Reviews of Books I'm Unhauling

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

3 stars

“Life is not a paragraph, and death is no parenthesis.”

Rachel takes the train every morning and night. As she watches from her window, she sees two people—a young couple—who catches her eye. She names them Jess and Jason and imagines their perfect life that is so different from the one that she has lost. But Rachel notices something one morning that shows that anything but this couple may be perfect. She goes to the police, but they don’t believe her. Is everything that she witnessed a lie or is it true? I first read The Girl on the Train in August of 2016. It’s been quite some time; I know and this review is long overdue. I’ve sat on this thriller for a long time and have read many since. Hawkins can write a gripping novel. I turned page after page and was enthralled by the suspense and build-up of Rachel’s life and unreliable character arc. Hawkins painted a fast-paced train ride that I didn’t want to jump off of just yet. I remember getting to the twist and then wondering how this became such an instant success with the masses because where was the character development going because none of the character arcs supported this twist. It was all very disappointing. Since reading this book I have also watched the movie which was so drab and further proved that the ending just doesn’t work for me. I’m finally writing this review because I’m ready to unhaul this book from my bookshelves. It’s been three years, The Girl on the Train, and you weren’t a bad book, but you didn’t bring me the joy that you promised me. I do plan to read Hawkins other works because her writing style offers promise. I think that’s where I’ll leave my thoughts. I don’t do many reviews often, but I feel like this book just doesn’t warrant a whole lot to say that hasn’t already been said.


Whimsical Writing Scale: 3.5

Kick-Butt Heroine Scale: 3

Villain Scale: 2

Character Scale: 3

Plotastic Scale: 2.5

Cover Thoughts: I hate this cover. At first, I liked it but font can’t be the sole striking thing to make me like a cover and the more I look at it the more I dislike it.

Paper Towns by John Green

1.5 stars

Q is in love with Margo. She offers adventure in all things that Q doesn’t have within himself. When Margo leaves town Q knows that he has to go after her and he and his best friends embark on a journey to uncover where Margo has run off to and what she is hiding from. This book is just not good. I was a John Green fan for my early high school years. I absolutely loved The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska wasn’t great but it kept me hooked when I was a sophomore. The summer before my senior year I hoped to fall back into Green. The Paper Towns film was about to release and it seemed like a good place to start. Suffice to say this book has since made me get rid of all the other Green books that I had yet to read because I decided to part ways from all of Green’s previous releases to TFIOS. I don’t regret it. This book is chalked full of dramatic one-liners that are meant to be pinned to the tumblr dashboard. Green’s books have the tendency to be overly witty. Almost as if they are a person nudging their mirror reflection in the mirror after they make a bad joke. It’s not appealing to me, but the character trait may win others over. It just doesn’t sing to me.


Whimsical Writing Scale: 2.5

My notes for this book are actually making me laugh so here is what Sarah from five years ago thought about this daunting tale of chasing a teenager across state lines because the main character is so in love with her.
Page 4
This book is already trying to be too witty.
She’s nine. He needs to calm down (in regards to when he “falls in love” with Margo).
Page 6
Repetitive sentences are repetitive.
Page 7
I doubt a nine-year-old would acquire all this information. (Margo does a heavy investigation on a divorce.)
Page 8
gag me with a spoon
Page 11
Bet a lot of band kids love the band hate.
Page 13
I hate all these characters. This is worse than LFA (Looking for Alaska).
Page 14
Q needs to shut up with his Margo is perfection routine.
Page 15
My eyes glazed over. I reread this page three times.
Page 16
If I have (to) read honeybunny one more time, I’ll fix him. [Young Sarah was violent.]
Page 17
Margo sounds like a b*. [This was written in my sailor days.]
Page 22
This gets dumber and dumber.
This was all just from the prologue and first chapter. I think I hate read this book. LOL. I didn’t like the characters. Q was a cardboard cutout of Green’s witty quotes with a fun and quirky weird trait to set him apart from all of the YA heroes because we can’t have him be an average boy. Margo is an over the top character who has unattainable expectations placed upon her by a teenage boy with an obsession. She’s also insufferably rude and believes that she is better than everybody else. She was, in my opinion, not worth chasing. The characters are hypocrites who made an argument and then contradicted that same argument within the same page. One of my notes that I walk away with assuredly giving a thumbs up to and still standing by is that “The only person Margo likes is Margo” (note written on page 67). My biggest hang up over the plot of this story is it’s about a boy who wants to find the girl who never showed any interest in him until she needed him for something. I just can’t get behind the subtle manipulation and complete championing of that kind of narrative towards cruel behavior. It’s not okay, folks. I wasn’t a fan of this one. Going through my notes to write this review reminded of how much I really don’t like Paper Towns. I can’t wait to give this away to someone who will and hopefully they’ll enjoy my notes.


