sydneythewhale's reviews
332 reviews

The Switch by Beth O'Leary

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funny lighthearted medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Feb. 2022: 4.75⭐️

Beth O'Leary has DONE IT AGAIN‼️‼️ This book is like a warm hug and I love it so much.
What Every Woman Knows by J.M. Barrie

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medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Jan. 2022: 4⭐️
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

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funny informative medium-paced

4.25

Jan. 2022: 4.25⭐️

Me?? Finishing a book in January?? 👀👀👀sus
Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner

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tense medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Dec. 2021: 4.5⭐️

hyperventilated as soon as I finished this so you know it was good
The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green

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funny hopeful informative reflective

4.75

Dec. 2021: 4.75⭐️
Paper Girls, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Oct. 2021: 3⭐️
The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang

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lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Oct. 2021: 3.5⭐️

As much as this book was enjoyable to read, it still contains the sentence “Stella didn’t seem to know it, but she had the kind of nipples men and babies dreamed about” and that is actually a federal crime.
Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski

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challenging reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Sep. 2021: 3.5⭐️

"And the odds had been stacked against us from the start: we had no manual, no one to show us the way. Not one example of a happy couple made up of boys. How were we supposed to know what to do? Did we even believe that we deserved to get away with happiness?"
Seconds by Bryan Lee O’Malley

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adventurous fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Aug. 2021: 4⭐️

Absolutely devoured this one. Great, fast-paced plot that keeps you engaged the whole time, plus super cool art and narration styles. Have a feeling it wont't be very memorable, but it was certainly entertaining for the 1.5 hours I was reading it!
Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark by Cecelia Watson

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funny informative medium-paced

4.25

Aug. 2021: 4.25⭐️

Wow yay for punctuation! I thoroughly enjoyed this, especially the latter half in which Watson delves into examples of semicolon use in various authors' writing and how those examples connect to broader societal ideas, like the legal system and accessibility in academic writing. This book is so engaging (even for non-grammar-fanatics) because of the ways Watson addresses the larger implications of punctuation use and breaks down what it means to use punctuation "correctly." I especially liked how she centered much of the book around the message of "precise language use is important not for the sake of following a set of rules but because it impacts how we connect and empathize with each other."