Angela
there is smth very fundamentally good about this story. it's simple and sweet but it's so heartwarming. yes, it's sad sometimes, but it still leaves you with a warm feeling inside.
the author says at the end that this is “a story about a boy who is trying to be a good person” and i think there is no better way to describe it.
oh for fuck's sake!
that last part killed me.
the book was excellent though
the only thing is, i don't quite see how it's connected to the turn of the screw. like yeah, okay, there is a nanny and the parents are away and there are possible ghosts and possible shady kids but like... the themes of the story is complete different. what this novel in ultimately about and what james' story was about are two completely different things. idk. i don't really see the connection
this was really interesting. i kept expecting for smth to happen since i know lucy foley writes mysteries now but i'm glad it turned out differently than what i expected.
i am usually not a big fan of historical fiction set in the 20th century, especially ones centring on the wars. it makes me feel this indescribable devastation. but i found that i liked the way it was incorporated here. i liked all the characters and their relationships. i was smiling when gasparo revealed at the end that his and audrey got together. i was really rooting for them.
all in all, it was an extremely enjoyable and well-written book and i'm glad i decided to read it despite not hearing anyone talk about it.
the only little thing i wasn't that big of a fan of is the journal story and the too-on-the-nose parallels it was supposed to have with the present timeline.
i love this series so much! arthur and rory are the cutest sweetest couple ever. i love that it does acknowledge the historic trouble the characters would be facing but doesn't go too deep into it cause that would for sure make it a darker story and ruin any happy ending you get. i like the side characters and i live the magic system, even if it's not always fully explained but i feel like it's justified cause the characters themselves don't know why some of the stuff happens. but the whole aura-in-his-magic / magic-in-his-aura thing at the end killed me, i teared up at it.
this is definitely a series i would reread. and i am interested in a lord fine/sebastian story even if they might not be the two guys i would put together, but we'll see i guess.
so info wise this is kind of pointless. it doesn't even have like family ties or smth. it has the favourite weapon of each character though. cause THAT'S what's important obviously.
the art is fine. some of it i really like, and some of it had me going “i'm sorry, that's who again? cause it's not.” like magnus bane for example. that's not magnus and i WILL fight you. so yeah, i wouldn't say it's worth it to buy it or smth, but if you can look through it for free, then sure
There are not enough words for me to tell you how much I DON'T GIVE A FUCK about Aiden. Aiden almost makes Tomás worse and Tomás was my favourite part of the first book.
Also I kind of hated this being set in Britain. Even more so, in Scotland. Like, leave Scotland alone. The writing was very repetitive. I got it, fire doesn't care, Edinburgh is ruined and so is the rest on Scotland and you're sad about it. I got it the first couple of times, stop repeating it over and over again.
i hate everyone but Jolyon. jolyon, mate, how did you manage to find yourself in such a toxic bloody friend group. that's some talent.
also, i wish we knew more about game soc. but i can also see how knowing more would've actually ruined it, so i'm fine with where we are.
still though, fuck chad! hated that lad so fucking much
i don't know. i don't know what didn't vibe with me. i just.. smth's off. maybe i wasn't it the mood for smth dark. maybe i wanted smth more from this. i don't know what to say other than everything was fine, but this was not a romance or a couple i was swooning over and i think even with the darker subject matter you should still feel butterflies in your stomach when the main couple are interacting with each other. and i didn't. like if they didn't end up together i don't know if i'd have cared.
also the darker subject matters [like drug addiction and homelessness and everything else] seemed like they were in the book to add tension rather then to add smth meaningful to the plot. like none of them ever went anywhere. i almost feel like i'd like this book if it was darker. the book doesn't really commit to any of it. the main character has a drug addiction which is glossed over and treated like almost a fun quirk he has until we get a one-liner at the end about him going to a rehab therapist. another main character is so stressed out about the football industry finding out about him being gay [with good reason cause as other reviews have pointed out it's unheard of and is basically a carrier suicide] but then everything is fine and super and he's accepted by everybody immediately and it's treated almost like there wasn't a reason for him to be so worried about it. and just stuff like that when there's a bigger serious issue at play which is then just brushed aside like it's nothing. i wanted more from it.
