Ascolta > Recent Status Updates

A note to publishing PR departments everywhere: just having a 'moving castle' element does not liken a book to Howl's. JFC, Howl's is a lighthearted comedy of errors not a bleak rumination on the horrors of the class system.

Ah, a DNF at 98%. Classic.

That feeling when jumping s/thing like 8 chapters ahead to the 95% point, and yet the pacing and story are as annoying as ever.

strangely, it took me until this point to realize that there's not a single robust female character in this entire book. B/c I was FForwarding since the 40% mark?

40%: More or less where I started skipping liberally ahead. Curious to know the outcome, but struggling to bear the blow-by-blow account.

Oh dear. This was humming along so well, then suddenly we get this annoying sloppy narrative line. Author deliberately mucking up the pace for ??? reasons ???

little prediction: hated uncle set up the 'provisions' in order to goad Mouse into staying

Is possible this will simply not work for me b/c of repellent narration. If Adults can't manage to voice teens w/out making them whiny caricatures of living people then HIRE TEEN ACTORS TO READ THE PARTS, ffs.

This book is a little too on the nose. I'll finish it, no doubt, but as Parry's most recent: a disappointment.

2h in @ Ch. 6 and nothing has happened but that our MC is starting to 'settle in' at what is clearly a ramshackle plantation house. Oy. Gotta DNF this.

Yikes, when I have to zip ahead from the beginning of Ch. 3 to Ch. 4 and it STILL doesn't feel like we've got to the good part? Grady Hendrix, massively successful YteDude does the 20th-century teen pregnancy version of disaster porn 👀

B) repeating the same folly over and over make the a novel feel stagnant. Like there's no development happening - in Sophie's case, we're asked to believe that she's attained this higher consciousness, yet she goes back to Bianca even at the 94% mark.

Yikes. We've gotten to a place in the story where author is just recycling the same asinine plot points. As noted elsewhere, a) making MC seem stupid relative to the reader is a definite means of distancing and tedious storytelling to boot;

Yikes. The problem with having a theme like ADOLESCENTS MAKE TERRIBLE CHOICES is that it offers very little in a meta sense. It's just tiring.

Liking this better than Magic & Disaster. There are def. no Mary Sues - it reads like another cautionary tale of how love leads to ruin.

3:21:10

oh shite; our MC is one of the worst people in the actual world. The kind who would actually be a Nazi officer.

The point where I start to wish our MC would just die and put us ALL out of her miserable existence, ruled by misogyny and insecurity.

Yikes. Between 63 and 73 a big sink again.

WELL might need to make another new shelf. In with a fizzle, out with a bang.

Tone vibes the Bridget Jones franchise. That kind of specifically English anxiety surrounding gender, which also turned up in Coupling.

This reads like it would be a GREAT movie premise.