emmareadstoomuch's reviews
2051 reviews

i finally (finally, FINALLY) posted my review of this at https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/contemporaries-emmy-oliver-and-the-loose-ends-list-reviews/. yes, it's been five months since i read it and wrote this review...what of it?

1.25/5 stars

this just seems like a good idea, poorly executed. the writing style reminded me a lot of nancy drew for some reason - maybe because of how frequently it described appearances? but it was wordier and try-hardier. it was super boring and disappointing. the payoff of the reveal was not even close to worth it; the romance was gross and deeply unnecessary. this was not a fun reading experience AT ALL.

bottom line: do not recommend. bleh.

I know I say this all the time, but I really mean it: I wanted to like this book so badly. I saw good reviews from trusted sources, so I had faith...but I just had so many problems with this book.



https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.com/2017/01/12/christmasy-books-a-christmas-carol-twelve-days-of-dash-and-lily-what-light-reviews/

Let’s start with the good stuff, though! I really liked the first part. I started reading this late last night/early this morning and stayed up even later to read it. I’m obsessed with the idea of Christmas tree farms, and the setting was done well. Most importantly, this book felt Christmasy. Which is obviously the most important aspect of a book featuring the best month of the year.



I wish it was all positives, but that’s about all I liked. This book’s only 250 pages long, and around page 100 things started falling apart for me. Let’s start with the characters. (Y’all know that’s what I care about most.) Caleb is so vanilla for me - just one of those snoozefest male characters who are ~handsome~ and nice kinda and that’s it. Bor-ing. But Sierra is the one who really grinds my gears. She’s a YA fantasy-esque object of obsession - every guy who sees her is hopelessly in love with her, causing all sorts of hijinks to ensue. She’s just that beautiful, guys. But she’s a total control freak who tries to fight all of Caleb’s battles for him long before she’s even kissed him. (They’re essentially in a committed relationship WAY before they get to kissin’.)



But the worst part of Sierra? She’s, like, the worst friend ever. She skips her her friend’s first big role in a play (which is her dream) just to get more time with Caleb. She prioritizes Caleb over one of her best friends who she only gets to see one month a year, even though this might be the last of those months. When she finally gets around to apologizing to the former, she talks extensively about Caleb in the same text. She doesn’t help her parents with the tree farm, and they have to hire workers to replace her - despite the fact that she endlessly bemoans the potential loss of her winters at the tree farm.



Plus, all of the obstacles are really easily overcome. Example: None of the teenage tree farm workers are allowed to even talk to Sierra, or they’ll be sentenced to cleaning the outhouses. But when one of them asks her out and is so furious about being rejected he takes to trying to ruin her relationship with Caleb? We’ll just have to deal with it, I guess! And the timeline in this book is so confusing. Some entire days are just skipped, while others are end-to-end filled with major events.



Also, Sierra begins her interest in Caleb after being told he tried to stab his sister with a knife.

Spoiler

And that turns out to be, for the most part, true.

Am I the only one who thinks that’s a touch too wild?!



Anyway, I’m going to try to source a candy cane, rap the entirety of Justin Bieber’s “Drummer Boy,” and continue my quest to get in the Christmas spirit. I hope you’re all having a wonderful start to the holiday season!

200 pages has never felt more like 400. (And this is a sequel, too.)



For background on my history with the first book: I read it for a middle school summer reading list the year it came out. (Six years ago.) I think I liked it but I was 13 and can’t hold myself to that belief. The other thing about it being six years ago is it really seems like a sequel is unnecessary. Especially one that takes place a mere year after the first. But I was on a quest for Christmasy books and I saw this. So I picked it up.



Unlike my last attempt at a festive read, What Light, I doubted this one from the start. It started off rocky, improved a bit, went further and further downhill and lasted forever. In short, I would have DNFed this if not for the fact that this was 200 pages. But God help me if it didn’t feel way longer.



