My Blind Date Is A Vampire (Love Is Blind #1) by Daphne Bloom | An ARC Review

Magic. Mayhem. And a little romance.
Nursing a broken heart, Julia takes a job far away from home in the little town of Mystic Cove. She has no interest in dating, at least for a while, but the eccentric old lady who owns the local bookstore seems to have other ideas.
Julia finally agrees to ONE date. She’s surprised when things with her enigmatic blind date go well, but will she face even more heartbreak when she finds out her blind date is a vampire?

My Blind Date Is A Vampire gets published August 26th, 2022!

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Is it weird to be kind of frustrated with this book?

Our main character, Julia, is so oblivious it hurts. But that’s what I liked about this book. While it’s so incredibly obvious that she is falling in love with a vampire to readers, Julia truly has no clue throughout this book. Instead, readers are treated to a sort of “inside joke” feeling as the side characters make puns and reference the supernatural community in this book and the main character… does not pick up on it at all.

However, that’s about the only thing I liked about this book.

I think a big deciding factor on whether or not a reader will like a romance book is whether or not they like the love interest, and I didn’t really care for Landon. It felt like there was no real reason to like him or any chemistry between the two characters. They just met and fell in love at first sight. Even now, I’m not sure I can describe Landon beyond a couple basics (rich vampire who does something with art). I couldn’t even remember his name and had to look it up!

I also didn’t enjoy the writing style in this book. I thought it was a little too wordy, with too many details I didn’t really care to know about, and the characters didn’t talk like people. They were a little too understanding and omniscient, building off of each other’s sentences to tell a story rather than letting the character who should have the knowledge say the details.

I think this book had a really cool and interesting main character, especially with her obliviousness, but the insta-love and writing style really pulled me away from this story.

Only When It’s Us (Bergman Brothers #1) by Chloe Liese | A Review

Ryder
Ever since she sat next to me in class and gave me death eyes, Willa Sutter’s been on my shit list. Why she hates me, I don’t know. What I do know is that Willa is the kind of chaos I don’t need in my tidy life. She’s the next generation of women’s soccer. Wild hair, wilder eyes. Bee-stung lips that should be illegal. And a temper that makes the devil seem friendly.
She’s a thorn in my side, a menacing, cantankerous, pain-in-the-ass who’s turned our Business Mathematics course into a goddamn gladiator arena. I’ll leave this war zone unscathed, coming out on top…And if I have my way with that crazy-haired, ball-busting hellion, that will be in more than one sense of the word.
Willa
Rather than give me the lecture notes I missed like every other instructor I’ve had, my asshole professor tells me to get them from the silent, surly flannel-wearing mountain man sitting next to me in class. Well, I tried. And what did I get from Ryder Bergman? Ignored. What a complete lumbersexual neanderthal. Mangy beard and mangier hair. Frayed ball cap that hides his eyes. And a stubborn refusal to acknowledge my existence.
I’ve battled men before, but with Ryder, it’s war. I’ll get those notes and crack that Sasquatch nut if it’s the last thing I do, then I’ll have him at my mercy. Victory will have never tasted so sweet.

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

I have never met characters who were more childish than Ryder and Willa in my entire life.

Willa, our female main character, needs to get a better grade in her business class in order to stay on the soccer team. Because she’s out of school often for soccer games, however, keeping her grades up is difficult for her. So when she asks her teacher for the lecture notes, only for him to point her in the direction of Ryder, who completely ignores her, she’s pissed at the “unfairness” of it all.

But here’s the thing: Ryder’s deaf. And he has no idea Willa asks him for the lecture notes until she already hates him.

This devolves into the most childish series of events I’ve ever read. I can’t even call what transpires between these two pranking, because pranking is supposed to be funny for both members. Instead, I had to read these two literally pulling each other’s hair and somehow falling in love.

Speaking of falling in love, the childishness doesn’t stop there. I had to read sex scenes with the most cringey and immature word choice I’ve ever seen in a book and will myself not to DNF my third book in a row. I highlighted a lot of stupid lines, but as an example:

Every remotely erogenous part of my body, from my traitorously hard nipples to my aching choo-cha, voice their demand to be plundered by the plaid-wearing rogue.
Jeebus Christmas, I need to get a handle on myself.

