divineauthor's reviews
354 reviews

“My heart is on rewind.” —Grace Monroe, chapter 20

i love time travel, i really do, because you can have some really ridiculous scenarios and you, as the reader, simply nod and accept the premise and vibe. grace and henry’s romance was a twisty, windy, (extremely) dramatic story and i really enjoyed it. for a good half of the book, i was wondering what went wrong five years prior and the way it went down . . . i could not make this shit up. henry was crazy for REDACTED and grace was crazy for REDACTED like truly they are made for each other. anyway, normally, i prefer to read along with an audiobook but this was an audible-only read. surprisingly, i didn’t mind! in all honesty, this book being narrated by daisy edgar-jones and sam claflin fully heightened the experience for me. they’re really good voice actors!!! even when this book gets released elsewhere to read with your eyes, i still recommend a listen :)

08/31/24: i’m more than two years out of my first reading of ALONE WITH YOU IN THE ETHER where i couldn’t even begin to explain to myself, let alone anyone else, why i enjoyed this book so much. a few months after my first read, i picked it up again, and i typed out some words about aldo and regan and their complexities and noted down what i loved. then i reread it again twice more—one was a listen as the audiobook released later that year and the other was while i was annotating copies for my friends—and i still had nothing really concrete to say. 

and on my fifth (!!!) reread, i still don’t think i can articulate it. well, not in any way that feels right, you know? let me say this: as someone who’s been writing shades of aldo and regan in my own characters, they superimposed on one another, and it was a treat for me that’s for damn sure. to see my own characters reflected in blake’s this clearly in a reread was a shock to the system.

anyway in this book, blake writes, among other themes, about the catharsis of loneliness and the ennui that stems from it. meeting each other is not only a catalyst but an avalanche. it’s not merely chemical to watch them fall in love, it is an act of nature, forceful and gripping, and yet still somehow deeply, deeply private. the contiguity of their love being both intensely dynamic and intensely private is just a treat for me to read, not to mention the varied writing style of the prose itself. ugh. yeah. i know this book isn’t for everyone, and it shouldn’t be, but it’s for me, so i will keep coming back to it. what a black hole of a book. truly a fitting way to close the end of the dying month of august with. 

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12/02/22: another reread . . . again, but this time it’s for the lads (i’m annotating copies for them)! 

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11/30/22: THIS IS A REREAD. THE AUDIOBOOK IS SO GOOD GUYS.

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05/02/22: there is smth so deeply intriguing abt regan and aldo . . . both mentally unwell and unstable, both loving each other so deeply that even they call it unhealthy, both flawed human beings who found solace in each other. olivie blake is sick in the head for this actually (she writes such banger lines tho 😫) obviously it could use a little editing, but i’m kind of in love with the genre-bending writing style

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01/21/22: don’t ask me to explain why i rated this 5 stars . I Just Did It

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*READ EDITIONS BY DATE: 

– jan 21, 2022: selfpub digital

– may 2, 2022: selfpub paperback

– november 30, 2022: tradpub audiobook

– december 2, 2022: tradpub hardcover

– august 31, 2024: selfpub paperback

08/31/24: i’m more than two years out of my first reading of ALONE WITH YOU IN THE ETHER where i couldn’t even begin to explain to myself, let alone anyone else, why i enjoyed this book so much. a few months after my first read, i picked it up again, and i typed out some words about aldo and regan and their complexities and noted down what i loved. then i reread it again twice more—one was a listen as the audiobook released later that year and the other was while i was annotating copies for my friends—and i still had nothing really concrete to say. 

and on my fifth (!!!) reread, i still don’t think i can articulate it. well, not in any way that feels right, you know? let me say this: as someone who’s been writing shades of aldo and regan in my own characters, they superimposed on one another, and it was a treat for me that’s for damn sure. to see my own characters reflected in blake’s this clearly in a reread was a shock to the system.

anyway in this book, blake writes, among other themes, about the catharsis of loneliness and the ennui that stems from it. meeting each other is not only a catalyst but an avalanche. it’s not merely chemical to watch them fall in love, it is an act of nature, forceful and gripping, and yet still somehow deeply, deeply private. the contiguity of their love being both intensely dynamic and intensely private is just a treat for me to read, not to mention the varied writing style of the prose itself. ugh. yeah. i know this book isn’t for everyone, and it shouldn’t be, but it’s for me, so i will keep coming back to it. what a black hole of a book. truly a fitting way to close the end of the dying month of august with. 

