caroline_mclaughlin's reviews
54 reviews

Vicious by V.E. Schwab

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

4.0

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner

adventurous mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

3.0

This book has so much promise but it never really hooked me. It felt like the entire thing was the beginning of a larger story drawn out to fill the time. I’m also finding that I’m really not a fan of “motherhood” narratives, especially those focused on a woman discovering she may be pregnant after her partner’s infidelity is revealed and the subsequent ruminations on the loss of her chance at motherhood, which is of course supposedly the only thing all women want. If that hadn’t been one of the primary focuses of the story, I think it would’ve been much better.

Bluets by Maggie Nelson

emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

Interesting concept. I’ve found that I struggle with poetry and short form prose in the same way that I struggle with art museums. I’m incapable of slowing down and enjoying, but I often enjoy the individual pieces when shown separately. I did enjoy some pieces, and despised others, so the score kind of averaged out. I do wish a book like this had been given the credit rupi kaur was given so I could’ve bought this book as a college freshman instead and actually read something worthwhile. 

However, despite some of the insight I gained from it, I thought it suffered from some of the same pitfalls many books like this one often do. Maybe this is just my personal taste, but I found that the many gratuitous sexual descriptions all felt intended for shock value or to appear “gritty and raw” and none seemed to truly add anything to the piece as a whole. There were also a few other bad takes I found with respect to the Middle East. Placing these in between quirky epithets and yearning passages often felt inappropriate. I’m sure it’s composition in proximity to 9/11 did nothing to help that, but it made the reading experience much more uncomfortable. Overall, it had some interesting ruminations and some truly, seemingly unintentionally off putting sentiments.

Winter by Marissa Meyer

adventurous funny fast-paced

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

4.25

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

informative reflective 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? It's complicated

2.75

Not sure I like Margaret Atwood’s writing after reading this and good bones and simple murders. I liked one of her poetry collections, and I actually found the poetry to be the best part of this book. I just wished she had written a few poems about these same topics instead of a full book where she didn’t really have anything new to add. Maybe this was very “new” when it was written, but I think now, with the many other takes on Greek myth, this is far less interesting. 

Unfortunately, it falls into the same trap many retellings told from a woman’s perspective seem to fall in: placing the main focus still on the main male character with some extra commentary, rather than really fleshing out the new protagonist. I also felt as though this book was lacking in love. No one seemed to really care for each other (Helen was awful, Odysseus is as bad as the rumors, Telemachus is less admirable, and even Penelope seems distant). This made it hard to care about anyone, and with the short length of the story and the somewhat repetitive writing, it was impossible to feel anything emotionally towards the outcome. Overall, though this may have been an outstanding work when it was written, it has been surpassed by other retellings, and I would suggest simply reading Circe instead.

War Storm by Victoria Aveyard

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

This book was only marginally better than the previous two, and I had a hard time distinguishing between whether I was enjoying the second half better, or was just feeling excited to be nearly done.

I don’t understand the point of adding in multiple perspectives for the final book, especially from those we have never heard from before. It feels like a cheap way to extend the story without actually introducing anything of interest. Also, why were they introduced when so many of them just think about how amazing mare is. I don’t need more perspectives talking about how fantastic she is when she is literally the least intriguing character in this whole series. I get that she is considered the protagonist, but there is no way that every other character would think about her that much, especially Iris.

This series seriously would’ve benefitted from a better editor to cut down so much of the unnecessary content. The amount of repeated phrases did nothing to help the theme or anything story wise, and just made every conversation so much longer. How many times do we need to have convos with diplomats or other leaders about the same exact things over and over and over again? It’s obvious that in a war, this would be necessary, but we don’t need to read it! We know maven lied, we know that mare was forced to do things, we know all of this info and we have been told it 6 times over every single time that anyone in this book talks to anyone even kinda new. The book was trying way too hard to be Game of Thrones with its level of political intrigue, but it lacks any of the world building to support something like that. I have to assume everyone who loves this book was constantly skimming or took super long breaks between reading each section because there is no way that the repetition wouldn’t bother you otherwise. 

This whole series had the tiniest bit of promise with the first book, but the narration style and the constant infodumping and unnecessary details made it so incredibly mediocre and boring, I don’t know how it has been recommended so much. I always feel there is something to gain from finishing a book despite not enjoying it, but this has absolutely proved that wrong. Just because it picks up a bit close to the end doesn’t redeem the meandering plot and repetitive nature of the book. This series is not worth reading and especially not worth finishing.

King's Cage by Victoria Aveyard

adventurous slow-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? It's complicated

2.0

This book is like 3 times longer than it should be and even though there is quite a bit of action, it’s so boring. There are three perspectives, but if you didn’t title them, there would be almost no way of knowing they’re different people. Not a single one of them has a unique voice and literally all 3 of them spend a good majority talking about maven/cal or their brother, because they all have one that is often their primary motivation. The only difference is Evangeline barely had her pov introduced and it was already more interesting than the entire previous book. Even despite this, all three spend far too much time reiterating the same things and even repeating info from the previous books which further adds to their lack of distinction. They each have to describe every motion and feeling that crosses their mind, and though I also feel that need in my day to day life, it creates the dullest reading experience. I don’t need to know that you can feel the lighting under your skin for the 50th time or that you miss your brother, I could pick that up from behavior if the author actually trusted the reader to draw the occasional conclusion.

