when i first finished Old Flame, i rated it four stars.
then i spent hours upon hours trying to pick it back up, my brain absolutely rejecting the concwhen i first finished Old Flame, i rated it four stars.
then i spent hours upon hours trying to pick it back up, my brain absolutely rejecting the concept that i had finished it. i had a series of work calls, and after each i wanted to continue reading. i had a series of tasks, and i without fail attempted to stop doing them in order to read.
i could not stop thinking about this book!!!
so boom. 5 stars it became.
part of me prickled at the conceit of this, which is that creating a human life is an act of creation that is radical and artistic and important, and that nothing is taken from the strength and passion motherhood takes by virtue of its being societal default. i didn't think that going in, and i didn't really want to think it through most of my reading experience.
but that's part of why i am a good reader for this book. because it convinced me.
and on top of that gorgeousness, this is funny and sharp and populated with unforgettable characters. it's two distinct stories, and i loved both, which feels like the rarest thing ever.
this is in many ways about how it is a huge act of generosity to love someone, and maybe the most valuable thing you can do in this life.
and i love women and this book loves women and i love this book.
bottom line: love! life! jokes about capitalism! what more could you want.
------------------- reread update
i love this book too much.
------------------- tbr review
literary fiction about what it means to be a woman...yeah this is up my alley
i’m a longstanding opponent of the not like other girls trope (i’m on the record since like 2015, which mei am never happier than when i feel special.
i’m a longstanding opponent of the not like other girls trope (i’m on the record since like 2015, which means this hatred significantly outlives most of my opinions, relationships, and sweaters), but i do like to be unlike other people. i turn the average meal-to-dessert ratio on its head. i stan dunkin over starbucks. i am in the midst of a lifelong quest to have the single most disturbing sleep schedule i can.
and of course, above all, i am an appreciator of a good unpopular opinion.
however.
i don’t think my opinion of this book should be unique.
this book has a devastating 3.19, and this is in spite of being complete perfection from beginning to end.
i picked up a library ebook of this, and while several of my very favorites in the world loved this book, i kinda expected to 3.5 it and move on into my resting state of complete forgetting as soon as possible.
instead, i found myself highlighting swaths of text, almost buzzing with that oh my god is this is a five star this might be a five star feeling, resonating with the emotions depicted and stunned by how lovely and clear the writing was.
and then i finished it, bought a copy, and reread and annotated it barely a week after reading it for the first time.
it’s really an easy five star, filled with taboo topics and fascinating characters and revealing dynamics. it’s about love and sex, gender and power, and how to find yourself or even know what that would look like. it’s about searching for happiness and meaning while being unable to admit that’s what you’re doing.
it’s everything that i think about the most.
bottom line: read it!!!
-------------------- reread update
nothing says five star read like rereading after a week
-------------------- pre-review
never happier than when i love a book everyone hates :)
review to come / 4.5 or 5 stars
-------------------- tbr review
the best thing that can possibly happen to a person is when they get very into a subgenre that is also simultaneously the single most trendy and common subgenre there is.
even at the best of times, when i am absolutely on the ball and everything is perfect and life is going my way ai do not know how to review this book.
even at the best of times, when i am absolutely on the ball and everything is perfect and life is going my way and i am organized and well stocked in cookies and persian cucumbers (the two best foods), the very best i can hope for in terms of how much time passes between when i read a book and when i review it is 3 weeks.
but that's beside the point, because we are firmly in the two month category on this one.
i just...don't know how to do it. i've never READ anything like this - how would i know how to write about it?
this is just so stunning. so lovely.
the simulation theory and the corresponding idea of SO WHAT, to put it as basically as possible, are two things that have always fascinated me, and now here i find them transcribed so lovingly???
at first i didn't know if i'd like this book - doubted i would, really - as characters from the glass hotel popped up but wow. how different. the two couldn't be more dissimilar.
which is a compliment.
bottom line: a really good book with a perfect ending.
