Book reviews

This was my walking book for the year — when I’d go on a walk, Alain de Botton would teach me a little bit about relationships. It’s very softly written, anecdotally, and not at all patronizing. I think we would all be slightly better partners if everyone internalized this book.

This was a cute, light read. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, so if you’re looking for hard time-travel sci fi, this isn’t for you. Everything else is in the jacket summary, and I won’t try to rewrite it. My dog would like to give this book 5 stars; I assume she liked it because I caught her chewing on it before I started reading it, and it’s the only book she has eaten, to date.

Give me a little 'started from the bottom now we here' epic fantasy adventure and I’ll for sure enjoy it. I’m already mad I didn’t wait to read this until book 2 was out because it ended on a cliffhanger and I NEED to know what’s next. That ending was whack.

In every book (just this book actually) there are three wolves: what I expected it to be from my friends’ reviews (erotic and horny, but literary) vs how I experienced reading it (insane woman makes deranged life choices I can’t relate to; my favourite genre) vs what it ended up being (self acceptance and feminism? Sort of). A rollercoaster of a read whichever wolf you pick.

Update after I’ve been sitting on it: I do wonder if me liking this book is like when I thought I liked Sonic Youth because all the other edgy people liked Sonic Youth.

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I’m a painter, and as a painter I struggle a lot with the idea of 'having a style'. I fear that if my visual style changes too much and looks too different from previous work, then it’s a sign I’m not confident enough/my visual style is not strong enough/I’m too inconsistent etc. I tell you this because in this book, Sally Rooney intentionally experiments with style, in a way that’s completely unrecognizable at first glance from her last books, yet when you’re done reading it 'feels' completely like a Sally Rooney book: deeply emotional, at times philosophical, critical of current society and some of its norms. May I be that brave.

The writing threw me off at first and took a bit getting used to. The sentences are sometimes backwards and feel overwritten— (the object), she (verbs): Cold and dark, the house around her / breathing out he typed / clink of teaspoons he hears / etc, but in the end it had the effect of making me slow down, read and think about every sentence because it was too pretty to miss. This isn’t a book where something 'happens', but it is a book where a lot of life is lived, and you’re right there along with the characters, mundane or introspective, agreeing with or getting mad at. And if you like the sound of that, you’ll love this book. Or you’ll think it’s real wankery and boring. Doubt there will be much in between.

Btw I do wonder if this was a deliberate choice; like, if I were Sally Rooney and I had all these big thoughts I wanted to put out there in the world to make it better, I’d be pretty bummed that Normal People got so popular because it was such an easy read, and people didn’t internalize them how I wanted them to. I do wonder if in this case, I’d write an extremely literary book, so that you can’t help but think about e.g. vacuous truths.

A soft 2.5/5. The main trope is miscommunication with some alleged enemies to lovers peppered in. The pacing of this book was v odd — the first 75% is basically 'mean girl goes to work and is primarily unprofessional'. A lot of planes, airports and automobiles. Not a lot of chemistry between the 2 characters. Not even a lot of dialog between them, which made it really difficult to cheer for them when suddenly in the last 15% of the book everything gets resolved.

Also, authors, a plea: it's deeply unrealistic that a woman in her 20s or 30s has exactly two contacts in her phone: her best friend (who she only has time for when it services her) and her mother. Please, I beg you: consider the existence of friendships. Or therapists.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the e-arc. I’m sorry if I’m the mean girl in this review.

In a future where the line between human and robot is blurred, Silvia Parks asks: what makes a person real, and what makes a thing a person? At its core, this book is literary fiction and not hard sci-fi — robotic world building is forgone to focus on identity and the longing for connection; these soft and messy ties that bind us.

Someone in the book summarizes this dichotomy well: 'Do you think the lines I say have less value because you can track the input data? What about the lines you say to each other? Aren’t they the same lines you downloaded from thousands of sources?' It comes at a very relevant time, one of large AI models that make paintings and write essays that we don’t want to call art. All I know is that in this (very plausible tbh) future, there is everything in between children with robotic limbs, humans that are monsters, and robots that are tender: all bags of flesh that want to feel less alone, and that is at times both cruel and touching.

The writing is beautiful, if a bit slow to start. I am a sucker for a good line, so quotes like 'Sometimes the heart can fail without war' really hit the spot for me.

If you’ve ever wanted to wake up one day only to realize Buffy/True Blood were basically documentaries, this book might be for you!

I was pleasantly surprised to discover this was a good-vs-evil-vampire-shenanigans book rather than a romance novel (absolutely minimal spice if you’re worried). It has: pop culture references, feminism, queer characters, fan fic about fan fic (it’s meta, think about it), witches, some serious topics (like sexual assault) but also some teen angst vibes (as a treat). And most importantly, an actual plot!

The only negative was that the writing was sometimes repetitive, but hey: I didn’t rewatch the entirety of Buffy at least twice for its literary writing.

Thanks to the publisher for (my first ever) e-arc.

Another little weird romance, this time with time travel. Extremely cute, not wholly unpredictable.

Magic little witch girls solve a serial killer mystery. Very cozy summerween read.

Full of cliches and bad writing. I remember liking “Better than the Movies” which is why I picked this up, but I wasn’t into any bits of this one.

Hell hath no fury like a witch scorned by puritans. Premise is fine but the writing was sooooo slow and predictable. I almost didn’t finish it. The spoopy drawings were a wonderful treat though.

