
I absolutely loved every second of this book! Yes, there is twue wuve which is amazeballs and adorable and had me giggling, but of course, because this lush, romantic affair is between the First Son and the Prince of England...there's going to be some politics involved. Their relationship, the international logistics, everything was all so maturely handled and emotionally raw that I had all the feels. I have more lines and passages stickied in this book any other because there are so many hilarious and witty conversations. If you find yourself losing hope in romance and true love, pick this up and your dreams will be restored.

Blue has been told her whole life that she will kill her true love. Coming from a family of psychics, she’s always accepted the fact, but didn’t really find it a problem until she meets the "raven boys." Rich students from the ivy-track high school nearby, each of the four boys is mysterious and quirky in their own way. Right from the first page, you get the feeling there's something bigger going on in the town of Henrietta, Virginia. Blue is a great main character and easy to relate to. She is splendidly odd, has a cool ability, and strives to be eccentric. Another great character, Gansey's enthusiasm for his quest to find Glendower is energetic and powerful. The excitement is contagious; I could just picture the light in his eyes every time he talked about the legend! The story moves well and there isn't a single lagging moment.


Even after seeing it win five of the biggest fantasy book awards last year, I’m not sure why I hesitated to start this book. Maybe that was precisely it. With so many stars, my expectations were set incredibly high; it was too daunting. But when I finally got around to reading the summary and learned what the plot was about, and that the main character is a spaceship…I picked it up the next day. I haven’t felt this empathetic toward an AI since watching Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation throughout my childhood. Justice of Toren One Esk’s history and plotting of revenge spanning over a thousand years is just plain exciting to experience. So hailing all hardcore sci-fi fans, here’s the erudite, complex novel with a narrative of avant-garde gender usage a la Ursula le Guin we’ve all been waiting for. And now I’m left scrambling for the next one.

I absolutely loved this book. It was my intro to Erik Larson's work and now I need to go read everything else he's ever written. I listened to the audiobook on Libro.fm, which was excellent. He makes learning history actually interesting, and toward the end where it's finally telling about the sinking of the ship, I had chills the whole time. I spent a lot of my childhood on luxury liners, and the way he so matter-of-factly states everything that happens in the sinking, pulling from the passenger's accounts, it feels real even a hundred years later.

