3.5 stars. I was bowled over by Ravatn's novel The Seven Doors, a kind of modern Greek tragedy. The Guests has some things in common, though it's smal3.5 stars. I was bowled over by Ravatn's novel The Seven Doors, a kind of modern Greek tragedy. The Guests has some things in common, though it's smaller, slower, and subtler. I think it may have worked better as a novella or even a short story with a more limited focus, but this is mostly because I think readers will approach this expecting it to be a crime novel when it is only sort of suspenseful.
The comparisons to Highsmith are still pretty good. This is a book where almost the entire plot hinges around two people who casually embark on a frivolous lie, unprepared for the consequences of it and the rest of the book is almost entirely watching conversations play out. But the stakes never reach Highsmith levels, it's always a low stakes situation even at its most intense. And there's nothing wrong with that! But I think the reader tends to expect something bigger to come in, which is not entirely something Ravatn is encouraging, but when you say a novel is one of "dark psychological suspense" you're certainly giving the reader that impression. I just think it's more enjoyable if you know that this isn't like The Seven Doors or that last domestic thriller you read.
All that said, I liked what Ravatn is doing though the pacing never fully worked for me. The beginning drags, and I don't think we get enough of an investment in Karin for the payoff to really work. But I love the central idea, that casually pretending to be someone you're not can cause you to reevaluate the person you really are. And I really enjoyed the way we follow Karin's thoughts, the way she can be so callous and harsh towards a woman she admires and desperately wants to be friends with simply because of the mask she's put on. It is a really interesting concept, I'm just not sure the structure and pacing of this novel are exactly right for it....more
I have read a lot of Karin Slaughter novels. More than a dozen, I'm sure. But a few years ago I quit the Will Trent series. I skipped the last two novI have read a lot of Karin Slaughter novels. More than a dozen, I'm sure. But a few years ago I quit the Will Trent series. I skipped the last two novels. But I picked this one up because it had a kind of Agatha Christie vibe, not Slaughter's usual approach, and I was curious. Of course this is Karin Slaughter so it is not just a simple whodunnit. As one character notes, this story is Agatha Christie by way of V.C. Andrews.
You know by now that there are always like 50 content warnings for her novels. I thought maybe this one would be different when halfway through we only had a handful, but don't worry there were plenty by the end!
But this is a different one for her and it was enjoyable enough that I didn't regret coming back to the series. Even though I have to wonder how old Sara Linton is now. (We have 20+ years of Sara Linton novels, of course, but I swear this woman has been through more than 20 years of actual plot and yet she still seems to be a hot woman in her mid 30s?) Slaughter is stuck in that dance many crime novel writers are these days where they are committed to writing about cops (surely the new Will Trent tv show only locked Slaughter in even more to this series) but they are struggling with the fact that so many cops are not good but they have to make their cop still good somehow, no one does it very well, Slaughter included.
The mystery here is big enough with so much going on that we don't get overly bogged down in personal life. This is what makes so many of her series novels tedious for me, but while there is a personal connection to this crime for Will, and plenty of thematic overlap with his own history, there is an awful lot to do plot-wise so we don't really get all muddled down in it. Plus none of it ever leaks out into his relationships with Sara, Faith, or Amanda. A relief. Mostly this is standard thriller territory and we get to just let things play out.
It is definitely V.C. Andrews territory, the wrap up is A Lot with so much potential exposition that we have to do much of it through flashback, and Will and Sara end up doing an awful lot of explaining what must have happened to other rightfully confused characters. But it's fine. It's not bad. If you want a quick beach read full of trauma, this will fit the bill.
I remain so curious about why Slaughter writes such aggressively heterosexual novels. ...more
I have a long history of forgetting how good Elizabeth Strout is until I am back in one of her novels and remember that she has this magic that you doI have a long history of forgetting how good Elizabeth Strout is until I am back in one of her novels and remember that she has this magic that you don't even realize until you've been reading one of her books for three hours straight. This novel is basically Strout's version of The Avengers, bringing together almost all of her characters into one spot and happily it's quite satisfying.
The truth is I didn't like her last novel, Lucy By the Sea, so I was nervous about this one. I read the three Lucy Barton books in a row and always struggled a little with how differently I see the world than how Lucy does, but in the third one I did not get sucked in at all. I was over Lucy. So I admit I came to the first chapter highly skeptical. And when the first chapter started with Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton meeting and becoming friends I felt kind of manipulated. But luckily this was really what I needed. I need a spoonful of Olive to help the Lucy go down. Because Olive likes Lucy a lot, just like I do, but Olive also regularly thinks "Oh brother," when Lucy says something particularly dreamy and optimistic. Knowing that someone else out there wants to tell Lucy to shut up sometimes let me relax and enjoy myself.
And I did enjoy myself! If you are thinking Oh no how will I deal with this book I didn't read The Burgess Boys, don't worry. Strout is great at giving you little reminders of things she shared in previous books when you need them. She will remind you of what Bob Burgess's deal is. (I read that book more than ten years ago! I remember nothing except Bob's name!) I love all these little asides, it feels like she is taking care of you as a reader, she is not going to make you review the entire Elizabeth Strout Literary Universe to enjoy this novel, she will give you everything you need.
This book is about confidants, about friendship, and how it can be a blessing and a curse. In particular it is about the friendship between Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess (which began in Lucy By the Sea) and where every single other person is like "hmm I think there's something going on between those two" and Elizabeth Strout is like You're not wrong! But what is it and what does it mean and what are we going to do about it.
Bob is a nice center here, he goes through a family crisis and gets a new client in a criminal case, and both of these shift how he feels about his life, his marriage, and his relationship with Lucy. Most of all he grapples with what this friendship means, what should be done about it, how he feels.
Strout doesn't romanticize, none of her characters do. She's deeply aware of how trauma continues to play out in people's lives for decades, whether they are aware of it or not. It's such an interesting and unusual thing to see from a writer of the Baby Boomer generation, and this is part of what makes her books so interesting. Some of her characters acknowledge this trauma--like Lucy or Bob--but many don't--Olive is the primary example, she gives simply a shrug of the shoulders when discussing a family member's suicide. Even those who acknowledge it do not always fully understand it, they often don't understand their own emotions or reactions, and this I think is part of what is so poignant about her work, seeing people struggle with their inner selves.
I read this in less than 24 hours, I think it's one of her best....more
2.5 stars. Moreno-Garcia is not exactly a hit or miss author for me, she's all across the spectrum. For me, this one is okay. There's a lot going on, 2.5 stars. Moreno-Garcia is not exactly a hit or miss author for me, she's all across the spectrum. For me, this one is okay. There's a lot going on, it mixes a kind of oral history style with three longer traditional third-person narratives, one of which is actually Salome herself. I'm not sure that Salome's story adds much here, but we need something else because the story of Vera and Nancy on its own is rather thin. Would be nice to just get a B plot or something. ...more
I have read a lot of novels that attempt to be their own version of IT, stories of adults brought back to their childhood to once again defeat an unspI have read a lot of novels that attempt to be their own version of IT, stories of adults brought back to their childhood to once again defeat an unspeakable evil. Most of them have felt like ripoffs, pale imitations. This is the first one I've found that actually has some magic to it. It's also one of the better Horror/Fantasy combinations I can recall. (Only Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House series comes to mind, they're similar in theme but pretty different in tone.)
I do not always take a lot of pleasure from the worldbuilding of Fantasy, the explanations of elaborate magical systems. And yet this book never bothered me, even though it has its own complex system of magic. It always feels organic, especially as we see how the different characters relate to it. This is, perhaps, the best thing about this book. Our primary protagonists--Hal, Erin, and Athena--all have profoundly different relationships to and experiences with the power known as The Dissonance. The shifting perspectives always serve a bigger purpose, not only to move the plot forward but to give us really different thoughts and experiences from the different characters. Multi POV can be done very badly but here it functions just as it should.
There are some weaknesses here that are not really weaknesses, but part of the intention of the whole package. Especially the central friend group who don't really make any sense together as a friend group, this is one of the required conceits of what the book wants to do so you just have to go with it. The romantic plots could be annoying but thankfully stay in the background until they become important for the plot or an emotional payoff. You do need to suspend a lot of disbelief here, especially imagining what would have happened right after 1999 and the destruction of an entire school and everyone in it, which the book never bothers to envision and once we have the full backstory it makes the future timelines feel like they're missing some pieces between the teen characters and the adults, but again, this is pretty typical of this type of story!
