maddness22's reviews
708 reviews

Gosh such an incredible read!! I absolutely adored the voice of Hera. She was an incredible narrator and her perspective was a beautiful addition to the narrative. I also adored the thrilling nuances of all of the women and their relationships with each other and how they survived in the massive patriarchal Greek society. The men were well done too with the right level of ego and obnoxious-ness. Telemachus especially was so well done with the "I'm an obnoxious teenage boy wanting glory and power" energy too. What a thrilling and greatly in-depth read! Not sure when I'll ever get around to the sequel but I'm excited to keep going once I do. 

Gosh this was so, so great. I was honestly annoyed with Teddy before this book, but she is so much more personable in this book and her chemistry with Gus is so dang good. The dirty talk is a bit cringe at times and I feel like the book wrapped up a bit too nicely, especially with everyone being like "Wow you guys are SO perfect so you should be together!!", but man I had fun in the meantime. I also enjoyed Teddy's relationship with Riley and the fun they had together. Very, very fun, but I still maintain that Rebel Blue Ranch is a cult. 

"I never know when someone in the audience is going to ask me to take my shirt off. I've got to be prepared at all times." - 🎶Jason Derulo🎶

This is the first time I've walked away from a celebrity book actively disliking the celebrity when I was positive-neutral on them before reading their book. Granted, I was expecting "washed up pop singer pivots to self help books" and got "washed up pop singer (who is also apparently on TikTok) can't close the yearbook on decades old singles or shut up about himself for more than three pages" instead. It's incredibly unfocused and my heart goes out to the ghost writer who had to take Jason Derulo's half-baked stories about his life and bring meaning to them through 2-3 paragraphs at the end of each chapter that somehow connected to a larger scope of meaning within other people's lives to attempt to define this book as "self help" 

Some of his insights are endearing in a "awww you're so cute" kind of way, but most had me rolling my eyes or skimming through the personal life stories by the end. It's like he wants to be a LinkedIn Bro, but has no idea how to do it or offers any real meaningful insight to his motivation. He regularly harps on how success is only number driven, but never once ever explains how to actually measure metrics or achieve the aspirational analytics for "success". 

My biggest enjoyment came from posting out of context quotes to Instagram where I got quite a lot of laughs and reactions from my friends. That part was quite fun. 

While a lot of the book comes off as "I was never the bad friend - everyone else was the bad friend to me but that's not my fault", I did find a lot of the angles and discussions about various friendship styles to be beneficial. I wish it was a bit more grounded in the claims with broader worldviews rather than dependent on the author's personal life experiences, especially since the author has the tendency to use the word "trauma" interchangeably with the concept of "hard times" which grated on me a bit. But overall, it does a very good job analyzing toxic friendship behaviors and providing the perspective of what it means to be someone with perpetual bad friendship issues and how to navigate those feelings.

I adored the chapter about being the only single friend amongst coupled friends too. I legitimately laughed a few times. 

Not the greatest read if you have massive hypochondria/health anxiety since a lot of the final arguments are dependent on the author's real world examples of "you'll never know what will happen", but otherwise I quite enjoyed this read! I mostly enjoyed that it was grounded in the expectations on what most people can do or control to improve their lives and focuses more on how to reframe existing mindsets rather than demand for readers to quit their job right away or make other substantial change to make their lives better. I also enjoyed the concept that there's no one Calling™ or Dream™ or just thing in general that will fix and improve your life. It's all acts of choice and commitment and actually taking action in your life rather than remaining passive in it. 

The included journal entry prompts are also a bit basic. I didn't find a lot of benefit from them, but I could see them being useful as a starting point for self reflection if needed. 

I just got so exhausted from all of the constant bickering and lack of actual communication. Like they're in their late twenties and they're acting like teenagers with their little hissy fits. Max kept running off and Sadie would be jealous of any woman that wasn't her talking to Max. Not fun or enjoyable or merry for the season, which is a shame because Holiday Swap was so cute. 

Gosh this was actually so incredibly fun. While I wasn't a fan of the gory violence, the retelling itself was remarkably well done with complex characters that still honor the original people inspiring the story. It was an action packed adventure from start to finish with a truly icky villain and legitimate tension even though the reader likely has high hopes for the little baby's survival because of how the story goes in real life (which I just realized the baby is never actually named but, c'mon folks. We know.)

I had a great time! One of my more enjoyable reads of not only the Christmas season, but of the year as well. 

My kingdom for a sequel from the perspective of one of the employees watching this clear favoritism for the new girl because the boss has a crush on the former felon that should've never gotten hired in the first place.

Anyways, this was just smut. 

It wasn't bad smut because Tessa Bailey does well with the spice, but the story around the smut felt lacking. The most compelling part of this book for me was Nicole and Stella's relationship and it was incredibly underutilized for the story. I mostly rolled my eyes at the relationship, especially with how quickly it moved and how much of it was based on "pretty girl is pretty" and like holy cow her pretty girl privilege gets her FAR. But still, it's an okay fun time and I guess Christmas is kind of involved in it so fun for the season too. 

It's already a pretty lackluster collection of essays with only a handful of interesting points, but my biggest complaint is that the titular essay exploring the Star Wars universe's ability to read bases the argument on a complete moot point - Naboo couldn't publish a newspaper because the communication channels were shut down by the Trade Federation which is why Padmé had to travel in person to the Senate to plead their case. It wasn't necessarily a literacy issue. It's an incredibly basic plot point that the author completely missed and it destroyed my trust for the other essays. 

Gosh this was so incredibly moving. There's real power in the relationships between the characters and offers a true understanding of Christmas in the larger context of life compared to most other Christmas novellas in this vein. I cried at the end, but still found myself laughing at parts in the middle with the crystal clear perspective of a 10 year old kid in the 60's figuring out life in his own way. What an incredible read for the season!