reviews

(read: 2023) an example of "no notes" would be "THE TRAVELLING CAT CHRONICLES". it was difficult to think of any weak spots significant enough to be worth mentioning and the build up to the end had me bawling my eyes out for kid you not 5 hours straight.. the storytelling i thought was pretty unique too, since we follow the main character's life without even really being in his point of view and instead seeing how all the people throughout different periods of his life see him both today in their reunion and in retrospect through their shared stories! it was also awfully bittersweet, so much so that you pick up on it and start anticipating something bad happening, but then it still hits just as hard when it finally happens. maybe because it was so bittersweet...

(read: 2023) "ANNE OF GREEN GABBLES" was very pleasant to read and i think the growth of Anne through the years after arriving at GREEN GABBLES was such a 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 was how i wished the emotionally charged scenes went in more detail, because they really had the potential of packing a serious punch, but it always felt like the writing didn't want to go as far as it could have. i also thought the scenes outside of town lacked the whimsy of Avolea and were boring to read through. i mean, anne going to collage was just quickly glossed over.

(read: 2024) the start was really good, it introduced the world and the characters pretty effectively, but by the end when everyone was already introduced, it felt as thought they were now just thrown out the window in favour of focusing only on the immediate cast.. (and when they're killed off, there's supposed to be a weight to it, but it only falls flat because of how little lines and significance they had to the story)

i liked jesamine's conflicting portrayal, because she can be very vulnerable (being friendly and even telling tessa her story with her dollhouse) or she can be condescending (looking at tessa, and even charlotte who is literally her boss, with judgement). speaking of, i also liked charlotte being a counter attack to jesamine's views of womanhood; she just doesn't obide by the social expectations of a lady that jesamine tries so hard to follow, her being there makes both jesamine's own flawed views and the conflicts between the two satisfying to read. but at maybe the halfway point there stops being much progress to her development, which i'd say is pretty unfortunate! it is true the book more or less was more concerned with the love interests now, but still.

another weak point is the ending - 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 atmosphere, but then the execusion feels so clumsy at times.....

(read: 2024) for a part i feel like charlie became confident and overcame his stuggles too quickly. we saw his 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 suppose it is true that he became more comfortable with himself after making good friends through the story, but the jump felt like a significant flaw in charlie's storyline, especially when his struggles with anxiety and OCD are a big part of his character..

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, that they love one another. i don't get why dev was jealous, because of course whatever charlie is saying to the contestants is just an act for the cameras, they gotta keep the reality show rolling afterall. i mean, dev has been working for the show all this time, he should know better than anyone that a lot of the scenes are directed.

i found it odd also 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 falling in love and experiencing so much you've never even know you could feel prior to this point.

i guess i liked that there's some nuance to dev's ex 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 so bonkers. 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 and inhaling so much ash on a daily basis that they all have a perpetual cough and irritated bloodshot eyes, i thought that was cool and completely shatters their mythologised portrayal that was built up in the previous 3 books so effectively), they really weren't important enough to the whole story to give the rest grace. as a whole it handled major plot points horribly!

most of the plot revolves around the Nightwings who have been kidnapping and imprisoning Rainwings (dragons that live isolated in the depths of the rainforests). they are dying of starvation and sickness, because the Nightwings don't have any fruit on the island to feed them and eating carrion only makes them violently ill. they're doing all that in the first place because Mastermind (the father of Starflight, the book's main character) wants to gather their venom and use it to craft bioweapons. it is horrible, but the book not only hardly adresses any of it, 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 in his book, 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. his character growth is marked by the volcanic erruption scene 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, but it felt like it happened just for the shock value of it, because the books tend to pretty much forget ab the rest of its cast once they are no longer the protagonist... and even if that wasn't the case, making your main character lose their sight at the very end of the book is bummy.........