I also absolutely hated the deaf representation in this book. Ryder, who lost his hearing after getting meningitis, states that he doesn’t want to get cochlear implants because he’s fine with not being able to hear and thinks its a waste of money. Rather than listen to his wishes, however, his parents push him into getting the surgery anyway… and then that’s it. Ryder’s feelings on the matter are never spoken of again.

I at least wouldn’t have minded if Ryder mentioned how he enjoyed being able to hear again after getting the cochlear implants. Humans are fickle. We change our minds constantly. But not once does Ryder talk about the issue after going through the surgery, leading me to believe his family pushed him to go through a surgery he didn’t consent to and he just… gave up.

You may notice, however, that even after all these negatives, I still rated the book two stars. That’s because I dedicated a single star to the cabin scenes closer to the end of the book, which focused on some good banter I actually kind of enjoyed between Willa and Ryder. I’m a sucker for some banter, and this was… Advanced Banter. Needling. A welcome update to their characters.

But I still, overall, hated this book.

Hating Jesse Harmon by Robin Mimna | An ARC Review

Frances wants to teach the popular girls a lesson: Anyone can be prom queen.
It’s risky. To pull it off, she’ll need help from her clever best friends and a shy girl with autism hiding a secret.
But when their plan works too well, Frances discovers elevated status comes at a price. Jealous girlfriends, ruthless gossip queens, and fractured friendships are only the beginning. Add in her alcoholic mother’s feeble attempts at bonding and Frances might just crack under the pressure.
Because in the spotlight, hiding your feelings isn’t so easy, especially from the one guy you were so sure you hated.

Hating Jesse Harmon gets published August 23rd, 2022!

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

I can applaud this author for what they were trying to do with this story, but I just don’t think they were quite there.

Hating Jesse Harmon is the story of a group of “outcasts” pushing to get the main character, Frances, as prom queen. And while this is the basic plot of the story, the book is a bit more character focused.

Our main characters–minus Jesse, the football player–are all “unpopular”. We have Frances, the fat nerd; Trevor, the gay boy; Naomi, who certainly exists although I’m not sure how to explain her beyond “boy crazy”; and Sonny, who is autistic. All these characters feel like caricatures of themselves, as though the author created a list of “unpopular” characteristics and then assigned names to them.

(As a side note, I’m not even sure that the plot of a group of “unpopular” kids trying to become popular is even a realistic experience these days. My high school experience included the ability to just walk up and talk to anyone in my classes, but we also all attended the same Nerd School and spent lunches doing homework and quizzing each other for tests, so I may be the outlier here.)

One of my biggest problems with this book was the plot of Frances trying to become prom queen. In the beginning of the book, Frances is nominated by an anonymous party, surprising both her and her group of friends. However, throughout the book (and even in the description), people constantly reference her desire to become prom queen. This was confusing to me, as Frances wasn’t even the one who threw her name out there. If anything, it was all the other characters pushing her to try her best for something she didn’t even want.

Despite Jesse’s name being right there on the title of the book, he didn’t seem to have that much to do with the book itself. His inclusion in the story was more of a side plot. A little puddle of romance for readers to dive into, believing it is an ocean.

Instead, I think this author was most passionate about Sonny’s character and her inclusion in this plot. As a side character, Sonny had a lot more focus in this story than she technically should have. It feels as though this author wanted to write a story about an autistic character but got scared somewhere along the way and created Frances as the “main character”.

I also think that this author’s heart was in the right place, but her representation of an autistic character wasn’t quite there. At one point in the story, Sonny gets her period for the first time and Frances finds her crying in the bathroom, thinking she’s dying. A big problem autistic people of any age face is being infantilized by neurotypical people, which I feel is exactly what is being done in this scene. Kids start Human Growth And Development classes in fifth grade. The idea that a female student will have no idea what a period is by the time they are Sonny’s age is a little too unrealistic, and I think this scene has no place in the story beyond infantilizing her character.

Overall, I understand that this author was trying to create a feel-good story about “unpopular” kids being accepted by their peers and winning the biggest popularity contest a high school can have. However, I don’t think this author had their focus planned out enough yet for this book to be ready for publication.

