This Savage Song and
Our Dark Duet, by Victoria Schwab
I enjoyed these books while I was reading them, but one month later and I can't remember many specific thoughts I had, except that I think I was wanting more the whole time. And also I wanted the ship to happen, but wasn't necessarily devastated that it didn't?
Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire
I really like the concept for these shorter stories and am looking forward to reading the other ones some time in the future. Of everyone's lost worlds Nancy's is the one I want more of, which is probably partly because of Lore Olympus, but whatever.
Aurora Burning, by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff
Book number two in this series, and I still love it. I like the new character, I liked the "training sequence," and it was fun. Except for that ending. Definitely one of the more brutal cliffhangers I have ever encountered.
The Hidden Oracle, by Rick Riordan
As much as I love the first two series involving Camp Half-Blood, I was not enthused about reading this at all. I simply do not care about Apollo/Lester like, at all. I think he's really annoying and somehow still insanely egotistical in spite of his new mortality and it is extremely eye-rolling. I nearly DNFed this book, but found I was able to consume it much easier by listening to it so that's the way I did this. I am mainly in this series for every/any glimpse at our friends from the past, and ate up every word involving Nico di Angelo in this book.
The Hazel Wood, by Melissa Albert
Beautiful, atmospheric, haunting. The first half of the book moved at a pace I really liked and the second half lagged a bit for me, but I still got really invested in the story and Alice and Finch. Book #2 is on my TBR.
Sadie, by Courtney Summers
This book was so great, and I cannot wait to experience it a second time, but via audiobook, which everyone says is AMAZING. I consider myself pretty new to the thriller/mystery genre, but I'm wading in and this was a really good book to start out with. I loved the podcast element that was brought into it. These kinds of podcasts have been wildly successful and drawing on that obsession that podcast listeners get and working to evoke that in a book was genius.
The Dark Prophecy and
The Burning Maze, by Rick Riordan
These two books brought back more of my faves, but also was unexpectedly devastating in a few ways. SHIPS ARE NOT WATER-TIGHT, Y'ALL. I'm semi-eager to get to The Tyrant's Tomb, which is nearly always available at my library, but since I've decided to go the audiobook route with this series, I'm waiting for several more weeks.
The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins
I thought this story was fine, and I get why it was such a huge hit when it came out. But a week later and I'm having trouble remembering finer details about things. The main character bothered me, and I hesitate to say it's because of her drinking because obviously she was addicted and I don't want to completely write someone off for something they don't have a lot of control over. But the drinking was part of it, and I questioned so many of her decisions throughout the book. I think at one point I was watching her possibly go to her death and was more resigned than worried for her.
The Selection,
The Elite, and
The One, by Kiera Cass
I have like, a million thoughts on these books and it kind of makes me wish I could just vlog it all out instead of type it, but whatever. I'm doing this. Spoilers abound!
First of all, I feel the need to say that I would have even read these books if it wasn't for BookOutlet. I saw that they were listing books 2-5 for around $4 each, and the combination of book FOMO and the great deal was too strong to ignore.
The Selection
The main character, America, was fine. I've now come to realize that a lot of people think she's really annoying, and in this book I didn't find her unbearable. She had some insecurities about her hometown boyfriend, but I thought it was kind of reasonable given the circumstances and how he had acted. I wish she had played music more, since that was like, her entire existence.
When the concept of "the selection" was explained, I thought it made sense. The prince was too busy to date like a normal person because he's training and learning to be king, so we need a special way for him to meet girls. Okay. But then, the prince was really dumb?? Like, he didn't seem to know anything about ANYTHING, so I was like, what are you learning in King School??
As for the actual selection, it was pretty bland. Obviously I wasn't expecting any physical challenges a la Throne of Glass or The Hunger Games, but definitely some tests to determine the girls' merits. I did like how the book seemed to be anti girl vs. girl and made a point to have the selected girls make friends with each other.
As far as the love triangle went, I wasn't so much pro-Maxon as I was anti-Aspen. I had serious suspiscions about him (probably because I had just finished reading a domestic thriller), and rolled my eyes all the way into my skull when his provider issues and need to dictate what was best for America came out. No thank you.
I also did not like the stuff about virginity/purity, especially since it's clear that it's no one's choice to act that way, it is virtually forced upon them. Also, it ended up bearing almost no weight at all as the books went on, so it felt pointless that it was a world mandate.
As it turns out, it appears I need very little to be entertained. There was little worldbuilding, hardly any descriptive imagery, and very few answers. And at the end of it I was like, that was dumb, but fun! Four stars!!
The Elite
And then my optimism all kind of fell apart. The love triangle was UUUGGGGHHHHH, America's insecurity, while still understandable, quickly became very grating, and there was not nearly enough Maxon kissing.
The One
And then, the series ended. Which I truly was not expecting because there are five books in the series, but if had looked up even a little bit about the series I would have seen that books 4 and 5 focus on a different girl and not America. So that kind of blew apart my hope that basically anything that I was finding lacking would be fleshed out and expanded over more books.
The pacing of this book was maddening. America didn't tell Maxon her secret until literally like, the last twenty pages of the book. And then, all of the ending action and the convenient kill-offs were completely off-stage. I kept waiting for America to do something heroic, but apparently she was truly playing that "not like other [female protagonists]" to the very end.
The one thing that I did like was the turnaround for a character who was largely antagonistic throughout all three books, and then she got such a dirty ending and I wanted to scream.
In conclusion
Overall for The Elite and The One, I kept seeing so many moments that I wanted to branch off and go a different way to make the story far more interesting than it was. Like if she had been sent home literally any one of those times she assumed it was going to happen, if the rebels had done SOMETHING of importance (like take one of her family members), if the reveal that one character was secretly a rebel had meant anything at all... there were SO many things that could have been interesting!
After about a week, I've lowered all of my initial star ratings by one star. I think my hopeful optimism and bank account were really wanting to like these books, but now that I'm compiling my thoughts and writing them out, they don't deserve that kind of optimism. There are a million things that I would have changed to make this series better. I keep imagining what a Bachelor-murder-mystery book would be like and I would LOVE to read that book.
Maybe one day when I'm feeling stupid I'll read books 4 and 5, but I've shed any and all optimism that I will feel better about those books.
Whomp whomp.
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