(update: raising to 5 stars 6 months later because i can't stop thinking about this book)
------------------ reread update
doing the normal thing i do where i reread a book i think is a 5 star almost immediately as some kind of weird gobliny test
------------------ pre-review
oh, gosh. life is so lovely.
review to come / 4.5 or 5 stars
------------------ tbr review
will this be a perfect glorious beautifully written book i never stop thinking about (station eleven) or a confusing mess that makes me almost inexplicably mad (the glass hotel).
I, for example, come extraordinarily close, and even I have my flaws. I work too hard. I give too much to charity. I cannot, FOR THENobody is perfect.
I, for example, come extraordinarily close, and even I have my flaws. I work too hard. I give too much to charity. I cannot, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, WRITE A POSITIVE REVIEW.
I can write negative reviews all day, and have fun doing it. Give me a book that is offensive, or dumb, or just plain bad, and we'll have the time of our lives roasting each other up.
But when I love a book?
Hoo boy. Bad news bears.
The highest compliment I can give a book is that it reminds me of Sally Rooney, the author of my heart, and Brandon Taylor's clear and lovely style does that in spades. This book wrapped me up in it, affecting the language of my internal monologue and the nuances of my mood and refusing to allow me to put it down until I finished - keeping itself at the forefront of my mind even if I did manage to take a break.
I read the author's short story collection earlier in the month, and while I didn't completely love it, I couldn't really shake it. Reading this seemed like a foregone conclusion, and was almost exactly like reading a novel-length version of some of my favorite stories from it.
This story, of Wallace, a gay Black science grad student surrounded by whiteness and solitude, even when in the company of others, has so much to say about violence, about race, about loneliness, about sex and love and cruelty.
Bottom line: Just read it!!!
----------------- book club update
i loved this book when i first read it, and i loved it even more this time. and now i really need to talk about it with someone so please join book club discussion: https://www.instagram.com/p/C3i17w1LZpD/
5 stars!
----------------- pre-review
"when you know you know" - most people about true love / me about authors i like
books in which everything is horrible but somehow turns out nice in the end >>>
i like books where the protagonist starts off deeply depressed and everbooks in which everything is horrible but somehow turns out nice in the end >>>
i like books where the protagonist starts off deeply depressed and everything goes wrong and then everything comes together.
although...this was mostly bad stuff and then too realistic of an ending. give me joy. give me career fulfillment and romance. not half-hearted takes on both!!!
i'm not here for realism. i am here for A Happily Ever After That Is Surreal And Magical Enough To Be Fairytale-Esque And Impossible, even if there are no princesses or cast spells and it's really just the sheer impossibility of having, like, a successful love life and career and social plans all at once.
For many years, I had no idea what kind of book I liked.
People would say that catty stuff about how people with low average ratings (generally known aFor many years, I had no idea what kind of book I liked.
People would say that catty stuff about how people with low average ratings (generally known as critical people) just don't know their own tastes, and I would be like HEY STOP, but secretly I would be like...maybe they're right.
But now they are wrong, and also I know.
I like short literary fiction.
This book won't take you long to read, but it's beautifully written and brilliant and will make you think.
This is what is known in the biz as a "win-win."
Bottom line: So many wins!
--------------------- book club update
this book is excellent and you should discuss it with our book club here
----------------- pre-review
things are dire.
even a short and good book can't end my reading slump.
review to come / 4 stars
----------------- currently-reading updates
adding more and more books that are shorter and shorter to pretend i'm not in a reading slump...more
when i first read this, i listened to it as an audiobook on a bad brain daysometimes, clichés exist for a reason.
"it's not you, it's me," for example.
when i first read this, i listened to it as an audiobook on a bad brain day (which is my cutesy term for a mental health emergency). it didn't hit the same as the first one and i was all, my bad, y'all. that one's on me. i probably just didn't do it justice.
so here i am, rereading it an unprecedented 2 months after my first read, and i'm ready to say i'm not taking the fall on this one.
this is a very fun story, but to me, it lacked the complexity, poeticism, and thematic richness of the first one.
onto the next!
bottom line: maybe clichés don't exist for a reason.