Ashley Poston writes the slightly weird sweet stories, and I think that’s a welcome change. She’s basically like the Twilight Zone of romance books — sometimes there’s ghosts, and sometimes there’s imaginary book towns, and even though the story or characters could do with 15 more minutes in the oven, you probably won’t regret nibbling on it. A raw cookie is still better than no cookie.

I DNFed at 50%. In this book characters don’t talk to each other; they just monologue for 50 pages at a time about their life and things they experience and how they interpret them internally, but they’re never talking with one another. It wasn’t for me, in the same way that reading philosophy isn’t for me: I do not care about people’s inner emotional life if they only tell me about it and I’m just there to consume the fire hose.

I really liked the first 80% of it, and slightly disliked the ending. The premise has “don’t worry darling” / “westworld” vibes, but I was hoping the ending to be weirder than it ended up being.

Men really would do anything but go to therapy. Even men written by a woman.

There’s this bit where the main character (a writer) is telling someone else what his book is about, and this is their reaction:

“A white middle-aged American man walking around with his white middle aged American sorrows. It’s hard to feel sorry for a guy like that.”
“Even gay?”
“Even gay.”

And that’s basically how I feel about this book.

I DNFed this book but not because it’s bad. It’s truly so beautifully written, like prose poetry, but I’m 60% in and absolutely nothing has happened. There’s only so much poetry I can read about the mundane of a slightly weird middle aged man. You know how people say they’d listen to Morgan Freeman read the phone book because his voice is so perfect? I feel like that about this book, only it turns out after 6 hours the phone book gets a bit slow.

Coming of age in Ireland. I can’t remember if I queued this because I’m on an Irish kick (it is; I am) or because someone said it reads like sally rooney (it doesn’t).

Ughhhhh I wanted to hate this so much. I don’t like YA, I don’t like books that open with a thousand pop culture references to really pander to their audience (gen z in this case), I don’t like martyr main characters and most importantly I have a really miserable hate/hate relationship with chess. This book is super unlikely and it’s like The Queens Gambit but without drugs and mostly just about the rom com and yet here we are. 4ish stars. I enjoyed reading it and I’ll probably remember nothing from it in a week. What a world.

“The human being is complex and I find the vile acts, contradictions, and sublimities characteristic of our condition astonishing. Our existence would be an exasperating shade of gray if we were all flawless.”

I love reading some of the community reviews for this book that are like “this worldview is so unlikely! I can’t believe humans would ever do this” because this is 100% absolutely what humans would do. The reason why I liked this book is because it’s not even the world building that’s grim — it’s the ending, and I can’t tell you why without spoiling it.

Read this on a beach, which it was perfect for. It’s like a You’ve Got Mail but with war time correspondents and magical typewriters. If you’re put off by fantasy, don’t be — the magic stuff is minimal, the focus is on the rom com.

Loved the premise, and it has me hooked for the series. The story is a short and classic shenanigans in space — I imagined it as a cheesy Event Horizon vibes adventure.

Mehhhh. I didn’t know what was really going on most of the time, which I think improves my memory of this book? Like in my mind it was gonna be real good and weird, but it wasn’t in reality. I liked how weird those kids were but they needed to be more murdery or horrory or culty or something.

A 3.5 stars rounded up. I love an intergenerational literary family drama. I think the book maybe wants itself to be a modern Little Women? It was well written and enjoyable, even if I didn’t really connect personally with any of the characters.

Beautifully written but heartbreaking, a very Can lit combination. What broke my heart the most was the loneliness of immigrant parents, stuck in this liminal space of not quite here and definitely not there anymore, especially as their kids moved on. I have one of these parents, I am one of these children, so I overflowed with empathy and sadness quite a bit.

Sometimes I felt the writing was a bit too “the little woman that could” for a story about serial killings, but it doesn’t hurt the story, or tbh the reader. The reality is that the 70s weren’t very kind to women. Even though this is fiction, it’s hard to read about the police incompetence, victim blaming, and homophobia and not believe it happened for realsies. It still happens now; of COURSE it happened to sorority girls in the 70s.

Remember when you were young and used to read these adventure books where a group of heroes would get together and go through trials in quest for a holy grail? This is that book, only instead of wizards and dragons it’s got Google, secret societies, and books and libraries. If you, like me, live in San Francisco, the local references might also warm your heart.

This book was a messssssss. Could’ve done with the whole first third of the book. Could’ve done without the entire Ithan storyline which was deranged and felt a lot like someone was rolling a dice trying to pick what things to happen next. Bryce was a bit of a wanker throughout. The ending was just pure chaos. And yet, I’ll prolly still read the next SJM.

What a great and clever premise and grim execution. I truly hoped the entire time that the women wouldn’t turn into violent and abusive men, but I guess when given the chance and a little bit of power, we’re all just a version of lord of the flies.

Very, very Hunger Games vibes. Unlike HG, I didn’t really understand the motivation of most of the characters for participating (like, death for shits and giggles? Weird hobby to have), but it didn’t really affect the story.

More like a 3.5. I think the title is very smart and I really appreciate it: each story is about a little horrible thing someone does; it’s not even that important in the grand scheme of things. So good!

I love magical realism as a concept, and unsurprisingly, I loved the magical realism stories the most: “Liddy, first to fly”, “Sandman”, “June Bugs” were my absolute favourites. Normal situations infused with a weird and magical thing. In these stories, everything is possible. “Climbing nation”, on the other hand, lives entirely in the normal, real, world, and it’s still very good.

