pastelwriter's reviews
1099 reviews

I absolutely loved this volume! The mangaka finally took her time developing the plot instead of trying to jump to the future more and more 😂👌🏼

I really did appreciate though that the majority of this volume was dedicated to the tensions that arose because Hitsuji is no longer Hinata’s teacher. Hinata now has a new teacher, who turns out to be Hatoyama’s senpai, and this leads to some complications. Hitsuji is stressed because he’s not really out to his coworkers, and he also feels a bit threatened by this new coworker because of the close friendship he had with Hatoyama. 

In the end, it all resolves in a way I found sweet and fun to read. I absolutely love Hitsuji and Hatoyama. Hitsuji definitely makes me want to bonk him in the head because of his insecurities, especially since Hatoyama is so clearly head over heels for him… But still, I love Hitsuji. He just needs to be a lil more selfish and accept all the love and happiness Hatoyama has to offer 🥺💖

My feelings for this book are…complex. I see the quality of the writing, and I found the overall story engaging…. However, I find one of its biggest flaws (for my personal taste) is that Frankenstein by Mary Shelley exists in this universe. 

If this were merely a retelling or reimagining of Frankenstein, I think this would be an incredible interpretation. I love the reproductive angle taken here. The different lens through which to approach an obsessive scientist. The source that compels this scientist to pursue this kind of research. It’s all very good!

Still. I couldn’t deal with the fact that said scientist, Z, was a fan of the original text enough to rename herself after it… without neither recognizing the awful parallels to said text to her life…or changing course at all due to having read the book. The arrogance and folly of Z was too much for me. As insufferable as he was, the original Frankenstein could just barely be tolerated because no one before him had done what he did nor had he read any cautionary tales. The same could not be said about Z. She let her ambitions cloud her judgement to a point that felt unbelievable. If Frankenstein the novel did not exist in Unwieldy Creatures, I wouldn’t have had any issues with the path Z took. It would have all made sense and been a creative parallel to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Ugh. It’s so frustrating! I’m sure part of the frustration I feel is intentional, but I have a personal threshold for this kind of thing. Sadly, this crossed it for me to a point that makes this reading experience complex in a way that I don’t enjoy. 

Despite it all, I find myself still giving it a 3🌟 rating (and not lower) because the writing itself was still excellent. Its only real “flaw” was the glacier pace of the story up until we get to “volume two” where the pace picks up exponentially. 

All this to say, this is a far more engaging read than the original Frankenstein…but it doesn’t quite amend what I perceive to be the original’s flaws in order to make a stellar retelling. That’s personally what I seek from retellings 🤷🏻‍♀️

I truly didn’t know this would be the last volume in this series ☹️ I’m so sad it’s over! 

Although this series wasn’t amazing, I enjoyed it. I loved being able to follow two ace / aro characters as they developed in closeness and interest in a romantic relationship. It was far from perfect, but I still appreciate that this even exists 💖

I don’t have much else to say. I’m just glad I picked up this series ✨

I have complicated feelings about this book ☹️ I wanted to love it without question, but I just didn’t. 

If I’m honest, what truly carried this book was the personalities of Vincent and Kent. I loved them both as individuals. I especially loved seeing Kent’s interactions with his family. They were lovely and sweet. I also enjoyed seeing Vincent interact with Kent’s family. When Kent took Vincent to Legoland? Be still my heart! That was really heartwarming 💖

The main thing that didn’t work for me was the smut in this. The particular kinks in this book just didn’t make sense to me—especially with Vincent’s OCD 😩 For example, Vincent’s OCD does very much present as a need for things to be really clean around him, and he has a whole crisis precisely because of this and the circumstances around their first sexual encounter. Then tell me how this same man is gonna indulge Kent’s foot fetish? 😭 It just didn’t add up to me. 

I also feel like it was through the kinks that Kent’s character was slightly ruined. Kent is an older gentleman, but the way the author wrote him sometimes made him seem like he was a 70+ years old man. My guy didn’t even know what a harness was and where to get one. THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE! I feel like still most people his age would know 1. what a sex (toy) shop is 2. that you can buy anything online. I don’t know. It was just bizarre to me how he was written when it came to stuff in the bedroom. 

I don’t know 😩 I truly wanted to love this…but so far this author has only had one true hit with me and that’s Mistletoe and Mishigas. I see an alternate universe where this book was also a hit, but it was a partial miss primarily because the kinks and Vincent’s OCD didn’t quite line up in my mind. 

I really really enjoyed this romance novel! I found it to be an improvement from the first book in this series, although I enjoyed that one too!

I really liked the relationship between Lola and Saint. I don’t often read romances with “the one that got away” trope, so it was a nice little treat. It was clear from the start that the chemistry between the two of them was still alive and well because they parted ways when they were both young and not great at communicating. It didn’t feel sudden how drawn they were to each other because we start by getting to know them when they’re younger and falling in love, and we get several flashbacks throughout the novel. It made their dynamic believable. 

I loved following a female lead invested in helping her community—especially queer kids—and with a general investment in the well being of youth. Lola was a teacher who clearly cared a lot about her students, even though they were quite suddenly put as her charges. I also really appreciated how focused Saint was on making sure the needs of his kid were being met. He was an affectionate and loving father, and it was so sweet to read his interactions with his daughter. 

Finally, I absolutely loved the mayhem the elders in both their families got up to. Those two old men are iconic 😂 Their shenanigans make me laugh so much. I support them in their chaos 🙏🏼

I have such…conflicting feelings about this book. 

