clovetra's reviews
210 reviews

adventurous dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

wow does atwood come back with a BANG. holy shit.

this book was like straight up crack to me. i couldn’t get enough. if i didn’t have a test to study for, i easily could’ve finished this in a day or two.

the shining star of this book is EASILY aunt lydia. she is by far the most fascinating character in this story. i’ve never watched past the show’s first season other than a few tiktok clips hear & there, but wow is she intriguing. i love to hate her, as it were. she is so complex and so full of character, and her chapters following the inception of gilead were by far the most gripping.

the other two protagonists…Meh. i’ll say by far daisy was my least favourite. she seemed bland and generic. agnes felt like this at times as well, making their chapters seem incredibly juvenile. which duh yeah they’re children that’s the point. but also with atwood, i expect the cream of the crop. and having aunt lydia, the perfect picture of why atwood is so good, next to agnes and daisy? it was a bit.. disheartening. i enjoyed agnes’ chapters a bit more simply because she had eventful plot points going on around her, but even though daisy’s plot did have some significant events, they felt boring and shoe-horned in for me. idk i also found daisy quite unlikeable so maybe i just wanted to dislike her 🤷 idk sue me.

the plot was great! like i said at times this book felt a bit juvenile, especially those last 20 chapters, but overall i was gripped and dying to know what was going on.

i really had fun with this book. for me, the only thing holding it back is that it feels a bit too unrealistic at times. gilead is hinged on possibilities that seem so fantastical to us in the real world but also could realistically happen to society, yet with plot points surrounding the connection between gilead & the rest of the world it felt flat, and took me out of the story. not to mention the entire climax felt almost like a waste of time? idk i wish there was an additional epilogue. i do like the current epilogue as is, but i don’t think it was strong enough to exist on its own without a final chapter fully concluding the story. but hey that’s just me.

all that is to say, margaret atwood i am telepathically kissing you for creating one of the best, most fleshed-out and realistic dystopian worlds. queen shit.

Content Warnings

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks

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challenging informative slow-paced

2.0

this is my first sacks’ read and honestly i’m a bit let down. now this might be because i study psychology at uni but my god was this a drag at times.

for one, it reads like a textbook. the amount of times i wanted to cry because he mentioned the basal ganglia is higher than id like to admit. psychology is a special interest of mine but my god did i want to dnf this so many times simply because it felt like homework.

also, i sadly think sacks’ writing style isn’t my cup of tea. at times he overexplains something quite simple, with pages and pages of quotes essentially saying the same thing. it felt like groundhog day at times where i’d just keep reading the same thing but reworded slightly. i do enjoy case studies, but at some points specific cases dragged on. less is more sometimes sacks.

i’ll be honest and say i did cry reading this though, simply because of clive’s story. fuck that one hit me hard.

sadly though, me crying because one story resonated with me does not save this book in my mind. honestly i feel like i used less brain power writing an essay on the complex cognitive changes on OCD. like i’m so serious id pick this up and immediately get a headache.

i might try another novel of sacks, but my god was this a SLOG for me. i’d defo rec it to someone with a love of music and/or psychology, but this was not a fun experience for me LMAO

Content Warnings

Maeve Fly by CJ Leede

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

to think i put off reading this so many times, and wasn’t going to read it at all. thank you universe for having me read this because my GOD was this stellar.

i cannot describe just how much of a good time i had with this.

the ambiguous references to disney????? SOLD. especially in that final scene with liz, i literally burst out laughing oh my god
the bus scene too??? holy shit??!?
the gore in this book in general!!!! oh my god was it spectacular. i think this is my favourite book in terms of how the gore was written because my god. it teeters the line between unrealistic and entertaining so well
maeve herself. insane. witty. somehow relatable. i love her.
gideon too. he is amazing, i love him, i want to be him, i want to be maeve with him. Yeah.
there was no plot to this book and i didn’t care. maeve captured my attention so well i didn’t care at one point i was just following her life.
the writing. is so. good. oh my god.
the ending????? i started crying. i started crying at the ending because i loved this book so much holy shit

if you love horror, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD READ THIS. i don’t even think i have the words to describe why i adored this so much oh my GODDDDDDDD.

anyways, ill never be able to watch frozen with my niece again.