I thought this was just ok. A lot of my friends loved it, and it won awards, so I expected to like it a lot more. I really like the premise, I think i just don’t like the pace and the writing style. In the last 20% I was antsy to finish it, skimming over paragraphs, without really caring how it ends; I remember having a similar problem with the Scholomance series. It just all felt… tedious.

A little fantasy adventure, as a vacation treat? Very ACOTAR-like.

This book stressed me out! I think it’s a well written book, about a relevant and interesting topic (who gets to tell which stories/where does inspiration end and plagiarism begin/the book industry is a mess), but I can’t say I truly enjoyed reading it. When I say I like “fucked up books about fucked up people”, those people are not usually inherently awful, and I want to cheer for them. As this the book progresses, I have less and less empathy for the main character (which I don’t think is what the author intended). In the end, it’s a story about hubris and dramatic irony, which makes for a really stressful read. I think I really don’t like books with unlikeable narrators.

Cults and skincare and Tom cruise, oh my! I like Mona Awad’s writing (and brain tbh) because it’s a funny/weird commentary on very specific pockets of society I care about, wrapped in an absurd horror story. I have no idea what’s going to happen next, and I’m just enjoying the ride. Unfortunately I feel this book is not as well done as Bunny: it’s a bit too long, the thing with the mirrors isn’t explained as well as I would’ve liked, the main character’s internal monologue is sometimes too much. All this to say: I’ll read her next book too.

I really disliked the writing style at first, but in the end, it’s the dry writing style that makes me like this book. It’s a composed, almost clinical retrospection of a deeply unhappy marriage and a shitty husband. Even though the writing feels detached and devoid of emotion, I don’t believe for a second the main character is. It’s a very honest story of the bad choices women make in relationships and the denial and blind hope they have that maybe they can fix it. It’s not written in an extremely sentimental way because shit happened, and nevertheless she persisted.

I read this in a review and really liked it: “Ginzburg, an antifascist, a feminist, and the first translator of Swann’s Way into Italian, writes for any woman eager to fit her bourgeois unhappiness to a form that can accommodate a quick and definitive ending. When should a woman kill her husband? Final answer: when it’s the only way to free yourself.” — https://www.publicbooks.org/b-sides-natalia-ginzburgs-the-dry-heart/

Ugh, this was not for me. It’s about not very nice people being cruel to each other, insufferable art school wankery, and very short sentences. I don’t know if toxicity is a common attribute of M/M queer relationships (which all but two are in the stories, and which I am not). I do know that in the two stories with women protagonists, the men are abusive and horrible to them, so all of this feels like a deliberate choice. In every single relationship described, sexual or not, at least one of the men is toxic, narcissistic and unable to produce an ounce of empathy. Was I supposed to feel hopeless with men as a genre when I was done with the book? Because I am. What a bleak, bleak novel.

I swear I’m also reading actual literary books, but at a snail pace because all this faerie shit only takes me a day to read and keeps ending on a cliffhanger. I am weak and need to know what happens. Weak!

I liked this more than the first book, which felt very YA. This has a bunch of intrigue and shenanigans and mild character growth from emo king himself. Related: where were all these faerie goth boys when I was in highschool??? I would’ve drawn fan art and everything. Come to think of it, maybe it was a disguised blessing they weren’t around.

I am so glad none of the unhinged time travel tiktok theories were true. I am less glad the writing and editing has gotten worse.

I have mixed feelings about this book. Here’s notes that I left myself while reading:
- the childhood memories are kind of written in the voice of a child, and the problem is I don’t want to read what children write
- it left a vague taste of trauma porn in my mouth. I don’t like reading about the horrible things us humans do to animals. It breaks my heart more than reading about human tragedies, and this book had a lot of that
- this book is fiction but reads like a biography and I don’t know how to feel about that. Do I trust all the science related facts in it? Do I trust that the chimp anecdotes are true to the real humans and chimps they’re based on? Is this the author’s story to tell? I honestly don’t know.

A little witchy murder mystery for Halloween, as a treat?

Quiet grief, messed up families, depression, the importance of being seen, friends who love you with the strength of ten. I enjoyed the writing even though it took me a while to finish it. I felt a strange amount of empathy for this person I’ve never met — I didn’t want to rush reading, and life kept getting ahead of me.

I don’t want to rate this because I spite-read most of it just to find out how it ends (a cliffhanger, so stay tuned for me spite-reading the next one too). I don’t know if it’s because I ate an edible for the second half of this book, but I didn’t enjoy 1) the magic world building rules and regulations I didn’t follow or really get motivated to care about and b) the inner monologue of the narcissist teenager. I think the main character is like 17, so it checks out, but it went from competent heroine to hero complex faster than I could get on board and I just wanted to be dooooone.

This is extremely good. Initially I was a snob and gave it fewer stars because it’s not a “literary” book, but then I was so amped up realizing I needed to wait a full month to read the next one, that I decided to embrace my full trash book rat form and go the full mile. Loved every minute of it: competent heroine? Enemies to lovers? A cliffhanger? Sassiness? Also, who knew dragons were so sassy?

I thought most of the book was a bit of a slog. I can’t stand Hunt, there was a big lore dump, and there were way too many characters. Everything pops off in the last fifth, and as Emelyn said “we’re so back baby”

I should’ve checked the publication date, and that’s on me. A book about painting wildly with colour in which 85% of the photos are in black and white is…not ideal.

I have no idea how I found this book. Maybe it was a random Goodreads recco I clicked on? None of my friends have interacted with it! I know exactly why I decided to read it though, and that was the first comment on it, by someone named Emma: “my favorite genre is literary fiction about messed up women doing crazy sh*t”. Girl, same.

