cannibalism may not be morally sound. but if you're willing to believe in yourself...it can be girlboss.
this is a book about a female food critic (radcannibalism may not be morally sound. but if you're willing to believe in yourself...it can be girlboss.
this is a book about a female food critic (rad) who has a lot of sex (rad) and sometimes murders and eats men (admit it: also rad).
it also takes itself Extremely Seriously, and is Very Try-Hard, and has so much Overly Formal Prose of the variety that always seems like the author went back and tried to make it sound fancier.
for these reasons, i unshelved it as lit fic halfway through - try as it might, this is more general-fiction-beach-read than it likes to admit.
not that there's anything wrong with that. when i accepted it, it was a pretty good time.
it's also both intentionally and unintentionally pretentious, falling short of the standard it's setting for itself, which is a little less easy to forgive.
but then, i'm a hater.
it's the girlboss in me.
bottom line: feminist win!
--------------- pre-review
try as you might: a cannibal-food-critic book is always going to be more goofy than it is elegant.
but that doesn't mean it can't be fun.
review to come
--------------- currently-reading updates
this has the chance to be one of those books i make into my whole personality.
--------------- tbr review
i think i am in love with this book already...more
brb, mom. heading to the goblin market. going to fall in love with a girl with like, corduroy skin and a spine made of thorns and have a chunk torn oubrb, mom. heading to the goblin market. going to fall in love with a girl with like, corduroy skin and a spine made of thorns and have a chunk torn out of my shoulder via teeth. see ya later
anyway.
i was obsessed with this and read like 200 pages in a sitting and it took me 2 days to get through the next third.
the pacing was weird!!! and not in the goofy weird mythical creature way i expected and/or would have been delighted by. it flashed back and forth between the past and the present, one of those books that's half flashback, and while normally i hate the flashbacks this time i preferred em!the stakes just...never felt very high in the current day.
like...if your guardian is letting you get bit by a goblin how unsafe is it.
but overall i thought this was a huge improvement over the author's debut stylistically and in content and i love feeling optimistic!
it's like a tropical for my dark twisted nihilistic brain.
bottom line: goblins!!!!!!!
3.5
---------------- tbr review
sapphic star-crossed lovers in a horror-fantasy spooky goblin market?? am i dreaming
i'm a simple girl. i see my friend five star a book, i read that book.
and my response to this one can be summed up in 1 word:
ACK!!!
this is the final bi'm a simple girl. i see my friend five star a book, i read that book.
and my response to this one can be summed up in 1 word:
ACK!!!
this is the final boss of unreliable narrators. if you've been reading a lot of lit fic about unlikable women lately (and it's all i know how to read), and you've been able to separate characters from your feelings about them (and that is one of my few skills), and you know the narrator is not the author (something i am aware of, usually), then you might. MIGHT! be prepared for this one.
maybe.
personally i wish i had training wheels. and less gore. but i'm willing to admit my badass image is mostly just a projection.
bottom line: i love this book's genre more than i love this book....more
Here is a small list of perfect things in life: - fairytales - scary weird mean beautiful girls - unsolved mysteries - flowers and generally pretty thingsHere is a small list of perfect things in life: - fairytales - scary weird mean beautiful girls - unsolved mysteries - flowers and generally pretty things - magical worlds just outside of ours - creepy stories - sisters
There are probably eleven perfect things in life, and I just listed seven of them. (Shoutout to 7 Eleven.) (Now I want a slushie.)
And guess the hell what.
THEY'RE ALL IN THIS BOOK.
I 100% added this book because of its cover, but then I did something unthinkably brave and even more rare: I read the synopsis. And when I did, I only got...more excited??
This is a story of three spooky sisters who had something Mysterious happen in childhood: they disappeared completely for a month, then came back with pure white hair, black eyes, sharp teeth, and ravenous appetites, and no memory of where they had been.
DOESN'T THAT SOUND AMAZING.
Also, their names are Grey, Vivi, and Iris. I mean...come on.