There are a lot of things I really enjoyed, that I thought this book did quite well. Even if I started with a lot of skepticism, I was very won over. I liked the movement through time, the flashes back to the past that fleshed out the backstory but are really the central story. Hamill lets us sit in them for long stretches. (The only time this book felt like it was too long or dragging was the desert stuff, I could never figure out why it had to go on for so long.) The book is great at holding on to a crucial piece of information until just the right time. And it's really good at not just making you wait, but having the reveal feel satisfying. They are not smack you over the head WTF reveals, sometimes you're not even sure exactly what is happening and why, but emotionally they hit the necessary beats. And one of this book's other strengths is it doesn't need to explain everything! I like the unexplained stuff, the missing perspectives, it leaves us feeling like everything isn't all wrapped up with a bow.
I liked Hamill's debut fine but noted that it suffered in its depiction of female characters. He's much better here, Athena and Erin are well drawn and interesting. I had just a slight quibble with the way Hamill writes about Athena's worries about her weight--it felt tacked on and not as fully realized--but these are quibbles and the gist of it all worked.
Mostly I just found this book really fun to read. I never found myself profoundly disappointed or annoyed, which is pretty impressive in a book this long. I was excited to come back to it and see what would happen. It made me wish that other people could execute this little subgenre competently instead of most books like this just not working for me at all because when they work they are fun! Hamill is one to watch, for sure, a lot of imagination, strong character development, real emotional investment, a solid work....more
2.5 stars. Started off pretty strong but it's not easy to pull off this high of a concept and ultimately the book isn't up for it.
The first third real2.5 stars. Started off pretty strong but it's not easy to pull off this high of a concept and ultimately the book isn't up for it.
The first third really works, the idea that a rich woman would swoop in and bring this lookalike in to shake things up and maybe lead her to the guilty party. But this conceit can only last so long. There aren't a lot of discoveries to make, and there aren't any more reasons for Jenny to stay around. And the last half is your standard Protagonist Makes Ridiculous Decisions Just So We Have a Plot stuff.
Except for the lookalike plot which could just be a coincidence but then it weirdly becomes not though the book doesn't know what to do with that, either. ...more
2.5 stars. Look this isn't a totally incompetent mystery. By most measures it's pretty solid. But it just bothered me at every turn. If I wasn't alway2.5 stars. Look this isn't a totally incompetent mystery. By most measures it's pretty solid. But it just bothered me at every turn. If I wasn't always in such a Oh No What Will I Listen To Now mode in audiobooks I probably would have quit.
I didn't like any of the characters, which can be fine, but not even the ones I was supposed to like. Ffion I hated the least but I hated her personal plot. Every part of it was very easy to see coming, and I think I would have liked it all much better if she'd just been able to be a prickly person and not have this very traumatic emotional plot arc. I didn't like Leo either. Do not even get me started around his personal growth arc, he starts out a terrible parent and ends up... only marginally better!
You are clearly supposed to hate everyone at The Shore because they are all suspects. But dear lord we spend SO MUCH TIME getting flashbacks to everything that has ever happened to make them hate the victim, it reaches a point of absurdity. Like we get it. Everyone hates him. They are all bad people. It was like this book wanted every single character to be guilty of some terrible crime and that gets boring rather than interesting.
This was definitely one of those The Victim Is So Evil How Did He Not Get Murdered Already? books. There is a lot of sexual violence in this book. And this man has done so much of it for so long and clear it's a pattern, it's unclear that he is able to interact with a woman in a way that is not sexually violent. I'm not saying men like this don't exist. But even people who know what he does don't give him a wide berth or warn other people about him. Everyone just stays on.
But hilariously my biggest complaint is that this book uses Cwm Coed's smallness where everyone knows everything as a rule of thumb AND YET one of the book's biggest plot point no one in this small town knows about which I do not believe for a single second. Everyone would know! Even if they didn't know they would have guessed! And it just annoyed me so much that at that point I could not get over it and this book was pretty much dead to me.
On the bright side, the audiobook narration was nice. Afaik all the Welsh was solid. Though I always wish when you have a book that is Very Welsh like this book is that the whole book would get a Welsh accent instead of just a few characters.
Being Welsh was by far the best thing about this book! More Welsh!...more
2.5 stars. Lyons keeps writing the same book. There are things he's getting better at and things he's getting worse at along the way.
When I reviewed 2.5 stars. Lyons keeps writing the same book. There are things he's getting better at and things he's getting worse at along the way.
