may reading wrap up

[braintransplant]

beartown by fredrik backman

rating: 3.5 stars

summary: what if everyone looked the other way?

comments: i really really liked the first third of this book, but the rest dragged, left me wanting in some ways, and just didn’t really do it for me. the characters you are meant to love are very loveable and the ones you are meant to hate are extremely hateable though. fuck the erdahls all my homies hate the erdahl family!! sune, amat, ana, benji, and all benji’s sisters are meu bebes however. fredrik backman’s writing style also started to get a bit grating around 50% of the way through this. some moments were very soulpain inducing while others i was just like UGHHHHH so bored. i feel like there was too much repetition and backman was just beating the same dead horse over and over. maya firing a blank at kevin with a shotgun while he was on his knees in the snow was so righteous of her though. anyways. i have very mixed feelings about this book, and i’m leaving a cw for sexual assault/rape for anyone looking to pick it up themselves.

highlight: David hates himself for not being better than his dad. That’s the job of sons.

pages: 415

authority by jeff vandermeer

rating: 5 stars

summary: what if you were in over your head trying to fix something? even more than you realized?

comments: i totally get why people who loved annihilation hate this as a sequel because it is very much UNLIKE annihilation, but what can i say...the monotony and palpable tension between employees of a failing government organization really got me. i dont think this would be a 5 star read for most people LOL. this book is like if a procedural was the office if the office was about cleaning up a biohazard. kind of. i love that the protag forgoes his real name to just be called Control by everyone, i love that this picks up after the expedition in annihilation, i love how Control interrogates the biologist from that expedition, who insists on being called Ghost Bird. i love their conversations...i love control’s tense rship with grace/the assistant director, i love the slow reveal of whitby being nutso bananas, i love the multi-tiered office politics, i love the slow reveal of the double/clone plot point. I HAD SO MUCH FUN WITH THIS! i’m going to think about it for a while. 

highlight: “Where does that leave us?” / “Where we’ve always been.”

pages: 340

the raven boys by maggie stiefvater

rating: 3 stars

summary: what if the real dead welsh king was the friends you made along the way

comments: continuing my self imposed nostalgia readathon...and the nostalgia got to me in this one ngl. gansey was a little worse than i remembered now that i am not 14 and have an actual  understanding of economic class dynamix but also i love watching bitches argue so i was still pleased. and some of the shit gansey said was FOUL i was hollering while lying supine in bed reading it. blue is mildly annoying as is expected of all not like other girls YA protags but i can get past it a bit. ronan and adam both individually and together remain the best part of this series imo! plus i have to say the gansey/blue dynamix are so hilarious when blue is committed to never falling in love with him. 

highlight: If it had a social security number, Ronan had fought with it.

pages: 409

the dream thieves by maggie stiefvater

rating: 3.5 stars

summary: what if the real dead welsh king was the friends you made along the way (which now includes the guy who killed your dad)

comments: ok im having fun for real now...kavinsky’s whole deal in this book is so hilarious. imagine you street race a guy one time and he immediately develops a psychosexual obsession before killing himself in front of you. RONAN DOESN’T HAVE TO. narratively, the gray man becoming an ally to the protags is always a fun little twist for the usual raven cycle antagonist. this book is also dedicated a lot to lynch family dynamix which i love so much!! ronan being his dad’s favorite and matthew being his mom’s favorite versus declan being no one’s favorite...well its funny TO ME!!! adam’s plot drags a bit in this one but as a character i really like the wrench he throws into the ot4/ot5 group dynamic here. he’s just so compelling. the way him and gansey grate on each other is so delightful. the commitment to the ronan/gansey as dog/master bit is almost too much to bear, i cant believe that was literally real. also i cant lie the blue/gansey scene near the end where they both admit to having accidentally developed feelings for one another got me so bad...the fact that i can be sniped by het romance is so sick and twisted but maggie steifvater really has my number UGHHHH. i feel like this didn’t quite live up to my expectations since i thought it was my favorite book in the series but if i get to bllb we’ll see…

highlight: In her mind, Adam pressed that fist against her bedroom wall. So gently. Though every muscle was knotted, wanting to destroy it. 

pages: 437

blue lily, lily blue by maggie stiefvater

rating: 3 stars

summary: you already know

comments: i am still having fun…! i think this is the book where the plot starts becoming a little too convoluted and there are a few too many characters. i'm slowly getting annoyed by steifvater’s writing as well (very repetitive) but man she can write characters and character interax like nobody’s business. i love ronan and adam getting closer in this one and also hatching an evil plot against greenmantle together...hehehe murder twins. i very distinctively love the scene where there's like twelve people in 300 fox way, and almost all of them know that gansey is going to die but they are all desperately trying to not draw attention to that fact, and the only person who picks up on it is adam. unrelated, but noah literally doesn’t need to be in this series past book 1 so i am slowly getting annoyed by his presence/plot. also jesse dittley legendary side character, rip in pieces king. anyways, my eyes glazed over for a lot of greenmantle chapters and piper chapters and imo there was way too many caves involved in this installment but maybe that's just me. 

highlight: Adam stepped around her so that she couldn’t not look at him. “Blue, which one of us?” His heart was thudding. He’d gotten it right. One of them was supposed to die. “Blue.” / She said, “You won’t be able to unknow it.”

pages: 391

the raven king by maggie stiefvater

rating: 3.75 stars

summary: what if the dead welsh king was really dead for real despite the friends you made along the way

comments: maybe im just evil but i still think gansey should have died for real. like narratively its so much stronger!! gansey is beautiful because he is doomed etc etc. also adam parrish once again rising to the top of my most loved characters...i love you bisexual icon who has never done anything wrong in his life. the ending of this book (and consequently the whole series) was still pretty unsatisfying this time around, but the middle section of this book is so so so good. even my taste in adam/gansey argument dynamix pales in comparison to the truth of ronan/adam toy car scene...fucked up!  henry cheng is still delightfully unhinged as well. once again i don't care about anyone but the main gang so antagonist/side character chapters were a bit of a slog. i was killed several times so i am allowing myself more than one quote highlight.

highlight: The head is too wise. The heart is all fire. 

highlight: Dad told me to make sure Ronan was the name of the hero, not just another spear. I know you’re a dreamer like him. I know you’re good at it. I know it’s pointless to ask you to stop. But Dad didn’t want you to be alone like he was.

highlight: I would not pretend to imagine I have any power to stop that boy from searching all of Virginia for his own grave.

pages: 438