This book was weird and at times gross in the same way a train wreck is: you can’t stop watching it and you’re not sure why. All the characters in this book are massive weirdos and not totally likeable; the story at times feels oddly clinical (a dry obgyn having sex with someone who transcribes interviews for a living? Brilliant!), and wildly violent and triggering at others. And yet? I kinda loved it. I thought the ending was kind of weak, but not enough to put me off the book.

This is for you if you like absurd realism and big weirds; otherwise there’s a high chance you’ll think it’s humourless and off the rails.

The good: this was a pretty accurate and often funny depiction of the misery of being a single woman in her 30s in 2023. The apps suck, the friends get weird, the men are insane, all on top of the other personal problems all human beings are plagued with. It’s all true; this story tells no lies.

My problem with this book is that I don’t know what it wants to be — it hits too close to home but isn’t satire, it is a light and easy read but isn’t a rom com, the characters are too generic for this to be truly about the people, and the criticism isn’t punchy enough to be more than feminism-lite.

I think I expected this to be more literary and less chick lit, and maybe that’s on me. But I also didn’t feel good when I was done reading; I thought “yeah, it’s not that great being a woman sometimes eh?” and I was bitter, and didn’t know where to go from there.

This book is wild. Is it body horror? Is it magic? Is it a made up schizophrenic event? I still don’t know. At any point in the book I had no idea where the the story would go, and it was delightful. It’s got the same bananas vibes as Jennifer’s Body, with added satire about art school wankery, and a really good writing style. What a treat!

Kevin Wilson writes weird stories and I like them. In both this and “Nothing to see here” you’re told the premise of the book in the first pages; you take it for granted, and then you read about the people around it. In this book, two teenagers make a poster that accidentally makes everyone go crazy. It’s like a memoir of a summer of absolute chaos that never actually happened. There’s not a ton of morals or lessons that you need to take out of it: it’s a weird story, and I liked it.

It is with deep regrets I must inform you: I have become a Sarah J Maas girlie. I think I liked this more than Acotar? Bryce is a very competent lead, and I’m sold on the magic universe lore.

DNF; gave up halfway. I expected some sort of franzen/great gatsby character development book, but instead I got absolutely insufferable rich people that seem to have no redeeming qualities. I didn’t see any interesting criticism or commentary about how awful these people are — it just felt like a soulless narration of their extremely boring and obnoxious lives.

Easy plane rom com! It’s basically the story of Pete Davidson dating Ariana Grande, if Ariana Grande was actually a middle aged singer and Pete Davidson was less obsessed with his face. It’s got a whole section of flirting via email which is, as a purveyor, probably my favourite narration mechanism.

Bonus points for all the SNL behind-the-scenes research that went into this; we love an author who does the work.

This book stressed the shit out of me. The main character is unequivocally awful, with no redeeming qualities, and her decisions made me physically anxious. I barely finished the book, hoping the ending would be worth it. Narrator: it wasn’t.

Ehhhh I should’ve stopped with the third book. I don’t care about Nesta, or the new pile of made up politics added to the stack. It was kind of a slog, peppered by like really excessive smut.

What better way to celebrate the 4th of July in America than by reading gay smut about the prince of England and the US president’s son? Easy read, far-fetched story, minimal spice. Great rainy day activity.

A bit long, a bit too fantasy, wrapped with a ribbon a bit too well at the end. I can also go a few hundred years before having to hear the word “mate” in a non-Australian way.

Predictable but fun!

Man, I know this is a trash fantasy series, but this was good. The plot fliparoo from book 1? Excellent. A main male character who’s like anti-patriarchy? Excellent. The world building? Also excellent. The writing? Honestly not enraging. I didn’t expect to like this, and I might get made fun of for it, but it was like “hunger games” levels of good imo.

Very “Beauty and the Beast” vibes, but where the beast is always kind of a babe, and the beauty is also a hunter who is trying to save the world. Also, fairies and magic and stuff. If you’re worried this has any kind of smut, don’t be: it’s all pg-13. Great beach read material.

I’m not super sure I got what the book was about. I thought it was gonna be about Fiona and Jane’s friendship and how it changes over time, but in most of the stories, Fiona and Jane weren’t key parts of each others’ lives. I don’t know why the stories are out of order chronologically, and I don’t know why some characters are written from Fiona’s perspective — the voice is very similar to Jane’s, and it doesn’t add any Fiona-specific insight. It’s also not exactly adding insight about Jane’s view of the situation; they’re kind of “and then this happened to Fiona” chapters that are interesting to read, but I’m not sure I understand where they fit. I don’t mean to shit on this book, it was a fine read and I wasn’t mad about having read it. I just wanted a more cohesive plan, I guess.

At some point in the pandemic I was in a deep existential depression with the world, and started listening to Jane Fonda narrate this book. I’d go on a walk, listen to a chapter and felt a bit better. Hearing her talk with so much honesty about her fuckups, regrets, feminism, activism, daddy issues, body issues, politics, boyfriends, etc, made her feel like my imaginary mentor and friend. I went on walks with her, she told me oddly relatable and personal stories from her life, and I learnt something about myself. I’m sure part of my adoration of this book (and tbh Jane Fonda the person) has to do with this strange routine I created around it. I’m also sure that now that it’s over, I dread taking a walk without it.

I was too old when she was on Nickelodeon, so I went in not actually knowing anything about her. After reading this book, I know at least two things: 1) being a child actor can fuck you up real good and 2) I’m also a little bit glad her mother died.

