icarusandthesun's reviews
140 reviews

gory and greatly entertaining!
a story that keeps you on your toes. reading this for the second time made me realize quite a few details that i hadn't noticed before.

the characters were great - diverse without feeling like some sort of caricature. i loved red and her attitude, loved the dynamic between her and adam (their conversations and banter were so painfully real for siblings) and her whole personality in general. her family was nice, and the two kids, too.
henry is just so good at writing children. they seem almost lovable when she writes them.

and i liked the story. sometimes the inevitable encounters with soldiers and so forth felt a little forced and unrealistic, maybe even a bit repetitive (but that might also just be because of my already having read the book once).
one of the major plot twists (

these slug parasite monster thingies

) was a little random, i guess?? entertaining, but really random.
(

i mean, these thingies were introduced in the middle of the book and then it wasn't even resolved in the slightest. just i know this book is about a deadly virus, but by the way, some government lab also created an otherworldly weird science-fiction ass, human-eating monster that nests in people's stomachs. like whuuut

)

but whatever, it's fine. great book, great characters, great story.

i once heard someone say something along the lines of: if you fed chat gpt every sally rooney book and told it to write a quintessential short story, this book would be it.

and i agree. it's got every rooney-esque element in it: large age gaps, financial differences - power imbalances. a bruised and difficult relationship to paternal figures. no quotation marks. quick and unfelt writing that still manages to pull on every single one of your heartstrings. 
reflections on life. reflections on death. cold and yet comforting relationship dynamics. bold and eloquent dialogue. 
often unrelatable, but very pretty.

honestly, i don't know.
this book was quick and dark, entertaining, a bit comedic.
definitely very creative, the characters were extremely detailed and especially the main character felt very fleshed out with partially gruesome, partially wholesome memories and experiences.
reading this felt like reading an autobiography of a very disturbed, unsure, unreliable and morally gray woman.
i expected this to be a little bit more disturbing though. there were some descriptions of very unsettling images and videos, naturally, but those were always kept rather short.
the twist (

that the narrator is actually unreliable and has been raping her girlfriend for a while

) was executed well and definitely set the tone for the abrupt ending (

the reader no longer seeing things from the protagonist's view but rather watching her from afar, critically, realizing her ultimate self-conscious descend into madness

), but it just wasn't enough.
i read the e-book and didn't have them show me the page number, so when the book ended after what i presumed was maybe page 100/130, i was flabbergasted.
because nothing was resolved. it just left me wanting more, you know.
but also, i get it because i probably couldn't think of a better way to tie a story like this up either, so fair play.
there were a couple of great quotes though, interesting observations, phenomenal ideas.
a book worth reading (since it's only 130-ish pages long anyway) if you like darker and unhinged stories, but nothing more than a bit of entertainment unfortunately.

tender and beautiful.
i didn't really know what to expect when i picked this up. i stuck to the synopsis that vaguely promised adventure and american landscapes and decided that this would definitely be something new, something i wouldn't normally pick up.
but oh am i glad i did.

right off the bat, i loved all the protagonists - every single one. they all had their own aspirations, dreams and motives, and were undoubtedly unique, yet also easy to sympathise with.
the relationship dynamics were at times wholesome, at others tenuous but without fail always profoundly human.

the occasional switch between the different points of view kept the story interesting and made for a very diverse reading experience.

the landscape descriptions were often quite long, however, and got repetitive after a while. during many of these very detailed scenes, i found myself zoning out and getting a little bored.

i did love the ending though, how it didn't seem to confine the characters to a certain conclusion but rather set them free to explore the world after, like releasing a bird from its cage. it was refreshing.

a very good read indeed.

the things i would do and give to be able to experience this book again for the first time...

i first read lost boy around 2 years ago, give or take a few months. and i was in love. baffled. shocked. totally immersed and utterly impressed by all of henry's brutal, brilliant and exciting ideas.
[this was the book that sparked my passion for re-tellings (of peter pan and others)!]
jamie and peter's relationship is so frighteningly interesting and nuanced; the manipulation, the jealousy, the betrayal, the absolute madness - i loved it all.

the book is very character-driven, and with that i mean most of the book is the characters getting slaughtered or slaughtering each other. the plot beyond that was scarce, but that's okay because the pages were filled with other things, namely clever ideas, fantastic revelations and intrigues (but sometimes, sadly, also kinda lengthy scenes).

there's only one thing i didn't like, neither back then nor now, and it's the whole thing surrounding sal.

