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bythenineshards · 2 years

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Hi, I saw you mention something about dresses that your characters wear and I (as someone who has compiled a Pinterest board of over 12k dresses (that’s just the long ones not even accounting for other stuff)) would love to see them if you’re willing to share. Also what are you writing?

Hey! I'd be happy to show you the dresses.

If you'd like some context I'll private message you 😊 So... I'm not gonna answer the writing stuff publicly. I'm not trying to be rude or anything. I actually really want to talk about them. But I also don't want my distaste with Sjm to push potential readers away from my books. But I can totally dm you and talk your ear off about them. I might do it anyway lol.

I will say that I have a few in the works. A fantasy romance involving the Fae, though they're very different from Acotar. A historical romance ala less problematic Bridgerton for my mom who doesn't like fantasy even if it's focusing heavily on romance. A slice of life duology set in an Epic fantasy world. A weird retelling of Cinderella set in the same fantasy world. There's a bunch of other stories but the ones mentioned above are the ones I have the entire thing planned out. I can definitely talk your ear off about those too.

A lot of my books are the sorts of stories I want to read. The relationships I want to see. And honestly giving young women female characters who aren't shamed for being unabashedly themselves. There's no gatekeeping of feminine traits and I work hard for my worlds to be feminist by literally just having female warriors and it's not questioned. I hope that makes sense. Like there isn't this feeling that a female character who likes being a homemaker is silly compared to a warrior. Or a woman has to be interested in masculine things to be strong. Also I consider my romances to fun, sexy and actually healthy. I just want people to feel welcome in my world. I would like to mention though that none of my stories involve big epic wars. Frankly, I'm sick of those.

They're slow going because of work, weather and just life in general but come winter it'll get better.

#ask holly #ask box #ask #my asks #I wish I wasnt afraid #I'd talk nonstop about my characters and books

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bermudianabroad · 5 years

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Summer reads, make me feel fine….

You’re welcome for that pun.

I’ve posted up everything what I read over the summer, since I have to go back to work tomorrow. :’( A bit rich to complain seeing as I had about six weeks off, but it’s my blog so I can complain if I want to.

I seem to have had a thing for blue covers…

Lots of sci-fi has been read since June. Flowers for Algernon is an old classic and I did enjoy it very much. I was expecting it to be a little dated, but it really hadn’t aged as much as I thought. The Illustrated Man had some truly excellent tales filled with chisel-necked, manly Astronauts who smoked their way across the galaxy, away from their women and headlong into mystery and heroic adventures. There were a few stories that presented like thought experiments that Bradbury didn’t know how to fully develop or write his way out of, but overall I feel compelled to seek out more of his stuff, and honestly, I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to read something other than Fahrenheit 451.

Hands down the best sci-fi I found was Invisible Planets: 13 Visions of the Future from China. A real mix of imaginations in this anthology; futuristic fairy-tales, myth and space opera, dystopian noir and mind-bending architectural feats that sculpt new realities. It’s not all tech-horror either, one of the best stories comes with a dash of optimism. Imagine that!

Also from China was Cat Country, about an astronaut who finds himself stranded on a humanoid-cat inhabited Mars. The once powerful Cat People’s civilization is crumbling from centuries of decadence and corruption and our Earthling fears he will never return home. I can’t recommend this story on plot alone, and honestly, unless you’re really into early 20th century sci-fi and 1920s Chinese politics and satire, maybe give it a miss.

Another thing you can give a miss is wild embers: poems of rebellion, fire and beauty which just read like Instagram caption empty self-affirmation wankery. Unoriginal and repetitive.

The Female Man was fun- read if you’ve gotten through everything of Margaret Atwood’s and are super impatient for her forthcoming Handmaid’s Tale follow-up. It’s gloriously nutty and weird and not at all easy to follow. More like a serious of biting comments and half-dreamt sci-fi fantasy than a novel. In the interest of full disclosure I didn’t manage to finish it before I had to return it to the library and I’m not sure I missed out on anything. Read if you fancy a challenge and to add a notch to your obscure feminist sci-fi literature bedpost.

For something equally feminist and easier to follow, try The Word for Wilderness is Woman which is a work of fiction that reads like a travel-manifesto. Our protagonist sets out for Alaska to be the female Walden/Thoreau because why should boys get to have all the epic wilderness adventures? What follows is a meandering meditation on nature, connectedness, feminism, masculinity, self and independence. Surprisingly funny as well.

