blewballoon's reviews
598 reviews

emotional funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Olivia Dade has been on my list of authors to check out for a while, and now I'm looking forward to reading more! This book was a lot of fun. I did find that certain areas of dialogue or humor would have worked better if they had been trimmed a little, but that didn't take away from my overall enjoyment. This is for romance lovers who embrace the silliness of the genre. I think the audiobook narrator did an alright job, but I may have preferred reading the text myself in this case.

Content Warnings

Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin

Go to review page

adventurous dark funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Shout out to my friend Katelyn for recommending this, she was so right. What a fun ride! This is such a good example of YA Fantasy Romance tropes, edgy imagery, and angst done well. Is this high-brow literature? No. Are some elements ridiculous? Yes. This is a book best enjoyed if you can channel your teenage rebel brain and not take it too seriously. The book doesn't seem to take itself that seriously, either. It feels like if the author had to make a decision, they choose based on what seemed the most entertaining, and for my reading experience that was not a bad thing. The romantic leads were nicely matched with each other, clearly they both needed to grow, and their complimentary strengths and weaknesses would push each other to grow in the best directions. I thought the supporting characters were compelling as well. I had a blast listening to this audiobook. I rarely want to jump into a sequel when I finish the first book of a series, even if I liked it, but I actually do want to just keep reading this story. (TBD if I actually will though 😛)

Content Warnings

Spitting Gold by Carmella Lowkis

Go to review page

dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

I don't like it when I feel like a book is trying to manipulate my opinion vs giving me the information and allowing me to come to my own conclusions. The narrative structure of having the older sister's perspective first, and then the second sister's perspective

to contradict it

, might work better for another reader than it did for me. It felt too much like the author was going for an unreliable narrator trope with

the first sister

and then decided at the last minute

to give her some character redemption at the end.

I think if you are more of a thriller reader who reads for the plot/mystery and not so much for the characters, you may enjoy this more than I did. But, I also don't know how well the mystery/plot stands up on its own. I was able to predict most of it. I was going to give this 3 stars for being an okay read that I didn't love, but the ending went slightly better than I expected, so I'll give it slightly more than a 3. The audiobook narration was good.

Content Warnings

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher

Go to review page

dark funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I loved this, as I expected. The tone feels like a fairy tale, the plot is like a horror historical romance. I really enjoyed having Cordelia and Hester's perspectives. There's a great supporting cast of decent people, which highlights how awful the villain is as a person and a threat. There's also a lot of humor sprinkled around, which works for me, but I can see how maybe it wouldn't work for some readers.

Content Warnings

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson

Go to review page

emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I had to start the audiobook over after I realized I had gotten a couple chapters in and hadn't absorbed anything. But, after getting a better sense of the characters, I did find myself more invested and by the last 30% I was making excuses to keep the audiobook on and not wanting to stop. I will say that this felt like a case of the Earn Your Happy Ending trope where the '"good" characters were constantly being thwarted by a surrounding cast of closed minded and selfish people. There are some really awful characters who are like the worst kind of people that a lot of us unfortunately have encountered in real life, but it feels a bit worse because society as a whole seems to be on their side. If I didn't like Constance, Harris, and the Motorcycle and Flying club girls as much as I did, I might have been too frustrated with the other characters to enjoy the book. I did wonder throughout the chapters why we were getting so much of

the perspective of the kind German waiter. I wish I hadn't wondered, what a horrible and senseless way to end that story. I suppose that's the point, though.

Content Warnings

Spellbreaker by Charlie N. Holmberg

Go to review page

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Although I liked the book, it took me a while to get through it and I was forcing myself a bit. I did predict pretty much how everything was going to go fairly early on, but I do think it was in character for the protagonists to miss what the reader would be able to put together. The characters were interesting enough; Elsie grew on me later into her character development. The book feels very much like Elsie's story despite having Bacchus's perspective, and there is a small cast of supporting characters that play into the mystery. Overall it was an okay time and I plan to read the sequel.

