jasperdotpdf's reviews
140 reviews

When I started Funny Story, I felt it had the potential to become one of my favourite romance books.

Within the first few pages I knew I'd absolutely love Miles as a male lead. The fact that he's just as wrecked about the breakup as Daphne, the fact that he copes a lot more openly than her by getting high while watching romcoms and listening to Celine Dion in the shower made him so loveable, and set him apart from most other male love interests I've read about. I really enjoyed the way Daphne and him interacted. There was chemistry and trust between them, but in a very casual way. They seemed at ease around each other, which allowed for physical contact-small acts of intimacy-to flow easily between them, yet it didn't rob their dynamic of romantic/sexual tension at all. All of this made their relationship so easy to believe, tangible and realistic, and most of all comforting.
I also thought there were a lot of funny moments that did, in fact, make this a funny story.

However, around 30-40% in, the book started to drag. I love it when books have good side plots and characters. But you can make your side characters as loveable as you want, but I felt the amount of scenes that didn't center Miles and Daphne weighed down the middle of the book.

And by the time we reached the last strech (third-act breakup my beloathed), it just got too convoluted for my tastes. I'm known to hate third-act breakups, so it's no surprise that I didn't like this one much either, but I can see the appeals of them when they're done well, and this one just didn't feel like it was.

One of Daphne's main triggers is abandonment, specifically waiting for someone who'll never come, and Miles stood her up in a pretty big way without ever cancelling, or telling Daphne about what's going on. She then finds out that he was with Petra, his ex, helping her move out after her and Peter broke up, and naturally Daphne's devastated. We later learn that the main reason he stood her up wasn't because of Petra, but because he was trying to talk her dad into coming back for her. That's sweet and all, but way this is told to the reader in an almost off-handed way, after I sat there being PISSED at Miles, didn't really redeem him for me. Their reunion also didn't hit as much as I would have liked it to, and the last chapter + epilogue felt like more back and forth than necessary.

Overall, there were a lot of good things Funny Story had going for itself, but there was too much to wade through and not enough that had the strengths shown in the first 1/3 of the book.

3.5⭐, 1.5 stars for Miles Nowak (call me if you see this)

Take All of Us is a story about a ragtag group of disabled teens learning to let themselves take up space, set against the backdrop of an Appalachian small town where the dead refuse to stay dead.

There was a tonal dissonance in the book that I struggled with a bit. In the beginning the book reads very young, with the characters being on the lower end of the YA age range. I also noticed that some parts of the dialogue were much closer to actual spoken language, with contractions like "Pro'ly", "Couldn't've" and "Musta" almost disrupting the reading flow. The core moral of the story was also very on the nose, and could have used a bit more subtlety in the way it was communicated, further adding to the juvenile feel of the book. All of this is perfectly fine for a YA book, but led to me thinking that I've probably outgrown the younger end of the genre.

However, the further the book went on the more it grew into something I really enjoyed reading about.

The idea of an ancient, almost eldritch thing in the mountains raising the dead and calling them 'home' was amazing, and I loved seeing it unfold and take up more space in the novel.

Natalie Leif conveys this atmosphere wonderfully with her prose; gorgeously vivid descriptions and paragraphs that made me pause to re-read or annotate them. 

Not only does this theme of eldritch horror slowly twist and grow throughout the book, it was also wrapped up really well. The last 10% of the book shines not only with the way it was written, but also with the amazing end it offeres to a book whose plot could have easily been concluded poorly. 

Unfortunately, this part of the novel only comes after the long stretch that is the first 75% of the novel that I struggled to enjoy. I sorely missed a common thread; a more central plot to make it feel less like I had to wade through a book that despite its potential hadn't decided what it wanted to be. Its more youthful traits make it virtually impossible to anticipate the darker, more imposing tone the novel takes on that, while really interesting, ends up fitting like an oversized jumper the book has yet to fully grow into. 

To summmarize, Take All of Us is a diamond in the rough that could have used a bit more polishing in the form of thematic coherency, but nevertheless has some wonderful moments in its prose, plot and characters. It has a core message that I haven't seen before in a lot of media, and is going to mean a lot to people. It's a debut that shows a lot of promise, and I'm interested to see what Natalie Leif writes next.

