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[tenderbookreviews]

The handmaid’s tale

3 stars

Last night I finished this book and I really don’t know what to say. Tbh the only reason why I read this book was because of the hype around the 2017 Hulu series. 

The story and the concept are great, I like the perspective Atwood took. It wasn't of a brave woman that freed all society, it was of a woman that was caught upon a utopia. However I feel like it was a but too mundane and that she could've done more with the story as well as with the main character, develop Offred more. 

I found Offred somewhat annoying and not really relatable and the relationships didn't really make sense sometimes. I understand that everyone was supposed to be distant and not talk with one another but I felt some lacking in the feeling of realness in the relationships.

The writing was confusing at times and I found myself lost. Even after I re-read I still couldn't make sense of it, specially when Attwood used no quotation marks for dialogues. But I like her writing style and how she told the story.

[tenderbookreviews]

The Guinivere Deception

4 stars BEWARE- MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS.

Earlier today I finished the first book of “Camelot rising” by Kristen White. It was exactly what I was expecting and it even had some pleasing surprises. 

The book narrates the story of Gunivere, she has taken the place of the real Gunivere in order to marry King Arthur of Camelot and protect him from an evil that’s coming. 

I loved the twists this book had, there was one at the beginning and I was a bit bummed out because it wasn’t revealed with impact. However, as the book continued the other twists made up for that small one. 

I liked the politics of it all, there weren’t mentioned much but they weren’t dismissed and it was acknowledged that they were important. I loved that there wasn’t any insta-love even if they were supposedly married. The writing was great, I do wish it was in first person so I could relate and feel Guinivere more.

I honestly can’t wait for the second book to come out. I want to find out more about Guinivere, her origin, her story. 

[tenderbookreviews]

The two lives of Lydia Bird

5 stars                                                                                              

I jumped into this book with not much expectation, it was my book club’s choice for this month and I thought it would be a quick and easy read, that I wouldn’t  have to go through much. But boy was I wrong. 

It tells a story of grieving. Lydia loses her fiancé the day of her birthday and her life falls apart. After some time her mom gives her some pink pills to help her sleep and cope, little did she know those pills would make her travel to an alternative universe were her fiancé was still alive. 

My favorite thing about this book were the characters and their relationships. They felt real and I felt like I actually knew them. I related deeply with Lydia and I could see why she thought the way she did and I could feel what she felt. There weren’t much -if any- clichés and overall the whole thing had such a realism that you experienced everything as if you were there.

While I read I listened to the audio book in audible. Olivia Vinall gave Lydia such an amazing voice, I cannot imagine anyone else as her. It definitely made me closer with the book.

The writing was great, simple yet it hold powerful words within. I learned a lot with this book, and the message it gave was wonderful. 

I can’t recommend this book enough. If you want to read it, do yourself a favor and pick it up.

[tenderbookreviews]

Carve the mark duology

3.8 stars BEWARE- THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS

I recently finished the “The fates divide”, the second book of this small series and had the need to share my thoughts with the world. 

The first book was incredibly slow and it took a lot of me to finish reading it but I pulled through. I was expecting something more action packed, due to the divergent series but that is not what I got. The story seemed extremely interesting to me but I feel that Veronica Roth didn’t developed it enough. I only picked up the second for the sake of knowing how it ended. 

I was really hyped up at the first half of the second book, I thought it was going to be better than the first one and this created high expectations for the ending. I even told my closest friend that it was one of my favorite books but that opinion changed when I finished it. 

 I noticed the writing improved greatly and Roth used tons of foreshadowing- which I really like-, the symbology and politics were amazing too. The world building was exquisite and the characters as well as their relationships were well rounded and flawed. I also really liked the twist of the main characters being swapped of families and I expected more twists like that throughout the book, didn’t get them.

The last portion of the book was disappointing. The main conflict, which was the war, was rushed. The portion were Akos is in the Noavek manor is also extremely hurried and it doesn’t really show how much his mind got scrambled. Akos and Cyra’s relationship was strange at the end, they didn’t really talked things out and it seemed fake. 

The very ending was left inconclusive, specially with how the galaxy was going to end up. And with the characters, they got the typical happy ending, which was underwhelming and awfully predictable.