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ellieb_reads's Reviews (186)
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
I am beside myself after finishing this book. Absolutely wrecked. This is one of my favorite (maybe the favorite?) books I’ve read this year. It is gorgeously written; I will read everything Chris Whitaker has ever written or will ever write. The characters are beautiful and complex, and the plot has so many surprising threads. It’s long, but I can’t think of anything I’d take out. This is a mystery, a love story, and a historical fiction all wrapped into one. I loved it, and I’m so sad it’s over.
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
I was blown away by All The Sinners Bleed, so I was really excited to read one of Cosby’s earlier novels, but this one just didn’t land with me in the same way. I really enjoyed the premise, and the plot and characters were compelling. But the dialogue read very off to me, switching back and forth from oddly formal to Southern colloquialisms and AAVE, often from the same character. It almost felt like characters “broke character” at times. That’s maybe a small gripe, but I kept noticing it. I also grew a little weary of the violence and repeated fight scenes, it was just too much. Still a big fan of Cosby, this one just wasn’t my cup of tea!
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
If this had been 100 pages shorter, I think I’d be giving it 4 stars. There was just a lot of filler, and that kind of killed the suspense for me. The ending was a little over the top, but I was surprised by the big reveal. I really liked the setting and the relatively small cast. The characters were all fairly unlikable (ranging from morally gray to asshole to literal murderer), but that was important to the plot I think. A decent thriller, but nothing to write home about.
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
This was gorgeous. The book is about Ellie and Homa’s deep, complicated friendship, but it’s also layered with reflections on class, gender, and religion. The characters are flawed and complex, and their conflicts and pain are written beautifully. I both cursed and empathized with many of them at different times, and I loved that the entire book centers around women and their relationships with each other. I didn’t love the brief time in Bahar’s perspective and wished it had either been longer or skipped entirely, and I felt it was oddly concluded. But I did like the very end and thought the epilogue was beautiful and heartwarming. I also really enjoyed how much I learned about Iran’s modern political history, and I’m now on the hunt for some nonfiction to understand it more thoroughly. This is a book I’ll be thinking about for a while.
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
There was so much potential here, and the first several pages had my expectations quite high. But this waffled between pretty good and very unpleasant from chapter to chapter. First, this is not a thriller. The “twists” are all incredibly obvious, and the pacing of the book saves all the action for the last 30 pages, which feels rushed and downright outrageous. Throughout the present tense timeline, the main character makes absolutely bananas decisions that seem wildly unrealistic—even for someone in the middle of a meltdown. And the continued theme of name-dropping luxury health products was just so over the top. I think it was intended to be a parody (??), but it felt like meaningless filler that I found either boring or eye roll-inducing. The flashback chapters were excellent, and Bieker’s prose about trauma and abuse were really powerful: “The way violence shrinks women, makes us feel lucky for things that aren’t lucky.” Gorgeous! Heartbreaking! Poignant! There was some brilliant writing and an interesting concept here, but it was sandwiched between so much outlandish and frustrating stuff that I came away feeling mostly disappointed.
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
This is a little slow to start, but well worth sticking with it. I loved the setting, thought the premise was unique, and Liz Moore’s writing is really vivid. The tone of the book was especially captivating—so many characters have a somewhat sinister feel to them, which really kept me guessing. I wouldn’t necessarily call this a thriller though, at least not until the last third of the book. It’s more mystery, with a lot of history and background to cover before it really picks up. My main critique is that there were just far too many characters and perspectives, some that we hear from only once and very rapidly. Fewer perspectives and less time spent describing tertiary characters only mentioned once or twice would have made things a little easier follow. But I really enjoyed the multiple mysteries and ultimately thought this was very much worth the long library wait.
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
I can’t figure out how to describe why I loved this book so much, but something about it made me want to keep reading. I love the multi-generational storyline and the three perspectives. There are so many layers here: wealth and class, race and immigration, trauma, romance, science, morality, motherhood. I was captivated from cover to cover, and I was a mess of tears on an airplane when it was over. A perfect multigenerational family portrait. One of my favorites of 2024, and will eagerly read more from Rachel Khong in the future.
emotional
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
This was unsettling. I don’t know how else to describe what I felt while reading this, but that’s also not to say I disliked it. Liars is a really vulnerable picture of a woman gradually shrinking herself to fit into marriage and motherhood. While her husband John is a deceitful, godawful man-child, the real liar turns out to be Jane, who regularly lies to herself about the state of her marriage and her own happiness. There were some quirks of the writing style that weren’t my favorite, and I would have liked more exploration of Jane’s life before John, but on the whole this was well done. Emotionally brutal to read - I can imagine it would hit home even more for married women who are doing the unpaid and invisible labor of parenting and managing a household for incompetent men who don’t adequately appreciate or support them. Yikes. A sincere fuck you to the Johns of the world, you’re the worst.