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sucreslibrary's reviews
1022 reviews
The Moon on a Rainy Night, Vol. 1 by Kuzushiro
2.5
there's a reason i don't pick up high school yuri anymore. the tropes involved really haven't advanced since i was reading it over a decade ago and now that i'm 30 i really just don't have the patience. i made an exception for this one because of the HoH character - I was interested to see how deafness was dealt with and if it was handled well. for the most part, i think it was fine. i don't have the same hangups with this one as i do with A Sign of Affection. it's everything else that doesnt work for me.
i really dislike the art style - the type of overly-glossy lips and extreme blush-y faces that have gotten popular in recent years are a huge turnoff for me. the manga has already set up a lot of sexual tension way too quickly (one of the things i dislike in high school yuri in general) and the characters aren't that interesting. it's obvious that saki is gay and having a hard time coping with heteronormativity, and i wish that had been explored a little more instead of simply hinted at in this volume. kanon obviously has more going on since she is the hard of hearing character but the manga takes care to show her personality and interests outside of her disability which is appreciated. unfortunately a lot of her character looks like its going to be otaku-based, and i was already getting annoyed with the few discussions that popped up because of it.
ultimately i'm glad i gave this a chance, but i will not be continuing with the series. if the art style was even a little more bearable for me i might be able to do it, or if i hadn't burned myself out on this style of yuri a decade ago, but as it is this just isn't my thing.
i really dislike the art style - the type of overly-glossy lips and extreme blush-y faces that have gotten popular in recent years are a huge turnoff for me. the manga has already set up a lot of sexual tension way too quickly (one of the things i dislike in high school yuri in general) and the characters aren't that interesting. it's obvious that saki is gay and having a hard time coping with heteronormativity, and i wish that had been explored a little more instead of simply hinted at in this volume. kanon obviously has more going on since she is the hard of hearing character but the manga takes care to show her personality and interests outside of her disability which is appreciated. unfortunately a lot of her character looks like its going to be otaku-based, and i was already getting annoyed with the few discussions that popped up because of it.
ultimately i'm glad i gave this a chance, but i will not be continuing with the series. if the art style was even a little more bearable for me i might be able to do it, or if i hadn't burned myself out on this style of yuri a decade ago, but as it is this just isn't my thing.
The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo
1.0
ive got a lot of thoughts on this that my poor wife has had to hear too much of but i dunno if i can bring myself to type em all out. ill just say im extremely disappointed after loving 'feed them silence' as much as i did and that this feels like a real step back in writing for the author. so much of the writing was very repetitive (there were several phrases that were repeated so often that any time i came to another one i rolled my eyes). the entire thing felt quite immature (especially with how much it loved to throw 'fuck' around - i use the word 'fuck' daily but it felt so forced and repetitive in this novella) and the main character, leslie, was extremely annoying at times (i really detested how he immediately projects certain things onto stevie + how presumptuous he is in thinking he's going to "save" stevie from his hometown).
i hadn't realized how much of this was a romance - if i had, i likely wouldn't have picked it up. but even if i had wanted that, this romance is written so poorly with one character being barely explored outside of what the main character projects onto him. who is stevie outside of his one-note anger? i also deeply disliked the age gap and how leslie takes to calling stevie "his boy" constantly after they fuck the first time. i just didn't buy that stevie cared about leslie in any real way (because they barely talked to each other! they didn't know shit about each other! it was almost entirely lust that drew them together but they're talking marriage at the end even though they haven't known each other for longer than a week!) and it made the ending portion almost unbearable.
in the end, i felt like i was sold something entirely different from what was actually delivered and i regret getting my hopes up so high for this one. for anyone looking for horror, that is barely in this book and is mostly brushed over so we can have monsterfucking. im a monsterfucker myself, but i prefer knowing that'll be happening going into a book so i dont get my hopes up super high for a compelling story. there really is almost no horror here, and the plot drags for something so short. the characters aren't great and neither is the romance. there's a lot of standing around and waiting for the plot to happen, which it only does in the last 10%. i could see some people appreciating the historical aspect of it, but that's about it. maybe if someone goes in knowing this is a romance they'll have a better time of it, but i doubt it.
i hadn't realized how much of this was a romance - if i had, i likely wouldn't have picked it up. but even if i had wanted that, this romance is written so poorly with one character being barely explored outside of what the main character projects onto him. who is stevie outside of his one-note anger? i also deeply disliked the age gap and how leslie takes to calling stevie "his boy" constantly after they fuck the first time. i just didn't buy that stevie cared about leslie in any real way (because they barely talked to each other! they didn't know shit about each other! it was almost entirely lust that drew them together but they're talking marriage at the end even though they haven't known each other for longer than a week!) and it made the ending portion almost unbearable.
in the end, i felt like i was sold something entirely different from what was actually delivered and i regret getting my hopes up so high for this one. for anyone looking for horror, that is barely in this book and is mostly brushed over so we can have monsterfucking. im a monsterfucker myself, but i prefer knowing that'll be happening going into a book so i dont get my hopes up super high for a compelling story. there really is almost no horror here, and the plot drags for something so short. the characters aren't great and neither is the romance. there's a lot of standing around and waiting for the plot to happen, which it only does in the last 10%. i could see some people appreciating the historical aspect of it, but that's about it. maybe if someone goes in knowing this is a romance they'll have a better time of it, but i doubt it.