snowbenton's reviews
3423 reviews

If I could have one wish it would be the ability to reload a previous save of my life the way I do in video games -- but teleportation would be a very close second. But this book (as scifi is wont to do) proves why we can't have nice things.

It's a wonderfully unique idea, Bamert is a delight, I love the teen angst and that the MC is a lesbian. But the pacing failed this story. It took me ages to read this because chapter after chapter was high intensity and it was just exhausting. There needed to be some filler chapters: something calm, show me the world just as porting was being introduced, give me a self-indulgent school moment, show me a diving lesson. Some of the scenes ran on too long even for me, and I love self-indulgence (see: Bamert was my favorite character). A better editor could have made this a great book.

This was so boring. I could not even believe how boring it was. The full-cast audio was great, but not enough to save this lame story.

I love an unreliable narrator. This should have been a little snappier but overall it was entertaining enough on audio.

An overall disappointment with a few decent scenes. If I didn't own the second book and feel obligated to read it, I wouldn't have finished this.

All of the characters are extremely irritating, so this one is a little hard to read. The twist at the end

(you find out that Daisy has been a ghost the whole book; she has been dead since she was 13 when Connor hit her with his car and her sisters help him cover it up)

was <i>almost</i> enough to make me want to go back to the beginning, but it just wasn't interesting enough to make it worth the time.

I read 88 pages and kept drifting off. The chapters were all like four pages long and I still struggled to finish one. So I skipped to the end to see if there was a good payoff, and just my luck, found the scene where Rachel was about to get assaulted. This one's not for me.

Props to Highsmith for making me sympathize with the man in this novel.

I definitely thought it was funny when he told Melinda's lover that he killed her previous one by referencing a man who had been killed recently. And I was intrigued but not terribly surprised when he actually killed Delisle (forgive me if I spelled that wrong, I listened to the audio which was great). And somehow Highsmith managed to make me mad at Melinda for going around town telling people that Vic killed him. I was listening in my car mumbling "damn it, Melinda, he's going to go to jail if you keep this up," despite the fact that he actually committed the crime. Incredible. I loved that both murders weren't premeditated, just opportunity attacks from a man who was tired and ashamed. I was expecting him to kill Melinda by the end but it still took me by surprise; though seeing that Don brought the police, while morally satisfying, left me a little disappointed. I expected more from you, Vic. Trixie deserved better.

After reading an entire page of Robbin's weird stream-of-consciousness about how he thinks a woman thinks about birth control, I simply could not continue. This is the second Tom Robbins I've abandoned for the way he writes about women and there won't be a third.

I almost stopped reading on page 12 when Torben says "neigh" instead of "nay" to indicate dissent.

I actually stopped reading on page 20 when Loftis uses "one in the same" when it should be "one and the same."

MY KINGDOM FOR AN EDITOR.

This is already a devastating book at a surface level; a series of bad information, bad decisions, bad management, and bad luck resulted in the very preventable loss of thirty-three lives.

But when you realize the depths of the fuckups and how devastating the effects of unregulated government, lack of oversight, climate change, and general indifference to the lives of those who work at sea you will be horrified all the way into your bones.