rnbhargava's reviews
404 reviews

The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing sad 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

4.5

This romcom book is lovely and full of charm alongside some real emotion about family connections and how they guide the characters’ present day.

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The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I really enjoyed this book. The pacing is mostly quite well done. The characters are wonderful and there’s a lot of diversity in the cast. My only gripe is that the absolute ending of the main driving plot feels a bit rushed thus slightly anticlimactic. I even really like the denouement. Overall, this book is highly recommended 

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Spy x Family, Vol. 12 by Tatsuya Endo

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful lighthearted mysterious relaxing sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Really fun and action packed volume with a hell of a cliffhanger for the main multiparter which will spill into the next volume.

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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book is great. It’s not like Ready Player One. It’s kind of like The Social Network but with mildly more sympathetic characters at its core. It’s ultimately about the work/life balance of three friends that start a video game company together told through the eyes of 2 out of the 3 of them. It also might be peak late Gen-X/Early Millennial nostalgia in terms of the video games referenced and it essentially inserts itself into how things actually happened in reality. Please note the sexism, misogyny and racist tendencies the characters Sam, Marx and their family members came across is realistically depicted. There’s also an active shooter situation depicted in the novel so be aware if it triggers you. One character also engages in an inappropriate relationship with a person with authority over them and mind if it triggers you. One character has a mobility disability and there’s vivid depictions of his struggles with medical care and health. There is suicide and car accidents depicted as well.

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Billy Summers by Stephen King

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This mostly character based crime story about a former army sniper hit man is surprisingly quite charming and tender in some aspects, tense, hard boiled and action packed in others. Excellent read. I’m glad this is my first Stephen King. 

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The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book has a fantastic story that has you see the narrative of the story from a multitude of points of view but honestly it doesn’t get confusing. There’s even points where you recontextualize earlier points in the story where things weren’t exactly what you thought they were.
This is honestly one of my favorite reads in years. I now need to find Simon Jimenez’s first novel. 

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It Starts with Us by Colleen Hoover

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective relaxing sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Seeing how Lily and Atlas fully commit despite Ryle’s behaviour which he comes to work on is beautiful in a way. I like both books equally for slightly different reasons.

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Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing sad 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

4.25

I quite enjoyed this book throughout. It’s fairly well thought out. It’s not perfect as many have suggested it is. However the characterizations and a good portion of the world building is done really well. These characters already are very memorable to me. I honestly can’t wait to get to the rest of the series. 

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Heart of the Sun Warrior by Sue Lynn Tan

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing sad tense 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? Yes

3.25

The strong aspects of this book are on level with the first book. That said, much of the pacing for the first half is unbalanced. The protagonist also makes choices and voices feelings that come across fairly inconsistent with where the first book left off and they’re not really even partially addressed for half the book. I ultimately had fun so I went 3 stars but I took a long break from reading down the middle of this for several months and I was mulling a DNF. I was even considering a 2 star once I did resume but it picked up.

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The Immortals of Meluha by Amish Tripathi

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 45%.
Been too long since I last read it. I’ll just restart whenever I want to try this series again.