You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
oraclereadings's Reviews (107)
Actual Rating
2.5 ✰
Ashley and her friends venture out into the woods for a fun night of partying. She knows nature like the back of her hand, having learned it all in camp when she was younger. When she finds her boyfriend with his ex, pants down in the middle of the night, Ashley starts running. Blinded from her rage, Ashley doesn’t realize that she’s running towards a ravine until it’s too late.
With nothing but the clothes on her back, an injured foot suffering from an infection, Ashley is now lost in the woods. She’s far from the trail and far away from her friends and comes to the realization that she’ll have to survive on her own if she wants to make it out of the woods alive.
Honestly, I did not care for Ashley’s character. I certainly felt sorry for her, she definitely deserved to be pitied, but she was just so annoyingly “not like other girls”. Like, we get it, you would rather go hunting and fishing and play in the mud than do “girly” things. I mean, I would definitely pride myself too if I knew how to survive alone in the forest. And maybe it was just because the book focuses so much on Ashley’s thoughts because she is alone, but I just could not stand her characterization.
Also, why did she carry her severed foot around with her? And how did she get around with only one foot? Or half a foot? I don’t fucking know. . . Also, also, if she knows all about survival, why didn’t she just start a signal fire?
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆
𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬
✰ 2.5 ✰ Listen. I didn’t hate it, but I also didn’t like it. I got through it, but still just a meh book.
━━━━━━━━━━☽✰☾━━━━━━━━━━
2.5 ✰
Ashley and her friends venture out into the woods for a fun night of partying. She knows nature like the back of her hand, having learned it all in camp when she was younger. When she finds her boyfriend with his ex, pants down in the middle of the night, Ashley starts running. Blinded from her rage, Ashley doesn’t realize that she’s running towards a ravine until it’s too late.
With nothing but the clothes on her back, an injured foot suffering from an infection, Ashley is now lost in the woods. She’s far from the trail and far away from her friends and comes to the realization that she’ll have to survive on her own if she wants to make it out of the woods alive.
Honestly, I did not care for Ashley’s character. I certainly felt sorry for her, she definitely deserved to be pitied, but she was just so annoyingly “not like other girls”. Like, we get it, you would rather go hunting and fishing and play in the mud than do “girly” things. I mean, I would definitely pride myself too if I knew how to survive alone in the forest. And maybe it was just because the book focuses so much on Ashley’s thoughts because she is alone, but I just could not stand her characterization.
Also, why did she carry her severed foot around with her? And how did she get around with only one foot? Or half a foot? I don’t fucking know. . . Also, also, if she knows all about survival, why didn’t she just start a signal fire?
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆
𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬
✰ 2.5 ✰ Listen. I didn’t hate it, but I also didn’t like it. I got through it, but still just a meh book.
━━━━━━━━━━☽✰☾━━━━━━━━━━
It’s so bad, it’s great. lmaoo
This felt like a fever dream.
I like how I keep seeing so many reviews comparing this book to Twilight, which I don’t think is fair to Twilight. Because Twilight has become a cult classic over the years since its release, and this has fallen (ha) flat.
Although I can see the similarities on why this has been compared to Twilight.
✧ Mary Sue main character
✧ New girl at school
✧ “Hot” enigmatic love interest
✧ Supernatural beings
Along with all of the other tropes that were popular in early 2000’s YA fiction.
I would have eaten this book up when I was fifteen. My entire personality would have revolved around this book. But instead, it’s been sitting on my shelf for over ten years, taunting me. Adult, almost thirty-year-old, me knew that this would be cheesy and still decided to hold onto and read this book all these years.
This felt like a fever dream.
I like how I keep seeing so many reviews comparing this book to Twilight, which I don’t think is fair to Twilight. Because Twilight has become a cult classic over the years since its release, and this has fallen (ha) flat.
Although I can see the similarities on why this has been compared to Twilight.
✧ Mary Sue main character
✧ New girl at school
✧ “Hot” enigmatic love interest
✧ Supernatural beings
Along with all of the other tropes that were popular in early 2000’s YA fiction.
