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The Night Stalker (Detective Erika Foster, #2)

The Night Stalker by Robert Bryndza

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


DNFed. Twice.
First time, I dropped it around chapter 4. The writing just felt terrible, I kept stumbling over it and going back to frown at it every few paragraphs. I wanted to scream that nespresso is the cheapest espresso machine there is (I checked UK Amazon later and saw that while it’s true for my country, they’re pretty expensive in UK and let it go) and the idea that the main character was from Slovakia was pulled in by the ears and then was not represented in any way in the rest of the text at all (not that I even finished the book, so maybe I’m wrong, but in the parts I did read it certainly didn’t have any sense for her to be from Slovakia).
So I thought that was it, but then when I went to goodreads and took a look if people felt the same, I was surprised to see so many positive reviews. So I thought maybe I should give it a second chance and tried again.
And it really didn’t get any better.
Very soon I realized that the author was simply trying to write it like describing a cheap-ish detective drama, exactly the way you’d see things on the tv. It is full of clichés, none of them pleasant or nostalgic. Sexism, racism, psychopathic narcissists, closed-minded superiors, words ‘gay bashing’ dropping left and right… Detective Moss (almost Morse) and Dr. Strong (no comment).
The interludes about the culprit – the very first chapter, the chat room, the part where the author actually tries to explain the whole psychology behind the murders in the very beginning of the book and then pretend like he didn’t – felt repulsive. Every few pages I’d come across some line of dialog or description that would make my hair stand up, and then it got to a point that this book was getting me angrier about my actual work of proofreading and editing texts, and I decided that there is no reason to torture myself any further if this book and me are clearly not made for each other.
And judging by the reviews, I’m not missing much about the story either.




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Grim Lovelies (Grim Lovelies, #1)

Grim Lovelies by Megan Shepherd

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Bland, inconsistent, depressing.

I’m sorry, but not only I found this book incredibly boring, I also couldn’t find a single aspect of it I could like.
After I read first chapter, I thought I was about to read a light story about magic… I didn’t even need it to be exiting end intriguing, I just wanted it to be magical and captivating. But then it felt like it was turning more and more disappointing with every chapter. It was a struggle to read. I made myself finish it, and I won’t ever manage to remember all of the things I disliked, but here’re are some of the impressions I have left of it:
1) First of all, this story is not light, and neither it is pleasant, because you have to read about things like cutting people’s toes and biting rats’ heads off. And all the gore in it is just depressing.
2) For the first half of it I sometimes felt like I was reading some article in a cheesy housewife magazine on ‘what to pay attention to while in Paris’. Oh the name dropping… the fashion brands… the shops… the pastries…. I tried to tell myself it was supposed to be world building, but it didn’t work, and these descriptions got so very annoying so very fast.
3) I don’t know if the author was going for the whole ‘unreliable narrator’ thing, or if it just… happened, but the characters, on top of being extremely bland, are inconsistent, unbelievable, and utterly confusing. Everything about the main character is confusing. There character development is hardly there, and when it is, is more of a ‘and suddenly this naive girl is the most powerful untouchable being’. Also, she was supposed to be human for only year, and yet exactly nothing is there to back up that fact and make it believable.
The whole ‘acts as an ally->betrays everyone’ and ‘acts like an asshole -> becomes close ally’ ideas were not executed well at all. I can’t even describe what exactly was wrong, but these descriptions felt too inorganic. The only way it could work, is if you believe this is how the main characters sees the world, while accepting the fact that she is an extremely fickle person with a heavy personality disorder on top, and changes what she thinks and her whole world view every hour. Also, there were only two characters who could show some promise, but both of them were washed down the drain.
4) The way the animals are treated. As in, being an animal repeatedly described as ‘being in dark place’, horrible dead existence, not feeling anything but hunger and fear, having no ability to love or think as an intelligent being… Just… no. This, and how the whole concept of ‘beasties’ was treated and described was likely my least favorite thing about this book.
5) Ideas being pulled in by the ears. As in ‘oh, suddenly, in this magic compartment of this magic bag, I suddenly find the exact specific potion that will allow me to create an astral projection of my body, and suddenly I know exactly how to use this rare old potion, and also, suddenly, my astral body will be able to handle solid objects, and of course, suddenly, I will manage to kill one of the most powerful witches just like that’. This book is full of these forced explanations jumping out of nowhere, and none of them feel remotely believable or organic.

I will leave it at this, because I don’t even have energy to dig back and argue about how things just don’t work in this book. Nothing in it made me care enough, sorry.



