Amelia Halgren > Recent Status Updates

This is described as a gothic novel… and it certainly has the plot of one. But it’s just not very atmospheric and I haven’t yet gotten hooked almost a quarter of the way in . This one just may not be for me.

This is my second attempt. I think this one just isn’t for me. It’s very character driven but I find the characters either unlikable, unrelatable, or a little too real and kinda depressing. It’s not at all a bad book or badly written, just not for me right now.

Good start but not really what I was hoping/in the mood for.

Maybe I’ll come back to this? It’s a good book but it’s really long and I lost steam when another reserved I’ve been waiting on became available. Now THIS one is due and I’m not done yet…

I’m not getting invested in this… I’m going to move on…

I’m gonna DNF this. It’s well written but I’m having trouble keeping up with all the characters and it’s just not what I was expecting, not what I’m in the mood for right now.

I think I’m going to stop early… this isn’t really much of a fairytale and that’s what I was looking for. This is much more about dysfunctional families… it may eventually be a found family story too but this isn’t the escapism I was hoping for.

“Relief feels like happiness when you don’t know the difference.”

“Rescue was bad. People who wanted you to be vulnerable and grateful tended to get very angry when you stopped being vulnerable and didn’t act grateful enough.”

Was that a reference to grandma’s feather bed or just a coincidence of measurements…?

“…forming a shape rather like a caterpillar —if a caterpillar were nine feet tall and six feet wide.”

“Why do you not say something to her?”

Sarkis groaned, “Because I have too much power over her right now.”

…The priest had never been slow on the uptake, “You don’t think she’ll feel safe saying ‘no’ to you.”

“I’m not willing to risk it.”

😭🫠🥹🥰

Eh… I’m not really a fan of the writing. It’s a little repetitive and observations meant to be profound seem simplistic. I’m think I’m done.

I had some issues with my audiobook or maybe the player so I didn’t get to finish this before the due date.

May have to buy this book…

I’m sad to say, I don’t think this one is for me even though I’ve enjoyed everything else by this author. I’m struggling to feel like I really know the characters even after twelve chapters. Worse…Sexual harassment/assault is uncomfortably common in this story.

“Tomorrow, in my experience is only worth worrying about about when there’s something you can do about it.”

I can’t get into this. The arguments between these two are just ugly and cruel and so much of what’s keeping them apart is just impatience and poor communication.

“I understood… the longing… for a place where they and their children can be safe and powerful, the bottomless hunger that makes us willing to devour others down to their bones.”

The author keeps mentioning along the way how many of these magical creatures were originally life forms created by wizards… is this a metaphor for all the ways in which the human race creates problems for itself?

Chapter 12/13 this suddenly takes a turn I wasn’t expecting… this is way more idealistic and ethical at its core than any other dystopian type YA book I’ve read. There’s a central theme of the wrongness of compulsion that I hadn’t picked up on before now.

“Was I starting to feel evil? Yes. Now I was worrying I’d be turned to the dark side by too much crochet.” 🤣🤣🤣

“She says it’s too easy to call people evil instead of their choices, and that lets people justify making evil choices because they convince themselves that it’s okay because they’re still good people overall inside their own heads. …I think after a certain number of evil choices it’s reasonable shorthand to decide that someone’s an evil person who oughtn’t have the chance to make anymore choices.”

“One doesn’t need magic if one knows enough stories.”

I think I made it to around the 30% mark but I lost my place and I’m not feeling motivated to go find it again. I may just wait a while and try again.

“I believe the human capacity for holding grudges is mostly vestigial. There is no need to be cranky.”

🤣🤣🤣

This was written in 1995… and it shows. 😅

“So I stopped taking the [antibiotics] and let my own defenses do the mop up work.”

…you want super bacteria!?? Because this is how we get super bacteria!

“I tended to group people into two groups: one that values politeness over honesty and the other exactly the opposite. Fay’s mother was doubtlessly the former and would go to great lengths of insincerity to avoid telling the truth, if the truth was hurtful, inconvenient, or scary.”

…interesting that he sees this quality in her but not the ways in which he and FOL do the SAME THING!

“You’re taking the damn sleeping pills…NOW!”

This guy is initially dismissive of all his fiancée’s valid concerns and now he commands her to take sleeping pills…?