When I reviewed his last novel, I said "In the first, a group of friends got themselves in a terrible situation and then you threw supernatural danger on top of it. In this one, a brother and sister get themselves in a terrible situation and then you throw supernatural danger on top of it. Next time I hope he mixes up the formula, it made the first third feel pretty predictable." This time we once again have a group of people who get themselves in a terrible situation and then you throw supernatural danger on top of it. Bright side: he's a lot better at the terrible situation this time! This was a bank robbery gone wrong and the stakes felt legitimate. There wasn't a clear path forward and there was a whole lot of possible ways to go wrong. Big improvement.
Downside is that this book is much longer than it needs to be and feels very bloated. The supernatural stuff is fine, though the cult stuff feels tacked on.
There are also so many times here where the plot makes no sense that eventually you have to stop asking questions. Why put an unconscious cop in your trunk as a human hostage? (Especially when you never actually use him as a hostage or develop a plan to use him as a hostage.) Why meet up with the people who betrayed you and are very pissed at you when you could very easily NOT do that? And once the supernatural stuff kicks into high gear it's confusing why this big evil will never stop and always follow you when actually it did stop and didn't follow you for like 20 years? This is the kind of book where you just have to say "Okay, you are making bad decisions for the sake of plot" and be okay with it. Which I don't really love!
Also personal pet peeve this is a book with a cop as a major character where the book is really determined to convince you that this guy is Not Like The Other Cops. Clearly Lyons knows he's going to have some ACAB folks among his readers and he's really trying to convince you that it's okay, this guy is a good guy. It is not a very successful effort. Also the whole book would have worked just as well if he wasn't a cop! The cop-as-hostage never made sense anyway!
If this book was like a nice 260 pages, I think it would have been a lot better. But the bloat was real and it slowed the book down a lot. Lots of unnecessary ruminating. I finished it more out of sunk cost than any pleasure....more
This memoir doesn't try to do very much. It feels deeply phoned in, unconcerned with the reader's experience, just page after page of long summary parThis memoir doesn't try to do very much. It feels deeply phoned in, unconcerned with the reader's experience, just page after page of long summary paragraphs. It is concerned with only one thing: making sure you understand that yes sex work is real and here are some of the ways it works. You could have accomplished everything this book accomplishes in a nice longform essay.
I often found myself with questions about Shane herself. She lays out a lot of situations but doesn't get much into her own feelings. She shows you how she had this need to please men from an early age, but it's still a pretty big jump from there to sex work, especially when she found sex unpleasant and painful. She breezes past this gap. And in some ways I get it, she wants you to understand that she does not need to justify herself. She wants to normalize sex work and that's a worthy goal. But it's not the goal of a memoir, which is to share a personal experience. That's the real problem: this isn't a memoir at all.
The center of the book is Shane's long relationship with an older, married man who falls in love with her. It's a strange relationship, and she sometimes tries to explain it, but she leaves a lot unsaid that leave you without a lot of new insight by the time it's over. ...more
I should have quit this book but I kept with it because I wanted to make sure it would prove my theory: divorce is boring. Not in real life, in real lI should have quit this book but I kept with it because I wanted to make sure it would prove my theory: divorce is boring. Not in real life, in real life it is all consuming. But in fiction, in memoir, in any narrative where you try to recount it? Boring. And while I didn't enjoy this book, I did feel vindicated by the end. Yes, there is not a book's amount of stuff here. Truly.
On top of the lack of drama, this is also a book where it tries to present you two points of view and then does not very much with it. It could try to make them equal and balanced and really show you two sides, but this book so clearly detests Bea that you never feel the two sides are balanced. She may feel normal at the beginning, but only when you have no other context for her. Before the narrative even shifts, you can already tell that while she may feel her husband left her for no reason we can already see a lot of reasons. Niklas, meanwhile, gets a surprisingly light touch, even though he does a whole lot of things to make the situation works and continues to do them. The book feels bad for him, after all who can blame him for this when he is stuck with Bea?
It is also hard to figure out how anyone saw these two as a happy couple. We don't get any evidence of this besides being told. Niklas and Bea don't have things in common, don't enjoy each other's company. Their split feels natural, necessary, because there is nothing to their relationship.
