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xcampuskiddo's reviews
245 reviews
Nothing Special by A.E. Via
1.0
I don't know if I can keep torturing myself with this one.
First of all, the machismo is disgusting. Get over yourself, character freaking named GOD. Being a stubborn bulldozing man is not sexy by any stretch of the imagination. I'm also not down with "I can change him/save him from himself" tropes. Function as an adult or GTFO.
Second of all, if your doctor suggests that the ideal way to bring down a dangerously high fever is by putting the fevered person in an ICE BATH, please run as fast and far as you can to someone who is not a quack who apparently got their Web-MD.
Third of all, the misogyny. It is not cool to get upset with your partner for wanting you to stay close during a dangerous mission and tell him to stop treating you like a "bitch" (apparently females are weak, can't take care of themselves, etc, etc). It's not cool to go on about how the person doing the cooking is wearing a - gasp - apron, and how femme (implied) that is. Like, it's not necessary to be PC; be authentic with how your characters feel about things, but not by throwing women under the bus. Gross.
Fourth of all, God is (claims to be?) an adult, yet his incompetence at making breakfast in bed for Day is a freaking caricature. And Day ACCEPTS IT!!! Like, dude, he's NOT THREE YEARS OLD. He should at least be able to recognize that he used a comically enormous spoon in the cereal bowl, even if he somehow can't figure out how to butter burnt (!!!) toast before it gets cold, and waits hours, I guess??? before serving ice cold coffee that's full of grounds and not even prepared the way Day likes it EVEN THOUGH GOD HAS BEEN HIS WORK PARTNER FOR FOUR YEARS AND CONSTANTLY TEASES HIM ABOUT ALL THE COFFEE HE DRINKS.
I may have been screaming out loud at my radio while listening to the audiobook in the car at this point, because I have a serious lack of CAN by now for this entire abomination of literature.
I'm gritting my teeth and bearing it since I'm 68% of the way through and I hate leaving things unfinished when I've already put this much energy into it, but yeesh.
Wish me luck.
First of all, the machismo is disgusting. Get over yourself, character freaking named GOD. Being a stubborn bulldozing man is not sexy by any stretch of the imagination. I'm also not down with "I can change him/save him from himself" tropes. Function as an adult or GTFO.
Second of all, if your doctor suggests that the ideal way to bring down a dangerously high fever is by putting the fevered person in an ICE BATH, please run as fast and far as you can to someone who is not a quack who apparently got their Web-MD.
Third of all, the misogyny. It is not cool to get upset with your partner for wanting you to stay close during a dangerous mission and tell him to stop treating you like a "bitch" (apparently females are weak, can't take care of themselves, etc, etc). It's not cool to go on about how the person doing the cooking is wearing a - gasp - apron, and how femme (implied) that is. Like, it's not necessary to be PC; be authentic with how your characters feel about things, but not by throwing women under the bus. Gross.
Fourth of all, God is (claims to be?) an adult, yet his incompetence at making breakfast in bed for Day is a freaking caricature. And Day ACCEPTS IT!!! Like, dude, he's NOT THREE YEARS OLD. He should at least be able to recognize that he used a comically enormous spoon in the cereal bowl, even if he somehow can't figure out how to butter burnt (!!!) toast before it gets cold, and waits hours, I guess??? before serving ice cold coffee that's full of grounds and not even prepared the way Day likes it EVEN THOUGH GOD HAS BEEN HIS WORK PARTNER FOR FOUR YEARS AND CONSTANTLY TEASES HIM ABOUT ALL THE COFFEE HE DRINKS.
I may have been screaming out loud at my radio while listening to the audiobook in the car at this point, because I have a serious lack of CAN by now for this entire abomination of literature.
I'm gritting my teeth and bearing it since I'm 68% of the way through and I hate leaving things unfinished when I've already put this much energy into it, but yeesh.
Wish me luck.
A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons by Robert M. Sapolsky
5.0
Truth Will Out by K.C. Wells
3.0
This one is a fairly straightforward, feel-good romp. I am not very good at solving mysteries, but this one I had the perp and the motive pegged from pretty early on, so it was just a matter of listening along until I found out that I was right. Fortunately, the writing is generally well done, if a bit pat in places (for example, the mystery was wrapped up quite cleanly at the end, which makes for a nice conclusion but not so much for a realistic one), so I didn't feel like I was spending a significant amount of time screeching at the characters to stop being stupid already. Though there was one major clue at the beginning, I could mostly buy that the main character wouldn't have considered what it meant, or at least buy it enough to keep listening. The romantic arc between the MC and the love interest is extremely tame, to the point where I had a hard time believing that both characters weren't a-spec, and nearly to the point where I couldn't believe they were really much more than good friends who occasionally liked to hug each other. When action did finally occur, it was behind closed doors, and not much of a fuss was made over it. But, if you can handle some canned plotting, prefer not to have your romantic action right on stage, and enjoy basic feel-good romantic mysteries that don't need to feel realistic to be enjoyable, this one is not a terrible one to check out.