A decade or so later, each sister is leading a very different (but always superlative) life, when the eldest goes missing. Cue a bunch of ethereal gore, model-on-model violence, and bug descriptions that will burn themselves into your head.
This is my favorite thing for YA to be: completely ridiculous, high on itself, and one of a kind.
Yes, that has its drawbacks: The plot dragged at times (under the weight of some truly try-hard writing), and our protagonist is less compelling than her sisters (this is the curse of most young adult fiction), and it has that extremely goofy thing of when YA authors try to make their characters rich and/or famous (in this case both) but they have literally no idea how and it ends up completely past the point of parody...
But when I let myself ignore all of that, this was fun. Much the dark spooky fairytale situation I wanted.
Undecided on whether to round up or down but 3.5 for sure!
Bottom line: dreams do come true.
----------------- pre-review
accidentally read 100 pages of this in a sitting. either it's that good or it's a cursed object
update: probably a cursed object.
review to come / 3.5 stars
----------------- tbr review
i know i've said many times that i judge books by their covers.
i requested an ARC of this on netgalley with great haste and love in my hearthello mtv and welcome to insanity.
this is THE WEIRDEST book of all time.
i requested an ARC of this on netgalley with great haste and love in my heart, because it's set partially in the boston public library, otherwise known as the single greatest place in the world.
i am a dramatic person with a flair for believing everything to be a sign from the universe, so i thought my liking this was ordained.
au contraire.
but let's back up.
this is a book within a book, kinda: an author is writing a murder mystery. half the book is the murder mystery (which follows four lame, boring friends, 2 in college and 2 grown ass people who should have something better to do, who witnessed - except not really - a murder in the BPL) and the other half is emails the author is receiving from her writing buddy, a full on loser.
the full on loser in question is based in boston, whereas our dear author is in australia (?), so a big part of this is that every chapter ends with an email intended as an unsolicited consultation on All Things American.
this would be kind of boring and weird even at the best of times, but it is truly made one of a kind in that the loser friend has a roughly 50% accuracy rate on his advice and corrections. "americans say cell phone, not phone!" he says in one email. (i always say phone). have your character say "i'm on the subway!" he adds in the next sentence, when it's (FAMOUSLY) called the T in boston.
i was waiting for this to be made a part of the story - turns out he's a freak who was never in america at all, or something! - but no. it was just error after error, as it turns out.
anyway. this has the pacing of a cozy mystery with the darkness and goriness of a thriller, derogatory. it's a combination that absolutely won't work for me, and the amount of ham-handed social commentary from immigration to US politics to the pandemic that's thrown in doesn't help.
worst of all, these characters are unbearable - oddly flat while omnipresent. there's no excuse for each of the friends having 1-2 personality traits when there are fewer sentences they don't show up in than do. they read cartoonishly, and their insta-love fixation on each other is bizarre to witness.
don't even get me started on the actual insta-love.
add in a lame reveal and a silly villain and we have a true nightmare on our hands!
Sugar cookies are better at Christmas. Surprise parties are acceptable because society did one (1) good thinSpecial occasions just make things better.
Sugar cookies are better at Christmas. Surprise parties are acceptable because society did one (1) good thing by restricting them to birthdays. (Imagine if surprise parties could lie in wait around every corner. Horrifying. Like a scary movie to even imagine.) Fancy outfits are by their nature fancy because you can't wear them every day.
So by the same logic, the 1-2 times I manage to scrounge up the courage to read a fantasy annually should be fun.
But here we are.
It appears I have grown out of fantasy, which is not to say that magic books are for kids but that I got tired of YA and for some reason find its adult counterpart to require amounts of energy roughly equivalent to heart attack-inducing caffeination and candy store buyout level sugar rush.
So I don't do it often.
But I am always - ALWAYS! - excited when I do, because I read only the fantasy that sounds the veryvery best.
Such was the case with this book, which I anticipated well before its release date (see below proof) and which involves a world of secrecy and magic and maps that sounds reminiscent of the best middle grade duology of all time.
But here we are, with a two star rating on our hands, all the same.
Sigh.
Let's get into it. I really only have one complaint, but it's a doozy:
This wasn't magical enough!
