skudiklier's reviews
602 reviews

I didn't like this as much as The Kiss Quotient, but I still definitely liked it! I appreciate having another autistic main character, especially one whose autism manifests in different ways than the main character in the first book. 

I really liked this! I was super invested in what happened to the characters, and the art was gorgeous. 

I really enjoyed this collection. What I knew about these women going in varied a lot, but all of the essays were thought-provoking and engaging. I also really liked Haynes's writing style, and the funny asides sprinkled in. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone interested in Greek mythology. 

Honestly I just couldn't get into it. The writing isn't my style, as it felt like it couldn't quite decide how close it was to the characters' experiences. After that I decided to read the reviews to decide if it was worth it, and it just doesn't seem like a book worth putting my time into. I didn't hate it, I just wasn't into it. 

I read this book in a very weird way, where at first I read a physical copy with my partner, and then I read some of it out loud to him, and then we ended up getting the audiobook so we could listen to that while I read the physical copy along with it (and paused it a LOT to fill in gaps to my partner). I have a lot of complaints about the audiobook, but I know I'm reviewing the print version, so I'll put that at the end. 

For the book itself: I loved it! I loved the first one, and I was excited to get to read the sequel. I'm not a sciencey person in general but I found this really entertaining and readable and fascinating. I'd definitely recommend it. 

For the audiobook specifically: I read the physical book along with the audiobook version, so I was very aware of all the decisions they made. I completely understand that this is a challenging book to translate to audio, and I actually myself read some of it out loud to someone who couldn't see it, so I was very ready to empathize with how hard this is. But I just ended up being so frustrated by the decisions made here (no idea whether they were made by Wil Wheaton or someone else, but I'm assuming it's a combination).

First, they completely ignored and left out most of the illustrations. For the ones that were just illustrating the text, that makes sense. But some of them were more text-based, had jokes, and/or were even necessary/relevant to understanding the text that came after. I was so surprised by some of the ones they just completely left out. On top of that, they *did* read aloud some of them, and it just felt so arbitrary. (To add insult to injury, they also described one illustration that was definitely unnecessary and not text-based, seemingly just because Wil Wheaton especially enjoyed it.)

Leaving out so much of what makes the book entertaining (and even understandable at times) is unacceptable in my opinion. I was reading this along with someone else who couldn't see the book, and I paused the audiobook every 15-60 seconds or so to describe what the audiobook either skipped over or made unclear.

Now, again, I'm not saying this is an easy job or that there's clearly one perfect solution. With all the footnotes and illustrations, there's no way to do it without at least some remaining issues. I fully appreciate this, but it honestly feels like they didn't even try with some of this book. So much of it was left out, and so many decisions were made that I felt were completely wrong. I know that the audiobook would be a different experience from reading the print book no matter what, but this was a whole other level that was very frustrating to experience. 

Okay, so: hmm. Wow. It took me a while to get into this book--at first, I was only really interested in the letters, and found the lead-up to them kind of boring. But eventually the book got me hooked enough that I was engaged by all of it (though still the letters held almost all the good parts imo). I wrote down a lot of quotes I liked. This book feels like one I would have loved in high school or even just a few years ago, but now I just liked it. It was written beautifully and made me cry.

I mostly liked this and thought it was well-done. There were some things I didn't like (like

changing Poppy's pronouns and name back at the drop of a hat without her even explicitly saying that

) but I like that at least it ended on a more nuanced note. A bunch of the reviews for this book were disappointing though, and I wish it were made more clear by the book that supporting your kid in being trans from a young age isn't the wrong move. Anyway. Overall I liked it, it was nice, it was well-written. Just not perfect. 

Oh also, if you're trans, a very specific part of this is really hard to read. Look at the spoiler in my content warnings for more detail. 

I was given a preview ARC on Netgalley, so I can't finish it yet--but I want to!! I loved the first three books in this series and this one seems headed in a very interesting direction. I can't wait until I can pick back up where I left off. 

Thank you to Sourcebooks Casablanca and Netgalley for the chance to read and review this (preview) ARC. 

Zane's latest collection might be his best yet! Right from the introduction I was hooked, and I found so much in these poems that rang true for me. Zane really knows how to put longing and loneliness into words. 

Thank you to Central Avenue Publishing and Netgalley for the chance to read and review this ARC. 

This is a beautiful collection of poetry, self-love, affirmations, and growth. My favorite pieces were the ones about her mother; they were so relatable and beautiful. I've been slowly making my way through this book for a while now, and it was really nice to sprinkle into each day. I wrote down a lot of quotes I liked, but my favorite was probably "this is my secret: i gave into the urge." 

Thank you to Central Avenue Publishing and Netgalley for the chance to read and review this ARC.