Mercer

This book was pretty whack! Torn between three stars and two, but honestly I don't think I would ever do anything besides tell someone not to read this.

I read a review that called the love interest “discount Rhysand” and tbh, cannot unsee.

This book was trite, predictable and poorly written. The characters were one dimensional, and the romance was uninspired. The way that death was dealt with was shocking—very little energy or attention given to it despite the fact that it was EVERYWHERE in this book.

Beyond that, there was zero “show don't tell” in this text. All exposition happened in conversation, nothing left to be inferred. The twist at the end was equally predictable and telegraphed.

As a YA/academia novel: the setting lacks exploration. As a romance novel, it lacks good romance, or well-written meaningful scenes. Truly it delivers on nothing. Read dragon riders of pern instead. :)

This was between a 4 and a 5 for me. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone because the content is deeply challenging and potentially triggering, but I do think that anyone who parents children should read it, whether they are fat or not.

This definitely shook my perspectives on some things and challenged what I think “effective” parenting is.

This book was recommended to me by a boss 5 or 6 years ago and I just got around to reading it. While I think this may be helpful for someone just starting on their leadership journey, or for folks who haven't put a lot of intentionality into their hiring, for me this was kind of redundant. The one thing I did like was setting aside 30 minutes a week to reach out and have a chat with someone that may be a dream hire for you in the future—love playing the long game in building relationships, and the idea of being more intentional about it sings to me.