All These Things I've Done by Gabrielle Zevin

Rating: 4 stars

     Mafia princess in a slight future (2083) dystopian, trying to distance herself from mafia. Also, Romeo and Juliet. And chocolate.

     Okay, its less cheesy than my synopsis and actually pretty good. I really loved the narrator. She had her head on straight and for the most part, her priorities in order. Her demeanor also wasn't always perfect and she made mistakes, which was good. I wish she pulled the mafia princess card more, but I v respect her for not. The characters were very relatable and interesting. I liked the writing style but it seemed inconsistent. I thought Anya's NBs were too infrequent that it caught me off guard when it happened. Another long note, instead of only one, I think would have helped too.

      I've also read Elsewhere and Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin, and I really enjoyed them both. I didn't read the summary as i was in a hurry at the library and I picked it up since I liked her other work and I went into it thinking it was a cute complementary where a girl loves chocolate or something. Then I thought it was some AU 1920s  and then I got frustrated at the rest of the series' covers.
 
 I did enjoy the book but it didn't feel like a dystopian, or even the future. There is very little change from then and now, which is okay, but it's marketed at a dystopian. There should've been more urgency about the lack of water, which I think is going to be expanded on in the later books, but there needed to be something in this book to differentiate the time. I wish they had a dialect or more futuristic things, other than the iPad type things. Also, i'm still confused as to why chocolate was banned and I feel like there should've been more about the caffeine ban.

  Overall I did enjoy the book very much, I read it all in one sitting. I really loved the characters and related to them. However the lack of world building and dystopian characteristics, and the inconsistent writing style was frustrating.

The Lux Series by Jennifer L. Armentrout (overall review)

Series Rating: 4.5 stars

    Let me set the scene. Olivia. Late at Night. A dead bookshelf with books laying everywhere. Grieving. The main character of the book I was currently reading is a book blogger. Why not?

*cue many days of template searching instead of actually reading*

    I saw this series on Booktube a lot as "Twilight but aliens" and finally gave in. I didn't expect to like it. Two Twilights can't coexist and both be good. But alas, it was sooo good. I didn't expect it to be so funny and I read the whole series in about 5 days. It took Katy a while to figure out the whole alien thing, which was frustrating, but afterwards the action never stopped and I was on the edge of my seat 95% of the time. The dialog was perfect and I found myself laughing in the most serious situations. My favorite was Opal (Lux #3) and my least favorite has to be either the first or last one.

     The main character, Kathy, was such a badass bitch and didn't take any shit I just want to be her. She was strong, a fangirl, and her refusal of falling into a damsel in distress position makes me love her so much. Daemon in the beginning was down right cruel to her and she never backed down. Daemon, the love interest, made me out loud and the banter he had with everyone, especially Katy, was perfect. To describe my love of the rest of the gang would give spoilers, but i'll just say a certain 15 year old is the reason for my existence. I was born to read him. I just want a whole book of just him. I could read him reading a phone book.

     The reason for the 4.5 stars instead of 5 was the opening and closing of the series. Altough i very much enjoyed the lack of insta love, in Obsidian and a little in Onyx Daemon was so hot and cold, his cold being downright awful to Katy, it was frustrating and sometimes I would set the book down because I didn't want to deal with him. However, once Daemon and Katy got together I was in love. In Opposition, the final book, I would find myself skipping whole paragraphs and skimming the page just reading the dialogue. It was, it hurts to say but,  boring. It seemed every three seconds there was a new conflict which was predictably solved in 50 pages. I still gave it four stars for the characters and the dialogue and I still enjoyed it.

    Overall, I loved it. The characters were fantastic. The narration was fantastic. The dialogue was fantastic. It made me laugh out loud then reread it and laugh again. It was cheesy, and it knew it, and it called itself out on it. It accepted it was a book where a girl literally falls in love with a alien and it embraced it. Go read it (I do suggest a library copy or an eBook though because those cover man, they're bad).