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themermaddie's reviews
467 reviews
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
5.0
this book is EVERYTHING. a warm hug. a soft jumper on a cold day. the sun behind the clouds. a bubble bath after a stressful day. a bandaid for sadness. hope in an increasingly negative world. a home.
the writing is so clever and sweet and funny and poetic, and it's just so pleasant to get lost in. the cast of characters is so rich and lovable; i typically don't like fictional children because they usually feel a bit caricature-like and prosthetic, but i just love these children so so much. they're all so unique and distinct, and their voices are really strong. they never feel like they're being used the advance the plot or theme, and they're just so realistic. i would read a whole book of their hijinks. arthur's character is lovely as well, i loved the slow burn of his and linus's relationship, that *yearning* is just so tender and absolutely bang on. as sweet as she is, zoe is the only character who felt a little forced at times, just in the way that a few of her conversations with linus seemed a little too on the nose, which occasionally came off a bit awkward. this is definitely me nitpicking though, i love zoe.
there's so much to say but i honestly think you should just read the book instead. this book just makes me feel safe and loved and warm and hugged. this was recommended to me so many times promising that i'd love and i cannot tell you how glad i am that i do actually love it more than words. such an amazing little book of healing and living.
the writing is so clever and sweet and funny and poetic, and it's just so pleasant to get lost in. the cast of characters is so rich and lovable; i typically don't like fictional children because they usually feel a bit caricature-like and prosthetic, but i just love these children so so much. they're all so unique and distinct, and their voices are really strong. they never feel like they're being used the advance the plot or theme, and they're just so realistic. i would read a whole book of their hijinks. arthur's character is lovely as well, i loved the slow burn of his and linus's relationship, that *yearning* is just so tender and absolutely bang on. as sweet as she is, zoe is the only character who felt a little forced at times, just in the way that a few of her conversations with linus seemed a little too on the nose, which occasionally came off a bit awkward. this is definitely me nitpicking though, i love zoe.
there's so much to say but i honestly think you should just read the book instead. this book just makes me feel safe and loved and warm and hugged. this was recommended to me so many times promising that i'd love and i cannot tell you how glad i am that i do actually love it more than words. such an amazing little book of healing and living.
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
4.0
so well-written!! the narrative just flows so well, very clear and precise about its purpose but also laced with little barbs that are reveal how characters really feel. it's just microaggression after microaggression, all the little things that don't feel "big enough" to label the person racist, but the yt people themselves would never think to call their own behaviour racist. i feel bad for emira and briar, and the way emira loved her. the last line made me especially sad.
Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman
2.0
i just finished this book and i literally have no idea what just happened. the alternating povs and character shifts were incredibly jarring and it made for a difficult experience. it was certainly ambitious and i can appreciate the creative format, but frankly there were so many characters and plot lines that i struggled to connect so i didn't understand WHY we were spending so much time with them. the plot twist at the end would've been more satisfying had i understood literally anything more about cleo's past; it could've been good but i just didn't understand how the two murders were connected (maddie being the coincidence doesn't count). the characters were a resounding meh: i wasn't attached to any of them, although maddie occasionally intrigued me with her post divorce self exploration, but none of it felt like it held any weight. if i hadn't been listening to an audiobook, this would've been very easy to DNF.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
4.0
what a delight. eugenides tells a wonderful story that sprawls across many generations through cal's voice, laced with a wry self-awareness that is unbiased and without ego.
You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson
2.0
i feel mislead by the synopsis; i'm very much the minority that did not like this book, but i'm glad other people found something worthwhile in this story. one star for representation, and another for pride of all sorts.
i'm sorry for the incoming rant.
i have never been so relieved to finish a book; despite being a quick read, this story just seemed to drag on forever. the blurb pitched a prom queen social war, rivals to lovers romance and i cannot stress how much this was not that. this 'great romance' literally takes place over like 3 weeks and i feel like we hardly get to know mack beyond just being nice and pretty and also having a dead mom. the romance doesn't feel like the main plot but also it doesn't really feel like there is one? even prom kinda disappears for a second. the story just kinda meanders from plot point to plot point, like a weekly updating wattpad story. frankly i'm not sure where all 330+ pages went because so much happened but also like nothing happened?
