i enjoyed — although maybe enjoyed is the wrong word — this author's fii was actually scared to read this.
and i should've been. but for other reasons.
i enjoyed — although maybe enjoyed is the wrong word — this author's first book, because while it didn't have much going on besides shock value and gore it at least did those two things in kind of an interesting way.
reading this was completely unpleasant from start to finish, and not because of the gross-out content. the writing is actively bad, full of clichés and adjectives, and somehow even though all of these stories (?) are very short, they drag on, not ending at the moment they'd be effective or shocking. characterizations are inconsistent, and in fact characters seem almost beside the point — none of these figures feel comprehensible, let alone human or real.
there's repetition here of whole details or lines of dialogue. favorite words are used to the in point of incomprehension — play a drinking game with covet, sense, decidedly, merely, perhaps with 911 on speed dial. this is teeming with repeated images (we get it, wounds have lips), adverbs, em dash breaks for more synonyms and more adverbs.
it's overwritten to the point that words have no meaning, which makes for a wildly frustrating read.
terrifying.
bottom line: i was anticipating this as a book that would make me truly scared, and i am: for the future of publishing.
to me, there is nothing that symbolizes the lack of romance in modern life quite like tpretty great title if you ask me.
so at least i liked one thing.
to me, there is nothing that symbolizes the lack of romance in modern life quite like the qr code. the fact that this book is full of them is the least of its worries.
among the biggest of my worries, you're surely wondering? thank you for asking. that's simple:
WHY DO MEN NEED TO WRITE SO MUCH ABOUT PENISES. i'm no prude but at a certain point spending this much time on phalluses takes up what we should've allotted to regularly scheduled programming, like character development, or themes. you know. the little things. (buh dum ch.)
in fact, an inexcusable section of page count is spent on shock value, masturbation, gross-out descriptions, pop-culture references, and brand names. what we're left with couldn't amount to much even in the best case scenario.
i enjoy an unlikable character more than a likable most of the time, because i am annoying and my brain is a cesspool, but i can't bear an unsympathetic one. we spend 300 pages in the mind of glue, and what is intended to be an exploration of the millennial experience left me unmoved and unrepresented. and in spite of the synopsis' claim that this book centers around hong kong's protests and "demise," that felt like an afterthought at best.
i liked the author's first book, but this reads a lot like the sophomore novel of someone whose debut was praised for its originality and literary quality when its most interesting portions were its observations of other art.
which is, you know. what happened.
bottom line: it's never a good sign when you're writing a rant on netgalley.com.
i'll never be able to see the words milk and honey without thinking of instagram poetry. thanks rupi kaur.
but i liked this about the same as i would ii'll never be able to see the words milk and honey without thinking of instagram poetry. thanks rupi kaur.
but i liked this about the same as i would if it were in that genre, so. fair enough.
this is just not my type of book (no more pandemicish dystopian, please, i'm too fragile) nor of writing style.
more frankly, this is overwritten, with words used for how they sound rather than what they mean. "hulkings," as a synonym for hills. "humping" instead of rising. "eloquent" for an image of a graffitied d*ck. i didn't like it when cormac mccarthy did it, and he did it a lot better.
beyond that, between piles of adjectives, this landed heavily on cliches: "it wasn't until i hung up that i realized he'd never asked my name." no way! really?
add to these its gimmicks: "my employer" unwieldily used as many as four times a paragraph, as what was a fun style choice in early pages loses its sheen by the halfway point. if only there were a short, one or two syllable thing that we could call a specific person in order to reference them.
there are haystacks of em dashes every time another language is used, in an italy surrounded by expats as our monolingual protagonist.
there's italicized dialogue instead of the proletariat quotation mark.
in other words...a lot of unearned style here.
and ultimately my interest in the idea of an illicit, hyper-gifted chef cooking in secret in a dystopian world without food died when met with an untalented line cook. that, and a nonsense plot hinging on the justification-less idea that she'd be portraying a woman of another nationality at least decades her senior.
