themermaddie's reviews
467 reviews

3.5 stars

a really lovely romance! the latter half gets a little violent so tw for physical abuse from an ex, but the characters are sweet and easy to care for. their banter was cute and i love how much communication they had. naya has a lot of past trauma to work through from her abusive ex and i appreciate this book's perspective on how naya learns to start healing.

i also liked how grounded this story felt. i liked that both naya and jake had relationships with friends/family outside of each other, as well as casual acquaintances from work, it made the whole story more real. the conflicts in their relationship were believable and natural for which i was so glad, i can't stand stories with manufactured conflict.

the reason this doesn't get a higher rating is bc while jake and naya are sweet and i was rooting for them, the book as a whole just didn't have that spark for me, the one in romance books that makes me extra giddy, so i can't in good conscience rate it any higher. but i still think this is an objectively well written book with important messages and an easy to love couple.

what a weird little story

4.5 stars

SO BINGEABLE. this book is like speedrunnjng the experience of an entire dating show season, with the articles and gossip columns and all.

bea is such an incredible protagonist, i loved how strong and self assured she is and i think the book did a wonderful job of describing her experiences with fatphobia respectfully. i don't watch a ton of reality tv but after this book i can absolutely understand the appeal now, it was very much written with fans of dating shows in mind. it was so fun to see the behind the scenes with bea, and to watch her progression from keeping all the men at arm's length to realising that she might genuinely be able to form real relationships with some of them was so lovely. it's so easy to get sucked into the drama of Main Squeeze but it's hard to tell which parts are real and which are manufactured, which keeps you on your toes.

i really liked that it wasn't glaringly obvious from the beginning who bea would end up with! it was so nice to get to know these men as real people and watch their relationships with bea develop, they all had their nice qualities and their flaws, they were all their own complex individuals and i loved that bea had different genuine relationships to each of them at the end. i loved getting overly invested in the outcome of the show, even though we could see the manufacturing behind the scenes. this was just such an incredibly addictive and fun dating show romance with some solid relationships and important messages about fatphobia and the way society treats fat people, women in particular. i'm so glad bea got her HEA but mostly i'm happy she found more ways to love herself.

3.5 stars

a really cute romance! i haven't read any of the rest of the series and it was still great, well-developed characters with distinct voices and backstories. second chance love stories aren't typically my thing which is why i'm not rating this higher, but this is a lovely sapphic romance if you like that trope!

i'm not exactly a fan of this, but i also am glad that i read it. it's really interesting to read classics and see how it shaped the genre, and i think APOM did that for me but probably not in a good way. as inventive as the world is, i was really just bowled over by the racist overtones. it's not like i didn't expect it — john carter is a literal confederate soldier and this is the same author who wrote tarzan — but i wasn't expecting it to be so overt about it lol. from john carter's snide remarks about the tharks's community/family structure, their noble savagery, and perceived brutality to the literal feathered headdresses of one tribe and the way dejah thoris is literally just the caricature of a beautiful naked native princess, it's hard to feel like this is a cool and unique alien species when it feels like burroughs just injected a bit of fantasy into native stereotypes. yes i know this was written like two hundred years ago and attitudes have changed; just personally this was the most glaring aspect of the story.

i was actually way more fascinated by the water canals. considering that burroughs was inspired by the theory of the day that mars had water canals on its surface, the idea that a species has been able to live off them is super fascinating. i would've loved to learn more about the canals and the structure of society outwith all the duels to the death for power, and also would've liked more exploration of the atmosphere plant. i had all but forgotten that it existed by the time the ending came around, which felt super left field. really? everyone just wanted to lay down and die EXCEPT john? it's giving white saviour the whole way thru x

3.5 stars

i liked this! i thought molly's anxiety was depicted well and reflected by how frustratingly circular her inner monologue is. she isn't exactly an unreliable narrator, she's just so anxious that you can tell a lot of her assumptions about people stem from her own insecurities and might not actually be true. i liked that the story was mainly a coming of age story and the romance was just one aspect of her growing up; i thought molly's relationship with cassie was great, i love that they had to learn to grow with one another and the love they have for each other is wonderful. the cast is nicely padded out and feel like they could be real people, this book does casually queer relationships well. i get that people shouldn't get brownie points for diversity but this was really refreshing; the narrative talks about queerness but it's never made the main conflict, and i feel like queer characters that aren't just defined their queerness is still a somewhat rare thing so this is a nice book for that. reid is a nice boy, though just a bit bland; he's supposed to be a nerd but the references are kinda cringe, either really dated (hogwarts house debates

this was fine, not bad but also not great. i think it was just trope heavy in a way that wasn't new fresh so by the time we got to the end it was just kind of like ... yeah and?

the elephant in the room: the narrator for max in the audiobook is AWFUL. the voices he does for the female characters are so bad and made me cringe every time we got his pov. like actually terrifying. it literally made me like lina less whenever the max narrator did her voice.

lina and max are cute and well suited to one another but also i'm surprised that andrew didnt feature as heavily as i expected; the main trope is "brother's ex is off limits" and yet i didn't feel like that was the main conflict, lina and max's own personal problems seemed more important. i don't feel like this would be a genuinely viable relationship; i get that lina got over her breakup bc she never truly loved andrew, but after like halfway thru the book, she hardly even factors in the fact that max is andrew's brother. presuming they end up married eventually, that's going to be weird at family gatherings lol. i would've liked a stronger conclusion/reconciliation between the three of them, and i think that andrew and max's relationship could've been stronger as well. for two brothers who supposedly spend their entire lives competing with one another, they felt strangely apathetic towards each other? I would've expected Max to harbour a lot more resentment towards Andrew but he didn't, and I feel like this was a complicated relationship that could've had more nuance.

I liked Lina's family and friends and how much of her culture and family history played into her own doubts in romantic relationship. the #ownvoices aspect was strong and these are likable characters that are easy to root for. the narration and tropes are just a little too on the nose sometimes, like they're just a little too aware of their own flaws as fictional characters? i cant explain it better than that.

this was so cute!! i can't speak to the accuracy of the representation but dev and jia's story are so rich with cultural traditions and obvious care. i loved how developed both of their characters are; they both have interesting and nuanced lives and relationships outwith their romance, and it makes the entire story just so much more enjoyable. i just liked dev and jia as separate characters, they're both very distinct. dev is somehow like, the literal perfect man, sometimes it bordered on unrealistic (but maybe that's my misandry talking<3). both of their families played a big role in the book, and i feel like the author did a good job of navigating their cultural relationships with each other.
the one thing is that it didn't really feel like a fake dating story after a while, i felt like it got dropped pretty early on and it's kind of forgotten after the family gets involved. i really liked how much healthy communication they had with each other, this was just a sweet romance and great to see a hijabi heroine!