clovetra's reviews
208 reviews

Did not finish book. Stopped at 19%.

this book just seems to ramble on with no true direction, and i actually don’t give a flying fart about any of the characters. that’s all this book has going for it. it feels like pulling teeth. plus i’m sorry books with extremely long chapters automatically lose points for me. maybe ill come back to this, but i don’t get why it’s so loved when it just rambles and rambles and rambles.

i might try to come back to this in 2025 but right now this is a miss

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How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin

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adventurous dark mysterious relaxing tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

what a sweet little story. usually with books i’m either in love with it or i absolutely despise it. and i am happy to report this was perfectly middle of the road for me. which is rare! in my mind average is still good.

i found the mc to be a bit bland. it felt as though she had no personality and was designed to be a reader surrogate, but that doesn’t really work considering annie’s role in this is connected through familial ties. i kind of feel as though she’s supposed to be a blank slate, but in the same vein she kind of can’t be due to her role in the story. i defo was rooting for her, and i liked that her prowess for mysteries was explained through her being a writer, but idk i didn’t really connect to her. like when weird shit was happening to her, i didn’t feel invested enough to be concerned for her.

the side characters felt like they had even less characterisation. i think that’s because there’s just so many moving parts in this story, and ill be real it took me longer than i’d care to admit to align frances’ diary entries to their modern-day versions. but god because there were so many characters i lost track of a character’s significance. for example, because in frances’ diary the girls kept swapping between so many boys, i kept forgetting who ford or billy or archie were. i love when a mystery book can surprise me because i usually have a good track record for figuring out culprits, but i honestly think the reason i couldn’t crack this isn’t because this book outsmarted me in terms of how things happened, but i literally was forgetting who did what and how that links to the crime(s). i’ll give the book a point for keeping me guessing, but even still when the entire mystery was explained to me, i was still a bit confused because there were just. so. many. characters. especially mfs with the same last name. i know it’s because it’s a small town but oh my god i couldn’t keep track of who was related to who and how and my god my brain couldn’t keep up.

i did have quite a lot of fun reading this though. it’s the perfect book to cuddle up with under a blanket, and for a murder mystery, is pretty lighthearted (in a good way!!!!). i don’t want to seem like a dick but this was generic in some ways, but honestly cliches are so common because they’re good. you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. and i honestly didn’t want to put this down because i wanted to see where it was going.

overall i’d say i had a swell time, but god you almost need to take notes reading this to keep track of who’s who in the past and the future as well as who’s related to someone from the past.

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Where Sleeping Girls Lie by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

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adventurous dark mysterious tense 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? It's complicated

4.0

ugh i wish i managed to squeeze this in for sapphic september but alas, it is an october read. which ngl im not too mad at seeing as it fits the vibes.

god i really get why this has so many fans. i was mesmerised with the writing, and all the characters were great.

sade was a wonderful protagonist who immediately gripped me and had me rooting for her; baz is the much needed comic relief yet also has depth to him; persephone was equally mysterious and intriguing; and the cast of ANA mostly didn’t feel flat. i say mostly because im ngl… the way the unholy trinity was built up, i was expecting mean girls 2. instead i got one interesting character and two who felt like they had zero personality outside of “money” and “lacrosse”. i mean hey i like money and lacrosse but ur side characters need more than that i beg. but honestly the characters kept this book going…. because its plot didn’t.

ok that’s so shady esp since im giving this 4-stars. but as someone who mostly vibes when reading…. i guessed the “culprit” like 20% deep. and the clues were JUST beginning to build. not only did i guess the culprit… i guessed the motive. cmon now.

and speaking of the mystery element…. it felt lacklustre. the way the “crime(s)” played out felt predictable and a let-down. i was expecting this book to just keep unravelling with its mystery, but instead i got something that could’ve been solved by the characters like 250 pages in if they stopped dicking about. like as much as i loved seeing sade just living her life, i was expecting a mystery. and instead i got class scenes, lunch scenes, a party, another party, swimming…. im contradicting myself i know. i loved the characters but the things that build them up, i seemingly hated. it’s just that the mystery was so appealing, and yet it felt dragged out because really, it could’ve been solved halfway through the book. it was so insanely simple i thought i was missing some extreme oversight, but no. i guessed most of the plot less than a quarter way through. and that’s fine! a mystery should have breadcrumbs a reader can follow! but when you are touting this as a mystery book…. and it is not a mystery at all what ha happened (/ref)……. yikes.

