Gillian

Fantastic!

Revisado: 10-01-23

Every hook in the series is better than the one before, and this one, absolutely. This was the scariest and most horrific, chilling, anxiety-inducing of them all! R.E.’s spine-tingling ordeal had me on the edge of my seat for half the book as the danger became greater and greater, and the fact that it was told in such a detailed way as far as the psychology of fear — well, all that made me completely believe even though I went it expecting I’d only be *assuming* that cult life was scary, JKR/RG made me believe in that fear and understand how people could be drawn in — by the time R.E. was beginning to question— well, I was beginnng to question too, and after, as she was afraid and questioning everything around her, I was too! I had to keep telltale mg myself,”it’s just a story! It’s just a story!” like you do when you’re watching an upsetting scary movie as a kid. I’m just mad that I had no discipline and practically listened to this book in one sitting — the only time I stopped listening was when I fell asleep. Now I have to wait at least a year— maybe two or three! —for the next one, and that’s the only scarier thing than listening to the book itself! Ah, I love this series!

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Ok

Revisado: 07-22-23

I didn’t like that she kept saying obvious things over and over and OVER with shocked surprise, like we didn’t get it the first time — it felt like a sixth grade report where you have to write a certain number of words so she was just filling space. The *idea* was great — but I don’t think she did it justice.

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So Many Piercing Emotions, Driven Deep.

Revisado: 02-09-23

I’m not done — I still have a couple hours to go, but I keep screaming on my head “I DON’T fORGIVE YOU!!!” This is very powerfully written. And the descriptions in Noah’s voice for what he sees— the colors and patterns, the titles of his mind-paintings — as an artist and writer, I am envious of this way with words, new metaphors, and the inside-out-sideways character description appeals to my inventive, Jean-Pierre-Jeunet-worship. So much of this feels true, and makes me angry, because it was a measure of this feeling that my brother launched at me, that I never understood, that we finally untangled before he died, and I never did anything even close to —- well, that’s why I keep feeling “I DON’T FORGIVE YOU!!!!

This story is great, sometimes hilarious, and balanced dizzily on a teeter-totter most of the time. Powerful. I don’t know how it ends yet, but I’m hoping for a landslide of atonement.

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Completely unexpected

Revisado: 01-25-23

I got this bok because I had some credits I had to ise, and it had so many great reviews. The beginning grabbed me and kept me hooked, and kept me feeling uneasy at the same time. I never thought I would empathize with a prince, but I did. I could relate to so much — not *what+ happened, but the bewilderment he felt, and how he kept going back to them, over and over, because they were family — and he was so isolated because of all the rules and structures and formality, he had to rarely on them because there *was* nobody else until Meghan brought him all the love and affection he’d ached for all his life. You could hear her his mother’s humanity reverberating in every anecdote and rumination, every lonely moment, and it’s almost unbelievable that he maintained such a gentleness and passion despite a family that did its best to knock it out of him from the day his mother disappeared from his life. Each painful disclosure was worse than the one before and each terrible act by the paparazzi made me more angry until
I was simply a mess by the end of the book and absolutely wishing him the best. I assume he must have had a co-writer behind him, because as someone who was as unacademic as he was and who wasn’t fond of books, it would stretch credulity to think that he could write this well— the story is well-structured, well-paced, and the anecdotes are well-told. But he must’ve told all of it to someone else, a co-writer or ghostwriter, to have it put together so well. Eminently readable, heartbreaking and enjoyable.

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More questions than answers

Revisado: 09-26-22

This book made me feel more queasy the farther it went on. The psychology seems so dated. The question that keeps being asked, about whether someone could be the killer and not know it, and the way that the family of a victim can be polite and act normal the very day they find out a family member has been killed, and enthusiastically romance the very next day — it all reminded me of little kids playing they’re in a movie or a tv show, children having dolls act something out. The most emotion was shown for the littlest causes. I loved the details and thought it was very well written, but the plot seemed both overwrought and underwhelming, and the characters seemed completely wooden and unrealistic to me, like cardboard cutouts. The narration was very compelling, however. I enjoyed it very much if I didn’t think about the truth of it.

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Ah, BLISS!