The very best book I read over the summer has to be The Housekeeper and the Professor which was a very easy going and gentle tale of… exactly what it says in the title. The professor is a professor of mathematics with a severe long term memory problem- he can only retain information for 80 mins, so every day the housekeeper has to reintroduce herself and put up with the professor’s strange obsession with numbers and finding odd connections between seemingly unrelated things. It’s a genuinely warm and happy story with some intellectual bite to counteract any tweeness. I’d love for more people to read this.

It was a toss up between Strange Heart Beating and Lavinia for second favourite book. Lavinia was just a really well written and readable meta- retelling of the Aeneid from a very minor side character. Strange Heart Beating was a darkly comic tale of grief and mystery.

Everything Else: Solar Bones was a gigantic run-on sentence from the thoughts of a dead guy brought back to his kitchen which was good and enjoyable but only read it if you are not daunted by a lack of punctuation or a sudden switch in a narrator’s train of thought like that train you used to take to school with your grandad and his hand taking you by the hand and the hand you held which looked so old now and his hand and your hand and the veins and wrinkles and the passage of time back and forth it goes fuck

The Bees a selection of poetry that was fine is not particularly memorable. A Short History of Women wanted to say something about the state of feminism and female sufferage and struggle but I’m not sure what. Of Dogs and Walls was good, but I can’t say I remember what the stories were about weeks later. So Many Island caught my eye because there was a Bermudian writer in it, but overall it was a bit of an uneven selection of stories.

And that, my friends, is the end.

#books #reviews #poetry #fiction #a whole mess of things #solar bones #wild embers #yoko ogawa #strange heart beating #lavinia #ursula k le guin #the word for wilderness is woman #the bees #the female man #feminist literature #summer reads #retro scifi #science fiction #chinese science fiction

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tinyshipper · 6 years

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Why Canada needs quality queer entertainment

Carmilla's Natasha Negovanlis reflects on the responsibility of queer entertainers, both on screen and off

By Natasha Negovanlis @natvanlis February 7, 2017

I remember the day I booked the now-hit web series Carmilla like it was yesterday. I was so ecstatic I performed an awkward little happy dance to the dust bunnies in my bedroom when I received the call from my talent agent. I had never wanted to land a part so intensely. From the moment I read the character breakdown for the titular role, this unexplainable and innate feeling told me it was a role I had to play. Maybe it’s because playing a vampire was something I had always wanted to cross off my “acting bucket list,” or because Carmilla was described as being “capable of profound loneliness” and that spoke to me. But mostly, I think it’s because it would finally give me the opportunity to portray a lesbian on screen—and one who actually gets her fairytale ending.

As a pansexual woman, I grew up watching the only lesbian show that was available to me over and over again. It was Showtime’s The L Word, and when I first started to realize I was also romantically interested in women, it was my saving grace. As it flickered on the television in my teenage bedroom, I recall thinking how cool it was and hoped for the courage to be out and proud. Now my own fans tell me they have a similar experience when binge-watching episodes of our little show on YouTube, and it’s gratifying to be a role model.

If you’re not familiar with the show, Carmilla is a modern retelling of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s gothic novella of the same name. Written 25 years before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the original story is considered the first vampire tale by some historians, and that it was Le Fanu who created the negative, oversexualized lesbian vampire trope. Nearly 150 years later, the story was revamped into a video-blog–style adaptation that takes a cautionary tale about the “dangers” of female sexuality and turns it on its head. Instead of an outdated homophobic story, the team created a version of Carmilla that offers both a queer-positive and feminist narrative. The importance of such a series resonated with many, and received a great deal of support in return, from executive producer U by Kotex, branded entertainment agency shift2, and production company Smokebomb Entertainment.

There are too many places in the world—unfortunately, even in Canada—where being anything but heteronormative is still not accepted. In some cases, it’s even illegal and many people in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community (especially youth) feel alienated, isolated, and sometimes even suicidal. Many turn to scripted content for escape—but finding positive portrayals can prove difficult. Studies have shown that the landscape of media is slowly changing for the better: a GLAAD media report examining 2016 television series found almost five percent of characters were identified as LGBTQ+. But too often, lesbian characters’ stories end in misery: these women die, have breakdowns, or end up heartbroken. It fuels the misguided idea that there is something wrong with being queer.

