I wanted to like this book
588339
I wanted to like this book.  Unfortunately, I found the writing to be rather juvenile and the dialog stilted.  All the characters felt like cardboard cutouts--the character development that was attempted (Roxanne's about-face, Lola's decision to fight back) was sudden and sloppy.  I get that Lola was supposed to have a connection with Jack because he understood what she was going through, but I didn't feel it-it was just like he appeared out of nowhere and the two were suddenly in love.

The characters should have been developed way more.  For example, why was Bob the way he was?  Couldn't his character have been fleshed more than Abusive Stepdad?  Or Roxanne.  Roxanne has 2 pages in the book where she's not the stuck up, snobby popular girl, and even in those pages, her words don't sound like something a teenager would say.  Or Lola's mom.  The entire book she's morose and depressed, and we're only told that things in the past were different, with the past barely being described.

The poorly written romantic relationship in this book honestly surprised me, since I just read Unlit Star by this author and loved the relationship in that book.  I get that Safe and Sound was focused more on Lola overcoming abuse rather than romance (Unlike Unlit Star, which was much more romance heavy), but I still expected better writing in that department.

I do commend the author for writing about abuse.

I was planning on reading all of this author's books after I read Unlit Star, but after reading this one, I don't think I will.
4916833
I really wanted to like this book.  In fact, I looked forward to getting a chance to read it and review it through the vine program.  Perhaps my expectations were too high.  The main character, Peter, is a sweet and well fleshed out character.  Unfortunately, something in the writing style was just missing for me.  The premise here is great, looking at a Chinese young man, the only son in his family, who is living a lie....he believes that he should have been born a girl.  The writing is free of that "preachy" or outmoded view of the trans life.  Just not enough to rate it higher, the style is just lacking something.
547747
i really wanted to like this book but i left it feeling very unsatisfied. the premise of this book is compelling--a battered woman sifting through her specious memories, trying to piece together the facts of a cloudy violent night, but the story itself was unsatisfying. the plot, which details the early years Maggie, the narrator, had with her husband and the aftermath of a mysterious attack on her, drags to the point of being boring. the language jaskunas uses isn't particularly evocative or memorable (with some occasional exceptions) and this becomes a real issue in a story this unnecessarily stretched out and static. the characters, generally, are forgettable--borderline stereotypes who exchange unnaturally earnest dialogue and nate and maggie's relationship, which constitutes much of the meat of the book, is generic and predictable; i wanted to care about them but couldn't. the strength of the book i would say is its interest in the porous nature of memory. jaskunas captures the tenuousness of maggie's grasp on reality well (that he shifts between 1996 and 2002 over and over helps create this sense of disorientation) but my pleasure in experiencing her blind spots and her doubts was ultimately outweighed by the book's other problems. might have worked better as a novella or long story.
3821191
I wanted to love the book, I just could not get into it.
2356800
I really wanted to like this book.  It started out catching and I thought it would turn out to be a good book.  However, I couldn't get past the editing.  It was bad.  It was hard to read when the author went from present tense to past tense in one sentence.  This happened more times than I could keep track.  There were also times when a sentence just ended with no complete thought...He dropped me off in front of.  In front of what?  The character development was weak as well.  I really wanted to believe these characters loved each other and that Natalie and Aly were best friends but I just didn't feel it.  I have read a lot of books and written a lot of reviews and I really wanted to like this book.  It just didn't make it with me.  Hopefully, since it ends with a major cliffhanger the next one will be better at least as far as the editing goes.  As much as I want to see what happens I'm not sure I will read the next one.
392405
I really tried to like this book...really! I struggled through - hoping it would get more compelling. Too many characters, too many shifts in time, too many plot twists - some of them impossible to follow, all of this leading to an implausible ending. After sampling the multitude of 5 star reviews, I expected better.
1482631
I wanted to like this book. I finished it within 8 hours.  I wanted to like this book, and I consider myself a progressive, third wave, sex positive feminist, but I had a lot of issues with this book.  To start, I'm giving this book two stars because I liked the idea of the story and I loved that it featured a plus-sized heroine. Being a plus-sized woman myself, sex and love are always sensitive subjects, especially when we live in a world where it's drilled into our heads from childhood that you'll only be loved if you're skinny.  This story, I couldn't get into it.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

To start, I know this is a work of fiction but I can't get on board with men making advances on women while they're asleep.  It's something I find really creepy and considering this is a book dealing with the subject of BDSM where trust is a HUGE issue, someone making advances on me in my sleep would be a major trust breaker.