As always, the characters are the main part. (Disclaimer: I can’t speak to whether they’re worse than in the first, because I don’t remember the first.) Let’s start with Dash, since he comes first, title wise. He’s, on paper, a male me - loves reading, grumpy, anti-love. Luckily, I was spared even the short-lived belief he could be a new book boyfriend by the fact that the first chapter is in his POV. And his POV sucks. “He” thinks in long, gaudy sentences without point beyond making him sound smart. And he’s boring. He doesn’t have much of a personality beyond the aforementioned list and his obsession with Lily, and even that isn’t followed much.



But unfortunately, he’s not the worst part. Because Lily? Lily goddamn sucks. (Follow-up to the disclaimer: I’m pretty sure she’s significantly worse than in the first.) Here’s a list of adjectives I angrily applied to Lily while reading: childish, attention-starved, b*tchy, bratty, unsatisfiable, selfish, annoying, and - God I hope - unrealistic. The entire book is Dash’s hopeless attempts to get her back in love with him/cheer her up - because she refuses to have an actual discussion with him.



But the book doesn’t end once they FINALLY stop with the irritating, unnecessary, unrealistic lack of communication. No, more bone-chillingly-annoying hijinks ensue. They each try to express their love for the other, but - get this! - it’s not that easy! Hahaha! Isn’t that fun! (Is the sarcasm coming through? Because I couldn’t be more sarcastic if I tried.) At this point, I was so fed up with both of their characters that seeing them have ooey gooey grand gestures of romance made me feel physically ill.



This book doesn’t even have the Christmasy feeling that redeemed What Light to two stars. No, this book doesn’t make me feel jolly or festive at all, let alone inspire the need for a candy cane that W.L. did. I could be reading this in August and have it feel equally appropriate.



Bottom line: Everything that happened in this book was so pointless and avoidable, and I didn’t even have a nice character or Christmasy feeling to help me cope. I can’t speak to the first book, but I can say that I couldn’t stand reading this one.

just realized i have a ton of backed-up reviews i've never posted. so strap in, because this one is a very negative and very long one.

1/5 (0/5 if I could do it)

I don’t take notes on every book I review. If I do, it’s because I’m worried about forgetting my thoughts in the earlier sections (i.e., I’m either reading it too slowly or too quickly) or--and I think you can guess which category this book falls into--I really cannot stand the process of reading the book.


My notes on this book fall into two categories: 1) poor writing, and 2) overall dumbness, for lack of a better word. Each have quotes to back up my harsh opinion.


Let’s start with the poor writing. This book features one of my personal literary pet peeves (and one I haven’t encountered since I read fanfiction as a preteen): an American who attempts--and nearly always fails--to write as a Brit. It often comes off as too try-hard-y, with British slang pouring off dialogue, but this one didn’t even try. The author didn’t even bother to control-F-change “Mom” to “Mum.” This was also just teeming with unnecessary and boring details. One time, the protagonist’s mother nods: this is described as a “motherly, reassuring, thoughtful, vaguely uncertain nod of the head.” I couldn’t believe it. At one point, the perspective--which remains first person without exception--switches to 3rd person in the middle of a paragraph, then back. The narrator also considers (at length) cutting her hair before deciding it wouldn’t be as chic as her mom’s THREE TO FOUR TIMES. Then she does it, and it’s the same conversation again.


Onto the next point: general stupidity. Let me introduce this by saying that I enjoy a book about a sociopath. And that’s what I thought I was getting: the cover’s tagline is “Perfect in her methods, precise in her madness.” But Kit is far from emotionless (unfortunately, since her emotions are always a chore)--she’s just honestly stupid, or a flat character, or both. She does things she absolutely does not want to do (I won’t say what exactly, for the sake of spoilers) for no reason. And despite being dubbed the “Perfect Killer,” she’s not that good at what she does. She is spotted at one of her crime scenes three times, and has two close calls. She befriends one victim, is convinced by another not to kill her, and punches one in the face in front of the entire student body of her high school. (To the latter, she follows up with: “I’ll get you like I get the rest [...] I’ll kill you.”)


