eemilycolleen's reviews
532 reviews

just honestly got distracted by higher fantasy lmao i’ll probably get back to it eventually

SAD and WEIRD and riveting and beautiful 😭

“One day you won't need me, Chouette. It's only natural. The day will come when you feast upon my liver and fly away, leaving the rest of me for the scavengers. It's a wonder that any woman ever agrees to be a mother, when the fruits of motherhood are inevitably conflict and remorse, to be followed by death and disembowelment.” 

very VERY sweet & heartfelt. would make such a lovely netflix movie. the culmination of the wanda jean storyline made me tear up a lil. maybe a lil too much schmaltz but it worked for me!!! sometimes schmaltz works!! 

"that was reciprocity—reaching out your hand in the dark, offering it, and hoping someone reached back."

an ABSURD DELIGHT!!!!!!!! the exact “okay just ONE more chapter” book i’ve been craving for ages. court intrigue & resigned fealty turning into PURE TRUST IN THE FACE OF DEATH & hot boys sneaking around the city in the dead of night & the ridiculous urge to perform reconnaissance missions even with dagger wounds all over your perfect body. also ROMANCE!!!! an unbearable amount of sexy handholding! there is NOTHING hotter than lying in the dark inches away from the person you want and not kissing them. ALEXANDRA GETS IT.

i loved every character so much, especially anxious messy prince kadou and my number one boy evemer, the most judgmental bodyguard/priss in the country. AND one thousand extra stars for tadek, who could have been annoying in a less confident writer’s hands but instead was uproariously lovable & bitchy in perfect ways. when he realizes the Truth like 50 pages from the end and just CACKLES until evemer threatens to drown him??? “oh, fuck, i think i just got religion”???? incomparable joy.

i just loved it so dearly. i could have read 500 more pages. my FULL throated recommendation! 

found this very soothing and sad like a lullaby, like eating soup when you feel particularly alone. didn’t hit for me like some of the other gaiman stuff did when i was younger (remember the absolute shock of recognition/delight when he used “bigger on the inside” to describe people in his doctor who episode? and everything about good omens? whew those were the good days) 

oh :') i very enjoyed this and in fact the last line made me weep. such a loving, thoughtful story about daring to notice and wanting so badly to be noticed back; about all the tiny ways love can fill you to the brim. blanca's fascination with george really killed me, i am really biting back Emotion here. QUEER IDENTIFICATORY DESIRE! "a hot and restless urge to look—and, by looking, to know”!!!!!!!!! that's the shit. i am SAD.

quotes that killed me especially:

- I imagined, sometimes, that they were my clothes, that I could be as real and sharp and clothed as George, could straddle a wall and smoke a cigar and write a book. That night, though, I was so tired and so alone that I imagined the clothes were George herself, that she was enveloping me, pressing back when I pressed her.

- It is as though I am watching my soul, she thinks, walking around in clothes and boots, outside of my body. It is a terrible, agonizing, unbearable experience and she goes back to the theater night after night to feel it again.

- Sometimes, she thinks, you just know that someone has something to do with you. One of the friends writes back: are you in love with him or do you want to eat him?

:') 

beautiful and vast and heartrending and hopeful. made me wanna rewatch bsg and also hug my mom. it’s INTENSE, like, there is so much here about death and destruction and loneliness and, yes, plague — but even at its bleakest it still feels so open-hearted and reaching out for connection. whew!!! good one to end 2022 on

it’s giving david rose! which is fun! the event planning stuff is all cute as hell. but also it rlly lacks subtlety and the miscommunication trope doesn’t work and also the epilogue is so so bad. why do romance authors keep doing bad epilogues. just cut it!

anyway, a fun christmas romp, but it’s no a fair return by thingswithwings 💞 

yeah bitch, she’s rereading animorphs! and she started with the darkest one! it’s a psychological thriller, it’s a courtroom drama, it’s a wartime romance, it’s colonialism as told by the colonizer. it’s the intermingling of motherhood and obsession and imperialism, all wrapped up with a shiny unreliable narrator bow. it’s disgusting!!!! it’s incredible. it’s visser by k.a. applegate.

edriss is so evil in such a human way; “the absence of metaphor is so striking,” you know? she is an abuser & an enslaver & a rapist & a murderer and through it all she’s also a mother and it’s never once subtext, it’s just literally the story she tells us. insane book. i cannot believe i read this as a child.

and then there's eva, who is here-and-not-here in every moment of the story, who watches in horror as her body commits literal war crimes, who holds her son in her arms and sees absolution so so close and then turns around and says: no. leave me here. who believes she was CHOSEN BY GOD to bear (and abandon!) the savior of the world: “I believe in a higher power, Yeerk. I believe I was taken so that my son would grow strong and wise and some day defeat you.” (????????????? yes. it really is that catholic. insane!)

and marco, my absolute son marco, who is like fifteen years old and was raised by a parasitic alien abusive mom AND is also the best tactician in a war he's been fighting for two years with only five other kids. the fact that eva gives him up because she deadass believes HER ONLY BEGOTTEN SON is the singular hope for earth and then,,,, what? he just has to keep fighting. because if not, what's her sacrifice for. THE JESUS OF IT ALL.

i can't believe scholastic published this. we are so lucky.

“but you keep my old scarf / from that very first week” THE NOVEL!! this made me cry on my cross-country flight home for christmas. sometimes love is four people trying their hardest and fucking up and kissing in dive bars and drinking a lot in the snow!!!!!!!!! i just adored this. i’m still tearing up! LIFE IS WORTH THE RISK!!! idk this just made me feel so grateful for the people i love and so lucky to bear witness to their every risk and failure and hope and success and joy. I LOVE TO BE ALIVE!!!!!!!! also i loved the kim-prescotts i feel so emotional just thinking about Family. what a world! what a book! ALSO I LOVE CHRISTMAS! okay i’m done