peristome's reviews
111 reviews

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

hopeful inspiring lighthearted slow-paced

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

2.5

It took me an inordinately long amount of time to finish this book. I almost DNF'd it several times, but I kept picking it up after each dry spell because I wanted to see what the hype was about. I don't think this book is horrible; it's middle of the road for me, in fact. But it has a lot of problems that made me wish I just gave up in the end. 

I had a hard time getting attached to the children, since they do not talk or behave like children at all. I did not think of the death threats were cute, I did not think the philosophizing they did was cute. It actually made me mad.

Why is Arthur letting them speak to a government employee that way, considering he wants to keep them?

I especially hate the "wise kid" trope. Sometimes kids do say the darndest things, but it's not everything they say, all the time and with great wisdom and ancient knowledge or whatever the fuck Lucy's excuse was. 

I did really enjoy the relationship between Arthur and Linus, though. It was very sweet, and more importantly, well-paced. I also enjoyed the aspect of middle-aged men finding love together—it's rare in all forms of media, so I appreciate the representation. In fact, it was enough that I almost gave the book 3 stars, but the ending made me lower my rating to what it is now.

The ending pretends that Linus had the choice to stay. Categorically, it was not a choice, it was the illusion of choice. Linus couldn't have actually stayed. He needed to go back if he wanted the children to stay in their home. When Linus quits his job and goes back, he doesn't explain this at all, he just apologizes for leaving and says he should have stayed.

It pissed me off. 

The book is not bad, but I also don't know if I would recommend it, especially because there is the controversy to consider. This book was, according to the author, inspired by the residential schools that Canada and the United States would put Native and First Nations children in. The children were often kidnapped or forcefully taken to these homes and treated terribly. Many died. I am not Native myself so I do not have much to offer in terms of opinion, but many people have come out against this book because of it, and it's a completely valid reason to protest the author or pass this book over. You wouldn't be missing much, either.

Fake Dates and Mooncakes by Sher Lee

lighthearted medium-paced

4.0

This is a very cute book. It is very YA, though. I am trying not to hold that against it too much, but inevitably, I did have to give this four stars instead of five because of how juvenile the writing and characters felt at times. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing—considering the age of the characters, it was realistic even if annoying—and I enjoyed it quite a lot despite the younger skew. I also loved some of the quotes, especially this one about grief: 

Grief has a way of sneaking up on you when you’re least expecting it. A song, a phrase, a scent…then you’re falling into an empty space inside that you thought you’d patched. That you thought could bear the weight.

Theo and Dylan, the main characters, are super cute. I have seen some criticism saying they didn't understand why Dylan would be into Theo, but now that I've read the book, I'm baffled by this. Theo is good-looking and Dylan finds him as much, but he's also a great listener and really shows—multiple times throughout the book—that he cares about Dylan and truly listens to what he has to say. Who wouldn't fall for a guy like that?

I do have some problems with the book, but they are pretty minimal. The main characters catch feelings way too quickly and are basically explaining their trauma to each other by their second or third conversation. The baking competition part of the book was also extremely rushed and could have been fleshed out more. Slowing things down would have improved the romance, even if it made the book a little longer.

I enjoyed the spotlight the book put on Chinese culture. I enjoyed learning the history behind mooncakes and I really want to try the mooncakes in the book. I've never had a snowskin mooncake before, but I will definitely be seeking them out if I can.

Overall, if you want a really light and fluffy read with very angst, you can't go wrong here. I do believe this would be a fantastic book for anyone in the YA age range to read.

Baby Boy by Athena Steller
Did not finish book. Stopped at 32%.

Once again, I tried to read a DD/lb book, and once again, I didn't like it. I don't believe the book is bad, it's just not for me. I enjoy daddy kink, but I can't do age play, as I'm discovering. I prefer for the dynamic to be more focused on discipline and without the sub wearing diapers. 

However, if age play is a kink you enjoy (and you won't receive any judgment from me if it is), this book will probably be great for you. 

Virgin Flyer by Lucy Lennox

lighthearted fast-paced

3.0

This book is... fine. Cute, even. But it didn't blow my pants off. I got mad with Teo several times during the story for being a huge pushover, and honestly, he never really gets over that, which is something that vexes me most extremely. 

