jaina8851's reviews
543 reviews

Upstaged by Robin Easter

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emotional funny hopeful 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

4.75

This book is incredibly sweet and an absolute delight. I resonated very hard with the main character and it made me grateful all over again for having discovered theatre and the ways that being a stage manager made me break out of my shell. The characters hit just the right balance of having believably tween personalities and challenges, while also modeling excellent communication and problem solving that, in real life, might be a little above their development level but is a great thing to have in a story to show kids how to treat your friends. An excellent and heartwarming little story for all ages.
Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin

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

2.75

Complicated mixed feelings about this one. I enjoyed the kind of absurdist and whimsical writing style in the beginning of the book, where it seemed to pop back and forth between darkly humorous anecdotes from the past and present. But as the book progressed and Gilda's problems just escalated, it made me more and more uncomfortable. And I do recognize that was part of the point! Seeing so many other reviewers highly rating this and saying it is such an accurate reflection of their own experience is useful perspective. But that said, I just didn't really enjoy reading it. I particularly felt like things went off the rails at the end of the book. I kept getting closer to the end feeling like "... how exactly is this all going to wrap up?!" and it seemed like it got resolved with a magic wand in the last five pages. It's a quick read and if you're looking for a really intense depiction of mental illness, Gilda's your gal.
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

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

4.25

A neat quick read. I really enjoyed the characters and the world building. I did find the answer to the whodunit quite predictable, but I am looking forward to reading more of this series as palate cleansers in between other longer audiobooks.
Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw by Eddie Ndopu

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emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

This is an important and interesting book but it left me wanting a little bit more. This falls squarely into the "definitely read this as an audiobook" category, because listening to Eddie tell his own story was very powerful. Hearing his struggles to get his care needs met and to afford to stay in Oxford was eye-opening and infuriating. However, I wish that at some point the book had shifted to exploring more of the details of his advocacy work. There were a lot of high level reminders about the accolades he has received but not a whole lot of details. Even still, I highly recommend this book. It's a short read you won't forget.
Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men, Vol. 8 by Chris Claremont, Scott Edelman, Paul Smith, Ken Landgraf, Dave Cockrum, Jo Duffy, Brent Anderson, Bill Sienkiewicz

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adventurous emotional funny tense 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? Yes

4.75

The Brood Saga gave me flashbacks to the Joiner Trilogy from the Star Wars EU. Never love my faves turning into bugs 😂 but I did *really* like this story, particularly getting to see things from Wolverine's perspective. I *loved* Special Edition X-Men #1, the throwaway detail about Kurt's pet pink pterodactyl that is never mentioned again is one of my new absolute favorite things.
Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men, Vol. 9 by Chris Claremont

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adventurous emotional funny tense 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? Yes

4.75

Great stuff in here. Love Storm's new look and the story with the Morlocks, and Wolverine's mini-series. I stayed up too late reading #174 and got up too early the next morning to read #175.
The First Ten Years: Two Sides of the Same Love Story by Joseph Fink

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reflective slow-paced

2.25

This really didn't land for me. I probably should have DNFed it. I thought it was a really cool concept and the first hour or so was quirky and funny, but it got tiresome for me pretty quickly. It turns out this book is exactly what it says on the tin: two people musing about their own relationship over the course of ten entire years, and it's... kind of mundane and boring to read about another couple's life. It's possible that if I had ever been a listener of Nightvale, I might have been more invested in this. A lot of the stuff related to the first Trump regime also didn't age well, particularly reading this now in the first weeks of his second regime. It felt like an inordinate chunk of the book was taken up talking about him in a book that was supposed to be about their life and love story. Other than talking about how much they cried about it, neither of them really went into detail about how they personally were impacted by his policies, so it just felt oddly performative. The fact that they kind of smugly say at the end "at the time of this writing, neither of us have gotten our acts together to start therapy" after detailing their respective mental breakdowns really sealed the deal on this being a bit of a self-indulgent yikes.
The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Vol. 4 by Chris Claremont

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adventurous emotional funny tense 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? Yes

4.75

Rating an Omnibus feels so weird because there are SO many stories in here. Knocking off a quarter star mainly for the Kulan Gath stuff because even after listening to the Jay & Miles episode about it, I still feel very "wtaf...?" about it. Otherwise though, this collection was jam packed with literal nail biting and character building stories. I particularly loved the moments between Rogue and Ororo in #185, and the volume ending with a missing scene from that story was an unexpected delight.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

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adventurous emotional funny reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I enjoyed this book a lot and firmly agree with all of the reviewers I had heard who said this book MUST be listened to as an audiobook. That said though, it took me about five hours before I really got into it. I found the setup of Grace being on the mission to be so implausible in a story that otherwise felt like it was trying to be immediate future alternate reality sci-fi, and the flashback explanations for how that came to be came a little too late for me. Where this book really shined was with the cultural exchange with Rocky. I was incredibly charmed and delighted both by the story itself between them, and also the way that the story was written and narrated. 
Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men, Vol. 7 by Chris Claremont, Bob McLeod, Michael Golden, Dave Cockrum, Jim Sherman, Brent Anderson, Bill Sienkiewicz

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adventurous emotional funny 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? Yes

4.75

I do dearly wish that whoever wrote the summaries for these collections took into account that there might be people reading them for the very first time on digital platforms, because I am SO tired of getting spoiled before I even have a chance to read the issues 😞

This volume contained so many things that I really liked. Having never read any of the Avengers, I was totally blown away by Carol's story in Avengers Annual #10.
I thought in the beginning of the issue that they were doing the exact thing that had apparently been done to her in the Avengers series with downplaying the impact that a surprise accelerated SA pregnancy would have on a person, and the ending just knocked my socks off with her actually calling the Avengers out and telling them off. I totally expected this to be another baddie of the month, everything goes back to normal issue, and was so impressed and surprised with how dark and serious it was.
Come to find out that this is a pretty famous issue and I was unsurprisingly not the only one who felt strongly about how this topic was handled!

I also absolutely *loved* the Kitty Bedtime Story, it was such a cute delight and I loved the little references to past moments as well.