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Got myself thinking about all book-worlds created by other people that are like home, no matter how messed up they are. 
There are good books and then there are homes.

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These Rebel Waves (Stream Raiders, #1)

These Rebel Waves by Sara Raasch

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Skillfully written heart gripping story of faith, politics, and prejudice

This was a very surprising read for me, because I did not expect to like it this much. First of all, I hardly ever like YA. Second of all, I don’t enjoy reading about politics and intrigues. And yet this book held me interested all the way through to the very end.
The writing is very good. The world is interesting and comprehensively built, even if small. And more importantly, characters feel true, their emotions and motivations clear and compelling. It was very easy to feel with them and for them, and never once I felt like they’ve been stupified, as I so often do with YA.
This is not a light story, it is full of blood, intrigues and betrayal. There are fanatics, religious or political, there’s torture, death, child soldiers, and the main characters have to fight for things that are so much larger than them, and against things that are so much larger the them. I liked that the ideas of right and wrong, of learning to see things from different sides, of reacting to changing circumstances no matter how painful the situation is to believe in, are in the heart of this book. This book kept me tense a lot of time, and even when I didn’t really want to be reading something that made me feel so tense, I still couldn’t put it down.
I’ll be looking forward to and dreading the sequel.

Although, I don’t know who decided to market it as a book about ‘gay pirates’ (which I learned after skimming through the first page of goodreads reviews), but it was clearly a mistake. This is not in any way ‘a book about gay pirates’.
It is worth a read though, regardless.




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Give the Dark My Love (Give the Dark My Love, #1)Give the Dark My Love by Beth Revis

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A tiring experience, not nearly immersive enough to outweigh its cruelness.　

I’m really on a fence with this one. On one side, this book gets pretty dark and tries to appeal to more mature readers by talking about heavier moral issues and questions of life and death, and it isn’t bad per se.
On the other, it still features the very YA shallow writing and world-building, dismissal of supporting characters… including the one who was probably supposed to be the second main character, since he gets his own POV and all, but ended up a repeatedly dismissed in both writing and story as a  shallow insta-romance love interest (I can’t say I counted, but the Nedra/Grey chapter ratio is something like 3-4/1, and a lot of Grey chapters are hardly longer than 1 page… I mean, why even do it if he can be so easily dismissed?).
The biggest issue I have with this book is with the way it ‘skims’ over everything, barely touching the surface. The time flies, days, weeks, months, lives, are only mentioned flying by, the flow of time doesn’t feel real, the reader has no chance to plant their feet in the world and look around, see how they feel about all of it. Nedra is strong, talented, clever, and mature girl… but she is also single-minded, closed-minded, arrogant, and dismissive in a very unpleasant way. I didn’t like reading in her 1st person POV because it was full of ‘I know what is best and everyone needs and appreciates me, and if they don’t understand how important what I do is they are clearly useless’, which was made worse by the shallow world-building that made it hard to feel the horrors of the plague real and see what was really going on in the world that it would make Nedra’s attitude at least more proportionate. I do not want to go in details to spoil the actual story content, but every time she would act almost likable and say something reasonable, it felt like a ‘fluke’ (or like the author/editor had to add it as an afterthought) and then she go back on it right away or acts like it was a mistake to feel anything human. Nedra is a tiring character to follow, but the Grey is written so shallowly he is even worse…

And that was the impression I got from this book – it’s not bad enough to actually hate it, but it’s so tiring to read and not nearly immersive enough to compensate for its cruelness.

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how interesting it is, to realise
that feeling a book as a physical thing,
being able to feel its weight and touch the paper, and probably most importantly smell it,
is as important part of “reading” as the text itself

I have a habit of pausing to smell the pages, while digesting some words and thoughts, when I read… and if I can have this ritual, reading doesn’t go as well for me.

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Sometimes I put away reading and watching my favourite stories ’till the right time comes’ for years,
Or sometimes I’ll stop reading/watching something in the middle, not because I don’t like it, but because I like it a little too much.
These stories that I feel I have some connection with, get a little too deep into me, and whatever I feel emotionally almost hurts me physically.

I was in middle school when I watched The Two Towers for the very first time in the cinema, and almost had some strange kind of panic/heart attack, driving home through the night in my father’s car. It was a dark road through a forest, and my heart was hurting, and my head felt like I left it back in the movie world, right there on the walls of Hornburg, and I couldn’t breathe.
And that’s how I learned that I might be a little too impressionable towards the things I like.
Then there also was a mistake of watching all episodes of old Berserk after all episodes of Ayashi no Ceres in one day/night, after which I couldn’t walk straight for three days.

