lkmreads's reviews
1086 reviews

Por ahí mi libro tenía contenido diferente, porque no sé como gusta tanto... a veces hay largas descripciones de cosas que poco importan y poco aportan, Clara es un personaje en mi opinión nada simpático (y huele un tanto a Mary Sue) y que para mi no aprende nada. La historia general tiene una premisa moderadamente interesante pero al final del día, la mejor descripción que le puedo dar es "meh".

 Thank you to the author for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review.

#brat is the debut novel by Lynx Patt, and I have to say, it’s a very good first one! I was pleasantly surprised.

Now before I get into the review itself, I should probably note the story deals with a 6 year age gap relationship which might be uncomfortable to some. With that out of the way, let’s get to it.

Enter Kyle, school delinquent who’s apparently been escalating in troublemaking to the point where his principal sets him up with some after school work in a nursing home in hopes of righting him up.

Initially I was a bit iffy about whether I’d like his character, thinking he was just going to be a typical bad boy, but I actually found myself quite enjoying his shy but bratty attitude. For the most he read like the slightly troubled young man that he was, without going on obnoxious as some stories do.

He meets recently appointed male nurse Mason, his love interest, at the nursing home. Mason was dreamy. He had his own worries to deal with, but seemed like a wonderfully centered man and I quite enjoyed his character and his reactions to his younger love interest’s mess ups, though he could have been fleshed out just a little bit more.

While I was still getting a feel for whether I liked Kyle I was unsure at first if the two would fit as a couple, as it felt a little bit forced at first; but as Kyle settled in his character, so did the relationship seem to fall in place, and I found the two got along really well. Totally a fan by the end.

The story is pretty fluffy and low on the angst scale, which is perfect for me. It makes it a very easy, adorable read. It did have a handful of very cliché-y scenes, but they fit with the lovey-dovey, low angst of the book and I loved all of them.

I really enjoyed the way Kyle grew through the book and came to really like him by the end. It was also super cute how he got tongue-tied around his crush. Their interactions were pretty adorable overall, although I had some doubts about Mason being so easily wishy-washy on what landed Kyle there.

Another thing I quite liked about them is that they were fairly open and willing to talk about things, which is a breath of fresh air. Sometimes romances rely too much on misunderstandings and couples not talking to each other at all, so to see them communicate was really nice and healthy.

My nitpicks with the book are minor.

The first is more a taste thing- it’s a first person book, which I guess a lot of YAs are, but I never quite like them as much as third person. For the most part it was alright and I could ‘ignore’ it, but every now and again there would be mentions of “little did I know… “ or the character being home then backtracking to tell his day, and other little sentences that threw me off a little. Like, are in the present or what? Because it seemed like they already knew what was coming, but then made no mention of it being something that had already happened and being reflected on or told. It only happened like 3 or 4 times though. Also a couple times that started a time skip with “Fast forward to-” was a tiny bit off putting, but maybe it was just me.

Another thing was the flashback chapter. I get it was supposed to explain why Kyle ended up as a troublemaker/delinquent, but it really didn’t for me. It set him up as the class clown, but why did he escalate? Because he did. And I suppose the few mentions of his family were supposed to help fill in, but it never really felt like it was properly explained why he suddenly went into rebel mode.
It wasn’t a huge deal to the overall story, but it would have been nice to be able to understand Kyle better.

Then, the way everyone was so very supportive of everyone’s sexuality, regardless of which it was, while very nice and ok in fiction, didn’t seem very realistic (particularly for a nursing home), but again, I like fluffy sweet stories, so it wasn’t a big deal, it was just a bit weird to see.

The one thing that did bother me most was Blake Mash. He’s this guy who gets mentioned a handful of times as being a thug and true delinquent who has gone to juvie, but since you never see him at all, it feels like he’s just there to make a forced, stark comparison to Kyle and be “See? He’s not that bad.” In my opinion it could have been left out and it would have been just as well, otherwise he should have played a larger role.

As a final thought, not so much a like or dislike, but… it was certainly a spicier book than I expected for a YA. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no prude, I 1. know that YA can deal with sex and isn’t always ‘clean’, and 2. have read spicier stuff as a teen myself/would have no issue with my teen reading that, but I still felt like this was a bit spicier than expected.


All in all it’s a very sweet first-time gay story, and I highly recommend it if you like sweet romances.
Look forward to reading more from the author! 

I liked it, particularly the distinction of writing to market vs writing to a trend. It's pretty basic, though, and really, really short. 

