Katie

This book was amazing. Lindy is so smart, funny, and incredibly good a cutting through the bulls*&%t to clearly explain her points. Never heard of her before this, but now I'm a big fan.

This book started off with multiple typos in the first few chapters, and went downhill from there. The author seems to be more or less a scumbag who is making is living now off the deaths of his co-workers. Example: He talks about how his friend Chris and he were always there for each other, and as examples says that Chris would always buy him a sandwich when he was buying one for himself, and that if the author ever needed anything, he could ask Chris for it. So, where was the part where the author did something for Chris? Oh, well, when Chris needed money, the author was broke, but very, very graciously allowed Chris to borrow money from the author's mother. What a guy! Another example: he describes in detail something he saw in the body bag of one of his “brothers” and then writes, “I quickly zipped up the bag so no one else would see it.” And then you wrote about it in this book for everyone to read!!

Finally, the writing is terrible. The author's sentences are basically, “Whoa, there was a shit ton of fire!” Followed by a ghost-written sentence “Fire has increased sevenfold in the Southwest in the past five years.” There were times when I doubted that the main author would even be able to understand the sentences that the ghost writer wrote.

I liked this to begin with, but then realized it was going to fall into the genre of “person makes stupid choices over and over and suffers from the consequences.” So, that genre gets a little old. I did enjoy the behind-the-scenes look at restaurant life.

Each story in this book was more horrific than the last. Some were my least-favorite type of realistic fiction: idiot gets him or herself further into trouble by idiotic behavior, and others were verging on fantasy. And even though I do not like sad stories, fantasy, or idiots behaving idiotically, I was completely drawn into each story like a separate little world. The writing was so good that nothing else existed but the story–in the space one, I was literally on the edge of my seat, as corny as that sounds. A great collection, but don't read it when you're in the mood for something light.

The beginning was a little slow, but it definitely helped me catch up on everything that I had forgotten from the first two books, and in a genuine, non-annoying way. The second half–WOW. That's all I can say.

This was an interesting premise and featured a believable, likable main character. Some of the police work seemed unrealistic. Overall, I enjoyed it, even the cheesy ending.

Please can I give this 20 stars? Catherine Newman has a way of writing the things that you didn't know were so, so true until she put them into words. I'm so glad she's still writing. I've been missing her since Bringing up Ben and Birdy.

This book was so amazing that I finished it and immediately started again. Maybe if I had read it in paper instead of on my Kindle I would have just been constantly flipping back and forth, but as it was I had to go over the whole thing again. And it was worth it to read it a second time.

I loved this book. It was a fitting homage to Jane Eyre without copying it or sticking to slavishly to its plot. The main character was great, the romance was satisfying, and the plot was page-turning. I was glad to get to know Sardar and Sahjara.

Though I'm not downsizing my parents' home, I thought this might give me a good perspective on what to keep and what to get rid of now. It was much more practical than the Joy book, and helped me think about what to keep and why. It also addressed the problem of worthless items with sentimental value, which the Joy book never did.

So, I found all the Indian words thrown in annoying–either stop reading and look them up, or just muddle through and don't really know what's going on. Also, the shift from character to character was so abrupt there were times when I didn't know who I was reading about. Things just seemed to happen–there was no internal thought or change. And the ending was very, very lame.

This was your stereotypical mystery complete with cliched characters (Jon, the mysterious ex-military who does contract work for the government and sleeps with two french young women at the same time, etc.). If it weren't for the dog I wouldn't have kept reading. This review is a reminder to myself not to pick up the next book in the series.

I loved this book. Some of the writing was so, so good I wanted to read it out loud to whoever was around. And not good in a pretentious, I'm trying to be a poet way, just good in a way that made everything sound incredibly true and right. I didn't like the teaser at the beginning or the twist in the ending, but every other part was just perfect.

I loved the main character. She was very strong–physically and mentally. The laundry list of ailments suffered by everyone in the family felt at times more like a psychology text book than a story, but other than that this was a great read.

This book was a ton of fun. The shifting perspectives slowed the story a little, but I enjoyed the funny little vignettes from different characters lives.

I liked the setting of this book a lot, and I liked how the main character grew into her own. I guess I'm just not in a mode of wanting to read more of those “everything goes wrong over and over until the very end” books.

This was extra good, even for Laura Lippman. It was different from her other books in that the main character wasn't always likable. But I ended up liking her a lot. I loved all the different stories happening at once, and the satisfying way she brought them all together at the end.

This book felt so very true. Couldn't read the title story, but I loved the rest.

This did a wonderful job of capturing a moment, a feeling, and a time. I loved the characters. And David Levithan is always hilarious.

I enjoyed this, but I really felt like the author played fast and loose with statistics. So, while she certainly pointed to some general trends, I'm not sure the statistics backed everything up. Also, she mostly ignored the kinds of people who were written about in Evicted.

This was a whole lot of very strange fun.

Often these “after the fact” books seem like just another way to get money from the fans. This one was different–it added interesting backstory, and was just as compelling as the rest of the series. Some of it was hard to read (Winter's story) but the ending was a great conclusion.

This book was painfully predictable (“no one can cross this bridge!” means that the main character is going to cross the bridge very soon), and the relationship between Freya and Archie seems built out of thin air, but it was still a new fantasy idea (to me, anyway) and the characters were likable enough that I read to the end.

This, along with Random Family and Ghettocide, should be required reading for every well-off person in America. Like the other two, this book was utterly heartbreaking. But it view into lives that most of us on Goodreads couldn't even imagine.

I enjoyed this book, and liked getting to know the characters. I especially liked the banter between Janine and Daniel, and the way Florence started out as a fairly hateful person and ended up being someone to emulate. However, it felt too slim overall–the constant shifting of perspective meant you never got completely inside any one person.