Revisado: 09-23-22

The TV show of Midsomer Murders (at my house we just call it “Barnaby”) is one of our favorites ever. We started watching it quite a few years ago because we kept going through detective series so quickly and missing them when we were done, so I set out to find the program with the most episodes. At the time, Midsomer was 6 or 7 seasons and that looked like a LOT. We decided to watch them slowly, to stretch it out. And they kept making them. And we never finally caught up — almost. I’m still a few episodes behind in the Neil Dudgeon era, and he doesn’t make me as feel as happy and comfy as John Nettles always did, and I couldn’t stand the whole baby thing, but I’m comfortable enough with him, And we’re still watching.

But I was SO surprised when I came across Badger’s Drift as an audiobook! Of course, I knew they began as books, and I’d even looked them up and found that at least the first few were the same plots — one book, one tv episode — but it hadn’t occurred to me to get them as books. However, when I started reading this very first one, I was hooked right away. The books are so different from the shows, full of so much more detail, and you get to be inside Barnaby’s mind, Troy’s mind— *he* is a very different character and much more interesting, I think. TV Troy is adorable and we love him, but book Troy seems much more realistic, somehow, and a good contrast to offset his boss’s solid, thoughtful essential *goodness*.

I won’t say anymore — and anyway, I’m only partway through — I just had to give it a great review because I’m elated to’ve found them. They’ve only recorded three so far, I think, and hopefully my library will get them eventually, so I won’t have to spend hundreds of dollars for the series, but I did find them during the summer-end sale, and bought the three I could get in English, and I’ve been going back and forth between reading the print one from the library, and listening to the Audible one. I’m in easy-chair-fluffy-blanket-hot-tea ecstasy. :) 🚪🛋📖☕️👓🪟 It’s going to be a happy beginning to this autumn. 😊🎧 📚👏🏽

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esto le resultó útil a 11 personas

I loved this book! SOOOOO A+

Revisado: 08-09-22

I loved this book so much that it ruined my whole day when I went to a dentist appointment actually excited because I was going to have a whole hour to listen to the end of this audiobook, which I had checked out from my local library, and as I was getting set up in the chair, I somehow accidentally *returned* the book. IT WAS GONE! And when I tried too ok check it out again, I found I was 74tj on the waiting list!!! I was furious, and I tried listening to four other books, but none of them could make up for it and I went home very mad. Luckily, it turned out a friend had it and let me listen to the end of theirs — I was SO grateful! So, obviously I really liked it. Here’s why:

First of all, the narrator, Anisha Dadia, was great — I absolutely believed in her as Galadriel, and furthermore, her accents were absolutely amazing and her pronunciation and the emotional quality of her riffs was great. She never stumbled or came across as if she wasn’t just telling you the story straight from her own recall.

And then the book—! I am not fond of sci-fi/fantasy. I’ve been trying to read in this genre lately because some of the new books have such great and irresistible descriptions, but once I get into them, I find that the writing turns me off and I just can’t finish anything. …BUT!

THIS book was different. One primary reason: WORLD-BUILDING! Novik’s imagination is fantastic and she fits together so many intricate ideas and rules and conceptual oddities— it just held together beautifully. And then she fit the characters into it — well, maybe the way that Tolkien wrote The Hobbit to see if his Middle Earth was a solid concept — Galadriel and Orion glided into this world structure and made it come alive — perfectly. And I loved El’s character because I could relate SO much to her experience of school in so many ways, and because I was just as angry, and it just felt authentic, the way she explained things — sometimes with too much explanation as a sort of parenthetical — like, she’d have someone say something and then explain endlessly some backstory point before another sentence of dialogue could happen — that started to become a little repetitive — but I forgave that because Inlpved so many things about the world and becUze the plot was really fun and swashbuckling with never a dull moment.

Anyway, I’ve said enough. Basically, two thumbs way up!

