Maya!
3.5 rounded up.
First read of the new year, woohoo! This one had a very slow start for me compared to the last McFarlane novel I read. It was also a whopping 430 pages and I really feel like it did not need to be that long?
Also, overwhelmingly British. Not a fault of the author but good lord I gave up even trying to google phrases about halfway through.
Overall it was very cute and I enjoyed the story and most of the characters (shoutout Nana Hogg).
Look, I know I'm the outlier here. I love the PJO series and I will always hold it near and dear to my heart, but this ... was not enjoyable for me. I don't know if it was the plot I didn't like (this 230 book took me two months to finish) or the numerous pop culture references/Gen Z slang, but something about it rubbed me the wrong way!
Then I was trying to figure out the timeline and had to do some research. Rick said this:
“Percy exists “now,” as you are reading the books, and that's when his story is happening.”
Which I guess is why he thought putting in references to TikTok was a good idea?? But I do not recall the original series having so many time period-specific references. (Why does Percy know what TikTok is if he isn't supposed to use a cell phone!!!)
Overall, it was fine, but the things mentioned above REALLY irked me. Nostalgia wasn't enough to make this anything more than an average read for me.
This might be 2.5 rounded up.... I have a lot of thoughts and most of them are not good LMFAO will update tomorrow
UPDATE: Okay, I slept on it and I am ready to share. I'm sticking with 2.5 but rounding down. My largest complaint is that the writing style is all over the place. I'll admit there are some really great lines here and there, but those moments are quickly overshadowed by lines like “Make your own tea, lazybones”. I'm sorry, LAZYBONES??? Overall, I wasn't a fan of the writing style, especially the dialogue - it felt very one-dimensional and flat.
It's lines like that that made me question the worldbuilding/setting. It's a fantasy, but we don't really get to see any fantastical elements up close (aside from the typewriters). The most fantastical thing happens in the epilogue.
My final gripe is about the pacing, which is so odd. I would be bored by the story and then something major would happen that we would just gloss over in a few pages. Hello? And also I just didn't care for most of the characters.
(Sorry not sorry for being such a hater.)
It was enjoyable and kept me on my toes, though I wish some plot points hadn't been revealed so early on - when we finally get to the narrator's explanation of those plot points, it's kind of glossed over since we knew it was going to happen after the 3rd chapter.
I got a little bored at parts but the concept was interesting enough to keep me reading. I also didn't mind the romance but it was a little out of place. 3.5 stars.
2.5 ☆. This was SO “quirky millennial”. It's a miracle I didn't have to read the word “doggo” more even though the damn dog mayor was mentioned every 2 pages. However, “zoom zoom juice” and “battery acid” being used to describe coffee EVERY TIME was just as bad. Possibly worse? Definitely worse.
This just fell flat for me. I loved the premise of a protagonist who can see and speak to ghosts, though the author didn't really utilize this as well as I'd hoped. I mean, Florence solved a MURDER with her gift and there were barely any details given. I also refuse to believe that Florence really needed to leave town because the locals were so mean to her. She goes on and on about how she needed to leave, and then she's back for a week, and she has a single negative encounter the entire time. Which was anticlimactic, followed by a lame scene in which Florence confronts her high school bully who was mentioned ONCE IN THE ENTIRE BOOK BEFORE THIS? Hated it. It wasn't empowering and I simply would have been embarrassed if I were Florence.
Also, this book is supposed to be about grief and love. I get that. However, Florence doesn't even admit her feelings to herself until about the 3/4 mark. She has spent the rest of her time grieving her father with her family, but they really didn't seem that sad to me at all. The family spent more time being quirky and dancing through the funeral home to “Build Me Up Buttercup” than they did grieving the man who died a few days prior. I guess I just wanted more out of the romance. Benji was dry to me and I didn't really find him to be an interesting love interest.
I really didn't like Florence either, the more I think about it. I found her annoying and so, so strange. And not in a good way! (Seriously, you're about to get laid and you say you're going to put googly eyes on the man's abdominal muscles??? WHAT is that?). She was a terrible sister. Terrible daughter. Every serious conversation she tried to have, she just ran away, right up until the end of the book. And also I hated the use of “chaotic” to describe her all the time.
Overall, this book was a mess of slang phrases and pop culture references that didn't sit right with me. It read like fanfiction. I just wish this book had explored grief more fully or even given me a better romance.
I have mixed feelings about this book. The cover is beautiful. The story was interesting enough, though I figured out major parts of the plot pretty early on (though that's not unusual for me with a thriller). It was enough to keep me reading. There were a couple of genre cliches that I loathed, though:
-I didn't like a single character, except maybe Katie. I am so tired of thrillers that don't give you anyone to root for. Helen was a total moron, and she never DID anything? Even when there were obvious red flags around her, she chose to ignore them or “deal with it later” because she is always so tired from her pregnancy. The men in this book were spineless shrimp, to be honest, and I despised them.
-I hated how some chapters would end on a cliffhanger, and then the next would switch the POV or skip to a day or a week later and not give the reader any explanation of what happened. It took me out of the book since I wasn't getting the characters' reactions and feelings in the moment.
-I hate when the reveal is an infodump from the guilty party!! In the very last chapter, no less. It's not fun, it's not exciting - why does there always have to be some monologue at the end of the novel that neatly explains everything FOR us? Although I had figured out most of what happened, it would have been nice to have the characters figuring things out before the last minute (props to Katie, who made an effort on that front).
I settled on three stars because, at the end of the day, this is the kind of book that's just engaging enough to keep me reading and I didn't have to think too hard about it. I just wish it hadn't clung to so many genre cliches, though I did like the writing and that gorgeous cover.
another underwhelming book for me. multiple people have noted this but this novel didn't feel complete..... i had trouble connecting with and caring about the characters. the writing style was so bland with a peppering of pretty prose every 12 pages or so. the cursing in this book also felt so bizarre to me- it seemed unnecessary and it didn't really flow. every f word was just jarring. and the plot was just..... i just didn't care all that much? normally i love a story that takes place over a short period of time but this one did NOT do it for me. uninteresting, uninspired.
i'm leaning toward 2.75 stars right now. i just didn't love this one the way i wanted to :(
DNF @ 20%. I hope all those bitches succumb to the mist or whatever the fuck the major threat is. I'm still not sure!
Read 25 pages of this and it was already pissing me off. So I'm saving myself the headache and marking it as a DNF
