laneyofthenight's reviews
424 reviews

The Urge: Our History of Addiction by Carl Erik Fisher

2.5

This book is billed as a history book, but it seems like the author can’t decide if he wants it to be a history book, sociology book, memoir, or commentary essay. He seems to have educated himself thoroughly on the aspects of addiction he talks about in this book, and then he sat down to write with no outline or forethought of what he wanted to say and why. It’s not bad but it’s also definitely not good.

The book is factually accurate on all fronts, but it does a poor job of communicating those facts across the board and relating those facts to each other in any logical way. It’s not driving any particular point home for me, nor am I sure what point it was supposed to drive home. It’s inferior in structure and and writing style to books like Dopesick or Drug Dealer MD, and it’s inferior in empathy, storytelling, and understanding to a more “traditional” (for lack of a better word) addiction memoir.

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell

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2.25

Fatal Throne: The Wives of Henry VIII Tell All by Candace Fleming, Stephanie Hemphill, M.T. Anderson

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sad tense slow-paced

2.5

The Edge of in Between by Lorelei Savaryn

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adventurous inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Everyone who knows anything about me knows my favorite book of all time is the Secret Garden, so when this popped up on my booktok and I saw it was a Secret Garden retelling I got up from my seat that instant and went to three bookstores to find a copy of it. Then immediately went home and read it.

There were parts of this book I absolutely loved and parts that left me exasperated, but on the whole I did genuinely enjoy it and do recommend it.

Things it did right:

This is easily one of the best characterizations of a child dealing with the loss of a parent I have ever seen. Her pain is very real and you feel it and relate to it very deeply. Her reaction to it even more so. The willingness to sacrifice anything to have the chance to see the people you love again, even if it’s just to say goodbye, was moving and I did cry in the first hundred or so pages. At one point she wrote: “There was no reason to believe anything would ever feel like home again. That was until she found them.” And I felt that was very poignant and moving in the context of this sea of sorrow Lottie is wrestling with.

The world itself is also very interesting, and the depiction of magic, while not the most unique thing I’ve ever seen was incredibly intriguing and well done. Not only did the magic system tie in very naturally with the world, it tied in with the characters and really added to the depiction of the characters emotions of dealing with loss and growing to accept the world as it is.

Unrelated to the plot, but the cover is beautiful and a great representation of the story.

However, there were things I did not like:

While Lottie and Clement I felt were depicted very well, I hated Agnes (and I wasn’t supposed to). I’m not sure if the author just wrote inconsistently or if she legitimately didn’t realize that Agnes was contradicting herself. But very late in the book, after Lottie learns the main lesson of the story, Agnes implies that she didn’t tell Lottie how to deal with her grief or judge Lottie for the way she was dealing with it. Which is just blatantly false, and I’m not sure if that’s a plot hole, Agnes lying to herself, or genuine mischaracterization by the author. Because in the only scene where Agnes actually sees Lottie upset she came across as deeply judgmental to me, being blatantly fed up with and not even remotely entertaining the very obvious sorrow and pain a small child is dealing with before her very eyes. It was just quite cruel.

The author is also guilty of frequent info dumping early on, and that changes to objectively MASSIVE amounts of exposition later. The info dumping at the beginning didn’t bother me too much, but the vast majority of the reason I’m rating this book 4 stars and not 5 is because the sheer amount of exposition completely ruined the ending for me. The ending comes over the course of the last 80 or so pages, and about 60 of those 80 pages is exposition. I don’t mind an 80 page ending when it’s warranted, but when the action breaks multiple times for multiple expositions in a row on multiple different things before I get back to the original point it’s quite frankly ridiculous. I get it. She learned the lesson that she should have dealt with her grief and moved on. I get it love is the key to everything. I get it she uses magic to paint. I get it. I get it. I get it. You don’t need to tell me ten times, and you don’t need ten pages in the middle of a fight to do it.

Overall, very good characterization for the most part, deeply moving depictions of emotions, solid plot, interesting world building. Awful ending.

Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

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adventurous dark medium-paced