thecandlelightlibrary's Reviews (1.25k)

I received a free ARC of this title from the publisher and this review contains my honest opinions. 

 

DNF’d at 104 pages/26% 

 

Sigh. I think I just need to set this one aside. While I like the writing, and it’s been a quick read so far, I’m 100 pages in and unfortunately I haven’t enjoyed much of it. I feel like so many of my reads this year have featured unlikable characters and I’m really not a fan. Disappointingly, this book is the next in line despite being promoted as an empowering feminism tale. Our main character is so desperate to find her happily ever after that she’s willing to ignore every red flag to try and fit a prospective partner into the box she’s imagined her future to be. [As a side note: no partner is ever worth compromising your identity or values just because you want to check off an imaginary milestone. This should have been my first sign that this book wasn’t for me.] I also really disliked the main character’s toxic, obsessive, and controlling relationship with her “best” friend. 

 

Is it too much to ask for to have an empowering feminism tale with a main character who is actually likable? This story could have been so enjoyable, but the main character has so much growth ahead of her to be redeemable that I won’t be reading on to discover what was promised. I’ve enjoyed so many other books published through St. Martin’s Griffin, and I’m sad to see how far off the mark this story was. Thank you again to the publisher for sending me a free ARC even if this title didn’t work for me. 

Congresswoman Omar reads the audiobook version, which brings a layer I think other readers would have missed. I definitely have a deeper understanding and an immense amount of respect for her after listening to her words, and I'm glad I chose to listen to the audiobook version instead of my default of reading print. 

Thank you to Macmillan/Tordotcom for sending me an ARC of this title. I received this copy for free and this review contains my honest opinions. 

 

Some Desperate Glory was one of my anticipated releases this year. This was a story I had trouble putting down: every time I thought I knew where the plot was going to go the story would veer off in a completely unexpected direction. While the plot choices were completely unexpected for me, and some of them could have used more development, most of them grew on me and I’m glad the plot followed the path it did. The world outside the society Kyr was brought up in has a lot of potential to be further explored, and my favorite parts of the novel were the ones when she wasn’t on Gaea Station (but, to be fair, I don’t enjoy reading about cults that much). 

 

I was hoping this would be an outstanding read for me, but there were several things that prevented this novel from being 5 stars. First, I was rooting for Kyr’s society to implode from the first chapter and that satisfying payoff I was looking forward to didn’t really start to happen until the final part of the novel. Some readers might enjoy this build up, but for me the delay was disappointing. Without spoiling parts of the plot, I was hoping Kyr’s society would have greater chunks in its foundation chipped away with each of the novel’s parts. Second, Kyr was so unlikable to me for so much of the story. While she did end up growing on me, there was some explicit homophobia, transphobia, and racism expressed through her lens as the main character that I don’t think was ever properly addressed. I think you can share the nastiness of a cult society without the main character explicitly sharing and reinforcing its beliefs throughout the story. Finally, I felt this story didn’t end in quite the place it should have. There was one major part I felt was left unresolved, and even one more page of text could have wrapped things up in a way that was satisfactory for me. 

 

While this novel didn’t quite meet what I hoped it would, I would be interested in trying more from this author in the future. Thank you again to the publisher for sending me a free ARC. 

I think this would have worked better if we had been able to spend more time with each of the characters and if their deaths had been spaced out a bit more. I also would have appreciated more time building deeper character motivations for all our POV characters.

I was gifted an ARC of this by the publisher in 2022. I received this copy for free and this review contains my honest opinions. 

 

I’ve put off this title until now for two major reasons: first, I didn’t know if I was ready as a reader to dive into a dystopian story set in a post-COVID world and second, I’ve tried to buy this for my library since I first learned of it (late 2019 or early 2020) but have had difficulty tracking it down (at the time of this review this title is currently in stock on both Bookshop and through my library’s vendor, so yay!). 

 

Overall, I don’t think I was quite ready to read a near-future dystopian yet (the story was a bit to realistic in some ways for me), but I think pre-COVID this might have been a 5-star read for me. I LOVE reading multimedia books, and I really appreciated and enjoyed the focus on gardening (both as healing and as activism), environmentalism, and deaf representation. Thank you again to the publisher for gifting me an ARC. 

Thank you to Macmillan/Henry Holt & Company for sending me an ARC of this title. I received this copy for free and this review contains my honest opinions. 

 

This was my first time reading a biomythography/mythmoir, but I think it was definitely the right approach for this book. I really enjoyed this writing style and how Mouton weaves in, and builds on, mythology to create this experience. One quote in particular has continued to stick with me, and I hope it makes it unchanged in the final copy: 

 

 

I will definitely be picking up more biomythographies and mythmoires in the future. Thank you again to the publisher for sending me a free ARC.