DNF @27%. I just can't get into this. I don't really enjoy historical fiction in the best of days so it kinda started at a disadvantage, but almost 10DNF @27%. I just can't get into this. I don't really enjoy historical fiction in the best of days so it kinda started at a disadvantage, but almost 100 pages in and there's nothing compelling about this story for me. I can predict almost exactly what will happen like I saw it in a vision, everything's been explicitly telegraphed already....more
DNF, I don't even remember the page or %. Lots and lots of pages of nothing. I haven't wanted to pick this book back up for around a month now, so it'DNF, I don't even remember the page or %. Lots and lots of pages of nothing. I haven't wanted to pick this book back up for around a month now, so it's time to let go. Left unrated because I don't think it's the book's fault, maybe it becomes amazing later on. Maybe I'll try it again in the future....more
DNF @60%. Started off incredibly strong, but lost all its momentum somewhere around the halfway mark. I couldn't care less about a possible (view spoiDNF @60%. Started off incredibly strong, but lost all its momentum somewhere around the halfway mark. I couldn't care less about a possible (view spoiler)[romance between Laure and Andor (hide spoiler)] which is what the narrative was most interested in when I gave up, and (view spoiler)[Coralie having made a deal of her own was so obvious, I couldn't wait patiently til Laure caught up to me in between her pining after Andor. I skipped forward a few chapters and yep, Coralie did. Whoa, didn't see that coming!! (hide spoiler)]
Left unrated because it's not objectively bad at all- the author is very talented. It's not the book's fault I lost interest, and I'm sure someone else would love where the story was going....more
DNF @39%. Ignore all the reviews saying it's soooooo weiiiiiirrrrrddd; it's incredibly boring and obvious about its themes from the get go, so why shoDNF @39%. Ignore all the reviews saying it's soooooo weiiiiiirrrrrddd; it's incredibly boring and obvious about its themes from the get go, so why should I keep reading if there's nothing to uncover or unpack? What you see is exactly what you get.
The writing is pretty good (I'd love to try the author's other works in the future), but the characters are bland, instead of a plot you just get a bunch of themes strung together as over the top satire (which, like other reviewers have said, feel weirdly outdated. The book reads like it was written and published in the early 2000s with all the emphasis on body image, consumerism, TV, and commercials), and all of it is just boring, a whole lotta nothing. There's a vaguely ominous tone throughout, but it's lost in endless navel gazing of the "newly adult existential angst, I don't know what I'm doing with my life, hardcore dissociating" kind. I know that that genre feels cathartic for many readers, but it doesn't work for me.
2 stars instead of 1 because of the writing....more
I don't care about any of this. It's like the author did absolutely zero planning/ outlining this book, juDNF @66%. I ✨simply cannot do this✨ anymore.
I don't care about any of this. It's like the author did absolutely zero planning/ outlining this book, just started writing with a premise in mind and see where that took him. If he wanted to write a mildly suspenseful, but 90% historical fiction/ western novel, he succeeded, but I went into this expecting a horror book and I got none of that.
The book is way too slow, just skips entire chunks of the narrative (view spoiler)[Adelaide is anxious about surviving the winter with no money and no supplies and no farm, but we then skip all that with a vague 'Uhhhh, Grace helped her'. We also skip the all the development of the relationship between Adelaide and Grace/ Sam, we only see them meeting for the first time, then fast forward, and they've already bonded for life. Same goes for Adelaide's relationship with Matthew. (hide spoiler)] and prefers jumping from character to character randomly without developing any of them. Who ARE those people? I've spent hundreds of pages with them and I've got no idea.
There's no tension. You don't feel anything for the characters even when something bad happens because they're cardboard cutouts, the narrative just tells you that you're supposed to feel something instead of grabbing you by the throat and making you feel it. It's all vibes, no plot, no characters; the setting is lovingly rendered (it's the strongest part of the book), but that's not enough for me.
Yeah, I know, harsh- but I was very disappointed. It started very well (view spoiler)[(how will Adelaide survive? What happened to her parents? What's in the trunk? How will she deal with everyone being openly racist to her (as we saw even from the beginning)? (hide spoiler)] but very quickly dissolved into nothing.