Next, I as this book deals with BDSM, the author ignores may important subjects surrounding the genre of BDSM.  Even though subs are encouraged to have and use safe words, they're still allowed to say "no" and "stop".  Rebecca says "no" and "stop" many times and Logan still has sex with her and does things with her.  This to me screams rape.  He even asks Rebecca if she's been raped or assaulted but because she's confused and new to BDSM, and Logan takes advantage of that, she doesn't realize she has been assaulted and raped.  Logan, to me - Like Christian from 50 Shades - is a terrible Dominant.  If someone says "no" or "stop" multiple times, you still have to stop regardless if they haven't used their safe words.  Trust and respect are important things in BDSM and Logan as a Dom has none of those.  Sinclair tells submissives to be open with their Dominants because they can't read minds but when the sub is being open the Dom isn't listening - it doesn't matter if she/he didn't use the safe word - then how can the sub be open?  Just because someone is a Dom, doesn't mean they can do whatever they want to the sub.  It does not work like that, fiction or not.

Which brings me to my next issue with this book. the subject of mind and body.  I absolutely hate it when people fail to separate mind and body when it comes to sex.  It's something I discuss and hear a lot about in the subject of sex abuse.  Many women who report rape are told they weren't raped because they got aroused or had an orgasm.  This is BS.  Just because a person's body is aroused or they may orgasm during inappropriate or unwanted touching, doesn't mean their mind wants to go along with it.  I absolutely hate when people blend the two together.  I don't care if this is a work of fiction.  It just feeds into rape culture.  This is not something to promote in a BDSM or non-BDSM relationship.  Unless a person says "Yes I want to do this", whatever their body is doing is irrelevant.

Something to include in the description or letter of this book would be the topic of "pseudo-rape" - Where someone pretends to resist but then goes along with what's happening.  There was no hint of this.  It unnerved me that Rebecca never used her safe word. Logan tells her to trust him but that Rebecca never uses her safe word tells me that she didn't fee safe enough to use it and that she only went along because Logan is a big guy and he can basically make her to whatever she wants no matter what.  Submissives, regardless of their positions, should never fear their Dominants.  There should never be fear in a healthy relationship of any kind.

I really wanted to like this book and this author, but I'm not sure I will be buying or reading any more books of hers after this one.  I just can't.
3321737
I really wanted to like this book. I tried very hard to continue to want to pick it up. I'm now on the last chapter and have absolutely no desire to finish it; it will be an effort to do so.  I simply do not enjoy books that are so contrived merely to get the author's point across - yes, mentally challenged people have had their rights violated and been treated poorly especially in the past (I know, I used to volunteer at cottages for the mentally disabled), there have been significant advances in their care and treatment. But the ways in which the lead characters surmounted their obstacles and then led to "climaxes" so contrived and predictable as to strain credibility to the point I've lost all interest in finishing this book. It honestly reminded me of stories shared in Jr. high school creative writing classes. This could have been a poigniant book given more depth. I was disappointed and sadly agree with the other 1 star reviewers.
2436943
I wanted to like this.  Its an interesting premise, the magic system made some sense and there was at least an attempt to balance it, and the intrigue built into the tale opened up plot possibilities.

Sadly, the really bad romance, the over the top betrayal and the angst the main characters display turned me off.  It was a great idea, but I can't recommend this book
4681433
I really wanted to like this book. Unfortunately, there were simply too many glaring issues to warrant a better review. First, the presence of simple typographical errors is simply inexcusable in a book with an editor. They grate my patience like nails on a chalkboard. One is bad but easily overlooked but the numerous issues within the text of this book combined with the next issue made it too much.

The second issue with this book is the writing style. It's rambling. Plain and simple. The author attempts to explain a topic with an example and gets steered off course and presents things out of order or that simply don't expound on the central theme. I find myself becoming impatient with paragraphs and wanting him to get back on track.

The layout of this book is its weakest and most glaring issue. There are a ton of colorful photos throughout the text -- and they in no way relate to the text you happen to be reading. They're just there for eye candy. Oh, they might be referred to several pages prior or after, but you will not find a visual example of what you're reading at the time. This just made the entire book seem amateurish and poorly laid out.

Overall, this book was a disappointment and I would highly recommend Dave Hughes's masterful Wet Flies instead. It covers all of the material covered in this book, and does so with a masterful storytelling arc, but also contains information about how to fish the patterns in easily understood terms. There aren't the gloss photos in Hughes's books, but his writing style is so good you don't need them.
987434
I really wanted to like this book but...

The characters were two dimensional and I couldn't grow attached to any of them.  I did like the love interest though.  The author focused well on her two main characters but then seemed to have trouble utilizing the rest of them.  The storyline was not compelling for me either.  The story was based on Lex needing to find a boyfriend so that her grandmother wouldn't cut funding for the school volley ball team.  The author barely focused any reading time on the volley ball team and so I struggled to even care about what happened to them.  It seemed like since the whole book was about saving this team, that the author would have focused better on them.  The storyline struggle for any focus.  The book flitted from one topic to another and left me having a hard time caring about anything that was going on in Lex's life.  I couldn't understand why Lex just didn't make up a boyfriend for her grandmother.  It seems like it would have been simple enough for her to take one of her friends to family functions.  I can understand where Lex wouldn't think that this is moral, but the fact that the idea never even crossed her mind seemed strange to me.

