I picked this one for a fluff distraction and it drew me in. The conflicts were predictable from the get go, and when you know the endgame, as you do in romance novels, any distraction relationships are kind of boring (I skipped large parts of the cruise).
But, the characters totally worked for me and so I enjoyed the ride. Sweet story. It's been a while since Kallmaker created characters that I'll fondly remember for a while, so I was happy for that.
Also, remarkably typo free for a Bella novel.
Can't get through it. The shallow descriptions of women really annoy me. Sexy seems to be the most important qualifier. I guess I was hoping for something more substantive as I've found in other trans autobiographies.
I liked. The characters, both primary and secondary, are really fun and the story flows nicely. The drama is foreseeable, but knowing her other books, I didn't expect a deviation from the same old, same old.
On the enjoyment scale, the book would deserve an extra star, but I had one issue with it that made me almost quit reading after a few pages.
It was an interesting lesson in dealing with the limitations of a first person narrator. I often have problems with it, but Glory's voice really worked for me. Kind of chatty, not too annoyingly funny, kind of like Georgia Beers' Avery in Starting from Scratch.
Galli dealed with the limitations in an annoying way: Interspersed were some diary entries from the other primary character to learn more about her side of things. ANNOYING!! The first diary entry was really lame and its function blatantly obvious: Getting to know Lena. That's when I almost quit. I'm glad I didn't, but I think the book would have worked just as well without them. There has to be more skillful way to add this information in a first person narration or a way to make do without it.
This was a weird reading experience. I went from annoyed, to placated, to very annoyed, in between really liking parts of the story.
What initially drew me to the novel was the description of the main character as a boi. That sounded like it at least hat the potential to break out of the lesfic mold. That hope didn't come true.
The novel falls into several romace novel cliches that make it boring and predictable. A lot of my annoyance my reading was pre-emptive, knowing how certain things would turn out due to genre constraints. There is instant one-sided love without knowing the other person, there's the sudden ending once they get together. In between there are instances in which you have to suspend disbelief and just carry on without analyzing things too closely. Unfortunately these involve the main conflict of the novel, the fact that the two main characters are part of a life coaching relationship, as in coach and coachee. How that relationship comes to be is the first instance of WTF. Which life coach would take on a client that was tricked into meeting her and then confesses to having a massive crush on her?
However, I found the characters to be really well-developed. The secondary ones as well, mostly. Some were cut short due to the narrative POV that was chosen so that, e.g., the turn of the dramatic conversation between the sisters was a surprise to the reader as well. The POV puzzled me a couple of times. The story flows nicely, it only seems hurried sometimes. They both battle their own demons, but it turns out that the coach actually has a lot more me-problems and Joey turns out to be the stable, secure one. I liked that switch and that it was believable.
The end then made me mad again. It is the traditional romance ending. They get together and boom, over. It bugged me specifically here as the life coach's career is in upheaval due to her relationship with a former client. There is a short discussion with her own mentor about this, but no hints whatsoever how she will resolve that important aspect in her life. Now, of course these things are unimportant when you experience (post) coital bliss, but the novel feels incomplete without having that resolved. I was especially mad because it feels like this would have been a better story if it was not boxed in the romance format. So much more could have been explored, especially since the characters were well-developed and ready to be part of a great novel about the conflicts they experienced.
Meh. Somewhere Meagher lost the magic or I changed. Both are entirely possible.
I used to love the time Meagher took to explore her characters, but when I want to slap both main characters, that attention to detail can be tedious. I skipped through some parts of book (mainly towards the end) because I really didn't care. Despite those details, I failed to really get a grasp on the characters.
This end of the novel unfortuantely follows romance formula in that the book ends hastily once they get together and then a meaningless epilog is tacked on. You could argue here that all the conflicts were resolved in the time they worked/lived together, still I figure that that final shift in the relationship would have deserved more time.
I hate when I don't like a book enough to not finish it and yet being somewhat unable to pin down the reasons I don't like it.
Something here doesn't work. I'm not a fan of the writing style. On the one hand it's overly descriptive, sometimes down to minute details. I hardly ever have the need to edit something I'm reading, but here I used my imaginary red pen excessively, crossing out entire paragraphs. Then there's the tone, and here I have problems pinning it down. I don't think the setting of the story is specified, time-wise. I assume it takes place in the present, and yet, there's a decidedly 50s feel to it. Kind of a happy place, yet the entire time, also thanks to the blurb, bad things are looming. This gives it a decidedly melodramatic feel, just like a 1940/50s melodramatic movie. It's just too much.
I certainly don't need happy books, I can deal with most everything you throw my way, but apparently I draw the line at too much melodrama.
I never quite got a feel for the characters, they didn't have distinct voices.
Overall, the novel lacks life. It's all very generic and planned out but doesn't draw me in at all.
All these books take place in a group of friends/softball rivals. YA romances dealing with first love, coming out, etc.
The blurbs suggest way more drama/conflict than actually takes place, which isn't a bad thing, just that blurb and content don't match.
Nice, mindless reads (I read them all back to back and have to admit they all blurr in my mind). Strong, queer, characters with different sets of problems so that the whole gamut is covered. Unfortunately it reads and feels like the characters never left the drawing board stage and don't really come to life. The writing isn't very good, this may also be a reason that characters don't feel more real. They have clear roles and purposes to fulfill. I realize I'm not the target audience, but I think teenagers as well would appreciate better writing.
I'm repeating myself, but now that I know what YA writing can be like (Malinda Lo), I can't help but compare things with her world, and other things keep falling short.
But I still couldn't put them down. Go figure.
7th in the Micky Knight series.
It was paced a lot slower than previous novels and only picked up speed towards the end, but hey, even Micky gets older, I guess.
I enjoyed the ride and had my heart broken in between, but this series always manages to do so. I was surprised that a storyline that hit very close to home didn't have me more emotionally involved. I'm such a crybaby when it comes to books and movies, but nope, no tears here. I don't know why.
It was a very Micky-centric novel, and I missed reading more about her friends. They were kinda there, but not really.
But it was good. Katrina still dominates their lives in so many ways, amidst the many tragedies in this novel, that is the greatest one.
I hope the typos etc. will be removed in the final copy, there were more than is usual for BSB, I think.
I feel the rating is somewhere between 3 and 4 stars mainly because I really didn't feel the first person narrative worked very well in the beginning. But the character really grew into her voice, or the other way around.
Four stars because this is a book just the way I like it and would like to see more of in lesfic. Not a romance, thank you very much, just a story about life that includes love, but so much more as well.
Very satisfying read dispite my problems in the beginning.
Meh. Didn't manage to hold my attention at all.
Volume 8:
I liked this a little bit better than the last one. Hardly any Angel helped ;)
For some reason I thought this was the last one in the series, but it ends on a cliffhanger, so I guess there's more?
We'll see if I'm curious enough to continue. There were some elements in this I really liked.
In the meantime I've read the season 9 is going back to the basics more. I'd enjoy that a lot more, so not all hope is lost yet.
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