Booked On A Feeling by Jayci Lee | An ARC Review

Lizzy “Overachiever” Chung, Esq. has her life mapped out neatly:
* Become a lawyer. Check.
* Join a prestigious law firm. Check.
* Make partner. In progress.
If all goes to plan, she will check off that last box in a couple years, make her parents proud, and live a successful, fulfilled life in L.A. What was not in her plans was passing out from a panic attack during a pivotal moment in her career. A few deep breaths and a four hour drive later, Lizzy is in Weldon for three weeks to shed the burnout and figure out what went wrong. And what better place to recharge than the small California town where she spent her childhood summers with her best friend, Jack Park.
Jack Park didn’t expect to see Lizzy back in Weldon, but now he’s got three weeks to spend with the girl of his dreams. Except she doesn’t know of his decades-long crush on her–and he intends to keep it that way. She’s a high-powered attorney who lives in L.A. and he’s a bookkeeper at his family’s brewery who never left his hometown. He can’t risk their friendship on a long shot. Can he? When Lizzy decides that the local bookstore needs a little revamp, of course, Jack is going to help her bring it back to life. But the more time they spend together, the harder it becomes to ignore there might be more than just friendship among the dusty shelves and books…
Sometimes the path to the rest of your life has been in front of you all along. 

Booked On A Feeling gets published July 26th, 2022!

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

I went into this book expecting something completely different from what it gave me.

When I first read the description for this book, I imagined a woman forced to take a break from her job by a boss who cared about their employees. I imagined this woman would go to this small town, find a run down bookstore, and decide she was going to put time and effort into making it her own.

And then I read this book. And not only did the main character decide herself that she needed a vacation, but she also has nothing to do with the ownership of the bookstore.

With my dreams crushed, the rest of this book didn’t seem that great to me. I wasn’t into the writing style, which I found difficult to pay attention to. I didn’t care for Lizzy and Jack, which also made me not care for the romance brewing between them.

I also wasn’t too keen on how the main conflict of this book stemmed from the two not talking to each other. Throughout this book, the two make big, life-changing decisions involving the other, yet never take the time to clue the other in to these decisions. For people who are supposedly “best friends” before the events of this book, they sure don’t seem to know each other that well if they can’t have a conversation!

There is one more aspect of this book I didn’t care for, but I’m unsure of how to breach the topic with it’s slightly spoiler-y content. If you are someone who agonizes over whether or not every book will end in a happy ending, don’t continue on.

There is a trope in media, Babies Ever After, in which a story skips ahead to show a couple’s future and their eventual child. As someone who hates kids, this was the worst possible ending I could have ever read in a book. Nothing makes a book worse, in my opinion, than pregnancy.

Most of the negatives I found in this book is entirely my own fault, however. This was definitely a book that just wasn’t for me, but there will certainly be people out there who will enjoy this book.

The Ruins of Gorlan (Ranger’s Apprentice #1) by John Flanagan | A Review

They have always scared him in the past — the Rangers, with their dark cloaks and shadowy ways. The villagers believe the Rangers practice magic that makes them invisible to ordinary people. And now 15-year-old Will, always small for his age, has been chosen as a Ranger’s apprentice. What he doesn’t yet realize is that the Rangers are the protectors of the kingdom. Highly trained in the skills of battle and surveillance, they fight the battles before the battles reach the people. And as Will is about to learn, there is a large battle brewing. The exiled Morgarath, Lord of the Mountains of Rain and Night, is gathering his forces for an attack on the kingdom. This time, he will not be denied….

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

I thought the setup for this book was very interesting.

Our main character, Will, is an orphan. His mother died in childbirth and his father died in war. But, because his dad died in war, the lord of where Will lives takes Will in and allows him to freely choose an apprenticeship on his fifteenth birthday.

And then this book… sorta goes downhill.

Of course, we can tell from the series title that Will will become a Ranger’s apprentice. My first connotation of the term “ranger” comes from Dungeons & Dragons, where rangers are generally stealth archers living in a forest. But in this author’s world, rangers are more like spies, playing a much larger role in politics and war.

Sure. You can argue there’s some overlap there. But I went into this book expecting forest archers. Not political spies.

I found myself bored throughout the majority of this book. About half of it focuses on Will’s story as he becomes a ranger’s apprentice, which is filled with cleaning his master’s house and learning how to ride a horse.

The other half, strangely, focuses on Horace.

Horace is a character I didn’t expect this book to have any sort of focus on beyond the first few chapters. He’s an orphan who grew up alongside Will and enters battleschool in the hopes of eventually becoming a soldier. His side to the story focuses on him getting bullied by the older students, and I just honestly can’t tell you why any of this was included at all. He doesn’t really do much for the plot. And yet half of this book focuses on him.