That’s why it is so imperative that queer characters are no longer misrepresented in film and television. And that is why I think Carmilla is such an important and successful show: because it stars the queer heroes that LGBTQ fans deserve.

Carmilla is the full escape. It’s young adults solving mysteries and fighting evil in their supernatural university. It’s action and adventure, whimsy and campiness. Sexuality isn’t in the foreground, and it isn’t a harrowing coming-out story (albeit, coming-out stories are important to share too) but it still features an honest and realistic lesbian relationship—one that has resonated with fans.

I first realized how important queer representation in entertainment was in August 2014, when I was shooting the first season of Carmilla. We filmed it in only four days, over two blocks of shooting, and after the first block we released six episodes that began trending online. While sitting in hair and makeup, one of my co-stars showed me the first piece of fan art someone had posted on social media of my character. It was a charming pencil sketch of me as the broody gay vamp, attached to a virtual “thank you” letter. My heart melted and it brought me to tears. That is when I knew I was part of something bigger.

Today, Carmilla has three seasons, a prequel, a holiday special, more than 50 million views worldwide, and will soon be a feature film. One simple piece of fan art has become tens of thousands of creations, and it’s a digital phenomenon that allows me travel to comic conventions, media events, panels, and more.

But for me, it’s not about red carpets and the illusion of glamour. It’s about feeling the warm energy a room full of fans gives off, and meeting parents who say to me, “Thanks for telling my kid they’re worthy.” It’s the lives and perspectives that have been changed forever.Carmilla is one of few positive queer love stories available on screen for LGBTQ+ audiences, and it is important for me not take for granted the gift of social responsibility that I have been given with this show. I hope to continue to accurately and fairly represent queer women, even as I shift into writing and producing content of my own. My heart and eyes have been forced wide open, and I encourage others to think critically about the media they’re consuming—all because of our fans, and a little web series that could. [x]

#natasha negovanlis #nat vanlis #carmilla #carmilla movie #representation matters #So proud of her #lgbtq

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howlsmovinglibrary · 7 years

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All of the question tags!!

Damn, it seems that this is what happens when you run out of phone data and are away from wifi for a while. The 11 questions tags take over.

Imma gonna answer every tag that I can find in this one long post, and sweet jesus I’m not tagging anyone in this particular chain, for fear of starting some kind of infinite loop that eventually becomes sentient and takes over the world.

So, time to seriously overshare!!

From @books-are-portals

1. Favourite mythological being (of any kind)?

It’s a tie between dragons and unicorns, and you know what that means…..FIGHT!

2. Least favourite drink?

I hate coke/diet coke/pepsi/cola. I’m quite intolerant to caffeine in large doses, so the last time I drank a glass of coke, at like 4pm in the afternoon probably about 8 years ago, it kept me away until 3am D:

3. What book(s) do you recommend for everyone?

The Wicked and the Divine comics. It’s hella diverse, the art is amazing, and it’s about insanely powerful magical pop star gods. EVERYONE SHOULD READ.

4. Can you touch the tip of your nose with your tongue?

No – I have both an incredibly small nose and a very stubby tongue.

5. Least favourite book protagonist?

Ummm, bar all the protagonists from classics that I could endlessly moan on about all day and all night (I’m looking at you, Pamela), I’m going to say Zoey from The House of Night series, for all her toxic slut shaming, double standards, and just generally horribly written narrative voice (‘bullpoopy’ is a word that will forever be branded on my mind).

6. What TV show/film makes you happy?

Brooklyn Nine Nine is my go-to happy tv show, Spirited Away/Howl’s Moving Castle are the film equivalent.

7. Favourite trope?

Anything where a platonic friendship (particularly between two women) gets prioritised above a romantic relationship.

8. What piece of fictional technology would you like to have?

An alethiometer from HDM – it tells you the truth, but not enough to stop you from being in control of your own fate (the beauty of a book about free will, I guess.)

9. Finish sentence: I didn’t get enough sleep last night because…

…my back aches from lugging all my books to storage.

10. Favourite food to eat when you’re feeling down?

To be honest, it’s probably toast (with peanut butter if it’s been a really bad day).

11. Can you knit?

I can, but I can’t knit well. If you want a scarf, I can, in theory, do that. Anything that isn’t just one uniform band of the same stitch and I am not the person for the job.