On the one hand, I enjoyed myself while reading this. I really liked our main cast of characters (i.e. Rig, Ginka, and Crane).

Rig and Ginka had great witty banter between each other. Their friendship was absolutely heartwarming 🥺💖 And Rig giving her the nickname Cactus? Be still my heart! They’re precious.

Ginka absolutely stole my heart with how awkward she was because she doesn’t really know how to express her feelings all that well. She’s the character that undergoes the most growth as she has to grapple with the beliefs she was raised with and her growing affection for Rig. Her relationship with Crane was also everything to me 😭 I adore them SO MUCH. Maybe the straights do deserve rights 🥺

Rig herself was also really fun to follow. She’s…a lot. But the best kind of a lot! I also enjoyed her relationship with June 💖 I didn’t really root for them as much as I did Ginka and Crane, but I largely blame this on the fact that they were in an already established relationship. Those are always trickier to get me to invest in. 

My main issue with this book was that… there was absolutely NO NEED for it to be 437 pages long aka 14hrs long in audiobook format. There was so much that could have been cut out. That’s why I lean to say that this is a character driven novel. There’s for sure a plot in here, but it didn’t need this page count to resolve. I’m all for developing character dynamics, but this just felt like a drag at times. The plot felt both too present and too absent. I prefer my novels to pick a struggle if they’re really gonna prioritize something, because this lead to a book that read like it had no stakes…even though there WERE stakes. I felt very little to no urgency during most of a novel where the main character is trying to rescue her sister who has been kidnapped 🙃 like what? 

I just felt like something about the writing was off. It was enjoyable, but it wasn’t quite satisfactory enough to lead me to love the novel as a whole. I loved pieces of it. 

I don’t know how I missed adding this novella to my read things on here…but I did. However, it was so long since I read this (and it was so mid for me) that I can’t even share any thoughts on it. I just remember wishing I had loved it, but I didn’t love it. It was just another thing to read to get me closer to reading the last novella in this series 🤷🏻‍♀️

I gotta admit…that I’m absolute trash for this series 😂 it’s messy and silly and absurd…but I made it all the way here. So I guess that says something probably both about it and about me

I honestly was just surprised by how much I ended up being invested in Chowon and Kyungsoo. I love that Kyungsoo forces Chowon to be better. Sure, Chowon is still a little brat, but he’s making a genuine effort to be better. It’ll take him time to not be such a pain all the time 😂

Dojun and Heeso will keep being my faves tho 🤩 their little holiday gift exchange? Adorable. Be still my heart! That puppy is so cute 💖😭💖

The only ones that keep being menaces to society that I simply tolerate are Dojin and Hye-sung. Dojin still belongs behind bars 😭 The jealousy that man feels is absurd, and he needs to find more productive ways that handle it that aren’t antagonizing Hye-sung. At least Byul continues being the cutest ever 💖

Ah, yes. As is to be expected from a Pride & Prejudice (book) hater, I had mixed feelings about this retelling.

I would say that I primarily enjoyed this. The biggest thing this book did in its favor was that it addressed the things that made me dislike the original Pride & Prejudice. This is mainly my complete lack of interest in Mr. Darcy. I know book nerds love that man, but I’m not one of them. This book actually brought to focus reasons one might genuinely like Darcy. We get to see him from a lot closer, and it does make him endearing. I really liked the Darcy here. Although I wasn’t the hugest fan of how much he kept his distance from women, I still really enjoyed his interactions with Oliver and could see the appeal of him. In general, this book just narrowed in on tender moments between Oliver and Darcy that made me believe their romance (unlike the original).

I also enjoyed the dynamic between Oliver and his father. I’m glad that was kept in here because part of what I also enjoyed from the original was the contrast between Mr. Bennet and Ms. Bennet.

One of the things I didn’t like as much was how…conflicted I felt about Oliver’s persistence that he couldn’t imagine why his friends would choose a life that doesn’t fully allow them to be themselves. It made the end bittersweet for me. Oliver gets his perfect “happily ever after” while his sapphic friends do have to settle 🙃 it didn’t sit right with me…especially with how unrealistic the ending felt. Now, don’t get me wrong. I know there were trans people in the past who did successfully live their lives as their true selves. I simply find it unlikely to believe that someone in Oliver Bennet’s particular social standing would be able to do so in the way he did in this book. I’m all for queer happy endings, but this one felt a little too good to be true ☹️ and I was left salty that we could find loopholes for Oliver to get everything he wanted but not for his friends. *sigh* 

Anyway. I don’t regret picking this up. I enjoyed the romance. I found the writing style engaging and easy to read. I’m likely to pick up more books by this author in the future!

I really enjoyed this novella! Clio Evans truly is an icon in the monster erotica subgenre 🙏🏼 She really knows what she’s doing, and I support her all the way. 

As some of you might now be able to tell, I’m not exactly reading this series in order 😂 I follow the vibes and tropes that compel me. I’ve actually started a bunch of other novellas in this series, but I only formally review when I read them cover to cover. This one made it through a full read. 

Tbh, I just really liked the throuple here 🥺 even tho I wasn’t the biggest fan of all the kinks in here, I still enjoyed the dynamic between the three characters. I even enjoyed the angst Evans loves to throw in at the end of each novella 😂 but that’s just me and my obsession with dreams and nightmares ✌🏼

That’s about all I have to say about this. I continue being a Clio Evans fan.