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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
adventurous
funny
mysterious
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Honestly, this was a wild and wack ride but I really enjoyed it. I liked the literary elements alongside the funky time/history parts. Keen to see what happens in the next book.
Content Warnings
Minor: Confinement, Death, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Kidnapping, Grief, Murder, War, Injury/Injury detail
This is more of a 3.5 than a 3 star review for me. Which would usually see me erring on the side of an extra star... but just following The Eyre Affair, I read another book which was a 4, and I felt that I couldn't give the same rating to a book that I enjoyed less.
It's not that The Eyre Affair isn't enjoyable either! I feel like if I knew a bit more history and had read a couple of the novels that come up throughout the novel, it would have been an absolute riot. But as it was, having never read Jane Eyre or much Dickens, I felt like I was missing out on so many subtle nods to the books, that I was always a step behind trying to catch up.
The writing was great, the story really good, but I don't think I ever truly appreciated the plot as I would have with a bit more classics and history under my belt.
It's not that The Eyre Affair isn't enjoyable either! I feel like if I knew a bit more history and had read a couple of the novels that come up throughout the novel, it would have been an absolute riot. But as it was, having never read Jane Eyre or much Dickens, I felt like I was missing out on so many subtle nods to the books, that I was always a step behind trying to catch up.
The writing was great, the story really good, but I don't think I ever truly appreciated the plot as I would have with a bit more classics and history under my belt.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This book was way longer than it needed to be, with so many tangential plot lines. Thursday Next is a single woman written by a man who thinks all women would be distracted by thoughts of the one they let go after 10 years and is so sad to still be single. I don’t think there needed to be a resolution to the pining, or even a romantic subplot, but here we are. I prefer Fforde’s Nursery Crimes Division books.
Although the story is ultimately enjoyable, the author seems to be using it to make sure the reader must either read, hear, if he is listening to it, or say, if he is reading it out loud, the word, "shit," as many times as possible. There's even a character named Jack Shit. It was funny at first, but then it just started to become tedious. It helps to have a working knowledge of the novel, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, before starting this one, but even if one avoids Bronte and Austin like the plague, this story is still interesting.
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This is a really really difficult book for me to rate. I'm not even entirely sure how I feel about it. There's so many moving parts and names and places and things to remember that I'm honestly not sure I even I understand the story and anything but decently vague terms.
There's definitely a lot of things I did not like. Because it was written in 2009 it has many instances of casual fat jokes and sexism. Those were obnoxious. While this is a mystery it is very much a literary mystery so it's very slow and dense. Theres a ton of on page discussion of political uprisings, war, and machinations. In fact the entire first chapter pretty much is all discussing and info dumping about the fictional war between Russia and England on the Crimean peninsula.
The summary and title are incredibly misleading. I went into this thinking it was going to be a largely a story about how Jane Eyre comes to life from her book and how she gets put back inside of it but Jane Eyre doesn't make it on page until 78% of the way through this book. I enjoy the overarching plot a lot and there are a lot of really cool features about who can travel into the books and who can travel out of the books and how in books impacts the story, etc and I even really enjoy the main villain but I just wish that the summary and title were different so that it was more honest about what the book is actually about.
I don't usually enjoy historical fiction but here it's not bad. I also usually don't enjoy any sort of alternate timeline/flashbacks/ inserts that aren't contemporaneous to the plot but here the entries in the beginning of the chapter are quite neat. They add context and thoughts from various perspectives within the world of the story but after the plot ends so it becomes something of an annotated novel of a story being told.
The narrator is really great. If you like the Loki TV show on Disney plus I think you will enjoy this because it deals very heavily with the actual abilities of time travel as in it discusses it in detail in many scenes. Its also incredibly detailed about various literary theories such as if William Shakespeare actually wrote all the works attributed to him. I haven't read any of the big classics so this was definitely too detailed and niche for me.
There's definitely a lot of things I did not like. Because it was written in 2009 it has many instances of casual fat jokes and sexism. Those were obnoxious. While this is a mystery it is very much a literary mystery so it's very slow and dense. Theres a ton of on page discussion of political uprisings, war, and machinations. In fact the entire first chapter pretty much is all discussing and info dumping about the fictional war between Russia and England on the Crimean peninsula.
The summary and title are incredibly misleading. I went into this thinking it was going to be a largely a story about how Jane Eyre comes to life from her book and how she gets put back inside of it but Jane Eyre doesn't make it on page until 78% of the way through this book. I enjoy the overarching plot a lot and there are a lot of really cool features about who can travel into the books and who can travel out of the books and how in books impacts the story, etc and I even really enjoy the main villain but I just wish that the summary and title were different so that it was more honest about what the book is actually about.
I don't usually enjoy historical fiction but here it's not bad. I also usually don't enjoy any sort of alternate timeline/flashbacks/ inserts that aren't contemporaneous to the plot but here the entries in the beginning of the chapter are quite neat. They add context and thoughts from various perspectives within the world of the story but after the plot ends so it becomes something of an annotated novel of a story being told.
The narrator is really great. If you like the Loki TV show on Disney plus I think you will enjoy this because it deals very heavily with the actual abilities of time travel as in it discusses it in detail in many scenes. Its also incredibly detailed about various literary theories such as if William Shakespeare actually wrote all the works attributed to him. I haven't read any of the big classics so this was definitely too detailed and niche for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Blood, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail
adventurous
funny
informative
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Meh. This book felt like it was trying too hard. There was all this stuff I should have liked but somehow didn't. And that ending with the whole wedding shenanigans? Barf.
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
The best part of the book was the last 25%. The beginning part of the book was boring. I'm not motivated to read further books in the series.