When I pick up my yearly magic book, I want, guess what, MAGIC. One of favorite genres (besides literary fiction about awful women) is magical realism, or urban fantasy, maybe, or really just generally books in which magic exists in our real world. Because wouldn't that be a dream??? And I read books to make my dreams come true!
But there was not enough magic in this.
Really, there wasn't really enough of anything.
There was a love story, kind of, except it was a second-chance romance that depended on 10 year old feelings still being there even though the people involved had not so much as glimpsed each other on crowded public transit in a decade.
There's a bit of found family, which is in the hall of fame of all tropes, but every single character in the book is simultaneously willing to not speak to their dearest loved ones for decades and yet have those feelings not fade at all.
There was magic, sort of, but magic built on a weird, confusing, and above all inconsistent and illogical system, one involving maps that sometimes had to be held in the hand and sometimes didn't and sometimes could bring places into being or destruction via their existence alone and sometimes were just maps and sometimes had to be Real Maps and sometimes could be scrawled on a napkin.
There's a plot reliance on the New York Public Library, but only a handful of scenes take place (unsatisfyingly) there.
In short (or medium, at best), I wanted more library, more romance, more magic, more love, more friends, more family.
I would have taken any of the above, but there was very little of any of it.
Bottom line: This is a great idea with disappointing execution.
---------------- pre-review
all is right with the world.
correction: all is just okay with the world.
review to come / 2.5ish
---------------- tbr review
sometimes when books aren't out yet it seems like a deliberate attempt to upset me...more
For years, I wouldn't even consider reading a book with an average rating below a 3.8.
Now it's one of the top signs I'll enjoy it.
After serving in theFor years, I wouldn't even consider reading a book with an average rating below a 3.8.
Now it's one of the top signs I'll enjoy it.
After serving in the top spot in the internet anti-not like other girls army for years, I think in my retirement I can dabble in seeking out ways to feel unique. I deserve it. It's like just kind of allowing your grandparents to mix up your personal details with your cousin's in their old age - they've accomplished a lot and now it's more trouble than it's worth.
This is a satire that is compared to Get Out in the blurb, and while it is like most satires I read (I enjoy the point more than the reading process) it is unlike almost every book (actually warrants the comparison to popular media made in the synopsis).
If this had focused entirely on our protagonist, instead of alternating with several other characters, I would have liked it more, but regardless this was honestly very creative, even if the way it came together was a little obvious yet abrupt.
Bottom line: Now I get to say one of my favorite things - I don't know why this average rating is so low!
sooooo important to see yourself represented in fiction.
and just like myself, this book is annoying.
nightbitch, which at not even 300 pages is somehosooooo important to see yourself represented in fiction.
and just like myself, this book is annoying.
nightbitch, which at not even 300 pages is somehow clocking in at "significantly overlong," follows a wife and mom who is so exhausted / depleted / unappreciated / unfulfilled she eventually turns into a dog at night, in a really obvious metaphor that comes across fairly obviously throughout the book, and then is outright explained in its last pages.
i have seen the theme of the violence of women's lives - the violence of birth, sex, giving birth, and death - done in ways i liked better! without descriptions of wagging tails and rotting flesh! i could rewatch the fleabag women live in pain monologue, for example, and then also just rewatch fleabag, and have a roughly 200% better time.
also, in my opinion, this would have been better with even less page time spent on other characters. almost no one shows up besides our dear nightbitch and her very boring son (i don't like children in fiction, this is not the book's fault), but i wish they were hardly there at all! don't do them if they feel like detractions. there are barely-there characters i find charming or necessary or both regularly, but that wasn't the case here.
generally i like experimental fiction, but at the same time i don't think weird = smart.
The real horror story was the friends we made in the other horror stories along the way.
Get it? Because this is a collection of interconnected horror The real horror story was the friends we made in the other horror stories along the way.
Get it? Because this is a collection of interconnected horror stories?
Ah, we have fun.
Anyway.
Do you ever think about how being alive is a constantly violent and dark and horrifying experience, and that we only forget that because we have to in order to function in a world that perceives that as normal?
