reviews

(read: 2023) an example of "no notes" would be "THE TRAVELLING CAT CHRONICLES". it was difficult to think of anything significant enough to mention as a weak spot (plus it made me bawl my eyes out). the storytelling i thought was pretty unique too, since we follow the main character's life majority of the time without even being in his point of view! it was also awfully bittersweet, so much so you pick up on it and start anticipating something bad happening soon, but it still hits hard when it finally happens. maybe because it was so bittersweet...

(read: 2023) "ANNE OF GREEN GABBLES" was a lovely children's good, the writing was very pleasant to read i think the growth of Anne through the years after arriving at GREEN GABBLES, of her becoming quieter and less lost inside of her vivid imagination, was such an interesting and beautiful way to wrap up her childhood self and move to her later teens... it was all very rewarding! the thing that made it a 4 for me was how i wished the emotionally charged scenes went in more detail, because they really had the potential of packing a serious punch, but i always felt like the writing didn't go as far as it could have!

(read: 2024) the start was really good, it introduced the world and the characters pretty effectively, but by the end so many of the characters felt as thought were just thrown out the window..

i liked jesamine's conflicting portrayal. at one hand she's mean, stubborn, lost in her world and totally fixated on the idea of running away with a rich husband, but on the other she is hurt and desperate, she hates the fate she has of being a shadow hunter when all she wishes is to be normal. she flip flops between liking tessa and being rude to her. she can be very vulnerable (telling her story with her dollhouse) or she can be condescending (looking at Tessa with judgement). i also liked charlotte being a counter attack to jesamine's views of womanhood. but then there stops being any progress to her development, so you almost have a worriesome feeling that she was meant to be a black & white antagonist after all...

another weak point is the ending plottwist - it was obvious de quincy was not the real villain as the cast thought, but mortmein and especially nate's evil reveals were just so sudden and random. nat's betrayal was just a whole monologue of 'I've always been smarter than you thought, my Little Sister, why did you think auntie died after eating those chocolates i sent :smirk:' AAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

there is so much potential and hints of interesting ideas, unique worldbuilding, and then there's either stagnation, random reveals or just even killing off side characters with 4 lines of dialogue during the big final battle for the sake of dramatic effect make it all feel so clumsy.

(read: 2024) at the beginning it was funny and pretty relatable, i super got charlie's feelings of being awkward and anxious. but for a part i feel like he became confident and overcame his stuggles too quickly. we saw charlie's struggles, especially at the start, but then it kind of mellowed out, like we just skipped half of his journey of getting to that point. i guess he became more comfortable after making good friends through the story and finally feeling understood, things that are all bound to help deal with everything, but it still felt like it was a huge jump and something i'd consider a major flaw in Charlie's storyline.

honestly i didn't get it when they misunderstood each other either. it was clear as day to me, and i think it should have been clear as day to the two of them as well. i don't get why Dev was jealous, because of course it's an act for the cameras, they gotta keep the show rolling. it seemed very obviously that he loves him and nobody really meant any of the things they were saying for the episodes.

i found it odd that some scenes were such a sudden fade to black too, because they seemed important to their relationship. i mean, everything seemed important, there are just so many sentances you can write about experiencing so much you've never even known you could feel before this point.

i guess i liked that there's some nuance to Ryan, it leaves it so it's not as black and white as Dev pictured it initially. just two people who didn't work out & who weren't for each other.

the ending of this book was making me think of episode (the interactive game) because it was bonkers as hell. i could picture their sprites emoting with their speech bubbles. i can't believe any of it happened. or the last minute flight. or everyone sitting through 12 hours of Ever After....

(read: 2023)while there were some small things i enjoyed about this book (for example the contradiction of the all-knowing and mysterious Nightwings actually turning out to be carrion eaters, who live on a volcanic island, inhaling so much ash that they all have a perpetual cough and irritated eyes, i thought that was cool and a really effective contrast to the way they were portrayed in the previous 3 books), they really weren't important enough to the whole story to give the rest of the book much grace. as a whole it handled major plot points horribly!

most of the plot revolves around the Nightwings who have been kidnapping Rainwings (dragons that live isolated in the depths of the rainforests) and keep them imprisoned, where they die of starvation and sickness in their cells, because Mastermind (the father of Starflight, the book's main character) wants to gather their venom and use it to craft bioweapons. it IS terrible, but the book not only hardly adresses it as such, but has Starflight offering help to the Nightwings when the island's volcano errupts at the end, saying that if Mastermind asks the Rainwing queen for forgiveness, she might let the Nightwings live in the forest with them...! even though they've been kidnapping, torturing and milking Rainwing venom for their own benefit! STARFLIGHT !!!!!!!

speaking of Starflight, another major storytelling drawback to this book was that the author failed him as a protagonist! there were so many flashbacks and dream sequences, and when there weren't any happening in the moment, Starflight was either thinking about Sunny, who he has a crush on (even though she's basically his adoptive sister (the books try to write it off that they aren't siblings because they're different races of dragons, but that makes no sense, they're literally hatchmates)) OR he is being hauled around by Fatespeaker, who has an identical personality to Sunny, a similarity that Starglight on-page notices! if it wasn't for her, Starflight would've moped in his bed the whole time, wishing someone would come resque him. he has character growth marked by the end where he finally DOES something, but i hardly think it was that good when he did not work on overcoming his fearfulness throughout the rest of the book!

at the very end, when they were escaping the tunnels that magically connect the island to the rainforest, lava falls onto Starflights eyes and he goes blind! it felt like it happened just for the shock value of it, because from what i've noticed, when the book focusing on a certain dragonet ends, we rarely hear from them again and they become no more than background characters!