not to mention that goofy ending.
anyway. this book doesn't know what it wants: for us to condemn its cast of wealthy, even as they do more than the politicians it can't bring itself to frame as the good guys; to extol the virtues of our protagonist, deliberately ignorant to the selfishness and ego and greed that rival anyone's; to approve of fine cuisine or skewer it, same with capitalism and global travel and age- and power-gap relationships and money and philanthropy and and and.
it's mealy mouthed in every way you can imagine, and it leaves a sour taste.
this book is truly nothing more than its title: extremely simple, almost annoying and cloying writing about very preschool-level topics, like imaginarthis book is truly nothing more than its title: extremely simple, almost annoying and cloying writing about very preschool-level topics, like imaginary friends and hitting and stuffed animals.
i read this book because of its title, and its title is the explanation for everything i hated about it.
life is so cruel in its ironies.
bottom line: i can't believe i'm giving this one star, and i can't think of any reason to give it more than that....more
i expected to like a book with a 2.88 average rating because i think i'm special.
we can all see how that went.
this is a surreal book that is also poori expected to like a book with a 2.88 average rating because i think i'm special.
we can all see how that went.
this is a surreal book that is also poorly written, which means, in other words, that it was for the most part total nonsense.
someday i hope i love anything as much as this author loves adjectives. we should all hope for a muse that leads us to use over 100 adverbs in less than 35 pages.
oh well.
bottom line: turns out i am like other girls....more
this is an untraditional, timeline-twisting book in which a company has accidentally invented time travel and is committing inter-time violence accordthis is an untraditional, timeline-twisting book in which a company has accidentally invented time travel and is committing inter-time violence accordingly...
and somehow the most unrealistic part was its depiction of human emotion.
the thing they never tell you about sexism is that it's boring. that's the worst part of misogyny: just the most boring female characters you've ever read.
ok, maybe not the worst part. but it's not in my personal favorites.
i am personally of the opinion that if you are going to tell me something relatively insane, such as time travel is real and being hoarded for evil by corporations (with some parts of that being less insane than others), you need to ground me in the narrative. maybe give me some lovable characters. maybe give me some real-feeling feelings. dare i say give me a dose of reality via human relationships, or human life, or human thought patterns.
this book skipped all of that, and the result was dramatic and annoying.
bottom line: logically i know i read this as a book. but in my heart, this is one of those budgetless interchangeable shows you scroll past on a lesser streaming platform and know no human has ever watched or talked about.
the feeling of satisfaction when you finish an incredibly long book: wired
the feeling of satisfaction when you finreading incredibly long books: tired
the feeling of satisfaction when you finish an incredibly long book: wired
the feeling of satisfaction when you finish an incredibly long book without enjoying it for even a moment: whatever is better than wired
reading murakami is always a balancing act between how brilliant he is and how misogynistic he is, and let me tell you this one was pretty heavily leaning one way!
it is actually just arduous and difficult to read 1,318 pages of women being described by their breasts. i have a pretty high tolerance for sexism in media, perhaps to a worrying extent, but sexual assault, pedophilia, and harassment were at the core of this plot. it's a lot harder to ignore the very strange way murakami writes women when that's the case.
but even beyond that, reading from the perspective of a female character who cannot go a chapter without thinking about her boobs...it gets old! i don't know when murakami encountered a beautiful woman who apologized to the ugly older men she slept with for the size of her chest, but i'm praying for her healing.
bottom line: i'm going to keep reading murakami. i'm just going to delete this book from my brain....more
my only hope and desire for this book was that it scare me so much i would be rendered completely unable to sleep.
so imagine my devastation when it wamy only hope and desire for this book was that it scare me so much i would be rendered completely unable to sleep.
so imagine my devastation when it was not only not scary, but bad.
here are just a few of the myriad examples of its eternal capacity for disappointment:
1) this is so unbelievably british that i actually googled if the author is even from england. it's giving one direction fanfiction written by an american 15 year old with a polyvore account. i'm ready to throw my hair into a messy bun and gaze into harry styles' green orbs.