like i said, i honestly loved the characters so much the lack of complexity didn’t piss me off to the point i hated this book, but i can’t lie and say i loved this. if this was marketed as a contemporary? sign me up man. literally any other genre & i would’ve loved this. but the mystery was not mystery-ing for me.

i liked the mystery surrounding sade’s background.. but i have the same thing about her past to say about the plot itself. it was a letdown. i will say i didn’t guess what it ended up being, but when the book is pointing you in one direction, and then ends up dragging you to another and, and that end is disappointing compared to the other end…… yet again a chop for me!

anyways tldr i love sade but homegirl please stop having meet cutes with like 3 ppl at once and solve the mystery. i support you but also god damn girl let’s get the show moving and figure out what happened!

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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 26%.

oh my god i’m so bored. GET TO THE STORY.
i have no idea why this is so popular nothing interesting has happened and i’m a quarter in

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We Mostly Come Out At Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels & Other Creatures by Rob Costello

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adventurous emotional inspiring fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.0

for my first anthology i found this a bit….. disappointing? there were some hits, but most of the time i felt there were lots of misses. this was very middle of the road for me.

standouts for me are:

other fish
how to summon me
the house of needs and wants
the girl with thirteen shadows
sons of god and daughters of humans

other than that, i was a bit meh on the stories. some stuck out to me for good reasons, and there was only one story i didn’t like (and that was simply because it wasn’t my style! sorry world weariness 😔).

i defo found some new authors to try out with this anthology, but overall i found it average.

i will say tho the illustrations before each chapter? ugh they were so cute i love when books do that.

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The Black Queen by Jumata Emill

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

this might just be my favourite mystery novel……

didn’t guess the killer which is super rare for me !!!
plot twists were unexpected yet didn’t feel cheap
loved duchess & her personality was great in drawing me in
tinsley was fun to love to hate and i really liked her character growth, it felt natural yet earned
i loved the intertwining of social issues into the story. they felt seamless & were the hard hitting facts
the plot kept me gripped and i wanted to keep coming back for more
no character fell flat, everyone had mini arcs
the mystery was intriguing and not simple enough to bore audiences yet not too complex for readers to not follow

fuckkkk this was good. i had such a good time. what i would give to go back in time and read this again for the first time.

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Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker

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adventurous emotional lighthearted 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? No

4.0

ugh what a cute story.

sapphic romance? check. nonbinary mc? check. witches? check. werewolves? check. disabled mc? check. everything i love in my books.

the only “letdown” for me was the fact i felt like this book started in the middle of a story. idk i felt like i was missing a lot of context, and like the copy i was reading cut off the first half of the novel. i felt like i was thrown in with no background knowledge which sucks because i wanted more of tam and nova!!!!!!!!

anyways u should very much read this i love gay people

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The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán

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challenging dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

sue me but i hated this. honestly for the life of me i couldn’t tell you why i finished this other than the fact it meant i checked something off of my reading list.

at many points this book felt like it was weird for the sake of being weird. its weirdness was pointless and felt like it was only there to shock me.

the characters all felt flat - paloma had almost no personality and felipe felt annoying. iquela was my favourite character, but honestly she had no competition and was only likeable because she made sense. most of this book does not make sense to me. i cannot tell what is real or not real or imagined or fake or what.

the plot feels barely connected, and the payout felt weak and like i had wasted my time.

the only thing i found intriguing about this book was its historical context, but honestly nothing was ever explained and every time the past was touched on i felt so close to actually enjoying this, and then the author rips the historical context out of my grubby hands and makes me return to felipe and iquela fighting.

this review feels so mean but im actually angry because this book had potential. at parts i did have fun. i was constantly waiting for this book to get better. it did not.

i might try and read the authors other book, namely when women kill, but honestly im so mad at this book i don’t even want to look at her other books for a while.

im gonna go watch drag race im actually so mad

edit: omg hello how did i forget the two massive things that made me the most angry about this book. at one point “autistic” is used as an insult, and there is an incredibly graphic scene of animal cruelty for no reason! which is even harder for me to read as it was about a parrot! i lost my baby girl monty only earlier this year. i actually wanted to vomit and cry reading that. i’ll miss you forever baby girl. and fuck this book for adding unnecessary animal cruelty.