Content Warnings

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa

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inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

this was cute!!! i had a good time reading this.

takako was a good protagonist, she was relatable enough to be likeable, yet had her own ambitions. she did feel like she lacked depth and often at times felt flat, but she was nice enough that i didn’t mind too much

satoru was…. fine? he kind of felt like he lacked any depth. and that can almost go for all the other side characters. i mean this isn’t even 200 pages so im not surprised the side characters felt boring.

the setting was honestly the highlight of this book. i mean cmon what reader wouldn’t love to live in a bookshop. part 2’s setting was also quite pleasant, and added to the dream-like feeling of this book.

the plot itself was……. Meh! i mean i liked part 1, as it felt like it had a point, delivered it well, and was structured nicely. but part 2…… i didn’t like as much. like i said the setting was enjoyable, but the actual story felt like i was reading a completely different book. the tone felt like it did a random 180 and suddenly became incredibly depressing????? it wasn’t what was advertised at all. i was promised wholesome book loving not Depression.

i don’t really have much more to say. i mean this book is barely 150 pages. obviously a short book is going to have issues to do with pacing and fleshing out its cast, but everything felt like it was missing something. plus the ending felt like it was purposefully unresolved to set up a sequel, which just left me annoyed. the ending was not satisfying. i mean i know you can only do so much when your setting is just a bookshop and the plot only surrounds that, but i would’ve preferred that! or keep part 2 but actually…. include that in the blurb!!!!!!!

i defo think ill read the sequel, if only to satiate my need to be a completionist. this was a perfectly average book. i am neither in love nor do i hate this. it was Fine

Content Warnings

Misery by Stephen King

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

holy shart. for my first stephen king book that was fucking NUTS.

i’ve read my fair share of horror, but i can say this is defo one of the best. god damn.

now i do have some teensy tiny gripes with this and tbh it holds it back from a 5-star for me.

for one, god this book drags at points. i do think the pacing overall is good, as for this story to be “believable” it needed to take place over a large span of time. but at some point the story kept repeating itself, and not only was i slightly bored at times, but i became disillusioned. this book teeters the line between horror and trauma porn quite closely, and at times i felt it was very much horror for the sake of horror you know? like at times there felt like there was a lot of filler, and the pacing was probably slower than it needed to be.

also, i have to say, paul is not a likeable protagonist, at least for me. i think he defo starts out with the goal of being unlikeable, but by the end you’re supposed to be rooting for him. but at some point i kind of wanted him to die? like just free me from the hell that is this book’s pacing my god. and that’s the thing with annie too — the character that’s been set up almost seems paradoxical. i know that’s intentional because she’s ~mentally unstable~ but at some point she has to have some level of logic and consistency. like really i get why she doesn’t instantly kill paul, but by the end there…. really what are we waiting for. what are we doing here. idk. making annie unstable defo works for the horror-ness of the book, but almost makes the book fantastical in nature because she is not realistic.

and now we come to the overarching issue - annie herself. at some point the book stops feeling like it’s plausible in any nature and i am just annoyed. like seriously how did she get away with all that shit. be so serious. idk like i said at some point the book almost feels like a caricature, especially with annie’s character. it seems like king just made up a mental illness and went with it. cmon now at least make it seem believable please i beg.

other than that, whoo did i have a hoot! this is probably some of the best written horror ive read. the trials and tribulations paul goes through are made so vivid by king, and the motifs and themes he employs are so…. chefs kiss.

the ending was a bit… Um. but hey they can’t all be winners!

overall i had a great time with this book. i really think king is just a fun writer. his charisma oozes through the page and it makes for a really enjoyable experience.

please next time tho i beg speed up ur pacing sire i was ready to just look at litcharts because it felt like it was groundhog day 🙏🙏

Content Warnings

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

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dark informative tense fast-paced

3.0

i fear i may have been too dumb to understand this book.

a lot was going on, and i had a really hard time following some chapters. when we were in the ward discussing kaysen’s life, i could follow that. but when there were chapters where it was just discussing things, such as velocity and viscocity, i had no idea what was going on. i really felt like i was reading a journal by someone in psychosis. which yeah can be argued to be powerful, but for me it created a text that was so manic in nature i felt lost as kaysen ran away from me with her concepts.

this isn’t to say i think this book is “bad”, on the contrary. i really think i just couldn’t grasp what was going on due to those weird in-between chapters.

i did really like the chapters within the ward, such as the chapters about ice cream, and alice & daisy’s stories. but overall it felt like something was missing — i can’t put my finger on what; it’s just a feeling i have.

i hope to come back to this some day and fully grasp what i had read, because currently, this felt extremely disjointed.