The point is, I feel bad about it, but I really can’t make myself watch/read some of my most favorite things just because they hurt too much and I think it’s kind of unfair.

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Heart of Iron (Heart of Iron, #1)Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s packed with good ideas, but betrayed by rushed execution.

It’s a good book. And while I liked the story and think that it’s pleasantly enough written, here’s why it’s 4 stars and not 5:
-It feels underdeveloped and rushed. Like a movie instead of a book. Or like someone took a much longer and complicated novel and made an abridged version of it. There were very nice ideas and moments, but it didn’t feel like they were explored. I honestly felt like I was being rushed through the story, without getting the full experience.
-Perhaps related to the previous point, but it also asks the reader to take for granted a lot of things without explaining how they really work in the world. Or much about the world in general.
-It didn’t really escape the ‘teenage heroine that makes you want to smack her for her stupidity’ curse of YA literature. I don’t know if it got a bit better towards the end, or if I just got used to it.
-There were cringy moments that personally rubbed me the wrong way. Felt like cringingness for the sake of cringingness – and while I know some people are fans of that, I am not.

I do think it’s good read… if you don’t mind being left with more questions than answers and completing the world you’re reading about in your head instead of getting it from the book, or feeling like you just watched a nice sci-fi movie, instead of reading a novel, and I also think I’ll try to pick up the sequel when it comes out, but I do think it leaves a pretty noticeable ‘something’s missing’ aftertaste.

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Ash Princess (Ash Princess Trilogy #1)Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A book captivating enough to make me ignore the fact that I hate a lot of its ideas.

This book is written well enough so that I couldn’t stop turning pages, even though after every chapter I kept thinking “torture, intrigues, love triangles, spies, and disgusting people who get off humiliating others? I like none of those things and don’t really want to be reading about them… especially now”. In fact I actually had to skip through some of the more unpleasant parts closer to the end.
And yet, I think this is one of the better YA books out there, just from the way it’s written, especially for people who don’t mind the above mentioned.

I do sincerely hope, thought, that the second book will contain less of the themes I hate to read through, and more of new original ideas and good writing. Though I’ll probably buy it regardless, since I’m interested to see where the story will go.

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The Bird and the BladeThe Bird and the Blade by Megan Bannen

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Disappointing execution of a disappointing concept.

I wanted to like this book. And I thought I did for about two first chapters… until the language and the way the story was told begun turning increasingly disheartening. Another good idea utterly betrayed by a very pure execution.
This book fails spectacularly regarding immersiveness and world-consistency. First, I kept feeling that more and more of geographical and historical descriptions felt somehow wrong, but decided that since it’s a fictional version of the world I shouldn’t care so much… But then I almost DNFed (I had to put it away for couple days) when I reached phrase “asset to be liquidated”. Because, seriously? Did the author even try to care about how her protagonist sounded? This and many more very modern phrases and thoughts, jump out from pages, break the immersion completely, and make it impossible to believe in the setting of 1280 Asia. I don’t know if it is carelessness, laziness, or if American YA writers are simply expected to write books like they can only be read by young girls who only care for the cheesy girly feelings and ‘unconscious cuddling,’ and not about things like writing language, consistency, and believability… (It isn’t too difficult to type ‘bullet’ into a search engine and look up the etymology and first known use, is it? Though I suppose something like common sense should tell you it’s not very appropriate for 1280 even without having to look it up… And neither is “yep” Or phrases like “thanks but no thanks”.) But it made me very sad and by the second half I was kind of skimping through a lot of text, instead of trying to enjoy submerging myself in the story (because I knew I wouldn’t be able to, and only would turn more irritated by finding other examples of questionable phrasing…)
Also, the summary is misleading. “Ghosts” have practically nothing to do with the story at all, and their very short “appearance” makes place only at the very end and felt very forced and useless. Otherwise there are only memories and dreams.
Lastly, the least it could have done is follow through with its silliness and have some sort of unexpected positive ending. But noooo, it does the most boring thing of sticking with the unpleasant ending of the original story, which became the tip on the mountain of my disappointment with this book… (The author says she was outraged with it, and than just repeats it in her own work word by word. I don’t see the logic.)

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PridePride by Ibi Zoboi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sweet but confusingly fickle teen love story. 

