Reviews by unsuccessfulbookclub

916 reviews by:

unsuccessfulbookclub

What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat

Aubrey Gordon

5.0

challenging emotional hopeful informative sad slow-paced

I could write pages and pages of my thoughts on this book but they all boil down to this one:

➡️ Everyone should read this. ⬅️

Aubrey Gordon is brilliant, engaging, emotionally vulnerable and inspiring. In 165 pages she gives an incredibly well-researched yet personal account of the costs of anti-fatness through an intersectional lens. And like every stain on American culture, the costs of anti-fatness are high and affect all of us.

Content Warnings

A Court of Wings and Ruin

Sarah J. Maas

4.0

adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I went into this book expecting a continuation of the swoony, sexy, exciting story in A Court of Mist and Fury. On the exciting front? It totally delivered. Lots of battles and secrets and spying and plot twists!

On the sexy and swoony bits? Meh. I was bummed that I didn’t get more romance in this book but only because the series has been heavily promoted as “sexy” and “smutty”. This installment in particular is way more Bone Carver than boning, more Lord of the Rings than hot guys with wings. 😏

Content Warnings

A Court of Mist and Fury

Sarah J. Maas

5.0

adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

Glint

Raven Kennedy

2.75

dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

Gild

Raven Kennedy

2.0

adventurous dark sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

The Matzah Ball

Jean Meltzer

3.0

emotional funny hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I’m late to the party for this book, pun intended.

You know that one couple in your friend group that gets in fights every time you go out together? The couple that is always breaking up just to make up? That couple that pretends to hate each other all the time? Rachel and Jacob are that couple.

It was cute, and I actually *loved* the characters, but I am not an enemies-to-lovers fan and this book is the embodiment of that trope. The main characters fight for 80% of the book to finally kiss and then fight again until the very, very end. 😩 There is also conflict driven by lies of omission which drives me absolutely bananas as a reader.

This is Meltzer’s debut novel so I am being a little lenient but I found the writing a repetitive and telling instead of showing at times. There were more than a few paragraphs that could have been eliminated without losing any details. There is also one joke in poor taste regarding the IDF, so if you visit Goodreads for reviews you will see chatter about it. The book could have done without it, but here we are.

👌🏻All that said, if you like enemies to lovers and you’re looking for a closed-door, lighthearted holiday romance that *isn’t* about Christmas, this is a solid choice. I enjoyed the window into Jewish culture, and the chronic illness representation seemed sensitive and realistic (the author has a chronic illness herself).

Content Warnings