Beyond this, the world building is terrible. I never know where we are or who is fighting who or why or what the locations mean. Not a single aspect of this book has personality or individualism and that really makes it all blend together. Not only was the plot meandering yet again, but I still don’t find most of the characters compelling at this point, and the story is almost finished. As someone who genuinely feels like they have to read every series they start, including little one off books or short stories, this book is making me seriously reconsider.

It’s really just an unfortunate mix of every other book in the genre that is much better than it (shadow and bone, cinder, and even winters promise or cruel prince), and even the worst of any of these has been better and even just shorter than the best of this series. I’ve never struggled so much to remember which things were from this book as opposed to the others while I was reading. I would recommend any of those series over this one, and I can’t imagine that the last book is going to change my mind at all.

The Memory of Babel by Christelle Dabos

challenging mysterious medium-paced

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

3.75

This one took me a bit longer to get into than the previous, likely just because of the time jump and the new location, but I still really enjoyed it once I got into it. The world is just so interesting and it’s nice getting to explore all of its eccentricities. It really reminds me a lot of A Series of Unfortunate Events in the sense that the world is an odd hybrid with technology that seems to exist outside of time and characters and places filled with eccentricities to be explored. I love the new characters introduced, and if it wasn’t for the romance established previously, I could’ve rooted for Octavio and Ophelia easily. Loved Blaise and thought Mediana would’ve been interesting to see more of, but I also really missed old characters like Archibald and Fox. 

I do wish that the romance was a bit more fleshed out as I’m not totally convinced by it. The two characters have hardly interacted enough for them to claim they’re passionately in love with each other. I’m all for a slow burn, but this book tried to pick up where the last book left off in their romance, but there was a very long time skip in between that I feel should’ve factored into their relationship. 

Also, I would love if these books had a different translator. Some things are definitely getting lost in translation and some are being translated far too literally for this book. There are also a lot of descriptions of people and words used that were offensive, but it was very hard to tell if these were just mistranslations and our closest English terms just hold negative connotations. Would love to read it in French one day to see if that changes anything!

Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

I already didn’t enjoy the first book, but this one takes everything bad about the first book and makes it worse. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so bored reading a book, especially ya fantasy.  This book absolutely suffers from act II lull and it’s felt like the characters were wandering relatively aimlessly throughout. In the end, it felt like little progress had been made and there was little intrigue as to what will happen next, despite the story absolutely trying to convince me I should care. I’m pretty sure the 1 min pov dystopian story tiktoks have more depth than this and don’t waste hundreds of pages just reiterating the same boring lines over and over again (“I’m the lightning girl” “anyone can betray you” etc). 

And, as far as mare goes, I know she has a “special power”, but she really thinks highly of herself and her abilities despite literally no evidence of her skill. She has no personality, and despite her romance occurring throughout, there is essentially no indication of her romantic interest in any of the men. The only time she has called people attractive is when she referred to Evangeline or other women, and she frequently displays disgust at Cal and other’s attempts to show her romantic affection. I’m not convinced she actually likes men, despite the book half-heartedly trying to state otherwise.

Also this book is so full of weird or badly stated metaphors that make the writing seem juvenile. The one I remember best is “they followed us like rats would a mouse,” and I have no idea what that’s supposed to indicate. Once it said something like “he lifted his palms up like a man surrendering to a battle” and I don’t understand why she didn’t just say “he lifted his palms, surrendering…” I was so confused by so many choices made throughout the story though that, after a while, noticing how bad the literary devices were was just funny.

Out of Love by Hazel Hayes

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

2.75

From the beginning, I knew this book wouldn’t be for me, but since I typically love most things I’ve seen from Hazel (short films and music videos), I wanted to give this story the benefit of the doubt. However, as someone who has followed her career, this book felt far too autobiographical to enjoy. It often felt like I could cast every character in the book as someone I’ve seen her collaborate with, and this made me spend a lot of the book just wondering if the real people did some of the things the fictional versions did.

The story had a clear plot despite its jumps through time in each chapter, but it almost felt more like a collection of essays or notes app rambling journals about grieving the end of a relationship more than a true story.  My favorite chapter was between the sheets, which felt like a poem, and my least favorite was the bodies chapter as it exemplified one of my biggest issues with the book. Throughout the book, I felt like I was being forced to agree with the protagonist, even though I often found her opinions to be misguided. I understand it’s a complicated look at the relationship, but it still often felt like it was missing nuance. I don’t think there’s enough mystery chapter to chapter either. Unlike most stories that go in reverse, it doesn’t feel like new things are revealed that were obscured before as much as just reiterated from the previous chapter. This makes it very easy to lose interest as literally everything has already been revealed and there is absolutely no suspense. I’m really hopeful that Hazel will continue to write and create new interesting stories, hopefully more along the horror/sci-fi genre where she does so well.