Status Updates From Australia

I can't wait for this to be over! At least they finally found her parents. If only more than 7% max of the book was spent on them and her restoring their memories and there wasn't hundreds of pages of Ron's toxic thought vomit!

So close...and yet sooooooooooo far. :'(

Ron has spent the entire book up until this point intensely paranoid about everyone. Now, because it is "convenient", he is just instantly trusting this stranger they've met and is onboard for traveling across a country with him. Not at all unbelievable or nonsensical.

Oh goodie. We are finally in the Hermione-centric part of the story where we get to focus on her story and her search for her parents...and then the author tips that motivation away from her and gives it to Ron instead. Oofta, the blatant sexism in this is so overwhelming. Hermione is just a prop. Ron could just as well be hanging out in Australia with a blow-up doll.

a) It would be "coarse bandages", not "course bandages" (this mistake has been made twice now.
b) That doesn't even make sense. What is she doing? Wrapping her wounds up in sandpaper?? Bandages are generally soft...you know...because they're used against WOUNDS.

Literally nothing happened in this chapter except they made a few phone calls and did some lip-locked acrobatics on a couch. So many words, nothing said.

Remains awful. I am really disliking how unhealthy their relationship is, and yet it's presented as if it is a normal thing. The way Ron treats Hermione in this fic is not normal and Hermione should be dumping his sorry ass and dating Krum instead.

"He'd come close to thinking somewhere along the banks of the Caspian Sea, that he'd lost Hermione."

At no point in this trip have they entered any country that borders the Caspian Sea. Seriously, just open up a frigging map and fact check yourself!

This fic can bite me. I hope Ron dies. I hope one of those seventeen species of poisonous spiders in Australia bites him and his body shuts down and he dies. No, scratch that, I hope ALL of those seventeen species bite him. I hope a swarm of poisonous spiders cover every inch of his body in oozing pustules of venomous bites.

Does Ron even respect Hermione? Because he seems vaguely disdainful of her throughout this entire chapter. And Hermione is not even Hermione. This characterization is so terrible, it's repellant.

Oooooofta. This is rough. Am I supposed to like Ron?! Because he is behaving like a total jagweed and I really can't stand him in this. And Hermione is a shrinking violet that does nothing but demure to Ronald's histrionics or is overly impressed by Ronald's overwhelming mediocrity. At least they FINALLY left the Burrow. Still haven't stepped foot in Australia yet though. :(

458 pages into this (of 1232 total pages) and the only thing that has happened is a funeral and a few puritanically chaste makeout sessions. Where. Is. The. Plot?? Are they EVER going to be in Australia?!

35% done and they still haven't even let the Burrow. Starting to think "Australia" is a bit of a misnomer.

Chapter 15 was a low point. Harry and Ron having a laugh over Ron trying to spy on Hermione in the bath possibly being the lowest of the low. Nothing like a good laugh about a violation of privacy bordering on sexual violence between two protagonists!

A lot of telling, but not a lot of showing. Stop telling me Ron is sad and grieving and actually show him grieving! Maybe actually include some of these scenes that Hermione is referencing, like Ron accidentally setting Fred's spot at the table. That would have been more interesting than the 80 or so paragraphs about kissing.

Hmmm. Not sure how I am feeling about this one. Technically it is well written, but Hermione is constantly blushing, shy, or embarrassed, Molly just chases grown adults around preventing them from kissing, and it repeatedly backplates between obsessing about kissing to cliched discussion about dead bodies being sad. It's telling me they're sad, but it's not making me feel it.