emmareadstoomuch's reviews
2051 reviews

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.

Of couuuuuurse. Of course this would happen to me. I reread Just One Day, and I’m all confident and pleased because 2017-me loves a book that 2014-me loved. And I’m all, guess what else 2014-ish-me loved? The sequel. This is gonna be great.
Well, guess what, world? It wasn’t great. It was, in fact, garbage.

You’d think I’d expect this by now, but I am STUPID and I NEVER DO.

Ugh.

So this book takes place over the same span of time that the first one covers, except this book, instead of being empowering and interesting and filled with amazing character development, is boring and repetitive and lovey-dovey and actually contains the biggest character downgrade I have ever experienced in my young and bitter life.

Willem is mildly hot in the first book. He is mysterious and poetic and whatnot. He speaks a lot of languages and is tall and has great hair and creates metaphors for love using wrist-Nutella. What’s not to love? Or, more accurately, what’s not to feel neutral toward.

Willem is the narrator of this book, and he is the worst ever.

He is boring. He is obsessive in a way that has very little positive impact on himself. He mopes around and manipulates girls into loving him (ha ha, the reader is supposed to say! How stupid of that girl for not realizing he’s in love with another girl, who this one doesn’t know exists! Lol! It’s almost like he’s f*cking her and living in her home and all around making her think they’re in an exclusive relationship). He is very sh*tty to his friends. He travels around to a few places, but with none of the visceral descriptions the first book has.

What I am trying to say is it is all very bad.

And then the ending is sh*tty and inconclusive and has no payoff, which is why the ebook Just One Night had to exist. And the fact that this book made that glorified pamphlet of foot fetishizing have to come into creation is reason enough to one star it.

I don’t want to talk about this anymore.

Bottom line: Please pretend this book does not exist. It’s for your own good.


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pre-review

SOMEONE JUST MURDER ME. JUST KILL ME. WHATEVER HIGHER POWER MAY BE UP THERE, PLEASE TAKE ME NOW. PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY. END THIS SUFFERING. GRANT ME THE SWEET SWEET OBLIVION OF DEATH.



You guessed it!! Even though I adored the first book and it's one of my favorite YA books ever, this book was not good!!! Because there is no justice or fairness or joy or love in this world!!!

Review to come if I survive today!!!!!

Remember how I read this book? Because I sure don’t.

What stands out in my mind is that I was able to finish this book when I was finishing literally zero books. But like...don’t let that make you think it was easy. It was Not. Every page I read was a gargantuan effort. Most of this got done by me literally spending one (1) entire evening reading this book. And I only did it because I told someone I was going to be spending my night reading, and that made me feel pressured to do so.

I do not hate this book. Neither do I love it, or like it a whole lot. Or even like it a little bit. It just...exists.

I get what it was going for. And it’s admirable. It’s supposed to be all imagination-y, and isn’t-childhood-cool, and family is important and let’s all love each other and smile.

But it was mostly just really boring. All the characters were bland. And sometimes it went too far on the imagination front. And on the redeeming-characters front. (Not everybody is awesome, okay?!)

Also, this little girl (the main character) is a haaaaaater. (That’s literally a reference to a specific episode of a specific podcast I listened to today. In unrelated news, I am the biggest loser on the entire earth.) Like, every kid is a sh*tbag in her mind. I JUST DON’T LIKE THAT. If you’re going to redeem a weird, semi-neglectful grandmother and a guy who is literally called the Monster, maybe there can be a kid or two who doesn’t full-on suck?

But hey. What do I know.

Plus I normally really like reading Scandinavian-translated books (I am the worst) because I like the way it sounds when it’s English-ized. It still holds a nice poetic effect. But I didn’t get that from this? Maybe because the little-girl-main-character speaks English a lot. Dunno. Didn’t like it.

I have really pressed the boundaries of how much I can talk about this book, so…

Bottom line: It’s okay. Whatever. Read it if you feel like it? Who cares about anything.


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I FINISHED A BOOOOOOOOOK!!!!

and it was...good? it was fine.

we'll talk about it.

review to come

Are you familiar with how thin the walls are in dorm rooms? If you are, take that and multiply it by a thousand and you’ll have my scenario. If you aren’t, I’ll give you some examples: I can’t fall asleep until no one in my hall is talking. I unwantedly hear my next-door neighbors’ conversations word for word. If someone upstairs is playing music I can feel the bassline. I try to be as quiet as I can since I know if I make a noise louder than a pin dropping it could wake the goddamn dead.