Her M.O. as a serial killer (beyond the “perfect” nature of her crimes) is that she leaves the letters requesting that particular victim to be killed with the victim’s body. If you’re like me, you’re thinking: That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. It’s not just the hitman who can get convicted, it’s the person who hires the hitman. And it’s easy to tell who wrote the letters. Our protagonist clears this up by saying that she cleans the handwritten letters of fingerprints, and because of this there can’t be a conviction or even an arrest. BECAUSE APPARENTLY HANDWRITING EXPERTS DON’T EXIST. God.


Kit is not smart, but apparently nobody told her (or the author) that. The narrative just takes aspects of her that are stupid and deems them intelligent. One example comes from Kit’s initial conversation with the police officer in charge of her case: “‘But you’re running the show, aren’t you?’ I regretted that comment. It sounded too intelligent.”


There’s another thing that bugged me about that secret mailbox of letters. People tack on money to their handwritten letters, which doesn’t super make sense since Kit doesn’t kill everyone, but whatever. My main problem is that the mailbox is very commonly known in the seedy underground of London--so why doesn’t anyone steal the money? It’s behind a loose tile in the women’s bathroom of a café!


Kit’s motivation for being a murderer is solely rooted in the motivations of her mother. Apparently her mother had been a serial killer but almost got caught and had to stop, so she trained her daughter and is able to satisfy her violent tendencies through the knowledge that Kit is murdering. Which doesn’t make sense, because that’s not how violence works, and also Kit feels things, often anti-murder emotions, and this motivation just doesn’t seem strong enough to me.


And I wish I could say this book was at least thrilling or entertaining. But I never enjoyed reading this. So…


Bottom line: nope. Can’t recommend.

Hey, Tommy Wallach, Urban Dictionary called! They want to know if they can use the entirety of this book as the example of their definition of “mansplaining”!



If you don’t like that one, I also considered this: Tommy, my man, Ayn Rand called! She wants to congratulate you on using fiction as a vehicle for your beliefs even more than she did with f*cking Atlas Shrugged!


Hi, babes. I’m pissed.


When I read the first dozen-or-so pages of this book, I was thrilled. I almost unhauled this book and then figured I might as well give it a shot. From the get-go I loved Wallach’s writing style (and by style I mean word choice, NOT CONTENT, bleh) and I thought there was some promise to the premise. (Lol.) (It's funny because those words are really close to each other.)



Oh my god, I thought. Did I almost donate a book I’ll end up giving 5 stars?



The answer to that?



Many of you know that the second I take out my teeny book-review notebook, I’m about to be one angry reader. This case was far from an exception. Here’s a list of the general categories of what Bugged me with a capital B:
-coverage of social issues (especially race, sexism; also including LGBT+)
-characters (specifically the female ones)
-choice of genre
-pacing
-and, as always, general stupidity


For examples of each of these, go to https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.com/2016/12/03/we-all-looked-up-review/. (Warning: it may be my longest review ever.)

(This review contains spoilers for Me Before You.)
With unexpected sequels like this one, I suppose it comes down to whether the sequel adds anything to the original. And I’m going to say this one doesn’t.

https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.com/2017/03/20/after-you-review/



I recognize the temptation to write a follow-up to Me Before You. That one smashed it, a rare combination of being a Goodreads ratings darling and having commercial/bestseller success. It’s an absolute goldmine. Of course you’d want to beat that particular dead horse. But I don’t have to appreciate your treatment of that poor equine corpse. (And compare those GR ratings - a lot of readers don’t like it either.)



”But that’s just a fairy-tale ending, isn’t it? Man dies, everyone learns something, moves on, creates something wonderful out of his death.”



An interesting sentence, that. Its intention is to explain the “need” for a sequel, when, in actuality, it’s making the reader feel guilty for loving the first book. Or at least liking it enough to appreciate its follow-up. I was already sensitive to criticisms of the first book, because I hate liking things that could be problematic in any way. (I didn’t even like the movie, which drew the most ire, and I still feel guilty!)



Let me explain my love for Me Before You so I can carefully outline my qualms against this follow-up. Me Before You is quite the love story - I don’t feel emotions very often, and I definitely felt something while reading that book. It made a claim for the humanity of assisted suicide, which is a cause I believe in. And it had a nice theme - we only have one life and we need to live it.