If not, this book will remind you of that. And if so, what a nightmare you have in store! But in a cool way.
This collection of stories about darkness and tragedy, each of which is connected with the others in an increasingly brilliant web, is probably the most amusing and exciting way to remember that.
And the least dangerous!
Bottom line: A pretty one of a kind book!
----------------- tbr review
been reading too much romance. i need something with the subtitle "eleven dark tales" to restore my badass image...more
I have never really THOUGHT cozy mysteries were for me, but allegedly "you never know until you try" or something.
So now I have tried, and I think theI have never really THOUGHT cozy mysteries were for me, but allegedly "you never know until you try" or something.
So now I have tried, and I think they still probably are not.
When I first got back into reading, I was so excited that I was 99% sure I liked everything that could legally qualify as a book, or otherwise conveyed meaning via words on a page.
But in the intervening years of me being myself (read: critical, hateful, cruel, grumpy, endowed with all of the charm and sunshiney personality of the bad guy in a children's movie), I have eliminated genres one by one.
First it was historical. Then it was all sci-fi except for biannual occasion I think I might be wrong. Then it was most YA (still haven't accepted that one). Then it was thrillers.
Now maybe it's thrillers and mysteries at large.
This was, in many ways, a fluffy and fun turn-your-brain-off read. It had delicious food descriptions, it was silly (in the good way) and silly (in the bad way, especially the ending). It was basically what I expected from baby's first cozy mystery.
Yes, there was also a love triangle for no reason, and additionally there were DOZENS of characters with 0 to 1 lines of dialogue who I could not remember or keep straight if you offered me financial compensation to do so, and overall I don't know if this genre was my cup of tea.
But it was fun to try something new!
Bottom line: Apparently that whole "you learn something new every day" thing made some points.
(thanks to netgalley / publisher for the e-arc)...more
the real horror was the capitalist systems we engaged with along the way!
that and the dashed expectations. and the gore, also. real horror show top tothe real horror was the capitalist systems we engaged with along the way!
that and the dashed expectations. and the gore, also. real horror show top to bottom, i guess.
as is my right as a young woman who dates men, i've watched 80s cult classic flick The Thing in my time, and this was a real knockoff! you're telling me we have a ragtag group of pals doing vague Science in the frozen tundra and suddenly a shape-shifting pile of blood and grossness is on the scene, scaring the sh*t out of everybody and generally ruining a good time?
like...i think i've seen this film before. (and i didn't like the ending.)
i liked (read: loved) the author's debut for the story it built AROUND the horror - the romance, the friendships, the banter - and there was none of that here, sadly. only horror. horror all the way down.
although the story did start immediately, which you have to respect. and a real gift for gore here!
and the villain is a tech billionaire dipsh*t named (checks notes) anton rusk, which is...the best thing i have ever heard in my life.
you take the wins with the losses.
bottom line: not exactly for me! but apparently not everything can be? sounds fake but ok.
--------------- currently-reading updates
a YA horror book about a group of teens on a trip to antarctica sponsored by a tech company owned by the rich dudebro "Anton Rusk"...
this is everything and i'm on page 8.
--------------- tbr review
all an author has to do is write one (1) five star book, and i am following them everywhere for life. à la stalking...more
man, every sherlock holmes title sounds like it was randomly generated by a computer.
anyway, it's anotherwelcome to...THE HOUND OF THE DECEMBERVILLES.
man, every sherlock holmes title sounds like it was randomly generated by a computer.
anyway, it's another PROJECT LONG CLASSICS installment. this is not that long of a classic, but i couldn't think of a better pun (i know – think of how low of a bar), so i'll be reading a chapter of this per day all month long.
let's get into it!
CHAPTER 1: MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES likely title for chapter 1 to be.
kind of fun to just watch watson and holmes gossip for a while...attempt their little "deductions" and whatnot. and then also be totally wrong.
CHAPTER 2: THE CURSE OF THE BASKERVILLES inching ever closer to that title.
unfortunately i find it very difficult to be scared by the thought of a big dog, which is the best kind of dog there is.