i think this is my favourite out of the series so far but it so lost me in the last 20% or so. it was very repetitive. the characters would watch baseball, have sex, talk about smth in a somewhat pretentious way. and then do it all over again, not necessarily in this order. and the thing is, it was fine. i like their dynamic and how they compliment each other character wise. but i was so done with it, that by the end i started skimming cause again, it was more of the same thing.
the was the whole plot point of them going on dates because “relationship is more than watching baseball and having sex” but it never really went anywhere and they circled back to watching baseball and having sex. again. [honestly, a bit too much sex for me in this book. i would've been fine with it if it was interesting but it was more or less the same sex scene written like 5 or 6 times. there was a bdsm tease throughout the book, but the book never delivered. i kept expecting them to like experiment and test the boundaries of what curt would be willing to do but nope, nothing happened. the most they did is indulged jack's suit kink].
the emotional bits got boring as well because again, it was the same thing over and over again in different words and it never really went anywhere. there was no exploration of the fact that jack has major trust issues or that curt has major insecurity issues. we just moved on. the conflict came and went and felt underwhelming at best [but at least it wasn't as egregiously “how the fuck are we coming back from this in the 5 pages that we have left cause fuck no” type of conflict that we had in the two previous books so that's good]. it was weak but at least it didn't bother me when it got resolved in one paragraph 2 pages later [i mean it did bother me but i can let it go much easier].
the paul story line was stupid as fuck. i knew immediately why it was there and what it was going to amount to and then it happened and i rolled my eyes and then we forgot all about paul [which honestly, poor paul. he deserved better].
the best part about the book is the chemistry. i could believe in this couple being compatible the most out of the three so far. they just fit. i liked the dynamic and the teasing and just everything. that was really fun to read.
and i really hope i like the paul book better.
it was good but i feel like i could do without the first two couples being there in this capacity. if we ever see them again i'd want it to be.. well, different.
and I reckon I shouldn't have started reading this book when I did as I was clearly not in the mood for it. at least my memory allowed me to pick it back up without having to reread the beginning of it.
finished: this was so much better than the first book. i liked the story and that it allowed us to go into the past of the characters unlike the first one. and I like both snow and jude, I like them together and I like their progression. i wish the climax was a bit more dramatic. like when they are at jude's and they remember they've left the food in the car and jude is going out to get it I was so sure he was going to get abducted. and it would've been so good. the ending we actually got was too quick and underwhelming. after all the attention the book is building, the end was not satisfying at all.
and i can't wait for ian's book. he was my favourite character in the first book as well and i think him and the detective would be very good together.
~before~
dnf for now
i can't get into the story. i even tried the audiobook but just no. no offence to the guy who narrates, I like his voice but it's so raspy i can't listen to the book, it's distracting. and I don't exactly like his emphasis during scenes. rowe sounds less intense in my head and snow sounds more bored and less teasing. I'm not saying one of us is wrong or right, I just don't agree with the choices and it ruins the characters for me a little bit.
will probably return to this at a later time when my attention span is a bit better and I'm a little bit less stressed out.
it's fine. i have some gripes with it but like... whatever, you know? I'm not that passionate about the book itself to feel pasionately about my gripes.
also, while this does have a higher headcount, I still think that the forbidden game series by l.j. smith is a better version of this type of story. plus, when you kill and/or damage too much characters, it kind of cheapens the experience so all the deaths didn't even do it for me by the end. like yeah, each of them individually was tough, but when you look at the story overall... i wouldn't say becca was worth it. and we didn't even released the primal evil. so what was the point again? xD
don't let my rating fool you, i don't know how I feel about this. this hurt me. but also I am somewhat disappointed, not going to lie. I've spent last half of this manga with this feeling of imminent danger. like smth bad is about to happen. and i can't say that it paid off. i cannot say that this conclusion or this resolution was on point with that tension. the stakes felt disproportionally higher than the resolution we've got.