I could have handled all of the above flaws a lot better if I liked Lex.  However, I found her to be one of the most annoying main characters that I have ever read about.  She whined about everything.  The book was a cycle of things going wrong for her and then her complaining about them.  I understand that we all do this but the extent to which she did this was sickening.  She also came off as extremely selfish.  She was constantly asking people for help and then was rude to them when they did help her.  She didn't handle it well when someone wasn't able to help her.  The one time that she actually helped someone, she sulked and complained about it the whole time.  She was rude at some point to every single person that she came in contact with.  I couldn't for the life of me understand in the beginning why her love interest even liked her.  She was rude to him for their first few encounters-especially their first encounter.  He must have been glutton for punishment or something.  I found it hard to relate to her.  I, personally, am not a big sports fan and she was a major sports fan.  I wish that the author would have included a few other interests of hers.  That's just me personally though.

I skimmed this book and still felt like I wasted my time.
1971418
I really wanted to like this book..but, after the first few chapters - in which EVERY point is repeated too many times with too many adjectives and correlations...I gave up.  I think the author has potential - good editing would help pare the story down.  I'm disappointed.
4496980
I did want to like this book. I really tried. The reviews made it sound interesting and amusing and it so easily could have been. The story is clever, the worldbuilding is interesting and original (there's some nice new terminology for vampires - "larva" is so much more appropriate for a newly-created bloodsucking parasite than "fledgling"), the hero and the heroine are both intelligent, intrepid and nice, the secondary characters are well drawn and charming. I am particularly fond of the delightful Professor Lyle, Beta Werewolf. There are mad scientists and ingenious devices and nice clothes. If the author had contented herself with a simpler style, it would have been a decent book.

But. In pastiche, words matter, and words are where this would-be romp trips on its hem and falls flat, not just once but throughout. I would strongly suggest that the author, before writing her next book in this style:

(a)Do just a bit more research into the manners, mores and vocabulary of late Victorian England, including such basic information as the correct styles and titles of the peerage. This is actually quite straightforward, we aren't talking about the Byzantine Imperial bureaucracy here. Getting the Queen's style and title correct would be nice too, especially if she is to be given another walk-on part. Google would be her friend given half a chance.

(b) Avoid the use of modern US locutions and vocabulary in the narrative and in the dialogue of non-US characters. I am unpersuaded that "rile" and "Gee" are terms applicable to or in the vocabulary of a two-hundred year old Scottish nobleman, whether or not he is also a werewolf.

(c) Read Nancy Mitford's "Noblesse Oblige" and Jilly Cooper's "Class". These are, obviously, 20th century sources, but on the evidence of the novel temporal or geographical dissonance of vocabulary is not an issue that concerns the author.

(d) Improve her English. Off-hand, I recall that the author clearly does not understand the meaning or usage of such words and phrases as "dissemble", "high tea", "social class" and "purposeful", and her grasp of prepositions is generally shaky. This is a small sample of various egregious errors of usage that riddle this book and make it unsuitable even for students of English-as-a-second language to use for reading practice.

And finally I come to the overwhelming point that drove me to decide that this is a book to be hurled aside with great force: the author's appalling proposition that the heroine, a rational, brave, intellectually-inclined and independent-spirited woman, has these qualities because she lacks a soul. It's used as a rather clever plot point - the heroine's condition allows her to turn vampires and werewolves (temporarily) back into ordinary humans with a touch - but the offensive implications of this premise are obvious to anyone with half a brain.

While it definitely has good points and the author clearly has some talent, I cannot recommend this book to anyone. If you want Victorian steampunk comedy, read Catherine Webb's three Horatio Lyle novels, which are much better.
3826622
I wanted very much to like this book and indeed there was much in it to savour and enjoy. The author casts an observant if cynical eye over early nineteenth-century France, the post-Napoleonic era. Through his hero (or perhaps anti-hero), Julian Sorel, he shows us small town, provincial attitudes, takes us into the hierarchy of the Church and then, as Julian's unusual talents allow him to rise, leads us into the top echelons of Paris political and social life. Throughout the author showed the hypocrisy and greed prevalent in every part of society, the jostling for power and social position and the precarious nature of social status in a society still quivering from the upheavals of its recent history.

