courtneydoss's reviews
785 reviews

 An Academy for Liars had a lot of potential. The school for magical adults trope is something I've always enjoyed, and Alexis Henderson is the kind of writer who I believe could have executed it well in different circumstances. Unfortunately, I think that the loss of Henderson's mother, as mentioned in the acknowledgements at the end of the book, may have turned this book into something that Henderson wrote to meet a deadline rather than because she was inspired. I have a lot of empathy for that, and certainly won't hold any lack of enjoyment of this book against her. I will continue to read whatever she puts out, but in this review space, I have to be honest and admit that this book was not what I'd hoped.

I think that this book would have perhaps worked better as a duology, mostly because the world building is complex enough to warrant it. Lennon's progression with her magic felt abrupt, because any work toward improvement was glossed over. Because there was so much information to absorb, so many characters to follow, so many plot points to address within it's pages, this book felt rushed even being 464 pages.

As far as main characters go, Lennon was not my favorite. I feel like she fell a little flat, a mentally unstable magical-Mary Sue. Because the progression of her magic wasn't really shown effectively, it seemed like she just consistently grew magically when it was convenient for the plot.

With that said, I did have a decent time reading this and think that someone interested in dark academia would like this. 

 I went into this book entirely unprepared for it.

I knew it was a love story, a good one judging by how often it showed up on my FYP. What I didn't know that it was also a story about grief, and after losing my grandmother not long ago, that was the theme that hit me the hardest. It didn't surprise me to read that Ashley Poston had lost her own grandfather while writing this book; there is a visceral authenticity to the grief Clementine feels for her aunt Analea that I related to.

Iwan and Clementine are a sweet couple. The speculative element of the story was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed watching them connect in the past and reconnect in the present. Iwan was a sweetie and Clementine was just enough of a disaster to be relatable without being insufferable. I'd recommend this book to romance lovers, with a special caveat to those in mourning that this is a book best read by yourself where you can safely shed a tear. 

 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet has been sitting on my Kindle since 2019 - one of the very first ebooks I ever committed to reading. I've read over a thousand books since then, all the while missing out on how wonderful this book was.

Following a hodgepodge crew aboard a space vessel called The Wayfarer, this book is more focused on the characters and world building than on plot. There are several nuggets of lore brought up throughout that I anticipate will be part of an overarching plot across the series, but as for this first installment, the purpose seems to be more set up than anything else. That isn't to say this book isn't interesting in its own right. A space-themed slice of life, this book is as fascinating as it is creative. The scene where the crew "punches" through across space was one of the most entertaining scenes I've ever read, incredibly fun and wildly unique. I also really liked the cast of characters - Kizzy, Jenks and Lovey, Sissix, Dr. Chef, and even Corbin.

If I had to be critical of anything in this book, it would be the length. At 443 pages, the book could probably have been trimmed down a bit, although I have to confess I don't know what could have been cut.

Overall, this was a stellar sci-fi with wonderful characters, fantastic world building, and superb writing. Becky Chambers is definitely an author I will be reading from again.
 

 Greek mythology has been a hyper fixation of mine since 6th grade, so when Threads That Bind came across my feed, I knew I had to read it.

Set in a world where god-descended people, in possession of special powers, exist as second class citizens, our main character is a much-maligned "cutter", descended from the Fates of Greek myth and capable of cutting the threads that bind a person to their life, their fate, and everything that they love. Io is just one of dozens of unique god-descended people in the novel, with unique skills that call upon myths from Ancient Egypt, Russia, and more. The world building and the way various mythologies are woven into a single, cohesive magic system make this book particularly impressive.

The best part of the book, in my opinion, was Io's relationships with her Fated mate -who encapsulated the sweetness and strength I particularly loved about Peeta Mellark in The Hunger Games - and her relationship with her sisters. Sibling relationships are complex things, and I think this book did a good job of depicting a realistic bond between three very different siblings.

This book takes a lot of the good things about early 00s YA fantasy/dystopia - haunted heroines with brains in their heads and the weight of the world on their shoulders, swoonworthy love interests, settings alive with the spark of revolution - and adds all of the elements modern readers have come to want and expect from their fantasy worlds- diversity of race and culture, meaningful LGBTQ representation, and romantic rivals who are more than misogynistic stereotypes. All of these elements combined to make a book that I could really enjoy, despite not being the target audience.

This book is a duology, and while I have a TBR pile about as tall as the tallest tower in Alante, I look forward to reading the sequel very soon.
 

 Unfortunately, this was a case of a good premise executed poorly.

The story was good enough, for a fluffy romance book. It isn't going to win any awards for historical accuracy, but I don't think that anyone is necessarily looking for that in their smutty romance choices. Whatever suspension of disbelief is required for the plot, I think most readers are willing to give and that should make this book likable. Where this book fails spectacularly, in my opinion, is in its characters, and less so, in its writing.

I don't know if I've ever found a romance heroine as unlikable as Emily Porter, and she is not helped by the cheesy dialogue and frankly bonkers decisions the writer makes in her characterization. I'm not a fan of insta-love, but I can understand how a knight imprisoned inside a statue for six hundred years could fall in love with the first woman he meets. What I don't understand is how Emily can become sexually aroused by a statue with no signs of sentience on the very first page of the novel. Is this something adult women are doing that I've just been oblivious to?

The out of place sexual arousal isn't what made me dislike Emily. I could even get behind her frankly ludicrous reactions to a statue becoming flesh and blood, all in the name of a story. Alas, I hated Emily because she was a jealous asshole.