Swoon Worthy Scale: 2

Kick-Butt Heroine Scale: -1

Character Scale: 2.5

Plotastic Scale: 1

Cover Thoughts: I love this cover. It’s bold and striking.

These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

First in the Starbound Trilogy

1.25 stars

Lilac LaRoux is the princess of the luxury spaceship the Icarus. She’s the daughter of the Commander and she has space at her fingertips, but she can’t do the things she longs to do due to the harsh confines and expectations of being royal. Tarver is one of the most elite war heroes and has been in the thick of some of the most brutal battles. Lilac and Tarver meet, things don’t go so well when politics and teenage angst is involved. To make matters even more complicated they are the lone survivors after a space attack on the Icarus and have to set their differences aside to survive and fight bigger battles of an unknown planet. This was a letdown. I had hopes for this one. It’s supposed to be Titanic in space, y’all that should be 5-star book. Sadly, this book was completely devastating to my own personal expectations. The writing had two layers which most likely is the contributing factor of having a co-authored work. The first solid point in writing is the political comments and acknowledgments of this world. I’m assuming that these were written by Kaufman because they reminded me of Illuminae and I could see her work shining through. The rest, however, was sappy, dopey-eyed puppy love that eventually turns into an all-out rabid case of lust. This book went from we have to survive and strange things on this planet could kill us to let’s get it on, lover boy. The writing is eye-roll inducing. The plot takes a rapid turn into the zone of who thought this was a good idea. I’m disappointed. I blame most of my hatred on the writing and the plot because by page 263 I gave up on even thinking that this was a relatively okay book. No, this book sucks and that’s my final word.


Whimsical Writing Scale: 1

The main female character is Lilac. Lilac is pretty insufferable for a vast portion of this novel because she is constantly going back and forth between her own morals. She makes a terrible princess because she herself does not know what she stands for, which I can forgive because she is a teenager. Sadly, there was not a good amount of character development to convince me that she is this strong person capable of making her own decisions because her decisions still seemed to be influenced by other peoples’ desires for her.


Kick-Butt Heroine Scale: 1.5

The main male character is Tarver. He wasn’t too bad. In fact, for the majority of the novel I liked him at a decent enough level. Somewhere around the 200-page mark my eyes become glued to my head when I was in his POV. He is not a very convincing hero, but I did like his familial backstory. He had promise, but it just didn’t pan out. I think this is mainly due to the fact that he lost his autonomy as a character and became the other half of a romantic arc where his individuality was thrown into the wayside in the hopes of selling a romantic and swoon worthy story. It didn’t work.


Swoon Worthy Scale: 2

The Villain- Again, this had promise because the corporation is bad and the Icarus was evil. Not surprising these are the way these space stories go, but it all felt so one-dimensional. At the end, it’s just all handled so happily ever after that it doesn’t seem believable. Also I hated the chapters where Tarver is being interviewed over what has occurred and interrogated.


Villain Scale: 1

Overall, this one was a letdown. I’m quite sad about it because I thought that maybe I had found a new scifi series to contend with, but nope. I’m not touching the sequel even if it was given to me as a gift. I would also like to advise staying away from this audiobook because it was painful. The narrators did not do a great job and the poor source material only made the narration worse, in my opinion.


