missrosymaplemoth's reviews
184 reviews

Slow going but pleasant read. A good palette cleanser. Although it took two and a half books to reveal Conny’s name was Conrad. I thought the poor boy was just “Conny.”

A quick, easy read, although it seemed like there wasn’t much happening until the last 150 pages. I enjoyed the women’s inner reflections despite finding some of it repetitive. My first Christian fiction book.

Often when the topic of autism, usually including my own, comes up in conversation, I’ll get a “have you heard of Temple Grandin?” And I had, yet I had never read any of her writing until now.

I liked this book for the depth it went into detailing visual vs verbal thinking. I learned a lot of interesting and useful information. I realized that I am a visual thinker. I deeply connected to a lot of Grandin’s personal experiences and the experiences of those she talks about in her book.

However, Grandin’s views on autism are largely old-fashioned and outdated. She is in her seventies so I am not surprised. Every autistic person is entitled to their own individual opinion about autism but at times it was hard to read, especially all of the unnecessary person-first language (which is also a matter of preference to the individual but for an undoubtedly part-autistic audience is an odd choice).

I was really turned off when Grandin started praising Elon Musk and the like as “geniuses.” There is more to genius than morally dubious white men. Was there no one else she could have explored?

I did learn quite a few things from this book but would hesitate to recommend it to a non autistic person who is ignorant about autism, as they often are (understandably, from what people are taught to believe about autism). The actual subject matter was often redundant, but I’m glad I powered through for the last chapter on animals and consciousness, which was nice on its own but did feel like it got off track from the main point of the book.

I read this in all of a few hours and really liked it. I was a bit surprised it was in with the children’s books as I thought it was pretty firmly YA.

The ending wrapped up too fast for my liking. It was also hard to believe that a pretty average sixteen year old was not frequently on social media or the internet.

Nevertheless, I still enjoyed this book. It was a page turner and I didn’t want to put it down. I enjoyed how the details and mystery of Libby were slowly revealed throughout the comic pages, which was a really cool feature of the book. I would recommend this, but more to YA and not children’s audiences.

To be very honest, a lot of the technical math speak was lost on me. Nothing to do with the book, I am just not good at math or discussions around math.

I did enjoy and get into the book after a chapter or two, and think this should be required reading for anyone who calls themself a feminist. I especially loved the post script with practical ways to incorporate “congressive” behavior in our personal lives as well as different societal structures. I would definitely recommend this book to anybody looking to increase their knowledge on gender imbalance and inequality and how society contributes to the elevation of men and the put down of women due to supposed value of “congressive” and “ingressive” traits.

I liked, and didn’t like, a lot of things about this book.

My dislikes:

My likes:

This is not a retelling of “Anne of Green Gables,” so if you’re coming into this book with that expectation, you will be disappointed, as I was. Around the 50% mark I let go of that expectation and it made for a more enjoyable reading experience. It’s not a bad book, it’s just not what it says it is (an “Anne” retelling). I don’t know how one would successfully go about retelling that story.

I debating even finishing this book because it felt like 250 straight pages of a girl being violently bullied and then the adults around her failing her in the aftermath. I really disliked the resolution as it was crammed into the last 30 pages. It was hard to believe these bully kids could go from being seriously racist, sexist and homophobic to suddenly nice and kind just because

they were put in their place by the drama teacher

. Gilly was annoying. The others were infuriating.

I was surprised this was YA; Anne often read as much younger, and this could have been a middle grade book if the excess swearing was omitted. (I’m not sure what the qualifications for a middle grade book are.) I kept forgetting she was an older teenager.

All in all, I still enjoyed this book. Anne’s character and worldview kept me reading until the end. Anne Shirley is one of my favorite characters of all time, so it makes sense why I’d enjoy it if this Anne was modeled after her.

The first thing that stood out to me is how his town, “population: 9,000” is repeatedly emphasized as such a small place to live. I live in a village of approximately 3,000 people. 9k is hustling and bustling! It was hard to believe that Xavier’s hometown was this super small, “quaint” place.

It didn’t feel to me that the characters had any intense chemistry. I especially did not like the age difference. Xavier even comments on how he’s closer in age to his daughter than Logan himself. The way Xavier often acted and was treated immaturely emphasized this.

The pop culture references bugged me, not because of my annoyance (which was frequent and mild) but because I feel like it dates the book. A lot of the references confused me, also. Maybe I’m just not with the times. Another completely unrelated non-issue is that I couldn’t stop thinking about Logan (Wolverine) and Professor Xavier from the X-Men when I read their names. 

All of that being said, this was a quick, easy read that kept me interested enough. This was my first male x male romance novel and I liked it. I’d not hesitate to return to this author’s other books for new reads.

I wish this book was 200 pages shorter and ended with Layken transferring out of Will’s class. The “heavy themes” in this book were largely about navigating the taboo (read: illegal) relationship. So gross. It’s illegal for a reason; I don’t care that the age difference is “only” 3 years.

Some points that stood out to me:

I don’t understand why I read this, or how the author has the following she does. I will not be reading the sequels (which I’m disappointed to say do exist). This book served as a lesson and a reminder to never read a book by this author again.

Informational and educational. Would have rated it higher if it 1. Didn’t trigger my anxiety 2. Didn’t include the author patting herself on the back every few pages for being too good and enlightened to join a cult, & 3. Had regular page formatting instead of a skinny indented body of text.

Reading this book was like running a marathon and during the marathon a train wreck occurs at the side of the course and you can’t look away so you trip and fall and break your nose but you still have 25 miles of marathon left to run. 

Terrible grammar and syntax, bad spelling, I have no idea how this book was published. Dumb characters and plot. No plot, really. This book had potential, but instead the one huge event was

her best friend dying

and then ten pages later she just stops mentioning it like it didn’t deeply affect her. The two guys

Derek and Bryant

might as well have been the same person and constantly confused me on who was in the scene. Three guys total made things more confusing. Many of the quotes at the start of each diary entry made little sense and included their own spelling, grammar and syntax errors. There are only so many times a woman can read “excited” as “exited” before she starts to lose her mind.

I feel like if this book lived up to its back cover blurb, it would have been good. It had potential. If

Madison’s death by a drunk driver

was explored more, more specifically Kallie’s feelings about it and how it affected her, the victim’s family, and the community, we would have had some substance. Instead, Kallie drones on about all the guys in her life and how they disappoint her. Honestly, I wish Karen had been the main character. She seems like she’s had a rough go at life, what with

her mother dying

and

TW being date r*ped

plus she seemed like a nice girl and I would be more interested to read her diary.

This book being self published and seemingly not very popular makes me wonder how a copy ended up in such a big library. I’d call it a hidden gem but it’s more like a hidden lump of coal. Was somebody playing a prank on the public by making this book more widely available? The author was a year older than I am now when she wrote this. No offense, but even I could have done better.

I only powered through to the end because of the meager page count (<150). All in all, this book feels like the author published her personal diary only having changed the names around and called it a day. Where is the content warning for “graphic boredom?”

Update: took another .5 stars off because no matter how long it sat with me, my opinions only got worse.