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I'm not even sure if I can really describe this. It's mostly things I already knew on some level, but it still hits very hard. And it manages to be poetically interesting, while still being easily understandable and accessible to people who don't read much poetry.

I'm reading this book at the same time as another paranormal romance about overcoming trauma, called Laura's Wolf, and the discrepancy is VAST. This book is so much better at integrating the fantasy and the romance, with a way more engaging story, and to be frank, the characters and trauma are more compelling. If not for the prose (which is still bad in a really weird way), this would be excellent.

This is so far from a typical paranormal romance that I don't even know if it would be right to call it that. (Mostly because it's high rather than urban fantasy, and both characters are human.). But if this does count as paranormal romance, it's probably the best I've ever read. This is just a really strong, well-executed romance that deals with overcoming trauma in a way that isn't cheesy or forced.

I don't have a whole lot to say, mostly because of the low word-to-page ratio. But this is very good.

This worldbuilding is really interesting. It's unusual to have an unambiguously fantasy world that also has technology. And even though I know the answers to the mysteries, I can still recognize that they're engaging.

This hit me surprisingly hard. This is a very powerful look at the power of micro-aggressions. That said, I'm a little worried that Rankine has already showed all of her cards, and the rest of the book will mostly be variations of this. If that ends up happening, the book will still be good, just not as good as it could've been. But I'm still early in - anything could happen.

So apparently, this book is largely about Ana learning to trust people after having been an abuse victim. This strikes me as really, really blatant now, but it went right over my head when I was thirteen. It's actually a little difficult for me to read, because it's so potent. But it's not handled badly or anything. In fact, other than the prose (which is kind of weird), this is really good.

Boy, reading this again, the writing is a lot worse than I remember. I'm reading a Cassandra Clare book at the same time, and while the writing here isn't nearly as bad, they share that feel of 'trying for a romantic aesthetic and just being sophomoric'.

I can definitely see why I liked this when I was thirteen. The book goes for a very romantic aesthetic, and it was the first thing I read that even hinted at sex (in a way that I noticed). I think reading this made me feel grown-up, and I wouldn't have noticed how silly it all is.

I was planning on writing an update that said that this book was improving, that the romance was starting to mesh better with the plot, and that at least Brown can write decent characters. But then the plot came to a dead stop for another extended sex scene, and we're right back where we started. This book just doesn't know what it wants to be.

Boy, this writing is terrible. I think Clare was going for an old-fashioned, Jane Austen meets Stephen King feel, but she lands a lot closer to A Series of Unfortunate Events. The difference being that series is funny on purpose.

Hey, you know what increases the tension in any novel? A character who can see the future saying that the bad guy will lose. Works like a charm!

Seriously, this is one of the reasons I like sci-fi better than fantasy: no prophecies.

I like that Lear acknowledges that replacing actual action with religious ceremonies is detrimental, without suggesting that religious activities are inherently illegitimate or false. That's a balance that I don't see enough.

This writing is pretty terrible. It's not constantly bad, so much as Clare does something egregiously awful every three or four pages. The character actions are pretty simple and cliched, and the plot feels pretty forced. (Jace knows Clary is in danger and has his sensor, and yet he makes zero attempt to chase after her when she impulsively runs away? Why!?)

This book is dated, and Graff isn't a great writer, but it does contain a lot of interesting information - I can definitely picture a lot of it being persuasive to people who opposed gay marriage.

I really don't like that Graff implicitly equates pedophiles with bisexual people, when she says that pedophiles generally don't show a gender preference in their sexual activity. Maybe the data says that (or said it in 1999), but Graff hasn't directly addressed bisexuality once, and she really needs to.

I can't help but wish Lear had used a more well-doccumented, perhaps more recent example than the destruction of Crow culture. The historical nature of this example involves a lot of speculation, and I suspect a lot of that speculation is self-serving.

Graff doesn't always use rich people as her default, but she does usually establish a default (whether rich people or poor people) and then explain other groups as exceptions, which is just a confusing way to go about giving us this information.

I like this book in part because it speaks to a feeling I've had for a while: that making the world better in big ways is largely hopeless, and that it's only really useful to make the world better in small ways and figure out how to carry yourself through it. I kind of don't want that to be the truth, but Lear seems to feel similarly, and this book explores how that can be okay.

At times, this book gets dangerously close to saying, "Gay marriage should be allowed because it makes gay people more productive members of capitalism." Still, this is a very good takedown of how arbitrary marriage and the ideas surrounding it are.

Graff's attempts to be funny are a bit cringe-worthy, but the information here is very interesting. This isn't comprehensive, exactly, but it doesn't aim to be - I definitely feel like I'm getting the important parts of the history of marriage.

For all the huge complaints people have about this book, my biggest so far is, weirdly, the way Clare writes character actions during dialogue. It's always the absolute most obvious thing they could be doing - there's one scene where Luke hears shocking news and literally drops what he's holding. It's cheesy and amateurish.

It sucks to be re-reading this book, because I'm basically about to be shitting all over my childhood memories. Ah, well - I had to grow up at some point, right?

I didn't realize this book would be erotic. I mean, that sex scene did sort of serve a purpose, but it went on long after the point had been made. So now this book has three conflicting genres: problem novel about PTSD, supernatural werewolf story, and erotic romance. Oh, joy.

I've run out of things to say, except, "This book is excellent and everyone should read it."

I do like the idea of a romance between two people with PTSD alongside a werewolf story, but the two elements detract from each other. The werewolf story makes the romance rushed and awkward, and the romance makes the werewolf story badly-paced and bland.

I know a lot of people think this book is overrated, probably due to overexposure after the movie came out. But please, try to re-read this with fresh eyes, because it deserves every bit of praise it gets, and then some. I'm not qualified to say if this is one of the best books ever written, but it's certainly among the best I've ever read.

This is a very good look at what it means to be a part of a culture and why we do things in general.

This isn't insta-love exactly, but it's still weird that Roy and Laura are telling each other deep, personal things without even much small talk first. Maybe this would come off better if the dialogue wasn't terrible, but it's all forced and unbelievable.

Katniss' interactions with Peeta are so much more nuanced than I realized when I first read this book. As a kid, I took Peeta's declaration of love completely at face value, but when you realize that Katniss has no way of knowing if he's playing to the cameras or not, the interactions take on a whole new meaning.