══════════════════

12/02/22: another reread . . . again, but this time it’s for the lads (i’m annotating copies for them)! 

══════════════════

11/30/22: THIS IS A REREAD. THE AUDIOBOOK IS SO GOOD GUYS.

══════════════════

05/02/22: there is smth so deeply intriguing abt regan and aldo . . . both mentally unwell and unstable, both loving each other so deeply that even they call it unhealthy, both flawed human beings who found solace in each other. olivie blake is sick in the head for this actually (she writes such banger lines tho 😫) obviously it could use a little editing, but i’m kind of in love with the genre-bending writing style

══════════════════

01/21/22: don’t ask me to explain why i rated this 5 stars . I Just Did It

══════════════════

*READ EDITIONS BY DATE: 

– jan 21, 2022: selfpub digital

– may 2, 2022: selfpub paperback

– november 30, 2022: tradpub audiobook

– december 2, 2022: tradpub hardcover

– august 31, 2024: selfpub paperback

08/31/24: i’m more than two years out of my first reading of ALONE WITH YOU IN THE ETHER where i couldn’t even begin to explain to myself, let alone anyone else, why i enjoyed this book so much. a few months after my first read, i picked it up again, and i typed out some words about aldo and regan and their complexities and noted down what i loved. then i reread it again twice more—one was a listen as the audiobook released later that year and the other was while i was annotating copies for my friends—and i still had nothing really concrete to say. 

and on my fifth (!!!) reread, i still don’t think i can articulate it. well, not in any way that feels right, you know? let me say this: as someone who’s been writing shades of aldo and regan in my own characters, they superimposed on one another, and it was a treat for me that’s for damn sure. to see my own characters reflected in blake’s this clearly in a reread was a shock to the system.

anyway in this book, blake writes, among other themes, about the catharsis of loneliness and the ennui that stems from it. meeting each other is not only a catalyst but an avalanche. it’s not merely chemical to watch them fall in love, it is an act of nature, forceful and gripping, and yet still somehow deeply, deeply private. the contiguity of their love being both intensely dynamic and intensely private is just a treat for me to read, not to mention the varied writing style of the prose itself. ugh. yeah. i know this book isn’t for everyone, and it shouldn’t be, but it’s for me, so i will keep coming back to it. what a black hole of a book. truly a fitting way to close the end of the dying month of august with. 

══════════════════

12/02/22: another reread . . . again, but this time it’s for the lads (i’m annotating copies for them)! 

══════════════════

11/30/22: THIS IS A REREAD. THE AUDIOBOOK IS SO GOOD GUYS.

══════════════════

05/02/22: there is smth so deeply intriguing abt regan and aldo . . . both mentally unwell and unstable, both loving each other so deeply that even they call it unhealthy, both flawed human beings who found solace in each other. olivie blake is sick in the head for this actually (she writes such banger lines tho 😫) obviously it could use a little editing, but i’m kind of in love with the genre-bending writing style

══════════════════

01/21/22: don’t ask me to explain why i rated this 5 stars . I Just Did It

══════════════════

*READ EDITIONS BY DATE: 

– jan 21, 2022: selfpub digital

– may 2, 2022: selfpub paperback

– november 30, 2022: tradpub audiobook

– december 2, 2022: tradpub hardcover

– august 31, 2024: selfpub paperback

“Johnston, your streets are pulsing. Bleeding from the cracks. Beneath, your heart is pounding. You are always coming back.” —Cash, page 300

BLUE GRAFFITI is a type of bildungsroman for twenty-something-year-olds who thought they’d live and die in the town they were born in. skogman lays the scene for our quiet, romantic, complexly simple, wisconsin-bred main character, cash, who guides us on a tour through his hometown—his landmarks being his own memories. this slice-of-life-ness leads to this drifting, nostalgic, and heart-warming depiction of johnston, wi and just of humanity in general. you can tell that skogman has such a love for humanity, an empath’s heart with a poet’s pen, to be able to weave love and grief and belonging and isolation and god with the beauty it deserves. the prose is lyrical, philosophical; gutting and stark, when needed, and reminded me of what it feels like to read a great american writer’s early work. also, this is a very me thing to say, but the entire book reminds me of “the view between villages (extended)” by noah kahan (of course, thee contemporary lyricist to mention when talking about staying in your hometown), though i could probably drop most of the album onto this book and have it stick the landing.

