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discardeddustjacket's reviews
317 reviews
Heartstopper Volume 2 by Alice Oseman
emotional
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
This is a sweet series. There’s something very healing and wholesome about reading a coming-out story wherein the character is supported and loved and reassured every step of the way.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying and Homophobia
Heartstopper: Volume 1 by Alice Oseman
emotional
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
I can already tell why this series is so popular. I picked up the first volume on a whim because I wanted something quick to read, and it’s been on my radar for a while, but it really did a good job of making me care about the characters. I’m excited to continue with the series!
Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert
emotional
funny
lighthearted
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
4.0
I know I say this every time, but I love the way Talia Hibbert writes masculine characters. They’re always so tender-hearted (even when they’re stubborn), and Bradley is no exception. I loved the relationship in this story—the way that Celine and Brad care for one another is so precious. This was just the sweetest
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness and Abandonment
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Bullying
The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
This was such an engaging and exciting read. The writing style was effortlessly propulsive, and the story was surprisingly immersive. I was almost immediately invested in the story, which is abnormal for me, and from there, I couldn’t stop turning pages.
I wish the characters had been more diverse, and there was a moment around like 2/3 of the way through when I hit a bit of a pacing snag, but other than that, this was a standout to me.
I’d recommend this to anyone who loves a dark fantasy with some angsty romance.
I wish the characters had been more diverse, and there was a moment around like 2/3 of the way through when I hit a bit of a pacing snag, but other than that, this was a standout to me.
I’d recommend this to anyone who loves a dark fantasy with some angsty romance.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Violence, Religious bigotry, and Murder
Moderate: Confinement, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Minor: Addiction, Animal death, Drug abuse, Death of parent, and Fire/Fire injury
Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
This is a story that tackles the tenderness of love but also the terror of being truly seen. It’s a story about existing as a Black man, and the constant fear that any day could be your last when the world (especially the police) looks at you and sees something dangerous. It’s a story about masculinity, mental health, and the suppression of emotions. It’s a story about Black art, music, culture, and joy.
If you like your prose to flow like poetry, this is the love story for you. This was gorgeous.
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-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
3.5
The phrase “open water” is used to describe both love and trauma in this beautifully-written story about the meeting and merging of two lives, which I find so fitting considering those are the book’s two main themes.
“You know that to love is both to swim and to drown. You know to love is to be a whole, partial, a joint, a fracture, a heart, a bone. It is to bleed and heal. It is to be in the world, honest. It is to place someone next to your beating heart, in the absolute darkness of your inner, and trust they will hold you close.” (Pg. 112)
This is a story that tackles the tenderness of love but also the terror of being truly seen. It’s a story about existing as a Black man, and the constant fear that any day could be your last when the world (especially the police) looks at you and sees something dangerous. It’s a story about masculinity, mental health, and the suppression of emotions. It’s a story about Black art, music, culture, and joy.
If you like your prose to flow like poetry, this is the love story for you. This was gorgeous.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, and Police brutality
Minor: Gun violence
The Survivalists by Kashana Cauley
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-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
1.75
Let’s start with what I did like.
I appreciated the themes of this book that centered around 1) the soul-sucking meat grinder that is capitalism and its lie that corporate-ladder-climbing is anything other than killing yourself in service of your employer, 2) the conflation of career with identity and worth, and 3) the ethics of gun ownership.
Despite the name of the book and what the synopsis might suggest, I think the main conflict in this story isn’t necessarily between Aretha and her survivalist roommates, or even the tension between her objection to gun ownership and the thrill she experiences selling illegal guns. I think the main conflict (and the more compelling conflict) is the tension between Aretha’s desire to be good at her job and Aretha’s hatred for her job. I think that’s something a lot of people can relate to on a deeply intimate level.
I thought the characters were unique, even if they weren’t likable (they weren’t meant to be, so that’s not a criticism). I also think Cauley has a way of describing things that’s often very tangible and artfully done. There’s a moment that stands out to me when she’s talking about the exterior of a brownstone building, and she describes the floor-to-ceiling windows as looking like eyelids propped open with toothpicks.
What made me dislike this book as much as I did was the writing style. This is an entirely personal preference, so others will likely disagree, but I found it weighed down by its long stretches of internal monologue, which were very tangential and read like an easily-distracted stream-of-consciousness. They were full of these run-on sentences with confusing structures making up paragraphs which started in one place, ended someplace totally different, and left me wondering how we got there. I spent a lot of this book re-reading whole pages for that reason.
