Adena > Recent Status Updates

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Adena
Adena is starting An Officer and a Spy
Is this book self-published? I keep finding grammatical errors and incorrect use of homonyms.
Dec 28, 2025 07:58AM Add a comment
An Officer and a Spy

Adena
Adena is 35% done with The First Witch of Boston
Let’s take an interesting premise for historical fiction and ruin it by trying to throw in smutty romance scenes and with a woman who acts too modern and has no understanding of the social constructs of the era in which she lives. How did this win a Goodreads award for historical fiction?! I’ve lost faith in humanity.
Dec 26, 2025 10:14AM Add a comment
The First Witch of Boston

Adena
Adena is 45% done with Beasts of the Sea
I have never seen a novel with no narrative voice have such a high Goodreads rating.
Dec 17, 2025 11:03AM Add a comment
Beasts of the Sea

Adena
Adena is 15% done with The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
Ugh! The author is spending way too much time building backstories for the characters.
Oct 12, 2025 11:45AM Add a comment
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Adena
Adena is 50% done with Isola
It was going so well until the author threw in a campy, shipboard romance, plot.
Aug 20, 2025 03:48PM Add a comment
Isola

Adena
Adena is 50% done with Finding Grace
This book started out with a bang, and I like the narrative perspective. However, characters are drawn with a heavy hand to the point of being cartoonish stereotypes. Tom is so wrapped up in his grief to the point of it being ridiculous. Lauren is so in love with Tom that it is obvious. I’m not sure if I will finish this book. Right now it is turning into such a disappointment.
Aug 11, 2025 06:18AM Add a comment
Finding Grace

Adena
Adena is 20% done with My Friends
Welp, I’ve already cried. It’s been a long time since a book has made me cry.
Jun 26, 2025 04:39AM Add a comment
My Friends

Adena
Adena is 30% done with The Book of Longings
We need to make sure readers of audiobooks who have to read Hebrew actually know Hebrew. The mispronunciations are like nails on a chalkboard.
Jun 20, 2025 09:17AM Add a comment
The Book of Longings

Adena
Adena is 25% done with The Poppy Fields
The premise irritates me. How ridiculously fragile have we made people through endless bulldozing of obstacles that they can no longer work through grief and need to be insulated from it?
Jun 14, 2025 06:27AM Add a comment
The Poppy Fields

Adena
Adena is starting My Name Is Emilia del Valle
The first person narration results in a lot of tell instead of show and makes the novel flat and boring.
May 05, 2025 03:11AM Add a comment
My Name Is Emilia del Valle

Adena
Adena is starting Great Big Beautiful Life
Take the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and add painfully bad smut romance writing to it. 🙄. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll endure the trash.
Apr 29, 2025 03:27AM Add a comment
Great Big Beautiful Life

Adena
Adena is starting American Housewife
Ugh. Someone told this author the be descriptive, but no one told the author that descriptions must be purposeful. I just read a paragraph about what they ordered at a Chinese restaurant. Details I did not need.
Mar 16, 2025 04:21PM Add a comment
American Housewife

Adena
Adena is 46% done with Ancient Blood (Navajo Nation Mystery #3)
The writing is easy reading, but the writing doesn't grab the reader.
Feb 12, 2025 05:56AM Add a comment
Ancient Blood (Navajo Nation Mystery #3)

Adena
Adena is 50% done with A Little Life
The writing is beautiful and the characters well-developed. However, this dips a bit too far into the "trauma porn" where readers are taken on a deep dive into trauma and trauma to make them feel better about their own pains. At a certain point it extends beyond the suspension of disbelief into the territory of eye rolling.
Feb 12, 2025 05:55AM Add a comment
A Little Life

Adena
Adena is 80% done with The Frozen River
I like that this is historical fiction that isn’t overly exerting itself in an effort to try to cross into literary fiction. It’s fairly solid historical fiction, but it does include gratuitous intimate scenes and - in contrast - Shakespearean illusions in an effort to seem more highbrow.
Jan 26, 2025 11:47AM Add a comment
The Frozen River

Adena
Adena is 20% done with Confessions
My goodness! This book drags and is boring! Please tell me that it picks up and goes somewhere!
Jan 19, 2025 12:41PM Add a comment
Confessions

Adena
Adena is 30% done with Ancient Blood (Navajo Nation Mystery #3)
I'm really struggling to want to read this book, but when I do pick it up, I find it enjoyable.
Jan 08, 2025 07:26AM Add a comment
Ancient Blood (Navajo Nation Mystery #3)

Adena
Adena is 80% done with Good Dirt
While I'm enjoying this book, I don't know how to classify it. It's a little bit historical fiction, a little bit mystery, a little bit romance. . . It's a little bit everything. It's not quite as literary fiction as I would have liked, though.
Jan 08, 2025 07:22AM Add a comment
Good Dirt

Adena
Adena is 45% done with Untethered: A Novel
Stylistically, this book reads like a middle school novel (cringe). I think it's the over-explaining and the unnecessary descriptions of unimportant details that does that. The book is taking a while to get to any meaningful plot or conflict -- mainly due to the aforementioned descriptions.
Dec 20, 2024 06:28AM Add a comment
Untethered: A Novel

Adena
Adena is on page 115 of 374 of The Island of Sea Women
I feel like See just keeps recycling Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Snow Flower was amazing, but each rehashing just disappoints. This may become a DNF for me.
Sep 17, 2024 09:42AM Add a comment
The Island of Sea Women

Adena
Adena is 30% done with A Pair of Wings
This reads like a book that’s a transition for people out of YA and into contemporary literature.
Sep 15, 2024 11:03AM Add a comment
A Pair of Wings

Adena
Adena is 25% done with I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom
This is a book that late-adolescent pretentious boys will love and anyone with actual intellect will see right through.
Aug 31, 2024 07:14AM Add a comment
I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom

Adena
Adena is 16% done with I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom
Ether was only clever for about one scene. After that, she’s is annoying and a schmaltzy writing tool.
Aug 30, 2024 11:37AM Add a comment
I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom

Adena
Adena is 51% done with Bunyan and Henry; Or, the Beautiful Destiny
What if our folk tale heroes were the counter-friction to the machine instead of icons of capitalism?
Aug 17, 2024 12:19PM Add a comment
Bunyan and Henry; Or, the Beautiful Destiny

Adena
Adena is 50% done with Beautiful Little Fools
It’s fan fiction, but suddenly Daisy cares about Pammy? Stay true to the characters.
Aug 09, 2024 06:58AM Add a comment
Beautiful Little Fools

Adena
Adena is 37% done with Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder
So far, I’m leaning towards 2 stars or lower. What’s with this trend of crafting poorly written neurodivergent characters whose neurodivergence is not relevant to the story? It’s like the trend of throwing in gay love scenes in books where the sexuality of the character has zero impact on the story.
Aug 04, 2024 08:35AM Add a comment
Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder

Adena
Adena is 64% done with Klara and the Sun
Textual Connections:
The current loneliness epidemic
“Reborn dolls”
Inequity in school tracking students/school funding
“Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock” + party scene
Jul 21, 2024 05:22PM Add a comment
Klara and the Sun

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