2) you cannot have this unbelievably intrusive, annoying person-narrator and also have the narrator be omnipotent. this is creative writing 101. you have to pick a lane. if i'm picking for you, i'd choose the option that isn't giving theater kid, but it's up to the author really.
3) okay, you chose theater kid. that's fine. except having a narrator who is a bad writer just means your book is going to be poorly written. and i guess that's fine too. but maybe consider the rest of us when deciding page count next time.
4) so many nouns used in back to back sentences. you know that thing? does that bother anyone else? catch me rephrasing in my own head instead of reading. just freelance, unpaid copyediting for nothing but a bad attitude and a love of the game.
5) for a book that uses the word island on every page it sure forgets where it is. calling an ambulance if you're in the middle of the sea isn’t going to help, bucko!
6) the plot has some serious holes in it, as in i don't believe that characters would do what they end up doing. in spite of spending a lot of time spent talking self-indulgently about the importance of motive, the book doesn't listen to its own advice.
7) it also can't decide whether it's about one truly evil person, or a group of bad people, or the inherent badness of everyone, and ends up somewhere unsatisfying between all of them — one person punished excessively, the others floating off to a life of joy after their sins and their pettiness to spend their days dancing and doing yoga like a yogurt commercial.
even though they, too, suck.
as does this book.
bottom line: the scariest part of this whole thing was that it somehow kept getting worse.
at any given time, i feel like i'm reading romance as a cry for help.
when i find a romance novel i love, it's my favorite kind of genre to enjoy. justat any given time, i feel like i'm reading romance as a cry for help.
when i find a romance novel i love, it's my favorite kind of genre to enjoy. just so comforting and fun and feelings-y.
but the vast, vast majority of the time, i am way too picky to bear it.
and in this case, well...this book is just bad.
sorry.
i really wanted to like this book, insistent product placement of the author's weird side quest cupcake wars-appearing bakery and all.
but it was too quirky and too much for me. there were CLIFFHANGERS in this book. like, chapters that ended with ellipses. "until he saw who was in the room..." and "she wasn't ready for what happened next..."-ass sentences. it feels silly.
this was unfortunately a not-good book on a sentence level (lots of weirdly constructed ones), on a plot level (clichéd confessions, an undue level of love interest-on-love interest obsession), or on a character level (we have a quirky gal and a boring guy, much like every romance of the last 5 years seems doomed to contain).
on top of that, this was arduous to get through. we're talking 320+ pages of miscommunication followed by 10 pages of happiness followed by, you guessed it, MORE miscommunication.
and for two people who tell each other 1100 times they'll be harmless (maybe "be harmless to each other" can be our always), they never tried to talk at all.
sheesh.
bottom line: i don't know what i did in a past life to deserve it, but this was a punishing read....more
this is one of those books i'm so excited to read it feels like it's been ordained by the universe.
let's see what happens (feat mini reviews for each this is one of those books i'm so excited to read it feels like it's been ordained by the universe.
let's see what happens (feat mini reviews for each story).
UNKNOWN BY UNKNOWN a girl gets laid off with generous severance only to be invited to house sit in a beautiful home for money and no responsibilities but walking a dog...this is my dream.
even if it did end abruptly at the most exciting part. rating: 3.5
LI FAN this is so clever and so unique and so empathetic and so well-executed. in my humble opinion.
it is also so short. rating: 4
TO GET RICH IS GLORIOUS you have to love a scammer. you HAVE to. rating: 3
FAREWELL HANK i can only hope that one day i become a creepy and controlling old lady with a nickname so pervasive no one remembers my real name anymore. rating: 2.5
CURE FOR LIFE this story would have gone craaaazy if it were written during the #MeToo era. as is: it's fine! rating: 3
KLARA friendship breakups are worse than any romantic breakup and that is the dark secret of adult life that no one tells you. rating: 3.5
A VISIT well this made me feel vaguely sad and guilty for a reason i can't quite pinpoint. a feeling to which i say: no thank you! rating: 2.5
FLIES this story contains a description of a dead rat so vivid and disgusting that it occupies a permanent section of my brain previously reserved for my siblings' names and my favorite cookie recipe.