But even though I was reading this at 1 a.m. on a Wednesday (WELL after quiet hours!) I couldn’t stop myself from scoffing. And groaning. And generally expressing my distaste. Loudly. I actually said “Oh, GOD” at the very last line of the book. To myself. In an empty room.


I dare you to read a teenage boy theorizing that a Grand Mystery--you know, one that spawned three novellas?--was caused by him and his girlfriend’s breakup going against ~destiny~ and not want to scream into the fucking abyss. I’m sorry for the language, but how did that even get published?! How is that in print?! A 3.47 average rating is pretty low for Goodreads, but I’m honestly surprised it’s not even less. Like one star, for example. Just every single reader giving this book one star. What a waste of time. I HAVE PAPERS TO WRITE, COLLEEN AND TARRYN!


I think I gave myself frown lines reading this.


It’s not super well-written, and it’s hard to tell whether that’s because the writing itself isn’t good or the characters are garbage or a mix of the two. Example: “‘I’m seventeen years old. I think I have the right to change.’ This guy. I want to roll my eyes at him, but first I need him to give me more answers.”


I never felt intrigued by the mystery. Maybe that’s my fault for launching abruptly into this having entirely forgotten the other novellas. Silas and Charlie, individually and together, made me want to GAG. But the most unforgivable aspect of this for me was just that it’s dumb.


Dumb mistakes, like saying they’re at a gas station an hour away from their destination on one page, then that they have two more hours till they get there on the next. Dumb reasoning, like seeing that two characters have small eyes and are kinda pale and assuming that one is the other’s father with no other evidence. Dumb perspective, since Charlie referred to herself more in the third person than first. Just dumb choices. Why would people take pictures of Silas because he sat in a puddle? WHY?!


Bottom line: I politely request to punch each and every one of these characters in the face, and then have a Silas ’n’ Charlie style memory loss so I never have to remember any of this book.

probably the most impressive thing about colleen hoover books is that every single one manages to mangle a different social issue.

by that standard, this one is the most impressive of all. because it mangles, like, 8 of them.

that's enough of a review.

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there is no one worse at naming characters than colleen hoover.

merit. honor. luck. utah. sagan. barnaby. two people named victoria. moby.

AND I AM BARELY A FRACTION OF THE WAY INTO THIS BOOK

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pretty classic that this is good ol' coho's lowest rated book and the only one that hasn't made me want to stab my eye out with a disposable fork by the 20 page mark

but hey, there's still time.

1.35/5 (The .35 is out of pity for how I didn’t finish this.)


A day and a half ago, I was telling you all I didn’t want to DNF it. Now, I’m DNFing it.


If you’re familiar with my (work in progress) 2016 favorites shelf, you’re aware that a lovely little number called Wolf by Wolf is featured in it. That book is so great. (If you’re not familiar: 1. It’s YA and a hypothetical historical fiction, exploring a different scenario in which the Axis powers won World War II and also centering on a badass global motorcycle race; and 2. Pick. It. Up.) If you are familiar, you may know that the sequel came out earlier this week. It is one of my most anticipated reads of the year. I am unbearably excited and continually checking my Amazon shipping status.


If you’re wondering why I’m yammering on about this duology, it’s because they’re by the same author. I’ve been anticipating reading this book for a long time but I’ve saved it for the final pre-sequel stretch, both to stave off my crippling enthusiasm and to remind me why I loved the book.


Here’s the thing, though. I hated this book.


The characters were flat, the writing was mediocre to rough, and--worst flaw of all when compared to Wolf by Wolf--this shindig was goddamn boring.


Also, what the hell genre is this? Unless an entire history from today until when this book takes place was revealed in the last stretch, I see no reason to believe this is a dystopia. If it’s fantasy, it’s the lamest fantasy ever. Things like Styrofoam and Gucci exist?! So uncreative. Bleh.


I had to stop reading because this was killing my excitement, and I refuse to allow for that to happen. This was making me question just how creative Graudin’s concept of hypothetical history was. She wrote it, of course, half a century after The Man in the High Castle was published, and likely in the wake of a renewal of that story’s readership when the Amazon series was announced. (God, what a great series.)


Anyway. So goes a DNF. I hate doing this, guys, mainly because it makes me feel unqualified to complain. But…


Bottom line: I found this book silly, confusing, flat, uncreative and boring, as well as an excitement-killing monster. Nope, nope, nope-ity nope.

Recently, I started watching How to Get Away with Murder. Because I am totally untrendy and if by some trick of nature I am somehow participating in something that people at large appreciate, I must do so four years too late in order to keep the world running and not break fundamental laws of world operation, probably.

It’s a very entertaining show! Twisty and turny. Very dark. I’ve gasped a few times. Viola Davis is a national treasure.

