→ i rate my books generously ♥

→ currently reading:

• rogue squadron
• goobers

→ on hold but will get back to it:

• james
• shadows of the empire
• snow fleas and chickadees
• The Comfort of Crows
• Backyard Bird Chronicles
• A Letter to the Luminous Deep
• Cemetery Boys
• Titus Groan
• The Private Lives of Public Birds
• Accidental Ecosystem

→ have read...

2025:

• The Bakery Dragon (☆☆☆☆☆)
  • SO CUTE
• Star Wars Sanctuary (☆☆☆☆☆)
  • what a great book; it was basically a 3 episode arc of TBB! <3
• Star Wars Attack of the Clones (☆☆☆☆☆) (idc if my rating is biased!)
  • WIP (50ish%): omg again, we get more in this novelization than i couldve ever hoped for... everything from padme's pov, the fact that obi-wan knew how anakin had it bad and HOW this whole thing was a test to see if anakin could be trusted going forward... BY GUARDING THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE?! shit. ok and then the whole jocasta scene that was there but not all the way there. i cant WAIT to friggen read obi-wan go to kamino. i know the thing that's gonna bother/crush me is right now it seems totally plausible that padme and anakin hook up, because she's totally developing feelings or at least infatuation. but like... the scene after anakin slays the sandpeople? i already know it's gonna be like it was in the film :(
  • FINISHED.... ughhh i am a mess. these novelizations are 5/5 so far. and the scene i was worried about, the author explained how padme was feeling which made me feel like i finally got her reasoning for responding the way she did.
• Star Wars The Phantom Menace (☆☆☆☆☆)
  • yeah that's right i'm giving it 5 stars. this book had so much more backstory than the film. it brought a cohesion that the film could've used, but that's okay, i love the movie Flaws And All. ok so holy shit, anakin said to padme like right when he met her that he was going to marry her???! and george lucas didn't think that was something we needed to know in the cinematic space?! wtf. it blew my mind. and padme was totally going along with it too. thats literally why this book got 5 stars... a 9 year old boy and a 14 year old girl. wild. unhinged. FIVE STARS.
• A Wrinkle in Time (☆☆☆)
  • i know i read this long ago, and it's possible i never finished it because that's how i was before audiobooks. but holy lord this book was so mid. i think i hyped myself way too much when i spontaneously checked it out the other day.. nostalgia will do that :/ but the beginning was good, just the other 75% of it was not worth anything to me. i fear the rest of the series will bring me down too... it's like when you watch a show from your childhood and it doesn't stand the test of time :(.
• Meet Me by the Fountain (☆☆☆☆)
  • 50% and feeling DNF only because it's very dense, but the info was great. i should just finish it lol
  • 75%: got back into it and i'm close to the finish line. god it's astounding how much racism classism and ableism is tied into shopping malls! one thing i think is the best description of it is that the concept of the mall is not new, it's been around for a long time, but also the failure of malls has been around just as long. so when we say malls are failing now, it's actually not a new epidemic, and the reason is because it's always been centered around shopping instead of community. what people gravitate towards when they actually do enjoy the mall is the ability for easy community, and the owners of these malls, even the city leaders are not okay with this being the main focus of the everyday people and especially people not of a certain status :(
• Star Wars: Aftermath (☆☆☆1/2)
  • wip: picked this book as something to listen to in the middle of the night when i can't sleep, soooo... there's some parts i've "read" but not really processed lol. and i'm fine with it because it's not a big important read to me and i've pretty much been spoiled by it over the years (:
  • finished: it was good, hoping the others in the trilogy are better now that i know each character's motivation more... found myself wanting to know more about the people in the interludes than the actual main characters.
• The Bad Guys (☆☆☆)
  • i found it weird that the author made a complete caricature out of the piranha for no good reason... but it was a good book and now i wanna watch the movie, truly had no idea there was one
• Silverborn (☆☆☆☆☆)
  • WIP: so friggen hyped about this book, been waiting for literal years. since I’m a newer reader, I finally know the struggle of waiting and waiting and waiting for a new book in a series to release!!! and we even got punked into thinking it would come out last year :,)
  • finished: wow, that was great. i've seen complaints that it didn't have enough fenestra or some of the characters from the last book (like the wunimal i cant remember) but to that i say: there was a LOT of fenestra in the last books and this book was really about mog reckoning with where she came from, really. and how both sides of her family wanted to forget her in one way or another. and exploring what it would be like if she could spend time with this family, and ultimately allowing her to have the choice to. i think this book was vastly different from the last three because of the nature of her discovery of this family. it's literally just as shitty as her dad's side but in an opulent way--and mog prevails and decides that found family is immensely better. and she gets to be close to her mother, a new semblance of pieces and memory of her that is really gratifying (to me at least).