Here's an example of Emily's insane jealousy.
1) She becomes jealous, in a dream, the first time they meet that he might visit dreams of another woman.
1) She becomes jealous when the knight speaks to her coworker and friend, Rose.
2) She becomes jealous when the knight says hello to a woman that is talking to him.
3) She becomes jealous when he says that the bride at a royal wedding, 600 years ago, was beautiful.

I was a fat kid in the 90s so I understand insecurity, but come on! Apparently Emily's unwillingness for her knight boyfriend to make eye contact with another woman comes from having been cheated on by her former spouse, but I just found the instances that made her jealous to be beyond petty and unreasonable.

The dialogue, too, was laughably bad. To conclude this review, I will leave you with an example.

For context, the central couple is about to engage in sexy-times during a dream sequence, wherein the female character mentions the hero visiting another woman that the heroine works with. This is the knight's reply.

We must speak of her ill-tempered ways no more, or my king will no longer be ready to enter the court.

And yes, he is saying the conversation will kill his boner. 

Come Fly the World tells the story of a handful of women who served as Pan Am stewardesses during the peak of the airline's life - the 1950s - 1970s - and uses those women as examples to showcase the ways in which stewardesses effected modern feminism, the war effort in Vietnam, and commercial air travel.  

Of particular interest to me in this book was the juxtaposition between Pan Am and their sexually suggestive, misogynistic marketing both to potential stewardesses and potential clients, and the way work in the industry provided women with unprecedented freedom.  The rigid standards of the airline for appearance, as well as firing women when they got married or became pregnant, are fairly well known parts of their story, but I think that sometimes people mistake women meeting the standards of femininity with them being anti-feminist.  A woman can wear pearls while also believing in and modeling female empowerment, and the stewardesses exampled in this book do just that.  They are all strong and independent, many of them well educated, and despite the stereotypes that accompanied their chosen career, all of them were intelligent, opinionated young women with curiosity about the world.

Another aspect of the book that I found interesting was the focus on the Vietnam war, and the crucial roles that commercial airlines and stewardesses played in the war effort.  To be a stewardess traveling in an out of war torn countries was dangerous work, but incredibly vital.  The horrors that some stewardesses saw, particularly when evacuating Vietnamese refugees from the country, were traumatizing and as a new mother, I was particularly moved by the section of the book focused on Operation Babylift.  My heart hurts for the Vietnamese "orphans"- many of whom were the abandoned children of US soldiers - and I can only imagine the stress the stewardesses must have felt handling dozens of injured, traumatized, and incredibly young children through long haul international flights.  

This book is relatively short, accessible, and interesting, and I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in the history of feminism, the Vietnam War, or travel. 

 This book was a delight

Essentially a locked-door-mystery set against the backdrop of a fascinating fantasy world, Voyage of the Damned follows Ganymedes "Dee" Piscero as he tries desperately to hide the fact that he the only powerless person on a boat full of powerful people. His plan is to alienate those around him so that nobody gets close enough to learn his secret. However, when the bodies of the powerful start to pile up, Dee is forced to get closer to those around him to uncover the murderer before it's too late.

Dee is one of the most memorable narrators I've encountered in a long time. He is self-deprecating and hilarious, and full of so much heart that reading this story through his voice is truly a pleasure. The cast of side characters is memorable and unique, and the complex fantasy world is remarkably accessible through them.

I devoured this book. When I wasn't able to read it, I was thinking about the next time I'd be able to pick it up. I've recommended it to everyone in my real life, and to anyone who happens to read this review, I recommend it to you too. 

 DNF at 26%.

I think that this book could have been enjoyable to me, but after the first chapter I felt like the book got bogged down by the authors interest in filling the book with as many 90s and 00s references as possible. Obviously, this book is trying to appeal to the millennial audience that can appreciate the call backs to Mall Madness and American Girl dolls, and I am that audience. I loved the reminder of childhood and the way the author discussed the nostalgia and joy that those things bring while also acknowledging the way consumerism and misogyny were marketed to children in those days. I was highlighting left and right in that first chapter, but I felt like after that, it just became a bit tedious. It felt like a rapid fire game of "remember this, and this, and this," without giving the reader time to really absorb and think about the things that were being presented. I think if some of the references had been trimmed to make a more concise point, it would have been much more enjoyable for me. 

 Despite pre-ordering this book pretty much the second I finished Dead Silence, I am just now getting around to reading it. The reasons for this are two-fold.

One, this book was released five days after I gave birth to my first child.

Two, by the time I emerged from my post-partum haze with an interest in picking this up, the reviews had started to come in and they were not that impressive. What they all essentially boiled down to was that this book wasn't as good as Dead Silence, and they were right.

However, that doesn't mean that this book was bad by any means. The world building is interesting, far enough ahead from our current technology to be interesting but tempered enough to seem plausible in the near future. It explored themes of colonialism, corporate greed, and mental illness without smacking you over the head with the messaging. There was plenty of creepy imagery and the story was fun and interesting enough to keep me engaged.

On a personal level, I was dissatisfied with the ending. I also felt like most of the characters were pretty flat. I didn't feel attached to any of them, and when bad things happened, I wasn't particularly emotionally affected by any of it. To be fair, though, I feel as though the characters of Dead Silence weren't that memorable on their own either. What both books excel at is the atmosphere of unease.

I would recommend this book if you're looking for something easy to digest, unsettling without requiring too much brain power from the reader.