I would have eaten this book up when I was fifteen. My entire personality would have revolved around this book. But instead, it’s been sitting on my shelf for over ten years, taunting me. Adult, almost thirty-year-old, me knew that this would be cheesy and still decided to hold onto and read this book all these years.
fast-paced
Actual Rating
4.5 ✰
This is basically: “What if the Disney princesses were all androids? What if they were all under the care of Disney himself? What if the princesses lived in the parks all the time and never left? And what if Disney was evil?”
I really enjoyed this.
A lot more than I thought I would.
Sci-Fi and Dystopias usually aren’t my thing, so I did not expect to like this as much as I did. But it was brilliant! The story was beautiful, the characters were a delight. I didn’t want to stop with this adventure.
On top of the science fiction and dystopia, there’s also a mystery.
A MURDER MYSTERY. . . to be exact.
I was kind of hoping that there would be more reference to actual Disney and the princesses. I expected to look at the “Fantasists” and be able to picture their relation to a Disney princess. (The Fantasists were actually more diverse than Disney. Oops.) I’m not exactly disappointed that that didn’t happen, because I do like that the Fantasists and Ana have their own personality and are their own character, but I was just expecting it to go that way.
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆
𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬
✰ 4.5 ✰ This was really good and it’s probably a fave, but it either had a slow start or something happened along the way that I didn’t like.
4.5 ✰
This is basically: “What if the Disney princesses were all androids? What if they were all under the care of Disney himself? What if the princesses lived in the parks all the time and never left? And what if Disney was evil?”
I really enjoyed this.
A lot more than I thought I would.
Sci-Fi and Dystopias usually aren’t my thing, so I did not expect to like this as much as I did. But it was brilliant! The story was beautiful, the characters were a delight. I didn’t want to stop with this adventure.
On top of the science fiction and dystopia, there’s also a mystery.
A MURDER MYSTERY. . . to be exact.
I was kind of hoping that there would be more reference to actual Disney and the princesses. I expected to look at the “Fantasists” and be able to picture their relation to a Disney princess. (The Fantasists were actually more diverse than Disney. Oops.) I’m not exactly disappointed that that didn’t happen, because I do like that the Fantasists and Ana have their own personality and are their own character, but I was just expecting it to go that way.
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆
𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬
✰ 4.5 ✰ This was really good and it’s probably a fave, but it either had a slow start or something happened along the way that I didn’t like.
slow-paced
dnf@ 66%
Actual Rating
1.5 ✰
This was a book that I had been looking forward to reading for about a year. I was so hyped to read it because I heard nothing but good things. I don’t know why this seems to always happen with books that I’m anticipating, but this was disappointing.
The story focuses around three (Hetty, Byatt, and Reese) girls that are living in a boarding school on an island off a coast. After a mysterious, deadly illness takes over, everyone at the school is stranded and must now learn to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. The strange illness causes animals to go rabid and gives the girls and staff members of the school experienced body disfigurements. When one of the girls goes missing, our main character, Hetty, will question everything she has ever known.
“Now that I’m Boat Shift. . .”
There was so much repetitiveness, especially with this sentence. I wanted to cry from rereading just that sentence over and over again.
I did not understand the romance at all. I thought that Hetty and Byatt were a thing, or maybe they were at some point. The relationship between Hetty and Reese felt forced and just sort of appeared out of nowhere and then it was gone. Or at least never mentioned again. I am not even going to be adding this under my LGBT shelf because I do not feel that it is worth it.
Eventually I just didn’t care to read any more because I found it to be so boring. Usually when I’m so close to the end of a book I’ll try to push through just to finish it, but I didn’t see a point with this one and just wanted it to be over.
I am starting to believe that publishers will put beautiful covers on awful books just so that those books are picked up more and given a higher chance of being read.
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆
𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬
✰ 1.5 ✰ I did not like it.
━━━━━━━━━━☽✰☾━━━━━━━━━━
Actual Rating
1.5 ✰
This was a book that I had been looking forward to reading for about a year. I was so hyped to read it because I heard nothing but good things. I don’t know why this seems to always happen with books that I’m anticipating, but this was disappointing.
