bkelrod's reviews
418 reviews

god, i love emily henry. her books are a warm hug. this one felt so much realer than her other books, i loved that it was about an existing relationship rather than a new one. it felt personal and ill be thinking about this one for a minute ugh i love em hen!!!!!!!!!

That took me SO long to read because honestly it was so confounding that I did not look forward to picking this up. To be fair, I did not do a reread because a)i just read iron flame in June and b) i have a full time job and do not have time for that, but I think if your books are so confusing you have to reread in order to know who any of your 100 characters are and their dragon’s names and their signets and their regions it’s too much. There were so many random characters who i still don’t know who they are (Llewellyn? Betwyn?) The middle introduced so many different foreign governments and customs that I couldn’t keep up. The last 100 pages were literally like…. what???? I had NO idea what was going on and honestly, am i stupid, what was the twist at the end? Like legitimately what happened, I don’t know. Ridoc saved the day as best character, second to Broccoli the cat who we do not know whether he lived or died because there was no follow through. Overall, I can’t lie, I am disappointed. I did not enjoy this read, and after so much hype and a midnight release party and all that I expected this to rock my world and it just didn’t. Booooo i hate that i feel this way!!!!!

Silly and delightful but really, really not my thing. 

I’m having a resurgence of teenage girl things in my life and i’m obsessed with Twilight. Edward is a manipulative freak in these books. 

I wouldn’t consider this to be horror at all but Stephen King does such an excellent job describing fear. Our main character was so tangibly afraid at a few points in this book where i felt sympathetic pangs of terror go through me. I feel like because this was only 179 pages, I read it way too fast. Stephen King rocks.

Wow. That was insane. SO much happened and it’s going to take me 3-5 business days to process the ending. I’d like to take this time to candidly admit that a) I don’t like this series as much as I liked ACOTAR and b) Sarah J Maas’s writing drives me nuts and takes me away from what is, admittedly, a pretty damn good story. Every other sentence Mrs. Maas says some dumb shit like “filled with breath and sky and bone” or “flame and shadow and darkness and storms” and this and something and something else and it’s a stupid way to write and it takes me out of the story everytime. It’s like how in ACOTAR she’d throw an ellipses or a - in every other sentence and I hate it. Sorry for being so negative in this review with all that hatred that i’ve spewed i am looking forward to ToD and understand why this is one of the greatest series out there. 

If i EVER let a man treat me like that please kill me. Hard to read, almost DNFed a couple of times. I’m glad we got some character development there at the end but jesus christ 

I wasn’t a fan of Jamie and Claire’s storyline this time around mostly because I think the minutiae of war is really boring. Once again Brianna and Roger’s storyline, and how it intertwined with Jamie and Claire’s letters from the past, was much more interesting and left us on a major super duper cliffhanger that makes me want to yet again read another 900 page book from this series. 

this was so, so intense. books about unhinged, unlikable women are my favorite but this was not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. i have no interest in being near a man for some time after finishing this book. our main character is depraved, but with good reason. 

Dolly Alderton is like a cool, messy, British Eve Babitz. Reading this book is like meeting a wise older sister drunk in the bathroom of a bar. It really made me reflect on how important my female friendships are and made me feel less bad about how i’ve felt in moments of heartbreak.