Dev’s Comments (group member since Sep 09, 2017)

Dev’s comments from the Nothing But Reading Challenges group.

ok so let's say tentatively the 17th, but i'll wait a few days to request the thread in case anyone else wants to suggest a different date

ok cool, is there a certain date that would work best for you? or maybe we should wait to see if more people are interested

so it seemed like the reactions to this one were kind of meh but i think i'll probably reread the second one next month so i figured i might as well ask if anyone would be interested in doing another buddy read

i was reading other reviews a few days ago and apparently this was originally published as a serial online so i guess like with every chapter separate. from that viewpoint it makes sense to repeat a few things, but i wish authors would do a bit of editing with those kinds of things when they combine online things into a single book. i honestly didn't notice the first time i read it because i spread it out a lot, but i listened to it all in one day this time so that was definitely something that stood out a bit more.

@Diane i think (view spoiler)[she manipulated the story or their minds or whatever to overlook her last name. or else maybe she gave them a fake one and manipulated it so they would never actually go to her house? (hide spoiler)]

Sooooo I accidentally listened to the whole thing yesterday lol. I will get into more specifics when other people get further in the book [don't want to accidentally spoil anything] but for now I will just post my review that I just wrote. Also I am interested to see what everyone thinks of this because I actually saw quite a few low reviews for it on here. Anyway, review:

This was my second time reading this book and I decided to try out the audio this time. Despite still loving the story in general, I would definitely recommend reading it instead of listening. I did not care for the narrator's voice at all and I felt like she made a lot of the female characters sound very whiny or air-headed a lot of the time [not to mention that her male character voice was just ridiculous]. Sloane's voice in particular was just baffling to me because her persona is basically 'badass goth chick' and the narrator most often gave her this ridiculous Valley Girl inflection. It was absolutely maddening to me personally because Sloane is my favorite character and every time she had dialogue I was just audibly groaning.

But a bad narrator does not make a bad book, and I do really love this book. It's definitely a very original concept and I like how Seanan manages to both lean into all the fairy tale tropes and turn them completely on their heads. Also you can tell that this is really a subject that she enjoys because she uses so many variations of the stories and often links the archetypes in ways that the average consumer of fairy tales might not notice. I really love all the characters [when I'm not having to listen to awful narration at least] and think they play off each other very well. I would definitely recommend this book if you are looking to get a peek at Seanan's urban fantasy writing style but don't want to start with one of her longer series.

First Round: [Reminisce / Flip Flop]
Second Round: [Reminisce / Spell It Out]

Finished another round! Decided I'm gonna go with the spell it out again because I'm too lazy to do flip flop again lol.

Third Round: Reminisce / Spell it Out

M Midnight Blue-Light Special by Seanan McGuire
I In the Balance by C. Gockel
M McGuire, Seanan - Reflections
I Ishiah - Downfall by Rob Thurman
C Cal Leandros - Nightlife by Rob Thurman

M Madeline Miller - The Song of Achilles
I I Bring the Fire Series - Wolves by C. Gockel
R Rob Thurman - Moonshine
R Rob Thurman - Madhouse
O Odin - Fates by C. Gockel
R Rob Thurman - Deathwish

I Ishiah - Slashback by Rob Thurman
M Mackenzi Lee - The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue
I I Bring the Fire Series - The Slip by C. Gockel
T Thurman, Rob - Roadkill
A Amy - Chaos by C. Gockel
T Thurman, Rob - Blackout
E Elizabeth - This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Oppel

C Cal Leandros - Doubletake by Rob Thurman
H Henry - Mike's Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner
A Annabeth - The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
P Pratchett, Terry - Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
T Thurman, Rob - Nevermore
E Eric Draven - The Crow by James O'Barr
R Rick Riordan - The Sea of Monsters

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And just going to go ahead and do round 4 here in the same comment:

Fourth Round: Reminisce / Spell it Out

V - Vicious by V.E. Schwab
A - Annabeth - the last olympian rick riordan
C - Cal - Roadkill by Rob Thurman
A - Annabeth - The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan
T - Thurman, Rob - Madhouse
E - Elizabeth - Such Wicked Intent by Kenneth Oppel

S - Seanan McGuire - Half-Off Ragnarok
K - Killing Stalking by Koogi
I - Ishiah - Doubletake by Rob Thurman
M - Mackenzi Lee - The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

S - Seanan McGuire - Chaos Choreography
T - Tales of Mystery and Madness by Gris Grimly
A - Alice - Jack of Fables, Vol. 1: The (Nearly) Great Escape by Bill Willingham
T - Thurman, Rob - Moonshine

