sarah2438's reviews
1046 reviews

This truly just was not good. I feel bad saying that but this just reminds me of the people that make fun of slam poetry. There were a couple good ones but would not recommend this collection.

This book has been sitting on my shelves for THREE YEARS and it had the AUDACITY to be BAD.
All I wanted was a quick romp of a rom-com. It didn't even have to be great, I just wanted a fun book to listen to on this glorious Saturday. And this was below mediocre. I have absolutely no faith in this couple-- he gives her a dirty look for like 1 second when they first meet so NATURALLY she must declare him her mortal enemy and make up how bad of a person he is, despite having literally 0 evidence. And then going to Hawaii and falling in love on a literal dream vacation is straight out of the Bachelor- I could fall in love with just about any attractive man while snorkeling in Hawaii, even if we had absolutely no chemistry, just like this couple. The third-act breakup was predictable and annoying (except for the part with Ami- we stan an organized spurned woman) and the proposal at the very end was extremely cringe. If your future spouse is roasting the shit out of the way you decide to propose, as you're actively about to do it, maybe that's not the best way to start off.
1 star is the bare minimum I can rate a book, this book gets a second one for at least being entertaining while I disliked it.

So... why do people like this?
It's a complete non-presence for me. It's a mystery without any mystery. It's a historical fiction without any history. It's a contemporary without any real emotion. Joe kinda just sucks and Norma wasn't very fleshed out. I'm seeing reviews where people say this talks about residential schools, MMIW, loss of culture, etc. and all I have to say is... did we read the same book? These topics are barely touched on, if at all. I just don't get it. I would've DNF'd if I wasn't reading this for book club.

Damn.
After how OBSESSED I was with A Dowry of Blood and how GOOD An Education in Malice was, this one really fell flat. The pacing was poor, the characters were lackluster, the stakes were neglected... I'm struggling to find a positive, honestly. ((Even the narration on this audio ARC (thanks Netgalley!) wasn't very good-- granted I listen at 2x speed, but it should still be pretty smooth. This narrator sometimes added pauses where there weren't any (bc dumb me got a physical copy too) and at other times completely disregarded page breaks. There were also a few instances, closer to the start, where I could just tell it was edited-- a slight change in tone or volume that would throw me off. )) By the time I was finishing this up I was falling asleep and I didn't even care. Quite frankly, I needed more from this. I needed more backstory about David's relationship with his father and WAY more context for his relationship with Rhys. I didn't care at all about the stakes in this book because we spent about 70% pretending they didn't even exist and I can't even remember what we were doing in that time. In a Dowry of Blood I could really feel Costanza's turmoil. This book didn't make me feel anything.
Apologies if this is incoherent, I should've been asleep well over an hour ago but I'm just cranky about this and needed to stay up to rant.

I really enjoyed the first one but this one was aggressively mid and I can't fully put my finger on why. I think part of it is that not much really happened for most of the book, and some parts were predictable. The writing is still very beautiful and poetic at times but I just felt very detached from the plot for some reason. Also, the character deaths had no impact on me-- I didn't like one of them, and the other was a complete non-presence in the series. I'm tempted to say this is just a me problem but it seems this book has a lower average rating than book 1. I'd still recommend the series but maybe manage your expectations. (This is the second YA series I've been OBSESSED with and then majorly disappointed by... might need to reevaluate some of the others on my TBR.)

Cool concept but overall pretty mid. Quick read. I think I've just lost interest in murder mysteries but this gives classic Agatha Christie vibes.

Also I thought it was funny that the killer was the only straight person, neat way to subvert the tropes of the old genre.

Won't be continuing with this series though, too many books on the TBR for 3 star reads.

Have I finally found a graphic novel series that I like?? Incredible. And for better or for worse, it's a loooooong series. Hopefully they stay good!

Okay FINE. I like Ali Hazelwood. Just because she's not quite as perfect as our lord and savior of romance, Emily Henry, doesn't make her any less worth reading. Yes, these books are predictable and basically all the same, but I cannot and will not stop. (On the actual book: I wish we'd gotten a bit more of the real conflict here instead of just cramming it in the last 60 pages. Also, very happy that we can have 2 women compete for a job without anyone getting truly nasty and engaging in girl hate. Nothing wrong with some healthy competition but you can still have respect for each other as you engage in it.) 

How was this book so good?? It took me forever to really get started because I was distracted by other books initially but once I settled in to make some progress yesterday, I literally could. not. stop. What did Ali put in this one?? The knot bit was a little too much for me (iykyk) but Misery and Lowe were hot and pining and all the things that I want. The plot is a bit predictable but that doesn't matter if it's fun. The only other book I've read by Ali Hazelwood was The Love Hypothesis (fun but a little more mid) so I'm excited to read more of her romances.

I have mixed thoughts on this one. This may be a series where the first book is actually the best. Part of it is that Corrick really has lost a lot of his ruthlessness by this book, and that was what made him so interesting in the first place. By the time we get to this one, he's honestly a bit pathetic. It's probably more realistic after years of trauma, but who wants that? I want my ruthless Cruel Corrick doing what he has to do to get back to his girl. (Basically, I want Kaz Brekker.)  Having all 3 MCs split up for almost all of the book made things a bit tedious as we watched all of them work over the same puzzle of what's going on in Kendala. To Kemmerer's immense credit, though, she never switched perspectives on a cliffhanger-- I felt like we ended at a satisfying point before jumping perspectives. We also get my favorite couple of the series (surprisingly NOT Corrick and Tessa, who spent the entire book pining for each other and getting a bit repetitive) and I was honestly obsessed with them. Finally, I thought it was just a bit odd that this whole series was intended to be focused on Kandala and helping the people there, but a significant portion of this book is devoted to the ongoing unrest in Ostriary. Kandala was like this abstract goal for 2/3 of the characters, where they were trying to eventually get there but in the meantime, they're mired in this completely different country's political unrest. Overall I would still recommend this series because it's been 10/10 fun, but I think looking at it critically, it's more of a 7/10. The first book is definitely my favorite, followed by the last book, with the second suffering from classic second-book-syndrome.