Things I like: - books with like, fake documents and stuff in them - unreliable narrators - mental breakdown fiction
Things I don't like: - undying devotioThings I like: - books with like, fake documents and stuff in them - unreliable narrators - mental breakdown fiction
Things I don't like: - undying devotion
Things I learned while reading this: - I hate undying devotion so much and find it so painfully secondhand-embarrassing to read about that it threatened to overcome all the things I DO like, even though previously I would have said love is stronger than hate - The power of cringe is the strongest force in the universe.
Bottom line: End earnestness forever!!!
-------------- pre-review
turns out i think undying devotion is cringe.
review to come now / 3 i think
-------------- currently-rereading updates
i learned my lesson. i'm rereading a hard copy before i review
-------------- first pre-review
so THAT'S why i don't like audiobooks. now i remember.
review to come / 3? 4? ugh
-------------- tbr review
not sure how this book, which sounds entirely up my alley, wasn't even on my to-read list until now. but i'm working on it...more
i’ve loved her since the first incarnation of my reading accounts, when i discovered a million junwelcome to my main character era.
i love emily henry.
i’ve loved her since the first incarnation of my reading accounts, when i discovered a million junes based on an act of love from the universe, probably, and never looked back.
i loved her fascinating, unique, sometimes creepy always lovely magical realism filled with banter and growth and stunning images.
when she moved to romance, her books felt less like My Books, ones written specifically for me, but it was kind of wonderful to see them be The Book for so many other people.
and then this one came along.
and i hate to center myself again, but…
just kidding. this is the same person who genuinely said yesterday that the rain was holding out for her walk home exclusively. i have no problem with indulging in narcissism, so:
this one feels pretty made for me.
i love sisters, and here our almost-as-important close-second relationship after the romance is between two crazy close sisters.
i love nora, our cold and tough and mean but on the inside very kind and lovely and of course book-obsessed protagonist. (it will come as no surprise that i relate to her. or, well, relate on the first and third points.)
i love charlie, who passes my single requirement for romance novel love interests with flying colors. (this single requirement is, of course, being obsessed beyond logic with our main character.)
i love banter. it is the best part of any romcom and it isn’t close. this has plenty.
i love having-it-all happy ever afters. i love when the magic perfect ending doesn’t just include love, but like 9 other neatly tied up subplots ending with confetti and rose petals or whatever too.
i love being a tall girl, and i love that this book recognizes our struggle!!!
i love dream jobs. i love tropes. i love mean-girl characters. i love little kids. i love books!!!
when it came to this book, it feels like — beyond my missing magical realism, and the not-very-enemies beginning of this enemies to lovers, and some excessive sister sneakiness — i loved (almost) it all.
bottom line: emily henry forever!!!
4.5
------------------ reread update
there's no problem that can't be solved by rereading every emily henry book
--------------- pre-review
please respect my privacy at this time (deciding whether to give my third romance five star ever).
once upon a time, i read this book, and despite the fact that i have a heart of darkness (sorry joseph conrad) and am full of hate and vitriol (makes once upon a time, i read this book, and despite the fact that i have a heart of darkness (sorry joseph conrad) and am full of hate and vitriol (makes me a fun gossip though) and eat romance novels for breakfast (as in am very picky about them - i'm actually not a big breakfast eater)...
i enjoyed it.
and then i read everything else that this author has ever written, and i hated all of it.
and when to came time to revisit...
well, welcome to judgment day.
i hated this too.
maybe most of all.