The story focuses around three (Hetty, Byatt, and Reese) girls that are living in a boarding school on an island off a coast. After a mysterious, deadly illness takes over, everyone at the school is stranded and must now learn to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. The strange illness causes animals to go rabid and gives the girls and staff members of the school experienced body disfigurements. When one of the girls goes missing, our main character, Hetty, will question everything she has ever known.
“Now that I’m Boat Shift. . .”
There was so much repetitiveness, especially with this sentence. I wanted to cry from rereading just that sentence over and over again.
I did not understand the romance at all. I thought that Hetty and Byatt were a thing, or maybe they were at some point. The relationship between Hetty and Reese felt forced and just sort of appeared out of nowhere and then it was gone. Or at least never mentioned again. I am not even going to be adding this under my LGBT shelf because I do not feel that it is worth it.
Eventually I just didn’t care to read any more because I found it to be so boring. Usually when I’m so close to the end of a book I’ll try to push through just to finish it, but I didn’t see a point with this one and just wanted it to be over.
I am starting to believe that publishers will put beautiful covers on awful books just so that those books are picked up more and given a higher chance of being read.
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆
𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬
✰ 1.5 ✰ I did not like it.
━━━━━━━━━━☽✰☾━━━━━━━━━━
All I can say is, I got 150 pages into the book and there was no plot.
I’m disappointed.
Kevin Sorbo disappointed.
It should be illegal to put beautiful covers on awful books.
I don’t even know if any of these would count as spoilers because I didn’t bother finishing the rest of the book. But this all happens in the first half of the book so, take it as you will. I’ll still section them off under the spoiler filter anyway.
Eleanor returns home for the first time in years after she was mysteriously sent away because of an attack that happened when she was young. Her family is cold to her upon her arrival, as they hardly know her and she hardly knows them. During a tarot reading, her paternal grandmother suddenly dies and Eleanor decides to take up being in charge of the family, due to her grandma’s literal dying wishes. Everything feels strange as Eleanor tries to find her place back in the family again.
Also, Eleanor and her siblings all obsess over the same guy. And like, I don’t think his age is actually depicted to how old he is, but his descriptions sound like he would at least be in his thirties or forties, if not older. Eleanor and her siblings are all under the age of twenty, so I found this incredibly odd and was very put off by it.
𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬
✧ DNF below 50% will not be rated ✧
━━━━━━━━━━☽✰☾━━━━━━━━━━
I’m disappointed.
Kevin Sorbo disappointed.
It should be illegal to put beautiful covers on awful books.
I don’t even know if any of these would count as spoilers because I didn’t bother finishing the rest of the book. But this all happens in the first half of the book so, take it as you will. I’ll still section them off under the spoiler filter anyway.
Eleanor returns home for the first time in years after she was mysteriously sent away because of an attack that happened when she was young. Her family is cold to her upon her arrival, as they hardly know her and she hardly knows them. During a tarot reading, her paternal grandmother suddenly dies and Eleanor decides to take up being in charge of the family, due to her grandma’s literal dying wishes. Everything feels strange as Eleanor tries to find her place back in the family again.
Also, Eleanor and her siblings all obsess over the same guy. And like, I don’t think his age is actually depicted to how old he is, but his descriptions sound like he would at least be in his thirties or forties, if not older. Eleanor and her siblings are all under the age of twenty, so I found this incredibly odd and was very put off by it.
𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬
✧ DNF below 50% will not be rated ✧
━━━━━━━━━━☽✰☾━━━━━━━━━━
3.5 ✰
Fun drinking game: take a shot every time SJM mentions that someone “purrs”.
Honestly, SJM is an author that I typically avoid because of all of the controversy in her other books. Along with all of the book drama that surrounds her as well. I’ve seen many other reviews exclaiming on how she butchered the characters. Which I definitely do agree with. These characters in the comics would handle things a lot differently than they do in SJM’s retelling.
Instead of me ranting for an hour on how much I disliked Catwoman or Poison Ivy or even Harley Quinn’s characterization in this book, I am going to pretend that I know nothing about them. Well, no. Actually, let’s pretend that they’re not the same characters from the comics. (because they’re not, but that's besides the point right now)
Like in “Wonder Woman”, I was really hoping that the book would mainly focus on the main character, the whole title of the book. Catwoman! I’m not complaining, though. It was very nice to see Batwing get some representation. Unfortunately, though, his character in this book was nothing more than a romantic interest for Catwoman and a fill in for Batman while Bruce Wayne is away.