This book was 400 pages of the latter, again. Because apparently, the reader isn’t intelligent enough to infer that Louisa Clark mourned, and then made her way to living her fullest life. No, we had to follow along as she monotonously ambled through it. There was no grand love story. (Though there was a forced and un-interesting one alarmingly close to the first book.) The attempt at social-issue appeal was an alarmingly outdated subplot on a housewife’s introduction to basic feminism that bordered on circus sideshow in sheer goofiness. Also, some heavy-handed looks at, like, violence? Maybe gangs? I think I detected what may have been a soon-removed effort to discuss mental illness.



And there’s the kicker - this book should, at its core, discuss grief and mourning. Instead, it inserts truisms. Its “Moving On Support Group” is a joke, cycled through a repetitive storyline in the hopes it’ll make sense when Lou makes progress. (It doesn’t.)



This made me realize that I don’t even like Louisa Clark. I liked Will Traynor. Or did I? I liked their romance. Or did I? The worst kind of sequel is one that casts an uncertain light on your feelings for the first book. God, I’m so unhappy right now.



I feel bad for my family - in day two (three?) of my post-wisdom tooth surgery recovery, I dragged my swollen face about the house complaining about how I didn’t like this book. My mom, a fellow Moyes appreciator, wisely told me to stop reading it. I can’t, I said, filled with mistaken confidence. The entire appeal of this book is in the promise of character development. HA, HA, HA. GOOD ONE, ME.



Lou completes this book worse off than in Me Before You - even in her state of quasi-full recovery, she’s lost her light, her large personality. She’s like an entirely different character. Really, this felt like reading a wholly different world from the first book.



Most of the story is Lou’s obsession with devotion to a sixteen year old miscreant misunderstood lovebug. She hangs on this girl’s every word, smokes weed when she’s asked, forgives a series of misdeeds ranging in severity - all for a girl she doesn’t know. She sums up her thoughts on her participation in the pot-smoking with: “Afterward, I couldn’t believe I had been manipulated by a sixteen-year-old. But Lily was like the cool girl in class, the one you found yourself trying to impress.” From a thirty year old. From a grown ass woman.



Looks like I’m not leaving the ruination of some of my favorite books by shitty follow-ups in 2016.



Bottom line: If you loved Me Before You like I did, swaddle yourself in that love. Ignore negative reviews, and especially ignore the existence of this book.

so...less happened in this one. and i'm a little worried about how part 3 can convincingly wrap up the story since there wasn't too much progression in part 2. all that being said i read this in an hour or two so that's always fun... i'll try to get to part 3 soon.

Ugh. I wanted to like this. Really, I did. But it just...wasn’t in the cards. Or should I say...foretold by the Magic 8-Ball. (That’s a halfhearted reference to this book. Check.)

https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/made-you-up-review/

God, I’m literally intimidated by the thought of trying to review this. It seems so haaaard to put my thoughts into words. I’ll try. Kind of.

Let’s start with the good stuff, though. This book focuses on Alex, a high school senior with paranoid schizophrenia. I was hype to read about schizophrenia. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in YA, and I used to be obsessed with it. (See, schizophrenia doesn’t start presenting itself in most people until the late teenage years, so I used to have a gripping fear that I would have it. But that’s a story for another day. Or never.)

Anyway. I don’t have schizophrenia (or I don’t know I do - shoutout to past me), so I can’t really speak to whether this book is an accurate display of the mental illness. But, to me, an outsider, it felt real. The most popular quote from this book is “Sometimes I think people take reality for granted.”, and I definitely felt like I was questioning reality right alongside Alex. Her hallucinations are often presented as reality, so the reader has to sort out what’s real and what isn’t. If nothing else, it’s an interesting storytelling tactic, and it has some big payoffs.

The only other upside of this book is that there are a few REALLY fun plot twists, and I didn’t see them coming AT ALL. I gasped aloud at one. It’s a ride.

But...everything else about this book filled me with hatred. It was fairly unbearable. We’ll get into it. (I’m appropriating that phrase from straight shooter and podcaster extraordinaire Jon Lovett.)

