to the faults in Aoyama’s mental gymnastics to prove his beliefs right. It made me want to stick my hands into the pages and just slap his face. 

The last two chapters are, of course, a dazzling masterpiece of macabre. This is the second time I’ve noticed Ryu using this particular method of violence, which I found very interesting. I don’t want to say more and give it all away, but, the last chapter had me white knuckling the book. 

I could go on and on about how much I love Ryu, probably forever, but I digress. Yet another amazing read. I wish more of his works were translated into English. 

Kotaro Isaka is so amazing at creating these absurd characters and making them feel so real, it’s difficult as a reader to not feel very strongly about them. 

I’ve read a lot of books with despicable characters, but I think I hate The Whale the most. I hated him passionately from his first chapter, I hated him as his story progressed, I hated him when I closed the book. But I love that it’s only due to Isaka’s amazing writing that could make me feel that way. Likewise, my character crush on Cicada just kept getting stronger (I know that he’s not a good guy, he was just so relatable to me. Aside from being an assassin with a penchant for knives.)

This book was very fun, like reading an action movie. It had some heart tugging moments, a lot of black humour, great fight scenes. Touched on humanity and grief. It kind of felt like he was making fun of the overused film trope “a man will stop at nothing to avenge *some crime against his family*”. 

But the real draw to this book is this crazy underworld building Isaka is doing. I’m so loving the way pieces are interweaving. I love this gritty, dark, absurd crime world populated by equally wild, skilled professionals. Rushing off to preorder his next book now! 

This book is easily my favourite of the Detective Galileo series. The main cast of characters feel much more developed and three dimensional (although I did find the third book to be a major turning point for Yukawa’s character overall). For those following Kusanagi’s smoking habits over the series, you’re in for a treat here as well. 

Beyond that, the wide cast of characters surrounding the murder plot were just amazing. The way their stories were revealed on an individual level followed by how their actions tied into the overall plot - it was a lovely method of expanding upon the murder mystery style Higashino is known for.