With how the book started, I thought that SJM was going to do her own interpretation on Selina Kyle’s origin story and becoming Catwoman. And I guess, in a way, she did. It just wasn’t what I was anticipating.
Also, Harley/Ivy. Or at least mentions of past Harley/Ivy. I wish there had been more of them, but this is a Catwoman story. (view spoiler)
⋆⁺₊⋆⁺₊⋆
• 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 •
✰ 3.5 ✰ I enjoyed reading it, but it didn’t have quite the impact that I thought it would.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☽✰☾━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Fun drinking game: take a shot every time SJM mentions that someone “purrs”.
Honestly, SJM is an author that I typically avoid because of all of the controversy in her other books. Along with all of the book drama that surrounds her as well. I’ve seen many other reviews exclaiming on how she butchered the characters. Which I definitely do agree with. These characters in the comics would handle things a lot differently than they do in SJM’s retelling.
Instead of me ranting for an hour on how much I disliked Catwoman or Poison Ivy or even Harley Quinn’s characterization in this book, I am going to pretend that I know nothing about them. Well, no. Actually, let’s pretend that they’re not the same characters from the comics. (because they’re not, but that's besides the point right now)
Like in “Wonder Woman”, I was really hoping that the book would mainly focus on the main character, the whole title of the book. Catwoman! I’m not complaining, though. It was very nice to see Batwing get some representation. Unfortunately, though, his character in this book was nothing more than a romantic interest for Catwoman and a fill in for Batman while Bruce Wayne is away.
With how the book started, I thought that SJM was going to do her own interpretation on Selina Kyle’s origin story and becoming Catwoman. And I guess, in a way, she did. It just wasn’t what I was anticipating.
Also, Harley/Ivy. Or at least mentions of past Harley/Ivy. I wish there had been more of them, but this is a Catwoman story. (view spoiler)
⋆⁺₊⋆⁺₊⋆
• 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 •
✰ 3.5 ✰ I enjoyed reading it, but it didn’t have quite the impact that I thought it would.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☽✰☾━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I was really hoping that I would like this book more than Shadow and Bone. Shadow and Bone was more of an introduction into the world so I was hoping that Siege and Storm would be better.
It really wasn’t.
I dreaded reading this book. I switched over to the audiobook for a while hoping that that would help, but that was worse.
Honestly, I just didn't care. I didn’t care about the story or Alina and her struggles. Maybe I already had low expectations after not enjoying Shadow and Bone, but this dragged for me.
Instead of world building this time, Siege and Storm focused more on Alina building her army and taking on her new role as a leader. Also while searching for a new amplifier to strengthen her powers. That was it. Four hundred and some pages and that was all that happened.
I will give points to Alina growing as a character. She did show some realistic emotion and actually conveyed being stressed from her new job.
And then, of course, love triangles got thrown in. I don’t mind love triangles if they are done right, but it was just so annoying and not even really considered “love” triangles. It was petty and childish and didn’t fit in at all with the whole army building story-line.
⋆⁺₊⋆⁺₊⋆
• 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 •
✰ 2 ✰ I don’t know why I finished this. I was probably miserable the whole way and yet, here I am.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☽✰☾━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
It really wasn’t.
I dreaded reading this book. I switched over to the audiobook for a while hoping that that would help, but that was worse.
Honestly, I just didn't care. I didn’t care about the story or Alina and her struggles. Maybe I already had low expectations after not enjoying Shadow and Bone, but this dragged for me.
Instead of world building this time, Siege and Storm focused more on Alina building her army and taking on her new role as a leader. Also while searching for a new amplifier to strengthen her powers. That was it. Four hundred and some pages and that was all that happened.
I will give points to Alina growing as a character. She did show some realistic emotion and actually conveyed being stressed from her new job.
And then, of course, love triangles got thrown in. I don’t mind love triangles if they are done right, but it was just so annoying and not even really considered “love” triangles. It was petty and childish and didn’t fit in at all with the whole army building story-line.
