vickycbooks's reviews
871 reviews

Hmm...I liked the plot and setting, but I just wasn't a huge fan of the main characters' dynamic. Second chance romance is one of my least favorite tropes and I thought some of the dynamic between Nena and Nestor was just very stilted. Nateras' and Gonzales' narration was still great, and I'd be excited to read what Isabel Cañas puts out in the future.

Thanks to Libro.fm for the complimentary copy, I listened on 1.8- 2.3x speed.

I enjoyed this! I really liked Montserrat's no-nonsense attitude, she makes a very practical protagonist who still falls prey to her own flaws (being defensive, overly practical, becoming too obsessed with something etc.) sometimes. The 90s setting was both atmospheric and relevant to the plot, and the horror movie focus makes SILVER NITRATE a great read for people who were fans of PLAIN BAD HEROINES. 

SILVER NITRATE was suspenseful and with a lot of plot and supernatural elements, but there was also a lot of very tender character development of Montserrat and Tristan. I thought Moreno-Garcia developed their characters in a very layered way

and I think their ending together is very sweet

. Overall, I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys spooky, supernatural infused adult suspense novels. (Think PLAIN BAD HEROINES, THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS, HOUSE OF HUNGER). 

Read as an audiobook courtesy of Libro.fm, on 1.5-2.2x speed! Gisela Chipe's narration matched Montserrat's character really well.

Better than the first installment!! Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu are really growing on me, as expected, and I've grown more used to The System. Impossible to choose my favorite MXTX pair these days...

Overall I enjoyed this! It's very slice of life -- yes, there's a little bit of plot, but it's very much character-centric focusing on Bianca and Obadiah and this time of transition in both of their lives. The audio narration by two narrators was done very well!

Read on audio at 1.7x speed, courtesy of Libro.fm! 

This was cute! It's very firmly centered in the YA romance sphere, and is perfect for, as advertised, fans of Sandhya Menon, Jenny Han, and Tashie Bhuiyan. 

Very much enjoying this -- it has all the elements that make me love an MXTX novel. The transmigration element has been really interesting, especially near the end of this installment. Would definitely recommend to fans of MDZS and TGCF!

It's been a while since I've read the first two books, but this is the first installment that I've read in ebook rather than audiobook format. I'm not sure whether this was the cause or it was the book itself, but this installment feels like it just lacks bite. It was very much travelling cleric, and missed some of the magic and wonder of the other installments. INTO THE RIVERLANDS was, in many ways, about the tiredness of storytelling (potentially because it was written in 2021). Chih and Almost Brilliant were still equally protagonists / narrators, but I do wish there was something more in INTO THE RIVERLANDS that the previous installments had. 

Scarily realistic...

I definitely think YELLOWFACE is one of those books that is unputdownable and horrifyingly believable. But I don't know. In a lot ways, I think it could have been a lot better. And I know it's hard writing books etc., but something in it left me yearning for more. People unfamiliar with the industry will certainly be drawn in by its idiosyncrasies, but to me? Everything was "old news," even if was fictional and not actually news. (I can think of real life Twitter events that even perfectly fits

June getting a sales boost because right-wing people championed her book as standing up to cancel culture...woof

.)

I don't know. YELLOWFACE just didn't really scratch the itch, narrative wise. I don't disagree that what Kuang has written about the industry is realistic, but I also felt like YELLOWFACE could have been better. I felt like it was drowned in so many opinions that it took away from the meat of the story -- not the publishing commentary and meta bits, but the actual story of the terrible things June is doing. I guess I wanted it to be more thriller, more horror, but there was so much publishing drama that it just felt like I was in 2019 again. 

I also feel like the actual bits about yellowface, not publishing in general, could have been stronger. I feel like Kuang tries to do something with the complexity of Athena, but ultimately, all of the nuance of the Asian characters introduced is kind of lost, mired in June's racism. The white racist perspective rendered a lot of Kuang's attempts at introducing an Asian perspective confusing and easily misconstrued. I really don't know what she was trying to say with Athena (or maybe not trying to say anything at all???), even though I fully understand the parts about Athena's character that Kuang puts forward. I think it's ultimately just really hard to tackle non-monolithic topics when you're writing from a racist perspective, but I still wish that Kuang did it better. Somehow. 

I don't think words can express the disdain I have for this book. Readers may not know this, but Batavia is now called Jakarta, which is a city in Indonesia. The book does not mention this at all. I can understand the lack in content of the story, but the foreword?? Would have been nice if this was literally mentioned ever. 

This encapsulates the core issue of this book. It's one giant colonial mess. It's a historical mystery set during the Dutch East India Company's reign in Indonesia (the story is set slightly in Indonesia, but largely on the sea route between Indonesia and Amsterdam), and it has <strong>absolutely no Indonesian characters</strong>. Because it's a book entirely about colonizers, and devises an entire mystery plot around the colonizers. 

It paints our hero and heroine (Arrant and Sara - spelling is unconfirmed, I listened on audio) in sympathetic lights, despite them being complicit in the exploitation and exportation of goods from a Dutch colony. 

It tries to pull at the kind of mystery of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie, yet falls desperately short because of its utter lack of critical awareness of the context. THE DEVIL AND THE DARK WATER wants you to be engrossed in the story and forget what you know about history. It wants these colonizers on the ship to be the center of your world, and the only time Indonesian natives are mentioned is when

literally an entire island of men, women, and children are brutally murdered off-page

. 

I am baffled. I am very nearly speechless. I do not recommend this book at all.