“Perfect devices: doctors, ghosts and crows. We can do things other characters can't, like eat sorrow, un-birth secrets and have theatrical battles with language and God.”

It’s not poetry, it’s not fiction, it’s not really about crows and it’s not really a guide. It’s maybe a small breath/meditation/witnessing of grief and healing. I thought it was absolutely beautifully written, in a bit of an unhinged way that I adore; writing anything immediately after finishing this book makes me feel dumb.

Mi-au plăcut aproape toate povestirile; mi-au dat cumva o nostalgie pt o viața pe care nu am trăit-o.

Emily Henry can do little wrong in the romcom genre, imo. I think the miscommunication between the two main characters could’ve been a little less…excessive, and the ending was a bit whack (it all worked out a little TOO easily). Not her best book, and still a banger compared to the rest of the genre.

I’m a big nerd, so I liked the writing, and how the author experiments with form. I liked the general concept: a story fed to you a bit at a time, out of order, about seemingly unrelated people but whose lives are interconnected. But overall I feel a bit like I do about some paintings: I can appreciate and respect them, without needing to put them on my wall.

Quirky female lead, introvert but not grumpy male lead, absent of tropes that send me into madness.

Overall a sweet friends-to-lovers story; not my choice of ending but whatever.

The nineties are a bit weird for me: I was born a bit too late to be a gen Xer, but because I grew up in Romania, which got the western world on a delay, I had all the experiences of a gen Xer. I didn’t have the internet but, tragically, I also didn’t have the phone on the cover. In grade 8 I was just about to get into Nirvana, but then I teleported to Canada, where suddenly it was the future. I feel a bit cheated out of my full post-nineties teenage potential.

Anyway, this to say: this is a very Chuck Klosterman book. Most of his essays take 2 apparently unrelated pop culture subjects and connect them, like clear Coca Cola products and Radiohead (by going through mtv’s real world - climate change - biosphere 2 - anything is possible - anxieties over cloning - KID A; bam). I’m into that, and i was into this book.

Very Harry Potter, easy read, YA fantasy vibes. I think if it came out when I was a teen I would’ve liked it way more than HP, because the main character is actually competent in their own right. Anyway, I’m probably committed to the whole series now.

I am so angry this gets 2 stars out of spite. The first 70% of the book? Amazing. “The next Beach Read by Emily Henry” I was going to write. Five stars. It had my favourite romance tropes: childhood best friends; friends who read; now/then story development. Recipe for success! The writing was even quite good!

And then it turns out these two main assholes didn’t speak for ELEVEN years over a giant misunderstanding from when they were 18 that could’ve been solved with a phone call and maybe 2 hours of therapy. Laaaaaazy.

This had the same vibes at Gideon, but fewer bones and memes. I don’t really know how to review these books! I read them in a very very long sitting and they still don’t make complete sense, but in a good way? And, as my friend Emelyn said, “the banter is primo”

I am very invested in the series and I can’t believe it’s almost over.

(This is like a rounded up 3 stars. Maybe 2.5 stars?)
This was very beautifully written, and I like the premise, but I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand the world building, and I definitely didn’t understand the time travel shenanigans at the end. It all felt a bit nonsensical. I might get it if I go back and reread it and think really hard, but that feels like homework and I’m not in school anymore.

Am I too old to be reading high school prom-roms? Most definitely, but since my prom sucked I think I get like 5 free passes.
If you liked For all the boys, etc, you’ll also like this.

I liked this less than Gideon, partially because I rode a rollercoaster of interest while reading it. The first third was interesting but kind of slow and maybe a bit predictable? I was convinced I had predicted the rest of the book. In particular, this entire chunk didn’t have as much of the silly writing of the first book, and I was concerned the book might take itself too seriously. Shit got real silly and popped off in the last third though, which was great. Also I ended up being 95% profusely wrong with my predictions. Love a good surprise.

The story is: fantasy shenanigans with bones and nerds in a gothic mansion. The writing style is: extremely silly. The main characters: hot and sassy and I want to be their best friend. I read this in one long sitting because I genuinely couldn’t put it down once I started it.

10/10 no notes.

PS potential criticisms one might have but I surprisingly didn’t: “the names are hard”, “the world building is tedious”. I rarely enjoy fantasy world building but I rather did here. It’s a weird world, yo! Bonecromancy!

I read this because someone recommended it as “Sally Rooney for people who hate Sally Rooney”, which I thought was funny because Sally Rooney wrote my favourite book of all time. However, I think that comparing Louise Nealon with Sally Rooney is unfair and unproductive - we don’t compare all American authors just because they’re American and write about people. This is a coming of age story, with fucked up families, with messy addictions and mental illness, with magic realism, and the eternal worry that you’re becoming your mother. And it’s a great story, with legs of its own.

Emily Henry style rom com. It wasn’t bad! Fairly unrealistic story with unrealistic character motivation, perfect to read on a lazy afternoon. Tbh I read this because I expected it to be happy and straightforward, as a palette cleaner after “The Idea of You” (which while not being an amazing book kind of destroyed me emotionally)

I wasn’t going to publicly list this book as “read” because it’s pretty spicy and I don’t really review smutty rom coms (hurts the intellectual brand I’m trying to cultivate!!

I liked the first book more than this second one — this had more made up fantasy politics than thieving and adventuring, but it wasn’t bad.

Easy, cozy mystery. Half of the book was backstory and nothing to do with the mystery itself, but I feel that might the buy-in cost for a new series. I’d definitely read the next book.