That show is a lot better than this book.

It, like this book, follows a group of young people and a murder, and mystery surrounding that murder. It, too, involves steamy romance and social media and endless drama.

But it’s just totally, full-on better at doing all of it. There’s no avoiding it.

That’s not to say that this book isn’t good! It is. Or at least it isn’t bad.

Here’s the thing. It’s the watered-down, YA version of How to Get Away with Murder. Some people prefer those versions! And that’s okay.

If you liked Warcross better than Ready Player One. If you’re more interested in Pretty Little Liars and Riverdale than Mindhunter or Making a Murderer. It’s fine if you are! They’re just two totally different things.

YA murder stuff is frothier. There are YA requisites it has to meet: budding romance; groups of friends; high school drama; usually some sort of impending-future college-slash-career-goals plotline.

It all depends if you want a side of fluff with your murder mystery.

I, personally, don’t. Give me darkness and thrills and creeps and gore. Do not give me baseball drama and romantic miscommunication and phones getting taken away, please. I’m not interested.

But as far as that goes, this book was pretty good at it. It, at the very least, incorporated the drama into the murder and the motive.

The ending was predictable, yes, and sort of messy really, and definitely not creepy or shocking or the things I really want, but it was unique and somewhat creative.

This whole shindig, actually, was much more unique and creative than I expected. I really didn’t not enjoy it, even though I’ve been so busy trying to lock down the “Most Pretentious Person Alive” award while writing this that I may not have had the time to convey that.

I think it’s that I just finished You by Caroline Kepnes. And that’s really just a much better book than this. Unfair standard, though.

Bottom line: If you want young adult sh*t in your thriller and not just thrills, this book is perfect for you. If you’re here for the thrills, there are way, way, way better choices.

"'[ISIS] oppose[s] anyone who does not follow the law as they see it,' Mr. Elhadad says. 'Even Muslims. Terrorists make no exceptions for anyone who does not believe exactly as they do.'

"I think about asking him why Muslims don't come together to stop this from happening, but I think I already know what he would say. Too many people here in Cairo - and probably in all of Egypt and the other predominantly Muslim countries - are just trying to make ends meet. Their days are full and their wallets are not. And if the Egyptian government can't bring running water to every tap and electricity in every building, can they finance a war? Or maybe I'm wrong and these governments can afford war. Maybe not all Muslim governments see the Islamic State as a threat. Maybe some even sympathize with their aims."

That quote should be enough to justify this one-star rating, no???

I mean, why don't the straight white men of America come together to stop mass shooters, right???? If it's just that easy???

In a Perfect World is about an American girl who has massively generalized ways of thinking about the Middle East and Islam, then moves to Egypt and switches them out - at an excruciatingly slow pace - for slightly different massive generalizations.

I tried to give this book the benefit of the doubt throughout, as it stumbled clumsily through attempts at discussing hijab, Muslim prayer, Fox News, the Egyptian revolution, the Arab Spring, and Black Lives Matter. But you know what? This book f*cking sucks at doing all of it. Maybe it's well intentioned. I wish it weren't this way. But it is.

So: one star. Easily.

i just don't think the bad-boy-who-acts-like-a-total-dickhead-because-tragic-backstory-but-really-has-a-heart-of-gold will ever be my type.

and the same goes for girls in the same trope.

so, like. not for me. but i can see the appeal if i close one eye and try hard.

this was probably the most hilarious series of all of childhood, and is, guess what, still hilarious.

i am probably as funny as i am because of this book. which is to say, endlessly amusing.

we all owe a lot to Barbara Park. (namely, my stellar personality.)

this was - when i used to read a lot of sarah dessen - my favorite sarah dessen book. to the best of my recollection. (even the best of my recollection is not a very good recollection.)

anyway. that's why it seemed a good place to start on the Massive Sarah Dessen-Centered Reread Bonanza of 2018. which was supposed to happen in 2017. but life, you know? i do not keep my promises.

this was exactly what i wanted, and also a lot more than i'd bargained for??? i am the worst ever, so i'd forgotten that sarah dessen delivers a hell of a lot more than sweet, fluffy love stories. (although, sometimes that.)

this book covers eating disorders, rape, victim-shaming, the sh*ttiness of high school, a dash of bullying, a nearly-book-boyfriend-a-ble love interest, family drama, sisterhood, music, a sprinkle of anxiety, and character development like the world has NEVER SEEN.

your fave could never.

so even though it wasn't perfect (long, v dramatic, semi-flat characters, fairly f*cking repetitive)........it was pretty damn good.

bottom line: DESSEN REREAD OFF TO A GOOD START. (but not a perfect one.)