there are so many subplots in this book and i didn't care about any of them, the only one that would've been worth developing in further depth was liz's mom and her brother's illness, which as it stands, feels very underdeveloped. i kept expecting to get told WHY liz wants to study medicine, but instead it's just bc her dead mom also did medicine and had the same disease as her brother. like okay, can you tell me about your passion for medicine? how you want to improve the lives of sickle cell patients? things you want to study in the field of sickle cell research? but no, liz just wants to follow in her dead mom's footsteps and go to her alma mater. i feel like that's something to work thru in therapy or maybe even just consider that you don't actually want to become a doctor too.
speaking of which, the logistical issues with this story are a massive mindfuck. it has the logic of a disney channel movie. the scholarship for prom queen is $10k, which is nothing to sneeze at tbf, but are you telling me this $10k is going to make or break her entire college fund? what about tuition for the next three years, and med school? and okay, let's assume that $10k DOES make or break it: if you're going to be a doctor, take out a student loan for $10k. private college in indiana is like ~$25k/yr on average, you'll be able to pay back a loan for $10k when you're a doctor. maybe i'm being cynical, bc if she just took out a loan then we wouldn't get this story, so i'll concede for argument's sake. say this money will solve everything: then what? she meets mack and is ready to risk it all for her even though they just met like two weeks ago. liz is pitched to the reader as this driven and hardworking student who's scrappy and ready to kill for that scholarship. instead liz is basically dragged kicking and screaming to prom court, egged on by Gabi and her brother, and then starts to get distracted once she and Mack start dating. liz is an incredibly passive character, she doesn't act in any way that matches her supposedly impressive transcript.
speaking of THAT, it is absolutely absurd to me that in a town that's supposedly so obsessed with prom court, legacies, traditions, and rankings, that Liz is VALEDICTORIAN and still describes herself as an invisible wallflower. yes, i know part of that is her social isolation as one of the only black people in school, but if anything, her achievements in a school that values surface level success (such as academics) would make her stand out MORE as a minority. people would expect more of her in a model minority way, not think she's an uncool nerd, especially when academics are Literally part of the prom court rankings. also they make such a big deal about how liz can't be seen with mack because people will think she's ~queer~ and this little town is so homophobic and no one will vote for her if she's gay!!! but then literally the second she gets outed everyone is super supportive and goes out of their way to be proud allies, including the teacher who up to this point has not shown any love for liz??? like??? what was the point. WHAT was the point. it was such a dumb plot point, jesus.
and okay, let's talk about the elephant in the room: the pop culture references. dear god, i will lose my fucking mind if i see one more pop culture reference. it feels like there's one in every other paragraph and it sounds so much like a millennial trying to be down with the kids and it hurts my fucking soul. stop praying to beyonce, stop referencing the kardashians, stop namedropping kanye, simone biles, idris elba etc into normal conversations. nobody talks like this, least of all teenagers. the dialogue is absolutely unforgivable, it reads like cringey CW riverdale dialogue but in book form. it makes every single character sound wooden and cartoonishly unrealistic. they're all just caricatures of their archetypes; britt is the edgy one w the piercings, mack is the new manic pixie dream girl, jordan is the misunderstood ex-friend, and stone is literally not even a person(she simply exists to say ditzy hippie shit like "your negative aura is affecting me so badly today" and "mercury retrograde incoming"). don't even get me started on rachel collins and her friends; absolutely cartoonish villains with no depth, even the ones like Quinn, Lucy, and the others who are nice to Liz speak the way that middle-aged men imagine dumb teenage girls speak. these are not characters, these are stereotypes. the writing is also just... not good. i feel like i've implied that already but to be clear, i was not a fan of the writing.
