daiinty's reviews
154 reviews

New Names for Lost Things by Noor Unnahar

challenging dark emotional inspiring sad fast-paced

3.0

“But to be a poet without being tragic would have been quite a shame.” — Noor Unnahar

years ago i was gifted unnahar’s guided poetry journal and was definitely intrigued when seeing her name on this poetry collection. i absolutely love the concept of the poems having companion collages scattered throughout the collection. i always find myself looking for innovation when it comes to poetry. unnahar’s poetry in this collection captures a mournful solitude. themes of grief, loneliness, and being far from one’s family and home are extremely prominent. i adored all of the subtle calls to unnahar’s pakistani culture that really made these pieces feel viscerally personal. within the onslaught of generic, base level poetry books being mass published, this felt like it had more substance. though, i will say, there were times i do feel some of the poems pandered to the “tumblr poet aesthetic”. while i do appreciate cohesiveness within poetry collections, i feel that with the themes of grief, loneliness and home being as strong as they were, i found that some of the poem began to bleed together and i was wishing for a bit more variety.

favorite poems:

“a personal tragedy”

“a reluctant heir”

“alter ego: an artist at work”

“when asked how they make art, the artist said”

“part-everything daughter”

Romancing Mister Bridgerton by Julia Quinn

emotional funny lighthearted medium-paced

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

3.0

“Deep inside, she knew who she was, and that person was smart and kind and often even funny, but somehow her personality always got lost somewhere between her heart and her mouth, and she found herself saying the wrong thing or, more often, nothing at all.” — Julia Quinn

officially all caught up for the season three premiere this friday! colin was certainly a step up from benedict’s toxic behavior, even if he is quite a bit aloof. i really enjoyed the way quinn goes about revealing the identity of lady whistledown and how this secret hangs over the plot/development of the characters until the very end when all is revealed to the ton. i absolutely love penelope’s character. i think she is my second favorite behind kate. i see a lot of people have deemed colin quite boring, and while i can agree that his aloofness maybe made the relationships lack that fiery passion we’re used to seeing, i think that was kind of the whole point. colin learns that falling in love isn’t like being struck by lightning, sometimes it is a slow and steady thing that catches us by surprise. 

with that being said, it did make the book not as riveting as the others. there was much less of a “will they won’t they” play going on. his proposition of marriage after the carriage ride felt a little abrupt, and while that wasn’t meant to be where there was the declaration of love, it still felt a little awkward. throughout the book we see that penelope gains self confidence when fortified by the presence of colin, but i think i would have liked to see more character development on her end where she finds that strength within herself. even at the very end it is colin who declares that she is lady whistledown, and pen just kind of stands there blushing. i wanted to see her really own it. 

An Offer From a Gentleman by Julia Quinn

adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• 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

“‘They say that a smart person learns from her mistakes,’ she interrupted, her voice forcefully ending his protest. ‘But a truly smart person learns from other people’s mistakes.’” — Julia Quinn

once i pick up one of these bridgerton books i truly burn right through them. this was no exception. i’m a true lover of re-tellings, so as soon as i recognized the attributes of a cinderella story i got really excited. while obviously a cinderella re-telling, i thought it was done tastefully, especially how sophie and benedict’s relationship evolved throughout the book. also, after the book i am the biggest violet bridgerton stan. if violet bridgerton doesn’t have any fans, it’s because im dead. 

benedict, however, i’m less of a fan of. for nearly the entire book he manipulated, gaslit, and mansplained to poor sophie to get what he wanted from her. i really wanted to like benedict’s story based on the narrative the netflix series has built up, but this was just kind of a disappointment. i found it hard to enjoy their love story because benedict was being so slimy most of the time. the saving grace of this book for me what truly sophie’s story and her character. i really loved this different view that an MC in the working class provides to this universe. 

Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

“Magic is the first sip of good wine that makes the edges of your vision blur. Magic is the cool breeze of the boardwalk at night and organ music in the air. Magic is landing a grand jeté and nearly going deaf with hate crowd's applause. Magic is the low flicker of tavern lights and the girl your courting leaning close so you can kiss.” — Ava Reid

another great book club book! reid’s prose is truly captivating and this was a book that i just couldn’t put down. she has such a command over mood and imagery that is as smooth as the butter marlinchen smooths over the black bread. even with its darker themes, the overall aesthetic of this book was absolutely divine: the ballet theatre, the gothic manor, the crumbling garden, the russian influences, all of it. it’s captivating how reid is able to seamlessly blend the sublime and grotesque with beauty. i feel like reid effectively captures marlinchen’s stockholm syndrome towards her father and the complex feeling that surround their relationship. i know a lot of the gore and darker themes weren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but honestly i feel like after reading the outlander series it takes a lot to phase me. i went into this book expecting some messed up stuff.

i feel like while there was character growth for marlinchen in the end, it did feel kind of stunted. it wouldn’t make sense for her to suddenly become strong and overpower her father, and we saw her fall back into her father’s arms multiple times before the final blow with the juniper berries, but it seemed like that was explained away just by her father’s magic surrounding her. that did feel very vague. i also felt sevas was a bit more passive than i would have liked, completely infatuated with marlinchen, but why exactly? because she showed him kindness in the alley that night after the ballet? i feel like i needed a little more convincing there, but i did like the romance and their ending together. my only other critique is that some things were very vague, like marlinchen’s mother being fed to them, somehow i missed that until it was brought up nonchalantly like it was already discussed, and marlinchen’s leg being sawed off? that came up towards the end but i have no recollection of that happening or any mentions of a disability especially when running around oblya. was that just a metaphor? that’s what i’m unsure of. 

overall i really enjoyed this and will likely pick of more of reid’s work in the future!