spoiler alert, i guess. rating: 3
SHE WILL BE A SWIMMER this is one of those stories that fails at what it was trying to do and thereby does the exact opposite. unfortunately. rating: 2
PHENOTYPE if this story was a full-length novel it would be trendy on bookstagram and have, like, a 3.53 average rating.
which is a compliment. rating: 4
ME AND MY ALGO this is just the worst, i'm sorry...this is middle school creative writing prize level writing...
i can't stress enough how much i thought i would like this book. rating: 1
PERSONA DEVELOPMENT this had traces of what i thought this entire collection would be.
and a great title. rating: 3
TOMB SWEEPING never a good sign when the title story doesn't hit. rating: 2.5
CAT PERSONALITIES what are we even doing here. rating: 1.5
OTHER PEOPLE this started somewhere and made me think it was doing something and then...i don't even know what happened.
aaaand that's it! rating: 2
OVERALL at no point did it even cross my mind that i might not like this book, which a) is one of my most anticipated reads of the year, b) shares an author with a book i unexpectedly really loved, and c) has a gorgeous cover (most important).
but this felt very shallow and thoughtless where the author's debut was the opposite. bummer. rating: 2.5...more
a friend and i joked recently that whenever someone says "can you believe ai made this," we watch every video and read every paragraph like...yeah. yea friend and i joked recently that whenever someone says "can you believe ai made this," we watch every video and read every paragraph like...yeah. yes, we can.
this book manages to do the inverse: i'm pretty sure it was written by a person, and yet it would make a whole lot more sense if it were by artificial intelligence. and it seems like the author's only other publication is the novelization of a forgotten movie, so maybe it was.
we follow alice, who is pretty. alice's best friend is sadie, who is controlling. sadie's mom is celine, a camille paglia-esque feminist scholar who alice starts sleeping with. that, in all of its cliched and cringing drama, is our plot.
it's overwritten to the point of feeling heavy. this book barely scrapes 250 pages, but it wouldn't make it over a hundred without taking advantage of a thesaurus and an innate desire to record one's own uninteresting thoughts as ascribed to flat characters. (you wouldn't believe how much time we spend wondering alongside sadie if one is supposed to apply sunscreen to one's eyelids.)
this book made me wince: at its sex scenes; at its page-long years-late diatribe to making a murderer; at its inconsistencies and errors; at the single weird voice shared by every character regardless of gender, age, or personality; at the dialogue so divided by paragraphs of internal monologue that the actual responses make no sense. it seems like even the copyeditor couldn't get through it.
and i'd say what this book needed a strong edit, but what it actually needed was one more editor saying no.
bottom line: it's not that i hated this book. it's just that it doesn't do anything well.
i like an unlikable protagonist, but it turns out i can't stand 3 miserable ones.
for me, the experience of being alive as a woman isn't defined soleli like an unlikable protagonist, but it turns out i can't stand 3 miserable ones.
for me, the experience of being alive as a woman isn't defined solely by hating my body, or by thinking about men, or by hating other women. i have moments of all of those, sure, but they don't make up a significant part of my life. let alone the majority of my experience. let alone all of it!
in the universe of this book, that's all women have.
we have three perspectives and they are all the same: just absolute victims of patriarchy, with the same voice, living the same experience. one looks like emrata, one is thin with "bad boobs," one is fat, but all three are obsessed with their bodies and male validation and nothing else.
there's a lot this book is trying to do, but it overplays its hand a all of it. creating three of the exact same character to do the same thing in an over the top and nonrelatable way and facing down an abrupt and meaningless ending doesn't work for me even from that standpoint.
beyond that, the writing grated on me: all thoughts are merciless or relentless. people are both nervous and worried. skin is knotty and bumpy. this stacked adjectives on top of each other to see what sticks.
the answer to what sticks is my frustration, even reviewing this a month after the fact.
bottom line: i love women! i love being alive! i wish this book did too.