I also didn't like that we basically got no content with the main couple being an actual couple... they say "I love you" and get together "for real" literally two pages from the end and then the epilogue is a very short

proposal

scene set one year in the future. I don't tend to jive with stories where the main couple's problems could be solved with one simple conversation, which is definitely the case here. Worse, we never really get to see them have this conversation... it's skipped over in favor of the "I love you." 
 
However, I don't think the book is irredeemable. The main couple, Teo and Jack, are cute as fuck. I liked most of the side characters well, especially Grandpa Banks and Millie. If you like fake dating, I bet you'll like this book and I encourage you give it a chance. 

Rescued by the Alpha by M.M. Wilde

lighthearted fast-paced

• Diverse cast of characters? No

1.0

This is a quick read, but not an enjoyable one. I feel bad giving it 1 star, but at the same time, I didn't enjoy anything about it. It's not criminally offense or unreadable, but still, it didn't inspire anything in me.

Now, this could be a me problem—I do not enjoy fast burns and this is the quintessential definition of a fast burn. I feel like this book would have benefitted heavily from being double the length. The characters are hard to get attached to because the author tells us basically nothing about them or their feelings. Elam is (famous?) a nature photographer, something that he supposedly loves to do, but it is never brought up again after he enters the cabin with Nic. Nic supposedly makes beautiful wood sculptures and one-of-a-kind furniture pieces, but we never see him do it or think about it besides whittling a small toy in the very beginning. I feel like if the burn was just a bit slower, and we saw these characters doing their hobbies apart from each other, it would give the story the depth it's lacking.

I also feel like Elam and Nic's backgrounds/traumas are not explored enough.

Why not have Elam start having dreams about being a wolf after breaking up with his ex and deciding to go to Alaska because of them? He apparently has diluted wolf blood/a dormant wolf, so do something with that! Why not have Nic start dreaming about having a mate with children, which could freak him out (since he prefers to be alone)? Why not have him unconsciously carve a sculpture of his dream mates face (Elam)? Why not have Elam run across Nic in wolf form when he's out photographing nature and feel a yearning he "can't place"?

Am I crazy to think there is so much more the author could have done? Instead of using these little character nuggets, we get a half-assed rushed relationship and pregnancy with no real depth or feeling.

As an aside, the e-book is atrociously formatted, at least on Kindle Unlimited, which I used to read this book. Overall, I feel like there are much better omegaverse books out there to get your fix. 

The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer

adventurous hopeful lighthearted

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

I knew I would enjoy this book the moment I read the epigraph. This is one of my favorite quotes of all time, and I don't even have the nostalgia of The Chronicles of Narnia to fall back on. Something about it has always touched me, and this book managed to follow in its footsteps and touch me as well. I legitimately teared up several times while reading this,

especially when I read the poem Rafe's dad wrote him right before he died

.

The prose was absolutely beautiful in this book. I wrote down several quotes as I was reading, which is rare for me. Additionally, the worldbuilding was amazing. Shanandoah really does feel like a 13 year old came up with it, which I appreciated as a detail. And while I was unsure of the "Storyteller Corner" sections in the beginning, I really liked how they were used throughout the book. The romance is also very sweet. I tend to really like the

second chance romance

trope when it's done well, and I think the book nails it. Don't go in expecting any spice, though. On the scale, this book is barely seasoned with black pepper! 

A little list of all the quotes I loved:

As far away as And they lived happily ever after is from Once upon a time

 

All the bitterness, which was simply another name for loneliness, fled like shadows at the touch of the sunlight.

 

Joy is quieter than people think it is.

 

There was no bond that bound hearts that did not bind theirs.

 

And, of course, Bill's entire poem.

If I had to give one critique—which is also the reason I'm giving this book four stars instead of five—it's that the dialogue is incredibly inconsistent. Sometimes it works, but other times it feels so stilted and unnatural. For example, I found Jeremy calling Emilie

Princess

out of nowhere was very strange, even if we find the reason out later on. It's not bad he did it, but I feel like it could have been introduced more organically. Or another time, when Jeremy asks "Anything?" twice in the same conversation, on the same page

(p. 154)

. This was absolutely the weakest part of the book for me. 

