internationalreads's reviews
1632 reviews

Darkmotherland by Samrat Upadhyay

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 8%.
There’s a certain bro-y type of humor happening that I can’t put up with for another 700 pages. One example: there’s no reason to use the R word, even satirically. 
A Calamity of Noble Houses by Amira Ghenim

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dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham

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informative slow-paced

3.0

Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal

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challenging dark mysterious reflective tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

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adventurous dark funny fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Entertaining, and the only thing keeping me from doom scrolling right now, but some pretty blatant jumps in characters’ personalities from the first book without any real explanation. I’m hoping the third book makes more sense in that regard. She’s great at an ending line though, I’ll give her that.
The Favorites by Layne Fargo

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Very entertaining, especially on audio. I was really disappointed by the ending though - Katarina’s arc seemed like a sudden personality change and completely out of character.
The Potato Eaters by Farhad Pirbal

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 31%.
Too absurd/weird for me right now. Might work for me in a different mood, idk.
Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling by Jason De León

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informative tense fast-paced

4.0

This book’s main achievement is humanizing smugglers in Latin America. The reader definitely sees beyond the headlines after reading this book. A few irritating points for me, though - he touches on race and gender but not as much I’d like (especially gender), and a lot of the quotes and conversations felt very awkward, like I could tell what the original Spanish probably was and the English translation was stilted. And why were so many presented in Spanglish? Like the author left one or two words in Spanish? Super weird to me. There were also a lot of times the quotes felt way too perfect for the point the author was trying to make.

Overall though a very informative book that Americans especially should read.
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford

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adventurous mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 53%.
I don’t know if it’s the original writing or the translation, but I’m both confused and bored.