(well, almost most of all. a love interest putting our protagonist's entire boob in his mouth is still not quite as terrifying and unsexy and jail-worthy as j*cking *ff into the discarded bra of the girl you s*xually *ssaulted, a real thing that happens multiple times in an actual ali hazelwood novella.)
i am an adult woman. i am tall. my hair is a normal, non-neon or -pastel color. i own zero pairs of knee-high socks with lisa frank prints on them, i am capable of feeding myself, and i do not live my life between instances of awe-inspiring misogyny from men that only other men can rescue me from.
this is a relatively typical list of traits, i think, and yet these details completely prevent me from enjoying even a moment of any given ali hazelwood I-Big-You-Small-Let's-Spend-40-Pages-Talking-About-How-I-Can't-Fit-Inside-You "romance."
c'est la vie.
bottom line: i officially give up on sunshine, rainbows, love, and happiness. and also this author.
--------------------- original review
(view spoiler)[Excuse me a moment. I just have to give myself a little pep talk. Won't take more than a paragraph or two.
Okay, Emma. I know you - gag - felt...feelings during this book. I know you were invested in the romance in a way that you have rarely been invested in anything that can remotely be construed as warm and cozy and positive. Your most-watched movie is Spotlight and when you were at home alone for a week you spent it rewatching Mindhunter and You. Your heart is typically shale-esque, in hardness and brittleness and darkness.
So I know that you're tempted to give five stars for the fact that it cracked your Grinchy shell and made your heart grow three sizes or whatever, but no.
This is not a perfect book even though reading it was, like, a near-perfect experience.
Even I, who thinks the miscommunication part of any romance is the best part due to the fact that is the most angsty and suffering-based, thought there were about 7 miscommunications too many here.
And I could have used a bit more personality from our love interest. Maybe, I don't know, actually I take that back because men should leave being fun and characterized to women, who do it better.
Okay. End pep talk because it isn't working. This is an insanely cute and skipped-heartbeat-inducing book and I want to give it five stars for that alone.
Maybe I'll come back to it.
Bottom line: Yippee! There's nothing more fun than enjoying a romcom!
--------------- pre-review
this is an extremely cute book that simultaneously rivals normal people in anxiety-inducing miscommunication.
Attention to the following things: - raindrops on roses - whiskers on kittens - bright copper kettles - warm woolen mittens - etc.
You are officially ON NOTAttention to the following things: - raindrops on roses - whiskers on kittens - bright copper kettles - warm woolen mittens - etc.
Because you can no longer qualify as a few of ANYONE'S favorite things when Sarah Hogle is writing romance novels.
I almost never love anything. The idea of wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings can hardly bring even the ghost of a smile to my evil face. My average rating on this godforsaken website has been under three stars for more than three years. I eat pain for breakfast. And those are just three examples.
But one thing I did love is Sarah Hogle's debut, You Deserve Each Other. In fact, I loved it so much that I read it like a million times (okay, four, but honestly that's almost as shocking) and felt Emotion and Pangs To The Heart and Butterflies and otherwise feelings that tend to be the stuff of my nightmares every time.
And since lightning doesn't strike twice (lightning in this case being me acting like a normal person), I assumed this would be a three and a half star read, tops. Because I do not deserve happiness and have presumably been cursed by some sort of witch or creature with haunting capabilities or mean anthropomorphic pond dweller to ensure it.
And this isn't a five star read.
But it's pretty close.
I tend to like a little hatefulness in my romance novels. A little darkness. A little b*tchiness. That's why You Deserve Each Other, a book with several top reviews that are like "why are this people so mean," worked for me SO well.
And this is a VERY sweet book. A little too much so, for me. I like a daydreamer or a sweetiepie as much as the next person, but as it turns out I draw the line at elaborate romance-novel-within-a-romance-novel AUs.
But this is fun anyway.
Bottom line: Cure for cynicism discovered by Sarah Hogle! Yours for the low low price of like...under $20, or something. I don't know. It's worth it.
------------------ reread update
this particular reread was not EXACTLY what i needed, but this book was the first time i read it, so i'm (mostly) leaving the review and only dropping it a star.
also, when you're comparing something to the perfect romance, it's hard for anything to live up to it.