Content Warnings

Heartstopper Volume 5 by Alice Oseman

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lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

me before opening this book: haha since i read the first volumes ive changed a lot and im almost 20 years old and i don’t think ill like this as much because im older and it’ll be weird reading about teens haha:
me reading this book: stimming wildly the entire time

Content Warnings

Babel by R.F. Kuang

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

ok. i gotta say it. least favourite r.f kuang book right here. which is crazy to say seeing as i haven’t finished the burning god but whatever.

first let me dunk on this book very briefly. i think this book has four issues that hold it back from a perfect novel.

one, rf kuang has set my expectations so high any imperfections seem so glaring when i adore her other works.

two. this book is repetitive at times. when you have 546 pages, i imagine there would be some repetition. but at some point after hearing about how lovell sucks, about how babel sucks, about how colonialism is bad, how exploitation of the lower class for the profits of the upper class sucks, and how racism sucks… i wanted more. which kind of brings up the issue of this book not going deeper with its analysis. ok yes i get it white people are perpetrators of colonialism and racism to the highest degree. now let’s add some more depth to this conversation. Nope! let’s instead

make lovell an almost cartoonish villain, make letty turn on her friends when she had a “redemption arc” coming her way, and have no depth beyond how white people are racist. after a while it felt like every white character became a mythic antagonist. i’m not saying humanise the racists! they can get fucked! especially letty you can eat dog shit at this point. what i am saying is let’s go beyond these fundamentals. rf kuang i know you can do this.

. i don’t think i properly explained what i mean here and i don’t think i actually possess those words. idk i just wanted a deeper analysis of the points kuang raises in this book. and this seems to be the issue with all themes in this book. the theme is explored in a surface way, and then fail to dig deeper and instead we get the same line rewritten every 20 pages. RF KUANG YOU CAN DO BETTER.

this also leads me onto the fact that there is no nuance in this book. everything must be black or white. britain is good or britain is bad. lovell is good or lovell is bad. babel is good or babel is bad. i expected MORE than just surface-level conversations that i’d expect to see on twitter.

robin sucks. robin swift the character isn’t a bad guy, he’s just badly written. at points he goes from the most obvious audience surrogate in the world, to someone with wants dreams and aspirations, to yet again as fleshed out as cardboard. at points robin felt so raw and honest, and other times he felt like he was just doing and saying shit just because the plot beckoned him to, not because that’s what his character would do. because he has no character!!!!! gun to my head other than listing characteristics of robin (e.g orphaned, chinese, a babbler), i could not name you 3 traits he has. i mean i could say he’s a good friend and that’s it.

and let me just say - this book is boring at times. straight up i did not care about this book until The Big Thing. like before that ok i was into this book, but i wasn’t gripped. there is no plot. there is no tension. and don’t sit here and tell me “oh it’s a school story at that point of course there’s no tension” SHUT UP. the poppy war’s school setting ate AND had a good plot. i don’t know what happened here shorty but it wasn’t great! it was fine. passable. tolerable. but not truly interesting.

ok now ive shit on this book let me tell you what i DID i like.

the linguistic side. idk it made this book feel more real. plus you could tell it was interesting and deeply researched
ramy. my love. my dear. you are babygrill. 🫶
after canton 2: electric bugaloo, the book REALLLLYYY gripped me. like i was HOOKED. i think from there i literally finished the rest of this book in one day.
the first half of this book was great in terms of atmosphere ! i actually was really digging it ! but after a while i realised the points raised weren’t really going to go past the basics i became a bit disillusioned

ummm otherwise idk what to say. i mean i very clearly had a good time reading this. i was invested and will always adore rf kuang’s writing. but this? this is a fall from grace compared to the beauty that is the poppy war trilogy.