I also found it funny that the Gorlan Ruins–the setting this first book is named after–doesn’t get even referenced until page 205. With a total of 249 pages in this entire book, that’s quite late into the story.

Ultimately, I just think this book didn’t know what it wanted to be. The author states that this series is based on a bedtime story he told his kid, which would have made me think that the author has a lot of details for this world and what goes on inside of it. Instead, I feel more like I read 200 pages of fluff and about 50 or so pages that actually mattered.

Also? I’m so tired of war. But that’s not this book’s fault.

A Little Bit Country by Brian D. Kennedy | An ARC Review

Emmett Maguire wants to be country music’s biggest gay superstar – a far reach when you’re seventeen and living in Illinois. But for now, he’s happy to do the next best thing: Stay with his aunt in Jackson Hollow, Tennessee, for the summer and perform at the amusement park owned by his idol, country legend Wanda Jean Stubbs.
Luke Barnes hates country music. As the grandson of Verna Rose, the disgraced singer who had a famous falling out with Wanda Jean, Luke knows how much pain country music has brought his family. But when his mom’s medical bills start piling up, he takes a job at the last place he wants: a restaurant at Wanda World.
Neither boy is looking for romance, but sparks fly when they meet – and soon they’re inseparable. Until a long-lost secret about Verna and Wanda comes to light, threatening to unravel everything.
Will Emmett and Luke be able get past the truths they discover…or will their relationship go down in history as just another Sad Country Love Song?

A Little Bit Country gets published June 7th, 2022!

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

I really wanted to love this book.

I hate writing reviews for books I didn’t like, but I think this one is the saddest of them all. Not only did I receive an advanced copy of this book, but my interest in this book was formed because of a tweet made by the author himself.

But let’s talk about the book.

This book focuses on three different conflicts. The first focuses on Emmett, a young country singer who wants to break down the heteronormative views of country music and become a popular gay country artist.

The second focuses on Luke, who is a closeted gay teen we’ll talk a little more about later.

And the third is between Wanda Jean and Verna Rose, two country singers who used to be very close. Until they weren’t.

Because a lot of this book focuses on country music, there are a lot of lyrics in the text. And I want to be fully honest by saying first and foremost that I skipped a lot of these lyrics. I know a lot of other readers also like to skip song lyrics when they pop up in stories, so anyone who also doesn’t enjoy reading lyrics may want to know that there are quite a few sections of lyrics in this book.

I did, however, really enjoy Emmett’s side to this story. I liked seeing him try to become a famous gay country star, even if country music is largely heteronormative.

However, I didn’t care one way or another for Wanda Jean and Verna Rose’s side of the story, and I hated Luke as a character.

A lot of Luke’s side of the story is him hiding important things about himself from his family and friends in order to “protect” them. Most of this protection focuses on his mom, who has multiple sclerosis and who he doesn’t want to relapse by telling her that he’s gay and wants to work as a chef, and his ex girlfriend, whose feelings he doesn’t want to hurt if he reveals that he just doesn’t like women.

As someone who thinks you can absolutely make a family out of people who support you and cut out the people who don’t, I hated reading Luke’s point of view. His hesitance to tell the people in his life even the most basic details about himself made me angry. But even worse, I hated reading him treat Emmett like trash in order to keep hiding his own identity and “protect” the people who didn’t need his protection. Multiple times throughout this book, Emmett needs to sneak around and hide their relationship. My eventual “fuck Luke, he can never recover from this” moment was closer to the end of the book, in a scene where Emmett has something really important to say to Luke and tries to catch him near the dumpsters of his job for a couple of seconds, only for Luke to tell him that he shouldn’t be there and push him away.

Emmett deserves better.

There’s a twist near the end of this book, but I didn’t find it that surprising. Early on in this book, I had a prediction. I had wanted to write down when exactly I formed a prediction, but I seem to have lost that note for myself. But either way, this book reveals a twist at 91% of the way through that ends up being the exact detail I had predicted. I think anyone even vaguely genre-savvy would be able to pick up on this twist, as it seems very obvious.

But maybe that’s just me.

As much as I liked Emmett’s side of the story, it just can’t make up for the rest of this book, and I have to rate this entire story two stars.