------------------ pre-review
a few things: 1) while reading this, i pressed my hand to my heart on multiple occasions, like an affronted victorian woman 2) i feel like my emotions and brain and soul just went through a blender, which it turns out is a good feeling 3) i might cry???? 4) i think this is the best romance i've ever read.
review to come / 5 STARS!!!!!!!
------------------ tbr review
I AM HOLDING MY MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR IN MY HANDS....more
"And this was perhaps the first time in my life that death occurred to me as a reality. I thought of the people beforeThis book contains this passage:
"And this was perhaps the first time in my life that death occurred to me as a reality. I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it - it, the physical act. I had thought of suicide when I was much younger, as, possibly, we all have, but then it would have been for revenge, it would have been my way of informing the world how awfully it had made me suffer. But the silence of the evening, as I wandered home, had nothing to do with that storm, that far-off boy. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine."
And that is more in a paragraph than most books can get to in hundreds of pages.
Ling Ma served us a whole meal. A feast. A buffet. A week’s worth of Thanksgiving dinners made up of gorgeously subtle metaphor and allegory and motifLing Ma served us a whole meal. A feast. A buffet. A week’s worth of Thanksgiving dinners made up of gorgeously subtle metaphor and allegory and motif, if you will.
And I will personally be stuffing myself my dear boy.
This is the kind of book that makes me wish I was still a student and I was assigned this book in an English class, and could spend a week's worth of hour-long lectures deep in discussion with 20 other people (but reasonably only four who had actually read it).
It's the kind of book I could have reread immediately after reading for the first time, and then a million times after that.
It's the kind of book that makes you think about that terrible movie with Bradley Cooper where he takes the pill that opens his brain up to full functioning, because that's the only way I can reasonably imagine being able to fully appreciate this.
The themes in this, man, the f*cking themes: The immigrant parent’s journey versus Candace’s pregnant journey in a new world. The fevered mindlessly going through tasks versus the pre-pandemic office workers doing the same. The idea of a “colony” and what that means. So, so many more.
I need to reread this immediately, is what I'm saying.
Bottom line: I want to eat this with a spoon.
--------------- book club update
reading this pandemic novel during a pandemic for a) the self-destructive vibes and b) the book club. in that order
do you remember those weird toys from childhood that were like little heart-shaped doodads with cartoon characters on them, and when you soaked them in water they turned into branded dish towels?
this book made me feel like one of those. but in reverse.
review to come / at least 4.5 stars but maybe 5
--------------- currently-reading updates
taking a mental health test by reading a post-apocalyptic book in which the apocalypse was a pandemic featuring a virus that first appears like a cold
--------------- tbr review
my face when i hear the words "anti-capitalist dystopian literary fiction": ...more
My limited and rarely tested abilities to write a five star review, ever decaying and decreasing from laWell, well, well.
Look what the cat dragged in.
My limited and rarely tested abilities to write a five star review, ever decaying and decreasing from lack of use. We meet again.
I will continue to make my own lack of skill the audience for this review, just for a moment, because this is a special occasion. This isn't just any five star book, although that would be a fairly once in a blue moon event as well.
You and I - you, of course, being my minimal talents - need to get it together.
This is a SALLY ROONEY book. And not just any Sally Rooney book, but possibly my FAVORITE Sally Rooney book. Could very well be my favorite book by who is likely my favorite author, in other words. Rooney has published one excerpt, one essay, three novels, and four short stories, and I have read her work 22 times, in total.
Also notably, there is a book I have called the following: - my Bible - the book of my heart - my literal and figurative self, distilled into pages - my most recommended book - my favorite book of the last 150 years - nearly my favorite book of all time, second only to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - my comfort book - the closest thing I have to a religion
It's a book called Conversations with Friends, it's also written by Sally Rooney, and it seems to have been dethroned by this one.
There's a reason I've put off writing this review for two and a half months. The stakes are f*cking high.
