jaina8851's reviews
543 reviews

Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 52%.
I sure wanted to love this book. I re-read House on the Cerulean Sea last month and was delighted by how well it held up on a re-read, it felt like the same warm hug that it was the first time around three years ago. But I just can't get into this book. A huge part of what made the first book so charming was Linus' slow burn transformation from a rigid rules holder to slowly warming up to each child to falling in love to rebelling against his rigid gray life. I made it halfway through this book and despite the fact that there's supposed to be a high stakes visit about to start, I just... couldn't find myself caring. The children's personalities all feel frozen and twee, with no growth being incorporated despite the fact that they are all tween/teenagers, a time when the difference of a few months can mean big shifts in interests or personality. The fabric and dynamic of the family somehow hasn't changed at all with David's arrival, and there are just only so many "I want to destroy the world!!" / "No you don't" arguments between Lucy and the grownups that I can read before it starts to feel extremely repetitive. I feel guilty giving up on this, but I have found myself avoiding reading because I just don't want to pick it up, and that's not how I want to spend my time.
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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adventurous funny reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Genuinely loved this book, Adrian Tchaikovsky's narration had me laughing out loud at numerous points. I definitely want to re-read it with my eyes at some point because I think I would catch some of the finer nuances of the satire that way (case in point: it took me WAY too long to stare at the section names to figure out the references hidden in there because I didn't have the book sitting in front of me). I loved the layers to this story, from the different styles in each section, to the needling of society and technology. Everything came together beautifully at the end in a way that made me feel very reflective. And of course, I'm always a sucker for a story about a lovable robot trying to figure out its place in the world the best way it knows how. 
And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott

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challenging dark emotional tense 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

I almost certainly would have DNFed this book if I hadn't been reading it for book club. I struggled with this book a lot. I found myself questioning on a meta level how exactly a writer could portray the type of accelerating psychosis that Alice was experiencing in a way that felt somehow more visceral for me as a reader because I didn't feel drawn in enough to the story to be moving through it *with* Alice. I'm also reading Butter Honey Pig Bread right now which deals with Nigerian spirits and that book grabbed me through the chest and drew me in from the very beginning, so I'm not entirely sure what was missing in this one. The writing style just didn't jive with me, I think. The book reminded me in some ways of The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down in the description of tension between the Indigenous mythology/spirituality and Western society/medicine, and how both can be real and true at the same time, but when you're caught in the middle, it goes tragically. The reveal towards the end came a little too late for it to save the book for me and it left me feeling frustrated that it wasn't more developed. I ultimately feel like this was a book full of really great and interesting ideas that just weren't fully cooked. 
The Pairing by Casey McQuiston

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

2.25

I think the most important thing I learned while reading this book is how deeply I loathe miscommunication trope. This entire book would have been spared if either of the main characters, as part of their theoretical separate growth journeys, and considered being brave and vulnerable to the other and saying "I still have feelings for you, it's okay if you don't feel the same because I'd rather continue rebuilding our friendship than nothing and I'm enough of an adult now to manage my own shtick if you don't feel the same way." Instead there were just hundreds of pages of incorrect assumptions and angsty pining. No thank you. The book was way too long, and utterly entirely predictable. Obviously, romance as a genre tends to be fairly predictable in that you know it will almost certainly have a happy ending. I contrast that with how I felt reading One Last Stop, the only Casey McQuiston book I marginally enjoyed (I think this will be my last one), and I genuinely had no idea how they were going to manage to end up together at the end. But with this it felt like every single plot beat was telegraphed and nothing at all took me by surprise. Boring and uninspiring, I don't know why I bothered finishing it.
The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk

