Adena > Recent Status Updates

Is this book self-published? I keep finding grammatical errors and incorrect use of homonyms.

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.

I have never seen a novel with no narrative voice have such a high Goodreads rating.

Ugh! The author is spending way too much time building backstories for the characters.

It was going so well until the author threw in a campy, shipboard romance, plot.

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.

Welp, I’ve already cried. It’s been a long time since a book has made me cry.

We need to make sure readers of audiobooks who have to read Hebrew actually know Hebrew. The mispronunciations are like nails on a chalkboard.

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?

The first person narration results in a lot of tell instead of show and makes the novel flat and boring.

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.

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.

The writing is easy reading, but the writing doesn't grab the reader.

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.

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.

My goodness! This book drags and is boring! Please tell me that it picks up and goes somewhere!

I'm really struggling to want to read this book, but when I do pick it up, I find it enjoyable.

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.

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.

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.

This reads like a book that’s a transition for people out of YA and into contemporary literature.

This is a book that late-adolescent pretentious boys will love and anyone with actual intellect will see right through.

Ether was only clever for about one scene. After that, she’s is annoying and a schmaltzy writing tool.

What if our folk tale heroes were the counter-friction to the machine instead of icons of capitalism?

It’s fan fiction, but suddenly Daisy cares about Pammy? Stay true to the characters.

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.

Textual Connections:
The current loneliness epidemic
“Reborn dolls”
Inequity in school tracking students/school funding
“Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock” + party scene