------------------ tbr review
this sounds more interesting to me than the alternative...more
well, i accidentally read taylor swift fanfiction.
it did not go well.
this is partially due to the fact that i am no taylor swift fan. i know this is cwell, i accidentally read taylor swift fanfiction.
it did not go well.
this is partially due to the fact that i am no taylor swift fan. i know this is currently tantamount to committing domestic treason or to thumbs-downing videos of baby animals forming interspecies friendships, but i can explain. i'm not secretly a 29 year old man recording too-close tiktoks of himself ranting about how now he can't watch the big game on sundays without seeing her face. i have simply always been neutral, and now she is everywhere. that's fine.
it's also beside the point, because in spite of my fairly opinion-less take on her...even i think this book, which claims to be solidly pro on the topic, has a pretty unfair depiction of her whole deal.
it is very weird to profit off of the most famous person in the world in what you claim is a love letter to her by perpetuating the meanest stereotypes about her — that she profits off her breakups on purpose and wouldn't be famous without them.
i have a lot of criticisms, beginning with carbon emissions and ending with money chasing, but even i can't deny she's talented.
on top of that, this book is just bad. in some silly ways, such as: - the liberally inserted very bad song lyrics - the number of adjectives - the moment when taylor-by-another-name escapes a crowd of rabid fans by (check notes) walking down the street and putting sunglasses on - essentially-taylor insising wearing her full wedding dress onstage...every single show, because nothing says "ready to perform" like 20 pounds of tulle - taylor-insert making our male main character do a fashion show to determine his new rock star look, ultimately deciding on (again let me check my notes) a "rakish bow tie" and "glasses" like a "lounge pianist." she skated straight past rock star to theater kid - the idea that our love interest could just open his laptop and buy a ticket the day of the final show of a tour we've been repeatedly told is sold out - imagine playing piano and asking the musician how they want it to sound and they go "like sunrise after sleepless nights." i'm putting in 2 weeks notice
it's also bad in some not as silly ways. this couple had less than no chemistry, to the point that i assumed we were still early in the book until i was flabbergasted by a surprise kiss and looked to see we were at the halfway mark. the only thing more surprising was the sex scene.
this is a second chance romance, and it seems like all of their love story is predicated on the idea that one time they had chemistry and that they share musical talent. but neither of those are on page so i don't know what we're doing here.
not to mention the writing. if you're into emotions described like "I snuff the rogue indignation" or "She endeavors to smile" or "inquisitive disappointment," this is the book for you.
so much of this book is just STRANGE. our love interest's tragic backstory is that his family's retirement home is closing. our heroine is dragging around her newly divorced mom on a pop concert tour she doesn't seem interested in. why were these choices made??? we spend so much time on these bizarre plot points and it's like...why put them in at all???
and i just can't stress enough how if your retirement community is failing, i don't see how dating taylor swift for the publicity is the best way to handle that. last i heard geriatrics weren't her primary demo. it's one thing to sell jerseys to teenage girls, quite another to try to convince them to put their grandparents into a home in the rural south. and the book just ends without resolution on this so who knows!
riley (read: taylor) is one of the least likable protagonists i've read in memory: completely selfish, fame-obsessed, describes "what she does" as "reaching everyone with her music," listening constantly to her own songs, inviting her ex husband to events "for inspiration," and unable to understand why everyone doesn't immediately kowtow to her in a scenario where basically everyone already does. i don't really know how to describe how unrealistic and unfeeling and borderline sociopathic this character is, but it certainly isn't a flattering portrayal of taylor swift!