all that being said, this is a debut and it felt like it at times. though beautiful, cash’s narration felt too aware, like skogman’s hand rested too heavy on his pen and it bled through the paper. i also have negligible thoughts about the idolization of women and the isolation of johnston itself in the whole of the us and that bit of naïveté cash seems to have about the horrors of the world, but, as i’ve said, they’re negligible. oh, and if anyone’s expecting like a romanceTM from reading the blurb, you probably shouldn’t read this book. the romance is honestly incidental. this is litfic with a heavy emphasis on memory and friendship and family.

fav bits: descriptions of johnston and every single bit about the father and The Father (god). truly some absolutely fucked lines. sick in the goddamn head.

oh!!! also, i HIGHLY recommend listening to the audiobook. the reading experience heightened it all for sure 🫶

“CAESAR: It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” —2.2.37-39

i haven’t read this play since sophomore year of high school, and i’ve forgotten most of what happens besides the basics (caesar dying amongst close friends, and the speeches—god, the speeches). as an adult . . . guys, this is upsettingly good. like i know it’s shakespeare, but this is insane. i watched the 2017 rsc production the day before committing to read this play, and i was riveted. the balance scale on which brutus and marc antony stand see-saw with each minute of mulling over their motives, their characters. ugh. [throttles everyone] when the classics hit, they hit!

“Come on. I love you, but this is no life.” —Andrew Blur, page 365

all of my friends know that i agonized over this book for various reasons. something that is so, so, so geared for me—a queer southern gothic tale—ticks all my boxes and then some. but then i started reading it, slogging through the prose, and it fell short because it felt like a debut. the lyrical prose, while beautiful, felt too congested at times in places where it definitely could’ve been cut. i’m not sure if this is a quirk of mandelo’s writing style or if it’s just a facet of the book, but visualizing what was happened felt off, as if i couldn’t really say what exactly with the characters’ bodies (corporeal or otherwise); i’d know exactly what emotional turmoil or peak they were feeling, but just vaguely. 

okay, cons aside: i fucking LOVE these characters. they’re messy, gay as hell (and fighting it), and so, so, so southern. andrew’s complex grief pushes the narrative forward, dragging everyone along for the ride—unwilling participants and all. and, funnily enough, before a beloved friend told me the author wrote kavinsky fic before, i was telling everyone who’s heard me yap about this book about how it has an older, darker, damper energy of THE RAVEN CYCLE. i laughed! anyway, that’s my review. love n light. good luck n godspeed, etc. 

“But you—you make love so easy, Daphne. You make me think I already deserve it, exactly how I am.” —Miles Nowak, page 372

emily henry flexes her romcom muscles and gains some new strengths in this one. this truly is one of her funniest books to date (regardless of the title’s relevance). daphne and miles are her most dynamic characters, i think; the space they inhabit are two separate spheres wonderfully co-existing as her other books felt more like a revealing of the same sphere. ugh. henry’s usual twist on a trope—fake dating, in this case—doesn’t detract from the story for me but spun it like a sun catcher in morning light. fleeting and bright and gone. i’m quite a fond of the fake dating trope, but i wasn’t surprised to see henry soften the blow of it. miles and daphne’s lives are ridiculous enough as it is. anyway. obsessed with the horniness of food. obsessed with their horniness in general. truly just a fun time!

“I love you more than my own happiness.” —Annabelle Archer, page 289

so this actually a reread! i’d consumed my fair share of HRs several years prior, but those left no lasting impression on me. reading this book at the turn of the decade reignited a love for the subgenre, so i’ll always have a fondness for it (despite the blond hero who consorted with tories for the most part—it’s fine, guys, he was disparagingly called a liberal by the queen herself—huzzah!). annabelle and sebastian are wildly intelligent, complex, and so, so sexy to read. there are issues with the writing itself, but it’s a debut, so i give it some grace. overall, well-written and a fun, quick read!

“Fear not, debutantes, there will come a time when happiness will settle in the palm of your hand. All you must do is take hold of it.” —A note for The Marriage Habits of the Native Aristocrat

lovely prose, a hero who is less of an asshole than most histrom heroes, and a heroine who is SO funny.