lanidon's reviews
1802 reviews

I gave up halfway. I was telling my friend who was buddy reading that it kinda feels like the written version of those sensory videos for babies, like not meant to make you feel anything except vaguely stimulated. I didn't sense any particular emotion, theme, or even vibe trying to be conveyed here. The main character sucks; he has a superiority complex despite nobody liking or caring about him. The setting is nebulous and anachronistic. The plot is just basically jangling keys in front of your face trying to get one if the half dozen shiny objects to hold your attention AND YET it still failed. It truly made me feel less engaged than Cocomelon....

The writing is absolutely beautiful, I just didn't feel drawn in. Neither the characters, nor the atmosphere got their claws in me. I just don't think this is the Piper for me

This isn't a bad book, but it's also not a good one. I want to like Ember, she just makes it really hard. She lies about dumb things in a way that just feels immature but then she acts like those lies are righteous and everyone is a big meanie for not getting down with her lies. You can't build a relationship on lies and you can't build a romance book on them either. She would have been fine if she had just stopped after lying on her resume. She has a lot of growing up to do and I don't think she's ready for a relationship, much less a job like this. It makes it feel like all the rejections she got were correct and not blindly racist like we're supposed to believe. 

Donuwoa rules though, he's a great leading man. I wish he were in another book because this one doesn't do him justice. I wanted more of him and his sister and less of the mc, which sucks to say. I think the book would be improved if it were dual perspective and he had POV chapters.

Lastly, this audiobook is a crime. The narrator talks like she's reading a middle grade book, which really intensifies how immature Ember feels. I had to skip any sexual scene because it sounds like a thirteen year old talking about her one direction fan fiction. A book like this did not need explicit sex scenes to begin with, but the narration makes it so bad that I almost dropped the book entirely

DNF @ 37% 

I kept picking it back up for fifteen minutes at a time, but I have to admit I don't hate it, I'm just bored. The characters aren't compelling enough to hold up a book with so little going on outside them. The point of this book was to be a "cozy" book with not much happening, but when those aren't atmospheric or full of sweet moments, they're simply boring. I could be doing something with my time that doesn't involve the crimp of wool being the most intriguing element

Also, if you go in expecting fantasy, it's simply not one (or the lightest version of one imaginable). It's a fully mundane world, just set in a fictional place. You should read it anticipating a historical romance more than fantasy and you'll have a better time

It's truly not a bad book, I don't have any negative feelings towards it, it is simply both not the book advertised and entirely too much the book advertised

DNF @ the sex scene, I couldn't do it anymore

The FMC is just a horrible person; she uses everyone in her life and assumes the worst out of everyone. I would hate to live in her mind, just constantly looking down on others. My real breaking point was her openly stating to the MMC that she wants to use him for sex so she can ignore her problems temporarily and then act like it never happened the next day. She is so self centered she doesn't even realize he's half in love with her already and that she's hurting him by saying all he's good for is meaningless sex. 

To be clear, I'm not a huge fan of the MMC either. He's repeatedly told his flirtatious ways are making someone uncomfortable and instead of stopping he just goes "chill, sweetcheeks, I sexually harass everyone." I do think he's more redeemable and more interesting than her, but I still don't love him. 

The writing of the book itself was good at first, it's just the romance that killed it for me. I know that's weird to say about a romance book, but the stuff outside the romance was interesting. I may read the second in the series when it's out because I think the author has potential

You just didn't stand out to me...

The world building seemed really cool but the romance wasn't working so I didn't want to stick with it

It feels disjointed. I could've finished it but it never pulled me back when I'd set it down

I didn't get that far, I just hated the way the older woman was written so so much it turned me off the entire book. I don't even know if she's in the rest of it, but the over the top cruelty just made the whole book feel edgy in a juvenile way

This takes a turn from intriguing to stupid that it can't really claw itself back from. There isn't enough foreshadowing to make the twist feel in line with the setup. The main flaw is that the mc is a third party in the story, she's superfluous, she's simply an observer. She doesn't need to exist after the twist which makes her setup feel wasted and makes the plot feel disjointed. The book is over the top and I'd be fine with that if it had either started there or built to there

Honestly, just go watch Blink Twice instead

This is great both on the romance front and the caper romp front, it was very close to five stars. If the couple had one more conversation about feelings before getting together and the caper had one less "twist" then it would've taken it over that bar. The caper plot was super fun and I could see how it brought the characters together, but the wrap up definitely jumped the shark. Overall super strong book and I hope the author writes a sequel with the sister