Café Con Lychee by Emery Lee | An ARC Review

Sometimes bitter rivalries can brew something sweet.
Theo Mori wants to escape. Leaving Vermont for college means getting away from working at his parents’ Asian American café and dealing with their archrivals’ hopeless son Gabi who’s lost the soccer team more games than Theo can count.
Gabi Moreno is miserably stuck in the closet. Forced to play soccer to hide his love for dance and iced out by Theo, the only openly gay guy at school, Gabi’s only reprieve is his parents’ Puerto Rican bakery and his plans to take over after graduation.
But the town’s new fusion café changes everything. Between the Mori’s struggling shop and the Moreno’s plan to sell their bakery in the face of the competition, both boys find their dreams in jeopardy. Then Theo has an idea—sell photo-worthy food covertly at school to offset their losses. When he sprains his wrist and Gabi gets roped in to help, they realize they need to work together to save their parents’ shops but will the new feelings rising between them be enough to send their future plans up in smoke?

Café Con Lychee gets published May 10th, 2022!

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

This is a book where I wish I could give it a higher rating.

One of the very first things I loved about this book was just how different our two main characters are.

Theo wants to leave. He wants his parents to get rid of their restaurant and get new jobs so he doesn’t have to worry about them when he leaves for college.

Gabi, on the other hand, wants desperately for his parents to keep their restaurant. He wants a future with the restaurant, taking over for his parents and making it his.

But the new fusion restaurant in town, delivering really weird mixes of different cultures to their customers, is taking down both of these family-owned businesses.

The two main characters hate this fusion restaurant and what it is doing to their traditional recipes, which is where this book kind of lost me. They decide to try and get more business for their families by doing deliveries together, serving Gabi’s pastries alongside Theo’s drinks. So they’re fighting against a restaurant serving a combination of their menu items by… serving a combination of their menu items…

Please make it make sense.

Beyond the plot of this book, however, this book also focuses on the conflict between the main characters and their families. Both groups largely focus on the theme of finding out that their parents love and support them despite everything that makes the main characters think that they don’t, which just really isn’t my kind of story. I find this hard to describe, but I like YA contemporaries where the characters are kind of assholes but learn throughout the story how to be better and that they have a support system of friends who would still stick up for them regardless. Their parents should love and support them no matter what, but if they don’t, at least their friends have their back.

This is sort of the opposite. Which is mainly why I think this story didn’t really work for me.

I think there are certainly people out there who are going to absolutely love this story. And I don’t think they would be wrong! If it works for others, I’m perfectly okay with seeing them shout out their praise for this book. But, personally, this book just didn’t work out for me, and since my rating system is based off of my own personal enjoyment, I have to give it two stars.

The Nature of Witches by Rachel Griffin | A Review

For centuries, witches have maintained the climate, their power from the sun peaking in the season of their birth. But now their control is faltering as the atmosphere becomes more erratic. All hope lies with Clara, an Everwitch whose rare magic is tied to every season.
In Autumn, Clara wants nothing to do with her power. It’s wild and volatile, and the price of her magic―losing the ones she loves―is too high, despite the need to control the increasingly dangerous weather.
In Winter, the world is on the precipice of disaster. Fires burn, storms rage, and Clara accepts that she’s the only one who can make a difference.
In Spring, she falls for Sang, the witch training her. As her magic grows, so do her feelings, until she’s terrified Sang will be the next one she loses.
In Summer, Clara must choose between her power and her happiness, her duty and the people she loves… before she loses Sang, her magic, and thrusts the world into chaos.

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

This book could have been so good.

It’s very obvious from even the beginning of the book that this is a story of climate change. Throughout the book, we talk about the nonmagical community’s expansion and how both the Earth and the witches with seasonal magic cannot contain their growth.

But even though I was into the message this book portrayed, I couldn’t get into the writing itself.

For one, there are often weird time skips between scenes. Many months can go by without any discussion of what happens in between, leaving readers with a sort of whiplash effect. Surely something happens between these scenes. The world cannot be stagnant between big events. But as readers, we don’t see the daily lives of these characters and what they’re doing in between. We just skip to the next big event.

I was also quite surprised that this book reads more like a contemporary romance than it does a fantasy. While it’s on me that my perceptions of a book with magic immediately went to high fantasy, the content of this book still feels a bit… strange. The conflict is more of a MC vs self than MC vs the world like readers would imagine the story to go. The magic is secondary to the main character’s growth throughout the book when it seems that the entire story should be about the magic and climate change.

The book just doesn’t… fit with itself.