I'm not sure how I feel about some of the quotes in it regarding reviews, though. 
Particularly: 
"That's not always the case, but I've found that a lot of the people willing to 1-star a book without regard to the author are going to be impossible to please."
I mean, yes, as an author I like to look at reviews to see if there is something everyone brings up that might make me think it's something I need to improve on, or something that particularly hit home, but I also know the review isn't written for ME. 
As a reader, my reviews are never meant for the author, but for the fellow reader. 
What kind of "regard" does this author think we do or don't have for the author of the books we review, or rather, that we choose to one star? And why should we have that regard? I don't know if it's what she meant, but it makes it sound like she thinks I should not rate a book one star just because it's rude. But maybe I'm reading too much into it. 

Then she went on: 
"Just because someone left a 1-star review doesn't mean the book is bad or not worth reading, only that the book didn't meet that reader's expectations." And while this is good to remember, she immediately follows it up with "(Or, as I've seen with several Reverse Harem authors, the reader hate-reads the genre just to leave bad reviews, as they know there's no chance of them liking the book.)" 
Now, I know there ARE some people who hate read stuff. And I know there are some people who read multiple in an attempt to give it a chance but then the genre doesn't resonate with them after all. But just how often does this happen to this author that she has to bring it up like this?
It feels like she's trying to make excuses for the many one start ratings on her books (I don't know if there are many, but now I am assuming there are and that the author is a bit bitter about them). 

Also the assumption that 5 star reviews have nothing to give because the majority are "Omg, it was amazing!" and provide no insight on what they didn't like. 
The whole ratings/review section just felt off to me as both reader and writer, I don't know. I could see where she was coming from but it felt off. 

The rest was alright though.

Good for beginners, but not so much if you've already been reading books on the craft. I like that the author shows how she outlines her books. 

A veces no entiendo que ve la gente en ciertos libros. Este ensayo tiene muchas reseñas de 4 y 5 estrellas, pero a mi no me gustó. 
Para empezar la introducción me pareció que poco tenía que ver y fue muy poco interesante, puro relleno para llegar al mínimo de páginas con la que se puede escribir un libro. Las ilustraciones tampoco fueron de mi gusto, más relleno para llegar al mínimo. Y el poema del final, tampoco de mi gusto, porque de por si no soy muy fan de la poesía en general.

En cuanto al ensayo en sí, poco conciso para mi gusto, volvía sobre las mismas cosas una y otra vez, y cuando no, expandía con sinónimos para alargar el texto. Honestamente me parecía más el ensayo de alguien que tenía que llegar a un mínimo de palabras y no sabía qué mas escribir. 

Dicho esto la premisa general (y te ahorro la compra del libro: son simplemente las dos preguntas de la descripción), aunque no es nada nuevo bajo el sol, es interesante. Una pena que a mi parecer no se exploró debidamente en el ensayo.

It's hard to rate this book properly, but I'll round it up to a 4 because I did like it and found it useful (plus I love the author). 

There are 10 exercises in craft contained here. Craft, not ideas, or how to get the soul of the story. It was less exercises than I expected, which was a bit of a bummer, and less varied in subject since they all surrounded the craft (prose and style), and not anything else related to writing. Which is fine; as craft exercises, they were great. Some people deem them a bit simplistic since they do address things you (should have probably) learned in school, but I think even so it's things we often forget to put into practice, specially when we're trying to write entire worlds.
Particularly the chapter on POV is the one people will find more useful, and probably one of the things we all struggle with the most. I know I did.

The examples are not my favorite but they serve to illustrate the points, usually, and I do appreciate them being there. 
I do wish there had been more exercises, a bit more guidance, and certainly more variety not to make them all simply prose/craft related. 

(Review written from a phone. Typos may abound.)

Hm. I, too, can write 20k a day when all I am doing is rambling and repeating the same thing a thousand times.

Less than 10% of this book was actually useful common-sense advice in actionable lists.

35 to 40% of this book was excluaively  the author going "I write over 20k a day. Not many people can. I do. I get paid lots to do it. I make a lot of money ghostwriting. I live on an island and get paid a lot. I'm looking out at the ocean, from my house in an island. Because I get paid a lot. Also I record several podcasts a day and have jobs waiting for me all the time, I make a lot of money off those jobs. In my island. Where I write fast and make money. And I'm dictating this book. From my dock. In my island. Did I mention I make a lot of money ghostwriting?", And then some more was peppered through so I lost count. That was just how far I got with my kindle tracking it before it stopped being full chapters about his awesome life and began inserting that into what should have been useful advice.

The rest of the book was him rambling in between what should have been the meat of the "20k system" and repeating himself over and over.
Give it a hard pass. It's basically "research first, outline, create a writing habit and remove distractions."