• Full Speed to a Crash Landing (☆☆☆)
  • this book was not a fav. really disliked all the inner dialogue thoughts. it reminded me too much of that TZ book I read last year (Icarus) which was the first instance of this kind of thing and it makes the book so distracting and impossible to read. I truthfully DNF right before the end because of this and I have no regrets. (note to future self, never write a book with this whitty facing but annoying banter nonsense). I’m sure Beth revis has som other great books including a SW book on my TBR <3
• First-Time Caller (☆☆☆☆)
  • it was good. not amazing but good. decent. i got grossed out from the explicit scenes... something about switching from being normal to all that dominance stuff just gross. but the rest of the book was good. i didn't like the MMC continuously trying to convince everyone he was no good for love?? like he was fine? he clearly loved her. it was incongruent and kinda took up too much of the story. oh yeah, also no romance book has any right to be 12 HOURS long. that's like 400+ pages. 200 pages more than it needed to be. i liked that it really seemed like they were in baltimore. i mean they were. ok if i write any more down i will convince myself to reduce a star so i'll stop.
• Beautyland (☆☆☆☆☆)
  • WIP: about 20% in and a little overwhelmed that there aren't shorter chapters. also feeling kinda uncomfortable about her realization of emotions and makes me sad that she has this relationship with her mom (and others)
  • another WIP thought 70% in: mouth sounds YES i get that so much, and the words that you can't distinguish from sex words, i get that too. wow. am i an alien?
  • finished: i've just determined that this book is telling me that being human is simply alien most of the time.
• Thrill Ride (☆☆☆☆☆)
  • finished: loved this!!! amy ratcliffe's debut indie romance novel about a former imagineer... yes. i had so many quotes i loved while going through this but of course i didn't write them down so i guess for posterity i'll just have to reread the book!
  • wip: rollercoaster romance!!!!
• Willodeen (☆☆☆☆)
  • found this book in the free library and thought i'd try it out. was so glad i did because it was very comfy. hummingBEARS... I NEED. screechlers are bascially dragons right??? i loved the theme that overfarming and overfishing etc does horrible damage to our whole balance of the world. that's a good message for kids to learn ♥.
• Feral Creatures (☆☆☆☆)
  • there was quite a lot of action, yet again, which i feel like took me out a little bit. BUT i did like the story generally and it felt necessary to finish. it was a pageturner for sure. i love love looooove all the animal facts sprinkled in. and Umingmak was probably my favorite character.
• Hollow Kingdom (☆☆☆☆)
  • wip: HELL yeah, only 10 chapters in and there's already a convo with a wise octopus. I'm gonna love this book.
  • finished and really liked it overall but only complaint was the action scenes were a bit too much for me, and HATED that Dennis died right after his fakeout death so sad so dark :(
• Open Throat (☆☆☆☆☆)
  • wow. i don’t even know what to say. Just that if i forget how this book made me feel, i must promise myself to read it again. i’m still crying. this book feels really personal to me for many reasons.
• There's No Treason without Tea(☆☆)
  • ok the rating is harsher than usual, but i just could NOT get into this book. i loved all the concepts promised, but it didn't deliver. in other words: i hate high fantasy, but i was promised low stakes cozy fantasy which it was NOT.
• Pure O OCD
  • i dont usually rate self help type books. this was informative to me as someone with pure-o ocd. recommend for others!
• Mall Goth (☆☆☆☆)
  • this book was made for teenage me... i wish i had it 20 years ago! ♥
• The Soul of an Octopus (☆☆☆)
  • i really hated learning how octopuses come to the aquarium and how inhumane it is... aka : the octopus hyperfixation to vegan pipeline...
• Darth Plagueis (☆☆☆)
  • plagueis = bad ok got it. sidious = extra bad ok got it. jesus, the wookiepedia was enough, i didn't have to sit through 15 hours of audiobook for this story.
• The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of the Whole Stupid World (☆☆☆☆)
  • always love this dude's sick humor, i know he really actually loves birbs
• Rules for Camouflage (☆☆☆☆☆)
  • she had autism, he had ocd, Aretha was the queen
• Fahrenheit 451 (☆☆☆)
  • it was probably groundbreaking for its time, but i felt like i was somehow choosing to torment myself with reading required reading for high school again for no good reason. the reason i did read it, was because it was mentioned in the library book which i'd just finished and i thought it would be cool to check out.
• False Knees (☆☆☆☆)
  • funny
• The Library Book (☆☆☆☆☆)
  • it read like a informative podcast; is this what non-fiction is like?
• Remarkably Bright Creatures (☆☆☆☆☆)
  • gave me a new special interest in octopus
• House of Frank (☆☆☆☆)
  • the story didn't grab me like i was hoping, but it was written well and a good debut novel