Bronte's Mistress by Finola Austin

emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.5

“I need them, anyone, to embrace me, touch me, so I could feel alive.” — Finola Austin 

to me the FMC of this book seems like the type of complex woman character many people have been craving. while she is not a character whose actions and attitude you would really root for, her plights are very real and you find yourself empathizing with her need for love and and purpose in life. before this i had not really been privy to this alleged affair between branwell brontë and lydia robinson. i have been a lover of the brontë sisters for quite some time, and while fictional, this book added a very interesting lens to the literary family. i found it interesting how austin holds all of the brontë sisters in the periphery of lydia’s conscious, particularly charlotte who lydia is always finding herself comparing herself to. she feigns such a disdain for these sisters, though it is apparent that her venom comes from a place of jealousy and their ability to infiltrate the spheres of men, something she herself is consistently bemoaning her inability to do. she is truly a selfish character, and we see that all the way through to the end, but does she truly get what she wants with sir scott? 

i feel the ending seemed a little rushed. it seemed implied that though sir scott was what she wanted since before her first marriage, this would not be the union she truly wanted it to be. lydia wants it all: a love match and a man who will see her living very comfortably. i think the ending would have been more impactful had that dissatisfaction with what she had gotten in the end been driven home more. i also thought that the disconnection between her and her remaining children would have bothered her more, not because she was really partial to them in any way, but because being a wife and a mother is what in her eyes did give her value in this patriarchal society. she had regained the status of wife, but had lost her children in the process and i expected her to feel some loss of her former identity as mrs. robinson through that. 

i enjoyed the prose, but overall i think the book was just okay. the most intriguing thing to unpeel were the complexities of lydia, and see how her story would unfold in the end. 

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

“She would build herself a life of plenty. She would force her world to bloom as she’d made the pomegranate tree grow and Santángel would help her do it. Even if blood watered the soil.” — Leigh Bardugo

the merger of two of my favorite things: history and fantasy. 1500s spain is only an area of history in vaguely aware of, but i love when pieces of historical fiction introduce me to different eras in different countries and lead me down a rabbit hole of research. the aesthetics of this book were absolutely immaculate and transported me back to madrid, toledo and valencia that i visited two summers ago. i also love the emphasis of language and a remembered culture and that is what gives luzia her magic. contrary to some criticisms i’ve seen, i do believe this was a well done stand alone, i felt that luzia’s arc had been completed by the end of the book. her main goal and wish from the beginning of the book was to claw her way out of the kitchens and find the better life for herself she so desired. while the romance was a significant part of the book — and don’t get me wrong, i love it — it also felt like there was so much going on not only with luzia outside of that, but with the other characters as well. many of them felt fleshed out to me, particularly santángel, hualit, and doña valentina. 

while i have loved bardugo’s writing, the start to this felt a little clunky technically. i found myself dealing with some issues of spatial awareness, unsure when we got to a certain setting/scene or when we switched POVs. in the past i have lauded bardugo’s ability to seamlessly transition between POVs in a single chapter, but in the beginning of this book i found myself getting a little lost. this did improve as the book went on though. i also didn’t understand the role of the lady playwright quiteria escárega. i feel like she was built up to play a bigger role in the story but then ended up feeling like a very random add-in. my last critique is about the ending. while i loved it to the most part, how you were unsure of luzia and santángle’s fates until the very end, i do feel like the ending would have been more impactful had santángle died, which i don’t normally say. but i feel after centuries of service to the de paredes family and all of the bad he is alluded to have done, it would be very poetic for him to give his life for the woman who changed him irrevocably and finally find peace. i didn’t really understand why he came back to life everyday, that didn’t seem explained at all other than ~magic~. 

overall i found this to be a very compelling story with a cast of compelling characters. 