⋆⁺₊⋆⁺₊⋆
• 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 •
✰ 2 ✰ I don’t know why I finished this. I was probably miserable the whole way and yet, here I am.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☽✰☾━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I should have read this sooner. Honestly, literary fiction scares me, so I put this off for so long thinking that I wouldn’t enjoy it. Boy was I wrong!
After reading and enjoying Circe, I knew that I had to read The Song of Achilles as soon as I possibly could. Madeline Miller does such a great job at portraying Greek mythology tales in a modern way but still keeping that classical feel to the original stories.
After reading and enjoying Circe, I knew that I had to read The Song of Achilles as soon as I possibly could. Madeline Miller does such a great job at portraying Greek mythology tales in a modern way but still keeping that classical feel to the original stories.
“If only I had something to take the edge off the loneliness. If only lonely were a more accurate word. It should sound much less pretty.”
───────⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆───────
3.5⭐️
We Are Okay jumps back and forth between the past and present, going through Marin’s life as a child to being a young adult. At the beginning, it’s very vague on the whole situation. All we know is that something tragic has seemed to happen to her grandfather, who raised her after her mother died when she was a baby. This event led Marin to run away from everything and everyone in her life, traveling across the country from California to New York.
During winter break, months later after Marin’s running away, her former best friend (Mabel) has come to see her. Without hesitation, Mabel tries to persuade Marin into coming back to California with her. Marin refuses this offer numerous times.
As the story progresses, we find out more about what happened to Marin’s grandfather. We learn about Marin and Mabel’s past and why they had a falling out.
<b>Representation:</b> Mabel comes from a Mexican-American family.
Both Marin and Mabel are LGBT+. ( I don’t remember if their sexualities were ever discussed or specific. )
✧*:･ﾟ✧
<b>How I Rate Books:</b>
✰ 3.5 ✰ I enjoyed reading it, but it didn’t have quite the impact that I thought it would.
▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃
┊ ┊ ┊ ┊ ┊ ┊
┊ ┊ ┊ ┊ ˚✩ ⋆｡˚ ✩
┊ ┊ ┊ ✫
┊ ┊ ︎✧
┊ ┊ ✯
┊ . ˚ ˚✩
slow-paced
3.0⭐️
This felt like reading a memoir, which made me less interested in the story. I had to keep reminding myself that it was indeed a piece of fiction and stop myself from checking over and over again to make sure that it wasn’t a memoir.
Despite my disinterests, I found myself relating to this a lot. I’ve grown up in a Christian, very conservative household that made it hard being part of the lgbt+ community. It’s very difficult being a teenager and having adults tell you that your existence is a sin. It makes you feel icky in your own skin. While I didn’t have quite the same experiences as Cameron, this still brought back a ton of memories.
✧*:･ﾟ✧
<b>How I Rate Books:</b>
✰ 3 ✰ Average read. The story/characters were nice, but I’ll most likely forget about it in a month.
▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃
┊ ┊ ┊ ┊ ┊ ┊
┊ ┊ ┊ ┊ ˚✩ ⋆｡˚ ✩
┊ ┊ ┊ ✫
┊ ┊ ︎✧
┊ ┊ ✯
┊ . ˚ ˚✩
This felt like reading a memoir, which made me less interested in the story. I had to keep reminding myself that it was indeed a piece of fiction and stop myself from checking over and over again to make sure that it wasn’t a memoir.
Despite my disinterests, I found myself relating to this a lot. I’ve grown up in a Christian, very conservative household that made it hard being part of the lgbt+ community. It’s very difficult being a teenager and having adults tell you that your existence is a sin. It makes you feel icky in your own skin. While I didn’t have quite the same experiences as Cameron, this still brought back a ton of memories.
✧*:･ﾟ✧
<b>How I Rate Books:</b>
✰ 3 ✰ Average read. The story/characters were nice, but I’ll most likely forget about it in a month.
▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃
┊ ┊ ┊ ┊ ┊ ┊
┊ ┊ ┊ ┊ ˚✩ ⋆｡˚ ✩
┊ ┊ ┊ ✫
┊ ┊ ︎✧
┊ ┊ ✯
┊ . ˚ ˚✩