Good, light, fantasy read. There’s no dragons, there’s stealing, it’s fine if you don’t remember everyone’s names, and the writing isn’t terrible. Great for reading at Christmas when someone interrupts you every third paragraph.

Good, cute rom com. Would’ve been a 5 star if bad communication wasn’t the intrigue. Is this how other people really live their lives, without sending drunk emails demanding explanations? Can’t relate.

What a strange little book! I didn’t really know what it’s about for a long time, but I still loved reading it. It had the same feeling for me as the Starless Sea — a book that’s more poetry than story.

Like a rounded up 3 stars.

I feel like the grinch who stole Christmas because everyone that I know loved this book and I didn’t. The first third of the book was a bit of a slog — nothing really happened, the writing was slow, a hundred characters were introduced and it didn’t really grip me. Then finally: crimes (yay!). Solving them was anticlimactic; everything fell into place, all at once, way too quickly and easily. I didn’t really buy it.

The other reason this book irked me is that I have a pet peeve about murder mysteries that don’t give the reader a chance at solving the mystery. In this book problems were solved not by presenting a bunch of facts and you (and a character) being clever little squirrels and figuring it out. Someone would 1) realize they knew the answer but not tell you how, 2) confront whodunit, a character who hadn’t been developed yet 3) they reveal everything and also give you their character exposition. You stood no chance.

This book really stressed me out. I didn’t like the writing style and in the end I didn’t really like the main character either. The whole experience felt like this: you’re trapped at a family dinner next to that aunt that won’t stop telling you stories in which she’s the hero and it’s never her fault; she hasn’t asked you a single question but has criticized you and everyone in the room at least once. I have this aunt. We all have this aunt. This stressed me out.

Reading this was bittersweet. The short stories are beautifully written, but always end too soon and make your heart feel heavy. I had a hard time articulating my feelings, so here’s some quotes from other reviews I relate to.

“Sublime short stories of race and belonging” — the New Yorker

“The success of the collection stems from balancing the gloom of racism with Evans wry commentary” — Chicago review of books

“This collection is full of characters who attempt to escape, confront, or try their best to wade through circumstances that have quietly upended their lives, and Evans painstakingly outlines their aches. There are truths and there are the truths we tell ourselves, and the space between those two poles can be wide” — the nNation

There’s authors that I will trust blindly with their writing because they’ve never let me down. She is one of them. I know that when I start one of her books it will feel odd and unfamiliar, but all I have to do is pay attention and enjoy it; by the end, she will weave all the threads and tie them perfectly in a bow, and I will once again feel like i was always in on a secret.

I’m now starting to believe it’s more meta than that, and that by the end of her writing career, Emily will have weaved all of her books juuuust so and I, a faithful reader, would have been in on it all along.

I have very complicated feelings about this book. Parts of it are great. Parts of it are really boring. The good news is that if you like video games and reading about them, it’s 100 times less enraging than Ready Player One. The bad news is that this is still prolly not the book you’re dreaming of reading.

The writing is a bit of a rollercoaster — most of it reads like a YA novel, but parts of it are really try hard; I left myself a note that is “Ersatz, ecru, echt, and be plus ultra in the first chapter? Yikes”. There’s also a random chapter that reads like a beat poetry stream of consciousness. I don’t mind authors experimenting with writing styles, but I didn’t think it was well thought out in this book.

I’m also starting to really dislike trauma porn as a means to advance a narrative (possibly because I’ve been ruined by the trauma queen herself, A Little Life). It didn’t feel it did anything to the story; yeah, it’s a conflict, but that could’ve been done with far less world rewriting.

Good read! Very similar in vibe and style to The Martian, but this time around I noticed how much the author doubles down on sheer science optimism. “We have a problem? Sweet, we can totally fix it!” — is the recurring theme, and while it makes you feel good about how the story is progressing, the science cynic in me knows that’s not how it works. Surely something can stump our former-phd-now-high-school-science-teacher in outer space, no?

That being said: Rocky is the cutest and I loved him every second. You go little rock spider.

Bailed about a third of the way in. The writing style was really exhausting; never-ending waves of neuroticism, fixated on random details that I couldn’t tell would be relevant to the story or not.

I saw a review that said this gave Marvelous Mrs Maisel vibes, and I can definitely see it. It’s a quirky story about a woman, her daughter, and the things and people spinning around in their universe. The characters are fairly unbelievable and the story is not deep with meaning, but it was a nice and easy read on lazy afternoons.

I can’t give a star rating to a book that’s primarily about facts and written by a lawyer. I will say this: it’s written in the 70s and you can definitely tell; there’s a lot of racist language that I felt uncomfortable reading.

I usually like David Sedaris, and his neurotic, self deprecating humour, but this book hit a bit differently. The usual pettiness he has towards other people felt gross and like punching down - I’m sorry the blm protests made you go two weeks without in person shopping, that people don’t want to staff your favourite restaurant for like 4 cents an hour anymore, or that you *had* to buy another apartment (along to your other 7+ houses) because your husband had the audacity to want to play the piano. His sister did the same thing to get away from her rabbit, isn’t that what everyone does?

I think his stories used to me more relatable, but just reek of privilege; I don’t find humour in the bit where he offered to fix a stranger’s teeth cause he thought they were ugly, or the one about how his sister said she was abused by their dad and nobody in the family believed her (even though they knew the dad was “a bit of a creep”), or the one about how a long time ago he thought a black woman was somebody’s maid and it turned out to be his wife, and as a result he should get brownie points cause he doesn’t assume things about people anymore. These all feel like shitty things he’s done in the past, that aren’t ok now, and because he doesn’t understand why society now thinks they’re shitty, tries to spin it as humour. I didn’t feel good reading this.

