ikandree's reviews
283 reviews

I should have DNFd this but I had read it was great (and heard from a friend).  It did get good...at page 283.  That is 71% in for you on Kindle and audiobook.  That means nearly 3/4 of the book was BORING.  

The beginning had potential with the story of Sam and Sadie, best friends from childhood who reconnect during their college years.  The story started to drag once they started to make their first game. It went steadily downhill after that.  Maybe it is bc I am not a gamer, but there wasn't much tech mentioned, so I think it was the complete and utter lack of plot.  Imagine reading for 200+ pages of people going to work.  Sure, there might be drama or gossip now and again, but otherwise pretty mundane.  

I haven't been this bored with a book in a long time.  I do not understand the hype.  The last 29% of this book saved it from being a 1 ⭐️. 

Memoirs are always difficult to rate bc you shouldn't rate their lives since, well, it's their life.  However, with a fiction book, one would definitely rate the characters as well as the other facets of the book.

With that being said, this book was very okay.  It was narrated by Matthew Perry (and was clearly meant to be an audiobook and not just the reading of the physical book) but I had to speed it to 1.25x bc at "normal" speed, it sounded like he had a stroke.  It was like he had cotton in his mouth that he was trying to talk around.  This actually makes sense with the insane amount of drugs, alcohol, and nicotine that he has put in his body.

The book as it is written starts off fairly linear, veering appropriately.  There are periods of "interlude" which kinda make no sense bc they are just another part of the story, but this particular story is told in periodic bursts.  The second half of the book can be hard to follow at times.  I thought it was staying linear like the first half, but then he would seem to circle back around to something that had happened 30 years prior.  

His actual story was absolutely heartbreaking.  He admits over and over that he has no one to blame for his addictions but himself.  It is quite eerie that at the very beginning he writes, "Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead." After reading this, I have no doubt that his untimely death was a result of 40 years of punishment he put his body through.  He was a womanizer, afraid of commitment, and therefore alone.  He doesn't spend too much time talking about his time on Friends, only how messed up his life was during that period. 

This book is a confession of transgressions and glimmers of hope. A story of addiction to redemption and the messiness in between.  I just wished that the story itself could have been more consistent.

I am actually pretty stingy with my 5 ⭐️ reviews.  This deserves every bit of 5 ⭐️.  Wow.  

This book is written so that each part is told through the eyes of her at that age.  For example, she is taught an eating disorder at 11, but expresses it in a way that is innocent and from the POV of a girl trying to please her mother.  She doesn't say that her mother's actions are terrible and abusive, but relays them as matter-of-fact events, telling what she thought and how she felt at the time.  This book is heartbreaking but really funny at times.  I cannot stress enough how amazing this writing is.  

I would also HIGHLY recommend reading this as an audiobook narrated by the author.  It is an experience like no other. 

I very much enjoyed this book.  I especially loved how the narrative jumped from not only different POVs but also different time periods for those people.  While the general plot follows the disappearance of and search for one 13 yr old, as well as the disappearance of her brother 15 yrs before that.  However, there are so many other storylines that center around family, connections, business, friendship, and more.  My only hangup was there were SO many characters that it got difficult to remember what everyone's connection was to one another.

This audiobook was absolutely wonderful. If you follow his Instagram, you will not be disappointed. He offers numerous takes on social media problems and offers solid advice on how to circumvent these issues and “live your best povvo life.”

This is 3 ⭐️, maybe 3.5.  I was very much looking forward to this book which might be why it was a letdown.  It takes a while for the story to really get going so it is a bit confusing.  I did like the POV of multiple points in time.  It was divided into "Then" and "Now", but those referred to different periods of now and then.  The meat of the story is written is screenplay form, which was nice bc it really made it easy to picture the scene.  The whole plot of the "movie" being made is creepy and slightly disturbing but let me wanting to know what is going to happen next.  It never explained WHY the kids were doing what they were doing.  Also, I don't feel that it stuck the landing.  The end was lackluster and, again, never explained the why.

It is disappointing that I DNFd this audiobook bc I listened to the other 11 books.  However, by this book, it was dragging on and on.  I got the return of Christ and realized I was only halfway through.  I was barely hanging on and just couldn't listen for another 5 hrs.  

This book was wholly disappointing.  I guess I was expecting to hear her story and how God affected her, either through encounters, family, friends, and such.  What the reader gets is a few paragraphs at the beginning of each chapters and then pages of preaching about nothing to do with homosexuality, but about sin in general.  Further, her story was about how one day the holy spirit impressed upon her that she should give up being gay (and all the stereotypical things that go with being gay such as dressing manly), and then the next day she decided to...well...stop being gay.  She still wrestled with the attractions towards women but simply was done with being gay.  Full stop.

I feel that this book was written less for people who struggle with same sex attraction and those that love them, and more for those people that say "pray the gay away." 

I do NOT recommend this book for anyone struggling with same-sex attraction.

This was a solid read.  Think Ghost Hunters meets Blair Witch.  The haunting parts are so well written that they are vivid; an absolute page turner.  I very much like the writing style of using "transcripts" of videos, journal entries, emails, and texts.  It offers multiple POVs as well as giving a more complete picture into the story and the characters' minds and behaviors. This could have easily been a 5 star read but I wasn't overly thrilled with the ending.

3.5 ⭐️

This was an entertaining story but often quite silly.  The various POVs throughout made for interesting reading, but the characters lacked any depth.  This might have been a 4 star read, but the authors "interrupting" the story, especially near the end, was quite frustrating.