bratatouille's reviews
168 reviews

Sirens & Muses by Antonia Angress

4.5

I started this with low hopes, expecting another book about the problems of a mediocre white woman. I was gleefully wrong. The cast is, in fact, all white people so I can’t say anything about that. HOWEVER, this story follows four different people at the same prestigious art college and I have never been so compelled by characters before. It’s not that they’re particularly interesting or dynamic, but the entirety of the book is written like you’re following four humans. I understand that that sounds obvious and simple, but what I mean is that these characters don’t do or say things for plot. They aren’t aware of what the others are doing or saying; they don’t rely on another character to propel them forward. They are simply living. Every choice, action, reaction, and emotion is done in a way that feels like you are watching them live. They aren’t pushing plot or emotional development, they’re doing what I do every day. I found myself enraptured in the unfolding of events and could feel myself grieve when I reached the end. I went into this COMPLETELY blind and found what was truly a surprise gem. For those that need more enticing: gay. And they were roommates!

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

funny mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

When I was looking to cleanse my palette of the thousand page, high fantasy, political intrigue book I’m currently struggling with, I had imagined myself with a cozy, witty, trashy romance book. In no way was I expecting this small-town true-crime podcast detective book to fill that hole for me. Life works in mysterious ways. Is this the best book I’ve ever read? No. But sometimes I’m not looking for the world’s most impactful piece of literature. I don’t necessarily always want wagyu steak. Sometimes I just need some fucking Mac and cheese. And this book? This is Annie’s shells and white cheddar, baby. 

I was concerned about the podcast formatting, but it switches between Lucy’s POV and the podcast episodes. Which, surprisingly, largely propel the plot forward. The characters in this are incredibly entertaining which overshadows how one dimensional some of them are. This is Tintera’s adult fiction debut and although you can feel the young adult fiction roots in the writing, this gives it room to be whimsical and downright funny. Some stuff felt gimmicky, but ended up panning out surprisingly well. BIG fan of the grandma in this story. Although I have mixed feelings about the ending, I find that mysteries as a genre struggle to pin an answer that is a satisfying culmination of the last 300 pages. Simply put, you cannot please everyone. But I am quite pleased and would totally read this again.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence and Murder

Moderate: Domestic abuse

If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha

3.25

This is entirely about a group of four Korean women living in New York and the intricacies of their culture and social lives. I love me a society gossip book. It holds a magnifying glass to a lot of beauty and success standards in Asian culture, but also somehow ended up being a touching story about women finding themselves and deciding their worth. I read so many books where the central characters are white, that it always hits me like a ton of bricks when I see experiences or traditions I can relate to reflected back to me in the pages. I’m glad I read this! However, it didn’t leave enough of an impression for me to read again.

You, Again by Kate Goldbeck

funny medium-paced

4.0

This is a good romcom. I laughed, I cried, I wished the characters were less human and more fiction so that I could be mad at them for sucking. Incredible gender-swapped Harry Met Sally vibes. It was a bit more crass than I would have liked, but as a former improv kid? I love the representation. Good cozy fun, would absolutely read again. I did bawl my eyes out.

More romances should end with being proposed to with a cock ring.

I will be purchasing a physical copy. This is advertised as enemies to lovers but it’s hardly even rivals to lovers idk why the industry keeps doing this. It’s good on its own! You don’t have to trigger-word advertise it!

Almond by Won-pyung Sohn

3.0

I adore literary fiction because I truly do not care if anything happens in a book. I’m so interested in characters and weird relationships that it doesn’t matter to me if the plot is lacking. The concept of the main character allows for the author to dig into situations and areas of human emotion/interaction that is harder to dig your heels into otherwise. It was a quick read, I was taken by the story enough to start and keep going until it stopped. A lot of people found this moving and impactful, but it was really missing that je ne sais quoi for me! I thought we would reach it in the end, but alas.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

2.5

The first half of this I really enjoyed! This fall into a cultish existence where moral judgement becomes entirely skewed through the seek of something higher is entirely up my alley. The characters were diverse and intriguing. Although slower than what I typically prefer, I was willing to allow Miss Donna her lengthy asides. The use of literary devices throughout the work is expert. She’s wonderful at showing and not telling, which is something I thoroughly enjoy in an author. All that being said, Book 2 sucked. It was over dramatic, frustrating, and parts of the plot felt incredibly lazy. It hinges entirely on the trait of a character that was barely even alluded to in Book 1. If looking at a wiki page or summary of the contents of The Secret History, it would seem like an exciting and wild topsy turvy story of collision after collision within a corrupt group of people. However, at a certain point, the author’s writing becomes so drawn out and irrelevant that you entirely lose the thrill of the interesting events in the expanse of the dull. There are several characters and instances that are thrust into the reader which have no effect on anything in the slightest and also never come up again. The author low key talks shit about the only relevant female character the entire book. The main protagonist is incredibly uninteresting and sort of a dick. Every other character is undeniably a dick and they all suck, but at least they’re interesting. There was so much classism and misogyny that wasn’t really justified by the context. The author? Sort of? Give the same weight of absurdity to both gayness and incest?? So much of this was head spinning. Am I glad I read it? Sure. I can understand, from a wide lens, why this book garners the reputation that it does. However, looking directly at it I shall never read it again or ever recommend it to anyone else.

Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda

challenging dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

There is an incredibly niche sub-genre of book that I enjoy, which I lovingly refer to as “crooked girlhood.” These are stories that clearly display the diabolical, perverse, and primal side of a feminine childhood. The unseen oddities of growing up in a panopticon of gender. Jawbone is, perhaps, the clearest example of this that I have found to date. It is feral and horrifying but, also, simply a group of schoolgirls. The story itself jumps between timelines and POVS, which I am not typically a fan of. I struggled with the character names for a good third of the book but this was likely because I was listening as opposed to reading. Ojeda paints unsettling scenarios that have little motive behind them, not to the fault of the author, but because young girls act on whim: there doesn’t need to be more reason than the desire to do it. The story begins with a girl waking tied up, having been kidnapped by her teacher. We follow the stories of both teacher and student that led us here. I found the relationships in this to be incredibly well depicted, but something about the lack of true consequence in any scenario leaves something to be desired. Although the ending is interesting, it didn’t go far enough in either direction of cathartic or appalling for me to feel satisfied. I do think I would read this again, but I wasn’t wowed. 

Animal by Lisa Taddeo

dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No

3.75

I adore the way that Taddeo sinks her claws into a reader and drags them along for the ride. Her storytelling is raw and violent in a way that is grotesquely, uncomfortably, human. The topics touched in this range from mildly uncomfortable debauchery to nausea-inducing evils. I can’t say that she handles them with grace, but there is a surprising air of dignity latched into ever sentence in this novel. Joan, our protagonist, goes on a journey that flashes between past and present. This back and forth is occasionally confusing, but is paced in a way that is infuriatingly good. When you become attached to the outcome of one timeline, Taddeo throws you back into the other. Although a large part of the story, sex is never depicted in a titillating fashion. Instead, it reads more like a means to an end or a necessary evil. This is immensely a feminine rage book. It’s not quite on the Gone Girl level, but maybe more unhinged instead of calculated. I can’t deny the surprising moments of clarity where I would see myself reflected in Joan despite how little I cared for her. I would rate it higher for prose alone, but often times I felt that the story would drag or that some sections were strictly unnecessary. After loving Three Women as much as I did, I am in no way disappointed by this follow up work of hers.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Rape, Gun violence, Murder, Suicide, and Miscarriage

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship and Child death

I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No

2.5

This was thrilling and suspenseful, yet somehow simultaneously so boring. The beginning starts off interesting and odd. An unnamed girl keeps reviving eerie calls from her own number that always leaves the same voicemail. She is on a road trip to meet her boyfriends parents and is thinking of ending things with him. Most of the story takes place in the car and cuts back and forth to different memories of the protagonist’s. The middle of the book truly starts to slog. The twist at the end is compelling! Part of me wants to say that it’s impactful, but I struggle with stories that have twist endings. IMO, a lot of the time the twist doesn’t come as a neat unexpected extra flavor of the plot. Instead, most of the book simply feels like a lead into some grand reveal on the authors part. This book definitely felt like that. Frankly, I’m not entirely sure that the ending makes a ton of sense when tracking back through the rest of the story. I spent the entirety of the book with these two characters and i still somehow have no sense of who they are.  🤷🏻‍♀️ It was an intriguing and short enough read. There’s a movie out somewhere now and I kept hearing about it so I’m glad I read it, but I wouldn’t read it again and have zero interest in the film.

Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross

adventurous reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

I’m having mixed opinions about this. It falls into a lot of the tropes that YA books about desperate, lonely, hard-knock, youths do. This book has been raved about immensely and holds all the magical rivals to lovers tropes I like so I figured it was finally time to submerge. I’m not particularly a fan of war settings, but the magical war was mostly a backdrop for the first half of the story so I was able to ease myself into it. The fantasy level here is minimal, therefore easy to process. The war itself is caused by the gods but, again, is not immediately relevant to the plot until later on. The only other truly magical aspect is the typewriter that allows our protagonists to essentially e-mail. Despite its setting, the story is surprisingly cozy. That being said, don’t get too comfortable. I can’t rave about the writing style or depth of characters, but I suspect this is a stark example of, “Jack of all trades, Master of None: better than a Master of One.” I found myself truly invested once I reached 25% and was giggling and kicking my feet and crying along with our characters. There is nothing truly remarkable about this experience, in fact, I would argue that the beginning is exhaustingly reminiscent of every other YA war romantasy. However, I thoroughly enjoyed the read. The ending felt incredibly rushed as I was reading, but I was under the impression that this was a stand alone novel (surprise! It’s not!) and wasn’t prepared for it to end abruptly with unanswered questions. I’m probably gonna read the next one when it comes out 🤷🏻‍♀️