and for the love of god, the social media in this book made me roll my eyes so hard. it literally sounds like the author has never used social media in her life and it is painful. there's Campbell Confidential which is basically an instagram rip-off exclusively for their high school, and it's used as a cheap narrative device to show when liz is doing well or poorly in the prom "race" (which is a farce; it's literally just a chart of who's more talked about on CC, who does the most community service, and who has the best grades).
i'll probably cool down in a bit and try to find some things i liked about this book but for now i am feeling annoyed and frustrated with it. i really hated reading this book, and i'm very sorry about it, because it has good rep and i liked seeing Liz demand that this small white indiana town make space for her. this frankly feels like a first draft, and i can't believe this supposedly went through an editor. it was just not a good book, i'm sorry.
i'm sorry for the incoming rant.
i have never been so relieved to finish a book; despite being a quick read, this story just seemed to drag on forever. the blurb pitched a prom queen social war, rivals to lovers romance and i cannot stress how much this was not that. this 'great romance' literally takes place over like 3 weeks and i feel like we hardly get to know mack beyond just being nice and pretty and also having a dead mom. the romance doesn't feel like the main plot but also it doesn't really feel like there is one? even prom kinda disappears for a second. the story just kinda meanders from plot point to plot point, like a weekly updating wattpad story. frankly i'm not sure where all 330+ pages went because so much happened but also like nothing happened?
there are so many subplots in this book and i didn't care about any of them, the only one that would've been worth developing in further depth was liz's mom and her brother's illness, which as it stands, feels very underdeveloped. i kept expecting to get told WHY liz wants to study medicine, but instead it's just bc her dead mom also did medicine and had the same disease as her brother. like okay, can you tell me about your passion for medicine? how you want to improve the lives of sickle cell patients? things you want to study in the field of sickle cell research? but no, liz just wants to follow in her dead mom's footsteps and go to her alma mater. i feel like that's something to work thru in therapy or maybe even just consider that you don't actually want to become a doctor too.
speaking of which, the logistical issues with this story are a massive mindfuck. it has the logic of a disney channel movie. the scholarship for prom queen is $10k, which is nothing to sneeze at tbf, but are you telling me this $10k is going to make or break her entire college fund? what about tuition for the next three years, and med school? and okay, let's assume that $10k DOES make or break it: if you're going to be a doctor, take out a student loan for $10k. private college in indiana is like ~$25k/yr on average, you'll be able to pay back a loan for $10k when you're a doctor. maybe i'm being cynical, bc if she just took out a loan then we wouldn't get this story, so i'll concede for argument's sake. say this money will solve everything: then what? she meets mack and is ready to risk it all for her even though they just met like two weeks ago. liz is pitched to the reader as this driven and hardworking student who's scrappy and ready to kill for that scholarship. instead liz is basically dragged kicking and screaming to prom court, egged on by Gabi and her brother, and then starts to get distracted once she and Mack start dating. liz is an incredibly passive character, she doesn't act in any way that matches her supposedly impressive transcript.
speaking of THAT, it is absolutely absurd to me that in a town that's supposedly so obsessed with prom court, legacies, traditions, and rankings, that Liz is VALEDICTORIAN and still describes herself as an invisible wallflower. yes, i know part of that is her social isolation as one of the only black people in school, but if anything, her achievements in a school that values surface level success (such as academics) would make her stand out MORE as a minority. people would expect more of her in a model minority way, not think she's an uncool nerd, especially when academics are Literally part of the prom court rankings. also they make such a big deal about how liz can't be seen with mack because people will think she's ~queer~ and this little town is so homophobic and no one will vote for her if she's gay!!! but then literally the second she gets outed everyone is super supportive and goes out of their way to be proud allies, including the teacher who up to this point has not shown any love for liz??? like??? what was the point. WHAT was the point. it was such a dumb plot point, jesus.
