breezie_reads's reviews
1030 reviews

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

5.0

I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to, considering the headache I had while trying to understand the language of teenagers in this world. Eventually it grew on me and I found myself understanding everything that was being said with no problem.

This book is disturbing, violent, and grotesque. I didn't know anything about this book before going in to it, so I was taken aback, to say the least. There's deeper meanings in everything and it definitely deserves to be discussed, especially in a classroom setting. If high schoolers are forced to read Beowulf and The Odyssey and Shakespeare, I think this should qualify as required too. Maybe a long, deep discussion of it would make a difference.

Suffer the Children by Craig DiLouie

3.0

This was a good representation of the lengths a parent would go to for their children and how something this massive would affect society, but it wasn't all that horrifying or exciting for me. Maybe being a parent would have made me feel differently, but going through everything these parents did and doing everything they did for children that were obviously not their children anymore just didn't make sense.

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

This was a masterpiece. Haunting, beautiful prose. I didn't know what to expect going in to this and I think that amplified my enjoyment, although there wasn't much in here to not enjoy. Rivers Solomon is a literary genius.

Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver by Mary Oliver

4.0

I was wary when I first started reading this book because I judged it by the title and assumed I was going to be preached at the entire time. That's not what this is. While the author did wrote about her faith and love for God, it wasn't in a proselytizing tone and I found myself connecting with a lot more poems than I expected. Mary Oliver wrote about her love for nature more than anything else, and a lot of the poems about religion were connecting her faith to her love for nature and I thought they were all beautiful poems. You could practically taste the emotion in them.

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

3.0

I'm not a fan of retellings, and there's something about Great Gatsby retellings that I just hate more than every other one. But this wasn't as bad as I expected. I think the magical elements of it were what kept me from hating it entirely, but they weren't frequent enough to really make the story all that intriguing.

If I had known this was a retelling before I started reading, I never would have started it. This was popular on BookTok for a bit when it came out, but even then I was never told anything about it being a retelling. I'd like to read a story that focuses more on the demonic elements in this book because they were only mentioned a few odd times.

No Land to Light On by Yara Zgheib

emotional sad

4.0

This hurt me. I don't know why I didn't expect it to, but this was an emotional punch to the chest and I think this book deserves more recognition.

Hello, Darkness by Sandra Brown

dark mysterious tense

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

I loved this. I didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did because the fact that it's romance mystery was throwing me off (not a huge romance fan). But it all tied in together so well, and the romance flowed beautifully. The progression of everything was just so perfect and I could not stop listening.

Imperfect by David Adams

informative slow-paced

2.0

This was very repetitive and boring. There was also a lot more editing mistakes than Magnet, which I read a few weeks ago. Maybe the repetition was supposed to convince the reader of just how meticulous the process was and how careful they were, but it wasn't necessary. This is a short story less than 20 pages long about, I'm assuming, the creation of a character in the larger parent series. I will read Faith, and I will read the first Lacuna book to fully give the series a chance, but this didn't do it justice.

Monstress, Vol. 9: The Possessed by Marjorie Liu

dark

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

The fact that I have to wait so long for the next volume is killing me already.

Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan
Did not finish book. Stopped at 31%.

I just have zero interest in this book, and at 31% through I feel like I should maybe have some slight interest in it. I'm not going to waste my Spotify audiobook hours on something I'm still not interested in.