Ms. Smartarse > Recent Status Updates

... I think I've just about depleted my creepiness tolerance. Dropping this.

Either I'm missing something, or I need to be utterly depressed to appreciate all this...

"You want to be known as a public benefactor, don't you?"
"I'd like to be known as one, but I wasn't necessarily planning to become one."

When a former rake acts as a chaperone:

"Although I seem to have caught the two of you in a compromising position, my moral pedestal is, alas, too short to give me a clear view of who's doing what to whom. Therefore, I'll spare you the sanctimonious finger wagging."

"Severin," he said carefully, "two years ago, I had the incredible arrogance to offer Helen's hand in marriage to Winterborne as if she were an hors d'oeuvre on a tray."
"Yes, I know. May I have one too?"

Creepy in a funny sort of way, or maybe... funny in a creepy sort of way.

Imagine driving through all those serpentines and not getting motion sickness...


And also YAY for completely unexpected Netgalley approvals!*insert annoyingly loud squealing*

I could hardly keep sitting here, silent like a petulant child, wondering about Ms. Karthaus-Kürten's middle name. Kriemhield? Kunigunde? It had to be something even worse than Kerstin, or she wouldn't have felt the need to shorten in.

Heartbreaking and terrifying at the same time. Mostly terrifying, actually. 🥺

Nowhere near as addictive as the ICoS series, but it does have its fair share of comic relief.

... 'cause I'm in desperate need of a face treatment. With rotten tomatoes.


And yes, I also miss the excitement I got while reading the ICoS series for the first time. *sniffles*

"I thought you were a secret society!"
"Not secret, sir. Not exactly secret. More... ignored, you might say."

"Well don, Mr Lipwig. Well done."
"Thank you, Mr. Groat."
"Good eyesight you've got there," the old man went on.
"Well the light was shining off [the pin]--"
"Nah, I meant the cobbles in Market Street, it being all brick paving up there."

"Lord Vetinari insists that all condemned prisoners should be offered the prospect of freedom."
"Freedom? But there's a damn great stone through there!"
"Yes, there is that, sir, yes there is that," said the warder. "It's only the prospect, you see. Not actual free freedom as such. Hah, that'd be a bit daft, eh?"

Pia wasn't too impressed by trendy* locations, cryptic food and wine menus, where the price of a single bottle lay in the 4-star category.


*Your truly, after Vio tells her that shickimicki means trendy.

They weren't tears of mourning, but rather of guilt, for not having loved her own daughter.

I spent my entire life in Manhattan before Moving to Baltimore. The sum total of my knowledge is that woods are filled with bugs, snakes, trees and probably bears, and that I don't want to have anything to do with them. But as Henry's seen fit to get himself lost, it would seem I have no choice.

... "a voice like honey drizzled over chocolate" is a metaphor (or maybe a simile?) that I never want to lay eyes on, when reading works penned by beloved romance authors. *shudders*

I don't think I've ever considered getting a pet rat (LIAR! screams my conscience), but when I read about Zombie cuddling with one, my brain keeps inching itself towards some sort of mushy state...

After flying through 4 installments of a YA series, getting back into the language intricacies of a regular adult crime novel is rather jarring. I was (cautiously) impressed by my vastly improved German language skills.
Alas, the slang's still my demise...

Otherwise, a rather intriguing beginning to the story.

You know you're a horrible person, when despite a full scale natural disaster all you look for is the KISS. Dear author, you better not chicken out, there!

All this UST is killing me... or rather the U and T is. Given the YA genre I highly doubt there'll be any S to have in here... *sulks*

Much better than book 1, especially when it comes to action scenes.

... have you ever read such a boring book, that you immediately wanted to reach for its sequel? There's a first for everything, I guess.

One of the more predictable YA novels I've read, but hoping I'm in the mood for all the cliché. So far so bad...