and okay, let's talk about the elephant in the room: the pop culture references. dear god, i will lose my fucking mind if i see one more pop culture reference. it feels like there's one in every other paragraph and it sounds so much like a millennial trying to be down with the kids and it hurts my fucking soul. stop praying to beyonce, stop referencing the kardashians, stop namedropping kanye, simone biles, idris elba etc into normal conversations. nobody talks like this, least of all teenagers. the dialogue is absolutely unforgivable, it reads like cringey CW riverdale dialogue but in book form. it makes every single character sound wooden and cartoonishly unrealistic. they're all just caricatures of their archetypes; britt is the edgy one w the piercings, mack is the new manic pixie dream girl, jordan is the misunderstood ex-friend, and stone is literally not even a person(she simply exists to say ditzy hippie shit like "your negative aura is affecting me so badly today" and "mercury retrograde incoming"). don't even get me started on rachel collins and her friends; absolutely cartoonish villains with no depth, even the ones like Quinn, Lucy, and the others who are nice to Liz speak the way that middle-aged men imagine dumb teenage girls speak. these are not characters, these are stereotypes. the writing is also just... not good. i feel like i've implied that already but to be clear, i was not a fan of the writing.
and for the love of god, the social media in this book made me roll my eyes so hard. it literally sounds like the author has never used social media in her life and it is painful. there's Campbell Confidential which is basically an instagram rip-off exclusively for their high school, and it's used as a cheap narrative device to show when liz is doing well or poorly in the prom "race" (which is a farce; it's literally just a chart of who's more talked about on CC, who does the most community service, and who has the best grades).
i'll probably cool down in a bit and try to find some things i liked about this book but for now i am feeling annoyed and frustrated with it. i really hated reading this book, and i'm very sorry about it, because it has good rep and i liked seeing Liz demand that this small white indiana town make space for her. this frankly feels like a first draft, and i can't believe this supposedly went through an editor. it was just not a good book, i'm sorry.
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
5.0
think this is one of the best books i've read this year. not quite ready to share my thoughts about it yet. something about it speaks so viscerally to me that pretty much any sentence from about halfway thru could just make me start crying.
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
3.0
3.5 stars
this was a difficult story to tell and i think barker does it decently well.
i'd heard people say that reading this book before song of achilles made it hard to like achilles because he's so much more violent in this story, but i still found him just as fascinating here. briseis's pov of him gives a less romanticised version of war, but still realistic. to be honest i was more interested in barker's version of achilles and patroclus than i was in briseis, up until about 3/4 of the way in. the development of achilles and briseis's relationship after patroclus's death was my favourite part of the story. i was surprised by the amount of achilles's grief we get to see, it makes him much more sympathetic, even within the self-awareness of his own violence and crimes. his grief opens up the relationship between himself and briseis, i thought their interactions here were the most promising and i would've liked to see more of that.
i did feel that the alternating povs were jarring and a little bizarre, although i recognise the difficulty of narrating a story like this. briseis's pov is first person past because she's given agency in this story, and achilles's pov is third person present because he doesn't get a future; i understand these are deliberate choices, especially as they both experience things that the other is not privy to, but it does give the overall novel a jumpy disjointed feeling.
admittedly some of the story got a bit muddled at points for me, where briseis's narration of life at the camps felt less like "pulling back the curtain on the trojan slaves" and more like a generic war account. my favourite part of camp life discussion is when briseis muses about how some women are able to love their new masters when they were the ones who had murdered their families; these types of thoughts are primarily in the beginning of the book and later transform more specifically into her thoughts about patroclus and achilles. another review calls the camp life discussion "tedious and repetitive" once achilles' perspective gets introduced and i'm inclined to agree. maybe it's intentional that achilles is still the most multi-faceted character in a book that claims to be about the women, like commentary that women's voices always get drowned out by men? who knows. i have conflicted thoughts about this.
overall i think barker did a really good job with the setting and the atmosphere, i did actually really enjoy achilles' character, i thought he was complex and unromanticised and flawed and i liked that a lot. i feel a little bit let down by briseis, whose narration seemed more monotonous than "wry" as the blurb suggested. again, i understand that it's difficult to write a retelling where you give agency to a character who canonically has none, so i think barker did well for the difficulties this narrative presents. briseis's closing monologue shamed me a bit, which was unexpected but not unappreciated, as i think it succeeds at wrapping up a story specifically designed to make the reader reevaluate the power of perspective in tales of heroism.