The Belles (The Belles #1) by Dhonielle Clayton | A Review

Camellia Beauregard is a Belle. In the opulent world of Orléans, Belles are revered, for they control Beauty, and Beauty is a commodity coveted above all else. In Orléans, the people are born gray, they are born damned, and only with the help of a Belle and her talents can they transform and be made beautiful.
But it’s not enough for Camellia to be just a Belle. She wants to be the favorite—the Belle chosen by the Queen of Orléans to live in the royal palace, to tend to the royal family and their court, to be recognized as the most talented Belle in the land. But once Camellia and her Belle sisters arrive at court, it becomes clear that being the favorite is not everything she always dreamed it would be. Behind the gilded palace walls live dark secrets, and Camellia soon learns that the very essence of her existence is a lie—that her powers are far greater, and could be more dangerous, than she ever imagined. And when the queen asks Camellia to risk her own life and help the ailing princess by using Belle powers in unintended ways, Camellia now faces an impossible decision.
With the future of Orléans and its people at stake, Camellia must decide—save herself and her sisters and the way of the Belles—or resuscitate the princess, risk her own life, and change the ways of her world forever.

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

One of my favorite things about this book was the worldbuilding.

It was easy to tell that the author really knew their world and had a lot of it figured out. There were many small details I don’t think many authors would deem important enough to think about in their own writing, but really helped this world seem fully fleshed out.

Unfortunately, I also feel like this author didn’t explain their world very well. In these same little details, nothing is really explained so readers can understand what it means. For example, this world has balloons that carry mail between different locations. The balloons are color coded depending on where they come from, but I often found myself stopping the story to wonder what the different colors meant. There was no list to help readers understand the importance of such a detail and I found it took me out of the story many times.

I also wasn’t a fan of the main character and found her absolutely useless. She’s very indecisive, to the point that events pass with her not doing anything because she has missed her moment to decide what to do, even if that decision should come easy to her. Sometimes her beliefs are very obvious, yet she doesn’t act on them because of her indecisiveness. This all gets to the point where I want to say this book doesn’t have a main character at all, as she does absolutely nothing at any point in this book and many of the events just pass her by.

I think the idea of this book is interesting and I’d love to see more of it, but the main character has made me hate the book so much that I wouldn’t even begin to consider continuing on with the series.

Warcross by Marie Lu | A Review

For the millions who log in every day, Warcross isn’t just a game—it’s a way of life. The obsession started ten years ago and its fan base now spans the globe, some eager to escape from reality and others hoping to make a profit. Struggling to make ends meet, teenage hacker Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter, tracking down players who bet on the game illegally. But the bounty hunting world is a competitive one, and survival has not been easy. Needing to make some quick cash, Emika takes a risk and hacks into the opening game of the international Warcross Championships—only to accidentally glitch herself into the action and become an overnight sensation.
Convinced she’s going to be arrested, Emika is shocked when instead she gets a call from the game’s creator, the elusive young billionaire Hideo Tanaka, with an irresistible offer. He needs a spy on the inside of this year’s tournament in order to uncover a security problem . . . and he wants Emika for the job. With no time to lose, Emika’s whisked off to Tokyo and thrust into a world of fame and fortune that she’s only dreamed of. But soon her investigation uncovers a sinister plot, with major consequences for the entire Warcross empire.

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

This book was just one unfortunate circumstance after another for me.

First of all, I’ve noticed through reading and reviewing books for almost two years now that I don’t tend to like conflict in books. As in… any conflict. I know it’s important to the plot of the book, but I hate that downfall moment where the characters don’t believe in themselves and their situation. This book opens in a sort of “downfall” situation for the main character, where she’s struggling to pay her rent and everything is about to go horribly, terribly wrong.

It took me a lot longer than it should have to read the opening bit of this book. It was hard for me to push through it and get to the actual meat of the story because it was so depressing.

And then, the worst thing that could have happened to this book occurred: while looking in the back for the page count, my eyes happened to glance over a spoiler.

This was a world-ending spoiler. A massive spoiler that changed the entire way I viewed this book. While I found the book’s application of VR in the real world interesting, it was hard to care for the book with the knowledge I had accidentally obtained. I couldn’t look at the characters in the way the author had intended while I knew certain details of the ending, completely ruining the experience for me.

I’m sure a lot of people would like this book, and I can kind of see why. But I couldn’t connect to this book in the way I should have, so I must personally rate it quite low.