********

From @heretherebebooks

1. Have you ever fallen out of love with a book? Why?

There are a lot of standard answers: ACOTAR, Twilight, etc. but my most recent is Borderline by Mishell Baker – I really like books with ‘unlikeable’ protagonists so I gave this a very high rating on first review, but I didn’t realise how damaging this representation of BPD is until I read multiple own voices reviews on the subject.

2. What’s the strangest book-related dream you’ve ever had?

I have a lot of book dreams which feature me as the protagonist in my favourite fantasy novels, but then when I try to use magic to defend myself my brain goes ‘but Emma, magic doesn’t exist’ and so I’m suddenly facing down a demon hoard with no powers whatsoever.

3. Have you read a book that you didn’t really appreciate until later on?

Ash by Malinda Lo is the main one for this, because I didn’t appreciate that Ash is not supposed to get with the unbelievably hot fairy prince…until I reread five years later and saw that the hot fairy prince is a dick.

4. What book would you like to see a musical adaptation of? (Bonus: any ideas for song titles?)

To be honest, I just want Starkid to do a ‘A Very Potter Musical’ version of Cursed Child and watch the fanfiction of the fanfiction.

5. Have you ever thrown a book across the room? What was it?

Ms Marvel Volume 4 (my ship was sunk…for now, anyway).

6. What book cover do you absolutely hate? How would you redesign it?

The Falconer and Dark Days Club UK covers are just super tacky – I’d take the Falconer US covers, and replace the Dark Days standard ‘pretty woman in fragile looking pose’ covers with either ‘plain looking woman fighting a fuck tonne of demons’ or just ‘fuck tonne of demons’, which is what the story is about anyway.

7. Have you ever cosplayed a character? Who?

I’m read this question at a con while dressed as Newt Scamander, so…. (last year I was Violet from the Rat Queen comics).

8. What’s the last book that made you want to scream from the rooftop?

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty (the thing I screamed was “MURDER. IN. SPAAAACEEE!” when my housemate asked me what it was about, although I was not on a rooftop at the time.)

9. What’s your favourite subgenre?

My new favourite is ‘geeky contemporary’, bonus points if it’s ‘geek convention contemporary’ (Queens of Geek, Geekerella, Unconventional)

10. If you could bring an author back to life to write one more book, who would it be?

I think Angela Carter could write one hell of a feminist YA fairy tale retelling, so I’m gonna bring her back.

11. Mug full of tea on your bed - yay or nay?

I just….I don’t live life this dangerously xD

*********

From @bookcub:

1. Who was the last character you related to and what were they from?

Luca from The Burning City by Amanda Foody – he was basically the reason I kept reading that book, which otherwise wasn’t really my cup of tea, despite being a perfectly good book. He was the love interest, and was explicitly demiromantic. Although I’m not entirely sure where I place on the ace spectrum, and also felt that his portrayal was a little bit too cut and dry – with no sexual attraction until the MC shows up and then all the sexual attraction immediately at once with not really any grey area – his indifferent attitude towards sex as a general concept until those feelings latch onto a specific person, and his hesitation surrounding how to handle a relationship when it’s not something he’s has to consider before that point, were both very relatable for me. It certainly fitted my experience a little better than Tash Hearts Tolstoy.

2. What’s your favorite genre of music?

Hmmm…there’s a wide range but I guess singer songwriter covers it? I care more about a song’s lyrics than what genre it’s in.

3. Which tags on tumblr do you follow and why?

*whispers* I still don’t really understand how following tags works…..(someone plz explain)

4. Do you have any book related jewelry?

I have a necklace of an owl delivering a Hogwarts letter, and Howl’s earrings from the Ghibli movie.

5. Thoughts on booklr being dead?

I think the parts of booklr that were active a few years ago might be dead, but that’s just one specific group of people and they’ve probably moved on for a reason. Given it’s only in the last year or so that I’m getting notes and making friends, if booklr truly is dead then it seems that I’m either a necromancer, or having one hell of a party in the graveyard.

6. What are some of your favorite picture books from when you were a kid?

We’re Going On a Bear Hunt is the classic (my parents used to sing it to me to get me to go on hikes). When I could read for myself, Varjak Paw.

7. What’s the first book you remember reading or being read to you?

My dad read me the first and half of the second Harry Potter books on the Eurostar train from London to Disneyland Paris.

