#but ngl it felt good to go on goodreads and read some 3 star reviews

[bloody-wonder]

assuming you've read tsc, what are ur thoughts?

mixed feelings, anon!

on the one hand, tsc is just another confirmation that nora is a talented writer - i think the dialogue especially is where she really excels. the reading experience was overall very fun, i did enjoy seeing my faves again. neil is an icon, obviously. the culture clash between jean and the trojans was Comedy Gold. and it was interesting to see an exploration of a different trauma response than we've seen in aftg in jean.

on the other hand, i feel like jean's story in tsc mirrors neil's story in aftg - a troubled youth joins an exy team where he will make new friends and get better mentally - but is like. a simplified and less compelling version of that. it's good that jean is his own character, i don't need him to be a copy of neil, but i gotta say - neil's cameo appearances totally stole the show and made me wonder why i wasn't reading a book about him instead. however, it's all the other characters who were the real problem - it felt like i'm reading a version of aftg where a less fun iteration of neil joins an exy team consisting just of the upperclassmen and nicky hemmick which uhhh,, if you've read some of my old posts you know how i feel about him so there was no chance in hell i'd like cat alvarez and her whole shtick. the foxes felt good for the soul bc there was a balance between the upperclassmen's and the monsters' type of care for neil - and crucially neil chose the latter group to be his close circle, among other things, bc he felt they could understand him better. by constrast, jean is alone with the trojans who don't give any credibility to his claims that they just can't understand what he went through, don't respect his right to keep his trauma private and just keep trying to force his "recovery". aftg felt like a bunch of freaks with various but equally fascinating issues put in close quarters and you watch them sometimes butt heads, sometimes uplift each other in the most unexpected ways. tsc however felt like a bunch of normies bullying a traumatized kid - so basically one of those obnoxious fics where the upperclassmen are all in neil and andrew's business.

jean's bisexuality was a double-edged sword too: on the one hand, i felt very smug reading about how his attraction works bc 1) it's so obviously different from neil and 2) wow turns out years of psychological, physical and sexual abuse do not in fact take away your sexuality! le gasp! surprised fucking pikachu!! crazy how through all of this jean is still bi. the human spirit is unbreakable. (unless your mom hits you for kissing a girl, then it's breakable). so i did feel vindicated but at the same time this was not relatable to the point that i can't see myself getting invested in jean and jeremy's developing relationship. nothing is more of a turn off for me in fictional romances than when both of them are immediately attracted to each other and let the reader know in no uncertain terms. where are the mind games? where are the intricate rituals? it feels like a lazy shortcut. but good for them, i guess?

sooo idk. i didn't hate tsc by any means but i'm sad i didn't enjoy it as much as my mutuals😭

[mautadite]

july book roundup

WE DID IT LADS!!!!!!! WITH FIVE MONTHS TO SPARE!!!!!!!!!! here’s to the 15 books i read this month, and the HUNDRED MORE I’LL READ IN THE COMING MONTHS +_+ (probably not. 50 more tho. that’s doable.)

how to bang a billionaire - alexis hall  ⭐️⭐️⭐️ a book that i might have abandoned 3 pages in if not for the fact that it’s written by alexis hall, who’s written some of my favourite stuff. it’s sort of a parody of other billionaire d/s books? sort of? sometimes it was just played straight and i didn’t enjoy it. but i’ll prob give other books in the series a try.

a lily among thorns - rose lerner  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ delightful! i’m in love with serena, she’s my absolute favourite. solomon was okay. also there were spies and intrigue and fancy parties and good old romance.

courting the countess / charming the vicar - jenny frame  ⭐️⭐️⭐️ contemporary f/f romance set in a small english village. lot of the f/f out there tends to be femme/femme, so i was glad to find cute butches in here. one was a very sweet fairy-tale-esque story, the other tackled being queer within the church (and featured a lesbian vicar).  all in all two cute romances, but not amazing.

portland diary - jamie berrout  ⭐️⭐️⭐️ a collection of short stories, all of which starred trans women of colour. man i liked it a lot, i just got frustrated that so many things were left unsaid. the collection felt extremely polished, but unfinished. and like i said in my review, i know leaving things unsaid is sometimes obviously the point of a story, it just didn’t work for me. still, i liked this a lot. it had sci-fi! it had dystopian futures! it had examinations of race and class! it had lesbians! i wanted for nothing.