I knew this was over the moment I read the phrase (view spoiler)["Oh, I have plans for your DNA". I tried to keep going, thinking it may be DNF @48%.
I knew this was over the moment I read the phrase (view spoiler)["Oh, I have plans for your DNA". I tried to keep going, thinking it may be a one-off, but turns out that that's Lucy's entire plotline (thanks for confirming it, Scarlet) and it's pretty much all she talks about from that moment onwards. (hide spoiler)]
David Sosnowski, I'm gonna need a 5 page essay from you explaining why, exactly, (view spoiler)[the ONLY female character's, literally the only female character in the book, plotline had to revolve around getting pregnant and feeling a 'responsibility' to push out babies, like we've never seen THAT before, while the male characters are all about just surviving- and even though her pre-apocalypse crisis revolved around an unwanted pregnancy that almost drove her to kill herself. Not to mention the grossness of her 'using' Marcus to do it, with explicit references to him buying condoms but her 'buying every med BUT birth control pills' like some manipulative Dynasty character. (hide spoiler)] Really. DM me.
I was having a lot of fun up until that point, I loved the 'realistic' depiction of an apocalypse (what's gonna happen to all the bodies? Utilities with no one doing maintenance? Animals, wild and domestic?) and I loved the three different flavours of surviving the 3 main characters did. I'd (by mistake) read the prequel, Buzz Kill, 4 years ago and enjoyed it, so I've wanted to pick up Happy Doomsday since then. What a disappointment....more
DNF @16%. I can't do this. We've already veered into trite and corny "Isn't being alive amazing?? Isn't waking up every day a miracle?? And you're takDNF @16%. I can't do this. We've already veered into trite and corny "Isn't being alive amazing?? Isn't waking up every day a miracle?? And you're taking it for granted!" territory that I couldn't care less about. I'm also not a poetry girlie, so I don't care for those sections either.
Left unrated because there's nothing wrong with the book itself, it's just decidedly not for me....more
Left unrated because there's nothing objectively wrong here, it's just too slow and too tell-y instead of shoDNF @54%. I don't care about any of this.
Left unrated because there's nothing objectively wrong here, it's just too slow and too tell-y instead of show-y for me. Also, a Youtuber (can't remember which) described this as a creature feature, and it certainly ain't....more
DNF @13%. Yeah, nah. The pompous/ smug writing style is rubbing me the wrong way, and from reading other reviews I don't think the rest of it will be DNF @13%. Yeah, nah. The pompous/ smug writing style is rubbing me the wrong way, and from reading other reviews I don't think the rest of it will be my cup of tea at all. Left unrated because I think that's a me problem, not that the book is objectively badly written or anything....more
I should've been out the moment I saw, on page 2 or so, that it's a Huge Guy/ Tiny Girl trope, which is generally very popular in romance butDNF @53%.
I should've been out the moment I saw, on page 2 or so, that it's a Huge Guy/ Tiny Girl trope, which is generally very popular in romance but does absolutely nothing for me, so I'm tired of it being in EVERY romance book I've picked up recently (Conversations with Friends, the Brown Sisters books, Beach Read, even freaking The Haunting of Maddy Clare, which wasn't even supposed to be a romance). "The guy is HUGE, a hulking GIANT, his legs are 3km long and barely ever fit under tables!! The girl is teeny tiny, how did this toddler wander in here? She can't reach tall shelves! The guy looms over her constantly but she likes it!"
Look, this is on me entirely. I just wanted an easy breezy read because my other one, Solaris, was getting a bit heavy and complex so I wanted a "turn my brain off" palate cleanser. But I wasn't enjoying any of this. The ~snappy~ dialogue is cringey, it's convenient and forced as hell (especially the show getting big pretty much since day 1, and then ooohhh, social media trolls pop up for some tension!), the characters aren't interesting, and I noped the fuck out the moment the weekend-trip-fake-dating plot popped up. I hate the fake dating trope, I stupidly thought we'd avoid it by having the characters pretend to be exes instead but nope.
