Reviews - Just One Damned Thing After Another: An Audible Original Drama

2.4k reviews for:

Just One Damned Thing After Another: An Audible Original Drama

Jodi Taylor

3.68 AVERAGE

b00kpanda's review against another edition

4.0

Lots of twists and turns... A little dragging in a few parts but overall an great entertaining read!

checkabookout's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous funny mysterious tense fast-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

This book was laugh out loud funny. I snorted. Repeatedly. Pretty sure my fiance was pleased to hear I finished it and this would no longer be my wind down bed time read. But seriously if the premise sounds at ALL intriguing, pick it up. There are literally 14 of these books lol

mickid_booksnbees's review against another edition

3.0

funny lighthearted mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

mrsemmaverdi's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous funny medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

marikoreading's review against another edition

1.25

adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

BE AWARE THIS BOOK HAS MULTIPLE SEXUAL ASSAULT SCENES
I finished this book on the toilet because that's what it deserved. If only I'd needed to poop then, it would have been perfect...

STUPID. S. T. U. P. I. D. My gods, this book was so STUPID!

If you are thinking of reading this for fun time travel with zany historians, don't, because that's not what you'll get. It's a background thing to endless boring violence, idiot plots (and not in the fun way), bodies stacking up like that means anything, some threat of evil guys from the future we're supposed to care about, rape culture...

I want to rewrite this book myself, I'm so disgusted. I can't-- think of a criticism of a book. No investment in any of the characters, showing not telling, boring violence, "yeah he sexually assaulted me but he's not a bad guy!," surprise pregnancy, punctuation mistakes, rape culture, randomly killing characters we barely remember because they were just introduced and we have no reason to care about them, anything. I thought that about this book while reading it. The one good scene- ONE- could have been the whole book. And this scene was just people planning and brainstorming in the background while our utterly infuriating (and not in a fun way) a main character flits around with another one of her random personality twists. There were so many moments I had no idea who was talking because the personalities were so wildly inconsistent.

WE NEVER EVEN ESTABLISHED THE BASIC RULES OF TIME TRAVEL IN THIS UNIVERSE?????

Here's all of my annotations, (mostly) without context:

Chapter 4
- So sick of the woman hate in this book. It's endless. Also she talked about how great the other historians are. Show it then!
Chapter 5
- No!!!! Stupid!!!!
- This is so out of nowhere
- yeAH DUH
- fatphobia
- stupid
- How do they have enough people for that? And how do they not prioritize relationships and communication?
Chapter 6
- Stupid "he's different when it's me" ugh so 2013
- Stupid and not in a fun way
- (to "I'm not bright") you got that right
- (to "and he kissed me") ew
- (to "sex is a bit like scratching a rash-- its nice when you stop) this better not all go out the window with some guy who's the best sex ever to sex
  - That is indeed what happened
Chapter 7
- No
- Bet bye then
- Ugh
Chapter 8
- yuck
- stupid
- shoot him
- It's so OBVIOUS he's bad it's TEDIOUS
Chapter 9
- Doubt it
Chapter 11
- Stupid
- This is so stupid
- I wish this was the end of the book
- Five YEARS??? HOW??? God this book SUCKS
Chapter 12
- nO FUCK THIS SO HARD THIS SUCKS
- Does she not remember that Mr. No Foreplay knew her in the future? Or does time travel change the future here? Sure would be nice if that was EXPLAINED
- SHOW DON'T TELL
- HOW??? AND OBVIOUSLY HE DID KNOW YOU AND THAT YOU ARE A HISTORIAN IN THE FUTURE WHICH YOU HAVE CONVENIENTLY FORGOTTEN GOD THIS IS SO STUPID
- Yet graduated with top points?
Chapter 14
- This was over a GUY? STUPID!
- N O HE DOES N O T
- I HATE THIS
- I'm hate finishing this book but FUCK THIS
- mORE RAPE WTF THEN SHE'S GOING TO FORGIVE THESE ASSHOLES UUUUUUGH I HATE THIS SO MUCH
- BITCH THE FUCK
Chapter 15
- Shut up
- Stupid
Chapter 17
- Duh. Idiots. Stupid. Now this is boring. You know why people read a time travel book? Time travel. History. Not drawn out bloody boring gratuitous violence. There are no connections to the characters and such a high body count from literally chapter 5 that we're supposed to be affected by
- Stupid
Chapter 18
- Oh no I'm so sad
- Stupid
- Who is she even talking to
- WHAT IS THIS

I would have DNF'd it by chapter 6 but I paid MONEY for this so I FINISHED IT DAMN IT. 1,300ish円 WASTED. BLOODY HELL. Here's how I'd rewrite it:
-Main character is still a woman with a doctorate in ancient culture studies, but she ACTS LIKE IT and this is applied in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. She's asexual and STAYS ASEXUAL.
-She's invited to work at this super secret society of historians that go back in time to preserve and protect artifacts in a historically-accurate manner, leaving them in their own time for someone to find in the future.
-We establish the BASIC RULES OF TIME TRAVEL IN THIS UNIVERSE- everything in the past is fixed, the future is a mystery. No time travel to the future, except the exact second you departed. It's not even possible.
-NO STUPID RANDOM OUT OF POCKET VILLAINS. No save the world/this is a big deal plots. We make the missions of our characters relatively low stakes, because a decent writer can invest readers in a low stakes plot! I promise it can happen!
-The book is only about 300 pages long. First quarter discovering the society, second quarter preparing for time travel, second half fun time travel adventures.
-There are about 50-100 people in the society, and they're separated into departments based on area of expertise. They come from all over the world; all sorts of languages, cultures, ages, religions, etc. The one thing everything has in common is a love of history and with it, their shared mission.
-Each department (e.g. Han Dynasty China) has people who also collaborate with other departments based on their even more specific realm of expertise/job as part of the team. Clothing, language, technology, medicine, religion, etc.
-The base is a castle with each department being completely decked out in culturally appropriate stuff (all non-stolen), and then there are shared places like the sewing room, woodshop, IT area, etc.
-This book confines our adventures to the Mesopotamian period, and each subsequent book in the series has a different main character joining the society and exploring their own period of expertise. Each book is team-written with the author and a historian.
-We explore how each person's own cultural biases change how they view history, even when each person is there. This is the theme of the books.
Okay writing that was super fun, I think I did get my money's worth out of this book after all. Maybe it's time for me to start writing a bit...

Content Warnings

des_thebookdragon's review against another edition

2.0

I won’t waste my, nor anyone else’s time, with a long review. This book was a great disappointment to me. The characters were flatly written, the “plot” was just a jumble of events, and it’s a waste of a good idea. I mean time traveling historians sounds like a great idea, alas it’s so badly executed I’ve decided to return the other three books in this series (there was a sale...).