I think you can really give this one a pass. Someday maybe someone will find a way to make narratives around divorce interesting but this one sure doesn't....more
Writing near future is so gutsy, but Phillips somehow taps into so many of my personal technology anxieties here. The style is less THE NEED more THE Writing near future is so gutsy, but Phillips somehow taps into so many of my personal technology anxieties here. The style is less THE NEED more THE BEAUTIFUL BUREAUCRAT. Short, speculative, but not a deep plot or character dive. And it doesn't need to be. That lets you focus more on Phillips' almost constant stream of unnerving inventions and the way they create small fractures in May's mind and her famnily. ...more
This book took me totally by surprise. It has all my favorite things: Food! Wine! Slutty Bisexuals!
Perhaps the most chaotic bisexual novel that has eThis book took me totally by surprise. It has all my favorite things: Food! Wine! Slutty Bisexuals!
Perhaps the most chaotic bisexual novel that has ever existed, this book is decadent. It is never going to do something a little when it can do it a lot. This book is not a healthy little salad, it is a multi-course meal where the courses just keep coming and the waiter won't stop pouring wine into your glass. Okay fine so it strains credulity that it takes 400+ pages to get Theo and Kit to a happy ending, it feels like they're basically all good when you're barely 20% of the way through. But while I wished we had some more legitimate obstacles and growth, I was happy to have a few hundred more pages if it meant we got to have this much fun along the way.
There is a lot of very queer sex on the page and I love that for us. Especially since this is a straight-presenting bisexual couple and all us bisexuals are very aware of how this can often erase our queerness to others. But McQuiston doesn't leave any room for doubt. These are two very queer people with complex approaches to gender, sexuality, and sex. The sex is frequent and varied and some of it gets quite steamy and specific, for me all big pluses.
This is a romance novel so you know going in it's going to be a HEA. You know there will be obstacles. But I suspect a lot of traditional romance readers will be troubled by how much Kit and Theo have sex with other people and how the book seems pretty fine with that. Because, well, it is actually really hot to know someone is sleeping with other people when you want to sleep with that person. If you can only accept Theo and Kit and will accept no other pairings, this book won't be fun for you! But if you have the kind of attraction Theo and Kit do, then it's just one more enjoyable indulgence.
I have been hit and miss with McQuiston, but this is definitely my favorite. It isn't quite as sugary sweet as RWARB or as capital-q Quirky New York as One Last Stop. They can still feel kinda insufferable, and I will say the first half is more of an uphill climb. Kit and Theo are definitely messy twenty-somethings who don't feel like they've really embraced adulthood, but they really come into their own when they finally start getting comfortable with each other.
Look, I have notes. We spend so long not actually understanding why they broke up, when it's also not clear why they can't just get back together, and where it seems like they are both on board. I would like more actual conflict and some more time with real growth. Both Kit and Theo are super privileged who can have a big fail and still be just fine, and yes it is a little annoying that they can spend their money on things like this tour that I personally could not afford even though I am nearly two decades their senior. And yeah Theo, maybe it's ok to just be the person who makes great drinks without having to be the person who runs your whole business! (Sometimes I really just wanted anyone who has any life experience to give Theo a good bit of work advice for real.) If this book hadn't been so sexy I might have bailed but instead I just drunk up all the sexy fun. ...more
Steadman's last book, The Family Game, was really enjoyable. This, however, feels incredibly phoned in. There was a while there about 1/3 of the way iSteadman's last book, The Family Game, was really enjoyable. This, however, feels incredibly phoned in. There was a while there about 1/3 of the way in where I thought "I have absolutely no idea what's happening, everything is bananas, this is fun," but then suddenly poof! All gone. Once we get oriented to what is actually happening this is no longer fun, it's just ridiculous. As I like to say about this kind of book, the problem isn't being silly, you can be really over the top and silly, but it has to be fun. If it isn't fun, then what's the point?
