iveydocx's avatar

iveydocx

your local braincell trying to grow

841 points

0% overlap
Spring 2025 Readalong
Level 4
Reading...Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
My Taste
Misery
The Secret History
Blood Over Bright Haven
Book Lovers
Pachinko

iveydocx commented on a post

1d
  • Blood Over Bright Haven
    Thoughts from end of chapter one

    this book was recommended to me wtf did i just read wtf wtf wtf

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  • Post from the Luminous forum

    2d
  • Luminous
    thoughts from the end of chapter 4

    the subversion of misgendering vs mistaking for a robot is SO good

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  • iveydocx wrote a review...

    3d
  • Cross the Line
    iveydocx
    May 03, 2025
    5.0
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    ok so i'm biased because simone is my friend but this is a cute, lighthearted romance also the cover is GORGEOUS ride with mee (LIGHTS OUT book 2) coming out soon xoxo

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  • iveydocx commented on a post

    4d
  • Luminous
    iveydocx
    Edited
    Thoughts from the end of chapter 1

    okay the world is SO immersive. prologue is def a tad confusing but still really fascinating. also jun is a trans person who wound up becoming part bionic, which i think is superb. i love this re-imagined korea, with north/south "unified", and how robots/roboware is integrated into it. been waiting to read this book since i bought it - doing a book club for the month of may with a friend - and i am SO excited to see where this goes

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  • iveydocx commented on a post

    4d
  • Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)
    should i read this book or will i cry if i do

    the answer is yes

    18
    comments 6
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  • Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)
    should i read this book or will i cry if i do

    the answer is yes

    18
    comments 6
    Reply
  • iveydocx commented on a post

    4d
  • The Golden Boy's Guide to Bipolar
    arc giveaway!! - May 1, 2025

    Hi everyone--we're very excited to offer our first partnered book giveaway! Thank you to Sonora Reyes who is giving away 3 arcs for their new YA novel, The Golden Boy's Guide to Bipolar. This is a poignant and searingly honest companion novel to the multi-award-winning The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School, following beloved character Cesar Flores as he comes to terms with his sexuality, his new bipolar diagnosis, and more mistakes than he can count. The book comes out September 16, 2025, so this is a chance to get your hands on it early! To enter, please fill out this form by May 16th, 2025, and we'll be in touch with the 3 winners via email (note--we can only ship to the U.S.). If you win, we'd love it if you posted your thoughts while reading & wrote a review on Pagebound + any other platforms you use! in case the link isn't working for you, here's the url of the form: (https://airtable.com/appRaBZZlRoMkRDrc/pagKHHCP27kOMDqrb/form

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  • Post from the Luminous forum

    4d
  • Luminous
    iveydocx
    Edited
    Thoughts from the end of chapter 1

    okay the world is SO immersive. prologue is def a tad confusing but still really fascinating. also jun is a trans person who wound up becoming part bionic, which i think is superb. i love this re-imagined korea, with north/south "unified", and how robots/roboware is integrated into it. been waiting to read this book since i bought it - doing a book club for the month of may with a friend - and i am SO excited to see where this goes

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    comments 2
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  • iveydocx started reading...

    4d
    Luminous

    Luminous

    Silvia Park

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    iveydocx finished reading and wrote a review...

    6d
  • Verity
    iveydocx
    Apr 29, 2025
    0.5
    Enjoyment: 0.5Quality: 0.5Characters: 0.5Plot: 0.5

