ladybugwrites's reviews
287 reviews

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

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dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I think the premise of this book is very intriguing and I love a good body horror aspect, which this definintely nailed. The book is interesting, it's written fairly simply, but leaves room for the reader to speculate. I did enjoy this and I kept coming back to it.

However, I think it lost the plot somewhere in there. I don't know exactly how to explain it, but it, despite keeping up my intrest, also lost me. I wanted more answers, and there are definitely too many things left open that I don't know anything about. This to the extent that it's not good anymore.

It's an okay book, but not really much more than that. The .5 stars this book gets is mainly because I think the premise and body horror was good enough to warrant something better than 3 stars.
Morgenstjernen by Karl Ove Knausgård

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 43%.
As I first started reading this, I was under the impression I'd finish. It seemed to have a theme around death and I was fairly interested in what might happen. by the fourth or fifth person I'd followed for a few days and seeing this weird star, I didnt care anymore. Also, these characters are not likeable. I cannot explain how much I just, at some point couldnt stand them.

At some point, one character says something about how people have decided to say things are good even when they dont like them, that theyre expected to like it so they act like its great, and this only perpetuates the shit and makes there be more shit. Ironically, this book got a bunch of five and six dice from various critics and I'm certain they must being doing this. Nothing happens in this book, and also, when my dad says it's not really worth it and had critiques and he usually reads stuff like this or that some people find boring, well. that says a lot to me.

might try another Knausgård book at some point, but it's gonna be a while.
Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 12%.
I had a hope that this would be good and that I could enjoy something like the shining again, but alas, I didnt even get 100 pages in. The writing is okay and I don't think the plot has really started where I stopped, but after the third csa story, I got kinda sick of it. The blatant misogyny didn't help.

I'm not against these things being in a story, but somehow, the way King wrote them left a bad taste in my mouth and I just don't care enough to read on.
King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense 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? Yes

4.0

This books has scared me for the past however many years since I bought it. It's been a, probably seven years since I read Six of Crows duology, and maybe four or five since I read the Shadow and Bone trilogy. Despite my love for the SoC, I didn't care much for Shadow and Bone (I did read all the books, though), and this scared me when I bought this book, something I did solely because it's about Nikolai and he's my favorite character from S&B and very much made the trilogy worth reading.

However, I had very little to worry about. Whilst I do think this book has an incredibly slow start somwhat unnecessarily - though it does pay off as you get into the meat of it - I still had a blast going back into this world. I have a thousand questions as I finished the book and I know for certain that I will be picking up the next one, possibly sooner than I might've thought myself due to the ending. I found the return to characters great, most of the plot interesting and fascinating. I will admit that, despite how exciting and nervous I was reading, parts of the plot aren't to my liking, not necessarily because it is bad, but because I believe Bardugo has the capabilities to do more instead of reusing something already done (that is very vague and iykyk). 

One thing I do want to highlight is Bardugou's great way of writing a slowburn. I am not a romance person outside of fanfiction, usually don't need it in my books, most often don't mind. Yet, I do sit here and giggle to myself like a teenager at times, hoping there will at least be a kiss to satisfy me. 

also this is just a stupid little thing, but how come Nina mentions Inej, Kaz and Jesper multiple times, but she doesn't mention Wylan even once? Am I misremembering something or did Bardugo herself forget about him (I know she didn't). Im sorry, I just wanted him mentioned whent the rest of them were