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I think I read this at the wrong time.

There were really good moments, but too few and far between for me to actually enjoy it. The narration was the best part; Robin’s quips were witty and he had some very good lines that were striking both in character and analysis.

The characters, for all of their charm and quirks (Lysistrata especially - I adore her), had little growth with arcs that really fell flat. I did not like the love interest, she reminded me a bit too much of the tortured male protag that just needs an innocent (younger) woman who knows nothing of sex that they can use for pleasure and who will help them “feel love again.”

2/5 Almost a 1/5. The book truly became a slog until things picked up again around the 90% mark - much too late for my tastes. Suggested for lovers of sapphic romance, magic, and a lovely, quippy narrator. Maybe I’ll enjoy it more if I come back to it.

4.5 stars.

This first book in the adult series "Emily Wilde" was not perfect, but it's the first time I have read a book like this one, making it difficult for me to rate it. I see all the aspects which need some improvement and I see why this book doesn't work for several people. Nonetheless, I have enjoyed much more than I expected because I could relate to Emily. I will start listing the cons and then come back to the reasons why it is still worked out for me.

Most of the issues are just the consequences of the diary format. Emily brings with her a fieldwork notebook and we see her entries over a time of 6 months. This means that we have only Emily's point of view (besides for a couple of entries by Wendell), leaving the characterization of othe characters very limited. On the other hand, I noticed the efforts and the very well crafted writing to create depth.
Also, Emily feels very real and human with her imperfections and weaknesses. I could follow her reasoning and motivations.

The plot is, in my opinion, the weakest aspect of this book. The pace was very slow for the first two thirds and little happened, while the finale feels very rushed. I didn't mind though, because it mirrored the fact that Emily was getting adjusted to a new place, people, routine, etc. It also had this kinda of "cozy" feeling or "slice-of-life" vibe, which I enjoyed it. I would have appreciated some pages more to give more space to the conclusion. Also, where did the students end up? At the beginning it is mentioned that they were gone, but nobody cared about them.

To sum it up, I enjoyed the vibes and could connect with Emily in a way that rarely happens. Probably it's because I love dogs and I am doing my PhD, but I also shared Emily's curiosity. That made me stand the negative aspects much easier. If you are into a comfortable winter read with a nice protagonist and story, I would recommend you reading it.

(This is my original review from Goodreads, I read it in January and reread it this December. Easily a book I'm going to continue returning to yearly.)

I went into this book highly skeptical of it being able to pull off the combination of academics and fantasy, but it is now easily one of my favorite books in its genre.

The characters each have their own voices and distinct characterizations; from gruff but kindhearted townsfolk, to the "mousy" but dedicated main character, to, of course, the flamboyant but loving love interest, who I found was delightful to read.

The world is as fun to read about as the characters. Fawcett has a beautiful way of narrating that makes everything feel fresh and interesting, which only makes it more powerful when the characters come upon anything magical in their environment.

The book isn't perfect. In some spots the story felt a little thin, like there wasn't really anything connecting a couple of the events to the main storyline. But that just meant that we got to meet more characters and find greater depth in characters we already knew, so I don't really have any complaints about that. The events were still engaging, but didn't always fit in perfectly with the main plot is all I'm saying.

5/5 for making me want to immediately devour the next book, for having the cutest love story I've ever read, and having me laying in bed giggling and kicking my feet while reading the bickering between the main characters. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a scientific approach to the fae, a fun frenemies to lovers story, and a plot that will have you loving every character for each of their quirks.

I preferred the first one.

Everything I liked about the Wisteria Society transferred into this one, however, with a slightly less enjoyable heroine. Charlotte is lovely, sure, but I found her wit to be more annoying than Cecilia's. Everything about Charlotte and Alex's relationship seemed to center around sex and fulfilling physical needs rather than emotional ones. (Not that that isn't a little bit relatable too, ha). Yes, I know they stopped having sex once to talk about emotional things, but that felt like too little too late for me. I did like Charlotte's budding friendship with Cecilia. Where the writing involving men sometimes falls short, the writing in regards to female friendships hasn't failed yet.

3/5 While it's not as good as the previous book, this was still an enjoyable read. If not for the romance, then for the world building and newly introduced society, the mystery posed by the maid, and the style of prose that Holton is so good at.

ROGUE PROTOCOL finds Murderbot trying to get answers about its former corporation's past and hoping to avoid being friends with an overly familiar robot and its humans. 

I continue to like Murderbot, Miki is adorably annoying, and the mental contortions that Murderbot goes though in order to manage what Miki learns is fascinating. The worldbuilding is gradually accruing as the series continues and I like this style.

It's best to think of this series, in terms of structure, like episodes of a tv show (perhaps one of the serials Murderbot loves so much). It builds on the details of the previous book, and uses the information from it, but there isn't room for fluff. That creates this dynamic where the plot is very self-contained, but some bits of worldbuilding don't get explained again if they were explained before, since there just isn't room to go over stuff that was already covered in detail in a previous book. It doesn't quite wrap up anything from the previous book, though it is now clear that Murderbot has a quest and a goal that its pursuing as the series continues. The main storyline starts here and wasn't present previously, except for the connecting thread that Murderbot was somewhere at the end of the last book and now needs to go somewhere else for its next objective. A pretty important thing is introduced and resolved within ROGUE PROTOCOL. It's not the last book, and Murderbot is poised to continue its quest in the next volume. The main character is the same, and its narrative voice is consistent. Because of the episodic nature of the series, most of this book would make sense if someone picked it up at random without knowing about the series, though there are definitely some terms that don't get re-explained and would have to be inferred from context. 

This was great and I'm ready for the next one.

While the previous book in The Murderbot Diaries focused a lot on dialogue, here there is a good mix of action and emotion, with another new bot/human relationship dynamic that added more to the world building.

The Murderbot story is interesting, the plot with GrayCris seems like it's going somewhere, but these past two books feel like a setup for the fourth book in a way that left both feeling incomplete. Murderbot still hasn't grown to like humans or see anything in a different light, but readers did get more insight of it's relationship with humans from it's reactions to Miki's relationship with it's leader.

Repetitive plots aside, I'm hoping that the fourth book will bring out new aspects of Murderbot as a character, shed some light on it's past, and take those final steps into the emotional impact of Murderbot's story.

3/5 for the humor, the fun action, the surface-level side characters, and the fast pace adventure I've come to really enjoy in Wells writing.

The first longer novella in the muderbot diaries. Murderbot hitches a ride on a ship at the beginning of the book and I loved the interactions between murderbot and ART. Murderbot is planning to investigate a traumatic incident in its past, and takes a job as security for a group of humans who are going to the planet it needs to get to, pretending to be an augmented human instead of a SecUnit.

It's a fun story, but the investigation that was the goal of this book, I don't remember any resolution of that? The whole point in this book is for muderbot to figure out what really happened - it gathers information and then the book loses interest in this entirely? I was so confused. Was it a mcguffin for the story to hang off of? How is murderbot going to develop as a character?

We still have the same basic character traits as the first book, I'm not seeing any development. Murderbot eschews human interaction. Murderbot would prefer to be alone watching tv shows. Murderbot is hyper competent against all the odds -- it can hack all the systems, outwit/defeat all the opponents. I guess that's entertaining a little, but I want more from a book. I guess I'll continue with the next in the series, they're short. I'm hoping to see murderbot progress.