Manga Review: Everyone's Getting Married, Volume 9, by Izumi Miyazono

Rating (Out of 5): ~3.5

Publisher: Shojo Beat (VIZ Media)

Release Date: March 2019

Volumes: 9.

Spoilers?: Light.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. RightStuf.

Volume: 1. 8.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Opposites attract—but should they get married?!

Successful career woman Asuka Takanashi has an old-fashioned dream of getting married and becoming a housewife. After her long-term boyfriend breaks up with her to pursue his own career goals, she encounters popular newscaster Ryu Nanami. Asuka and Ryu get along well, but the last thing he wants is to ever get married. This levelheaded pair who want the opposite things in life should never get involved, except…

Successful career woman Asuka Takanashi has an old-fashioned dream of getting married and becoming a housewife, but popular TV newscaster Ryu Nanami would rather die than ever get married. Asuka doesn’t want to get in the way of Ryu pursuing his career abroad, so she has ended their long-distance relationship. With their lives on different paths, is this loving couple destined to remain apart?

Review:

I respect how this series ended, which is probably an odd thing to say.

This started with Asuka declaring that she knew what she wanted, which was to marry and be a homemaker, and with Ryu stating he didn't want to marry. They've both been through quite a bit, though it might have dragged on in some places. I appreciate that Asuka decided she might need to do something else for now, and that she didn't think she and Ryu could be together, given how differently their wants were.

I think it made sense, how things play out from there. Asuka ended up going down a different path than she expected, and I think she was happy with that. I'm glad that the drama with Kamiya was actually resolved, finally. The relationship between Asuka and Ryu was resolved sweetly, too, and I'm happy with their ending. They kind of both needed to do their own thing for a while, before they could finally meet in the middle, and that made sense.

Parts of this series seemed to drag on, and then the ending came quicker than I expected, but overall I'm happy with how it ended. It didn't feel rushed, and it made sense for the characters, so I can appreciate that.

A review copy was provided by the publisher, VIZ Media, for an honest review. Thank you so, so much!

Novel Review: The Retribution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #3) by Michelle Hodkin

Rating (Out of 5): ~4

Genre: YA Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Release Date: November 2014

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Teaser Tuesday. Wishlist Thursday.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Mara Dyer wants to believe there's more to the lies she’s been told.
There is.

She doesn’t stop to think about where her quest for the truth might lead.
She should.

She never had to imagine how far she would go for vengeance.
She will now.

Loyalties are betrayed, guilt and innocence tangle, and fate and chance collide in this shocking conclusion to Mara Dyer’s story.
Retribution has arrived.

The Cover:

I love all the covers of this series. They all go together so well, and this one is just as pretty as the others. And I think it fits the book very well, too.

Quotes:

•  "'The people we care about are always worth more to us than the people we don’t. No matter what anyone pretends.’” (Hardback, Pg. 399)
• "The ability to heal does not make one good any more than the ability to kill makes one evil. Kill the right people, and you become a hero. Heal the wrong ones, and you become a villain. It is our choices that define us, not our abilities.” (Pg. 422)

Review:

This last book was surprising and hard and so very good.

Mara goes through a hard change, a very dark one. There’s some serious violence here, and Mara deals with it the only way she can, which is something that everyone else has a very hard time taking. But she has violence and destruction in her, and she accepts that.

Noah is missing. Horribly so. And this does horrible things to Mara, in particular.

Mara does a lot, going on a journey with several people, doing bad things and things that need to happen. I don’t know what else to say, because I don’t want to ruin any of it.

The climax is… surprising, and horrible, and I’m still a little unsure of how it worked. But it did, and I’m okay with that. I wanted that. We get some answers for Mara’s visions, as well as how they all work and why they’re like this.

I will say that I was a little disappointed with the opening line of the first book (“My name is not Mara Dyer…”), because I had hoped it would be more, there would be more answer and excitement to that statement, but that’s all right.

This was a very good conclusion to the series. I’m happy with how it all worked out, and I liked the dark side that Mara ended up on, with the surprise of it. I look forward to whatever Hodkin releases next.

Novel Review: Allegiant (Divergent, #3) by Veronica Roth

Rating (Out of 5): ~3-4

Genre: YA Dystopian Romance

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins)

Release Date: October 2013

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Teaser Tuesday. Wishlist Thursday.