8. What’s your favorite dystopian novel and why?

Hmmm, I’m not really a fan of dystopias all that much (more of a fantasy person), but I really like the Wolf by Wolf series, which I think counts due to it being alt. history, and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. The first because a) it has fantasy elements, and b) A* character development over the duology. The second because it was the first ‘literary’ book I read for school and enjoyed, and because the TV show has been one of my favourite things this year.

9. Where do you get/buy most of your books?

Truthfully, Amazon. I’m trying to do better now that I’m no longer strapped for cash.

10. Favorite animal?

Cats. Fluffy, smooshy faced cats in particular ^^.

11. What book release are you anxious for (one you know the release date for) (yeah that means not Doors or Stone)

It’s a toss-up between The Stone Sky by NK. Jemisin (which is out like, next week!!), Provenance by Ann Leckie, and Warcross by Marie Lu.

**********

From @accidentalspaceexplorer:

1. What do you think of science fiction?

I think it is good when written well, where the focus on world building doesn’t leave the characters one dimensional. Unfortunately I also think it is coded masculine in a number of ways - the focus on a ‘logical, technological’ world rather than ‘illogical’ femme coded magic - which means that sometimes I find it quite an frustrating and alienating genre.

2. What’s one of your pet peeves?

Mansplaining. Currently there’s this really horrible man at my book club who keeps trying to explain narrative to me and I’m like, dude, I’m an English Literature graduate.

3. If you could pick one magic system to exist in real life, what would it be?

Oh, fuck. There’s so many that would be amazing, but I think the main I always gravitate back to is Elemental magic a la the Avatar universe, because that was the first type of magic system I fell in love with.

4. What is your favorite tree?

Cherry blossom

5. Do you have any plants around the house?

I do not own any personally, but my housemate has like fifteen spider plants to which I like to think I am a caring godmother figure.

6. What is the book with the weirdest premise that you’ve read and would recommend?

The Jane Austen Project - time travellers go back to Regency era Britain to befriend Austen and try to steal one of her lost manuscripts.

7. Have you loved books for as long as you can remember, or was there a particular event that sparked you becoming a reader?

As long as I can remember - I remember giving a presentation in class about how I was going to be any author at age 9.

8. What is your favorite recipe?

Lemon meringue cake - cake, lemon curd, a fuck tonne of meringue, what’s not to love?

9. Do you reread books? If not, why not? If so, what’s one that you reread again and again?

Yes. Always reread. My three main ones are The Dark Days Club, Uprooted, and (of course) Howl’s Moving Castle.

10. What’s your favorite weather?

Cold sunshine in winter.

11. Do you read every day?

Pretty much (I read on my lunch break at work).

I think that’s every outstanding question answered - sorry if I’ve missed anyone!

#11 question tag #some would say 'too many questions' tag #about me #some would say 'too much' about me

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alittlebook-ish · 6 years

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My 5 Best & Worst Books of 2017

So, for one of my first personal posts, I thought it would be a great idea to kind of round up the tops and bottoms of my 2017 books as a way to get to know me as a reader and what I like and don’t like in a book/story/etc. So here they are in chronological order with #1 being the best/worst.

My Top 5 Books of 2017

My Life by Lyn Hejinian This poem/novel is written by Hejinian, a known LANGUAGE poet. This is an autobiography of Hejinian’s life and it comments on common LANGUAGE poet themes like construction of words and the falseness of identity. It’s beautiful if you really like poetry and you want something both challenging yet completely comprehensible. The challenging parts of this text are her use of repetition and parataxis but meaning is incredibly profound.

Bloody Chamber & Other Stories by Angela Carter Bloody Chamber and Other Stories are feminist retellings of folktales. Bloody Chamber specifically is a retelling of Blue Beard, and my favourite tale within the novel is actually Snow Child, a snow white retelling. Carter is a beautiful writer and her retellings are incredibly unique and her use of sexuality is both explicit and thought provoking. The stories are really stunning if you enjoy folktales and would like to read things that are blatantly feminist.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn I think at this point, we all know the plot of Gone Girl but if you don’t, this story follows the lives of a Nick and Amy. Nick and Amy are married and to most, they seem to have a perfect marriage, that is until Amy goes missing. Nick becomes the prime suspect and it’s a race against time to find out who took Amy and what happened to her. The novel makes you question everyone, even Nick when you’re reading it and Flynn is a master at the thriller/mystery genre. Her ability to utilize narrative to manipulate both plot and characters is unique and demonstrates how masterful of an author she is. If you haven’t gotten on this book, you really should, it’s 100x better than the movie and it really won’t disappoint.