    I’d like to start off this review with this disaster from Colleen Hoover’s acknowledgements: “I’m sorry the ARCs for this particular book were such a hot mess. That happens when you don’t finish the book until four days before release. I will do better next time, I promise.” To see that this book was not finished until four days before the release makes a lot of sense (more commentary on that later). I will not be criticizing CH’s writing, mostly because I have nothing nice to say. VERITY is rife with bland characters and plot holes while having plot points that make NO sense. Seriously - the story opens with Lowen witnessing a man get run over by a car in the streets, and THAT is the story’s meet-cute. Which, by the way, has NO plot significance other than being NoT LiKe OtHeR MeEt CuTeS. Seriously. I thought this would wind up being an oh, shit! Jeremy’s the one who killed him to get Lowen’s attention! But no. It opens with a head exploding onto Lowen’s shirt for no reason other than “why not.” It doesn’t even impact her emotionally, not really, other than being a bit frazzled. WTF. Here’s where I want to pause about what I wanted this to be about instead. I walked into VERITY hoping for GONE GIRL meets MISERY. I’m a sucker for psychological thrillers, unreliable narrators, and complex and unlikeable women. Based on the summary, I figured this would be about a woman who’s grappling with her own baggage and not-so-stellar writing career. I expected it would be about a woman taking over the manuscript of another writer’s novel, a writer who was driven mad by the dark contents of her stories about “villains”, who would slowly slip into insanity/evilness over the course of finishing this writer’s manuscript. As Verity’s complicated identity with being a mother starts to surface, I figured PPD and the difficulties of moving around your whole life for children would be the contributing factor. Yeah, this book isn’t about that at all. Lowen is your quintessential Mary Sue who has no personality aside from thirsting over Jeremy and being nosy. She has no emotional depth and thinks about Verity’s book and sex and Verity and Jeremy having sex and also having sex with Jeremy. Her stream of consciousness is so abysmal that I wouldn’t be surprised if CH keyboard smashed the entire draft to submit it four (4) days before the release date with zero developmental editing. For a book about a writer who’s supposed to write a book, there is, like, NO WRITING actually happening. In fact, Lowen spends the entire book NOT writing (she puts together an outline and submits it at one point) and instead reading Verity’s titled autobiography (extremely slowly, I might add). NONE OF US EVEN KNOW WHAT VERITY’S BOOKS ARE ABOUT. We are told her writing is “GOOD. REALLY GOOD” (paraphrased) and that Verity is SUPER SUCCESSFUL and writes about “villains.” THERE IS LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE ABOUT VERITY’S WRITING. She’s just Good. REALLY GOOD. So you should also think that she is VERY GOOD. The huge irony is that we actually get to read Verity’s writing through her autobiography and let me tell you: Verity is NOT really good. I guess that makes Lowen an unreliable narrator? But not because she’s actually unreliable. I think she just has bad taste. Jeremy is no better. If Lowen is a Mary Sue, Jeremy is Martin Steve. He is depicted as being a hot and incredibly caring father when in reality he’s doing the bare fucking minimum????? Men shouldn’t be praised for taking their kid to the hospital when they’re hurt or getting them ready for bed. THAT’S WHEN THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DO. His only personality is he’s a good dad! He’s a good man! He’s hot! Oh and BTW he’s SUCH a caring husband for hiring a nurse to take care of his catatonic wife and taking over a few hours a day. Anyone who found Jeremy to be a heartthrob….love urself. You deserve to have higher expectations for men. The plot also made NO SENSE. It’s like CH used a random prompt generator or typed into ChatGPT “give me a random plot point to add into my thriller novel”. Lowen basically spends her time reading, bonding (thirsting) (fucking) with Jeremy, and being suspicious of Verity. She’s also supposed to be a chronic sleepwalker but the only way this contributes to the plot is that Jeremy installs a lock on the OUTSIDE of her door????? There are some eerie moments with Verity but TBH I found them far and few between! And Jeremy and Lowen’s bland personalities washed out just how eerie they’re supposed to be! I’m trying to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible, but holy mother freaking shit. I’m inclined to believe that CH simply does not understand the human psyche. Or, like, how humans function. Because some of these plot twists could work if you explore the emotional repercussions of them. But there ISN’T any. The story is told to us with the emotional inflection of someone reading an IKEA instruction manual. To name the very first instance that isn’t too spoiler-y: Crew (five-year-old son) talks about how Verity tells him things. You mean to tell me this ENTIRE TIME, he doesn’t mention this to Jeremy AT ALL, and Jeremy CONTINUES TO BELIEVE VERITY IS ACTUALLY A VEGETABLE??? Jesus Christ. The plot is not, in fact, plotting. And, my final commentary: the letter is a fucking cop out. 0.5/5 stars

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  • iveydocx commented on a post

    1w
  • A Novel Love Story
    Thoughts from 37% (beginning of ch15)

    Not to be that person…but who edited this book? “…I called, putting down a ten for my lunch and scooting out of the booth.” Not even half a page later: “So I put a ten down on the table for my food and followed her…” These are the kinds of things I DNF books for. Sure it’s a little error that was missed, but to me it’s pretty inexcusable to show such a lack of care for the story. This is something you fix in round one edits. How do you expect me to care enough about your book to read it if you (or your editor(s)) clearly don’t care enough to ensure mistakes like this are caught?

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  • iveydocx commented on a post

    1w
  • The Left Hand of Darkness
    embarrassingly this is on pause because my ebook library loan expired

    in my defense sometimes i just don't have the braincells to read

    6
    comments 2
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  • Post from the Verity forum

    1w
  • Verity
    Thoughts from 15%

    what in the name of trauma dumping is this novel

    4
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  • iveydocx commented on a post

    1w
  • Great Big Beautiful Life
    Thoughts from end of chapter 19

    emily henry once again shows why she's the best at character driven contemporary romance

    3
    comments 2
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  • iveydocx commented on a post

    1w
  • Great Big Beautiful Life
    Thoughts from 54%

    Hayden’s wrong, It’s a Wonderful Life should have never been made. Worst Christmas movie ever and I will die on this hill.

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