sonygaystation's reviews
428 reviews

Late to the Party by Kelly Quindlen

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emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Hovering somewhere between a 3.5 and an even 4.0, but I can’t decide which one fits best. I loved HNitS a lot but this one was a little harder to enjoy because of the writing style (and I don’t remember having that issue with HNitS even though conceivably the writing would feel similar since it was written so much earlier in Quindlen’s career). This book felt very explanatory, like lots of things were being declared and told to me, rather than letting me intuitively put the emotions/actions/etc together on my own. What I liked best about this was the heart of the story. While there were a lot of conflicts I didn’t necessarily relate to, the motivations and rationales behind them really resonated. This book really does a good job of capturing how we hold ourselves (and each other) back, the yearning for a life experience it seems like everyone but you gets to have, and the feeling of not only missing out on your youth but the way you’d like to spend it if you were only given the chance. Also this book gets an extra quarter star cuz of the character named Brenna at the very end :)
The Fell of Dark by Caleb Roehrig

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adventurous emotional funny mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

This was so fun, I loved every minute of it!!! 4.5 stars easy. The whole time I was like “I LOVE how Buffy the Vampire Slayer this feels” only to read Roehrig’s thanks to the show in the acknowledgments (I love being right). The narrative voice was the perfect blend of genuine and snarky, which can be hard to pull off. Tone can land weirdly in fiction and I sometimes find myself more easily annoyed than the average person by funky tone, but I really, really enjoyed the humour in this book. I also really appreciated the subtle polyamory and the romance without it being an actual romantic endgame (a love triangle done right). I just had such a good time reading this and I would read it again in a heartbeat. More queer vampire stories please and thanks!!!! Extra brownie points if they make me laugh as much as this one does!
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Dog Songs by Mary Oliver

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emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective fast-paced

4.25

I lost my dog in February and while I miss her all the time, I’ve extra missed her lately. I’d been sitting on the collection, knowing I have to return it to the library soon and just waiting for when the mood felt right to read it. Naturally it made me a lil emo. My favourite was Bazougey (which as a sidebar is a great name for a dog) 🥺💛
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A Thousand Mornings: Poems by Mary Oliver

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adventurous emotional inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing

3.75

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Not to be exceedingly callous but this book feels like it’s a 17 year old’s first novel posted on wattpad chapter by chapter. All THAT for a man??? One poorly written cliché after another. Also hated the way the women were written lmao and Flo was such an upsetting character like why do crime novels always have to hinge on memory loss and emotional instability? Anyway at least it was a super quick read (and I admit I was morbidly curious about how much more it could annoy me enough to keep from DNFing) even though sometimes it did kind of feel like pulling teeth. Think if you like crime novels this is a good one to pick up in the airport and read on the plane only to leave it behind for the next flyer 
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A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

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challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

2.5 if I’m feeling generous, and that’s because Yanagihara is extremely eloquent. I don’t want to hurt my friends’ feelings, as I know every single one has loved it, so I just want that out there first. Y’all best believe I WILL be writing a review with the receipts when I feel up to it. Check back in a couple days when I have the energy to spare on why I’m so frustrated so few people are acknowledging in reviews the problems I also had with this book and its identity representation. The TL;DR is I don’t like the author as a human being nor her principles (she straight up doesn’t believe in therapy and thinks it doesn’t work for people and that some people are so “damaged” we should just let them die lmao i cannot) which so clearly are intrinsically tied in every paragraph of this book and I find this to be horribly depressing, done in poor taste and with little emotional caretaking or sensitivity, and ultimately with not even kind of enough pay off to make the trauma worth it. The topics covered in this book aren’t a spectacle to try to provoke the reader (like the author says was her rationale for writing this book in numerous interviews), they’re legitimate traumas people experience lmfao I never wanna pick this book up again. I’m angry I read this. I’m angry at this book. And I’m super angry with this author who candidly said she did ZERO research on Jude. What the fuck!!!!!
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My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman

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adventurous funny reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Took me a while to read and that's partly because I'm somewhat in a slump, but also partly because this takes a bit to get into. SO worth it when it does and I'm pretty certain at this point that Backman never misses with any of his books. He's so insightful and somehow manages to write a child who acts like a child, even if the things she says sound older at times - what I liked best about Elsa is how much you could see her mom and grandma in her characterization (impressive writing on Backman's part omg). I really felt for Elsa, who's just lonely and lost and struggling to come to terms with the feelings of being left behind. This book is about loss without feeling like there's overwhelming grief, and I think anyone who's lost a grandparent can get something out of this. I remember losing my grandpa to cancer, and while at 18 I was considerably older than Elsa when it happened, it definitely cemented my closeness with my grandma and some of my favourite memories ever are the ones I spent with my grandpa. Out of the four Backman books I've read, this rotates between third and fourth place because there were a lot of characters to keep track of when listening via audiobook and sometimes the fairytale didn't land for me the way I wish it would have.
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Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert

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emotional funny hopeful lighthearted relaxing fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Ok this took me 600000 years to finish but was so cute and I’m obsessed with Zaf and relate way too much to Danika!!! I liked Chloe’s book but man this one is definitely for me. It did a good job of balancing funny and sexy and emotional, which I really appreciated. The pacing felt better in this one than in Chloe, too, and if you like very meta and obnoxious declarations of love this is definitely the book for you 💓
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One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

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adventurous emotional funny lighthearted slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I liked this one a lot! Not as much as I enjoyed McQuiston's debut, but this was very fun and the cast of characters really added to it. Jane was my favourite but Wes is a very close second. It was interesting reading this one, as I didn't want to compare it to RW&RB just because it's by the same author; they're both very different books even if at the core of what the story is about, they have the same heart inside. I think maybe I had a harder time immersing myself in the yearning of this book because of the necessary required suspension of disbelief on everyone's part with the time-bending subway. That's not to say I didn't think that idea was fun and done in a way that I enjoyed, I just struggle personally with time-travel because I often yank myself out of immersion unintentionally (one of the top reasons I really disliked the Outlander series, for example). I think the beginning of this book was the "weakest" part (and I say that so loosely because again, I enjoyed this book a lot), and I really only started to feel extra emotional and invested around the time Jane started really confronting the emotional burden of her experiences, which is pretty damn far in. Part of that delayed investment too, I think, is because I didn't connect too much on the same level as August, which kept me from connecting deeper with the book as a whole. All that being said, this made me smile and laugh - it's always such a comforting feeling to read a character who goes from lonely and self-isolating to surrounded by people who are going to love her whether she wants it or not. Where RW&RB fills me with an impossible yearning and a palpable love-in-the-face-of-everything feeling, One Last Stop leaves me with a quiet comfort of found families and certainty, which doesn't feel as consuming, but is definitely as powerful. Glad to have finally had this book in my hands, even if it took me way longer to read than I ever would have expected of myself. :)
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Competitive Grieving by Nora Zelevansky

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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