Jeanne > Recent Status Updates

Really? The head cryptographer doesn’t know the Latin phrase for “who watches the watchmen”? Seems completely ridiculous. Especially since her fiancé speaks like 500 languages flawlessly.

He’s never heard of the NSA? But he’s helped the government out with translation and is super bright? And “cordless phones” exist so it isn’t before 1942?!! What.

“Strong, hazel eyes”? Geez this one is already a keeper with a pouty female scientist and a vacation that will never happen… Dan Brown should stop trying to write from the female viewpoint, at least when it’s his male characters THINKING smart women are like this you can say it’s just their fault, not his.

"While Jacob was still loading his father into the car." Ugh. I really feel like there's a less inhuman way of saying this. Like his dad is an inanimate object just because he's in a wheelchair.

Having read Lolita recently all I can think about is how Edward is like Humbert Humbert in his "reading" of Bella's emotions. He really does seem to be grooming her. I realize I tend to be a completist, but I still don't understand why I want to finish this book. "Want" may be the wrong word, because I'm looking at the two books I missed in this series and thinking "I should just get it over with and read them too."

Ugh. I read the originals, so was expecting something that would make me feel cringy about the low-key misogyny that pervades these books, but "why does she need to exist" and internal dialogue about how to kill a young woman for pages and pages... it's so InCel it's killing me. I'll give it another chapter, but it hadn't occurred to me how much worse having a male at the center of this awful "love" story would be.

Wait. This guy is 31, has a 7 year old, in SAN FRANCISCO! And no one finds that odd? How on earth could he and his wife work enough while having a kid to afford SF in their 20s?

Also, the writing is still so ridiculous I’ve switched to audio, which is read by Emily Woo Zeller who is currently my favorite narrator.

“…her curiosity powered the words finally through.” Why is this written so strangely? And every page has some weirdness like this that takes me out of the “story” to try to figure out what the words mean, and then why it was written in this order. Is it to emphasize something?

I’ve complained a lot recently about the lack of editors in books I read, but this one may be the worst. It’s like the writing is translated by someone who doesn’t speak English.

“Although he’s known people that died, everyone he knew seem to escape unscathed.” Wait… what?!

This book is a good example of why passive voice is so infuriating. And, is it the cadence? Something just keeps making me so angry. WHY is this such bad writing? Like, other than passive voice and insane exposition and characters thinking things they would have stopped noticing months ago… there’s more that I can’t put a name to. 10 more pages and I’m giving up.

I do not understand how writing like this gets published without someone fixing it.

“Krista Deal, an impeccable combination of professionalism laced with sass, was speechless, perhaps for the first time since Moira and Frank hired her. Her grey eyes went wide. Then she inhaled sharply.”

My husband rated it four stars (!!!) so I cant give up on this so soon. But… ugh. So glad I’m not “laced with sass.”

Oh my! She just poured vodka on her face and isn’t screaming at the pain that would cause her eyes!!!

Ugh. So much exposition from a 19 y o girl who thinks I’m her head like a 40 y o man. :(

I am slightly concerned the author is writing about cranberry bushes, not understanding how cranberries work.

This book is amazing.

Desperate was white noise is this house…it was the hope that pulled at her heart with dirty little fingers.

She didn’t know there were things worse than selfish.

A lot like melting but more violent.

Well, I'm annoyed and embarrassed to say I'm hooked. It's such an artless book. And sexualizing the relationship between mother and baby is disgusting. I'm hoping that now the character has gotten at least a little older (still way too young to be sexualized as much as is going on, but whatever) it won't be so gross. The story, despite its best efforts, is interesting, and I really want to see where it's going.

I see you “Heptad” sitting their all sneaky. You didn’t get past me.

“Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.”

Y’know, quite a few times the men in this story rant and rave or expound for far too long about what they’re excited about, but the second a woman does she feels the need to stop and apologize because she find something fascinating?

…but the whole point of that document was that it was small, so it WASN’T a message board of thousands of monkeys typing in the dark.

“Contentious blond girl”? What exactly was contentious about her? She asked some freaking questions.

It is really hard to take a book like this seriously when they couldn’t do enough research to know you go UP to the platform at King’s St. It is not a subterranean stop.