cat_rector's reviews
76 reviews

Giving up on this one after a day cause I can tell I'm not going to get what I want from it. I want it to lean harder into the young queer ladies part, but it's leaning harder into the grooming part. Not what I came here for.

This book isn't a five-star because it's an easy read. No, it's a five-star because it's a collection of horrors that everyone should understand.

I picked this up as research for a book I'm working on. I wanted to better understand the connection between women and medicine before the invention of western doctors. I got that, but I got more than I bargained for. I got a long history of men making choices for women about their bodies that resulted in illness and death. I read about religious shame and willful misunderstanding about women's bodies. And now I look at mine and understand so much about myself, and why things are.

I want this book to be fiction, because if it were, healthcare would be more equitable. If it were, I wouldn't have a list of women in my head who were underserved by doctors. There are women in my life who are dead because their illness wasn't detected early enough, because their pain was brushed off, who are dead because we invented entire diagnoses to explain for centuries why they must be imagining it.

I want this to be fiction. I want someone to rewrite our history so that our bodies are better known. So that the real diseases that currently plague bodies born female were curable, treatable, understood. So that we aren't told it's all in our heads, even today. So that I don't spend 34 years learning and unlearning shame.

This is a great book for people wanting to dabble in horror as a beginner. I loved the rep and diversity of characters. I did not love the large amount of flashback material for each character, or the amount of characters we were in the head of. I found it hard to be connected to anyone, and sometimes I was confused about which character was which. This one just wasn't for me.

This book was like listening to a meditation. There's so much to be learned that I don't think I can do it in one read. One read is enough to understand that your way in the world is destructive, and to begin to think of things to change. I think this book has enough to offer that it could be read again and again, and could shape the lives of many people open to living in more balance with nature.

I read this for research, and I hope that it shapes me for years to come.

This is a delightful little book with a few spooky scenes that will stick with me for a while.

First thing to note is that I've never read The Fall of the House of Usher, so there were probably bits of its beauty that were lost on me. It was honestly a cover buy (or borrow in this instance) and if they sold the cover art as a poster, I'd already own it.

Things I loved:
The use of flora and fauna to spin a strange little tale.
The use of non-standard pronouns for a variety of characters (I haven't read a ton of books with this and it's great practice)
The MC's self-awareness and snark
The author's dialogue feels very genuine and authentic
The themes of war and PTSD

The thing I didn't love is that I knew what was coming before I was 10% into the book. That's not an issue for many readers, so don't let that scare you away. It's a mild annoyance for me because I tend to most highly value books that surprise me in some manner.

In either case, this book felt like a sibling to Crimson Peak, which is very much a compliment, and if you enjoyed that book/movie, you'll love this one.

An interesting listen that I think will help solidify my foundations!
I picked this up on a whim, having never heard of the author before. The audiobook was in my library app and there was a long waiting list for it, so I checked out the synopsis. Plus look at that cover!

I was hoping this book would give me direction to a little more sense of self, for lack of a better way to put it. In some manners, I feel solid in who I am, but as the author discusses, I've definitely been a tamed girl for most of my life. I acted as I was expected to, used the mantra "only calculated risks", and possessed nearly puritanical thought processes over everyday things.

This book is a reminder of how I was programmed that way.

I found a lot of the author's personal stories helpful, as if watching someone else have that kind of courage was permission to develop my own. I think the strongest part of the book is the first chunk, and I personally got the most out of her transition between classic marriage to modern family unit.

The thing that served me the least is the discussions on faith and religion. They'll definitely serve someone else very well, especially since her background is as a Christian writer. Her change of faith from organized religion to personal practice is important, especially in the face of some communities that promote bigoted spiritual practices. For me, it's not what I came to the book for.

As well, some of the back half of the book seemed less related to what I came to the book for and more like personal anecdotes, but I think that's very subjective. Sometimes it reads as a story, sometimes it reads as a series of essays, and not every essay is for everyone.

Either way, I do hope I can take some of the things from this book and use them to shore up the walls of my confidence and inner convictions. I think it'll be on my mind for a while to come. I don't yet entirely know how to turn inward and trust the parts of me that know what I want, but I hope that will come with practice.

Obligatory Five-Star Review from the author XD

This project is a little love letter to the series I wrote. I hope people will have fun with it, because ultimately it exists just for that purpose. To fill some gaps, to let characters tell other parts of their stories, and to add a little joy and pain to readers' lives.

The collection is 9.5 stories and 170 physical pages, each of which comes with their own trigger warnings list. Some are cute, some are fun, some hurt, and some are spicy. Two of them are also found in the back of the hardcovers of The Goddess of Nothing At All and Epilogues for Lost Gods, in order to make those stories accessible to other readers. One is a story that was available via Ko-Fi as a fundraiser. The rest are original content. Every cent of profit from this book will go toward the creation of my next book.

If you're looking for a full list of triggers, go to https://www.catrector.com/threadsoffate and scroll down.

I knew this book would be different going in, but I didn't realise how challenging it would be to rate it afterwards.

Pew was thought-provoking above all, and is something to be meditated on. I feel like I'll think back on this book over time, about the questions it asked about society and about the style of the writing. Personally, I did find it more "important" than "enjoyable" and you can decipher that however you want, since I'm not even entirely sure how I mean it.

For me, the primary standouts of this book were the discussion of gender, race, ethnicity etc when applied or not applied to the character of Pew. I saw one of my own bad habits in this book, reminding me of the times that I'll decide someone's intentions for them when they neglect to give me information of their own. With Pew unable to give information about themselves, each member of the town decides who Pew is on their own terms.

The other thing I found really interesting here was the examination of the town itself. Without spoiling anything, we learn a lot about the town and its residents through the monologuing to the blank slate of Pew. It's like Pew serves as some sort of confession booth for the town, which is interesting in light of my interpretation of the ending.

What I wasn't thrilled by was the slow pace, but I don't think that's a problem with the book. It might just be time for me to read something faster. If you're looking for a book in which Things Happen, this isn't the book for you. The 206-page book is a lot of one-sided conversation with some scene-setting in between.

As mixed a review as this probably reads as, I have no regrets and was happy to explore a style of writing that deviates from the norm!

4.5 rounded up. This serves as a great piece of validation and a reminder to women that rest is not a betrayal.

While not all topics in this book were new to me, or not all of them served me, I hope to use it as reinforcement for several parts of my life. The largest and most important thing I got out of this book was the term Human Giver Syndrome, which is the deep need to give of yourself until your well is past dry and everyone around you has benefitted from your suffering. I've been guilty of this all my life, perhaps worse than many of the women around me, because I saw selfishness all around me in my youth. As an adult I can see so many of those "selfish" simple acts as a loyalty to self, and it's past time that I develop a few of my own "selfish" habits.

Aside from this introspection, I found the information about completing the stress cycle to be helpful, and hopefully one I can put into use in the future.

If you're looking for something to explain why you're a woman who's so fucking tired all the time, this is the book for you.

Hmm. I feel like this is a 3.5 for me, rounded up to 4. I loved Abitha's storyline but didn't much care for Samson's.

The ideas of this book are fantastic. The witch trials took power away from the people involved, but this book gives it back to them. Many of the characters carry themselves with dignity and grace in the face of horror. I found myself rooting for Abitha quite quickly in the book and it was her character that kept me engaged.

While Samson's storyline was theoretically interesting, it was also the part that caught me the least. I like the ideas it presented but found that I didn't care about/for the characters in that arc. Which I think comes down to personal preference more than anything.

Overall, Slewfoot is a great addition to stories that empower women, and I assume that the physical copy would be extra engaging. (I read the audiobook.)