Content Warnings

Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu

Go to review page

dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This book really took me back to being in 6th grade, starting out middle school. I imagine this would be highly relatable especially for middle grade girls. There are also mentions of the covid pandemic and references to modern media, so I think this book will serve as a bit of a time capsule for this specific early 2020s time period. It takes a long time for the horror elements to show up, but they are there. The real story though is about the difficulty of navigating adolescence and an "invisible" illness.

Content Warnings

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Go to review page

adventurous emotional funny slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

A Psalm for the Wild-Built is one of my favorite books of all time, and yet it took me a while to finally pick this up. Like a Psalm for the Wild-Built, the sci-fi setting is both a compelling atmosphere and a mechanism for philosophical discussion. The descriptions of how non-human sentient species approach the world and each other will often lead the presumably human reader to reconsider aspects of our own culture in comparison.

The book is also an excellent example of a found family almost slice-of-life story with a diverse cast of characters dealing with a variety of circumstances with a variety of stakes. It's like Firefly, but with more focus on the "small stuff" and interpersonal relationships. The emotional experience of the characters is always at the core of the more action-heavy sequences, which I appreciated. I did cry at one point, so I certainly got invested in this crew.

The audiobook narrator wasn't my favorite, but she did well enough covering a variety of voices.

Content Warnings

The Phoenix Bride by Natasha Siegel

Go to review page

emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Being very generous with my rating here because I don't think the writing is bad, there were elements to the story I did like, and I think people who like contemporary sad girl millennial books might really enjoy this despite it being historical fiction. I personally hated the main character Cecilia, but it seems like the book expected me to love her. It seems like I was supposed to find her passionate and brave, but instead I found her to be selfish and insensitive.

She is incredibly self centered and fans the flames (haha) of whatever inner turmoil she's experiencing to the point that she can't function or manage her basic needs and has to rely on others, and yet blames these other people at every turn for any decision they make that isn't exactly what she wants. The book implies that Cecilia's sister (Margaret, I think) who is in an unhappy and difficult marriage, struggling with fertility issues, and trying to keep her sister alive and safe, is an irredeemable person undeserving of pity even when she sincerely apologizes in both actions and words for her failures.

Cecilia acts like marrying an incredibly kind and generous man with an adorable dog who wants nothing but friendship from her and who will allow her to live her life in comfort and however she wants (including having a lover!) is some big sacrifice, and the book seems to agree? It takes nothing less than

The Great Fire of London

for Cecilia to attempt to do anything for another person, and even after that she berates her working class, marginalized,

homeless

lover for the crime of

not waking up next to her in her upper class fiancé's house??!?

I feel sorry for the poor flower seller who had to deal with Cecilia's antics multiple times without Cecilia ever bothering to buy a flower from her.

David, the other POV character, is much easier to understand and sympathize with. Throughout the book he is living the reality of surviving in London as a working class Jewish doctor from a foreign country, grieving multiple losses, and trying to do the best he can by his family, friends, and patients. The book at times seems to imply that his caution and realism are somehow bad things compared to Cecilia's blind recklessness?

The audiobook narrators did a good job. David and some of the other supporting characters were great. I know there is a market for characters like Cecilia, but I found her insufferable and the way the book seemed to disagree with me on that made for a frustrating reading experience.

Content Warnings

Ne'er Duke Well by Alexandra Vasti

Go to review page

emotional funny hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Alexandra Vasti really pulled this off. This is a fantastic historical romance. The writing style is beautiful. The characters are charming and intriguing. The plot is interesting and suspenseful. The romance was genuine. There are many hot and spicy scenes. The spicy scenes never felt like they were getting in the way of the plot or the character development. I had such a great time listening to this audiobook, I am eager to read more from this series!

Content Warnings

More...

blewballoon's reviews 598 reviews

blewballoon's reviews
598 reviews