KV > Recent Status Updates

Literally the romance takes away so much.

Ngl genuinely I am disgusted by the “sex”. I know bodice rippers love rape but I’m just. Irritated.

“They were courageous fighters and dauntless warriors, but they were also as superstitious as any primitive tribesmen from Africa or the Middle East
“ there it is. There’s one of the constant flaws in these romances. It feels like Gaelic highlanders are chosen the same way monsters are in many modern romance novels—a proxy for this orientalist fantasy.

Things make more sense with the time period properly established. Unfortunately it’s boring rn bc the sex.

Immediately lost so much historical credibility that they assumed wetnurse when she said nurse. They had nurses in this time period, are you serious???

Almost done.

No update in length, I just read a few good short stories by women and it makes me so bitter tbh, I'm struggling with this collection so much, even since the story about the cheerleader or whatever in this fucking book.

tbh I'd like to be done. sometimes I feel certain ppl lean into nonfiction/biographies when they admire or crave to do fiction work but don't know how to prune the information they share or balance tone and character, which this book struggles with all of them. considering I got my bachelor's in history, it's kind of exhausting bc well-written nonfiction is great.

Idk this is feeling like a two star at best. We are spending so much time babbling about the exceptionalism of white ppl in his life that are mediocre allies at best and I’m tired of it.

It's a bit hard to read at parts--huge paragraphs and run on sentences and I find myself agitated by certain tonal choices on The Good White People in his life although I understand why it would focus on that. It just makes me want to read James Baldwin: A Biography by David Leeming instead, but this was on the goodreads list, so here I am I suppose.

Same page, just contemplating the fact there's like three short stories written by women and one poem in a collection of nine (including the poem). Three out of eighteen short stories are by women.

I lost my steam the second there was that story about the cheerleader. And since then I've just felt drained and had difficulty continuing, ngl. I cannot fathom how men write teenage girls.

I’d dnf this if I was less stubborn. Truly heartbroken, it’s a gorgeous book, but I’m barely in it and the writing is so awful.

I wasn't sure how I felt about at first, but I am enjoying it now.

You know I got flashes of this up to now, but this really sealed the deal. I'll likely still give it four stars, but I am so fucking tired of liberalism bleeding through all media, complacent moderates who chose comfort and ease over the true cost of our constant current state of life and who write out about the constant passive murder of the systems we live in but somehow equivocating resistance to those systems.

Some things work for me and some things don't, but this is heading towards a four star rating and I think that's very positive.

Still having fun! Occasionally the dialogue makes me stumble because it's not quite as engaging as the rest of it.

Got caught up in life stuff but picked this back up and I'm having fun actually.

Just started, but I like this more than most of the other chosen books from illumicrate for 2024. We'll see if I continue to enjoy it.

Why is labeled lesbian if it's m/f romance.

Very cliche kind of over-the-top villain, but I continue. Also why are the present love interests the same starting letters in their names?

Look. We're already starting with terms like "diluting" being thrown around for mixed children or whatever is happening in this world and I'm not loving that. I don't even really like heists so this is going to go a type of way I think.

A chunk in, mystery begun, I have a complicated mix of feelings on the matter and I'm debating if I'll lean into the rubric or not yet.

I'm already slightly put off by the asinine vitriol between the two women, but that is the nature of rivals to lovers so I need to just buckle up.

I think it suffers with the split pov, at least as a mystery.

The thing is, if this was a less pushed book, I would accept it as kind of pulpy genre work and move on, but unfortunately if it's pushed through by illumicrate, I do hold higher standards for it and it's just not meeting those standards.

Ngl I feel like some of the potential mysteries were revealed too quickly, told to us too much in the text rather than folded out, which doesn't have to be so horrible in a short book, but considering this is 400+ pages, I would've liked to build it more.

I know Aila's working on it with Tanya, and it is good the narrative pointed out these problems, but I also feel so terribly for Tanya and so frustrated with Aila, as well as exhausted w the therapist black best friend trend, so even trying to unpack it is frustrating, especially with her constantly calling her animal names.

Get this white boy out of here.

I wanna dnf so badly. The racially charged language is a lot. The contemporary romance writing style is frustrating. I don't see what's cozy about any of this--the high school dialogue and conflict, the stress of how the animals are treated and regarded, the looming pressure of Aila's self-absorbed anxiety. I'm having a really hard time with this one and the most interesting part--the animals--do not get enough time.