syllareads's Reviews (951)

I really wanted to like this book but, some personal enjoyment aside, this was just...not the one for me.

First of, I want to use a disclaimer: I have nothing PERSONALLY against this book. In fact, as I stated above, I did enjoy it quite a bit! Just going from personal investment/enjoyment and the number of times I had to laugh I should be giving this about 3.5 stars - but I just can't lol

My biggest complaint is that the entire book feels like a Drarry fanfic.
And I don't mean this in a "fanfic is automatically not as good as published books" kind of way. I adore fanfic. It's whack, it's over the top, it's everything a lot of published books DON'T give us because publishing doesn't understand that the appeal of fanfiction is that authors literally just pour their obsessions and love onto an electronic page.
But: "Carry on" is a fanfic in the sense that it feels like I should know these characters, and I don't.
Let me explain.

The book starts out with Simon being in his eighth year at his magical school and basically his eighth year of being threatened by a being they all just call "The Shadow". How do I know that? Because Simon tells me. Himself. In excruciating details I'd rather have read about than hear him tell me.
The book relies so heavily on you knowing what happened in the past (to get the characters' motivations, their backstory, everything they've been up to in their entire school career...the list goes on tbh) that it feels exactly like fanfiction in the sense that it feels like the author expects me to know this universe and these characters and their shenanigans and just doesn't really bother with worldbuilding anymore. Instead, I get small nudges and hints á là "hey, remember when this happened in canon???? and how much we loved it??? yea ME TOO"
Hence: the fanfic comparison.

Now going into why it specifically feels like Drarry fanfic: the entire book reads like poorly disguised Harry Potter fanfic with Draco (as Baz, vampire) and Harry (as Simon, the Chosen One) as our main couple. I swear I've read eighth Hogwarts year fanfic that had a very similar plotline if not exactly THIS plotline lmao
As the author, I'd have been TERRIFIED of a lawsuit while publishing this ngl

The actual plot (instead of the reminiscing we do the entire time about what happened early, aka anything from 7 to 1 year in the past) only picks up at about halfway through the book and at that point I was too annoyed to care. Some moments were decently funny or at least trying to be emotional and that was pretty much it.

Do I recommend this book? No but if you DO want something similar I can probably find about 30 fanfics that did it better :)

This was such a beautiful and harrowing YA Thriller, full with identity and hope and grief, and I loved every second of it.

I want to preface this with: Yes, I did have to google some things but mostly because I wanted to try and understand the full weight of their significance to the best of my abilities. They were actually explained really well in text even for someone with almost no previous knowledge of the Native culture I was about to experience. Please do not be discouraged from picking up this book just because it's from a different perspective than what you usually read (by this I mean: just don't be a racist prick <3)

Firekeeper's Daughter is a piece of art, from the beautiful cover to the deeply meaningful story itself, the characters, their interactions with each other, a healthy relationship (in a YA book? IMPOSSIBLE- I'm kidding. Mostly), and a horrible crime about to be unearthed by our protagonist, Daunis, a young woman I immediately fell in love with. I really loved Angeline Boulley's prose as well, a simply and yet beautiful way of showing the readers a world they might not be familiar with. I will openly admit, I teared up several times, especially towards the end.

The way the author wraps up everyday horror within the things Daunis goes through in this book and also goes into detail about how connected she is to her culture and her people while also letting her mourn when those connections aren't as great as she hopes for them to be is truly unparalleled. I loved what this book let me be part of, even if it was just for a moment. I cried for Daunis and the horrors she had to live through, and the grief balled up inside her heart up to the moment she finally lets herself feel it for the first time. This book is just a masterpiece from start to finish!

I'm gonna have to buy this book, huh.

Night Shine by Tessa Gratton is a beautiful book pulsating with life and love and finding oneself and one's own name in a way I have seldom seen before. Everything about this book is queer, dripping with queerness, gushing with it (also have not seen this that often and I love it! more! give me more!). The monstrous sorceress (ma'am, I am right here), Nothing's journey of self-discovery, The Prince Who Is Also A Maiden.....I loved everything in this book from start to finish.

It reads just like a fairy tale, every cadence meant to be savored by a storyteller, every word well-placed. The bare bones of every fairy tale, except it is not just a knight saving his princess, and it is not just a hero slaying a monster. There is love, romantic and platonic and every color in between, messy and real and beautifully painful, self-acceptance and self-fulfillment, adventure... I could go on, and on, but all I can say is: read this book. You won't regret it.

The Chosen and the Beautiful is a piece of art, a way of whispering of the magic between the lines of the Great Gatsby, a story on fire of a paper-man, and a magician, and a woman who belongs to neither and a woman who wishes she did.

I have said at some point that I will read everything Nghi Vo puts out and that I will be rather obnoxious about recommending her works to people - and this book absolutely made her one of my auto-buy authors. I will never shut up about her works at this point, ever. Watch me.

The Chosen and the Beautiful is a Great Gatsby retelling from the view of Jordan Baker instead of Nick Carraway, which means that we have some scenes almost verbatim from the previous book, some scenes that give us a different perspective to a scene we already know from "The Great Gatsby" and some completely new scenes we previously had no way of knowing of, given that Nick isn't an all-knowing focal figure. Nghi Vo also drapes a veil of magic over the entire story, settling her book firmly in the "Magical realism" category, something that made the wild, inherent magic of The Great Gatsby seem all the more apparent.

What can I say except that I loved every word? That Nghi Vo's way of writing is exquisite, dripping with beauty and love and pain, that her vision of utter queerness deeply embedded in the narrative is breath-taking? Please, I have no words to describe this book anymore, I just HIGHLY encourage people to read it.

The Colour Purple is a heavy book by Alice Walker that I nonetheless urge everyone to read at some point in their life.

Our protagonist, Celie, is a black woman living some time in the Southern US (since I'm not as well-versed in US-centric history, it's very likely that I missed some historical landmark that could have pinpointed the exact date and timeframe during which the novel is set. Celie's life is a struggle she accepts quietly and mutely - because she sees no point in rising up. After getting pregnant two times by her own father, she gets out of her family by (basically, since there is never a true ceremony) getting married to another man. We never learn his family name, since Celie only ever calls him Mr.---, and his surname is also mentioned only a couple of times, hammering home the distance she feels to the man who is supposed to care for her like the loving husband he is supposed to be (which he is not). Slowly, however, Celie gets to know other people, and herself in the process, among them the notorious singer Shug Avery - a woman she inevitably falls in love with.

The entire novel is basically told via letters or prayers to God, and later as a letter exchange between Celie and her sister Nettie. There is no direct speech per se, and if there is, it is not marked by quotation marks, a fact that might trip you off at first. 
Despite all the darkness and admittedly horrible scenes in this book (Celie's abuse at the hands of her father, her husband, basically every man she ever meets in her life, her pregnancies at 14, her two children being given away pretty soon after birth), I found this novel to be almost equally hopeful at times. The love between Celie and Shug, despite not always being perfect, gave them both the strength they needed to go on. Celie finding purpose in life, even getting to know her husband the way she should have had been able to spend time with him all along, was a beautiful story to witness. She didn't have to change her world to fit her, she just had to find a way to take space where she had always been, and I think that is wonderful.

Overall, this is a heavy book but an impactful one that I think everyone should have read at least once in their lives!