svmreads's Reviews (412)

Writing was insufferable.

Another absolutely delightful installment in the Heartstopper series! I loved reading this after (nearly) finishing season 2 of the TV show and comparing them side by side.

Too many personal anecdotes from the author. Was hoping for more history of the bars themselves

A new all-time favorite book!! 💚

This wasn’t 100% perfect but I LOVED it. I loved how Ren’s desire to become a mermaid and find belonging in a mermaid community symbolized her otherness within her community as a queer Asian teenager. Ren’s far from a perfect protagonist but I found her story compelling and I could not put the book down for the entirety of the second half. What an excellent debut!

This book didn't work for me on multiple levels. The writing felt too cartoonish, the characters (except for Nelson) felt like caricatures or they were boring, TJ Klune takes forever to make a point, and every quote that was meant to feel "meaningful" came across as shallow. 
I think my biggest frustration is that I wanted this book to be more of an introspective, character-driven novel featuring Wallace grappling with what went wrong in his life through flashbacks. The one scene that worked for me was when he drank the peppermint tea and went back to his childhood, and I wish we had more of that. Without looking at Wallace's back story, we have no idea why he became the curmudgeonly lawyer he came to be, which makes the potential of his redemption feel false. Instead of emotional labor conducted by Wallace, we have a KoOkY cast of characters that are supposed to become his found family, and I don't think Klune was successful in crafting this trope. 
I will say, kudos to the audiobook narrator, he really gave it his all.