coriolanus - william shakespeare  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ reread this after seeing that gifset of hiddleston and fraser making out. still a banger. “we have been down together in my dreams, unbuckling helms, fisting each other’s throats, and waked half dead with nothing.” dang. gay.

the god eaters - jesse hajicek  ⭐️⭐️⭐️ this has been on my to read list for a hell of a long time. it was good! not great, but good. fantasy m/m in a western-esque world of magic and gods. the world-building was sort of all over the place, it leaned heavily on racist tropes in the beginning, and a lot of things just didn’t makes much sense. buuuuut the characters were good and they fell in luv.

how they met and other stories - david levithan  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ i love david levithan a lot, i read a bunch of his stuff in my late teens, in my ‘I’M NEVER READING ANYTHING AGAIN UNLESS IT’S GAY!!!!!’ phase. this was a sweet collection of stories, in levithan’s always simple but always pretty and evocative prose. enjoyed it a lot! (tho ngl, i was crushed there was only one f/f story ;; and it wasn’t even happy!)

the adventures of sherlock holmes - arthur conan doyle  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ nth reread. not my favourite collection, among the short stories, but i love it a lot anyway. contains one of my favourite exchanges between holmes and a villain (grimesby roylott, in “the speckled band”). holmes the meddler! :D

huntress - malinda lo  ⭐️⭐️ this has also been on my to-read list for a while, and alas, it was a decided disappointment. flat characters, slipshod plot, omniscient pov/pov switching, which i hate more than i can express. i do not need to know what every character is thinking, if a scene is from a certain pov, LEAVE IT THERE, don’t switch around to let me know what character B thinks of A’s statement, right after A says it! agh. it was frustrating. but hey! malindo lo writes real pretty prose, and there were lesbians. so there’s that.

the sitar - rebecca idris  ⭐️⭐️ A BIG OLD YIKES. two stars because i really enjoyed getting a look into the british-muslim diaspora, even more so because two of the main characters were muslim lesbians. everything else: yikes. the author seemed undecided on what she actually wanted to SAY, so many passages were long and overwrought, character motivation from space, and NO editing/proofreading. also, the ending... yikes. yikes!!!

the merchant of venice - william shakespeare  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rereading coriolanus made me want to reread this too, just because it’s been such a long time. and wow it was a lot gayer than i’d realised in form 3. “say how i loved you, speak me fair in death. and when the tale is told, bid her be judge whether bassanio had not once a love.” gay.

sarah’s lover - saxon bennett  ⭐️⭐️ you’re ever reading a romance novel and you wonder, “wait, why is A falling in love with B? B’s an asshole!” this is the story of a lesbian who gets dumped by her asshole girlfriend, and proceeds to fall in love with a ghost who is eerily like her asshole girlfriend. but the author seems totally unaware of this similarity. yikes.

the covert captain - jeannelle m. ferreira  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ reader, i swooned. this book has a very particular style, few descriptions and transitions, and it makes it hard to read at times, and there are other areas in which it’s less than perfect. but it also the tale of a traumatised veteran of waterloo, a woman who’s been in disguise for most of her life and all of her career, and how she falls in love with the sister of her closest friend. i loved it! frick.

briarley - aster glenn gray  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ i love fairy-tale retellings!!!!! this is a gay retelling of beauty and the beast, set in 1940s england in the midst of wwii. a parson stumbles upon an old mansion, picks a rose for his daughter, and then a weird dragon man shows up and breathes fire in his face. this was unbearably sweet, i want a thousand more like it.

“so what’s next, now that you’ve finished the challenge?” WE KEEP READING BOIS. i’m not going to change my goal on goodreads, just to let myself off the hook, but i’ll keep reading. just not as much. i’ve been reading a lot of ultimately substance-less romance, which i love and is good for my soul, but i also want to get back into reading more classics, more nonfiction, more books in french. since i just took a free trial of kindle unlimited, and its selection of books kinds runs more towards the light stuff, i prooobably won’t be doing that for some time, but it’s on the agenda. right now, i’m listening to an audiobook of the memoirs of sherlock holmes, and ngl, i’ll be diving into some more romance soon. :D