Here’s an example. This is ONE sentence:
“She packed while getting hit with the memories of the apartment she’d agreed to ditch: the glory of finding a decent place to cushion the sting of having to move out of the apartment she shared with her three caterer roommates who kept their kitchen so full of free white wine and congealed hours d’oeuvres that she had to keep her food in her bedroom but were always up for going out on a Thursday, or a Tuesday night, or a Sunday afternoon after-party to the Sunday morning after-party to the Saturday night start of the whole thing; celebrating the raise she’d gotten at work with Nia, an ill-advised pre-party bottle of rum and the taxi driver who reversed backwards down a narrow street at forty miles an hour to avoid a stopped ambulance; getting ready to go out to a party in her apartment’s tiny, badly lit bathroom and accidentally gluing a set of false eyelashes just far enough away from her real ones that she looked like she’d started knitting a blanket to cover her face.” (Pg. 102-103)
But it wasn’t just the run-on sentences that were confusing either. For example, “Six months before Aretha entered their lives was the sixth month after James showed up” (pg. 56). That sounds like the beginning of an algebraic word problem. Why not just phrase it: “Aretha entered their lives a year after James showed up”?
Those are just a couple examples pulled out of context, but that’s basically the style in which the entire book is written. Besides a few moments when the humor broke through and had me genuinely laughing out loud, I couldn’t make myself enjoy reading it.
I appreciated the themes of this book that centered around 1) the soul-sucking meat grinder that is capitalism and its lie that corporate-ladder-climbing is anything other than killing yourself in service of your employer, 2) the conflation of career with identity and worth, and 3) the ethics of gun ownership.
Despite the name of the book and what the synopsis might suggest, I think the main conflict in this story isn’t necessarily between Aretha and her survivalist roommates, or even the tension between her objection to gun ownership and the thrill she experiences selling illegal guns. I think the main conflict (and the more compelling conflict) is the tension between Aretha’s desire to be good at her job and Aretha’s hatred for her job. I think that’s something a lot of people can relate to on a deeply intimate level.
I thought the characters were unique, even if they weren’t likable (they weren’t meant to be, so that’s not a criticism). I also think Cauley has a way of describing things that’s often very tangible and artfully done. There’s a moment that stands out to me when she’s talking about the exterior of a brownstone building, and she describes the floor-to-ceiling windows as looking like eyelids propped open with toothpicks.
What made me dislike this book as much as I did was the writing style. This is an entirely personal preference, so others will likely disagree, but I found it weighed down by its long stretches of internal monologue, which were very tangential and read like an easily-distracted stream-of-consciousness. They were full of these run-on sentences with confusing structures making up paragraphs which started in one place, ended someplace totally different, and left me wondering how we got there. I spent a lot of this book re-reading whole pages for that reason.
Here’s an example. This is ONE sentence:
“She packed while getting hit with the memories of the apartment she’d agreed to ditch: the glory of finding a decent place to cushion the sting of having to move out of the apartment she shared with her three caterer roommates who kept their kitchen so full of free white wine and congealed hours d’oeuvres that she had to keep her food in her bedroom but were always up for going out on a Thursday, or a Tuesday night, or a Sunday afternoon after-party to the Sunday morning after-party to the Saturday night start of the whole thing; celebrating the raise she’d gotten at work with Nia, an ill-advised pre-party bottle of rum and the taxi driver who reversed backwards down a narrow street at forty miles an hour to avoid a stopped ambulance; getting ready to go out to a party in her apartment’s tiny, badly lit bathroom and accidentally gluing a set of false eyelashes just far enough away from her real ones that she looked like she’d started knitting a blanket to cover her face.” (Pg. 102-103)
But it wasn’t just the run-on sentences that were confusing either. For example, “Six months before Aretha entered their lives was the sixth month after James showed up” (pg. 56). That sounds like the beginning of an algebraic word problem. Why not just phrase it: “Aretha entered their lives a year after James showed up”?
Those are just a couple examples pulled out of context, but that’s basically the style in which the entire book is written. Besides a few moments when the humor broke through and had me genuinely laughing out loud, I couldn’t make myself enjoy reading it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism and Gun violence
Moderate: Car accident and Death of parent
Minor: Cancer and Mass/school shootings
The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by S.A. Chakraborty
adventurous
dark
mysterious
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? No
4.5
I loved this!!! What a vivid and gripping display of storytelling. The characters were so strong, and the plot was exciting!