If you are not going to read it and just want to know why it is so ridiculous I will happily tell you after a spoiler tag. (view spoiler)[It is a house full of escape rooms that will kill you, which is definitely silly but could be fun. Except the whole thing is that rich people pay to watch normies who have no idea what's happening be subjected to this. Which just doesn't make sense! Not even in a rich people hunting poor people for sport kind of way. Because these challenges are mostly puzzles. In the one we watch they are puzzles based on T.S. Eliot poems. There is nothing to watch! There is just will this person think of the right thing before they die. As soon as you know that's what is happening, to go through all of it is just so dumb. I liked the book much better when it was just Mystery House What Is Happening. (hide spoiler)]...more
A novella that tells the whole story of a marriage up to the moment it will either be destroyed or saved. Told in alternating chapters of husband VirgA novella that tells the whole story of a marriage up to the moment it will either be destroyed or saved. Told in alternating chapters of husband Virgil and wife Kathleen, we slowly learn the whole story of their lives together. Anthony takes her time with all kinds of reveals, small and large, to see just how little these two people know and understand each other. Surprisingly optimistic for a book about the way marriage traps people....more
This is a memoir with a hook and it does its best to deliver on the opening pages, as Waite pores over a secret hard drive her husband kept. But it isThis is a memoir with a hook and it does its best to deliver on the opening pages, as Waite pores over a secret hard drive her husband kept. But it is a false bill of goods. The title tells you this is a book about grieving an awful person. But ultimately when you ask what this book is about, it is not about that. It is about making peace in grief. It is, kind of disappointingly, a rather basic grief memoir at the end of the day.
The grief memoir is one of the largest memoir subgenres, right up there with celebrities and addictions. And Waite's hook means it should be a useful entry. Grieving a person who made big mistakes is certainly a more interesting (and likely common) story than we get to hear about. But even when Waite is diving into her husband's secrets, or revealing the times when he was a difficult person in his life, it never comes together. It feels more like a collection of anecdotes. While the broad strokes move linearly through time, there is no clear path to follow.
After reading this entire book, I couldn't really tell you what this marriage was like. We get glimpses, but we do not get a clear narrative or a final tally. Of course a marriage is complicated and a marriage with infidelity and secrets and undiagnosed mental health issues is more complicated. But Waite only really gives us two modes: she is either searching for secrets or she is grieving a man she loved. And the more time that passes, the more we move from one to the other. We don't get a chance to reckon fully with those secrets, we don't get a chance to reconstruct how all this happened. We don't really get the chance to understand what it must be like for Waite to have to hold all these secrets when everyone else thinks Sean was such a great guy. I could not understand the happy parts of this marriage or the sad parts, not even just from Waite's perspective.
The writing is straightforward. Things veer pretty strongly into a new age direction in the last half, looking for signs and trying to identify messages from the dead. It's a weird contrast from the beginning of the book. I think this memoir suffers from a very common memoir problem: Waite is actually too close to the feelings and experiences. It's clear that what Waite really wants from this need to communicate with Sean is a chance for him to reckon with the things he's done, a chance for the two of them to find closure. It takes a long time for the book to recognize that this is what it's about: how Waite has to do the work her husband never had to do, how she has to bear all the consequences, tie up all the loose ends.
When the book is angry, it feels the most real. When it is looking for peace, it becomes a lot less interesting and doesn't really seem to know what to say anymore. I think it could have used a stronger structural edit, a deeper look at everything. A willingness to move beyond anecdotes, to really ask questions and find answers.
I cannot stop thinking about one piece in particular that Waite shares early on, while her husband was still alive, where he threatened violence right in front of their son. It's not that Waite ignores it, but she doesn't fully reckon with it either at the time or later. The porn, honestly, doesn't even matter all that much. It's classic opening chapter shock value stuff. But this, I just couldn't let it go even when the book had set it aside. It made it hard for me to feel good about Waite getting tearful at what she took as a message from him. There is an unspoken idea that this dead version of Sean is penitent, that he is reformed, that he is somehow fixed, that he isn't the same person that he was when he died. When, to me, I can't let that person go.
Perhaps that is one of the things a grief memoir has to do. Is learn to let go. And I am simply not reading a grief memoir correctly. But to me what's interesting about the story is that this man acted so badly and that he will never account for it, that he somehow still gets forgiveness and love without any remorse or amends. And that Waite isn't all that interested in what that means and how you deal with it. ...more
A really enjoyable dark comedy with a particularly sharp satire of the perils of Hollywood. Jane is the perfect lead, someone with an actually pretty A really enjoyable dark comedy with a particularly sharp satire of the perils of Hollywood. Jane is the perfect lead, someone with an actually pretty charmed life who is not content with her lot and makes a regular string of bad decisions that consistently make everything more complicated and difficult. Yes, you will want to shake her constantly, but that's part of the fun.
