shivani_n's reviews
384 reviews

right now i’m just utterly confused… hopefully i will understand the book better when i have to read it for the second time (for class). 

“when their eyes had locked, he'd squeezed ilya's fingers, just a little. that look, and that squeeze, had said so many things to ilya. i know. we were supposed to stand alone at the top, but we will always be there together.”

holy shit i was not expecting to love this book so much??? no bc tell me why it was SO SO CUTE i literally had butterflies like the scenes between shane and ilya were always so romantic😭😭. their chemistry was literally so good right from the beginning, and i was originally sus and didn’t think i was going to enjoy it because they had sex in the first 50 pages (and i don’t like fast burn) but actually when you continue reading the book it makes so much sense why the author chose to start it that way. she executed it SO WELL like i loved seeing the progression of their relationship from just hooking up in secret to actually being in love and establishing a relationship. and it wasn’t even a trashy romance like i know it sounds like one but it’s actually not. you can see how whipped they are for each other and they are soooooooo adorable together i love them sm. also they’re just so funny like i love them individually as well, and their banter made laugh as well. rating it 5 stars bc honestly i just loved it and i just feel like it :)) tbh now i might read the other books in the series since this one was so good. i definitely need to read shane and ilya’s sequel soon though bc that ending was hmmm i wanna know more!!!

edit a year later: reread this because i suddenly felt the urge to, and i had a lot of time!! obviously i do not regret, it's so much fun. i still love this book :)) the rivals to lovers energy is just so good and their chemistry is off the charts. tbh the funniest part in the book was shane telling his mom and dad about his eight year long situationship 💀. anyway, i can't wait to read the sequel. eventually.

definitely not as good as heated rivalry, my favourite part of this book was the shane and ilya cameo LMAO.. this acc rlly made me want to reread heated rivalry.

it's 12 a.m. and i just finished the beartown trilogy. oh my god. i will probably update this later but for now all i can say is that this book literally destroyed me and i feel like it crushed my heart into a million pieces but in the best way possible. i'm sobbing

edit the next day:

"We can't fight against evil. That's the most unbearable thing about the world we have built. Evil can't be eradicated, can't be locked up, the more violence we use against it, the stronger it becomes when it seeps out under doors and through keyholes. It can never disappear because it grows inside us, sometimes even in the best of us, sometimes even in fourteen-year-olds. We have no weapons against it. We have only been given love as a gift in order to cope it."

i fear i will never move on from this.. this book is a perfect example of how important literature is and how huge of an impact fiction can have. when i say this series changed my life i am being SO serious. it changed my perspective on human beings and relationships and what is perceived as good/bad etc. it sheds light on how almost nothing is black and white and there is so much complexity to the human mind, and how our actions do not always reflect who we are inside but rather how we are a product of our surroundings and upbringings. it also sheds light on how violence festers in a community, how sports culture can be an amazing thing for young kids to belong to but how it can also be detrimental for who they grow up to be and the values it instills in them.

i love this book series SO. MUCH. i said this about beartown and it can be applied to the whole series, i think everyone should read it. it is so, so powerful. aside from the messaging, what really makes this series shine is the characters. oh, the characters. over the course of the 3 books i got so attached to all of the characters, you follow them for years and watch them grow into people you care about so deeply. all of beartown. especially benji, bobo, amat, and maya for me personally.

beautiful writing, impactful & clever storyline, incredible characters, and most importantly huge, HUGE heart. this series is everything to me and i am going to miss it so much, it really feels like the end of an era❤️

i thought this book was supremely boring, but i also don't know if that's the novel's fault or if it's mine because i was just not in the right state of mind to read a classic. anyhow, i guess we'll never know!

lmao this book made no sense

"have you ever seen a town fall? ours did. we'll end up saying that violence came to beartown this summer, but that will be a lie; the violence was already here. because sometimes hating one another is so easy that it seems incomprehensible that we ever do anything else."

i was so excited to reconnect with the characters in frederik backman's sequel to beartown, and my god it did NOT disappoint. sequels sometimes have a tendency to fall flat compared to the first book in a series, but that wasn't the case with this at all. us against you was an absolutely perfect sequel to beartown. to me this book is perfect and i will accept no criticisms! it's everything!!

frederik backman is genuinely one of the most talented writers i have ever come across; his words are so rich and powerful, yet so simple and blunt. the way he reveals such subtle yet obvious truths about humanity is so clever and my copy of us against you is HEAVILY annotated, just like beartown. there are so many lines that just live in my head rent free because they're so beautiful. i especially love how he uses foreshadowing alongside the commentary of the characters.

the plot was also incredible, i loved how this one delved deeper into the rivalry between the two towns and their hockey teams, because backman gives a lot of insight into how sports culture can affect a community, especially when it's taken seriously to a high degree. it was really enlightening for me, too because i'm not much of a sports person, but this allowed me to dig a lot deeper into sports culture and why it is so important to people, as well as the consequences it presents. at the end of the day it's largely about human nature, the people we choose to be and the people we can't help being, the choices we make and how they affect ourselves and those around us. it's about believing in something bigger than yourself. 

lastly, the characters of beartown are SO SO SO special to me they will always have a place in my heart. i was rooting for so many of them throughout the book and i'm so excited to see where the finale of the trilogy will take them, especially because it's about BENJI!!! he's my favourite.

i cannot recommend this serious enough, please please PLEASE read it it's incredible!!!

this book is not bad, but i enjoyed reading it. after finishing the good girl's guide to murder trilogy, a cutesy YA romance was exactly what i needed. 

the romance was nice but nothing special. i think ali hazelwood's books have really been going downhill for me since love, theoretically. i don't understand why she had to make check & mate YA, because to me, nothing about this felt like a YA book except for the cringey writing and the age change of the characters. i feel like she just decided to make them 18 but then didn't actually put effort into creating the character of an 18 year old and truly getting inside their head. sure, mallory was immature, but all every main character in ali hazelwood's books are the exact same, and they are all fully adults. i feel like the story would have worked just fine with just a few minor changes even if they were 30. mallory also pissed me off so much; i'm sorry but if you exclude her chess abilities, she is an idiot. 

however, there were some cute parts between her and nolan that i enjoyed so it definitely wasn't all bad. he was so obsessed with her and it was lowkey adorable, there really is something to be said about someone understanding your passion and truly caring about it because you do, because they want you to be happy. also, i'd never read a romance book about chess before though, so i liked how it was a slightly new twist to a regular romance book. i don't really know anything about chess though, so i can't speak on how accurate any of the terms were.

to sum it up, it was pretty decent, but there are much better YA books out there.