zoeelizabethk's Reviews (642)

The Last Magician was just fine. Despite having one of my favorite book elements - a heist - I just found too much lacking in this book. I wanted more context, more worldbuilding, and more from the characters. I didn't dislike our characters, but I felt like I was being asked to care about the characters more than was warranted based on the amount that the author provided. And all of this in a 500 page book which was already on the longer side. The pacing was all over the place as well and it took almost halfway through the book for things to become clearer and for the heist to appear. All in all, I didn't dislike the book, I just felt very meh about it and I'm not interested in continuing the series.

The Count of Monte Cristo is WAY too long, but that was just the style during the time of its writing.  It is full of some incredible moments, reflections, and character interactions, and the ending was very thought provoking. I also found the book to be much more approachable than I anticipated and I really did enjoy my time with this book. 

I listened to the audiobook narrated by John Lee, whose narration was one of the best I’ve ever heard. 

I ended up liking Queen's Shadow the best out of this Queen's trilogy about Padme Amidala. Queen's Shadow is about her time in the Senate after being queen and navigating the various plots and scemes. Padme feels true to character, but you get to see a different side to her here. Very few things about the book really stand out - the writing is fine, the plot is fine, etc - but they also aren't really distracting. As long as you know that you're going into a young young-adult novel and you like Padme then I think you'll probably enjoy it.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Catherine Taber and I liked the narration.

Take A Hint, Dani Brown, was fun, though I did not find it as compelling as Chloe's story. Writing this review a couple months later (I'm very behind) I just don't remember much of the plot cause it didn't make much of an impression on me.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Ione Butler, whose narration was great.

I DNF'd The Pennymores at 32%. My impression is that this would probably be a better book for middlegraders, but it didn't work for me as an adult. The beginning - after the first chapter - is super slow, the worldbuilding feels is inconsistent and doesn't feel real, and I just could not get attached to Parker or the other sisters. I was pretty confused on where the plot was going or what the purpose of the story was. There's things going on in the tiny land-locked kingdom regarding literacy and magic, but Parker's also trying to escape. Some of the girls are trying to find their brother but also figure out magic. It felt like there were too many threads, and maybe they all get enough attention later, but they certainly didn't during the first third of the book. It seemed like a fun premise, but I just could not bring myself to care about The Pennymores unfortunately. 

Ok, this was the most fun of the Brown Sisters books. Good banter and dialogue and I liked the characters a lot, which was a relief, because what we saw of Eve in the other books didn't make me think I would like her terribly much. It's a cute B&B setting with a sunshine/grump situation that is pretty cute. I will say, as with most romance books, I was annoyed by the trope-y "we have to have tension so we have to engineer a breakup" deal. But this one was ok. I will say also that the bedroom scenes are the most explicit from this trilogy imo, and I wish it need not be that way. Overall though, very fun.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Ione Butler, who did a fantastic job! 

Enjoyable and cute story about friendship. I wish I liked these more, but they honestly don't do a ton for me.

This is my least favorite of this series, just because the narrative flow feels off with trying to use the war as a jumping off point for stories back home. But still many lovely stories.

Empire of Ivory was a step up from the past couple Temeraire books. This had more of the feel of the original and was much more interesting.