I like serial killers more than anything and I only finished this book out of spite (and by thumbing through a lot of the drivelling). I think I was tricked by the cover art that it was going to be a charming book with a plot; instead I got a harlequin romance at best?

The main character is really obnoxious and seems to only be able to speak in terms of 10 pop culture references per sentence (and dreadful inner monologues that never end), the love interest is given sufficiently little dialogue to be barely present, and the whole book could’ve been over in 20 pages with a phone call. Most disappointingly: nobody was actually a serial killer. Rough.

Unrelated: I’m always going to dislike a book if all the internal monologue happens mid sentence with another human (as if time stops for the other person during the 10 pages you’re reminiscing about the past to introduce context). Authors, surely you can do something else? Or at least, mix it up with something else? That’s not how humans work.

This book holds the record for a) having a romcom plot I haven’t read before (but I’ve seen it in movies; looking at you Casper!) and b) making me cry two thirds in? The first couple of chapters weren’t my favourite (too much self professed jilted lover quirky girl), but then it gets really cute and wholesome. And like, who doesn’t like a good ghost story, right?

The good news: despite being ~technically~ a romcom, this book adds a bit more depth by touching on race, identity, messed up families and the hope and burden of revolutionaries on everyone around them. The bad news: it does so in a bit of a faux woke, fake diverse kind of way, where Latinx immigrants have fairly perfect lives, some crazy shit happens, and everything is wrapped up really neatly with plot holes the size of craters.

I really wish the author didn’t try to write a romcom and instead wrote a miserable and dark novel about living with an absentee radical activist for a mother (this is not a spoiler)

The problem here is that I thought this would be a different book. That’s not the book’s fault, so I don’t want to give it a bad rating because it didn’t meet my made up expectations. I didn’t read anything past the title, so I expected it to be essays on tacky things, which technically it is, but they’re really just an excuse for autobiographical anecdotes. And those weren’t baaaad, it’s just that I don’t know the author, so I didn’t really care, and they weren’t l what I wanted to read right now.

I didn’t think I’d enjoy historical fiction, because I find most of them a bit of a bore, but I’m an absolute sucker for “actually two thirds of the people who worked at Bletchley Park were women and they were rather badass; here’s the fun bits”. Even though all of the characters are based on real people, and pretty much every plot point is a real one (I looked it up!), it’s a super fun read that reads like a good book.

Bit of a bingo of tropes. 1) Coworkers that hate each other, but one is oblivious that the other one is flirting. 2) Grumpy stern man extremely in shape and never smiles 3) discombobulated quirky woman really into desserts. 4) A deal where one side has to be the other one’s date to a wedding, etc

If you feel like you’re reading the “Hating Game” summary, you wouldn’t be wrong; this is basically that same book but, I’m really sorry to say, longer and somehow worse.

I don’t know what to write here. I’m not entirely sure whether this was scifi, literary fiction or social realism. The first third of the book was the closest thing to David Foster Wallace I’ve found, both in writing style and content; I am obsessed with that part. There’s an entire chapter on authenticity and how social media has destroyed it, and one man’s life-long quest for witnessing and causing short, non-phony reactions from people. Another chapter is written from the perspective of a statistician, who sees the world as counts and probabilities. Another chapter is a list of field instructions a spy is writing to themselves. I love DFW, and of course, I loved this.

But, I’m not sure I understood the rest of the book correctly (and it’s why i couldn’t give it 5 stars). The chapters that I loved would absolutely stand on their own as short DFW style essays. The world itself is interesting: our social media is turned up to 11, and in this future we upload our consciousnesses to the cloud to replay them, or others’; some people are for it and some think it’s creepy. But that world isn’t explained like it would be in a scifi novel, so to me the book can’t be about that. Which means that (to me), this book is partly about people, partly a metaphor for our real, too online, too performative world we find ourselves in.

Light holiday read. I didn’t enjoy this as much as the Flatshare, but the story is endearing and blissfully lacking the usual tropes.

Loooooook here’s the thing. I don’t want to be the person who 5 stars rom com novels, but here we are anyway. Anything Emily Henry writes is cute and easy to read and not vapid and I really like it, ok? If you can’t have me at my Book Lovers, you can’t have me at my Infinite Jest.

What a strange little book! At first it looks like a book of unconnected short stories, so what I wrote down was: “why is it that as adults we stop telling whimsical stories? When you’re a kid you get told short stories every evening, and you tell tall tales in return, and at some point we just stop. Well, this book tells you whimsical stories and it’s great”.

But then it turns out the stories are maybe not as unconnected as you thought. Characters from one story appear in a different story, and what you thought was just a whimsical story was maybe actually a metaphor, and before you know it the book is over and it’s too soon and you haven’t figured it out. I instantly wanted to reread it, so I could obsess and map everything out, but maybe there’s a reason why the author doesn’t warn you about this upfront. Maybe being dazzled is part of the experience.

There was a meta bit early in the book that I enjoyed: two Black authors are talking, and one complains that she can’t just write a book anymore, it has to be about the plight of being Black in America, or have some higher meaning, which frustrates her, as it’s a standard that white authors aren’t held to.

I think that woman is this author, and this book, I think, is the book that she wanted to write. It’s a good rom com, where the characters just happen to be Black. They also happen to be liberals, feminists, mentors, southern, some dating dumb beautiful men, some writers of smut or writers of high literature, just like the world is. But the book is really about 2 kids being in love, ya know?

