dustilane's reviews
857 reviews

Go Gently is an easy-to-understand beginner's guide to approaching the climate crisis starting at home.

The climate crisis is a bit terrifying and definitely overwhelming and I think Wright did a great job at breaking it down for those who are just beginning to try and figure out how they can help. I appreciated her efforts to uplift the voices of those of color and to respect indigenous people, as those people are often left out of the conversation despite being impacted most by the climate crisis most. As with most books of this sort, I cannot apply a lot of this to my life due to many various reasons, but I still enjoyed listening to this audiobook. I think Wright wrote a good basic guide and many of these actions can be implemented by anyone, anywhere. She checked her privilege along the way as well, instead of blindly assuming that everyone is as privileged as she is. There were a few things in the book that I am iffy about, but overall I did enjoy and would recommend. 

Brat is a journey down memory lane with Andrew McCarthy, an iconic member of the 80s Brat Pack.

I enjoyed this as a huge fan of 80s movies including some of the ones he starred in. It wasn't the best memoir I've read and it's not one I'll be begging people to read, but I did enjoy it. I was happy to get an insight into McCarthy's early days of acting and how his life was growing up, but I also would've loved to hear more about his current projects. Overall a good read if you're a fellow 80s pop culture fanatic!

I am a huge fan of Becky Albertalli. Her books are light and bring me joy. So I will admit I had high hopes for this book. It did not meet those expectations but I did enjoy it. Anderson aggravated me for about 50% of the book and the overuse of the phrase “fboy” was very annoying. But I feel like a lot of that was made up for with the adorable end romance. I also loved the side characters in this book more than I did Anderson and Kate. Matt was sweet, Kate’s whole group of friends were interesting, her brother Ryan was adorable, and Noah stole my heart.  I also have a lot of appreciation for the diversity of Kate’s friend group when it came to sexuality, gender, race, and abilities. 

I was very annoyed and not into it for the first part but then it really picked up and I couldn’t stop listening to the audiobook. I just needed to know if the friendships would be okay and if the potential romantic relationship would happen. This was a nice fluff read and I enjoyed it enough to look past the things I didn’t like. That’s why I’m giving it 3.5/5 stars! 

Two rival agents communicate secretly through time. What starts as jabs and sarcasm turns into something more.

Sapphic time travelers that are enemies to lovers?! I was like hell yeah! And then I started reading and was more like oh.. this is beautiful. And then I kept reading and was like... oh hell, I am very confused.

That basically summarizes my reading experience. It's a beautiful book and the writing is outstanding. That being said, I just kind of was like "What...?" every few minutes. I did manage to follow along semi-okay but I'm still pretty confused. I think this is perfect for the romantics, for those who love flowery writing and vague stories with not much detail. It really is beautiful and you will love it. But for everyone else, it may not work for them. I am somewhat in between so therefore my rating is too. 

Ibi Zoboi puts together a collection of quotes and poems to form a biographical constellation of the science-fiction icon Octavia Butler.

I thoroughly enjoyed this! I am the odd one out here as I have yet to read any of Butler's work and I also have yet to get to Zoboi's books. BUT that being said, I am very excited for both of these authors' books and I am familiar with them. I picked this up as I love biographies and poetry and I'm glad I did! It was a short but beautiful insight into Butler's life and I found it very interesting. I would definitely recommend this to others. 

 Marigold has a lot of issues to work through and a past she is trying to escape when her family moves to the town of Cedarville. She reminds herself that change is good, but everything about the town and her new home begs to differ. Marigold quickly learns that there's something odd going on in Cedarville and there's something darker hidden beneath the shiny new coat of paint in her house.

White Smoke pulls from classic horror but puts its own twist! It is creepy and thrilling and there were definitely a few moments where I was on the edge of my seat. It takes the classic tale of a creepy house with a dark history and spins it around to make it unique and all its own. I loved Marigold as a character. She is flawed but someone you can root for. Marigold has anxiety and from what I can tell, a form of OCD, though, unless I'm misremembering, it isn't named directly. I found this depiction to be very realistic and made sense with the story. This is a great example of how you can write horror and involve mental illness without vilifying the mental illness. There wasn't a dull moment in the book and I enjoyed the back and forth between the creepy scenes and the more typical YA novel scenes. The one downside is that it is a big of an open ending, but I don't mind those so much.

Overall I really enjoyed it! This was so different than the other book I've read by this author but I still really enjoyed. I am excited to read even more books from Jackson! 

Charlie is just a girl in pieces. The only way she knows to help herself is to make herself smaller and cut out the bad. When given a chance to start over fresh, Charlie must face her inner demons and try and make a life for herself out of the little she has. This is a dark, deeply sad novel about self-harm, addiction, abuse, and so much more. Please be sure to look up a full list of trigger warnings before reading!

I don't really know how I feel about this one. As other reviews have mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind when reading this book is fans of Ellen Hopkins would love this. It deals with a broad array of issues, all jampacked into one novel. It can be a bit much, but at the same time I do think it felt much more realistic than a Hopkins novel. Though self-harm is the main focus of the novel, I think what stood out to me was her portrayal of what it's like to live in poverty. That isn't a subject that gets covered much in novels, but in my opinion, Glasgow did a decent job. As for her portrayal of self-harm, I think it was decent and I didn't have much to complain about. The portrayal of the mental facility was a little disturbing. I know not all are great and there are awful people who sometimes end up in positions of power, but it was just a lot. I'm not saying the portrayal was completely inaccurate, I just found it didn't line up with my knowledge and experiences. 

What I appreciate most about this book is that it isn't one of those rose-tinted novels. It's raw and dark and very sobering. It doesn't romanticize addiction or self-harm, it portrays them as they truly are: horrible things that ruin lives, but are not completely inescapable. Though there is hope in the book, it still doesn't make it seem like suddenly everything is okay and magically mental illness / addiction is gone, which I hate when books do that. 

The fatphobia is very present throughout the book and was hard to read. That was a bit much for me as it didn't add anything to the story other than to make fun of fat people. I also do want to warn people who read this that it's very crude in its descriptions when it comes to gross things and food, so just be warned! I personally feel like it makes sense with the writing style and the story itself but I was a little caught off guard as I was expecting a book about self-harm and wasn't prepared for all the other stuff. 

Overall, I definitely got emotional and invested in the story for bits of it, but for the most part I was just kind of eh about it. I think this is something I would have loved when I was 13-15 years old but now I'm out of that phase of reading and it just didn't hit the same. I do hope that whoever does reads this gets the author's intended message. I highly recommend reading the author's note as it gives some insight into why she wrote the book. Self-harm and other forms of addiction are very serious and there are so many misconceptions about it. Don't reduce it to a stereotype, it's a very real thing that so many people deal with.