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Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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adventurous challenging funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

welcome gideon the ninth, you are now one of my elite employees (/ref).

i am broken. i am shattered. i am changed.

i am but a simple lesbian.

i’ve been sitting here for an hour contemplating how to rate this. on one hand, the concepts were so frustrating to comprehend, and it was to the point where after every chapter i was consulting a guide because i wasn’t sure i was actually grasping what was going on, which made all 479 pages incredibly frustrating. on the other hand, this book is all i could think about. usually to fall asleep i employ a video essay of something that’s my special interest — recently only until dawn has been scratching that itch. but my body was craving a gideon the ninth video essay. all i could think about was this book.

needless to say, i can overlook how annoying this book was to read at times simply for the grip it had on me.

i love griddle. what an insane fuckjng nickname. i adore her, her inner monologue, her relationships, her reactions, her one liners, everything.

i would die for the sixth, and harrowhark baby im coming for you in the next series hold on for me.

the plot was fucking insane. who decides “yeah the book i’m writing is about sapphics in space who are necromancers and also there’s a lowkey murder mystery plot with some romantic undertones and high fantasy oh and yeah did you forget we’re in space. and necromancers.” like ?????? i want what muir was having when conjuring up the idea of the locked tomb. absolutely batshit insane. and i wouldn’t have it any other way.

i don’t really know what i was expecting from the plot but im very pleasantly surprised by what it ended up being! even more surprised as i got a semi-big spoiler and yet it really didn’t spoil shit for me! like the spoiler did hold a lot of weight in the plot but because so much happens in this story it was so easy to focus on the other reveals happening simultaneously.

the fight scenes were a bit hard to follow especially when the necros are involved, and the trials were so fucking confusing to my mind. but honestly i was so invested in the characters, mainly the ninth & the sixth, that i can’t put this book any lower than 5-stars.

i’m gonna go stare at griddlehark fan art for the next 3 hours sobbing. also this book gave me such a big fucking headache oh my god reading my neuroscience textbooks is easier.

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Ophelia After All by Racquel Marie

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emotional lighthearted reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

this was such a sweet book!!!!!! ugh i don’t know why i didn’t read this earlier but i loved it!!!!!

i think the real reason behind my love for this story as i can very much relate to ophelia. the fear of coming out, the fear of rejection, burning your entire friendship group down over one small thing….. yeah me & ophelia are kindred spirits. she was such a fun and relatable protagonist i couldn’t help but root for her (pun intended).

i really enjoyed how this story was a subversion of books like this —

although whilst reading i wanted her and talia to work out, i kind of prefer them not dating, and enjoyed that the story focused more on self-love rather than finding your identity and dating a girl. the fact the plot did a 180 with talia & ophelia’s relationship and stuck to it? i actually really loved it and it makes this story stand out from the rest of the genre

i had fun with the plot, and the exploration of not just ophelia’s love life but all of the friendship group’s love life was done incredibly well for a book this length. i did not expect everyone from ophelia to her dad to wes to have such fleshed out storylines. it was refreshing to see.

the ending was very sweet as well, and i like that the ending felt very true to what was being set up the entire story.

i will say however the one thing that knocks this down a peg for me is the constant pep talks ophelia gives the reader. i mean i get it, but i can’t say i love when books constantly repeat their message so obviously in a way where it feels like im almost reading a self help book. ophelia darling im so happy you’ve got your life figured out but you don’t need to convince me babe.

anyways i really liked this! probably one of my favourite coming of age stories ive had the joy of experiencing.

shout out agatha for being the best side character.

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clovetra's reviews 208 reviews

clovetra's reviews
208 reviews