It takes a while to get to the television stuff, but it's a short novel and that's when it really kicks into high gear. I would love to read a bunch more books like this, that have a fully developed world and a sharp observing eye. Jane and her family feel like real people, the kids never feel like they are just there for show. As usual, Senna has a very keen eye on issues of race and the particular conundrums of being biracial....more
There is a stretch in the middle of this book that is so so good. Where we see old high school friends Cary and Shiloh veer towards becoming more thanThere is a stretch in the middle of this book that is so so good. Where we see old high school friends Cary and Shiloh veer towards becoming more than friends, and then learn that they have tried this once before. It ends badly both times. The passion and then the misunderstanding and then the stubborn escalation repeats from their different points of view and these different points in time and it totally breaks your heart. There's a reason so many romances insert the specific obstacle of misunderstanding, if you do it right there isn't much that is more wrenching as a reader. Rowell does this really well, the dialogue is sharp, and the characterization is so good that I kept recognizing myself and other people in these characters. The rest of the book doesn't quite reach these heights, but it had an awfully long way to fall.
There is a lot to like here. I particularly loved the Omaha setting, the real lives these characters lead. I grow more and more frustrated with stories where we are told characters are broke but they do not live like broke people. Shiloh and Cary and their families live on the edge in a way that feels much more real, and only gets more complicated as they get older. Nothing is simple and easy, and that feels very right. Shiloh's status as divorced single mom also felt real real, this isn't the kind of book where her kids disappear as soon as it's inconvenient for them to be around.
But even though I enjoyed spending time with these characters they drove me up the wall. Shiloh and Cary are incapable of having a goddamn conversation, which I know is what makes these stories work, but none of them seems to realize a conversation needs to be had. Still, it felt realistic, who wants to have a difficult conversation? And when we shifted into a higher gear in the romance department, when they started actually being deliberate, things got suddenly and weirdly boring just when they should have gotten interesting. The whole issue these two face is the apparent impossibility of how to be together, this looms over them (twice!) and is the reason they don't get together for so long and then when they do it is just fine and we are swept past it as if all that worrying was for nothing when it didn't really feel like nothing! It felt reasonable, like real questions worth answering, but the two of them barely bother to answer them.
This happens more than once. Like how young Shiloh is disgusted by Cary's decision to join the Navy. It's one that makes sense for him, given his financial position and family resources, but seeing him in this giant organization of violence hurts Shiloh. And this feels real and correct and then when they are older Shiloh is like, "Yeah I was just being a dramatic teenager, it's totally fine." Just when we've gotten to what should be the interesting part, it is batted away like nothing.
I should say for the record that I am not much of a romance reader. And in many ways this book suits me because it is interested in a lot of things just as much (or more) than it is in being a romance. It may be clear that we're heading for a HEA but it doesn't feel like it a lot of the time, and those are the best parts. I get that what Rowell is doing that I find most annoying may actually please the people this book is for.
I still enjoyed it and it was a very welcome fluffy read when I couldn't tolerate any more tension and devastation. ...more
3.5 stars. Starts at a 4, ends around 3. The strongest parts are the social horror of the buildup, a thing I love and wish we saw more of. The discomf3.5 stars. Starts at a 4, ends around 3. The strongest parts are the social horror of the buildup, a thing I love and wish we saw more of. The discomfort of the violation of social rules, or the inability to violate social rules, is such a great way to build tension and hint at some unknown.
As it gets closer to the climax it becomes more cosmic and more chaotic. Sometimes that kind of chaos is great, but sometimes it just feels like less than the sum of its parts.
But the eerieness of that first half was so effective. I felt more creeped out by this book than made sense....more
This is... fine. There's a real disconnect, though, with the reissue. The book comes with a real self-celebratory vibe that is going harder than you'dThis is... fine. There's a real disconnect, though, with the reissue. The book comes with a real self-celebratory vibe that is going harder than you'd see even a much celebrated, much lauded, much awarded book. It is a book that defined a queer generation, apparently, that it assures us was passed through the hands of queer girls to their lovers but none of my girlfriends have ever mentioned it to me. To be fair, I was old for it when it came out and I'm even older for it now, but I was expecting something big when what it is is just a pretty basic little novella about a woman's first queer relationship that hasn't entirely aged well.
All these blurbs about how sexy it is, but it isn't a very sexy book, though it refers to sex and sometimes will describe the position or length of time.
