juliad55's reviews
203 reviews

I was expecting the emotional conflict to pick up a bit quicker than it did, but nevertheless, Emily Henry’s characters are as loveable as ever. poppy and alex win the repressed poor communication award of the century. sweetness factor 100000

Rebecca

Daphne du Maurier

5.0

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

SUSPENSEFUL. this book feels like a masterclass in literary tension. it started off slow but had some of the most intense scenes i’ve ever read. twist after twist was so carefully plotted and every chapter was packed with rich imagery. so much to think about. so worth the read.

King and the Dragonflies

Kacen Callender

4.5

emotional

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

this middlegrade novel tackles difficult topics - death, grief, abuse, racism, and homophobia in a way that young readers can grasp. i appreciate how this book handles the honest complications of how these issues coexist. a powerful middlegrade read for sure!

Love on the Brain

Ali Hazelwood

fast-paced

shamelessly giving five stars to this book that i intended to start tonight but read in one five hour straight shot. imperfect and stumbling, entirely predictable from the first page, and sometimes i had to laugh out loud because it was TOO MUCH cringe but also so unapologetically cheesy in a way that love stories should be sometimes. i was sold. and of course anything with copious star wars references immediately goes to the top of my list. why do i not work at NASA? why am i not a cool neuroscientist with purple hair? why do i not (possibly) hallucinate cats in my workplace and run a secret viral twitter account to gather the STEM girls? the copious commentary on being a woman in stem is at times overwhelming in the ‘men = penis’ variety of humor, which i think deserves more of a nuanced analysis than what it gets here (and yet, why should i ask this text to do this deep dive when this is not the primary function of the story? i could go on and on in this debate) but ali hazelwood gets that feeling of walking into a room and seeing that you’ve got to work twice as hard to be taken half as seriously, and i appreciate the way she tackles the complications that being in this environment can have on the personal lives of women. the romance!!!! the vibes!!!!! also no man has eyes so green that they are THAT overwhelming and we as a society must stop acting like it is feasible that one human being has eyes so expressive. i read this book to be entertained and immersed and it checked those boxes so i’ll call this one a win for the girlies, honestly. and thank u for slow burning even though it was SO OBVIOUS what the twists would be. i appreciated the performance of it.