i didn't hate her character in and of itself (i guess she was even meant to debunk certain female stereotypes), but i hated the effect she had on all the others and the story.
i hated how the revelation that she's a girl seemed to change everything, from the boys' thinking to their language to even the narration (suddenly noting her physique and random blushing and so forth). and i hated how jamie came to the very quick realisation that he loved her right there on the battle ground. it was strange.
her whole arc didn't fit into the story and she brought a certain aspect to the book that i didn't enjoy. perhaps it was the romance that was obviously inevitable (because she's the only girl and jamie the main boy, which is just so stupid). perhaps it was the possibility of a happy ending. i don't know. the book seemed to lose its tone and charm as soon as jamie fell for her and even became a little unenjoyable from this revelation on until her inconsequential death. it got better after that, though.

but the ending was great. like really. it was impactful and so so SO thrilling.
still one of my favorite christina henry books, even after nearly 2 years.

i went into this book expecting another 'lost boy', another 'girl in red', another 'horseman' - just famous and innocent tales twisted into something evil and brutal -, something that, in hindsight, i probably should not have done. because in comparison to all these fun and exciting stories, the mermaid was excruciatingly mediocre.

i was wholly underwhelmed and this was exacerbated by the fact the first half of the book was plain boring. the exposition was long, the writing felt very sober and unenganging. it really felt like someone was telling you a fairy tale - lots of telling instead of showing, mostly just sentences of action, hardly of feelings - but instead of listening to it excitedly, i found myself wondering 'okay, and then what?'.

i do have to say though that i ended up really enjoying the second half of the book, after it finally found its tone and thankfully stuck to it.
the choppy writing style evolved into something more relaxed and loose and then solidified. it was also incredibly immersive, which is not at all unusual for henry's writing.
the book stayed rather uneventful (except for one or two 'shocking' happenings) until the end, but at least the writing really managed to carry you through it, like a good carriage on a rocky road. 

the characters were fine. i didn't particularly like any of them, but i respected their strengths - amelia's bravery and self-sufficience, levi's kindness, charity's solidarity and support (even in the face of her unwilling husband).

and i liked the ending. it was sort of predictable (

them having a child, moving to this far-off island, levi and amelia getting together in general, which i'm still not sure i like

), but that didn't particularly ruin anything for me.

so yeah. a fine read once you make it through the first half.
if you haven't read any christina henry books yet and ergo haven't been blessed (or cursed in this case) with the absolute exciting brilliance and brutality of her other books, then you might enjoy this. and if you have, just don't expect this one to be the same as her other masterpieces.

since this is a memoir/self-help book, how much i enjoyed it was directly proportional to how much i related to the author and her struggles.
so note that my rating conveys just that - how much i identified with the author - and not necessarily how good the book was from a literary or objective point of view.

for me, this was a very insightful read.
while i couldn't relate to every single thing the author struggles with (obviously), i did find quite a few of my own problems and struggles represented. 
the therapist's answers and reflections weren't life-changing in and of themselves, but the combination between them and the author's ("the patient's") conclusions made for very thought-provoking chapters and situations. 

inspiring if you dare to apply all of this to your life and actually try to 'self-help'.

i do need to mention though that some aspects of the book were a little repetitive, which makes sense, obviously, because one can only have so many struggles to mention and those don't go away once you check them off of your imaginery checklist, but just wanna mention it for the sake of your reading experience.
however, since the book is only around 200 pages long, i think you should be more than fine.

fanfic-y writing, lots (and i mean lots) of smut and a rather lacking story sums it up pretty well.
if you're looking for comfort or escapism, enjoy reading about possessive and jealous, hormone controlled college students who act like they're still in high-school, paired with inconsequential, unconvincing drama threaded into 440 pages of sex, parties and only a pinch of actual figure skating and ice hockey, i think you might like this book.

but for me personally, all of it was just too much.

i didn't like the characters. they were a little two-dimensional, horny all the damn time and some of the hockey players i simply couldn't tell apart, because they were so similar (douchey, clowny "good guys"). i didn't think there was any substance to work with, no stunning and unique personalities, nothing. the only person that actually summoned some sort of recognizable image in my head upon hearing his name was henry. and it was even worse with the girls, because the author chose to not give some of them any personality at all. there were names and corresponding characteristics (girl 1 is an annoying bitch, girl 2 rejected nathan, and so forth) but that's basically it.

also... the smut, right. i don't have anything against smut in general, but there was just too much of it for my liking. it was really A LOT. and oh my days, if i took a shot every time nathan mentioned his boner and all the little daily things anastasia does that turn him on, i'd have died of alcohol poisoning long before even reaching the second half of the book. also, some of it was just so inappropriate??
the obvious event to mention here would be them literally fucking in an UBER that they shared with all of their friends. but it was the little things, too. like her being turned on by the fact nathan's favorite movie is coco, A KIDS' MOVIE BY THE WAY. or them playing 'house', you know... the thing that children do, and it results in them fucking.
idk, maybe that's just me, but that shit made me uncomfortable to say the least.