Goodreads Synopsis:

The faction-based society that Tris Prior once believed in is shattered—fractured by violence and power struggles and scarred by loss and betrayal. So when offered a chance to explore the world past the limits she’s known, Tris is ready. Perhaps beyond the fence, she and Tobias will find a simple new life together, free from complicated lies, tangled loyalties, and painful memories.

But Tris’s new reality is even more alarming than the one she left behind. Old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless. Explosive new truths change the hearts of those she loves. And once again, Tris must battle to comprehend the complexities of human nature—and of herself—while facing impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice, and love.

Told from a riveting dual perspective, Allegiant, by #1 New York Times best-selling author Veronica Roth, brings the Divergent series to a powerful conclusion while revealing the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of readers in Divergent and Insurgent.

The Cover:

I like this cover. I think it's pretty, it's eye-catching, and it goes with the other books really well. It represents the book pretty well, and gives the idea that it's dystopian.

Quotes:

• "I feel like myself, strong and weak at once—allowed, at least for a little while, to be both.” (Hardback, pg. 32)
• "'Wouldn’t it be more effective to unleash the whole tank at once?’ […] Doing a little at once can fix something, eventually, but I feel like when you believe that something is truly a problem, you throw everything you have at it, because you just can’t help yourself.” (Pg. 147)
• "Ordinary life surrounds me, and I am alone with these revelations.” (Pg. 190)
• "People are supposed to fear others, not themselves.” (Pg. 239)
• "'Sometimes I feel like there is so much to be afraid of, and sometimes I feel like there is nothing left to fear.’” (Pg. 239)
• "'You don’t believe things because they make your life better, you believe them because they’re true.’” (Pg. 257)
• "'She said that everyone has some evil inside them, and the first step to loving anyone is to recognize the same evil in ourselves, so we’re able to forgive them.’” (Pg. 277)
• "I fell in love with him. But I don’t just stay with him by default as if there’s no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.” (Pg. 372)

Review:

Till about fifty pages from the end of the book, I didn’t know why so many people were upset about the book. It seemed pretty similar to the previous book, which I know quite a lot of people also didn’t like, but I enjoyed it. And so I was enjoying this one. Was thinking it was going to be a set four stars, at least. And then I had about fifty pages left, and something happened.

I’m going to do my best to keep the event a secret, because it should be a surprise, as much as it was for me.

When I first read the scene, I wasn’t sure if that had really happened. So often, something like that happens, but ends up being saved at the last second, so I wasn’t sure. And then I was a little crushed that it had really happened, because what.

On the one hand, I have to give Roth props for doing it. That almost never happens, in a book or a movie or anything. So she had guts for doing it in the first place. And the wording of when it happened was just perfect; it was stated perfectly. That’s one reason why I wasn’t sure if it was fake or not, because of how well it had been written. Also, it really makes me wonder if the movie is going to end the same way, because this kind of thing happens even less in movies.

But then there’s the fact that it kind of sucks. I wasn’t expecting it, not even a little bit. Not even as it was happening. I’m unhappy because I wanted the other ending, the ending that we always get. I was perfectly content to be getting that one. And I’m also unsure if I believe that it really needed to happen.

Would the development really not have worked out as well the other way? Was that really the correct ending for her? Really? Because I don’t know if I agree with that. I’ve taken some time to think about it, and I’m still not sure. I can see both sides, and I really can’t decide.

I’m also not sure how I feel about everything else. The ending for the compound was a little iffy for me, but I can see the upsides. I can deal with that, be content with it, at least mostly.

I found what the reason behind their being locked up in Chicago interesting, but rather frustrating.

Some things happened with some other characters, like Tobias and Caleb. I was quite intrigued by Caleb.

I’ve always like Tobias, and I really enjoyed being in his head, and thought that was done really well. Near the end, too, I really felt for him. I almost cried a little, even. There was a lot of development for both Tobias and Tris, and I loved their journey. I really enjoyed seeing it, but I don’t want to go into too much detail.

I’m not sure how to rate this book. At first I thought a four, then I want back and forth between a two and a four. Now I don’t know if it’s a three or a four. I kind of think it deserves a four, but at the same time, I’m not sure. I just don't know if the ending fits, because I'm leaning toward it not. It’s somewhere between a three and a four, though.