sweetsxrrxw's reviews
100 reviews

this year hasn't been the best for me book-wise, since i have been constantly having reading slumps and i have had to change my reading goal a few times, lmao. i just haven't been able to get into most of the books i tried to read. however, reading has always been one of my hobbies and, for whatever reason, i especially missed it today. so, thanks to my audiobook app i have been able to find a short story that i genuinely ended up loving!

the story follows a "one-month nanny", a late middle-aged woman who takes care of mothers and their newborns during their first month. she never gets attached to any of the families she works with but, of course, this new mother and baby she is nursing seem to break her rules. i believe this is an interesting topic to write about and one thing about me is i am a sucker for stories about human connection so, yeah!

i think i need to shoutout both the author and the narrator of the book. the writing style blurs the line between what the main character feels and thinks (and should probably say out loud) and what her actual utterances. i feel like if i hadn't listened while reading my experience would probably be a bit different. oh, and also, despite the shortness of the story, there were some fun one liners as well as deeper ones. once again, loved that.

i often enjoy short stories and i am aware that they usually stick to giving a brief glimpse into a situation or a character's life and i am okay with that!

i am not surprised by open endings, even though in this case i would have loved to know if the nanny decided to keep the baby she was nursing or move on with her life.

but i feel like with this book i really wanted to get some more back story of every single character and mostly the main one. 

regardless of that, if you, like me, enjoy short stories i totally recommend this one! i believe it's worth it to spend about 30 minutes reading it because it will 100% make you reflect on one or even more different topics.

i have read this book as a part of my thesis investigation and, while i don't usually rate books i read for uni assignments, i feel like this one deserves a high rating. 

as a multilingual person myself, i saw myself mirrored in so many parts of the first half of this book. i actually even teared up at some parts, especially when the author included writings made by other multilingual authors or students. i just felt... so understood. and reading some theory about this whole topic also felt nice.

it is unfortunate that the last two or three chapters didn't catch my attention that much and that there have been many terms i still can't fully understand (hopefully i will once i start writing my thesis). but overall it was a really nice read and yeah i am just so glad this was the first book i read during my investigation process <3

i think this was way too short to properly review it; it would have worked better as a bonus chapter on just for the summer. but yeah, it was kinda fun i guess

ps. im so sorry but the preview to the next book made me cringe soo many times and its only about 10 pages 💀 so yeah since i already finished this trilogy, i think its time for me to stop reading this author's books

well, i really liked the premise of this book. two people trying to break a dating curse together, so they can find "the one"? sounds fun and it's obvious that they are meant to be. of course that doesn't take away the thrill of getting to know the characters. 
 starting with justin, i appreciate how he is the "most flawed" mmc of this trilogy (even if his flaws are just him holding grudges or being angry at stuff, lmao) and, well, i love me a nerdy boy who does nerdy stuff for the girl he likes! maybe him fist pumping in the air every time he got excited was a little cartoon-ish, but well, it didnt really bother me so much.
 then, emily was really nice. i could relate to some of her isolating/avoiding tendencies at some points and i really tried to empathize with her and the reasons why she acted in certain ways

even though, if we're being real, *her* curse only existed bc she has an avoiding attachment style and probably cut off every guy once she started feeling any kind of butterflies 😭

and i really loved the symbolism that her different homes held. 

even though i was disappointed that the curse plot stopped about 30 pages in, i actually liked the secondary plot of the different family dynamics of each main character and their relationships with their mom

it took me a while to realize who amber and neil were btw

and i ended up appreciating that they brought it up because it allowed to give the characters a desire for a more mundane type of love (having breakfasts together, taking care of each other when sick...) and omggg i always eat that kind of romance up. 

while reading, i wanted to give this 4 stars but the ending was *so* rushed, it left me wanting more and i think that's my main problem with this author. not every story needs a third act breakup that gets magically and quicky solved in the last 5% of the book, quite literally, because of the power of love 😭 i really wish we had gotten to see more of their healing process or their "make up" process because, no matter how forgiving you are, i don't think it's that easy to forgive someone after 6 months of ghosting lmao. 

so yeah, it may not be thee book of the summer, but i think it's a nice august/september read! 

ps. i like to think emily and i share birthdays because hers is some time during late september but maybe a week or two before october and mine is on the 22nd sooo
 

i was looking forward to pick this book up for a while, since one of my booktwt mutuals recommended it to me and said she loved it. i think it is such a shame that i got into a reading slump so bad that it took me about a month to finish it, because i genuinely liked it.

i have to admit i'm not a huge fan of the fake dating trope because, usually, it involves miscommunication and that's a trope that i actually dislike. i do understand that the book would have been about 100 pages shorter without it, since miscommunication was the main issue of the story. but i just hate that it took over more than half of the book

and then there was the third breakup act... i hate ittt.

