icarusandthesun's reviews
139 reviews

Mann bewirft Käfer mit Äpfeln und ich sympathisiere mit dem Käfer.

insufferable people with weird opinions yap about love, the economy, art, beauty, philosophy and god.
yes, that's it — that's the plot.

childish will-they/won't-they relationships, girls giving head, people who don't actually love their partners (seriously, what was felix's spiel with all his "i know you love me" instead of saying i love you back) and tragically mundane social commentary fill up these 320 pages of suffering.
the characters were horribly unlikable, i wanted to gouge my eyes out multiple times. 

i enjoyed sally rooney's normal people, and conversations with friends was also fine, as well as her short story mr salary and i read this book as a preparation for intermezzo, but now i'm actually quite sure i won't be reading intermezzo anytime soon.

boring boring boring.
gone is the geeky whimsy of book one; instead we have wade, who sounds like a bitter middle-aged man, and an evil "superhuman" villain who forces the characters to complete another mystery hunt–but make everything as deadpan, unspectacular and tiring as possible.

a waste of time, truly.

exasperating and unrealistic.
the feminist commentary did little to spice things up. the way mallory and her family didn't communicate for the longest time was the worst – i didn't like her nor her weird family with both sisters being annoying to the moon and back. there was nothing cute or comforting about their family dynamic. the only person who didn't piss me off all of the time was nolan, because he seemed sensible, and like an emotionally mature person and was the most relatable with the way he didn't whine about absolutely everything. 
the chess in this chess romance was alright, the references to chess players and moves plenty, so at least one can't complain about that.
i thought mallory's backstory was overdramatized and so over-the-top, i couldn't really sympathise with her at all. there was basically no conflict in this book that couldn't have been solved by a medium-long serious conversation.
not one of ali hazelwood's best books, imo.

this novella follows an eponymous schoolgirl, documenting an ordinary day in her life.

filled with self-hatred, self-deprecation, reflections on life and society and what is "normal" (and yes, also the occasional misogynistic comment), it is unmistakably an osamu dazai book.
beautiful as much as it is strange and truthful; thoughts scattered everywhere; lots of morbid topics – death and death and more death.
the schoolgirl's a "heroine" that is, as osamu dazai's characters tend to be, not quite likable, but relatable, laying bare the ugly and ponderous sides of being human. 

there's something to his books, always, that makes me want to come back.

cute – and surprisingly relatable!
written from the naive and innocent perspective of a 4th grader, this was shockingly insightful in the sense that we don't question things, situations and people quite like children do. 
kawakami succeeded in writing a great novella with a perfectly realistic child-narrator. 
as sweet as it was strange and unusual. 

30% cute, 70% questionable.

the cute: romance, science, social commentary!

i liked nearly everything about levi, from his calm demeanor, to his rationality, attitude and (soft) personality. bee and levi shared some cute moments, and their relationship seemed genuine and built on common interests and values (veganism, science, cats, hummingbirds, movies and music), which i enjoyed. i liked the banter, and both characters as a couple were likable enough. i enjoyed the science talk, and the feminist and social commentary, and the facts about Marie Curie!

the questionable: everything else.

the characters, especially rocío and kaylee, seemed like cheap clichés. the 'villain' was disney-esque (seriously, there is an "i'm telling you all about my evil plans and schemes" scene, which could've been copy-pasted into a mystery book for children and no one would've batted an eye).

bee started to seriously get on my nerves circa 60% into the book. she makes my sense of delusion seem like a daydream in comparison: "he hates me", "this is not a date", "we're just friends-with-benefits", la di da – girl, he literally asked you to move in with him, be for fucking real.
the miscommunication was hard to read sometimes, and so was her crying over every single roadkill (she's an empath and i'm a cold bastard, apparently).

the plotline with her ex-fiancé tim and ex-best friend annie was anticlimactic, utterly pointless and boring – first and foremost because tim has no redeeming qualities, is a completely unambiguous, black-and-white character that served only as a tragic background for bee and to explain her immense fear of social commitment. he's shoved into the readers' faces ("he's bad!") and it stays that way from start to finish. (nearly the same thing applies to annie.)

the ending (and big reveal) was goofy at best, and a shitshow at worst. it completely took me out of the illusion of the book.

astronaut with gun pressuring scientist to suicide. Félicette, a CAT, jumping the villain so that bee could escape. need i say more? seriously, whom was this written for? 6-year-olds? (i briefly considered throwing my copy against the nearest wall.)

levi and bee got some closure and a nice ending, which is cool. the romance was the only thing carrying this book at this point, so an epilogue that was not completely disappointing seems like a big-enough win to happily accept and glutton over. 

fun! wouldn't read again. 

the best harry potter book so far.
loved finally getting to know the marauders and the action/plot-twist were actually impactful and interesting, unlike in the second book.

let me tell you, reading this at 18 was a surreal experience.
i fully expected not to like this book, for the simple reason that dolly's life is utterly unrelatable to me. i'm not a social butterfly, i'm not a millenial, i'm socially awkward. but maybe that's the exact reason why i soaked up her insights and advice like a sponge. insights about things i've never experienced.

and though dolly and i don't even share the same generation, i could relate to a lot of her fears—losing friends through growing up/apart, the fear of getting older and not being where you expected to be, and the feeling of slowly running out of time.

everything i know about love gave me extreme fomo, but at the same time also eased some of my other fears and worries about life. i loved dolly's takes on therapy and (female) friendships and platonic love. 

will definitely re-read in a few years.

slightly boring, especially the plot twist. after so much build-up and suspense, i expected a grand, shocking reveal that just never came.