CHAPTER 3: THE PROBLEM to be honest i would have pinpointed "guy murdered by magic ghost dog" as the problem. but i guess that's why i'm not sherlock holmes.
CHAPTER 4: SIR HENRY BASKERVILLE i bet this guy is about to seem completely innocent and normal.
he actually does seem okay. but the doctor just revealed a phrenology side interest that i'm not loving.
CHAPTER 5: THREE BROKEN THREADS i want to say that holmes and watson have a will they / won't they thing going on, but i'm scared of the fanfiction creators i would align myself with.
CHAPTER 6: BASKERVILLE HALL oh, what a coincidence. there's a deranged escaped murderer lurking around our new neighborhood. chekhov's nearby serial killer.
CHAPTER 7: THE STAPLETONS OF MERRIPIT HOUSE can't a woman even sob horrifically through the night with no tangible cause without being considered a clue in a murder anymore?
CHAPTER 8: FIRST REPORT OF DR. WATSON can't wait for this dork's basic thoughts to be translated into brilliance by sherlock.
i have to say, it's an interesting strategy for a (checks notes) sherlock holmes book to have its hero offpage the whole time for...the incredible reasoning of "he's working on other cases which we are not reading about."
CHAPTER 9: SECOND REPORT OF DR. WATSON - THE LIGHT UPON THE MOOR two people are hunting an actual nearby serial killer in the dead of night on a mysterious moor, and they're more scared of a dog they heard barking. get real.
CHAPTER 10: EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY OF DR. WATSON no chance this is anything but "Mr. Dr. Sherlock Holmes...Mr. John Holmes...Dr. Mr. John Watson Sherlock Holmes...he loves me, he loves me not..."
CHAPTER 11: THE MAN ON THE TOR let's play another round of my favorite game: Am I In A Bad Mood Or Was This Twist Annoying?
CHAPTER 12: DEATH ON THE MOOR dun dun dun!
this is a lot more scandalous than other sherlock installments i've read. all sorts of impropriety happening.
CHAPTER 13: FIXING THE NETS it's all coming together now...
CHAPTER 14: THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES title chapter title chapter title chapter!
we gained awareness of an evil dog and we lost awareness of an evil woman...tragedy unfolding before our eyes.
CHAPTER 15: A RETROSPECTION sounds like this one will be action-packed.
OVERALL this is not the best sherlock (he's barely there, the mystery itself requires multiple extensive recaps, the big reveal is kind of drawn out and therefore disappointing) but it's still sherlock. rating: 3.5...more
The central point of this book is that thirty-seven years of being a woman is enough to drive a person to kill.
And truer words were never spoken.
Yes, The central point of this book is that thirty-seven years of being a woman is enough to drive a person to kill.
And truer words were never spoken.
Yes, this is also wildly well written, causing me (a non-marker by nature) to highlight and annotate like it was my job, and yes, the theme of prey and predator as it comes to gender dynamics is excellent, and sure, these characters may not stay with me as long as what they were intended to portray will, but who cares about any of that.
Cool Girls like this book and it's feminist in the most f*cked up way on earth.
Another win for literary fiction about women who are horrible.
Bottom line: As long as I have something to read like this book, I'm pretty sure I'll live forever.
---------------- pre-review
i don't really highlight or annotate when i read - it doesn't occur naturally to me - but my borrowed ebook of this is ravaged by blue-lined passages.
review to come / 4 stars
---------------- tbr review
this is on a lot of Cool Girls' best of the year lists, and that's all i need to know...more
every single thing i heard about this book was "it wasn't what i thought it would be."
and still i'm like...huh. that wasn't what i thought it would beevery single thing i heard about this book was "it wasn't what i thought it would be."
and still i'm like...huh. that wasn't what i thought it would be!
i am, like any self-respecting citizen, addicted to heist plot lines. they're the best. i once thought i had feelings for someone because we watched heist movies every time we hung out, and then the heist movies were removed from the equation and there were no feelings whatsoever.
in other words, i feel genuine romantic love for heists.