The book had so much potential, and there‘s a lot of things that drew me in initially. 

The premise of an incredibly accomplished vampire hunter fallen from grace telling his own story, likely as one of his last acts before death, had me hooked. The worldbuilding and vampire lore seemed interesting, and it felt like there might be a good amount of depth and complexity to the protagonist. Also the drawings peppered in the chapters were really cool. 

Unfortunately, that‘s where the good parts of this book end. 

The way it was told entirely through the dialogue between Gabriel and the vampire interrogating him did not work for me at all. The descriptions of the events were way too detailed for someone verbally recounting memories that lay decades past, but there was still a lack of immersion caused by the distance between the narration and the actual events themselves. There were also a couple 4th wall breaks that just felt out of place. 

The dialogue in the story was also very flat and juvenile. The characters‘ voices were nearly indistinguishable, except for one who kept coming up with the strangest insults imaginable and using them 3 times a page against then 15 year old Gabriel. People also kept making „I fucked your [female relative of choice]“ jokes. Obviously in other words, but the core message stays the same and it felt uncharacteristically childish for a supposedly dark fantasy novel. 

I didn't know I needed a post-apocalyptic story about two boys falling for each other but I really enjoyed reading this. 

The first 80 or so pages were a bit rocky, especially regarding the pacing of the story. I wasn't sure whether I was gonna finish the book, but with a 5 hour train-ride on my hands as well as determination to finish a book I actually like after DNFing 2 highly anticipated books, I pushed through, and it definitely paid off. 

Once Jamie and Andrew left their cabin the book really started to pick up, and I was having more and more fun while reading. I loved their quips and conversations, but it especially stuck with me how they grew to trust each other. It was so refreshing to see both of them continuously decide to trust each other instead of turning potentially conflict-inducing situations into fights. You could feel their bond throughout the entire novel, and I was rooting for them so hard. 

I also really liked the variety of characters we meet along the way, and Brown really managed to add life to an otherwise empty, abandoned world. 

Something that did bother me was that some things were quite on the nose or one-note and could have used more nuance, but I assume that's a byproduct of the YA genre. At the end of the day, they never felt shallow, just simple, which also isn't horrible in a setting as bleak as this one.

All in all, the book was really engaging and fun, and the relationships that formed between the characters were so sweet. I recommend, would binge-read the last 300 pages on a trainride again.

I haven't loved a book as much as I've loved Ninth House in a long time. It's not perfect by any means, but it's such a wonderful display of Leigh Bardugo's strengths as a writer.

Ninth House was such a rich book, with nary a moment empty or out of place. It's a book that feels thoroughly alive, and while I thought the same about Six of Crows, I loved seeing Bardugo apply her style to an adult novel with darker, more mature themes.

There isn't a lot of time spent explicitly exploring the motivations, histories and personalities of the characters on the page. However, everything that defines a character is felt every time we see them interact with the world or other characters. And the times we do see a more direct exploration of a character's traits are so potent that by the end of the book I felt like I truly new these characters, and couldn't help but love them.

I did feel like the worldbuilding could have used a bit more developing, mainly regarding the magic and societies of Yale. There were times where I was stumbling not entirely in the dark, but at the very least in the shade. While I definitely found my way through the plot, that admittedly didn't need more exposition to work, I still thought it would have been nice to feel like I knew the world in which the story I was growing to love was set in.

Especially knowing the characters are going to literal Hell in the sequel,

having the parameters of the world be a bit more clear would have helped some moments feel less arbitrary. 

Nevertheless, the journey the book takes you on is phenomenally crafted in a way that is so characteristic of Leigh Bardugo's writing, which is why she's shaping up to be one of my favourite authors. The way parts of the story are interwoven, only to finally unravel and reveal all of the secrets I was dying to find out the further we got in the book was absolutely delightful. 

Despite its flaws, I adored Ninth House. I could not get enough of it, and came out the other end of it hungry for more.