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Noooo, no, no, NO. Hated it because…

Revisado: 07-27-22

I gave this thing two stars because I think that anyone who writes a book should get credit for writing a book and because she was able to write wc Hal sentences and paragraphs perfectly well. . But I have to say that I had to force myself through listening to the first chapter because I was repulsed from the very beginning.
The main character, who tells the story in the first person, is so snotty, egotistical, self-deluded and condescending with no justification and therefore so completely repellent that it made me think, “God, no wonder people can’t stand Americans!” and I AM American! Her whiny complaints and nasty characterizations of the Britishisms in the people around her were exhausting and unoriginal. I thought that maybe the point of her personality was that she would start out horrible and learn her lesson and become humble and likeable by the ending, but she was SO unlikeable that I figured I would never stand to be in her company for five minutes if she was a real person, so why in the world would I listen to her for that long when I could leave whenever I wanted?

Just to be fair, I listened while I cleaned my kitchen and did dishes and made dinner, but after she had her first tutorial in which she argued idiotically with a Browning expert about a Browning poem and said things so stupid (and with ridiculously self-congratulatory smugness about her preening stupidity) that no educator could possibly listen to her without throwing her out in frustrated disgust after understanding that she thought her errors and misunderstandings were actually *clever*— well, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

No matter what subject she was talking about, her absolute ignorance of logic just made her sound stupid. I don’t know if the author is equally ignorant, but because she wrote her character’s lines as if she were a spoiled, precocious 12-year old, I just couldn’t stand to listen any more. When she left the don’s office, I left the book.

Maybe the plot is good— I don’t know. If this sounds like the kind of thing you might enjoy, by all means, pick it up. If you’re like me, don’t.

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Wonderful and had EVERYTHING you could want

Revisado: 05-31-22

…although I did want a *full* revenge against *all* of the— well, ok, no specific spoilers. I loved this book and almost wished it would be twice as long, although I suppose that might’ve been exasperating. I just wished for a bit more— it was the perfect length and I loved it. Truly wonderful protagonists, character growth and some learning (with room for more, of course, but I liked that Henry was willing to learn, and was stupid from admitted ignorance, love and fear rather than purposeful obtuseness or knowing prejudice). I loved how [X] knew himself and had an inner strength and [Y] was a rebel and had hidden depths and [Z] acted like a confident jerk but was able to admit [“a”] and I loved the way that [B] was willing to— anyway, I loved it. Swashbuckling adventure with everything in it — highwaymen and pirates, mystery and wild journeys, love and heroes and heroines and evil nemeses, sneaky plans and brilliant maneuvering— Absolutely Everything you could wish for in a story. Go for it!

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I was surprised…

Revisado: 05-23-22

I was really looking forward to this and preordered it, expecting that transcendent, transporting, electric-chemistry magical romance I’ve come to expect from Christina Lauren… but this one somehow missed the mark. Not that the plot wasn’t full of whirlwind convoluted highs and lows, epic twists and turns, but it didn’t hit that exquisite butterfly riot of sighs and thrills in the romance department.

Also, the supporting characters were a little too…too. Brad was too much of a loud punch-your-shoulder dude-bro. Walter was too blushing squeaky little-bro. And the third guy (Russell? Terry? already can’t remember now) was too obviously the misogynistic every-chick’s-a-ho bro.
Nicole the bff, on the other hand, was kind of too shouty, weapon-wielding, “I will CUT you, bro!” They seemed more like charicatures than characters.

I did like the mc’s, Lily and Leo, but the will-they-won’t-they seemed like it was settled too early — there wasn’t that much tension between them.

Anyway, the plot was fun, it just — you know, here it is: it felt too close to a Nora Roberts stand-alone special. The feisty, spicy, bad-ass action chick version — one of NR’s three stock heroines in a very NR plot. The ranch setting was like {Setting#7:insert here}, and it didn’t feel original, wasn’t personalized enough.

Maybe this doesn’t explain it all that well, but it’s hard to put a finger on what didn’t work for me — I don’t think I’ve quite figured it out yet. Maybe it’s because I just read Emily Henry’s “Beach Read” and absolutely loved it so much that nothing else can come close at the moment? Whatever. “Something Wilder” was fine and the narrators were fine too — I only spaced out a few times while listening and it did its job as my Escape Lit for the weekend — it just wasn’t a ten on the Swoony chart. It was more like a weekend in a nice motel near the beach than a month in a tropical paradise at an ocean-view villa where English isn’t the first language, the water is clear and blue as sapphires, and the weather is perfect, including that one warm rainy night perfect for dancing in a fountain…😏🤷🏻‍♀️

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas