J'avais des astres dans les yeux

Ava Reid heard you like stories so she put a story in your story.

Again.

She loves doing this. I kind of think it's funny how much literary analysis her characters do in this book and for the silliest snippets of her imaginary story. The quotes so reminded me of the over-the-top writing in something like Rainbow Rowell's Simon Snow books. Anyway, A Study in Drowning is the third book I've read from Reid and sadly the blandest!

I've had a love-hate relationship with her books. She writes well and her perspective on prejudice and misogyny is at least interesting to read in the sphere she's published in in (YA, New Adult). This book includes those topics, but I wouldn't say it was done well here, especially the prejudice that never gets addressed.

I have to say this is my least favorite of her novels, though I haven't read Lady Macbeth yet (and I hear it's not good!). I want to say that this novel had the bones for something good, but I think I liked my own idea of what might've happened in this book before I got a quarter through and it fell apart. The cover is nice though. It wasn't the worst thing I've ever read, but I think my issue with whether or not I actually enjoy her books is now skewing towards "no." I'd rather be torn and mad, than bored and disappointed.

I listened to the audiobook of this so it didn't have the acknowledgements at the back, but apparently she gives an acknowledgment to Zelda Fitzgerald which is insane, 'cause girl this book is not good. But now I see where the MC's name came from 💀.

A Far Wilder Magic is the second book I've read from Allison Saft. Someone recommended it to me and told me it handled the topic of prejudice better than Ava Reid’s Juniper & Thorn. I was mostly surprised to see Saft’s book recommend because I didn’t remember her debut novel, Down Comes the Night, being particularly well received.

In A Far Wilder Magic Margaret Welty lives in isolation in her small town, taking care of her home all alone while she waits for her mother, a renowned alchemist, to return from her travels. When she spots a mystical and elusive fox in the forest near her home the town’s traditional Hala hunt is announced. Believing that winning the hunt and slaying the fox will bring her mother home she decides to sign up, but there’s a problem: she needs an alchemist partner to compete. Luckily, Weston Winters, a down-on-his-luck alchemist shows up at her door looking for mentorship from her absent mother. They sign up for the hunt and throw themselves into a rocky partnership where they clash with each other and the rest of the town.

Ultimately, the writing sucked, the pacing sucked, most of the characters were completely boring including the female lead despite how badass she was supposed to be with her hunting rifle. It read like a first draft and was extremely derivative of Full Metal Alchemist and a little derivative of Shadow & Bone

To be consistent, a small review for Asunder by David Gaider another book in the Dragon Age novel series.

This book sucked yo! What happened?? I thought Gaider had improved after I read The Calling and I was expecting Asunder to be comparable, but NOPE. Even the characters were bland and sad.

All Rhys did was whinge and play the centrist whilst pretending he had any iota of radicalism in him. Why on earth was he even in the Libertarian mage fraternity????? And Evangeline was the boring standard Templar who turns a blind eye to the worst of her Order then all of a sudden thinks mages deserve more than being abused in a tower all their lives, somehow. In fact I don't even remember how or why she changed her mind what the hell. Cole was boring too, Weekes really gave him an overhaul for Inquisition. Wynne, consistently as annoying as in Origins, but less talkative I think. Adrian was that bitch and honestly nothing regarding mage freedom would have been accomplished without her yet she's shown negatively by the end of the book. Why the hell did Rhys even vote for separation? Just for plot convenience. He was so wishy washy about EVERYTHING. And I really hate that the final decision was basically left up to him by, for some fucking ridiculous reason, having been chosen as the speaker for the Aequitarian fraternity HE WAS NOT EVEN IN. ?????? OK 👌

Uh the rest of the plot? Who cares lmao.

My Life as a Goddess by Guy Branum isn't the type of book I usually read. Meaning I don't read memoirs. The last memoir I read was pre-2010 unless you count The Keys by DJ Khaled that I read in 2017 which I think was intended to be more of a self-help book. I have no idea why I don't read memoirs even though I love reading about people's days on Twitter and here on Dreamwidth. It might be that I don't particularly care about celebrities so I don't gravitate toward that kind of book (even though not all memoirs are about celebrities. And the one I read before 2010 was about a Chinese woman's family and was really good!). Anyway, this book was in delphi's End of Year: Ten Best Reads of 2019 The excerpt caught my attention so I borrowed the book from my local library and I liked it!

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The Death of Kings is book 2 of Conn Iggulden's Emperor series. Which I am obsessed with atm lol.

Ok, not gonna do a usual full review for this one because I don't feel like it. Not that it was bad, but it definitely wasn't as good as Volume 5 or 1.

Mostly I think I'm just too amped to see the battle at Pharsalus to care much about anything that is not Pharsalus lol. I just got book 4 from the library today and that's the one with Pharsalus! Might zoom through book 3 to get to it lol.

As usual I loved the writing in book 2 too.