I especially hated all the forced drama about Lying to the Listeners!! because they're not really exes, which had to include everyone in the characters' close circles too for some reason. I still don't understand why Shay couldn't tell her mother, for instance. It's literally just storytelling. Of course the listeners couldn't know to keep up the illusion, but why not, like, Ruthie?
Also, I'm 85% sure that the author is either a koreaboo, or a kpop fan at the very least. Dominic is written like a kboo's wet dream, and a lot of the language used to describe him is exactly stuff that kpop fans fixate on. I'd know, I'm a kpop fan myself. "Oh my gosh, I'm attracted to this cute guy who's soooo much younger than me, isn't that WEIRD? Oh my gosh, he's so TALL and clean shaven always, but just a glimpse at his stubble is making me swoon! His long, long legs are miles long!! Oh my GOD, FOREARMS???"
2 stars because I didn't hate it enough for a 1 star. It's just that I didn't care to follow the book wherever it chose to go....more
DNF @about 50%, but I did skip to the end to find out the resolution of it all (mundane and lame doesn't even begin to cover it)
Insufferable navel gaDNF @about 50%, but I did skip to the end to find out the resolution of it all (mundane and lame doesn't even begin to cover it)
Insufferable navel gazing that ultimately went absolutely nowhere, just a bunch of words filling pages. I don't want to read pages and pages of the author analyzing his local supermarket's "We're always here for you, we want to be your friend" generic slogans, especially when all he has to say is a childish "....But I don't want to be your friend, supermarket!".
From my perspective, the author was contractually obligated to write a book, but had no ideas for said book, so he just took a walk around his neighborhood and tried to force ideas to come by the classic "But what if....."/ "Make up a story about this subject, where it came from, where it's going" writing exercises. That didn't work, but he still had to write the book, so he was suddenly hit by an epiphany! He could make it all META, a book narrating the brainstorming process of trying to write a book, but not going anywhere and, in fact, ending exactly where it started! You get to fill the pages without actually saying anything at all! It's the perfect crime!
More like a perfect flop, imo. The quirky, meandering writing worked perfectly when it had equally quirky and absurd characters and scenarios to support it in his A Series of Unfortunate Events/ All the Wrong Questions series, but not here. Absolutely not for me, but I don't know who it's for, either....more
DNF @19%. This book is neither what I expected nor what I wanted, at least not at this time, and I realize that's my own problem entirely so I'm leaviDNF @19%. This book is neither what I expected nor what I wanted, at least not at this time, and I realize that's my own problem entirely so I'm leaving it unrated. Maybe I'll try it again in the future, but I doubt it....more
I think it's time to admit defeat. DNF @63%. Boring as hell, I've been trying to force myself to just finish it already but I can't. It's about time II think it's time to admit defeat. DNF @63%. Boring as hell, I've been trying to force myself to just finish it already but I can't. It's about time I moved on to something else.
Gets 2 stars instead of the usual 1 reserved for DNFs because some of the stories were good....more
DNF @, like, 70%, didn't even check. Just noped out.
Boring, repetitive, and the "virginal, innocent, has never even masturbated but becomes empowered DNF @, like, 70%, didn't even check. Just noped out.
Boring, repetitive, and the "virginal, innocent, has never even masturbated but becomes empowered and confident after having sex" heroine was eyeroll worthy. Had to nope out after the mentions of ~breeding~ when it was clear that that was exactly where the book was headed. Absolutely not....more
It's a no from me @12%. I'm getting flashbacks to The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, another hyped slow burn book that I also abandoned at around It's a no from me @12%. I'm getting flashbacks to The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, another hyped slow burn book that I also abandoned at around 10%. There is absolutely nothing that is making me want to read further and I'm not going to force myself to, I really don't care for the slow burn historical fiction vibe this has. I may try this again in the future, but right now I'm not feeling it at all....more
I can't do this to myself anymore, this isn't worth it and I never want to pick this up. There were some great scenes, especially the opeDNF @pg 142.
I can't do this to myself anymore, this isn't worth it and I never want to pick this up. There were some great scenes, especially the opening chapter, but they're completely lost in all the slog.