I selfishly wished that Raksh would find out about his daughter and be redeemed in the end. Even though he was a scoundrel, I still found his character strangely endearing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Grief, and Murder
Minor: Alcoholism, Slavery, Islamophobia, and Religious bigotry
The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest
emotional
funny
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
2.75
This was fine. It was cute. There’s nothing about it that I necessarily disliked, it’s just there wasn’t much about it that I really liked either. Just sort of mid. I kept waiting for a moment when I would begin to get excited about the direction of the story, and that moment just never came. It’s not that I don’t think it was written well, I just think I was expecting a spark that wasn’t there. Probably just wasn’t for me. And that’s fine!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Abandonment
Minor: Infidelity
Redwall by Brian Jacques
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
How adorable!! I know I’m late to the party, considering this series has been around since the 80s and I’m just now hearing about it, but I understand why it’s been so popular.
The woodland characters are so charming and funny, the story progresses at a steady, easy pace that keeps the reader’s attention, and there’s something so satisfying about the writing style. It’s not overdone, but the imagery is still vivid. The dialogue is to-the-point while remaining dynamic. There are some books that are just easy to read, and this is one of them.
The ONLY thing that gave me a bit of pause (and this is likely a product of the time in which the book was written and not done intentionally or maliciously), was that most of the woodland creatures are given standard European-sounding names like Constance, Matthias, John, Jess, etc. But you’ll notice the rats, weasels, ferrets and other central antagonists of the story, are given names like Cheesethief, Killconey, Ragear, Redtooth, Mangefur, etc. This, along with the fact that the rats refer to their leader as “Chief” (a character who occasionally dons a war helmet topped with bird feathers), makes it seem like the villains were modeled after indigenous people.
Again!!! I don’t think this was done purposefully or with cruel intent, but it’s something I definitely noticed. You could even expand that to the sparrows, as well, who also have indigenous-sounding names like Bull, Warbeak and Dunwing; who are depicted as uncivilized, and speak in a blunt language like “Bull Sparra be wicked; bad temper. Best he thinks you no-harm mouse.”
There seems to be a clear distinction between the “civilized” races in this book and the “uncivilized,” brutish ones. And the latter are given traits most western readers would unconsciously associate with Indigenous people.
I think it’s important to criticize even (or maybe especially) our most beloved stories. It doesn’t need to mean we can’t still love them! But we have to be mindful, and acknowledge when we notice harmful elements, that’s all.
The woodland characters are so charming and funny, the story progresses at a steady, easy pace that keeps the reader’s attention, and there’s something so satisfying about the writing style. It’s not overdone, but the imagery is still vivid. The dialogue is to-the-point while remaining dynamic. There are some books that are just easy to read, and this is one of them.
The ONLY thing that gave me a bit of pause (and this is likely a product of the time in which the book was written and not done intentionally or maliciously), was that most of the woodland creatures are given standard European-sounding names like Constance, Matthias, John, Jess, etc. But you’ll notice the rats, weasels, ferrets and other central antagonists of the story, are given names like Cheesethief, Killconey, Ragear, Redtooth, Mangefur, etc. This, along with the fact that the rats refer to their leader as “Chief” (a character who occasionally dons a war helmet topped with bird feathers), makes it seem like the villains were modeled after indigenous people.
Again!!! I don’t think this was done purposefully or with cruel intent, but it’s something I definitely noticed. You could even expand that to the sparrows, as well, who also have indigenous-sounding names like Bull, Warbeak and Dunwing; who are depicted as uncivilized, and speak in a blunt language like “Bull Sparra be wicked; bad temper. Best he thinks you no-harm mouse.”
There seems to be a clear distinction between the “civilized” races in this book and the “uncivilized,” brutish ones. And the latter are given traits most western readers would unconsciously associate with Indigenous people.
I think it’s important to criticize even (or maybe especially) our most beloved stories. It doesn’t need to mean we can’t still love them! But we have to be mindful, and acknowledge when we notice harmful elements, that’s all.
Content Warnings
Minor: Death, Violence, and War
Lourdes & the Mafia by Aleera Anaya Ceres
dark
funny
mysterious
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
3.25
This was cute! I downloaded it on a whim because I saw it had plenty of good reviews, and I was actually pleasantly surprised!
It took me a little bit to get used to Lourdes’ narrative voice, because that sort of casual tone is usually a turn-off for me, but once I did, it had me cracking up. And I loved the Morte brothers, each of them for different reasons.
I thought the story was paced well, it wasn’t over-written, and the end actually had me crying. This was a solid “why choose” fantasy romance!
It took me a little bit to get used to Lourdes’ narrative voice, because that sort of casual tone is usually a turn-off for me, but once I did, it had me cracking up. And I loved the Morte brothers, each of them for different reasons.
I thought the story was paced well, it wasn’t over-written, and the end actually had me crying. This was a solid “why choose” fantasy romance!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Sexual content, Torture, Blood, Murder, and Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Fatphobia and Toxic relationship
Minor: Body shaming, Infidelity, Physical abuse, and Death of parent