there were also quite a lot of generic tropes in there that just weren't done quite well enough. of course there's a scene where the main character gets sexually harassed at a bar and rescued. it was so inconsequential and stupid, sexual harassment used as a means to show that a specific person is "good". great.

the plot wasn't it either. i wanted more figure skating, and ice hockey. i wanted more plot, more things that could make the book unique and interesting. more genuine distress. the 'villain', or antagonist, was boring. the whole drama was boring. everything about the plot was boring.

seriously, aaron's whole performance was just embarassing if anything and didn't have any impact at all. c'mon, there was this intense build-up to the team revealing what aaron said about anastasia and it was about her being adopted, because that's the worst and most offensive thing the guy could come up with. it was so silly because anastasia said it herself that she doesn't care about her birth parents, because her parents love her. so what the fuck.

what threw me off was how self-aware this book was sometimes. when i mentally called out a character on their bullshit, it did occur various times that another character calls them out on said bullshit. but that, too, wasn't done quite well enough, because the calling out had no consequences and was often used as a sort of "joke" or form of comic relief?

i spent most of my time reading wondering who exactly this was written for. because the writing is fanfic-y and so are the tropes, and the characters behave like teenagers. but it's 18+ and contains graphic sex scenes so what...
it felt so off because it never stuck to its supposed tone. it swayed into the adult romance direction and then hits you with the most childish dialogue - i don't know, it was just weird, know i'm saying.

+
gotta give this book credit though where it's due. some jokes were funny. and buddy-reading this did get me out of a reading slump, because it was easy and roastable and so entertaining (in all the wrong and infuriating ways, but entertaining nonetheless).

i was a little scared the representation (for various things) would be overdone and ridiculed when nathan outed jj as pansexual in the first couple of pages. but the rep was very subtle going forward, which was nice.
i also have to admit, the eating disorder representation was spot on. especially the middle part and her (suspiciously fast) recovery journey were relatable, though kept quite short, maybe a little too short to be representative, but the emotions and concerns anastasia conveyed about her weight were realistic.
the whole message surrounding therapy and how it feels hard at first but eventually can be really rewarding was cool, too.
oh, and the book had a romantic line or two in it as well, i guess.

yeah. i can't say i had fun. 440 pages were just a little too much for so little plot, so of course the book started derailing and getting sillier by the page from the second half on.
the epilogue was okay. it made their lives come full-circle. it wasn't interesting or exciting or especially impactful, it was just nice. okay. mid.

but then again, the book probably just wasn't for me. it's not supposed to be overanalyzed that way, it's just a funny little steamy romance for peak escapism. but i tend to take all of my books seriously like that, so here we are.
take from this whatever you will. if you do decide to pick it up, i sincerely hope you'll enjoy it. 

laugh-out-loud funny, exciting and very human.
i love art's and muderbot's relationship, it's so unique and full of banter and still tinged with a certain kind of affection. 
the story was packed with action and adventure and interesting plot-points and plot-twists, however the pacing felt a little off this time.
some parts of the mission were hard to read, even a little boring. the great characters undoubtedly made up for it though. reading about murderbot interacting with anyone is always the most entertaining and heartwarming. the emotional character development in this one was strong with all these new and important relationships established and explored.

i loved the experimenting with different POVs towards the end, that was refreshing and just a good time in general.

the best book character-wise, but not really the best story-wise.

update: march 26
upon re-reading it, i've only been enforced in my opinion that this one's probably my least favorite murderbot diary. it's kinda lengthy and though the plot is interesting 'on paper', the actual writing was a little exhausting. 
as i've mentioned before, the characters are great and so is the character development. the rest, though, ehh...

this book was the wisest but also the silliest thing i've ever read.
the quotes and reflections? chef's kiss. the eating disorder representation? amazing. the weird supernatural ability stuff? so. weird. it was so irritating. 
this book says some of the wisest lines that i've ever heard, and in the next paragraph the protagonist is controlling pigs and seeing the future. what is this??
i constantly switched between adoring this book and wanting to dnf it because of just how silly it was. this book combined one of the most real topics ever (eating disorders and depression) with the most fantastical supernatural garbage there is and it threw me off because it wasn't done quite well enough. 
i could've loved this book, but the story was simply... something else and i couldn't handle it. but maybe someone else can.