Me, My Shelf, & I > Recent Status Updates

only finished the first 2 chapters so far but I'm cautiously optimistic that this could be really good? admittedly the synopsis didn't drag me in, but the publisher and friends alike seemed to think I'd like it and so far I think they were on to something

okay yes, just said "HER majesty" so we're definitely in Victorian times
(and yes, this is generally following our own timeline since they mentioned Ann Boelyn explicitly by name earlier in the book)

finally acknowledging the not like other girls issue, but I fear it is too little too late and I find her utterly insufferable by this point

maybe this is an issue in the arc, but earlier he said it took 2/3 vote to overthrow a decision made by the president, and now we're down to the wire on a 50/50 vote... which would automatically pass cause it's nowhere close to 2/3???
I remember thinking that 2/3 is as good as guaranteed, with how difficult it is to attain historically in the US Senate. really really rare to get that much consensus

considering this is supposed to be ~the Victorian era
and considering that blood types weren't discovered until 1901
and that they didn't have telephones and the internet to make transmission of new ideas widespread quickly
and the discovery didn't even get the Nobel prize until 1930...
the scene I just witnessed is very implausible, that's all I'm sayin'

there've now been two instances where she took initiative and did something that wasn't exactly what other people want her to do--
1. she turned down the wives who looked up to her and wanted her to teach them (cause she thinks the men will see her as a wife then and not take her seriously)
2. telling lies about Elizabeth to her father so she's essentially sent away on house arrest
cool cool cool cool

there's a fair amount of 'not like other girls' in this as well
at an earlier scene Henry says something like 'But you're not other women. You're Mary Anning.'
and just now Mary is complaining about a 12yo girl "Fool girl; she'd just made the rest of us look weak by association."

struggling w/ this from a character lens
I'm over halfway through the novel and the two defining attributes of the love interest are smirk and devotion to the MC
not really sure what attributes the MC has, aside from being poor and really passive in her own life
I know this book has been a win for other folks, and the beginning was very promising, but I'm just not sure how it could win me over at this point

this turned from a cozy academic fantasy about fossils into a patriarchy-stuffed parade of glad-handing and balls and has now turned into a sort of hyper-Christian witch hunt
I truly didn't expect this book to have so many of my least favourite tropes

I kinda feel like I've sensed where this book is going from the start and that the path to reach that conclusion is sooooooo long and the book never ends

feels like the book is over but I just looked to see there's a whole third left wtf

not only is this starting to feel like it's more depressing slog than anything else, but also the animals are dying and I don't like that at all

"I left before their good moods ruined my grouchy one."