So where do I go from here?
I can tell you that, so long as I live, I expect never to encounter writing like this again. Writing so clear and lovely, writing that summons new images and thoughts and emotions you've never considered and acts as a kind acknowledgment of the scariest and deepest and truest ones you quietly have.
I can say that this book begins with a launch, a tossing into the pool, an unceremonious jumping in that's more like a continuation, an assumption you've been there all along. That though it begins suddenly it feels like coming home.
I can note that these are some of Rooney's best and worst love stories, the ones you root for the most with the most complicated and "bad" and problematic people populating them, and that it's so beautiful to have those two things coexist.
I can attempt to work out my feelings about these characters, that while I feel for them and am fascinated by them and may adore them, it's almost beside the point of everything else. That for me, a person who reads for characters, the characters are wonderfully done and the realest yet, and the least important part, for me.
I can add that this is also an incredible act of bravery by Rooney, that it serves a huge leap in scope and in style and in intention from her previous books, that she has been criticized for much of her still-nascent career in a way that feels mean-spirited by the aging totems of Literature, and that instead of ducking her head and conceding to the characterization of her work as vapid and millennial, she filled her third book with so much heart it's hard to fathom.
I can try to describe what this book means to me, what it's like to spend most of your life trying on cynicism like a Halloween costume, scratchy and seamy and not quite right, to indulge in pithy "I hate everyone" negativity when people seem to be the only real reason life is worth living, and then have your very favorite author - who, it may have been mentioned, holds a fairly outsize role in your heart and mind - tell you she thinks so, too.
I want you to know, and I can try to convey, that love and friendship are all that matters, and that this book is the loveliest way of giving yourself the gift of letting yourself believe that.
I will try to tell you so many things if they get you to read this book.
Bottom line: This is a once in a lifetime one, for me.
----------------- note
as if i needed more reasons to find this book completely perfect: free palestine
----------------- reread pre-review
the first time i read this, i finished it in a sitting.
the second time, i savored every word.
review to come / 5 stars / more if i could
----------------- reread updates
i don't know how long i can go without rereading a sally rooney book. but i'm not willing to find out
-----------
i wish i could say this was as good the third time...but i can't.
Give me a book I hate and I’ll write a full-on thesis on it. Prime example: Just yesterday I spent one huI do not know how to write five star reviews.
Give me a book I hate and I’ll write a full-on thesis on it. Prime example: Just yesterday I spent one human hour on a seven-page one star rant review. And honestly? Time well spent.
But when it comes to something I truly love? I’m illiterate. Can’t read. Can’t write. Call me Jared, 19. What am I doing on this book site? Couldn’t tell you.
I WANT to scream about this from the rooftops. I want each and every one of you to read it, because it is utterly one of a kind and it’s gripping from page one and the characters are fantastic and the writing is witty and beautiful and it is…
I tried to trick myself into stating all the ways in which it is amazing, but as always I got overwhelmed and ran out of words to describe it. (The one scenario in known human existence that can get me to shut up for even one second.)
Anytime I write a five star review, I struggle to render perfection onto the page, and I just make myself want to reread.
Damn...I really, really want to reread.
Bottom line: Don’t take my insufficient words for it!!! But read this book immediately.
The best things in the world are as follows: - when you perfectly toast a bagel. I mean we all know how easy it is to underdo that bad boy so it’s stilThe best things in the world are as follows: - when you perfectly toast a bagel. I mean we all know how easy it is to underdo that bad boy so it’s still a weird squishy bread circle or even more likely, burn that baby till it’s glorified charcoal but when you really find that sweet spot...(chef’s kiss) - baking cookies and then eating them while they’re still warm, and then you eat a whole tray because if you made them they don’t count as caloric - genuine, believable enemies to lovers where you really feel them fall in love and also it’s funny and also everything is perfect.
Aka this book.
