immakingt0ast's reviews
839 reviews

ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

This one really didn't do it for me. The art was cool but for some reason I couldn't get past the fact that the MC was Korean for no apparent reason? She doesn't really have a backstory except that her parents were murdered so it just seemed a... strange choice. It does not seem to inform her character or her decision making in any way, so it just seemed off. Ofc diversity is cool but it just seemed like it was inserted for the sake of diversity, both with the race of the MC and other characters. 
The rest of the novel was pretty okay, the art was so colorful and great to look at but the story did not really draw me in. 

Not vibing with the audio but the story is interesting. Setting this aside to pick up in print at a later date

Art: 5/5
Story: 5/5
Ease of Comprehension: 2/5 lol

So, this might be a "me" problem, but as much as i loved the art and the overall story of this, I found it really hard to understand. It's in English, mind, and there are no problems with the actual text localization which is perfect native English. The problem for me is that the story is kinda in "stream of conciousness" format, where thoughts overlap and flow into each other and characters are speaking and thinking at the same time, and I had a really hard time following it. This is definitely not my first time reading manga, and while I wouldn't consider myself a manga afficionado or anything, I'm not exactly a stranger to it and I found it really hard to figure out what character was saying what, which bubbles were thoughts, and what was the narration. It was really jarring at times because I would have to flip back a few pages and try to figure out what was going on, which kinda killed the simmering, emotional buildup the author was trying to achieve. I'm not sure if this would be easier to understand in the original Japanese, or the localization editors could have done a better job, or if I just kinda suck at reading manga but unfortunately this fell a bit short of what it could have been.

4 confused stars. 

Don't get me wrong, this book was good and I enjoyed reading it, but I feel like the description is a bit... misleading? 

(mild spoilers)

This book is fast paced and the plot has some really interesting twists and turns. The world building is good, and the alt-history setting of wartime Bletchley Park is super interesting! I also love the lore we get about the dragons (which talk and are sentient) and how they were historically integrated into Brittania's society. 

That said, since I have a habit of barely glancing at book descriptions and picking them based on ~vibes~ I didn't have any complaints til I went to write up my review, and realized that if you are someone who reads the descriptions, you might not agree at all.

Some issues I have with it based on the description:

Slow-burn, enemies to lovers romance: The romance is bland and underdeveloped, and describing this book as a romantasy is comical. It felt like the author copy-pasted a pretty generic romance because it was a required checkbox, however, this didn't really bother me while reading because the romance took up very little page time. (but again, it seems disingenuous to call this romantasy because it just is not) Also, they weren't enemies at any point. 

Dark Academia setting: The setting is not a school? girl quit lyin. Yes, they talk about school a lot because the MC wants to study languages, but this takes place at Bletchley Park, which is not academia?

My biggest issue: This book isn't explicitly described as a standalone, but the story does NOT conclude at the end. The main conflict, aka the civil war, is not resolved at the end, not even close! But there is no mention of a sequel. I don't know if there will be another. I do not know if the author left it open ended on purpose because they were hoping to get a book deal for a second and it didn't happen? Idk, but when I hit the 80% mark and realized there was no way it was going to wrap up I was irritated. I would read the sequal if there was one, but I would have preferred to know that beforehad. 

This is super cute! The art is an absolutely gorgeous watercolory style and each page is bursting with color. A real feast for the eyes. The story takes place the future on a planet (or maybe moon?) called Meridian, which is 2 generations removed from humans living on earth. We follow Oberon, a trans teen who has recently dropped out of university, as he is learning how to harness his latent superpower, which is the ability to manifest in reality things he has seen in his dreams. The other MC is Kon, the one who got away, who Oberon hasn't seen since he moved schools several years ago. 

The story has slice of life, coming of age vibes but also discusses a number of serious issues including blended families, generational trauma, mental health, coming out, and a number of -isms, all thoughtfully discussed and presented in relevant situations. The story evolves in a way I wasn't expecting and I loved the ending. 

The only reason I'm not giving it 5 stars is because a number of the comic panels were designed in a way that was somewhat unclear, and I wasn't sure what the author / artist was trying to convey. It didn't take away from the overall understanding of the story, but it did happen a number of times. Still though, a very heartwarming and enjoyable read. If you like Heartstopper and superhero stories, you will probably like this too. 

I'm taking a break from this... Might come back if my loan is still active when I finish my next book. But literally nothing has happened after the original setup. The premise is interesting, but we are 4 hours in and we've still onky got an interesting premise and no plot or even a suggestion of where it might go

Thank you to Ron Currie and Netgalley for the advance copy, provided in exchange for an honest review.

This book was such a journey. I had no idea what to expect, because I clicked that "request" button on Netgalley the second I saw Ron Currie had a new book out. I had a moment with one of Currie's early books, Everything Matters! when I was in my early 20's, and thought this book was one of the most deeply profound things I had ever read, and obsessively recommended it to everyone, including one of my best friends, and have been following him as an author ever since. (side note, the author is a very cool dude, i once contacted him about a signed copy about one of his books i was wanting to purchase as a gift, and he was not selling them at the time. instead, i bought a book, mailed it to him, and he signed it and mailed it back. we might even still be facebook friends. he also went to the same college as I did - very cool dude indeed.)

anyway, that has no bearing on my review. which is primarily that the description of this book absolutely does not do it justice. This book is listed as a mystery - thriller, and it does have a mystery, and there are definitely thrilling parts. But truly, this book is more than that. It's a deep and often dark look at a French-Canadian family living in small-town Waterville, Maine - where the author is actually from. But this book is at its heart, a character driven story about a group of people who are doing the best they can while dealing with a fascinating and tragic blend of racism, classism, xenophobia, mental health issues and addiction.

The plot revolves around the titular character Babs Dionne, but her story, from start to finish, is mostly told through the eyes of her family, particularly her daughter Lori, as well as her grandson and a few others. All of the characters are, quite frankly, fucked up, and many of them are well developed to the point that any of them could carry their own books.

The history of the area is quite frankly, horrifying, and well researched, and even though I spent 6 years of my childhood in a city not too far from Waterville, I was completely ignorant of the historical treatment of the French Canadians in New England. Babs is from Little Canada, a presumably real area of Waterville that was home to French-Canadian immigrants who primarily worked in the Hathaway Shirt factory. Though I haven't been back to the Northeast in years, I have driven through enough of these run down backwater, half-abandoned mill towns that although there are some mild supernatural elements, the rest of the story requires almost no suspension of belief. It's almost like there are people like this in every Smalltown USA. Which is... sad, and thought provoking.

"So, Abigail - if I may call you Abigail- I am here to tell you that life, as it's actually lived, does not fit into your neat little black-and-white categories. And I ask you, please, to stop being so certain of what I am and am not, what I have and have not endured. If you look at me and see a white woman, that's your mistake. Whatever sins go along with being white, don't pin them on me- I've been running from white people my whole life, like most everyone else on the planet."