lvriot13's reviews
39 reviews

A Merry Little Meet Cute by Sierra Simone, Julie Murphy

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funny lighthearted relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes

3.5

Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade

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hopeful lighthearted slow-paced

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

2.5

Lightlark by Alex Aster

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

The fact that this book got review bombed before anyone had even read it is a tragedy. Alex Aster got lucky, for sure. She has financial privilege. She’s also a young woman of color who everyone decided to shit on because it was the flavor of the week.

Did she write a perfect book? No. Is it even a GREAT book by traditional benchmarks of literature? Also probably not, no.

But I didn’t NEED this to be Catcher in The Fucking Rye. I needed it to be a book I devoured like sour candy— the kind where after a while the roof of your mouth starts to sting and burn because the citric acid is literally eating you alive, but you don’t care; you’re addicted to the sweet sweet pain of warheads or whatever. And Lightlark delivered.

It’s been a long time since I sped through a book like this, filled with the same kind of evangelical zeal I felt In my youth reading books like Twilight. This book is fun! It’s tropey! It keeps you guessing and turning the page!

Are there plot holes? Fucking everywhere! Do all the twists hold up to scrutiny? Not at all!

But the thing that makes Lightlark good is that I don’t care.

There’s a scene in Jurassic Park where shot to shot the landscape of the environment completely changes. Suddenly a cliff that wasn’t there before IS there now and it changes the entire direction of the movie. It’s a massive plot hole. But if someone tried to tell me Jurassic Park was a bad movie because of it? I would think they were a pedantic asshole. You only really notice it when you’re looking for it and if you’re LOOKING FOR IT then you weren’t ever intending to enjoy the movie to begin with.

Lightlark is the same. The strings are showing all over the place and I don’t give a fuck. At the end of the day, I went to the theater to see some fucking dinosaurs and that’s exactly what I got.

I give Lightlark 4.5 stars.

Gabriel's Inferno by Sylvain Reynard

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 51%.

This book is horrendous. I question the taste of anyone who likes this book and wish them a very “please go to therapy.”

Misogyny incarnate wrapped in thinly veiled Twilight references.

Content Warnings