Allison's Updates en-US Mon, 28 Apr 2025 04:57:23 -0700 60 Allison's Updates 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg GiveawayRequest705871983 Mon, 28 Apr 2025 04:57:23 -0700 <![CDATA[<a href="/user/show/1509746-allison">Allison</a> entered a giveaway]]> /giveaway/show/408219-the-husbands The Husbands by Holly Gramazio
5 copies available, ends on May 16, 2025
Enter to win ]]> Review6913502776 Sun, 27 Apr 2025 16:47:15 -0700 <![CDATA[Allison added 'These Violent Delights']]> /review/show/6913502776 These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever Allison gave 3 stars to These Violent Delights (Hardcover) by Micah Nemerever
This gets three stars not because it's a ho-hum book but because various aspects are either so good or so bad. It's probably why the reviews are so polarizing.

4-5 stars for: Successful dark academia vibes. Nemerever's ability to hold and maintain tension is excellent, as is his writing of an obsessive mind (Paul's). The intertwining of violence, or the threat of violence, throughout most of the book works—mostly—effectively. It definitely kept me turning pages, at least until we get to the point in the book when the opening scene is realized.

1-2 stars for: Overwriting. This book should have been at least 100 or 150 pages shorter. The amount of internal explaining Nemerever attributes to Paul gets tedious, then tiring, then utterly ridiculous. Nemerever can clearly turn a phrase and apply a detail, so why must he always tell us everything, too? It's a shame his editor didn't intervene more forcefully. Relatedly, the middle of the book dragged to the point where I was skimming pages, looking for the next place to sink my teeth back in. Maybe it should have been 200 pages shorter.

As for more of my personal preferences/complaints: The queerness in the book was both overdone and underdone. I thought the cultural/temporal positioning of Paul and Julien's relationship, the resistance they faced especially from Paul's family, was extremely well done. However, their actual sexual attraction and chemistry was barely explored, which occasionally made me wonder whether it was really there or if this was just an intense friendship that had morphed into obsession on Paul's part. (And was it just on Paul's part? By the end it seems like we're supposed to believe the obsession/dependency is mutual, but I kind of wanted it to be a full unreliable narrator situation.... What in the world did Julien love about Paul so much?)

Paul's dead dad was also such an intense presence in the beginning of this book, I thought it would amount to something important. But it pretty much vanishes as Paul's obsession progresses and everyone else in his family heals. Are we supposed to believe that the obsession supplants the grief? I'm not convinced that's effectively conveyed, but it's my best guess. Either way I found it disappointing.

Finally, I really need someone to come explain the ending to me. It can't just be what's literally on the page. Please, someone? ]]> Rating851796609 Sun, 27 Apr 2025 16:43:30 -0700 <![CDATA[Allison Goldstein liked a review]]> /
Allison liked Erik's review of These Violent Delights:
These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever
" These Violent Delights is a book that in so many words says so little.

Paul is a young prodigy and son of a former police officer, now dead as a result of suicide. In college at the age of 16, he meets Julian, an heir and Nietzsche fan, and they immediately fall in with one another. This friendship becomes romantic and it leads them down a dark path in which murder becomes the name of the game. As Paul strives to figure out if Julian truly loves him, and Julian acts out to guide Paul to his love, they find themselves in quandary and with no clear path out but to fall into each other.

