minsessed's reviews
342 reviews

<b><i>Things I'll Never Say</i></b> follows Casey, an eighteen year old fat, bisexual surfer, who's grieving the death of her twin brother while also juggling her feelings for both of her best friends. The story is told through a series of journal entries that Casey writes to her dead brother as a way to let out her feelings. 

The way grief was explored in this book was so beautifully heartwrenching. We get to see Casey go back and forth between anger at him for the overdose, confusion on how she's supposed to go on feeling like half a whole and most painful of all, acceptance that he'll never come back to her. Throughout all of this, Casey also struggles through a budding drug addiction and it was interesting to see how she dealt with the fear of becoming just like her brother. It all felt very palpable.

If the book had been solely focused on the grief aspect, I might have rated it 5 stars but the romance bit was underwhelming. None of the best friends felt real to me and other than the fact that they ended up in a polyamorous relationship, there was nothing else that really stuck out to me about them. 

I loved how the book ended the same way it started, with Casey and Sammy, her brother. It was very much an open ending but we got to see somewhat of a curtain being closed on Casey letting her grief control her life and how she enjoys it and I found that to be a perfect way to end the story. 

I would recommend it for anyone who enjoys stories about sibling love and loss!

I do not have words to describe how much I hated this book.

First of all, I hate when Black authors feel the need to constantly explain their culture or parts of it repetitively in a book, especially when it's adult fiction. Your audience should be curious enough to want to google these things, and as an author you should damn well expect them to rather than spoon-feeding them. It's a different kind of exhaustion reading a book and immediately knowing it was edited with white people in mind. This book did so much of that with the footnotes and the over-explaining, it was tiring. 

The romance was shit. Absolutely horrendous. Literally nothing to like about it. Angie was a man obsessed woman with no self respect and Ricky was a bastard of a man with no self awareness and sense of accountability. From their first meeting, where he took her on a pseudo date without telling her that he had a girlfriend and only brought it up when she tried to confirm that it was a date, I knew the relationship was not going to be good. It got even worse when he proceeded to disturb her at work constantly and then gaslight her when she pointed out that he led her on. I kid you not this man actually said, "Not everyone who's nice to you is trying to get with you" like what a fucking cow. The fact that her friends and his best friend kept pushing her to get with him pissed me off even more because what spawns of the devils have you surrounded yourself with girl?? Throughout the entire book Ricky kept pushing responsibility for his actions onto everyone around him except himself and it was so disgusting. And of course, the author used the death of a relative as a tool to push them back together... creative! 

It's so frustrating because I liked how the author portrayed Angie's relationship with her immigrant parents especially as the first born daughter. It's just overshadowed by the mess of a romance and the shitty main characters the book had going on. What a waste of my time.

Oh this was slow as hell. I'd have zero complaints if the slowness was used to build up their relationship and give us scenes of them getting to know each other but we got nothing of the sort. Their entire relationship, as far as I could see, was founded on attraction and sex and Santi was clearly written for Ander, as a way to make him 'better'/abandon his prejudices and I wasn't here for it.

The ending also really pissed me off. Ander's parents should have actually parented this boy. Him dropping opportunities to follow a boy was so unserious to me.

The book though is chock-full of Mexican culture, food, music and even though I had to Google translate all the Mexican sentences (roughly 30% of the book...there was a lot), it was interesting to read

dnf at 21%

This was a stream-of-consciousness book in a sense and this was further pushed by the fact the audiobook is narrated by the author herself.

I found that I was so engrossed in the author's voice that I wasn't concerned about the story or where exactly it was leading to. I finished it unable to decide whether or not I liked it. However the more I sit with it, the more it hits me that while I was entertained, I could not say that I enjoyed it.

God Help the Child, at its core, points out how easily kids are traumatized and affected by the events of their childhood and how it dictates their adulthood. We follow Bride, who has reinvented herself after facing colorism and emotional abuse from her mother, and the people that have shaped her the way she is, people who have also experienced horrible things in childhood.

This is my first Toni Morrison book and for as much as I didn't like it, I'm still looking to try another one of her works. I'll probably try her most acclaimed ones, The Bluest Eye and Beloved, next

Family, Love, Self Discovery, Racism, Self Loathing... Woodson managed to fit all of this in a short book with such impact that it sits with you for a while. 

I loved everything about this book. From Melody and her need to understand her emotionally absent mother while also loathing her for not being there for her, to Iris who had a child at 15 and ran away from it all before eventually trying to face the consequences of her actions, to Sabe, my favorite, who spoke of generational trauma passed down from her mother and battling with feeling like she failed<i>her</i> child. I almost cried and that's a rarity for me when reading. 

The way the book juxtaposed the effects of a teenage pregnancy on the mother vs the father, on a poor family vs a well off family, the individuals involved vs the community that shamed them. Oh how I loved reading this book. 

Jacqueline Woodson, I have become enamored with your writing. I can't wait to read more of her work. 

I spent too much of the book waiting for the other shoe to drop that I fear I might have missed the magic or something. I turned the last page and all I could think was, "Is that it?" 

Small Things Like These has darker themes but is ultimately wrapped up in cozy, fable-like writing that did not work for me. Maybe I'd have enjoyed it more when I was in a cozy mood, who knows?

Well...that was disappointing. 

For a self published debut, I believe the pacing issues can be excused on my side of things but what I can not look the other way about is the language/vernacular used. The author should have, at the very least, gotten a British person to read through because a lot of the phrases used are not only far too modern to fit the Regency Era, but they were also quite obviously not British either. 

I read Dora's mannerisms and characterization to be autistic/neurodivergent and the author confirmed that in a review under the book, but all that did was make me mad at the connotation that half a soul=neurodivergent. This anger was fueled even more by the epilogue where it is alluded to that Dora and Lord Sorcier went back to Faerie Land to join Dora with the other half of her soul. Like oh, okay then. 

While I did have slights with the romance, mostly on the part of Elias, I did still enjoy reading about them. The little gestures and moments were very cute. The most interesting character to me though, was Albert and I wish I got to see more of him. 

I really hoped I would enjoy this but alas, it was not to be.

This was such a blatant copy of Fullmetal Alchemist, I don't know how the author thought nobody would notice. That being said the writing style was beautiful and I do think people who've never watched FMA would probably find this mind-blowing.

I'M FREE. 1/10, do not recommend