however i did like this book better than the first one. 'yours truly' had everything that i missed in 'part of your world' and that is a slow(er) burn romance and more wholesome, soft, not so-spicy moments between the main couple. i totally loved their "being harmless to each other" dynamic, their exchange of letters, how they slowly fell in love before even jumping to physical touch and i loved how the author still kept the theme of having two total (and partly different) strangers get to dive in each other's worlds and create one of their own.

of course, i also loved the main characters. i appreciate how this time the author tried to make the mmc more "relatable" by giving him anxiety. it was still hard for me to find him real because he was still a bit too perfect but i get it, since, at the end of the day, he is just a figment of a romance author's imagination. 
i liked and laughed at briana's interventions on the first book so it was nice to get to know her more in depth and have a closer look at her dealing with her brother and her divorce. i understand her story was supposed to be more of a rom-com so that's why the author didn't delve further into her background and trauma. even so, she was still a very relatable character

so i am so glad she got her happy ending with a man who, despite his anxiety, loves her so much that he is willing to go out of his comfort zone and show up for her every time.

this second book put the bar a bit higher for the second one, so i hope it can exceed my expectations!

one of my booktwt mutuals recommended me the 2nd book of this series but i decided to blindly go for the first one instead, because it felt more logical to me.

in retrospect, i found myself enjoying this book but i think i liked the subplots better than the main romance plot. 

i guess it is mainly because i might be somewhere in the ace spectrum, but i just will never understand how two total strangers can hook up and then feeling like they have a special connection without barely speaking to each other ??? ofc by the end i thought their relationship was cute and i liked how they kept bringing parts of each other in their own world. but yeah i think i would have loved the romance part better if it was more of a slow burn and less spicy. and maybe if daniel (mmc) was a bit more flawed? like he was... too perfect 😭 and i know that is usually the point in romance books, but in this one it felt weird, since everyone else had their own issues.

i think the stories going on in wakan were nice; i love me some found family vibes lmao. at first i felt like the village characters were a bit one-dimensional but i believe that was mainly because their descriptions came from alexis' pov and in her world everybody is pretty shallow, so i guess i can understand why said descriptions were that way.

but i liked to see how throughout the narration we could see the similarities of the royaume with the grant house and how they're both kingdoms in their own way and how both characters felt somehow trapped in them at some point or another in the story

moreover, the exploration of the so many forms of abuse that exist was interesting.

and i like how it was not only shown in the neil-alexis and the liz-jake situation but also in amber-daniel, alexis-cecil, jennifer-cecil. and i also liked how each situation was talked about differently because of the characters' positions on it. and it was nice to see neil taking accountability for his actions by the end, without forcing alexis into forgiveness.

the only thing that i disliked about it was how

alexis highkey blamed her mom too for being "quiet" or "too tired to argue". just because she accepted the abuse and total control from her husband doesn't mean she did not care about him hurting her or her children

so yeah, i think my rating is actually more 3.85-ish but i dont feel like giving it 4 solid stars, so i guess it'll stay this way, with 3.75!

i've been stuck in a reading slump for so many months that i absolutely forgot to read this book when it came out, even though i was looking forward to do so. i know that, for now, she only has three published books, but i would dare to say this one is ann liang's best.

let's start by focusing on the characters. i loved sadie, she is just like me: a chronic people pleaser who also used to be the smartest girl in class (in past tense bc i don't think there's a "smarter person" in college. also, i have always sucked at sports lol). so i totally related to her urge of always priorizing everyone else's happiness before hers and the urge to be liked by everyone and keeping her family happy by doing what she "needs" to do, aka getting the best grades she can. oh, and her abandonment issues were on point too. i annotated "she is so me" quite a lot while reading the book, lmao. 
as for julius, i honestly wish this had been a dual pov book because i was really curious to see a little insight of his life. i would have loved to see his reactions to sadie's letters and how he tried to keep his crush on her undercover. and, most importantly, i think he also deserved his own "healing" arc and a glimpse of how he deals with his family dynamic. 

i feel like the story had a good mix of rivalry, romance, fun scenes and sadie's introspection. some parts of the plot were maybe a bit predictable

(such as julius' obvious crush like... why else would he memorize ALL of sadie's emails... he is so pathetic and i love him for that lmaoo)

but idk i just loved it overall and even though im too old now to have an academic rivals-to-lovers trope, i hope someday i find someone who sees me and understands me as well as julius sees and understands sadie <3

ps. i would totally watch a movie adaptation, my hopeless romantic ass would love to giggle blush and kick her feet over these two losers once again <3 

i wanted to read this book for eid, which was almost a month ago, but due to the huge reading slump i've been in for most of this year, i just couldn't. in fact even when i wanted to start reading it, it took me a while to get over the first 10-15% of the book. i am not sure if that was because of said reading slump or for other reasons, lmao.