Because I am extremely picky about books and am disappointed by most of what I read, I like to do this very adorable and charming thing where when I like one thing, I assume I will like everything that is similar to it.
I very much enjoyed The Hating Game (possibly to an extent in which I compared myself both to a jack o’lantern and a gif from Disney’s Tangled in my review, I don’t know, who’s to say), and so I assumed I would like every rom-com. Especially ones that were actually funny.
Especially-especially of the enemies to lovers.
And, like the new Star Wars movie and orange-flavored Skittles and every other disappointing thing, that was not to be.
But finally, FINALLY, my suffering has been rewarded.
Because...dare I say it…
This book is better than The Hating Game.
I KNOW.
Look at us. Hey! Look at us. Who would’ve thought?
Not me.
This is The Hating Game in terms of tropes and plot and the overall yay-falling-in-love feeling it gives off, but with better characters. And more humor.
GOD. This is so funny it doesn’t make sense. Since when are books funny? When was the last time I truly laughed at a book and I wasn’t laughing out of all the anger and hatred in my cold dark soul?
Not sure. Well before this, I’ll tell you that.
But it wasn’t just a barrel of laughs my friends. It also made my heart hurt, but in the good emotional way where you’re like, oh my god...fools...just love each other...kiss already...except also don’t because the drama and conflict and miscommunication and will-they-won’t-they (they will) is the fun part.
Basically what I’m saying is: I don’t know how to love anything without being obsessed with it, and I already want to read this eleven more times.
Bottom line: I didn’t play Animal Crossing for this! ANIMAL CROSSING!!!
-------------- project 5 star update
welcome back to PROJECT 5 STAR, a project in which i revisit all the books i've ever given five stars, mostly out of cynicism and masochism, but in this case just as an excuse to reread the most perfect romance novel of all time.
simply rereading this so i can write a kickass review and not because i've been searching for a reason
-------------- pre-review
please don't tell anyone i burst into tears at the gushy part of this book. it'll ruin my bad-boy image.
review to come / POSSIBLY FIVE STARS
-------------- tbr review
just saw this quote from this book: “I’m a miserable cynic (a newer development) and a dreamy romantic (always have been), and it’s such a terrible combination that I don’t know how to tolerate myself” and instantly started reading it because girl if that ain't me...more
“WRENCHING,” a book’s front cover will yell, and say it's a quote from like the Delaware Post-Tribune or the Huntington Park Journal or the Winding River Bend Rural Paper. “IMMERSIVE,” shouts a glorified neighborhood book club. “UNPUTDOWNABLE,” according to a woman with a lot of Instagram followers.
I very rarely agree with these influencers or made-up sounding publications. It is an infrequent occurrence that I put down a book and immediately begin referring to it in intense one-word statements.
I did not do anything of the kind upon finishing this book, but there are two Book Marketing’s Greatest Hits terms that I would ascribe to this book: FUNNY and HEARTWARMING.
This was a really good read. So good it cursed my brain and now I will have to live out my days speaking like the faux-Reese Witherspoon who writes her book marketing copy, my words forever taking up precious space that could be devoted to pretty pictures or actual, you know, synopses.
But I’ll try to stop talking about all my irritations with the idea of blurbs and give actual reviewing a try.
I really miss reading this.
It was half feel-good fiction, half-romance, and while I kinda wish it’d been one or the other...I’m not that mad.
Because both halves were - sigh - A DELIGHT. (Lift your curse from me, O The Oprah Magazine!!!)
In another rare occurrence, I liked these characters a lot. I consider it a stroke of luck if I enjoy so much as a single character in any book, so finding one in which I like multiples??? Nothing short of a miracle, my dear boy.
Bottom line: In conclusion, I will henceforth be reading everything Linda Holmes writes, and also please let me live inside this book thank you.
------------ reread update
messing with what works (rereading a book i liked several years ago) and surviving.