M - McGuire, Seanan - Pocket Apocalypse
I - Ishiah - Slashback by Rob Thurman
M - McGuire, Seanan - Changing Meanings
I - I Bring the Fire - Warriors by C. Gockel
C - Cal - Nightlife by Rob Thurman

M - The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht
I - I Bring the Fire - The Fire Bringers: An I Bring the Fire Short Story by C. Gockel
R - Rob Thurman - Blackout
R - Rob Thurman - Downfall
O - Oshossi - Deathwish by Rob Thurman
R - Ragnarok by C. Gockel

yeah she kind of just drops you right into it at the beginning so i think it takes a few chapters for what is actually going on to take shape

yeah i'm pretty pale as well and i use spf 50 too but really 50 blocks about 98% of UV rays and 30 blocks about 97% so i mean 50 IS technically better but i guess not as much as the labels/numbers would lead you to believe lol

also i'm amazed that there are people who listen to audiobooks at 3x speed. i think my head would explode.

i also just started it on audio since i'm rereading and i'm noooot loving the narrator so far but maybe her voice will grow on me lol. i'm thinking maybe it's because i listen to it on 1.5x speed and it makes her voice a little bit higher? but i don't have the patience to listen at regular speed at all.

also i hate that when she said she was putting on 'spf 200' i automatically was like 'anything above spf 50 is useless and a lie' because i've been listening to the sawbones podcast way too much. although i guess this is a world where fairytales are real so maybe they also have extra strong sunscreen that is legit too ;)

i'm glad to see so many people interested in this!

also i just want to say that i just got an amazon alert that both books in this series are 99 cents right now on kindle if anyone still needs a copy

yay! it's been awhile since i've read this one so i'm excited :)

ok cool, i just requested the thread

woo! excited to finally be able to start this. i've been sitting around for the past week constantly reminding myself 'no you can't add that to the decades challenge it doesn't start til the 9th' since i usually start all my challenges at the beginning of the new year lol

hahaha maybe we should pick the later date to add a few weeks of time between rereads for claudia ;)

either of those dates would work for me. does anyone else want to try indexing?

DQs, Day 4

14. When you started reading through Episode 5, what did you first predict would happen? Were your predictions a lot different than what actually happened?
i thought there was going to be some kind of twist i guess. but despite the confusing and very open ending the whole thing seemed a lot more straightforward than i thought it would be.

15. Did you suspect any time before that it was Sadie’s doing sending the postcard or did you believe Claire was the one behind? What do you think Sadie’s motives for sending it were? Do you think she’d known how obsessed Mattie would’ve gotten?
maybe she was just trying to make mattie happy by making her think their mom was thinking about them but then when mattie became obsessed with it sadie got more upset than she thought she would. i think it could have been something claire would actually do. i mean it takes very little effort to send a postcard and i could see her thinking it makes her a 'good person' somehow.

16. Were you relieved when Keith was found dead? Do you think he deserved it?
he definitely deserved it. i guess in reality he should have paid for his crimes by going to prison but i definitely wouldn't be upset that he was no longer alive.

17. Claire’s actions in the end didn’t entirely comply with what we’ve heard about her throughout the story. Do you think May Beth was telling the truth about Claire hating Sadie or feel like Claire was actually telling the truth?
I don't know, I skimmed a lot towards the end. Maybe Claire just wasn't ready to be a mother when Sadie was born and it messed up their relationship for good? Or maybe she has bad memories of Sadie's father? [did we find out who Sadie's real dad was? I don't remember it but like I said I was skimming a bit]

18. What about the ending? Did you like how open it was? What would you have prefered to happen?
I really felt like the ending was a huge letdown. I guess it's nice to leave it open but it was still pretty straightforward and I found myself asking what the point of the whole thing was. I definitely wasn't a huge fan of this book, although it had some good parts / themes thrown in so i rounded my 2.5 up to a 3.

also i'm guessing from everyone's feedback on this book that we don't want to continue with the next one right now?

i would be up for either her indexing series or velveteen series if any of you want to give something else a try though. i would say indexing is darker and probably closer to toby in feel [also only 2 books] while velveteen is ...well it's not really 'lighter' because it's definitely serious stuff at it's core, but the heroine is also a superhero who can animate stuffed toys sooooo ...maybe it's more like this one lol. and it's 3 books

yeah feed is really good. i usually don't like zombie stuff because it all seems so cliched and like everyone doing the exact same thing at this point, but hers is really unique and interesting.

@claudia yeah i agree that dominic changed his attitude a bit too quickly, but also i don't WANT him to be a horrible douche so like ...i'll let it slide since it's something i wanted to happen anyway lol. but i guess technically he was around for several weeks where we didn't really see much of him so maybe it's a bit less sudden than it seems on the page.

i was never that into buffy so i didn't make that connection but yeah it does seem like that now that you mention it