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 5 (five) 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 during their reunion and in retrospect through their shared stories! it was 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)the growth of Anne over the years since arriving at GREEN GABBLES was such a beautiful way to wrap up her childhood self, who was deep in her imagination and always eager to prove herself, and move to her later teens, where she has become wiser and milder, quiter... it was all very rewarding to following! the thing that made it a 4 for me was how i wished the emotionally charged scenes went in more detail or just lingered a little longer, because they all really had the potential of packing a serious punch.. i also thought the scenes outside of Avonlea lacked the spirit that the book had up until then and were boring to read through...

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

i liked jesamine's conflicting portrayal, because she can be very vulnerable (being friendly to tessa and even showing her old dollhouse) or she can be rude and condescending (looking at tessa, and even charlotte who is literally her boss, with judgement). speaking of, i liked charlotte being a counter attack to jesamine's views of womanhood; she just doesn't obide by the social expectations of a lady which jesamine tries so hard to follow.

and when it comes to the boys, even though Jem is nice and respectful, guess who Tessa is in love with! the rude, hot-and-cold Will who is a total jerk to her and is constantly leading her on only to immedaite shove her away after! why does she even like him, Jem is right in front of her..

another weak point is the ending - it was obvious from the start that De Quincy was just a red herring and not the real villain as everyone thought, but to an extent Mortmain and especially Nate's evil reveals were just so sudden and random.! Nate'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 (really enjoyed the automatons, i think fantasy is the perfect genre for a humanoid robot army, surprisingly, because saying they're fueled by dark magic gives it a lot more wiggle room to the 'how are they even functioning' question). regardless of all that, a lot of plot-central elements just felt too clumsy.....

(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 mellows 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 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. 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 either, 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. dev has been working for the show all this time, so he should know better than anyone that a lot of the scenes are directed.

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 game) because it was so bonkers. 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 about 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.........