Scandalous Women by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon This novel is a book that touches on the lives of many different women in history. For example, she talks about Cleopatra, Barbara Palmer, Anne Boleyn, etc. I actually found Mahon’s blog under the same name and purchased her novel because I loved her blog so much. I will definitely say that she does not spend too much time on each woman, for the most part each chapter is more of an in depth summary than a long biography, but I went into it expecting just that because I was used to the length and depth of her blog posts. If you’re looking to read a novel about fantastic women, some you may not have heard of, some that are popular, like Cleopatra, but don’t know the real story of, this novel will give you that. A fantastic introduction to fantastic women.

Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding I finally read the first novel in this series after most adults in their 30s telling me “oh! Renee, like Renee Zellweger, like Bridget Jones!” Yes, I get it, I share a name with the only relevant Renee who happens to play Bridget Jones. So picking this book up I really didn’t know what to expect, and only after finishing this novel did I realize it was a pride and prejudice retelling, which okay I can see but ?? NO THANKS? Anyways, this novel is written in a diary format and follows Bridget Jones, a middle aged woman and her coming of age story while she tries to deal with her problematic family and romantic life. This novel is not necessarily amazing literature, but it’s entertaining, fun, and was just a good trashy read. I found myself hating, loving, being frustrated, and being proud of Bridget Jones throughout this novel which only tells me how much this character really resonates with me and I loved every page of this novel.

My Worst 5 Books of 2017

The Heir by Kiera Cass I did not finish this book and don’t really think that I want to. This novel takes place after the original selection trilogy and *spoiler* features America and Maxon’s daughter having her own selection. If I’m being blunt, their daughter, who I can’t remember the name of, is a really huge cunt. I mean, I just don’t understand how their child turned out so horribly when her parents are genuinely so good. It was just, bad bad bad bad bad and bad. Nope. Can’t do it.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern So this novel is about two people with magic who were promised to fight to the death through a series of creations/attractions inside of a travelling circus. The premise of this novel was really great and Morgenstern’s imagination is captivating. The most beautiful part of this novel are the circus attractions. Morgenstern has a way with words and an extraordinary imagination that everything about the book is beautiful. There is something so whimsical and fantastical about this novel but this novel lacks so much in both storytelling and character development. The love story is lacking, the character development is lacking, the plot is completely lost in comparison to Morgenstern’s attention to creating new amusement parks. The ending was also incredibly disappointing and felt like Morgernstern just wanted a nicely packaged happy ending that wasn’t all that nice. The ending was rushed and the whole story was just not cohesive. It was disappointing as a story, but beautiful as a concept.

Dare Me by Megan Abbott The novel is described everywhere as a competition between Beth, captain of the cheerleading team, and the new cheer coach that escalades into a murder. The main mystery is who did it and partially who was killed (because you find that out halfway through the novel). I really hated the narrator because it was first person but it felt more like Nick from Great Gatsby than an actual character’s perspective. It was just an observer that really didn’t do anything and the whole plot was overshadowed by the inappropriate relationship between the coach and our narrator and Beth. Beth is the only redeeming thing about this novel because she is absolutely fantastic and well-rounded. But everything else is so... meh. And the person who killed him is so lackluster, like I didn’t expect them but it was the most obvious person for sure. It just wasn’t even a twist it was so... meh. Everything about this novel was meh tbh.

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire This novel is set in a reality where secondary worlds are real and it revolves around a school where kids who return from these worlds are sent to to be rehabilitated for the “normal” world and after the MC arrives at the school, a string of murders begin. It’s a really interesting idea and I can’t say that I hated it but it really lacked world-building, the murderer was really easily deduced for me, and I hated the ending. I mean, there’s not much more I can say.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K Rowling I think I’m one of the very few people that doesn’t like Harry Potter. I just think Rowling’s writing is lacking, the storyline has never been interesting to me, and I only read this novel for my child lit course. It’s just... bland. The characters lack uniqueness, they’re just archetypes of the classic school story & romance genre. The plot always takes a backseat to the world-building and school story. All the actual adventure/plot literally happens at the last half of the novel, which is.. bad writing? I’m just over the hype. I didn’t like it when I was a kid, don’t like it now. Sorry.

#renee reviews #renee #books #book review #reviews

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