bratatouille's reviews
204 reviews

I do not enjoy pandemic books and wasn’t aware this was one when I began. I creator whose opinions I care about recommended this book and I may need to reassess her choices. The female lead goes on a plethora of personal tangents unrelated to anything critical. The love interests admit their love within two weeks at the big age of 38 years old. They also decide to live together in that time. Groundwork is laid for possible character growth but you never actually watch any significant developments happen. I’ll admit it’s a fun sought-after trope to have the celebrity you ogled after for a short time span email you years later during a particularly low point in their life! However, that should remain fan fiction trope! I was in no way convinced of the chemistry or compatibility of these two characters. At most, one of them has been to a lot of therapy and learned to communicate and the other is funny. 

This accomplishes what it sets out to do. I’d even argue that it does it well. This book is essentially the “society if leftists took over” that right wing people are so afraid of. It discusses the demons that live within people who know and love and how impossible it can be to identify them. It normalizes gender queerness, non cis-het relationships, accessibility, and has a fuckin cool/scary angel creature. The reason the rating is so low is because it has the Barbie Movie problem. Everything is perfectly spelled out for the reader because it’s meant to introduce them to broad strokes of clear concepts. As someone who is not new to any of these topics, I found it to be like reading a middle grade woke book. Which is good for new audiences but I am not that; so it impacts my experience. All of the conflict was predictable, even down to the character responses to it. Similarly, the resolutions were underwhelming. I like some of Emezi’s writing and do believe this story holds a lot of merit. It just wasn’t intended for me.

This is told largely through personal experience and holds very little actual data or fact. There’s a whole section where the author explains a concept using an odd reader x author imagine instead of third party imaginary characters.

Oh my god 

I read a lot of weird books but this is probably the most peculiar one I’ve read in a while. A young mother turns into a dog but only kind of and also not at all in a werewolf way. It was a crazy dive into the feral and beastly woman. There’s violence and some unsettling behaviors, but nothing that would be odd for a common stray dog. I’m struggling to articulate the experience of this book. It’s hard to determine what’s real and what’s in her head. Despite this, you can’t deny with the results she gets. Her relationship with other characters is interesting because of how unreliable our narrator is. Her experiences with her son, her husband, and other mothers and dogs feels questionable. If you liked Bunny, this is an equally bizarre and brutal dive into female culture. I highly recommend it. I guess they’re making a movie? 

I did enjoy this! Or at least, I enjoyed more parts than I didn’t. At a certain point, I felt that it was much longer than it needed to be. The pacing is incredibly slow and the timing in this book is sort of touch-and-go. I understand that they’re vampires and timing means nothing to them. I get that. However, the first third or so of the book takes place within a year and then there are time skips over several months, fifteen years, and five years. It’s difficult to determine how long an event spans. The prose in this was half flooring and half things like, “her whole body felt like a breast” or unnecessarily using words like ‘behoove’. The characters are diverse, queer, and lovable. Frankly, this book is all vibes. The plot is not incredibly grabbing, due to the pacing, and the ending was not as pleasing as the journey we took to get there. Sometimes I thought the protagonist could just shut up and everyone loved her a little too much. But I am going to buy this and pretend like I’m gonna read it again, one day.

This was really cool fake history shit. A scholar gets the opportunity of a lifetime. She starts translating letters between the subject of all her historical research and an unknown person for a private collector. It’s gay! And seems to transcend impossible time periods! Also she falls into a relationship herself! Of course, all hell breaks loose. This is part of a series, but the ending of this book doesn’t leave me wanting to read the others. The storyline that I cared about is relatively tied up. It was incredibly fun to read and was everything I wanted This Is How You Lose The Time War to be (note: historical instead of sci-fi, vampires). The main girl’s frustration and excitement at all of these impossible times is catching. 

There is a previous book of this author’s that I wholeheartedly adore. It is easily one of my most impactful reads of the last few years. Due to this, I went into this novel blind, as I usually do, to catastrophic results. I was expecting some sort of gritty commentary on anything at all and was instead met with a contemporary romance. This, in itself, was not the issue. I like romance as a genre! The problem here was that none of the characters were likable from the start and all of their decisions made them worse! 

We start with a woman who lost her fiance in a car accident five years ago and hasn’t been emotionally or sexually active since. She begins the book by fucking some dude in a bathroom and making this guy a regular thing. When they decide they’re bored she starts (sort of?) seeing one of his friends. She wants to take it slow and keeps reiterating that they’re friends. He does the same but it’s immensely clear that nothing about either of them has the intention of friends. After knowing each other for a blip of time he flies her to his home in another country for her art to be displayed in a show that he made happen for her. Friends, right?

During this time she falls for his loaded celebrity chef father???

Just. None of the timeline or character reactions really made any sense in this. The girl and dad at the end share the same grief and then talk about maybe getting married in the future?? It felt so terrible and wild. There is not enough time spent building any of these relationships so you’re left not caring about any of them. There is one (1) fun character and they are the reason for the single star.

At this juncture, I’ve read a lot of sapphic vampire books. This one starts pretty strong in setting its grim yet romanced vibe. It begins by following the tortured and vengeful story of said vampire. She is callous and honest with herself about her situation and state. This is a plus for me! I enjoy when the moral question comes from the acceptance and unapologetic lifestyle of the damned. The story shifts to modern day where we follow a single mother who is facing the death of her own maternal figure. I found the change in setting and narrator to be stark and relatively boring as it loses the air of nostalgia and supernatural. I was okay with how the story progresses, but didn’t feel particularly wooed. My main complaint with both sides of the story is that the sex and violence in it felt vulgar for the sake of vulgarity rather than an expressive tool. This book is translated so everything should be taken with a grain of salt but 🤷🏻‍♀️