Micah Nemerever writes a compelling story in These Violent Delights, but this story is hidden in an extremely overwritten book. The detail the writing encompasses is overbearing and makes the story seem slow and unmoving when in fact so much is happening. The constant detail, scene building, and character describing creates a book that is so bogged down in its own language that the characters and their stories get left behind. Paul and Julian are compelling characters, if only they weren't hidden behind so many words."
]]> GiveawayRequest705612246 Sun, 27 Apr 2025 08:07:46 -0700 <![CDATA[<a href="/user/show/1509746-allison">Allison</a> entered a giveaway]]> /giveaway/show/411918-the-thursday-murder-club The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
15 copies available, ends on May 15, 2025
Enter to win ]]> ReadStatus9344127736 Wed, 23 Apr 2025 13:21:03 -0700 <![CDATA[Allison wants to read 'The History of Sound']]> /review/show/7513090578 The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck Allison wants to read The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck
]]> ReadStatus9343989852 Wed, 23 Apr 2025 12:44:04 -0700 <![CDATA[Allison started reading 'American Bulk: Essays on Excess']]> /review/show/7336340910 American Bulk by Emily Mester Allison started reading American Bulk: Essays on Excess by Emily Mester
]]> ReadStatus9328550635 Sat, 19 Apr 2025 17:21:08 -0700 <![CDATA[Allison started reading 'These Violent Delights']]> /review/show/6913502776 These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever Allison started reading These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever
]]> Review7414145395 Sat, 19 Apr 2025 15:57:01 -0700 <![CDATA[Allison added 'The Ministry of Time']]> /review/show/7414145395 The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley Allison gave 3 stars to The Ministry of Time (Hardcover) by Kaliane Bradley
bookshelves: goodreadschoiceaward, charlottes_angels
Five stars for Bradley's portrayal of characters from the past trying to come to grips with the realities of our present. The details of what each character struggled with (and what they easily adapted to!) brought these characters to life in a way that was as delightful as it was revealing.

Four-point-five stars for Bradley's command of language at the sentence level. There were some absolute gems here, particularly nestled in the dialogue.

Two stars for pacing. I wouldn't have DNFed this novel because the language itself was good enough to keep me going, but this story really slogged for a good two thirds. (And then it absolutely tripped over itself racing to the end.)

I am conflicted in how I feel over the main character (also the narrator). On one hand, I though the complexity of her background and motivation added needed depth to the book. However, it didn't go deep enough. The narrator is far too self-aware for my liking, which kept all of her issues—class, ethnicity, perceived and real control, and nationalism to name a few—at the "explained" level rather than embedding them so that we, the reader, can feel them moving the book itself. But maybe I'm asking too much of this book. It did come very hyped.

I personally don't mind that the novel didn't slot easily into a genre. It's not strictly romance, or science fiction, or literary. The disappointment, for me, is that it leaned into tropes when they were easiest and forewent them when they were hard. Any rational explanation or even hint at a rational explanation about the actual time travel, such as why they retrieved these particular people or how any of it actually worked? Nil. (Because that's hard.) Predictably happy romantic ending? Yep, because that's easy.

I guess I ultimately wanted this book to be more literary, not just because that's my preference, but because that seemed to be the promise at the outset. The language of the writing itself felt like it was promising me that, despite that this book was going to entail time travel and probably some sort of romantic entanglement, I was about to read a deep treatment of complex characters. For a while, I got a deep treatment of the complex character Graham, the male love interest and second-most-important character in the book after the narrator. But then the romance took over. And then the spy-thrillerness took over. And by the end, I felt disoriented and unfulfilled, as though I had planned to eat a full savory dinner, blinked, and discovered I'd eaten two bags of chips and a pint of ice cream instead. A real bummer!

But an entertaining read. If you're going to read this book, go in expecting a standard three-star book that intentionally does not fit into any genre you probably saw marketed, and I can almost guarantee you'll have an enjoyable experience. ]]> ReadStatus9326656648 Sat, 19 Apr 2025 06:58:35 -0700 <![CDATA[Allison wants to read 'The Explorer's Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map']]> /review/show/7500894872 The Explorer's Gene by Alex Hutchinson Allison wants to read The Explorer's Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map by Alex Hutchinson
]]> ReadStatus9316597050 Wed, 16 Apr 2025 12:32:02 -0700 <![CDATA[Allison started reading 'The Ministry of Time']]> /review/show/7414145395 The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley Allison started reading The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
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