relatedly, i think most people dislike this book (or felt disappointed by it) because it's not really a heist story, and because the heist(s) there are are very rudimentary and not so fun.
and by most people, i mean me.
so this bait and switch (lol) momentarily upset me, betrayed me, destroyed my trust and love in the universe and those around me, but once i recovered somewhat...
the themes that take up the page count that the heists otherwise would have (if i designed the entire world) were enough for me! the explorations of diaspora and colonization, of cultural and personal identity, were fascinating and well done, imo.
where we have a problem (because this is me, and of course there is a problem) lies elsewhere.
namely, in the flat characters, the suddenly-there romances, and the annoying writing style.
there were so many descriptions teeming with that "she was all thighs and eyelashes," "he was all confidence and cologne," "he was all ___ and ___" sentence structure i abhor.
there were so many chapters than began or ended with corny, declarative sentences: "this was growing up. this was the future shifting. this was history."
and i get the theme of what home means that was happening here, but if i have to read one more interchangeable harvard or galveston description i will ensure both are permanently closed.
i guess in the end, this felt like a very promising debut to me, but there was no moment i could forget it was a debut.
sorry if that's b*tchy.
bottom line: the real heist was the expectations we lost along the way.
2.5
------------ currently-reading updates
a heist story about Chinese college students stealing back art from colonizer museums? i'm so excited about this i don't even know what to do with myself. what do i normally do with my hands?!...more
First: I used to give one star ratings all of the time. I would read books exclusively Life, probably, is about growth.
I have three relevant examples.
First: I used to give one star ratings all of the time. I would read books exclusively because they were popular, I would hate them, I would write a rant review, repeat.
And while you may be tempted to say, "emma, you still do that," and while in many ways you would be correct, I have this piece of evidence for you: I only gave five one stars in all of last year.
Which makes it extra impressive that just six days into 2022, I'd already given this one.
But onto the second example.
Which is: this is Katrina Leno's first book, and it is by a country mile her worst one. That expresses progress, if anything.
And finally: None of us have to read books like this anymore!!!!
In the early to mid 2010s, mental illness was consistently treated like a plot twist, a thriller trope, and, like, a death sentence. Young adult contemporaries had sad mentally ill teens moping around and being unlovable. Young adult mysteries had mental illness as crime motives. Young adult fantasies had mentally ill villains / mentally ill deus ex machina / mentally ill teens moping around being unlovable, too.
This book characterizes that period.
Now, you can pick up any YA contemporary and pretty much guarantee that 1-3 characters are depressed and anxious and zero of them are going to become anthropomorphic garbage cans because of it. No one in their Oscar the Grouch era, if you will.
When you pick up this book...no such guarantees.
The mental illness portrayal is the worst part of this book, but it is by no means the only complaint I have.
The second worst part is the romance. This is, like the mental illness rep, what I like to mentally refer to as "Mara Dyer-esque," meaning it's insta-love-y and features a lot of mentions of oddball combinations like black hair and green eyes or a British accent smack dab in the middle of Florida.
The romance is particularly bad because it is treated as our "escape" or "relief." It is the supposedly nice break we get from the main plot (which, since I didn't mention it, is our protagonist slowly realizing she can't remember huge parts of her life, and the reveal is (view spoiler)[she has dissociative identity disorder, which, as we all know, is handled perfectly by pop culture every time (hide spoiler)]).
The third worst (and still, for those following along, very bad) part is the characters. I hate them very much.
We have the titular Molly, who manages to be either the rough equivalent of a rag doll in her ability to act and decide things or inexplicably belligerent to those around her.
We have a guy whose name I don't remember, but it's definitely like Jack or Ryder or something, who dies at the very beginning but still manages to befit his forgotten name (misogyny, egocentrism, being annoying) via flashbacks.
We have another guy whose name I don't remember, who is the brother of the first guy whose name I don't remember, and is called something like Miles or maybe also Ryder. He is very boring, and additionally commits one of my personal least favorite social transgressions: being someone who is too old to be in high school but wants to date a high schooler, for some reason.