i’m such a hater oh my god

Content Warnings

Empty: A Memoir by Susan Burton

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challenging emotional informative reflective slow-paced

3.0

oh i hate giving memoirs anything other than glowing reviews. it feels like im commenting not only on this person’s writing but their life. so believe me when i say i hate that i didn’t like this more.

i think this is a perfectly fine book! i can understand why this resonates with so many people. i’ve not experienced the same eating disorders as burton has, but i do face ARFID and have always had issues with my body image, so im not completely isolated from her experiences. i did relate to her at many points in this book, especially her describing her relationship with food as a child. the only vegetable i ate until i was a teenager was cucumber (which i always had to have with tomato sauce mind you). we and toddler burton are like this 🤞 fr. i also really appreciate how burton didn’t focus on the glamorisation of eating disorders. that sounds like stupid praise because to write about the details of an eating disorder (e.g weight, methods, etc.) has been known to be a cardinal sin when recounting experiences. but just because it’s widely known that you shouldn’t do that doesn’t mean people don’t! especially since for burton i imagine her recounting her weight would only spur the feelings she explains in her book again. it’s not even that she tip-toed around the issue — she straight up doesn’t mention her weight, any methods she uses in her anorexia periods, she doesn’t shy away from the almost hidden nature of binge eating, and i adore her for that.

the thing i struggled with most in this book was the writing style. now ofc im not a fucking phd student of literature yet here i am critiquing a very well known author!!! who am i? but i cant ignore how i felt reading this. it almost felt like burton was writing a list, of getting to point a to point b and so on. although the story recounted her feelings, it didn’t feel like she was reliving them and i was an observer, it felt like i was watching a movie of burton watching a movie of these events. like it felt even more detached than second-hand, it felt almost robotic at times. and im not even knocking what some other reviews have, where they complain about this book repeating itself in a cyclical nature — newsflash that’s literally how eating disorders work (although i can’t lie and say it did get tiring as a reader, but im not gonna hold that against this book as those are the facts). but it felt like with every event, with every new change in burton’s life, the emotions were still flat. and yeah that can probably be ascribed to her fixation with food dulling her emotions, but it was hard to read as i felt like i was reading from a textbook, devoid of all feeling. the only parts i really felt “connected” to burton were parts i myself could relate to, but other than that it felt like this book was going through the motions.

either way though, i feel like this was a great insight into eating disorders in the long run — people don’t just “get over” eating disorders. it is a constant battle. this memoir also shines light on binge eating, a topic often forgotten about in conversations about eating disorders. it is just as real, just as harmful, and just as difficult to crawl out of.

Content Warnings

Severance by Ling Ma

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dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

holy shit. HOLY SHITTTTT. add this to ur tbr immediately. IMMEDIATELY.

this book reminds me of station eleven but more adult (and not written by a zionist 🤐). ling ma i could kiss you.

i’ll be real — my expectations were low. i read bliss montage last year, and i was not a fan. but this? this book reminded me of why i love dystopias so much.

god was this story captivating. not only following candence through her life post-shen fever but her life leading up to it.

now after living through a pandemic (kind of…), this book really rings true. like god the way ma described how corporations continued to exploit their workers whilst the world was crumbling…. Yeah. i especially loved that this plague doesn’t work in the classic sense of human-to-human infection, and doesn’t follow your stereotypical portrayal of those infected. especially in the last couple of chapters — i loved the portrayal there.

candence was quite a plain character with few discernible traits, but i think it worked here. she was the perfect audience surrogate, with just enough individuality to be interesting yet vague enough so i really felt like i was there with her.

the concept of the plot itself was a bit boring imo, but once things started happening (iykyk) i was more and more intrigued. the nonlinear narrative added to this, as if i got too “bored” (i didn’t really i was loving seeing how the world works on a fundamental level), i’d be taken to a flashback of life pre-shen fever where i found candence’s life quite relatable. i hate the concept of a 9-5 too girlie i get you.

ugh i can’t even describe why i loved this book. it’s so good. i understand after this book why people sing ling ma’s praises, and i will join in (only for this book sorry she still lost me in bliss montage)

Content Warnings

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clovetra's reviews 210 reviews

clovetra's reviews
210 reviews