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juliad55's reviews
203 reviews
The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster
3.5
so han solo’s death is equally upsetting in book form……..good to know. and WHY is it implied that kylo ren had some knowledge of the force dyad business to
come. like, sir, REVEAL YOUR SECRETS. ugh.
come. like, sir, REVEAL YOUR SECRETS. ugh.
The Mortal Instruments: The Graphic Novel, Vol. 2 by Cassandra Clare
4.5
in the spirit of becoming a graphic novel fan i was so intrigued when i saw this. i wish i had all the volumes! but the art style is really cool. everyone looks more mysterious then i pictured them being. minus half a star for the sibling plotline reveal here because cassandra clare WHY i will never understand.
Chain of Thorns by Cassandra Clare
5.0
crying. traumatized. these characters have my heart in a GRIP and their trauma in this book is gut wrenching. no spoilers but WOW some twists that i did not expect. and i especially thought the narrative about showing others more kindness and grace (no pun intended) than they showed you is quite a good one. lucie, cordelia, matthew, and christopher <3 but also james, thomas, anna, ari, and alastair are loved. what an emotional roller coaster
The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger
fast-paced
4.0
ahn-dre-ah……nothing can compare to the film for me, but the fleshing out of andy’s friendship with lily and the complications with her boyfriend made this worth the read. i also appreciated getting more depth from emily and seeing the alliance between andy and emily. interesting critiques on the beauty industry - sometimes well placed and other times not. also, book miranda is more horrible than film miranda. i didn’t know that was possible. that’s all.
The Catch by Alison Fairbrother
4.5
what a moving book that reflects on grief, love, and the impacts of our relationships with one another. i liked that this book contained so many flawed characters - including the narrator - and that there’s so much nuance to the idea that people don’t exist as just a singular “good” or “bad” person, but are rather collections of many choices and quirks. and the setting feels like an adoring love letter to DC, one of my favorite places in the whole world, so i really enjoyed that as well. grief is so hard and so complicated, and with the narrator’s search for answers about her late father, readers get to consider how wanting to know everything about someone we’ve lost has costs and affordances. in attempts to memorialize the legacy of a loving but complicated father, the narrator must contend with all that he is, and that doesn’t allow her to sensationalize him. really great storytelling, really emotional plot. so personal.
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
emotional
funny
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
love. love the critique of the romance formula and the type of woman it privileges. love the commitment to a character who knows what they want, who is career driven, who cares deeply and works hard and can learn and change but isn’t told that being career driven is wrong. love reading into the idea that it’s important that we don’t stereotype/caricature ourselves based on our media consumption, and that there’s more nuance to who we are as people than the surface level reads of our occupations and demeanors. loved and felt complicated about the big sister element of the story, the responsibility of it, because… yes, just yes. and i cares about the characters more than i thought i would so THANK YOU emily henry for that dialogue. i appreciate how this book gets into the thick complicated area of how relationships between people who love one another (family members and romantic partners alike) really work, but then it’s also just like…. sweet! things that resonated with me in a horridly sappy manner — reorganizing the local bookstore. ordering two drinks because lightweight and getting sick the next day (HA), wanting and needing a desiring life to be lived around literature, sisters (SISTERS!), caring about people so deeply it hurts, loving and longing for places and feelings, and dancing to james taylor under sparking lights. ugh. this one digs a layer deeper than other romance novels i’ve read lately, and i think it works so well to delve into so many layers of complication, because the reality is romance does not exist in a vacuum.
And I Darken by Kiersten White
3.0
interesting historical fiction with intriguing setup and a truly feral protagonist (lada u crazy ruthless girl u are so interesting to me), but it was too slow paced in the plotting for me.
Loathe to Love You by Ali Hazelwood
5.0
and you know what i will not write a single critique of these novellas even though i have many and the overly formulaic miscommunication antics can get tiring. because girls deserve LOVE and at it’s cheesiest three besties fell in love with the men of their dreams and for that i have no comment besides <3 awwww. five stars for goofy cheesy silly unrealistic lovely romcom vibes. kind of want to cry? maybe i should be an engineer because i too think about outer space a lot. i don’t know. book was more vibes than plot.
actually you know what? i have more to say. why does every single book by this author (and a recurring theme in hetero romance novels) have to be about a “small” woman and a man that’s described repeatedly as “big” in the sense of extremely tall and muscular. absolutely no diversity of physical characteristics except for now they’ve introduced blondes and gingers into the mix. and i LOVE the smart science steminist genre of women with fleshed our backgrounds and work lives and real friendships with other women in romance but the continuous overuse of miscommunication and “mainstream attractive” (i hate that but can’t think of another way to describe it) physical attributes is tiring to me. and there’s such minuscule allusion to a bi/wlw main character in this book but it’s, like, that’s it. at that point i’m just tired of girl meets brooding hot white man being repeated without any sort of focus on the numerous other people that exists within the fields of STEM and experience love. it feels like picking tropes off social media based off of what’ll go viral, what an algorithm likes, and turning it into a book. the three different scenarios here feel like overlays for the same formula of story and the relationships are not grounded in place but rather in the tropes they inhabit. for all the science-y coolness of the women, they’re often just boiled down to whatever trait they need to inhabit for a romance trope, whether that be emotionally distant or extremely cheery. same goes for the men, who are mostly just brooding and hot and sometimes have different hair colors now. so i give it a sappy five stars because when i read romance novels i just want to cry and giggle the whole time so it’s five stars if FEELINGS but in my real girl brain i’m, like, one-starring it because these just feel like summaries of viral tropes of romance—commodifying love, running tests on the kind of love that sells and picking a science themed overlay to package it. which, for me, can work once or twice, but at some point the characters need to not be just the same people in different fonts if i’m going to attempt to enjoy more out from this author. this book made me feel like i need to debrief on romance novels for like 500 hours my head was spinning i have so many thoughts
actually you know what? i have more to say. why does every single book by this author (and a recurring theme in hetero romance novels) have to be about a “small” woman and a man that’s described repeatedly as “big” in the sense of extremely tall and muscular. absolutely no diversity of physical characteristics except for now they’ve introduced blondes and gingers into the mix. and i LOVE the smart science steminist genre of women with fleshed our backgrounds and work lives and real friendships with other women in romance but the continuous overuse of miscommunication and “mainstream attractive” (i hate that but can’t think of another way to describe it) physical attributes is tiring to me. and there’s such minuscule allusion to a bi/wlw main character in this book but it’s, like, that’s it. at that point i’m just tired of girl meets brooding hot white man being repeated without any sort of focus on the numerous other people that exists within the fields of STEM and experience love. it feels like picking tropes off social media based off of what’ll go viral, what an algorithm likes, and turning it into a book. the three different scenarios here feel like overlays for the same formula of story and the relationships are not grounded in place but rather in the tropes they inhabit. for all the science-y coolness of the women, they’re often just boiled down to whatever trait they need to inhabit for a romance trope, whether that be emotionally distant or extremely cheery. same goes for the men, who are mostly just brooding and hot and sometimes have different hair colors now. so i give it a sappy five stars because when i read romance novels i just want to cry and giggle the whole time so it’s five stars if FEELINGS but in my real girl brain i’m, like, one-starring it because these just feel like summaries of viral tropes of romance—commodifying love, running tests on the kind of love that sells and picking a science themed overlay to package it. which, for me, can work once or twice, but at some point the characters need to not be just the same people in different fonts if i’m going to attempt to enjoy more out from this author. this book made me feel like i need to debrief on romance novels for like 500 hours my head was spinning i have so many thoughts