this was a difficult story to tell and i think barker does it decently well.
i'd heard people say that reading this book before song of achilles made it hard to like achilles because he's so much more violent in this story, but i still found him just as fascinating here. briseis's pov of him gives a less romanticised version of war, but still realistic. to be honest i was more interested in barker's version of achilles and patroclus than i was in briseis, up until about 3/4 of the way in. the development of achilles and briseis's relationship after patroclus's death was my favourite part of the story. i was surprised by the amount of achilles's grief we get to see, it makes him much more sympathetic, even within the self-awareness of his own violence and crimes. his grief opens up the relationship between himself and briseis, i thought their interactions here were the most promising and i would've liked to see more of that.
i did feel that the alternating povs were jarring and a little bizarre, although i recognise the difficulty of narrating a story like this. briseis's pov is first person past because she's given agency in this story, and achilles's pov is third person present because he doesn't get a future; i understand these are deliberate choices, especially as they both experience things that the other is not privy to, but it does give the overall novel a jumpy disjointed feeling.
admittedly some of the story got a bit muddled at points for me, where briseis's narration of life at the camps felt less like "pulling back the curtain on the trojan slaves" and more like a generic war account. my favourite part of camp life discussion is when briseis muses about how some women are able to love their new masters when they were the ones who had murdered their families; these types of thoughts are primarily in the beginning of the book and later transform more specifically into her thoughts about patroclus and achilles. another review calls the camp life discussion "tedious and repetitive" once achilles' perspective gets introduced and i'm inclined to agree. maybe it's intentional that achilles is still the most multi-faceted character in a book that claims to be about the women, like commentary that women's voices always get drowned out by men? who knows. i have conflicted thoughts about this.
overall i think barker did a really good job with the setting and the atmosphere, i did actually really enjoy achilles' character, i thought he was complex and unromanticised and flawed and i liked that a lot. i feel a little bit let down by briseis, whose narration seemed more monotonous than "wry" as the blurb suggested. again, i understand that it's difficult to write a retelling where you give agency to a character who canonically has none, so i think barker did well for the difficulties this narrative presents. briseis's closing monologue shamed me a bit, which was unexpected but not unappreciated, as i think it succeeds at wrapping up a story specifically designed to make the reader reevaluate the power of perspective in tales of heroism.
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
4.0
WHAT THE FUCK
absolutely furious w gillian flynn for writing such compelling fucked up women all the time, it's so rude for them to be this good.
i simply have too many thoughts about this to say anything substantial in a goodreads review, but i would kinda love to write a paper on this book with a disability theory lens, there's just so much going on here. the beginning was a little slow and meandered a while before i got hooked, but it's just such a weird and hypnotising story. i don't generally find crime thrillers actually disturbing in a stomach-roiling way but this one genuinely had me deeply concerned at several moments. very excellent
absolutely furious w gillian flynn for writing such compelling fucked up women all the time, it's so rude for them to be this good.
i simply have too many thoughts about this to say anything substantial in a goodreads review, but i would kinda love to write a paper on this book with a disability theory lens, there's just so much going on here. the beginning was a little slow and meandered a while before i got hooked, but it's just such a weird and hypnotising story. i don't generally find crime thrillers actually disturbing in a stomach-roiling way but this one genuinely had me deeply concerned at several moments. very excellent
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
4.0
this was so much fun! it walks the line between realistic and slightly implausible so well, with a good dash of social commentary and excellent world building. the nigerian setting and characters are rich and the cast all have distinctive voices, which are narrated excellently in the audiobook. the first half was definitely stronger than the second plotwise, but i did enjoy the exploration of Korede and Ayoola's upbringing a lot. Korede's voice is so strong and she's such a captivating narrator, i was really able to feel for both her and Ayoola, although i had moments where i very much wanted to throw Ayoola under the bus. the ending fell a little flat for me, somehow being both predictable and unpredictable, which left me a little more confused than breathless like i was hoping. the ending could've been punchier, it was good, just a little anticlimactic.