Would I pick this book up if I was browsing at a store? 99% not. (Might have something to do with very toxic pink of the inside cover of Owlcrate edition, tbh.) The themes in this book are something I have absolutely no first-hand knowledge of, and could hardly relate to (hoods, black cultures, teenage dating). Doesn’t mean I wasn’t interested in them, I love to read from perspectives of different cultures, but it does mean that for the whole duration of this book I couldn’t really tell if I should be taking it seriously (believing what it was putting down), or not. In fact, I would actually like to know how people who relate to the background of this story (who come from the area and cultures described) felt about this book. Is it relatable or is it laying it too thick?
I would have given this book more stars, because it has its own world, and the writing is pleasant and charming, if not for one thing – the main character. And I honestly couldn’t tell if this was a writing quality problem of inconsistency of presentation, or if it was a realistic representation of type of a teenage girl mentality I simply didn’t want to know anything about… One minute she is clever and responsible, the next she is arrogantly blind and annoying. Is she calling this boy a ‘home’, and saying how it is easy, comfortable, and ‘right’ to be with him, or is she only going out with him to make the other boy jealous? One minute she says ‘you gotta have your boy’s back’, the next she believes what someone else told her about him withing a second. In fact, she kind of seems to believe whoever was the last to talk to her. I love him, I hate him, I love him, we can’t be together,… every three-four pages the main character changes what she thinks and feels and if that’s how teenage girls are supposed to be I’m glad I wasn’t really around for that phase.
The reason I’m more inclined to believe that this is a writing issue is that a lot of other characters are treated in the same way. A boy who was supposed to be in love with her sister for a very long time suddenly is in love with other girl and there isn’t any explanation, a girls who was almost an antagonist and bitchy as hell is suddenly all nice and helping, there are characters who get introduced and dismissed right away, and story points that could have gone somewhere being dropped and forgotten all over the place… Everything is just so… fickle.
This book felt like it could have a lot of potential the way it began, but about half way through it’s like it was all rushed through and scrambled, like the author just had to finish it and be done with it, leveling behind undone more than half of ideas that she had at some point.

Should probably also mention that this book is full of poetry, and it seems like it would be a big plus for those who enjoy it.

Overall, I feel like I wish this book could have been rewritten properly, with more depth and exploration, picking up all the little branches and focusing on its own details, and then I could have actually honestly liked it.

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Learning Not to DrownLearning Not to Drown by Anna Shinoda

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An account of a young soul trapped in a tiny world.

I might have built this book up a bit too much for myself in the beginning. I don’t really know why, but the first chapters made me imagine something really horrific happening, and it made me hesitant about taking it down from my bookshelf for a long time… Because of that for the first half of it I was swimming in this ‘is that it?’ confusion, and it made more sense only towards the very end. I think this book gave me an opportunity to remind myself how for a lot of people even things that seem little and insignificant to me can be real nightmares. That there are a lot of people who are trapped in very small worlds, with no one to get them out.
I actually liked that this book focused on not painting things in black and white, even though I personally tend to. Even though I felt like not a single person reacts or relates to things like I would in their place, I can relate to loving people who try to break your life in pieces and learning how to get yourself out.
I also think that the writing is quite good, though I probably would’ve preferred it if some scenes and issues were explore a bit more deeply. I think this is one of those books where it makes a lot of sense to read it once, and re-read it right after, from the new perspective.

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Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles, #1)Cinder by Marissa Meyer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An interesting idea, yet shallow and underdeveloped.

There’s certain charm in fairytale re-tellings.
I personally like the sense of safety you get when you kind of know what where it is going to go, but read it for the experience anyway. Well, everyone knows this, it’s why we still get new movies based on fairytales all the time and watch them none the less.
This… has hints of a number of fairy tales, but they are only hints, there for no particular reason but to be there. I wouldn’t call it a re-telling in any way.
I think it has a number of interesting elements tied together by strings that seem more often than not too thin.
Story elements spring out of nowhere or die in nothingness… often enough to mildly bother me, but not often enough to actually hate it.
The whole concept of Lunars and shells and how do they work and where did they come through seemed underdeveloped, under-explained, and a bit too far-stretched.
I was sort of glad that Prince Kai was not a haughty blind (idiot) with a tone of issues like princes so often are in YA books, but on the other hand he seemed a bit too nice to be believable as an Emperor.
In fact, believability is a rather big issue with this book as a whole. The whole state of the Earth, the relationships between races, the reasons for the way cyborgs and androids are treated the way they are, Lunars, as I have already mentioned it… Hardly anything is ever explained in a believable way, and most issues are glided over in a manner that says ‘this is YA sci-fi, stop thinking and just accept things at their face value and swallow down without chewing’.
I can’t say I loved it, but I would like to see where it goes from here.

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