howlinglibraries's reviews
1803 reviews

This was so cute! The art is really precious and I loved how over the top and silly the characters were. There's a great message in here about being yourself and not pretending to like the things your friends like just so they'll like you more. I'd definitely recommend this for kids (plus any adults who enjoy cutesy graphics like I do).

I don't know why, but I really love plastic surgery themes in horror. It's probably related to my own general fear of medical procedures and the idea of someone having nefarious intentions with another person's body, but it always gets to me! I really enjoyed most of this, though I knocked a star off for the ending. While it didn't surprise me or feel particularly out of place, it felt very rushed and I think another page or two would've gone a long way in tying up the loose ends.

I appreciated the idea behind the book, but the execution left me wanting more. No matter how hard I wanted to like this, I couldn't bring myself to care about the characters or plot. As someone who typically adores dystopian novels and isn't terribly hard to please with them, I really expected to enjoy this more than I did.

Between how beautiful this book is and how excited I was to read it, Krampus had no business being this boring or this disappointing. I really wish this hadn't been my first Brom experience! I'll try other books by him since this one is as old as it is now (13 years old at the time I'm writing this), but it definitely soured my expectations. The story dragged forever, I cared about literally NONE of the characters except Krampus himself, I hated the ending, and the Native American writing was some of the worst I've seen in a long time. This book as a whole felt like I was reading something mediocre penned in the late 80s, not an incredibly hyped book barely over a decade old.

I've seen the film adaptation of this several times over the years after stumbling across it during a deep dive on Netflix a looong time ago (early 2010s, I'd say), but I didn't know until this year that it was based on a novel. When I saw that it was available on Kindle Unlimited, I had to borrow it right away to see how it compared. I'm pleased to say that the film does the book a ton of justice. There are so many verbatim quotes and the plot follows incredibly closely to the original events.

I'm not sure if Senseless is more devastating to read or to watch, but this is a story in either format that has stuck with me as one of the more impactful (and underrated) pieces of media I've experienced. It's bleak, nauseating, and downright paranoia-inducing at times (thinking, "This could be anyone!"). The only complaint I had about the book is that some of Gast's internal monologues drag a bit longer than they need to, but otherwise, I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a truly unique and provocative story.

25 Days was absolutely fantastic! I loved the idea of breaking this story up into 25 chapters to read a chapter per day, like a twisted little bookish advent calendar. I'll admit that I didn't follow the schedule strictly; there were days I skipped and other days I read extra to catch up, but I never read "ahead" of schedule and saved the ending for Christmas Day. It was so suspenseful that it was hard not to tear through the entire book in one go.

The book requires a lot of suspension of disbelief, and there were some plot threads I wasn't sure were tied up the way I hoped they would be, but none of that detracted from the fun I was having. Each day's section flew by aside from the first one, which was just longer to set the stage and let us get to know the characters. I enjoyed this so much and would definitely read more from this author in the future!

This is honestly one of my favorite comic books I've read in a very, very long time. If you've ever wanted a comic book series about a group of animals who all have a similar sense of humor to Michael Scott from the US version of The Office, here you go. I giggled throughout the entire thing. Also, being "over today" by 9AM is just a forever mood.

I'm not THE biggest fan of newspaper comics like this, but there were some really good ones in here and they're definitely all relatable in a very sardonic way.

I tried the audiobook along with the ebook at first, and the audiobook narration wasn't great. There were moments of poor editing (like Geo starting a sentence, pausing, and restarting it) and the pauses between sentences were awkwardly long.

Then, I switched to just the ebook, which was certainly more enjoyable, but still very DENSE with information. A lot of it probably could've been left out or trimmed down to make each of the sections not drag as much.

Another minor complaint is that, while Geo's art is AWESOME and I loved it!!!, I wish there had also been a photo of each location to go along with the gorgeous artwork. Despite how intricate Geo's paintings are, I still wanted to see what a realistic depiction of each place would look like, so I kept tabbing over to the browser on my iPad to look up photos at the end of each section. It's a small thing that I think would've gone a long way to increase enjoyability for me.

All of that aside, I learned a lot of cool facts about some very Haunted Hydrology and I love that. If you're into weird facts about nature, I recommend this, or better yet, checking out Geo's videos!

If there ever comes a day where I do NOT giggle and smile at Sarah's Scribbles, put me out of my misery. I love these.