We have two friends of Molly's who really only appear to remind Molly that she is not being a good friend to them, so that is as fun as it sounds. We have a brother of Molly's who appears occasionally to call her, like, a selfish b*tch, which seems a bit harsh even if I agree. We have a little sister of Molly's who is I think not yet or barely a teenager but is characterized like a soccer mom behind the wheel of a Honda Odyssey.
And that's our world.
The fourth worst part is the plot and structure. We begin with a character dying, who our protagonist doesn't know, but he knows our protagonist. Then the brother of this character shows up, and it seems like he knows her, too. Then she starts realizing that she doesn't remember stuff. Then flashbacks begin.
This book is very corny and flat, and (view spoiler)[the Sybil reference and the deus ex machina cure of DID (hide spoiler)] at the stupid big reveal is the corniest, dumbest, worst bit of all.
Everything is relatedly very out of order, down to like. Paragraphs. It does not seem like a deliberate choice, and if it is, what global-scale geopolitical crime did 12 to 16 year olds commit in the 2010s to warrant this book being their punishment.
Basically how I feel is that if a book is confusing and I also hate the characters, I'm not invested, I'm just annoyed, and I'm going to throw a tantrum and write 2,000 words while doing so.
The fifth worst part, and the one that made me the saddest, is that this is unrecognizable to me as Katrina Leno. I haven't loved all of her books, but all of them have at least had the following things: - writing that can easily transition between lovely and funny - great friendships (and sometimes romances) with great banter - some nice feminism
This had none.
It replaced it all simply with suffering.
Bottom line: It has been so long since I wrote a rant review. I think the anger and the throwback have reverted me to 19 years old again.
Add it to the list of this book's cruelties.
----------------------- pre-review
it's a beautiful thing, liking an author enough to read books that sound completely uninteresting
update: it is not a beautiful thing. don't listen to me ever.
I wish I could tell you this book lives up to its cover.
I wish I could tell you that I was struck by that image, and then I couldn't stop thinking aboI wish I could tell you this book lives up to its cover.
I wish I could tell you that I was struck by that image, and then I couldn't stop thinking about it until I read it, and then I continued to not be able to stop thinking about it because the work itself was also good.
I wish the words behind that picture had the same skin-crawling creepiness, the same deftness of skill, the same unforgettable quality.
It doesn't. The book itself, to me, was just fine.
But holy god that cover.
Bottom line: I also wish I could say this will teach me to judge books by their covers, but it won't! I will never learn! That's the Emma guarantee!...more
I do not love books very often. Of the 1,249 books I have ever marked as finished, I have five-starred 89. This year, wOnce upon a time, there was me.
I do not love books very often. Of the 1,249 books I have ever marked as finished, I have five-starred 89. This year, which has been in both quantity and quality likely the best reading year of my young life, I've given a perfect rating to 15 books. Out of the 287 I've read to date.
I don't even want to calculate those percentages, for fear of perishing from sheer sadness.
Anyway. All of that means that when I do read a book that is five star level great, I am forced to Act Up. I binge read that genre. I search for books like it (in tools other than Goodreads' garbage recommendation function). But above all, I read everything else I can find by that author.
And, as you can see in this case, it rarely works.
When reading I'm Thinking of Ending Things, I had no clue what was going on. In the fun way. The writing was awesome, I was fascinated by the characters, I couldn't put it down.
This book, instead, was immediately predictable. I cannot emphasize enough how quickly what's going on becomes clear, even as you're forced to wait a million jillion pages for the characters to catch up. (This is the kind of short book that magically feels light years long.)
Where I expected craziness and coolness and one of a kind read-ness, I got predictable and blah and boohoo.
A bummer for the ages.
Bottom line: Don't mind me, I'm mourning the loss of the feeling I had when finally reading a perfect book. It seems it will NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.
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you know when you pick up a random book and out of nowhere it's a five-star read?
when that miracle happens for me (approx. once every 5 years) i literally can't do anything except try to recreate it by reading everything that author has ever written
update: you learn something new every day. today i learned that lightning doesn't strike twice
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