Whoa, wait, hang on. I just glanced at the synopsis, and this book claims it will “appeal to fans of Wes Anderson, Silver Linings Playbook and Liar.” What in tarnation? Wes ANDERSON? The nerve. What the f*ck this book has to do with that filmmaking genius I may never know. Anyway.

This book is just littered with stupid mistakes and irritating inconsistencies. I didn’t think I was going to review this, so I didn’t write that many down, but I’ll try to dredge some up from my tragic, limited and upsetting memories of this book.

Alex always says her town is small, but it’s made up of like a bajillion “subdivisions” and each “subdivision” is made up of several “neighborhoods.” Also, Alex gives a lot of inconsistent information about finances: her family is “dirt poor,” but they could easily drop $70 for a new school uniform, it’s just that her mom wants to guilt trip her instead. Add to that that her mom is chomping at the bit to ship her off to a mental hospital and we get a whole bunch of confusing info. That shit’s expensive, man. Like, really, really expensive.

On top of that, this book is BONKERS UNREALISTIC. Everything about it. I just wanted to shriek while I was reading it. None of the characters feel real. There’s a psychopathic, cheerleading blonde (clichéd AND unrealistic); a principal who went insane because...he got electrocuted?; a conspiracy in a high school administration; a teenager who “runs jobs” like putting fleas in a kid’s bed and IcyHot in his underwear - and GETS PAID HANDSOMELY BY FELLOW TEENAGERS; a community-service club for troublemakers; an archaeologist father who spends weeks and months in Africa only to make no money...there’s definitely more but I want to repress the memory of this book again.

Alex always complains about how she neverrrr had the chance to have friends - even though she, like, just spent a year attending another school - and suddenly friends just SPRING UP at her new school. Literally spring up. I was like, “Ah, several acquaintances, to whom Alex may perhaps wave in the halls, but certainly not people she could call friends, by any means.” And then suddenly, she’s all, WOWWWW, MY FRIENDSSSS! AMAZING TO HAVE FRIENDS!

And oh, yeah. The love interest in this book? SUCKS. F*ckin’ Miles. He’s the aforementioned job-running teen, and he’s the worsttttt. Apparently, he has problems with empathy, and that’s why he’s okay with doing stuff like LIFE-RUINING PRANKS. It makes no sense, it really doesn’t. There are sociopaths who fit in better than he does. THOUSANDS OF THEM.

But the worst part of this book? I’ve read World War II historical fiction with fewer mentions of Nazis. Everyone calls Miles a Nazi, because he’s Aryan, mean as sh*t, and speaks with a German accent sometimes. After hundreds of pages of this utter bullsh*t, he - one f*cking time - screams that genocide isn’t funny. Already too little, too late, no? Add to that some Nazi sympathizing (he wears a Nazi bomber jacket, and tells Alex that not everyone wanted to be a Nazi) and the fact that he DRESSES LIKE A NAZI FOR PETTY CASH, and I’m f*cking done. It’s not funny. You’re not allowed to try to get me to sympathize with your piece of sh*t asshole of a character by downplaying the systemic murder of millions of people. Seventy years isn’t enough for me to think that’s okay. A THOUSAND years won’t make that okay. And that’s why this shit isn’t getting any bonus points for mental illness rep. Normalization of the Third f*ckin’ Reich deducts as many points as possible.

On top of that, this book is just weirdly written and f*cking annoying, IMO. I was so sick of it by the end I could puke.

Bottom line: There aren’t enough O’s in the world to satisfy my NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

This book...is amazing.

To all anti-feminists or non-feminists: I challenge you to pick this up and find a reason not to love feminism.

To all feminists: Read this. We all need some cheering up right now, I'd imagine, and this will give you a little bit of hope.

To all men: This involves you, too. Society disservices you with gender expectations as well as women. You are not oppressed, but you are hurt. We would all benefit from a change in our cultural recognition of what gender is.

This book stands out from other books about feminism in so many ways: In its brevity; in the power and beauty of its prose; in its discussion of African sexism alongside its existence in the West; in the relatability as well as in the differences.

It's a gorgeous little book. I know I will return to it.

Bottom line: Read it, read it, read it. No excuses. It's short, it's important, it's lovely.