cass_lit's reviews
1432 reviews

I loved this.  Maybe it was a product of being the right time -- I needed a calming, hopeful, feel good, easy story and this delivered on all accounts.  I loved all of the characters, I loved the magic, I loved the setting - my only complaints are that I wanted more about Jieun's hometown and I would've loved a different ending for her main problem.

This was great. Somehow fun and hopeful despite tackling a lot of really hard topics. You have to suspend disbelief at some points but I had no trouble with it. Some of the women characters were infuriating (like life itself is infuriating, why make it harder on each other?) but I loved how it all came together in the end.  

This was a wild journey and I'm surprised to find myself at the end saying I liked it.  I think I wanted more from the ending, and there were certain stops along the way that I wasn't a huge fan of.  But ultimately, that crab twist was a surprise and it's rare that I get that in a book these days.

This wasn't for me. I like historical fiction, and I'm all for telling people's stories that aren't otherwise always told (recognizing, of course, that we're only getting the viewpoint from a privileged white woman in this). I'm never going to love a story about the military though, and this had a lot of pro-military despite getting into anti-American policy that time. I was also SO over the personal drama.  The Vietnam War did not need *two* men with secret families, a last minute wedding call-off, a miscarriage, etc. You know what I would've loved more of instead? The Black Panther party stuff at home at the same time. Barb's brother was murdered and she's still going cross-country multiple times to help Frankie.

This was an interesting nonfiction about a subject that I didn't know a ton about.  I think I liked the author's thoughts beyond ancient Egypt, but the Hillary Clinton references (yes, plural) definitely took me out of the story.

Only seems fitting that my final read of the year be (short, quick) one I’ve had checked out from the library for most of it, constantly renewing but never rereading. I think my mid reaction to this is my own fault, as I’d built up expectations based on reviews I’d read but not on anything else. While almost every poem is a metaphor still, I was expecting a much more fantastical approach to story telling that I felt just wasn’t really there. 

I should also mention that I can’t relate to a lot of the stories Jen is telling in this, so it’s possible that’s why the poems didn’t hit as hard for me as they may have for someone else. 

This was super informative, while also still being an easy read. I learned a lot but never felt like I was being information dumped to. It actually makes me want to read Julia Shaw’s other nonfiction works, which are on totally different subjects. 

There’s obviously still only so much you can do with a short story/“novella” like this, but I think I’ll always love Alexis Daria so I had fun with this. 

This was a nice memoir in graphic novel form. There was a lot of text on each page, which isn’t my favorite in this form and I think can make a graphic novel feel pretty clunky. But the story was real and helpful, and the art was beautiful.