And this is exactly why I don't start [or if I do I usually don't end up finishing] longer, aka 15+ volumes, manga series anymore — I have never read one that stuck the landing.
it wasn't emotional enough? maybe. but this manga feels rushed as it is. the last 10 chapters could've been 10 volumes. and i know we were on a clock. but still. every story beat feels to rushed. like it should have more time to sit. like the characters need more time to sit with it and feel it and feel the full scope of what's going on and what it means. we found a solution, came around the self-sacrificial nature of it and then found a way around it in basically a day. and then that same day we implemented it. and I'm not even bringing up that part of it all was convincing a being who has been hating demons since long before we even come into the story, to help a demon. which we accomplished in like 2 pages in the span of probably a minute. and i don't like it. it needed more.it needed more room to breathe. and you can't exactly write it off as them closing manga in a hurry cause the WHOLE manga is like that. which is especially evident when you compare it to the anime which adds extra scenes to make the stories flow together more nicely and more naturally. the manga honestly felt like a summary of the events at part, devoid of any emotion. just fact after fact, this is what happened, like from some kind of impartial observer.
same goes for the characters' and their dynamics and their history. sometimes it seems like the manga tries to persuade us that these ppl have history and they feel smth for each other and it gives us these flashback scenes. but maybe because the main character [abeno] is so cold, it often feels like we are kept at an arm's length with everything. everything is very one-liner. justice is passive. legislator is fake. abeno is cold and guilt-ridden. which is btw never explained. cause abeno had literally nothing to do with anything that happen. so him feeling like what happened to aoi was his fault somehow and legislator even having to tell him at one point that it wasn't never actually ends up meaning anything. cause we know the story now. abeno did not have a role to play in it.
i don't know.
i love the art and i like it as a light read [ha! this! light read! tell that to my heart]. but don't dig deep. this is not that type of story. when you dig deep it falls apart. the emotional core of it doesn't hold up. and I'm unsatisfied. not with what the ending is, but with how it was done. even THE ending, there's never a big emotional moment from either of the main characters about this huge MONUMENTAL thing that happens and what it means. there's literally nothing. no acknowledgement of what they went through, what it means for them, how are they going to cope. no. we just smile and say “i hope I'll see you some time in the future but let's not hold our breaths, i guess” and walk away from each other. what the fuck was the point then? abeno could've easily acknowledged that hey, i have a human friend now who is also my classmate. and I'm not just going to abandon him and forget about him. cause we've been through shit and, BY THE FUCKING WAY, he is basically the sole reason aoi is back in my life now. so let's me make a compromise and stay friends with him just as two humans would cause i don't work 24/7. same goes for hanae. where is “let's stay friends. i still want us to hang out and shit. keep me in the loop about what goes on. i still care about them even if i can never see them again”. nobody fucking died!! stop acting like one of you is leaving this world for good and moving on to a different place! “i guess i won't see you much”. bullshit!!! you go to the same school and are in the same class. the world didn't fucking end!!
...I'm getting angry at how unneseserily diluted this ending was, so i should probably stop here.
if you want to read it, i'd say go for it. but don't get to involved. it's empty.
[What I would want is smth akin to that scene in shadowhunters the TV show in the end when clary realises she's going to lose sight and how she handles it. But also the fact that she has been warned it was going to happen but she did the thing anyway, knowing what the consequence will be. And then we actually have a year late scene when she sees again, and that all you need. Just that one scene, like a breathe of relief
So much more impactful
But also zenko isn't even considered as a variable in this situation. Is she also going to stop being friends hanae now and ignore him the way abeno is also planning to? Or just treat him differently? Never bring up yokai or the underworld in front of him. Cause i call bs on that]