If you're looking for a fun, lighthearted read, I'd highly recommend this book. It's not a mind blowing experience, but I don't think it's trying to be either. It's a story about friendship, love, and what the power of the pen. It's a fairy tale through and through. Or is it?

Either this isn't a fairy tale... Or it's only the beginning.

P.S. One day, I'm going to bake that cake. Mark my words.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

2.0

I originally thought I would rate this book 3 stars, but after some consideration, I decided to knock it down to 2 stars. I think I gave too much weight to the premise of the book, which is one that really interests me. I love that this book explores the human need to create and share art even in the apocalypse. I find it a fresh take on post-apocalyptic media, as I certainly have never seen a story like it before. Survival is insufficient. But that initial idea is not enough to make the overall product enjoyable. However, the thing that's keeping the rating from going even lower is the prose. The prose is spectacular—the author truly has a way with words. I particularly liked the "No more" sequences early on in the book and I wish they had stuck around.

The first two sections of the book were incredibly strong—if the story continued to be that strong, this book could have easily gotten 5 stars from me. But very quickly after that, we dive into the past and stay there. I am sorry, but there is no reason we needed

to know every detail of Arthur and Miranda's lives, marriage, and eventual divorce. It was completely irrelevant to the story

. Ninety percent of the sections we read about the past could (should) have been cut out and the story would have improved because of it.

I also felt like everything was simultaneously too close to the end of the world and too far. For example, in the book, dogs are described as wolfish or muttish and the younger members of society don't recognize dog breeds like Pomeranians, but it's only been twenty years since the fall of civilization so it's not like dog breeds would have disappeared in that short amount of time. But then you still have things like people living in the shell of a Wendy's twenty years on, which seems so unrealistic. If one "town" was described this way, I might be able to accept it, but that's not the case—no, in fact, this is described as normal by the members of The Symphony. Why wouldn't people move into houses, or even try to construct their own? Especially after twenty years?

Why did it take the people in the Severn City Airport two years to make, at the very least, tents to sleep in?

Not to mention, the collapse of civilization itself is written weirdly in this book. I don't know how to describe it, but it feels like the author retcons it several times as she keeps going back to the past.

One thing that springs to mind is Miranda being unable to get a flight out of Malaysia when she finds out that Arthur has died. She finds out he died the next morning, basically, and the narrative says that the airports are already closed by the time she gets back to the hotel. But then when we learn about how Clark got stranded where he did, he was taking a flight to Arthur's funeral, which is a day or two after he informed Miranda of Arthur's death... so airports were still open. Then you have parts of the narrative that say people stayed on the internet until it blinked out, but then in Clark's later sections, you see that people couldn't access the internet even the first day or two after they were grounded.

I feel like these issues were exacerbated by the nonlinear narrative.

I am not a person who hates disjointed narratives—in fact, I quite like them when they are done well—but in this case, I think this style of narrative really hindered the story. If I had to pinpoint why, it would be because everything is too cleanly linked.

The twist was way too easy to guess. I called that Tyler was The Prophet in part three when we were getting Miranda's backstory, that's how easy it was.

It doesn't help that Station Eleven (the comic) literally has no bearing on the story whatsoever.

The only impacts are the dog which is named Luli and Kirsten quoting one line from the comic to Tyler at the end. Worse still, Tyler barely even reacts to Kirsten quoting it and then we don't even get an explanation to how this shaped Tyler's worldview as he dies two paragraphs later. I posit that you could literally delete every reference to Station Eleven (the comic) and the narrative stays the same. It is why the past sections didn't hit hard at all—there is no reason to spend that much time on Miranda creating Station Eleven just for the pay off to be practically nothing.

This is also one of my greatest "sins" in writing—having a comic book be part of the narrative and not showing it. Why can't we get black and white prints of the comic interspersed in the book, especially if it's supposed to be a such a big part of the story?

I also found every other character besides The Symphony to be more interesting, and I know why—they have names. It is insane to me that most of the members of The Symphony are referred to as their instrument. It kept me from getting attached to the characters. And for the ones that were named, I feel like we didn't get any resolution with them at the end.

Why didn't Kirsten and Sayid have a conversation after everything that happened? Why didn't we get to see Clark and Kirsten have that conversation about Arthur, especially because we had to spend so much time learning about him in the first place?