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dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book was so tough for me to rate and I needed to let it it marinate for a bit before I wrote the review. I was very intrigued in the beginning of the book with the introduction of the mysterious creepy "we", and I liked the slow moving exploration of Mieczysław's personality and backstory and growing relationship with Thilo. But I also spent a lot of this book frustrated, thinking "is this horror? what are you trying to tell me with all of the misogynistic rhetoric? where is this going?!" I even said out loud to my partner "I am not going to rate this book very highly because you can't just string me along for 80% of the book and have a banger ending and expect that to be enough." .... And then, almost literally, I turned the page, and sat in silence turning pages as quickly as I could, because indeed, Olga Tokarczuk has done it again, the banger ending WAS enough. All of the slowly and methodically placed pieces slid into place and the story she was telling came into focus and the payoff was incredible. It made me want to immediately re-read it with all of the context and insight that I now had. Olga Tokarczuk continues to be one of my favorite authors (trying to make this a three-Olga year and finally read the copy of Flights that has optimistically been sitting on my end table for six months) and I am thrilled that this got translated into English so quickly so I could devour it in the middle of spooky season.
The Grownup by Gillian Flynn

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Not as good as her novels, but a fun creepy short story with plenty of twists. I thought I could see one of the big ones coming but in typical Gillian Flynn fashion, she still managed to make me go "whaaaaat?!" 
The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

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

3.5

This was a solid 4⭐ for me until the ending. It was definitely a "enjoy the vibes and the ride" story that I flew through quickly and couldn't put down. I found almost all of the reveals predictable, but it didn't really bother me, because the story was intriguing. But the ending, as other reviewers have said, was an absolute hot mess. The motivations of how they kept the big secret make absolutely no sense, Nell comparing herself and her motivations as no better than a serial killer made no sense, even the villain's motivations made no sense. I've now used the word motivations too many times, but it remains correct: nothing about the ending was satisfying. And not for nothing,
why tf did Irene have to die??? Just to throw suspicion on Nell? Did they ever explain that?
I don't regret reading it, but definitely wouldn't recommend it.
The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

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adventurous emotional 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? Yes

4.5

This book didn't grip me quite as strongly as the first one did. I remember feeling this way the first time I read it as well. I certainly wouldn't say that this book suffers from second book syndrome because nothing about the story felt like unnecessary moving of chess pieces or characters expounding to each other about the way the world works, but at the same time, it had a different sort of pacing and urgency. I really enjoyed the chapters with Nassun and getting to learn more about her life and also her experience of being Essun's child. Very poignant and heartbreaking to hear both sides of their relationship. I also liked learning more about the lore and the worldbuilding, but I will admit that I don't entirely understand the motivations behind all of the factions at play here. This is another thing I remember from my first read-through, a sensation of "I love this but I also don't quite get it???" and I had hoped that a re-read might clear things up. Not quite, but, I do still love it quite a lot. 
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 23%.
Entirely bored and disengaged. Gave it a solid shot through Act I, but for a book that is labeled as a thriller, you really need to have literally anything happen in the first 25% of the book besides the characters just narrating Shakesepeare lines on the page. Also what was with the bizarre racist descriptions?? There was a line about the main male character getting assessed as if he were a slave at auction and another about the group sitting cross legged like Indians. Almost dnf-ed it for that alone. 
The Shining by Stephen King

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This was the first Stephen King that I've read since I was a kid and powered through way too many Stephen King books at way too young an age. I somehow never read this one OR saw the movie, so it was really awesome to read it for the first time so fresh. 

There were so many things that I enjoyed about reading this book that had little to do with the horror aspect of it. Reading a book written in the 70s and set in the 70s was like glimpsing a time capsule. Having to take a pause to recognize that the hotel being closed for a decade in the 30s was as close in time as the 80s are now was a trip, and moments like a character calling an airline thirty minutes before a flight took off to purchase a ticket was absolutely wild. I also was very amused to realize that this book actually fits very nicely into one of my favorite high-level categories of books: slow moving character studies. Except it was horror. 

The pacing of this book was so fantastic, and so many of the scary moments were indeed frightening and deeply unsettling! I was viscerally remembering the rules I had set for myself when I was a kid reading these books about never reading them with the lights off and without music playing in the background because I’d get nightmares. While I didn’t get nightmares from reading this book, there definitely were many scary moments that have stuck with me. I also appreciated that somehow, as violent as the book got toward the end, it wasn’t graphically depicted body horror (for me at least), so I didn’t have to skim sections and hope I didn’t miss anything important.

Overall I really enjoyed reading this and am looking forward to watching the movie soon so I can compare the two experiences! A perfect way to kick off spooky season.