amelianotthepilot's reviews
739 reviews

In a near future dystopia, America has now monetized 'hard action sports' wherein incarcerated people participate in battle royal style murdering to be released from their sentences early. It intersperses real historical facts against this jarring dystopian world of societal failure. The absurdity of society in this book highlights how truly not far off we are from it. In this world, Americans watch and cheer on their favorite incarcerated competitors as they murder each other in sports stadiums broadcasted on TV behind a paywall. It highlights how many people in prisons could be in there for something as simple as having weed, to a mistaken sentence, to murdering their rapist but they are all treated equally horribly in the eyes of the prison. It shows how the prison reform system is not helping communities or addressing route problems but instead tears apart families and essentially exploits incarcerated people for forced labor.

This book should be a must-read for everyone, not only is it extremely well written and truly leaves you feeling a large range of emotions while exploring different perspectives but it is also educational and thought-provoking. 

2024 (4 stars): Rereading this exactly 10 years later is wild. I loved this series as a teen and I still really enjoyed it now. It's a fun YA urban fantasy book with high school drama alongside vampire drama with a slight sapphic vibe. Compared to other 2000s YA I've reread this one surprisingly held up and I didn't find many problematic things besides the dating-your-teacher trope with a 10 year age gap between the underage MC and her instructor 💀.  The plot is fun and well written and the characters are also pretty alright.
The plot follows Rose a dhampir girl, a half vampire/half human that guards the good 'Moroi' (sorta like vegan Cullens) vampires from the evil 'Strigoi' vampires (sorta like red-eyed Volturi vampires). She shares a special bond with Lissa, the Moroi vampire that Rose unofficially guards. They both attend a vampire school in the middle of nowhere Montana 😂. Lissa has a special power unlike other Vampires, she's able to heal and use compulsion, but as she uses it it harms her mental state and makes her extremely depressed. After running away for a year Lissa and Rose are captured and returned to school and now need to blend back into the cliques while also dealing with a series of mysterious dead animal threats directed at Lissa. 

2014 (5 stars): such a good book! im excited to read the rest of the series and see the movie.  I like how Rose's character isnt a helpless little girl and neither is Lissa's they both stand up for eachother and get stuff done, yes they are not invincible they have fatal flaws but they work hard and can protect themselves to an extent.  The plot twist at the end was really exciting but i thought they should have left natalie alive so that they could have another antagonist and it was sad to see her go.  i really love the bond between lissa and rose which is sisterly and really nice. i just love this book.

ugh this was so good i dont know what to say except i cant believe she did [REDACTED] dirty like that :(

gah i love this series

yet again another intricate insanely interesting dark academia story following our six 

this was eh. definitely a foreigners idealized image of nyc in the winter which was fine i guess. lots of food moments and italian american-isms.

our main character Iris, is a chef from London, her mother has recently passed away and she’s escaped a manipulative ex boyfriend and now is living in NYC trying to live the dream. She’s found work at a noodle restaurant who’s owner is her gay male best friend 🙄 (what a tired trope) and she also lives in the building. After a series of events she ends up helping our leading man, Gio, an italian american restaurant owner, figure out his family’s lost gelato recipe which Iris happens to know. 

first off it starts with a random chapter set on valentine’s day of Iris being rude to a random man (guess who this turns out to be) cause he took the last book at a bookstore. 

The book then jump cuts to September’s San Genarro festival in Little Italy and doesn’t bring up this bookshop moment until wayyyy later at which point I literally thought it wasn’t coming back.

I also feel like there was a weird confusion around her parents and the love interest’s parents that left me thinking half of the book that this might turn out to be an incest plot 🙅🏼‍♀️🙅🏼‍♀️🙅🏼‍♀️ maybe i just wasn’t paying attention enough but Iris’s mother was in a band together with two men who were a guitarist and a drummer. Her mother also dated one of the guitarist’s brother, who is the restaurant owner and Gio’s uncle that he calls papa. For me it was unclear that Iris’s mother had the baby with the drummer not the guitarist, and that the guitarist is Gio’s dad. Very confusing tbh and I spent have the book in fear it was incest

I dont understand the hype for this book. I feel like I remember people raving about this a few years ago but I truly found this whole book horribly depressing and meaningless. It gave Holden Caulfield vibes in the worst way. 

I guess you could say its a feminist book representing women in the worst way, women can be horrible too, women contain multitudes. I'm also pretty positive it doesn't pass the reverse Bechdel test (men are rarely mentioned and only in reference to sex). Which I guess is interesting... idk overall I thought it was terribly boring and depressing.

The main character is in her 20s, both her parents have passed away which she says she has come to terms with but clearly still deeply affects her. She has decided she wants to sleep her life away. She goes to a bad therapist complaining of sleep problems so she can get prescribed increasingly wild drugs. She then takes a cocktail of drugs in efforts to fully sleep through the rest of life to varying success. Her therapist is an extremely hippie unhinged bad therapist, her best friend is extremely vain and fake, her deceased mother was an alcoholic and uncaring. Overall every single character was unbearable and annoying and I don't feel like I particularly learned or gained anything from reading it. 

This book is truly so boring. Classic to the other Selection books nothing happens until the very last chapter and then it's absolute chaos. 

this story adds absolutely nothing