The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn

emotional funny hopeful tense medium-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

4.0

“Love's about finding the one person who makes your heart complete. Who makes you a better person than you ever dreamed you could be. It’s about looking in the eyes of your wife and knowing all the way to your bones that she's simply the best person you've ever known.” — Julia Quinn

it does surprise me how much i actually enjoy these books. i was reading this in tandem to rewatching the second season on netflix, and much like how i felt about the show i did enjoy anthony and kate’s story much more than daphne and simon’s. this couple’s biggest conflict was far less problematic. i feel like their “enemies to lovers” arch was believable and there were times i was literally cackling out loud at some of the situations the two found themselves in. i found the deviations from the book the show made really interesting. the show really delves into the sister dynamic between edwina and kate, and even gets to the point of edwina being at the alter with anthony. none of this happens in the book, and the book takes quite a different route of anthony’s unwillingness to find a love match. while i think the way the show handled things was much more dramatic, i think the book goes much further into anthony’s emotions and how deep his fears of loving and losing really go. one thing that really impresses me about quinn’s writing is how she is able to flawlessly go between POVs of the two love interests. i’ve seen this done poorly, and it can feel disjointing to read because you’re not sure of whose POV you’re in. with quinn’s switches i never feel that way, everything feels very fluid. i’m very excited to dive into the next book, which is not actually the subject of season three of the show.

Tomb Sweeping by Alexandra Chang

funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.0

“Lying there in her cramped room, in her small bed, Fufu, now eighteen, feels as though her world is the least significant seed in a pomegranate. She yearns for the whole fruit.” — Alexandra Chang

another book club book! this was quite different because we haven’t done a collection of short stories before which is not something i usually grab. as always i was excited for the change of pace in my reading. i’ve more recently been reading more realistic contemporary fiction, but nothing that primarily surround chinese culture like this. overall, i would say about half of the stories did really resonate with me. one’s that particular stood out were “li fan”, “to get rich is glorious”, “a visit”, and “tomb sweeping”. li fan nearly made me sob on an airplane. how it works backwards to tell this story of a promising young woman fallen into homelessness, emphasizing how destitution can happen to anyone and you don’t need to necessarily “screw up” for it to happen. i feel like chang’s biggest strength is her ability to capture a very subtle writing style in each story that captures the character it is focusing on to develop the voice. chang deftly captures many different family dynamics and how culture and circumstances effect them.

other stories, however, just didn’t really hit the mark for me. i told my book club that all of these stories probably have the potential to have something grand pulled out of them, particularly if this were taught in some literature of ethnic america course, but i am not a college professor, so i’m working with what i got out of it. for instance, the ending of “unknown by unknown” fell really flat for me, making me skeptical about the rest of the collection. then there were one’s like “cat personalities” that just seemed to be there more for comedic effect than anything else. 

i feel like i would still recommend this to someone looking to get into short stories and is interested in reading more about chinese culture as a whole. the stories that did hit are still very much worth reading. 

All's Well by Mona Awad

dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

“We all fall, Ms. Fitch. We fall and we rise. Bones and tissue heal. But sometimes we want to hold on to the pain. Sometimes we have our reasons for not being able to let go.” — Mona Awad

mona awad has done it once again. another five star read. i honestly was brought back to my english major days with how many annotations i made for this book. i feel like i could write a whole essay, and this may become a mini one. i think what i found most fascinating about this book was the character’s relation to each of the plays: macbeth and all’s well that ends well. miranda is constantly nostalgic for her role as helen because what she ultimately desires is to be seen in rhetorical same way helen is finally seen at the end of the play. this is why she pushes so hard for all’s well to be put on. miranda’s rejection of macbeth makes sense once it is revealed that it was during her role as lady macbeth that she took her career ending fall. there indeed many parallels between miranda and helen, in particular miranda’s powerful touch. this touch, however, is the opposite of helen’s healing touch, for it heals miranda but bestows her pain onto whomever she grasps. we then see how miranda starts to seek out pain that she no longer feels since she had been defined by her pain for so long. her obsession with her red poppy dress harkens back to helen’s act one dress. 

further parallels are found, however, between miranda and macbeth. we see her association with the “weird brethren” and immediately macbeth comes to mind. macbeth was in a way “given” (or rather took as miranda does) what he desired by the weird sisters, but it ultimately becomes his demise. in the end, miranda has lost all empathy and sense of reality, and is quoting macbeth’s final lines before he dies just before she takes her second fall off of the stage. 

the ending for miranda is very open however. i love how perfectly awad writes the unreliable narrator because throughout this novel we are never sure what is real and what is imagined. the open ending of the novel really cements that for us. 

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

“The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true.” — Leigh Bardugo

i do love a rag tag team of misfits that comes together to meet a common goal. this was unlike any fantasy i’ve read, and i really enjoyed the industrial, dark, band of criminals vibes that was curated in it. i’m always a big fan of multiple POVs and i the way bardugo weaves in each character’s backstory and relationship to one another was so seamless, each character was given such depth. in this way, too, we could see each character’s ulterior motives which has me wondering just what each character was going to do next. it’s rare for me to not be bored in a certain character’s POV. i enjoyed the hints of romance that just furthered character development and certain plot points (i particularly love nina and matthias). i was also really impressed by all of the layers of this plot the group had put together and the way that bardugo revealed it to us. i think my only “complaint” if you can call it that was that considering the character’s backstories i did find myself asking “why are they all literally seventeen?”, but the book is YA, and i think this is a great example of YA that is intriguing to adults as well. i’m a little overwhelmed by this whole “grishaverse” as i’ve seen it called, but i am excited to continue diving into this world and these characters. i absolutely adore inej, so i need to find out what happens to her.