anyway, this was my first time reading both of these authors and honestly i had a good time! but... i need to get this out: i HATE miscommunication trope most of the time. it's just annoying and i think it's one of the main reasons why i couldn't give this more than 4 stars.

but, other than that, i enjoyed reading the book. i am 20 now and this is definitely the kind of love story i would have loved to read when i was younger :') not only because of the religious background but also because i think the family dynamics showcased throughout the story were both relatable and interesting

like i know i said i despise miscommunication but i feel like in ethnic households it is always so hard to speak about feelings, grieving, the crippling guilt that somebody always carries, not being able to meet expectations.

. i know this book wasn't meant to give exhaustive monologues about it, but i think it would have been nice if the authors talked more about these problems or the anti-blackness that black people face even when they're part of another minority. 

the main characters were definitely adorable dummies and it was nice to have a dual pov of them because i couldn't help but giggle every time one of them mentioned having butterflies, like, babe... if you only knew... it's mutual!! but overall i feel like this could have worked with them only sticking to a platonic relationship, because, yeah, their banter was cute and fun, but i feel like the romance subplot isn't really the highlight of the story. 
i love it when i can see parts of myself painted (or in this case written) in fictional characters and in this case i just related to both tiwa and said. her fear of abandonment and his realization of how the world kept moving without him just hit a nerve for me, lmao. 

i liked that there were some small but intertwined details you could pick up from reading

such as tiwa being a slow driver because of her little brother dying in a car accident

but then i feel like maybe the explanation and resolution of the conflicts

both the reconstruction of the islamic center and the lost letters one

were a bit rushed :/ and that's also an important detail that didn't let me enjoy the book 100%

this was both my first kieko kawakmi book and the first book i've read after a very long slump. to avoid falling back into a slump, i kinda overstimulated myself and i decided to read the english edition (while listening to the audiobook) and also the spanish one. and yeah i feel like this hyperstimulation made me understand the book better

although i noticed a couple differences between the editions which me feel like ??? the most jarring one was by the end of the book: while in the spanish edition the narrator has seen his biological mother and, therefore, knows she had a lazy eye too, in the english edition he doesn't. and i thought that's such a small but important detail because it can build or destroy a solid reason to explain his choices.

anyway, have i enjoyed reading this? pretty much! would i reccomend the book? hmmm, it depends; not to everyone, that's for sure. and, of course, check the trigger warnings, because most of them are pretty graphic. 

i believe on the main points of the story was to show us a somewhat flat character surrounded by differing opinions on what to do or how to cope with his situation and which one was better to settle for. personally, i like reading stories about characters facing hardships and their choping mechanisms to deal with them and i don't dislike stories that talk about bullying.  and i really enjoyed the premise of two hurt people bonding over fear. their friendship was beautiful and, even though it didn't suffer huge changes, it was nice to see how it evolved with time and how they found a safe space in each other's company.

it's a shame that by the end of the book they never got to meet again

but definitely my favorite part was the second half of the book.

i just felt so many emotions while reading it. the volleyball bullying scene was totally the most devastating one in the book and i felt a knot in my stomach while reading it (i even had to take a little pause before i kept reading). however that same gut-wrenching scene led to many outstanding scenes such as the portrayal of the kids' philosophies.  while i did not specially agree with their ways, i understood kojima and momose's opposed ideals. i mean, they both made good points at some part of their monologues. 
oh and i think one of my favorite relationships in the book was the one the narrator had with his stepmom. at first she seemed like a distant person but by the end of the book both mother and son could find some kind of comfort in each other. and trust me, i was so so happy when he finally told her about the bullying and she made him change schools and later also supported him in the surgery process.

as for the last scene, it was a perfect bittersweet ending to the story.

once again i felt so happy that the main character was healed and saw the beauty of some parts of the city he used to hate so much. but at the same time it was heartbreaking to realize he didn't have anyone to share that beauty with :(

i feel like this could have been a 4 star read if it wasn't for a couple reasons:

but yeah, overall, i think it's a worthy read! 

this book was... okay. not horrible, not good, just okay. 

i personally enjoy reading short stories, specially the ones where characters and plots are intertwined. however, there's a couple reasons why i couldn't enjoy this book at 100% :

however, despite these two issues, as i said earlier, it's an okay book! i liked how it just painted a picture of a whole neighborhood, explained its quirks, unique experiences and dived into different characters in every chapter. i think i could have enjoyed it more in different conditions