If I hadn’t read “The Night Circus”, I would probably be giving this book a higher rating, but I think many of the things this book does well, “The Night Circus” did better. “Cruel Beauty” is also a YA, and I habitually have issues loving YA as much as I love adult books with similar themes. I had serious issues with the craft, and I realize after looking back through my other reviews, that I’ve become kind of a writing-craft snob, but this book was all tell […]
Live. Die. Repeat.
Over and over again, Ursula Todd lives through two world wars. She’s never in as much control of her death and rebirth as characters in The Edge of Tomorrow, for example, but she does learn from her multiple lives. It’s somewhere between deja vu and being able to completely accurately predict the future (because you’ve already been there). I have to admit to being disappointed with this book, but I don’t think that’s the fault of the book. I just wanted it to be something […]
Don’t Tell Me To Smile
My goodness. What do I even say about this that hasn’t been said already? Bitch Planet is a prison planet for women who are “Non Complaint.” They are too fat, too mouthy, too ambiguously scary, too….too. For all their failings in the eyes of this toxic patriarchy (is there another kind?), they are sent to prison. But it’s not like the expectation to be compliant ends with getting put in prison. It just morphs, changes shape. Instead of the daily grind of microaggressions and 1960’s-style […]
When the movie is made, I hope they get Abbi Jacobsen (Broad City) to star.
I can’t stress how much I loved this book. In many ways, it serves as a companion to Ready Player One. It follows Zoe Ashe from a life of poverty in a suburban trailer park through a terrifying hunt to an inheritance she didn’t know awaited her. It has the same basic plot as the aforementioned book (which I reviewed earlier in the year), but diverges in a number of distinct ways. For starters, the protagonist here is a woman. I don’t think that’s a […]