Plotastic Scale: 1

Cover Thoughts: I love this cover because pretty dress, but the characters are so badly photoshopped that I laugh at the cover when I look at it for too long.

The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

1 star (if I could give 0 I would)

Stan and Charmaine live in a world where economical collapse is rampant and they are struggling to survive. They are living in their car and in constant danger of being jobbed of what little they do have. The Positron Project offers residency in the town of Consilience for six months of the year. Every alternating month, they will work in the Positron prison system and for the next month they will get nice and easy living. At first the setup has a lot of benefits and seems like their prayers have been answered, but a taboo affair breaks out between Charmaine and the man who lives in the house during the other months of the year. Positron won’t allow this and the iron grip of the prison system they work for does not allow for such blatant self-pleasure. Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite authors. The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake are fantastic pieces of science fiction that display the horrors of humanity and the excess of human decay that is lurking to break through and oppress those who are vulnerable for their own purposes. The Heart Goes Last definitely has these qualities and it rings true to who Atwood is a writer as far as themes go. However, the writing is subpar, cheap, and just disappointing. I’m embarrassed that such a prolific author such as Atwood published a novel like this because it was painful to read. I know that sounds so harsh and I feel bad for even thinking it, but it’s true. This novel does not live up to what Atwood is known for and capable of doing. It’s a very sad dystopian novel and I’m disappointed by it. I did greatly enjoy the beginning of this novel and the discussion and themes of poverty. They were brilliant and Atwood is known for creating satiric pieces that toe pass the line of black humor into straight horror, but this novel went from making exciting and brilliant commentary on poverty, consumerism, and prison systems to outlandish commentary that turned this from a serious dystopian into a sex-crazed and weird pseudo-science fiction story. I weep.


Whimsical Writing Scale: 1.5

Stan is gross, y’all. He is constantly calling women sluts and thinking about masturbation and what he can to be pleased physically. He has no traits outside of his sexual prowess. It’s disgusting. I don’t mind reading about a despicable and sexually obsessed man (Oryx and Crake has a great example of this), but he has no extra development. He is nothing, but sex. He is one of the most grating and disgusting characters I’ve come across. It was even worse because I opted to listen to the audiobook while reading a physical copy as well and both mediums were disgusting but the auditory damage this to my poor psyche will forever be scarred.


Swoon Worthy Scale: -5

Charmaine is not much better. She is a cheater who immediately takes advantage of her luxury living to forget about where and what she originally experienced. It’s almost like she wipes her mind of her humanity and becomes a sexualized woman only living for her next escapade with her lover. She also loves to judge other people for their appearances which makes her an award-winning grade A character with stunning heart and great character development.


Kick-Butt Heroine Scale: 1

The Villain- This novel is a mess. There is a woman who imprints with a teddy bear due to a mind-altering transplant that makes her love the first thing she sees. This transplant is [also done to Charmaine. She is obsessed with her husband and they have kids and host parties and BBQs. Their kid is named Stanlita (WHAT). Then you find that she was lied to about having the surgery and basically has tricked her own mind into loving Stan devotedly like never before. She pulled a Ron Weasley thinking he had Liquid Luck. (hide spoiler)] This story is a joke.


Villain Scale: 1

There are very few redeeming qualities about this novel and that brings me great pain. I love Atwood and it’s heartbreaking to read a novel by a beloved author that is absolutely horrible and perpetuates themes that are disgusting and degrading. The ending, if you didn’t see the spoiler tag above, was one of the worst endings I remember coming across. I’m still sad about this book because it was supposed to be a new favorite Atwood. I would love to own all of Atwood’s novels one day, except this one because I don’t want this gigantic mess to take us bookshelf space.


Plotastic Scale: 1

Cover Thoughts: I do like the cover. Not a favorite, but I like the orange with the blue.

I didn't realize this until just now, but I wrote this by ranking from liked to my most hated. That's funny and I did that subconsciously.

Have you read any of these books? What are your thoughts on them? Are there any books that you can't wait to unhaul? Let me know down below in the comments!