However, I felt the book had some important flaws too. Julian is a cold, calculating hypocrite (though with occasional flashes of manic passion) and as such I found it hard to empathise with him at any point. His two great love affairs were on-off to such an extreme that it became tedious and repetitive. At least a quarter of the entire novel is taken up with descriptions of how Julien and Mathilde fell in and out of love with each other repeatedly and only once or twice at the same time. I found myself quietly chanting `she loves him, she loves him not' each time I resumed reading. Unfortunately I also `loved him not' but a good deal more constantly than the spoiled, haughty and frankly unstable Mathilde.

There is always an issue with translated novels in that the reader is not able to determine whether any flaws are with the original or the translation. I started to read the Moncrieff translation and while it may have been accurate it was so poorly written as to be almost unreadable. I then moved on to the translation by Burton Raffel, which flowed much more smoothly and had a more literary feel. Overall, though, the book came over as somewhat fragmented, with contradictions from chapter to chapter. How much to blame this on the original or the translator, I am unable to say.

There is sometimes a tendency to assume that in great literature, entertainment comes second to the insight the author gives us into humanity and society. I beg to disagree. If a book fails to engage the reader's sympathies, then I think it is less likely that the author's message will be heard. For me, that was ultimately the problem with this novel. I understand why it is called great; I admire the writing, the observations of a particular time in French history, the descriptions of the various levels of society and I am glad to have read it. But unfortunately, because of my antipathy to the main protagonists, I can't say that I found reading the book a wholly enjoyable experience and, in the end, I was unmoved by Julien's eventual fate.
2634933
I really wanted to like this book.  Truly.  I am fascinated with Russian and Ukrainian culture.  I wanted to learn more about Chernobyl.  But I just couldn't do it.  It wants to be a mystery-thriller, but the author's insistence in breaking up the chapters into bite-sized chunks (never more than 5 pages probably to make it an easy bathroom or "waiting for airplane" reader) makes it impossible to get into a scene, get to know a characters, or become intrigued by a mystery before you're onto the next thing.  Half the time, the sudden changes in perspective left me thinking I had missed whole chapters.

I simply can't recommend this book to anyone.  The concept is great and the outline is good.  But the actual execution is too flawed.
2112272
Oh, how I wanted to love this book. It starts out so promisingly, but by the end, I was shaking my head a lot. It's structured in a dual narrative switching from the present on a horse ranch, run by Cal Crow, a biracial teen and his dad, in the rural West where a homeschooled British teenager, Hope, and her mother, Meredith, an ardent feminist are visiting, to the past in the 1870''s. Naturally, there is attraction between the two teens, but Hope, who has lived a sheltered, rather over-controlled life, may have a hard time getting closer because of her mom. The other narrative is told in the form of a letter from a young English woman, Emily Forsythe, who is traveling to the West Coast to marry a railway magnate whom she has never met. When Emily is the victim of a horrific carriage accident that leaves the rest of the passengers dead, she's unexpectedly rescued by Nate Redfeather, a half-white, half-Native American man who is kind to her but inexplicably refuses to help her be "rescued." Meanwhile, in the present (where Hope is reading this in the ancient diary she discovers at the ranch), Hope and Cal take a day trip and wind up stranded in a cabin, waiting for rescue. As Hope and Cal begin to notice uncanny parallels between their story and that of Emily's, they start to fall in love, but will a tragedy from Cal's past and Hope's mom, thwart their relationship?

What I didn't like:
1. The villains were too, well, vill-ainy. We know from the moment they appear, that they were the designated bad guys. I thought their evilness could have been toned a lot down and still had the desired effect.
2. Too many coincidences! I think the author could have taken out some, and had an equally moving effect. There were just too many exact parallels to let me suspend disbelief.
3. Toward the end, everything got melodramatic to the point where it decreased the connection to the characters for me, not the opposite, though I'm sure that was hardly the author's intention.

What I did:
1. Learning about that particular era and the historical events taking place at the time.
2. Learning about the manners and morals that young women in that period were subjected to.
3. That good ultimately triumphed over evil, even if it was overdone.

Overall, a story with a fascinating parallel love story, but ultimately, didn't work for me because of the over-reliance on "coincidences" and the melodramatic ending.
,
1902310
I wanted to like this book. I really did. I tried to like this book. I set it aside for awhile and came back to it. Time didn't fix any of the issues. It seemed like he was trying to put too much into the book.

The interplay between the girls (and I never really understood why it was so awful even when it was "explained") was drawn out way too much, especially as it didn't really seem to make much of a difference. It's hard to explain what this book is like, to make any comparisons. The second half reminds me of the first two seasons of the Walking Dead except that there are no zombies. The first half of the book reminds me of any of half a dozen we go to a special school and it is bully/admin vs. the narrator.

It wasn't the worst thing I've read and I did finish it. I don't really have a desire to read the rest of the trilogy and that says something. Maybe if I got them for free then I would read them but that's about it.