The story took too long to get back to Jeevan, Clark, and Miranda in my opinion. I wanted to know more about them, not Arthur's newest scandal. I especially wish we got more from Miranda post-apocalypse. It seems like she survived

(if her waking up to see ships on the horizon is any indication)

and I would have loved to know what life was like

on the other side of the globe

. Instead we got nothing but a lackluster ending. It should have ended when

Clark showed Kirsten the town with electricity

. I was shocked we got a whole section after that, for no reason that I could discern. 

Despite all my complaints, I still think the book is worth reading simply because of the premise. I know that seems crazy, but as I said before—I don't know of any other story that centers humanity's need for art in a post-apocalyptic setting. I have heard from some that it is better, so that is an option for experiencing the premise too. Since I liked the author's writing style so much, I would be open to reading another book by her in the future. 

P.S. There is a quote from the book that is not very remarkable, but has stuck with me nonetheless. Probably because it hits close to home, having experienced the Covid 19 pandemic. 

August said that given an infinite number of parallel universes, there had to be one where there had been no pandemic and he’d grown up to be a physicist as planned, or one where there had been a pandemic but the virus had had a subtly different genetic structure, some minuscule variance that rendered it survivable, in any case a universe in which civilization hadn’t been so brutally interrupted.

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix

5.0

If I were a man, I would fight him.
If she were a man, no one would force Kania to try to bear child after child.
If I were a man, I would not be the next in line to be married if he kills her.
If we were men… 

I'm not surprised I liked this, but I am surprised to be giving it 5 stars. The book has sat with me for a while now and I can't find any glaring faults with it, so why shouldn't be 5 stars? I loved the characters and the world. It was so interesting. I liked that we didn't get all the answers right away and how the author was able to tie everything together at the end.

The world really captivated me. From the moment we're in the bone pit with Marra, to learning about dust-wives and godmothers, to the goblin market, I was truly invested. The author gives us an actual adult protagonist and love interest, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Marra, although she was sheltered, never felt young to me, which I appreciated. I ended up really loving all the characters, especially Agnes. I wish we had gotten to learn more about her past

and mother

, but since she's not the main character by any means, I'll let it slide.

If I have one criticism of the book, it would be that, after Marra escaped the blistered land, the stakes never felt high again. Despite the macabre set dressing, this is more in line with a cozy fantasy than anything else. This wasn't a deal-breaker for me, but if you're looking for a lot of tension, this book won't provide it. I actually liked this aspect of it. This could be me reading this book at the right time, since I've been in the mood for this type of book.

I would love a sequel to this so I hope T. Kingfisher is cooking it up. I need to see Marra and Fenris

rescue the other indentured humans from the goblin market. I also want to see Agnes and the dust-wife living together and getting into all sorts of shenanigans

.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it if you're looking for a quick, easy fantasy read in an exceptionally fleshed out world (for how short the book is). 

On the Same Page by Haley Cass
Did not finish book. Stopped at 5%.

It's long overdue for me to write this, but I had to DNF this book because I'm not in the right headspace. It's so incredibly long, and the worst part is that it doesn't need to be. There's literally no reason for this to be over 400 pages. I would be open to giving this book another chance in the future, though. 

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.

I have a lot to say, having read so little. I decided to DNF after reading the third chapter because I can't get over how completely terrible the worldbuilding is. I went into this knowing it was a fantasy romance and it wouldn't be the most epic or thoughtful setting imaginable, but even then, I can't look past the utter stupidity of the world.

There is a nation at war and they have set up a military school to train their recruits. Fine, I can accept this. What I cannot accept is that a nation at war would let hundreds of recruits die each year trying to go over a glorified balance beam to get a chance at becoming a dragon rider. I'm sorry, it's just too stupid. Why wouldn't they line up all the recruits, let the dragons pick who they want, and then put the rest of them in the infantry? YOU NEED THE BODIES.

Not the mention that apparently this nation allows traitors and their children to become high-ranking officers in their ranks? And allows the recruits to literally kill one another? This is supposed to be a military academy! The one job of a military academy above all else to is foster a bond between recruits so that they want to fight with each other and, subsequently, are willing to die for their country. Letting recruits kill each other does not do that. Letting traitors into your ranks does not do that.

If you had a great time reading this, I'm happy for your. But if you are like me and at least need your worlds to make sense, skip this one.