Anna

That was crazy

I didn't care for all of the teenage boy level sex jokes scattered throughout but oh my god I'm so obsessed with Princess Donut. I will riot if anything happens to her in the next books

Perfection, one million stars, best end of a trilogy I have read in a long long time

This book made me cry and I wasn't expecting that wtf

I will indeed count childrens books for my 2025 reading goal if I have read them a million times because I have read this one million times. Also this story is delightful and we love it

Finally read this book and surprise surprise it's about real life gay penguins. How tf are gay penguins pushing the “gay agenda” when they are literally just living their best penguin lives without any knowledge of the human concept of the “gay agenda” because THEY ARE PENGUINS???? “Think of the children, this book will confuse them!” “You were raised with good Christian values Anna you should know better!” (Things that were said to me about supporting this book) like huh??? It's about PENGUINS ERIC.

“If censorship is fear, then its opposite is courage. Let us face the world as it is and build a better one.”

I can tell why this book is controversial among book banning circles and I love it for that reason lmfaoooo

Won't lie this book is triggering if you have ✨religious trauma✨ and have people close to you that are ✨Christian nationalists✨ lollllllll but this was such a good read, April has a way of writing that makes this depressing topic that makes my stomach hurt enjoyable to read. I listened to the audiobook and will also be getting the physical copy at some point. Highly recommend

Yes I did actually read a cookbook and I'm counting it in my book challenge

I thought this book was a fun read! The premise was really interesting, I love a good murder mystery. Very excited for the next book to come out and to see more from this author!

Ngl I didn't fully read this but I did read about halfway and got the gist and it's due back at the library in 2 days soooo. I'm counting it as read

Very happy that Jill was able to escape the clutches of her father. What a toxic environment to grow up in.

One thing that I had no idea about was how traumatic of a birth she had with her second kid. I was sobbing during that part of the book, and so was Don because I was reading the book out loud to him.

Obviously there are still some problematic takes in my opinion such as glossing over Derick's tweets and also what appears to be Derick wearing an IDF shirt (not positive about that but that's what it looks like in the picture with their first kid Israel, oh boy) but overall there is a lot of growth on her end and I'm glad for her.

My personal favorite line in this book: “You treat me worse than you treat my pedophile brother.” YES JILL TELL HIM!!!!!

Yeah this was a good book

Last edit: I've been thinking more about this book lately and actually, it does deserve only 1 star. SJM, for how many books you've written and with all the resources available to you as a big name author, this should have been better. The average rating for this book is too damn high.

Top read of 2023

This was a really cute book but there were parts that I didn't like so much - kinda dragged in the middle, and the end felt really rushed and left several questions unanswered, otherwise this would have been 5 stars

The idea for this book was really interesting, which is why I kept reading, but the writing didn't do it for me. Felt kinda boring to read, didn't flow very well imo. I'll still read the next book whenever it comes out and hopefully there will be a better flow next time?

This is such a cute book

There is a cat, and the cat does die. This does not contribute anything of significance to the actual plot so I'm not marking this for spoilers. Why even write the cat into the story? What was the point of that? I'm annoyed. And sad for the innocent little baby. Otherwise I guess this book was advanced in concepts concerning LGBTQ issues and criticizing the military/war considering when it was written, and it is for these two reasons that I gave 2 stars and not one, but I still don't like sci-fi and probably never will if this is supposedly the best sci-fi book ever. Still annoyed about the cat

There are 705 pages in this book, and about 100 of those pages moved the plot forward and the other 605 described Auren giving Argo a cookie and otherwise getting the brains f*cked out of her.

I recognize I'm not the target audience but this still wasn't it y'all lmao

The first two books in the series were amazing, but I really had to slog through this one

Obsessed with Sophie and Howl, cozy vibes all around

Honestly, I DNFd this book with about 60 pages left but I did read the last two chapters so I know how it ends. The world building and the plot is just not there, the writing is just not good. Life is too short to suffer through poorly written books, and I don't say that lightly.
Some questions going through my mind while reading:
-What is up with all the religious stuff?
-Where is this world, is it Earth in the future?
-If it's not Earth, why is Jesus there??
-Why is there a whole scene with the MC screaming the Lord's Prayer?
-Why are there buggies and motorcycles? What year is this?
-Why was the MC placed into a torture chamber as a demonstration when they could have used a patient as a demonstration? (Yes that sounds bad but it does not make any sense as to why they would put someone who works there into it???)

Additionally, there is the elephant in the room with the shitty trans rep. I can't wrap my mind around why author thought that was okay. It was more awful for the character to be trans than it was for the inc*st CSA???? Honestly what the fuck. Don't get it. Author said that it was meant to show the ignorance and backwardness of the MC in one of her TikTok's but there was not enough character development for that to have any weight in my opinion. In fact, there's really no character development at all?? Like MC is ignorant because she's from the woods? Idk. Anyway, a lot of people who support this book are saying that if you don't like dark romances then no one is forcing you to read this book - I like a dark romance but the thing is, there has to be a point to graphic violence as a plot device, otherwise it's just for shock value and that ain't it.

So to top it all off, not good writing, world building, character development, plot, negative harmful stereotyping of trans women, graphic descriptions of violence that don't seem to have any point to it. Probably no one is going to read this but I am just so irritated and I gotta write down my feelings hahaha