sophiesometimesreads's reviews
256 reviews

I quite enjoyed the first two parts of this and was curious as to where it was going, but the third part and ending let me down. Some of the descriptions of scents were poetic and beautiful, but towards the end it got a little much at times. I felt like we didn't get enough character development, and I was confused about what to think about Fisher as a person by the end. The ending was so rushed, it felt like the book just ended in the middle of the conclusion. This book ended up just being okay for me, with some parts I enjoyed and some parts that I really didn't. I would consider giving this author another go, though, so a three star rating it is.

This book had some good moments and I loved seeing South Asian rep in a romance novel but it also felt a little surface level, and the relationship was insta-love. 

I liked the development in Niki and how she (mostly) grew out of her people pleasing ways and stopped comparing herself to her sister. The sister dynamics in this book were interesting and one of the best parts.

The characters themselves weren't overly fleshed out and deep, with the exception of Niki in the ways mentioned above. I feel like if we had gotten more about the characters and why they worked together, this would've hit harder for me. Instead, I didn't really see why the characters had fallen so hard for each other after only a week, so the insta-love didn't really work for me (though, to be honest, insta-love rarely does work for me). The way they were written, particularly Niki, as the book was written in first person POV, felt a little juvenile, and I wouldn't have picked that she was 29 years old if the book hadn't told us.

The resolution was also so quick, we didn't see them resolve any of the problems that caused the third act conflict/break-up. I wish we had had more than a 9-page chapter dedicated to this.

I would've loved more about Diwali, as we only spend about a quarter of the book on the holiday, and about Niki's time in Punjab with her family, instead of one paragraph about it. In saying this, I really liked what we did get of Diwali and the atmosphere it painted, as well as the description of the settings throughout India.

I think it was good of the author to bring up the not-so-good parts of India and it's culture, particularly caste and sexism, but I think to balance this out, it would've been good if we had had more focus on the positives and the things she enjoyed about being in India (apart from Sam). This could've come through by expanding on her time in Punjab with her family and actually showing us how she felt like she fit in there, instead of just mentioning it as a passing line.

Overall, this was a quick and easy read and I generally had a decent time with it, but I would've liked a little more depth to the characters, storyline and cultural setting. I would love to see more South Asian representation in romance like this, though!

I really enjoyed this!! I honestly just wanted it to be longer to flesh out the story and characters even more, though they didn't necessarily feel lacking in this context either. I just wanted more! This started slower and didn't seem too much like horror for the first half, but then it really ramped up in the second half. I liked the writing style and T Kingfisher really painted a gruesome and horrific picture with some of her descriptions through that second half, but even through the first I really enjoyed the creepy gothic vibes. I would definitely read more from this author and the second book in this duology.

I don't rate memoirs but, like the first one, I really enjoyed this! Lewis brought humour, emotion and vulnerability to this engaging retelling of his late teens to early 20s as he continued his trans journey. I liked the video game theme and how his older self still makes appearances and comments throughout.

I did not know the original story of the Ramayana going into this and my current knowledge (so far) only comes from what I learnt with this book, so I am rating this on face value and cannot give any opinion on how much justice this does the original myth. I am also not Hindu, so I cannot comment on the quality of this representation. I can see a bit of a mixed bag of opinions regarding the faithfulness to the original myth and it's depiction of Hinduism in the reviews, which the author seemed to have predicted in her Q&A and Author's Note at the back of the book, though noting the author herself is Hindu.

This is very much a character-driven story and follows the life of Kaikeyi from her childhood through to adulthood. I had moments where I was more connected to Kaikeyi and moments where I wasn't, but overall I enjoyed reading her story.

I wonder if maybe the pushing on the misogyny being Gods' word at the start of the start of the novel was a little heavy-handed and may not sit well some people, particularly those who practice the faith, and we could've had a bit more clarity on this not being the actual opinion of the gods than one line later on. However, as I said, I am not Hindu so cannot comment too deeply on this, it was just something I noted when reading.

Overall, I enjoyed this and I am motivated to read more into the story of Ramayana in the future to see how this compares and delve deeper into the world of Hindu mythology.

My three thoughts whilst reading this were:
1. The narrator makes Lucy sound in her 60s instead of late 20s
2. I could really go some scones with jam and cream right now
3. Wow, this narrator's Australian accent is AWFUL

Also, the culprit was literally the most obvious person.

This was once again super cute! I just felt some of the translations were a little clunky and the cafe owner gave me some odd vibes. But otherwise super cute and I enjoyed it, and I will be continuing the series.

For the most part, the actual writing style of this book wasn't awful. The tropes felt a bit overdone, but it was alright to enjoyable most times and I think I enjoyed the plot/twists in general more than The Housemaid (which I read earlier this year and has essentially the same plot, though this was published first). In saying this, there were a few things that didn't sit right with me and made me have to reduce the rating from 3 stars to two.

Firstly, I felt that it was awful to position what Daphne did as okay because Amber was an awful person and "got what she deserved". Switching places and leaving Amber stuck in a domestic abuse situation with a manipulative and abusive man is not getting what she deserved. Getting what she deserved would've been jail time, or getting called out publically. Domestic violence is NEVER a situation that someone "deserves". I don't think this topic was handled with as much care as it needed to in this case, which is furthered by my next point.

In a similar vein, I really didn't like how many scenes there were leading up to and inferring marital rape. I understand we wanted to see how awful Jackson was as a husband to Daphne, and I recognise that the scenes weren't overly detailed when it came to the sex part, but I think once was enough to understand the gravity of the situation and what was happening, the other few scenes after that were not necessary.

Lastly, I didn't like the subtle fatphobia woven into this book, particularly in Amber's storyline. Amber's section of the book is written in third person, but it is never stated that these fatphobic thoughts were Amber's. I believe that this was the authors' intentions but it really irks me when the author writes in third person but doesn't make it clear what is the characters uninformed and gross opinions, instead of stating them like fact. I could've written it off had this been written in first person, as the character is directly narrating, but in third person it made it sound like the author was condoning these fatphobic views.

Overall, this could've been an okay book had these things been addressed. It wasn't super thrilling though.

There were elements of this that I really enjoyed - Katrina's character and her growth, the relationship between Shizuka, Astrid and Katrina, the donuts. To me, the sci-fi elements felt a little out of place for the most part and we could've gotten the story without them. I also think that I would've gotten more from some of this had I been more into classical music and the technical aspects of violin playing. The pacing was a bit off, and it got slow through the middle, where it felt like not much happened. In saying this, I did have a decent time with this, even though I wasn't as connected to the characters and story as I would've liked to be.

I really enjoyed this one! As a science nerd, all the science talk in this really scratched an itch for me. However, even if you don't have a lot of science knowledge, I think this is really accessible sci-fi as the theory behind things are explained well, but you'll need an initial interest in science for it to work for you.

The only thing I wanted was an extra chapter at the end that explained

how Earth went whilst Grace was out in space, and more explanation around how they fixed the problem rather than a bit of a hand-wavey "oh hey I guess they figured it out and there must be some people left if it was all okay in the end!". There was a lot of focus initially on predicting how Earth would fare as the sun dimmed but we never got closure on that.

In saying this, I really enjoyed the rest of it. Rocky was hilarious and wonderful, and even Grace was mostly endearing to me towards the end. 

I listened to the audiobook which I think may have meant the humour and tone of the book translated better than if it was written, and it even had some sound effects! I would definitely recommend the audiobook if you're into those.