maehemlovesbooks's reviews
50 reviews

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

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funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Out of Body by Nia Davenport

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.0

The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.75

I almost DNF this book so many times and maybe I should have since I was litteraly dragging my way to the end.
The premise is very interesting and captivating, this could have covered a lot of subjects, but we are stuck on babies and husbands, husbands and babies...

- the storytelling style is really interesting, we see the pandemic through different women, but unfortunately, always the same lense. Middle-age women, good job, comfortable situation before and after the pandemic. By the end of the book, I would mix up the characters because they were all the same and all forgettable to me. It would have been interesting to see multiples identities, sexualities, classes, really represented with depth.

- A lot of the events happening during this pandemic are told to us and not shown. When the world slowly understands that men are doomed to disappear so they abandon their job, the society is suppose to not function as smoothly right. And apparently there were food crises, technologies crashing, and so on. It just never affected our characters for some reason.

- Husbands and babies. All I was reading, was my husband this, my husband that, poor me, my baby this, my baby that. I want babies, how can I have a baby, my husband up, my husband down.
None of our characters have family ? Since we are so focused on men, are you not worried about oh I don't know, you father ? Brother ? Uncle ? Best friend ? Each of these characters' life (with some exceptions) depend on their husband and babies ? Oh, okay.

- Nobody wants to know what is the cause of all this pandemonium? Really not one entity? Hoooooow? So you are telling me, in a society that exist to cater to men and only men are dying, only one woman take it upon herself to track patient zero and try to identify the reason for all of this ? And no vaccine talk for months ? OK.

- Don't get me started on the vision of bisexuality the author seems to have, I...

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by S.A. Chakraborty

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adventurous lighthearted fast-paced