Hating 1 of the 2 POV narrators certainly isn't helping matters, but looking at the other reviews, no one else likes Sam either. I'm also gonna have to echo (see what I did there?) the other reviewers in not wanting to read another "cuz" "hadda" "shoulda" ever again. I understand that the translator probably just wanted to make the two POVs completely different so the reader wouldn't feel like they're reading the same person the entire time (a very common problem with multiple POV narrators), and it's actually not even the translator's fault at all but the author's, because Sam's chapters are already irksome enough even without the haddas. Boo hoo for being so superficial that you want to leave your boyfriend because they're not pretty anymore, prick.
But the biggest problem is the pacing, which is glacier slow (geddit? I'm on fire today). I read practically 150 pages and only about 40 -at most- of those were of any substance. The rest is complete nonsense of both narrators suddenly getting distracted from whatever they were talking about and going on endless tangents that no one cares about, least of all me. I'm not saying that this should be an endless-action-can't-stop-won't-stop book, but there's a huge difference from that to the author just loving his own voice so much that, well, he won't stop. Where the hell was the editor for this?...more
It's time to admit that I don't want to keep reading this book any longer. DNF @44%. It has its merits but it's just repeating the same things over anIt's time to admit that I don't want to keep reading this book any longer. DNF @44%. It has its merits but it's just repeating the same things over and over again (particularly "Just chill out and don't expect results immediately in any endeavor, don't believe those "[Do thing] in 4 hours!!!" self help books") and I don't care for that.
Left unrated because, again, it has its merits so I don't want to lower its rating because it may genuinely help someone, but I (obviously) didn't enjoy it all that much and I feel it really shouldn't be as long-winded as it is....more
Dropping a book at only 10% may seem like I barely even read any of it and I can't possibly have an opinion yet, but this is a massiveDNF @10%.
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Dropping a book at only 10% may seem like I barely even read any of it and I can't possibly have an opinion yet, but this is a massive book of 432 pages, and 10% is 42 pages; I've read almost 50 pages of absolutely NOTHING. Not a single character (and we've barely seen any) seems interesting, the plot hasn't even started, and the setting of "remote rich people manor surrounded by forest" is beyond boring; just as boring as the dry writing style and the idiot protagonist, who jumps to conclusions like it's an Olympic sport and they're trying for gold. I'm not wasting any more time with this book, the premise is intriguing as hell but the execution ain't it....more
No one is surprised that I gave up. I'm gonna copy paste one of my updates here and edit it slightly as my final thoughts on this book:
This bDNF @53%.
No one is surprised that I gave up. I'm gonna copy paste one of my updates here and edit it slightly as my final thoughts on this book:
This book was constantly reminding me why I don't read high fantasy: too freakin' long, super old fashioned (all male cast, all the women described as seductresses, old timey dialogue of "my lord"-s and "my lady"-s, no science, of course pirates, set in a vaguely medieval-European-city) (oh, and Calo, Galdo and Bug were annoying), and requires a lot of brainpower to piece the story together because the combo of detailed worldbuilding and plot is so damn complex; nothing wrong with any of that, it's just not really my thing. My little pea brain couldn't handle it, so I'll just leave it to the seasoned fantasy buffs. It's not my genre.
Left unrated even though I usually give my DNFs 1 star, because the story was well-written, and I could recognize it was doing something and going somewhere. I just didn't care to join it....more
DNF @23%. A classic case of "it's not the book, it's me", because this was nothing like I thought it'd be and that's the reason for my disappointment;DNF @23%. A classic case of "it's not the book, it's me", because this was nothing like I thought it'd be and that's the reason for my disappointment; the book is what it is, it's not its fault it's not what I wanted. I was expecting more of a memoir writing style instead of a pseudo-motivational, this-could-be-one-of-those-tapes-you-listen-to-in-your-sleep/ a self help seminar that uses a lot of "we" language to emphasize that we're all in this together. It's not "you", it's us~
I'm not giving this a rating even though I usually give my DNFs a 1 star, because I think that someone could really benefit from this book. I just wasn't that person, and that's okay....more
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