elerireads's reviews
390 reviews

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers

emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

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

3.0

Much like the first one, this was pleasant and calming to read. Gently thought-provoking and sweet.

The Heartbreak Bakery by A.R. Capetta

funny lighthearted mysterious reflective 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? No

3.25

This was extremely silly. Ridiculous and cheesy, but a pleasant, fun easy read. I have to say, of all the unrealistic stuff in this book, the schooling, or lack thereof, was the bit I couldn't get past. 

Friendship by Lydia Denworth

informative reflective slow-paced

3.0

I quite enjoyed bits of this, but felt it was maybe just a bit long? Towards the end of each line of discussion I just started to get bored and fed up. Interrogating how friendship is even defined and different types of friendships depending on age, gender, socialising style, looking at what's going on genetically and hormonally as well, and the health impacts. It was all interesting - I just tended to feel that once the point was made i didn't need quite as much of the detail, examples, personal anecdotes, etc. Like, I got it can we move on please? I did have some interesting food for thought from it though, and probably most enjoyed learning about how they even go about framing research questions about friendship.

Ravenous: How to Get Ourselves and Our Planet into Shape by Henry Dimbleby, Jemima Lewis

hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

This was decent. Made some good points and was pretty well written. There wasn't really anything that was new to me though so it was just sort of fine?

Ending the Pursuit: Asexuality, Aromanticism, and Agender Identity by Michael Paramo

hopeful informative inspiring slow-paced

3.0

This was alright. Made some interesting points about the way the terms 'asexual', 'aromantic' and 'agender' only exist in the context of and in opposition to violently imposed colonial cisheteropatriarchal norms.

It wasn't particularly well written though. Not terrible! Just like the author was trying a bit too hard to sound erudite and academic so it came out with a bit of a quality of having been written by someone who swallowed a thesaurus. Plus a few grammatical niggles - not necessarily errors just some ugly split infinitives, using 'how' where 'that' would have been more natural/accurate. Anyway, all combined to make it a bit clunky and not really having a natural voice or flow, which made it more effort to read than it could have been.

My biggest issue with reading this book though was that it wasn't what I was expecting. Obviously that's more of a me problem - looking at the cover I don't think there's anything that misled me. I think I just had a strong idea of how I would write a book with a title like this so that's what I was expecting 🤷‍♂️. Anyway, I just really wanted it to be looking at the intersection of all the identities and how they interact with one another. And it didn't really - just looked at them separately under the same type of framing. Anyway. Guess that's for another book.

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

adventurous mysterious tense 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? No

2.0

Didn't really enjoy this. But it's quite difficult to describe why - I just found it quite tedious for the first 80% or so. Probably part of it is that I didn't like Jude much - possibly that's just a sign she was quite a well-written teenager and was therefore kind of insufferable. A lot of the world building and lore wasn't too bad but I really felt there was a lot of inconsistency in the moral code. It may be that part of it was intentional, i.e. there isn't really one but it felt more like the author just changed what was or wasn't meant to be shocking depending on what suited her. There was also a massive over-reliance on telling us stuff rather than showing us to make us feel it ourselves. E.g. constantly describing characters as 'ruthless' or 'bloodthirsty' without them ever actually doing anything remotely threatening in the actual narrative. Or "I suddenly realised I would have to..." or "I suddenly felt ..." that's been put in purely to create some tension out of nothing even though there's no way Jude hadn't thought of that earlier or there's no particular stimulus for her to feel like that. People do suddenly feel things out of nowhere of course, but this felt a bit too often and unrealistic.

Annoyingly, I did get quite into it in the last 20% or so, mainly because the stakes got a bit higher than pulling pigtails at school. I say annoyingly because it did make me feel quite a strong urge to read the second one, but if 80% of the next one is also shit, that would be a gigantic waste of time.

Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

challenging hopeful mysterious slow-paced

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

2.0

Finally finished this bloody book! Thought 'well I enjoyed one long George Eliot so why wouldn’t I enjoy another?'. Because it's completely different Eleri that's why. I don't mind the dense language if I'm invested in the story but I hated Gwendolen she was intolerably vain and Deronda was an annoying wet blanket. Interesting from the perspective of reading about 19th century perceptions of Judaism and Zionism. And I did vaguely get invested in Deronda's quest to find out about his parentage. But that was about it. High effort - low reward. 

The Bone People by Keri Hulme

challenging emotional hopeful mysterious reflective 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

Gosh this was an incredibly thought-provoking book but it boy was it difficult to read. The way it was written is disjointed in every sense - moving between different characters' points of view, between first and third person, between describing inner thoughts and narrative description, with some of the thoughts indented on the page and others not, and also between languages. The passage of time also felt very uneven, with some shorter periods such as their holiday together given a lot of extremely detailed description whilst in other places large chunks of time seemed to go by without a clear indication that that was happening. The prose itself was not the most readable either - there was a lot of esoteric, bordering on bizarre vocabulary and references, and sentences in the same paragraph often either had no clear thread joining them or connected to one another but only insofar as following a train of thought off on an eccentric tangent. There's also a lot of Maori for which you have to keep flipping to the back of the book to find the translation (would have been really helpful if these translations had been in footnotes on the page instead). So to say this book is not easy to dip in and out of would be an understatement - it's definitely one that needs you to set aside a chunk of time to immerse yourself fully in the rich and strange narrative voice or you won't have a hope in hell of understanding what's going on.

In a strange way though, I found the alien language and structuring sort of helped to make it feel like you were thrown into a whole different world. And whilst there's never a doubt that the main characters are weird, it feels like a very natural kind of weirdness in the context of the otherworldly atmosphere of the whole book. Or maybe it's just that the love between them is so vivid and rings so true that all their personal eccentricities fade to insignificance. That said, Kerewin is bizarre and I did find her more than a bit pretentious, although there is quite a lot of self-awareness too when she reads back some of her diary entries etc.

The way the abuse was handled was very uncomfortable and I don't really know how to feel about it. At no point does anyone actually condone it, although Kerewin does seem to be allowing some kind of 'measured, reasonable' (not a quote) beating. However, it's very clear that the perspective the reader is supposed to take is that Simon is better off going back to live with his horrendously abusive father than being placed in any kind of foster care / alternative care. And the love between them all is so strong that it's very convincingly done. Uncomfortable. 

There are many, many more things that could be said about this book but I've already written loads and have now lost all motivation to write the rest down. Anyway, difficult to get into but very vivid and interesting characters whose lives eventually do pull you in.

Also - asexual main character!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child abuse

Not for the Faint of Heart by Lex Croucher

adventurous funny lighthearted 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? It's complicated

3.5

A bit of light-hearted fun. Set in unapologetically historically ambiguous (read: innacurate) Robin Hood time. Dramatic battles, romance, Merry Men politics, childhood trauma - it's got it all. Good for an easy Christmas read.

Aces Wild: A Heist by Amanda DeWitt

funny lighthearted mysterious 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? No

3.0

Good fun. I was maybe a bit underwhelmed by the whole "heist" element of this. I also didn't really feel much of a sense of danger - although the antagonist was described as a crime boss we never actually observed him doing anything other than talk a bit meanly so it was difficult to see him as much of a threat. I did enjoy the representation of an all-asexual friendship group who had originally met online - it felt very realistic. When I look back on it there are many things that i think could have been better in terms of building connection with the characters and feeling more invested in the story, but at the same time i did end up reading it pretty quickly and enjoying it so it can't have been too bad. All round not the greatest book ever but still enjoyable.