Lou

The Night Circus is a sluggish story about a circus... that happens to contain two magicians who, for much of the book, have no idea that they're competing or why. There is no “fierce competition” or “duel” and describing their feelings for each other as “deep, magical love” is only accurate in that magic is the only explanation for why either of them would be attracted to the other.

This book had a lot of problems, but the one that bothered me the most was the choice of the 3rd person omniscient narrator. The author tries to build tension by having Celia question Marco's motives, but the attempt falls flat when you remember that you've been privy to both their innermost thoughts throughout the whole book.

If you really like romantic-to-the-point-of-absurdity depictions of circuses, tension-less romance, and clocks, this one might be for you.

Delightful! Somehow not at all what I was expecting and exactly what I was expecting. It's short. Just read it. You'll see.

Strong start but got less and less relatable until I had to put it down. I'm ostensibly the target audience for this book–white, queer, over-educated, high-masking, leftist–but even I felt like Price became out of touch once he started trying to explain what unmasking could look like.

The first 2 chapters were validating, and I even sent entire paragraphs to my mom because they explained experiences I haven't been able to articulate. Chapter 3 “The Anatomy of the Mask” started to lose me, and by Chapter 4 “The Cost of Masking” I was annoyed by Price's generalizations and inability to conceive of Autistic people who didn't validate the point he wanted to make. Fully gave up in Chapter 6 “Building an Autistic Life” because all of the anecdotes used as examples of successful unmasking were from people who started in economic and social circumstances that are unattainable by most. I skimmed the rest, and it looks like Price quickly glosses over some actual societal changes as a palate-cleanser to make up for it?

Overall, the book lacks a strong thesis and suffers from it. Is it a memoir of a specific Autistic experience? A self-help guide for high-masking Autistic people? A resource for allistic friends and family members? It doesn't seem to know.

Mr Warren's Profession is a compelling, beautifully written, and heartfelt romance which features all of your favorite Victorian tropes (romance complicated by class! complex social rituals! repressed emotions!)

Sebastian Nothwell has a way of describing things that immediately conjure vivid images in your mind and a knack for creating complex and complete characters that you can't help but adore.

Listen, I'm not someone who thinks authors should only write about people who share their experiences or identity, but in this case, Grady Hendrix should have stopped to ask himself whether he was the right author for this kind of story. It's disappointing because I really liked some of his female characters in other books. Unfortunately, while he is good at writing a female character in isolation, I'm realizing that he really fails to understand how women relate to each other and the world around them. In some cases, it just vaguely feels like there's something missing from how he writes female friendships, but with Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, there was nothing about any of his female characters, their interactions, or how they perceive their world that felt true. And that's a huge deal when the entire story is about a bunch of teenage girls, their relationships with each other, and how they're treated by the world. At that point, it's not just an identity thing, it's a quality of writing thing.

The narrator of the audiobook definitely didn't help. It felt like she was hamming it up the whole time and made every. single. sentence. sound like it was the worst. thing. in. the. world. Even benign descriptions are given this tone of “Isn't this the most world-shatteringly terrible thing you've ever heard?” but the text is just like, describing the view out a window. Also her voice whenever a character was yelling or crying was painfully shrill. I got to the hospital scene towards the end of the book and gave up partly because Hendrix's writing was exhausting and partly because I couldn't stand listening to the narrator shrieking.

Sorry for the extremely subjective review, but the experience of reading this book really pissed me off. Hendrix was a must-buy author for me, and I'm feeling disillusioned.