jbellomy's reviews
453 reviews

idk if anyone is aware of this but Arthur really snapped with this one

I'm once again asking authors to figure out how "repressed memory" works (or rather, does not work)

The title goes so hard, but as someone in the reviews pointed out, there's no knife. Which is the funniest possible outcome for this silly little paint-by-numbers book that doesn't at all live up to its dopeass title.

was so on board with the disabled mc until

his disability became magical.

Can we not simply have a character with chronic pain? what are we doing here???

Star ratings were not made for books like this. I found it alternatively baffling and gorgeous. My main gripe(?) was the writing style. "Overwritten" doesn't really capture it. Descriptions of the most mundane acts are described in sideways, flowery prose, which is often my jam--it worked for me ~70% of the time--but I could never get a full grasp on what I was looking at, & never felt grounded in the slightest. Probably intentional (given the strange-yet-grounded nature of the magic) but it hampered me in several ways:
- it took a ridiculously long time for me to finish this, even though I mostly enjoyed it, because I only picked it up when I was in the exact right mood
- I have the feeling I missed a lot of romantic build-up. I kept waiting for

Sam's

character to materialize in a way that only really happened for me in the last 40ish pages of the book.
- idk, it just made me feel kind of stupid in a way that was frustrating?
I prefer prose that goes in and out of the slippery, verbose description to provide something solid to hold onto every once in a while. I'm harping on this because it was the one recurring issue that stopped this from becoming a new favorite. Low magic, angst, sweat, blood, academia, ghosts?!?!, GHOSTS AS METAPHOR?!?!?, GHOSTS AS **GAY REPRESSION** METAPHOR?!?!?!?!??! -- come on, that shit's MY shit. There were so many moments, sometimes whole chapters, that worked so so well. At one point I felt like I was on drugs. 
(EDIT: it has just been revealed to me that Mandelo once wrote Kavinsky fic, which is fucking hilarious because initially my review was just going to be "Dream Thieves for 20-something freaks" but that felt too trite.)
Anyway, I'll probably give Mandelo another try, but it might take me a while.

really great in so many ways, deeply tainted by the fact that rebecca makkai does not understand cancel culture.

i get we all loved rwrb but the fanfic-to-romance-writer pipeline floweth TOO freely. the trauma narratives are getting out of control. at the beginning of this book is a long list of content warnings--including but very much not limited to: physical abuse, a quite harrowing portrayal of an alcoholic parent, a pretty brutal image of violence, and just wild parental neglect all around--that ends with BUT DON'T WORRY, THERE WILL BE NO HOMOPHOBIA BECAUSE WE MUST PROTECT THE CHARACTERS FROM HOMOPHOBIA SPECIFICALLY. like what are we doing here. (tangentially related: there are two joking mentions of biphobia that lead me to believe the author does not understand what biphobia is.)

but also, i listened to it in one day while traveling cross-country. and it was cute. i'm part of the problem.

Fun but doesn't deserve the hype! I rolled my eyes non-stop at both the characterization and the prose. Violet is the specialest girl alive -- simultaneously ~oh so weak~ but also THE STRONGEST EVER (it's giving bella swan), Xaden is your stereotypical bad boy with a heart of gold (aka every LI in every enemies-to-lovers story), the writing explains stuff in narration, then re-explains it in painfully repetitive dialogue, then explains it AGAIN in narration (see: low-rent 2010s YA fantasy). More than once, a character would say something in one chapter, only to fully contradict themself the next chapter -- and not in a way that was supposed to indicate complexity; these instances were clearly editing oversights. Also if anyone could tell me why she had to say the word "caress" so many times, or why she chose to cop the idea of elementally powerful sex from Sarah J Maas, that'd be swell. Hopefully later installments will have more Rhiannon, she's the only one still alive at the end of this who interests me.