The only thing that really stuck out to me was that it's a book about an obsessive relationship with a butch woman, and somehow butch women have almost disappeared from the queer landscape. Not in real life, but in depictions of queer life, the real and the fictional. It's really weird! So I am always thankful when books about queer people remember butches exist and that they are hot. Thank you for that.
It is about an obsessive relationship, about a person struggling with addiction and self-definition, very loose twentysomething meandering which I have seen more than enough of. It's very readable and you can finish it quickly, but I wish there was more there there....more
This may be the best example of all the ways social horror learned the wrong lessons from the success of GET OUT. The takeaway to so many seems to be This may be the best example of all the ways social horror learned the wrong lessons from the success of GET OUT. The takeaway to so many seems to be "horror + racism" is a winning combination but despite the over-the-top third act of GET OUT, that full tilt absurdity is earned from two slow, subtle acts before it. Its strengths are in the subtleties. It holds you in a mild discomfort, makes you unsure whether there is a threat and what that threat is, escalating little by little, and then when it finally really goes for it it takes it to an almost nonsensical, even hilarious place to help cut the tension. On the other hand, what most of the works following it have done is just say here are the horrors of structural racism, now with monsters. They present racism without subtlety, it is an anvil, a piano falling from the sky and smashing on a sidewalk, it is just "what if racism but worse?"
That, sadly, is what is happening in this novel. Which is really just a Stepford Wives remake switching to a lens of race rather than gender. Our protagonist, Jasmyn, is a good person, a good member of her community, a public defender devoted to helping those who need her, who are often young Black men. Jasmyn is overwhelmed by racism, she watches every video, she bears witness to every act of cruelty, and while it makes her sad and scared, it also gives her a sense of duty. Jasmyn, somehow, is able to do all of this, to confront racism and to never let go of it, without burnout or fatigue. But when the opportunity comes to move to an all Black luxury neighborhood, she takes it almost without question.
This is where things start to get confusing. A lot of what happens here makes no sense, and I mean that in both the character way and the facts of the story. Like sure you could definitely just build a whole new luxury community in the greater Los Angeles area where all the homes are huge and the neighborhood is big enough for a whole school and services. (This is so hilariously impossible you just have to let it go.) Oh and did I mention that you can get a house here with 6 bedrooms and an olympic sized pool for low 7 figures? Jasmyn doesn't seem like the kind of person who would want this, she cares about her community. But she weirdly doesn't care about her husband's new wealth since he left teaching and went into finance, she isn't enthusiastic about the neighborhood but she worries about her son and the baby on the way so she agrees.
Jasmyn doesn't really exist as a person in this book. Her work, her community, all these things we are told she cares so much about are barely mentioned. Her child, who is supposed to be the focus of all this anxiety she has, also disappears for several chapters at a time. All that Jasmyn does is follow stories about racial violence on the news, talk to her husband, and hang out with her new friends in Liberty, the other outcasts who don't actually like it all that much. This is all she does. She worries about racism in the world and she worries about what is weird in her neighborhood. She does not seem to have hobbies just like the book is completely uninterested in a B plot of any kind. Jasmyn is a cardboard cutout, but at least she is described. Whereas her husband King and the other basically brainwashed residents of Liberty are never more than ciphers.
If you know the story of Stepford Wives (and everyone does) this is all quite dull. We know where the story is going, we know what's going to happen, there are no surprises here. It can be fine to have a story where it's not really about the destination but the journey, but there is not any fun on the journey either. There is no satire, no plot, just a series of regular escalating events to grow us closer to the inevitable ending. Well, we do get plenty of Jasmyn judging everyone else for not watching enough videos of police shootings and not attending enough vigils and not experiencing racial trauma in the way she has decided is correct.
When it's fully revealed it's quite boring, which is expected at this point but also disappointing. This is the one place where Yoon doesn't totally spoon feed us her themes. All these weirdly calm people at Liberty who no longer care about structural racism are also people who have suffered traumas well beyond anything Jasmyn ever has. There is something to this idea, that there is some kind of breaking point where your trauma can be so overwhelming that you no longer want to find any kind of progress, that you want only safety at any cost. But this idea is almost entirely unexamined, which is a shame because it's basically the only interesting thing in the book.
The novel is clunky. It reads more like YA than adult, the kind of book where the writing is secondary and just a vehicle of plot delivery. It is bad enough that it makes me wonder if my rave review of her previous novel The Sun Is Also a Star was wrong. ...more
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