------------ update
raising this rating because i really miss reading this book
------------ pre-review
this did the trick.
review to come
------------ tbr review
i need a book where everything is bad and then they all live happily ever after, and if this book turns out not to be that book i will explode...more
not to sound like i believe myself to the center of the universe, but...i am and i do and this book was probably written for me.
i, like our protagonisnot to sound like i believe myself to the center of the universe, but...i am and i do and this book was probably written for me.
i, like our protagonist, am a 24-year-old blonde with exactly one toxic but adoring friend who daydreams about the idea of sleeping away a week / month / year and waking up refreshed and renewed and in a slightly different, shinier life.
in college, the aforementioned singular friend and i lived through finals and midterms and forty-hour workweeks combined with internships and full-time course-loads by fantasizing about comas. just a few weeks or so, no brain damage, modern-day snow whites escaping capitalism or the patriarchy or what have you.
all of this is to say that the only thing that separates me from this protagonist is the first two decades of the millennium and the wherewithal to get it done.
life is painful and exhausting and gross. life is stained crate & barrel couches and intolerable people with trust funds who can't tolerate themselves and caffeine addictions upheld by sh*tty coffee. life needs pills to get you through it and pills to get you out of it.
but life is also the in-betweens: waking up from blackouts (proverbial or literal) to full-body enjoy a slice of pizza standing in front of your fridge. feeling the sun on your skin at the end of winter. sitting in a park and watching people be happy. calling friends.
and life is knowing that the worst part of it all could be just around the corner, on the very last page. but the best part could come a few after.
and maybe the bad parts are actually the in-betweens of the happy ones.
that isn't what this book is about, but it's a fun side effect.
bottom line: this book is good.
reread update: want to note that a) i don't think that you're supposed to like this protagonist, god help me, and b) raising this to a 5, because this is not a perfect book (that ending...shudder) but it's close to it for me!
-------------- 2nd reread
depressive episode reading
-------------- reread pre-review
i have almost no new insight.
still review & rating to come
-------------- reread update
doing the Bravest thing i can imagine: rereading this less than 3 weeks after i read it for the first time just so i can buddy read with lily (and also hopefully figure out a rating)
-------------- pre-review
how could i possibly be expected to sum up this book with a number between 1 and 5?
review & rating to come
-------------- tbr review
secretly i hope every book i pick up will turn out to be the kind of depressing, nasty, female-authored literary fiction populated by unlikable young women and Something to Say about the soullessness of late-stage capitalism that changes my internal monologue for 10-14 days and sears disturbing images into my brain.
It is impossible not to like this book. It’s entirely made up of charming illustrations and great handwriting and beautiful sentences and jokes about It is impossible not to like this book. It’s entirely made up of charming illustrations and great handwriting and beautiful sentences and jokes about cake. It gives you zero chance to dislike it.
I wish I could dislike it, because I have a very cold and mean soul and it would be very on brand for me to hate something that Chris Evans, Captain America himself, called the most beautiful book/Christmas gift possible and the marketing copy calls “hope in uncertain times.”
But alas. I had no chance.
This is the kind of book that you read in 20 minutes and then immediately hand to someone else, who then wants to lend your copy to someone but can’t because they aren’t a monster and instead buys 10 copies to keep on hand as gifts that seem personal but really aren’t.
This giftiness is both the best thing about this and the worst.
At some points this feels more like a collection of quotes than anything else, which is sad because I liked other things about this - the boy, the mole, the fox, and the horse, namely. And I could get inspirational feel-good quotes anywhere (including on this site, by the thousands).
Still, though - this wasn’t perfect, but it came pretty close.
Bottom line: Captain America was right about this one.
------------------ pre-review
"I got you a delicious cake," said the mole. "Did you?" "Yes." "Where is it?" "I ate it," said the mole. "Oh." "But I got you another." "Did you? Where is that one?" "The same thing seems to have happened."
needless to say i loved this so much it broke me in half.
review to come / 4 stars
------------------ currently-reading updates
i don't know anything about this book but it looks like it's going to make me cry...more
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