nico

OIKAWA IWAIZUMI NISHINOYA

3.4 ★

loved the reveal and i really enjoyed the game as a whole, but seeing everyone's future was so underwhelming. i didn't think it was necessary for everyone to stay connected like that especially turtle and theo like ?

3.9 ★

i'm not really sure what to say about this book, it took me a really long time to find how and where to get it, but i was able to buy it eventually. the story is fine, but i feel like most of the development between the characters is lost in the moments we don't get to see. apollo is one of my favorite characters and i enjoyed his portrayal in this book, even though i'm not the biggest fan of his "fears" in the more modern times. the book had quite a lot of errors, including misspellings, switched names, and a couple of words that shouldn't've been there, and there were a few repetitions of phrases that could've been written differently.

all in all, this was fine, i enjoyed it and it was a nice read nonetheless!

4.5 ★

rip charlie, you would've loved gross by hitgs

ok, but fr though, i have been waiting for so long to read this book, i pre-ordered it months ago, and it finally arrived just 2 days ago, and i had to start reading it! honestly, it's everything i was hoping for. it's cute, it's fun, and it's great! for some reason, i actually thought this was in uni, and not high school, so it caught me off guard when suddenly they were only sixteen.

i do have a few other stuff i wish were different; like, i wish we could've gotten this written in a 3rd person's pov just because i NEED to know everything jasper was thinking as well, charlie is great as a main character (more on this later), i just think i would've gone insane (positively) if we had also gotten to know more from jasper. and of course, the fact that this was set in high school just felt a bit too lacking to me. yes, high schoolers ARE that dramatic, and honestly, annoying me with the amount of stuff they think is so important when it's not is very accurate, and the whole hating romance makes sense for charlie because of course a 16 y/o would think that after ONE failed experiment, but i think their romance could've been more impactful if they were older

now, charlie! he was dramatic and anxious and honestly just a complete enneagram 4; unfortunately, e4s are not my favourite people. as a trans guy who is older than charlie, but behind him in terms of transitioning, sometimes i felt some of his fears were a bit much (though i can excuse him since he's a teenager). like, there's NO WAY i would make myself suffer through 1 hour of pe every day ???? (also, whose high school only has 6 classes, and it's the same schedule every day? what?) besides all this though, after my therapy appointment today and the fact that she made me talk about my feelings, which i can't (i get you charlie) i realize that maybe everything charlie's feeling is still what i feel even if i try to push it down and pretend i don't. so haha you know, fantastic...

anyway, i really liked this! i think the first half was my favourite, and more towards the end it started feeling a bit too much. mostly with charlie's lack of confidence and low self-esteem and thinking no one likes him, because i've gone through that when i was his age, and technically i only really accepted i was trans when my depression wasn't so severe, so seeing him be so far ahead with his transition and still have these fears was a bit disquieting to me.

i don't know, i've said a lot and expressed too much of my feelings...... this was great btw! love it when characters only get together at the end, and the humor was also very nice, i just really really liked it

3.25 ★

i read the whole book today, so my judgement may be a bit clouded with the amount of information i had to process, but this was... something. i actually wrote down a couple of things that were a bit annoying(?). did jessica have to almost spit her wine quite literally EVERY time? and what even are "masculine colors" ? the amount of expressions/phrases that kept being used over and over and over again when most of the time were unnecessary or didn't even fully fit in with the rest of the sentence.

the plot was ok, nothing too great. i actually hate when the culprit ends up being the last one to be suspected, because it's just going through each one of them and you KNOW whoever is last will be the killer.. i just think it's a little lazy, especially in books that love "showing off" with so many twists and turns. the characters were all detestable, and my god did jessica annoy me; none of them is a good person but i felt like the female characters were constantly being punched down for no reason other than them being girls. out of the 7 characters + eric and courtney, jack and frankie are easily the best ones. not just in personality, but the way they were written; even with their flaws you can see them beyond that. even eric felt like that. but none of the female characters have that, caro is infinitely better than most of them and yet we get nothing for her, i understand that was the point for her IN the narrative, but as a whole? really? you're not even trying to pretend you also care about her. and heather! the girl who DIED, the supposed character who is haunting the narrative barely has any information on her, we get this whole plot point in which you find out MAYBE she's more than she shows, studying hard, and right on her sophomore year thinking about how to get a recommendation for later, even if she ends up playing it as "i decided on a whim" and then there's nothing? no explanation? no depth into her.

and the whole crime just being the blueprint of physical misogynistic behaviour... qnd it's painted off as "but my daddy issues". girl, shut the fuck up.

i was gonna develop more on that + a few more things, but i'm too tired for that rn. the book was fine tho, as a mystery it keeps you hooked on finding out who did it, it's just not very well executed.

3.4 ★

very cool premise, and i liked it, but a lot of stuff just wasn't for me i think

3.0 ★

joana and i have started a new fun game in which we choose a random 1€ book for each other, and we have to read it. she got me this one, and i was interested since it was basically the fake dating/fake marriage trope! it ended up not being quite that, but it was fine nonetheless. this was a very fast and light read, and the plot unravelled rather quickly in a short window of time. not a lot of development nor depth, you're just thrown into the middle of the plot, but it works ok!

3.8 ★

this is such a difficult book to rate, because .... man i don't even know. i am very excited for our discussion in class tomorrow, and i really wanna hear more about this. i found the second 'kidnapping' a bit meh, and i didn't really enjoy that part of the story as much; even if it's supposed to be a mirror of the protagonist, it fell short, to me. it is kinda crazy how much the writer (humbert, not nabokov) tries to manipulate the reader, and does his best at trying to gain sympathy, because if we weren't aware of the severity of his actions and be able to tell apart what he really did from how he tells us, someone could really be tricked into understanding and justifying his actions