so if this book isn't for her fans, and it isn't for her non-fans...who is it for?
bottom line: this is a money grab with no plan to get the money.
for me, this book was love at first sight (that cover! girls falling in love at the university of edinburgh!)...and dislike at first read.
unfortunatelfor me, this book was love at first sight (that cover! girls falling in love at the university of edinburgh!)...and dislike at first read.
unfortunately, this is just not well written. that feels like the meanest criticism there is, but there's no avoiding it here. this book uses synonyms for said, is teeming with appearance descriptions, and has darlings on every page that likely should have been killed.
and this extends, sadly, to plot: everything seems to be going really quite well, and then suddenly someone does something quite unforgivable, out of nowhere and inexplicably. less than ten pages later the book ends. that's after hundreds of pages of what feels like flippant, underexplored inclusion of a dozen serious social issues.
i wish it could, but debut doesn't begin to explain it all away: this was under-edited by a lot. it feels tropey, shallow, cliched, and i came away thinking i needed more and less at once.
bottom line: if you don't have anything nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all...but i really wanted to like this book.
eating disorder fiction is just so boring. much like having one!
there is nothing new or interesting about disordered eating, which at its core is unabeating disorder fiction is just so boring. much like having one!
there is nothing new or interesting about disordered eating, which at its core is unable to shake off the embedded falsehood that women should be small or should deny themselves. these stories can try to be new or interesting, but they'll always come off as fatphobic, they'll always tie human worth to appearance, and they'll always feel outdated and overdone.
this is no exception.
this book wanted to be nightbitch + milk fed + exciting times all in one. it wanted to have a big secret but not really, and it wanted to be stylized but only in italicized final paragraphs, and it wanted to be character-driven without the pesky character development. it wanted to empower and liberate through eating, without actually having to reckon with any of the thinking that goes with that. it wanted to be literary and unique, while covering some of the most well-covered topics of all time.
like its protagonist, it wanted a lot and ended up with very little.
bottom line: EDs have taken a lot from me, but they've also given me the chance to write this review without anyone being allowed to get mad at me. so who wins, really.
1.5
------------------ pre-review
warning: reading while hungry
(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
a little thing i like to call Too Much and Not Enough, sadly.
in the first half, i have to tell you...i hated this so much. it stole the "where are youa little thing i like to call Too Much and Not Enough, sadly.
in the first half, i have to tell you...i hated this so much. it stole the "where are you supposed to put all of it" beautiful love and mourning line from fleabag and had a going rate of one simile per sentence, as in most sentences on average had one but sometimes mercifully one would be spared, but not to worry because just as often, somehow, evilly, there would be more than one.
the second half was better, for some reason. but that's a lot to get over.
this very badly wants to be a quiet, striking, introspective book, like those written by sally rooney or brandon taylor, but it doesn't know how to do that. maybe the author will find a way!
bottom line: yipes.
(thanks netgalley for the e-arc)
------------------ tbr review
blacked out and requested books on netgalley exclusively because of their covers...more
modern life is an unrelenting nightmare <3 and so is this book.
do you know how difficult it is to get me to think a MAN is a better person than a womamodern life is an unrelenting nightmare <3 and so is this book.
do you know how difficult it is to get me to think a MAN is a better person than a woman? a woman who is our protagonist? a man who is bad?
but our main character, a woman who is addicted to internet stalking, being nosy, justifying her own behavior, and chalking it all up to a vague feminism, is so much worse. she begins at rock bottom and manages to do a sum total of negative character development, spending her days jealous of a hot dead girl who dared to date her not even boyfriend 2 years ago.
i can excuse a lot of bad behaviors in the face of the unrelenting misery of daily life — this is coming from a person who usually replaces at least one meal with a small pile of sweets on any given day, like a child who magically gained the power of self-determination — but it turns out even i have a line.
bottom line: this is monotonous, unchanging, and hard to get through. much like la vie quotidienne itself.
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