I don’t think that I’m the target audience for this book; I’m already obsessed with cults and I’ve consumed every existing documentary that I’ve found about them, so there wasn’t anything new in here for me. I don’t want to ruin the book’s rating though, because it wasn’t badly written. It did have a bunch of information about some of the big boys in cultlandia, and some interesting analysis about how the language they employed overlaps with, say, Amazon’s or fitness movements.

Loved the premise! I was hooked from the beginning to the end of the book, and I honestly have no complains about the writing or the story.

I don’t know how to review this book. The author and I have a lot of things in common: immigrants, hard relationships with our mothers, a neediness for our country’s food as a means of preserving our identity. As a result, this was a devastatingly sad read, and I irrationally felt like reading it was bad luck — if I read about her mum getting sick, will mine? Is this person’s relationship with their mother the same as mine? Is this how my mother feels about me, and is this how I will feel when she’s gone? Even writing this review is making me tear up; I feel like I’ve read someone’s diary, and have felt all of their feelings, and now that it’s over, I don’t know where to put them. I think this means it’s a good book, right?

I don't know how I feel about this book! Reading it I flip flopped a lot between "actually insufferable” and "but maybe really cute". It has a bunch of tropes I’m not keen on and that always make me worried for the romantic habits of humanity, but it sort of falls into place in the end?

I hope I never become too old, too boring, or too stuffy to love a Lemony Snicket book. This one is seemingly about poison but secretly about light philosophy, and if you like his whimsical and non linear writing style, I think you, like me, will have a pretty good time. If nothing else, you’ll learn how to cook an egg five ways.

I really enjoyed this. I went in wanting to have better vocabulary (that wasn't pretentious and from philosophers) about why I personally feel marxism had "good intentions, bad executions", and I found myself highlighting so many paragraphs. I liked the format of short essays that answer a specific question (like "is socialism anti-feminist?", for example), because these were actual questions I had. The language is very approachable and not at all boring, so this was 100% exactly what I looked for.

This was actually really cute and wholesome! I loved the premise, and that the chapters were written from each person’s perspective — it’s like 2 main characters for the price of 1! They both felt like believable people, which, if we’re being honest, is a rare occurrence in a chick lit/rom com/whatever you want to call it.

Hell yeah, if it isn’t the Greek mythology gay romantic tragedy I never thought I needed until I did! I kept putting off reading it because I’ve been traumatized by reading some Homer in the past and thought this too was going to be serious and boring. Instead here I am: doing a soft cry at the end of the book after getting really invested in a love story.

Look. There’s nothing wrong with the “enemies to lovers” trope as long as the characters are actually enemies and not just….. people who claim to bicker for like 4 years but it’s actually just them flirting. Also like one of the character is a huge douche bag and someone nobody has noticed.

This wasn’t my first read through (a refresher for the movie!) so it’s impossible for me to review this in any reasonable way. The first time I read this I was a teenager and it blew my mind. I think I still think the world in it and the story are fantastic, but the older I get the more words I want to have with this book’s editor.

This is bad trope central. Religious nerdy virgin meets beautiful and experienced tattooed man. Obviously, he is a softy at heart and she is perfection embodied, and there’s some drama about their families.

I read rom coms on planes now. They’re the perfect length to get them done in one sitting. This one was fine, a meta meet-cute of meet-cutes, with a main character that is a pretty insufferable and self absorbed person. But I think that’s pretty common in movies too, so if you get over that the rest is pretty cute.

This is You've got Mail if Meg Ryan were a Canadian Muslim millennial and the bookstores where restaurants. I really appreciated that a) being Muslim and an immigrant in Canada was central to the story and not just an afterthought to make things different and b) this was a proper rom com (as opposed to a thirst fest), where it's all about the story, and the characters have something else going for them other than being enemies who want to bang.

I thought this was just fine, I just wished that the big reveal happened quicker. Or the book was shorter. Or that there was more horror. Like not a lot of weird shit goes on until the last 5% of the book and then everything happens all at once and it’s kind of rushed. I had the same complaint reading Sarah Waters’ “Little Stranger” — is this a genre thing?

it's fine. this is a general criticism of the genre, but I wish male characters were less brooding and angry, and women were less neurotic and against communication. like half of these books would be over in the first 20 pages if any of the parties was like "hey so real talk" instead of brooding for 600 e-pages

Small note after a reread: just noticed that when the book is written in the third person, there’s no “she felt”, “she thought”. Everything is written as a script: you the reader are watching things happen, and drawing your own conclusions about the feelings of the characters. With a few very deliberate and obvious exceptions, Sally Rooney tells you absolutely nothing about what she thinks the characters are feeling. I love this. It puts the onus on you, the reader, to have empathy for the characters (or I guess, not have empathy and not enjoy the book). This made me like the book even more than the first time I read it.

——-

It is no news that I, like half of the millennials who read,
am obsessed with Sally Rooney's books. What might be news is that I'm in the controversial segment of the population that liked Conversations way more than Normal People (I promise this is relevant). In Norma People I thought that even though the relationship between the main characters was interesting, the people themselves weren't: because we only had 2 characters, they were a bit too black and white and didn't benefit from strong supporting characters to guide our understanding of them.

Beautiful world returns to that original multiple character setup from Conversations, which also means: I liked it a lot! Each character is flawed and has moments of lashing out, but they are also, in my opinion, an archetype of a Good Person (and I don't mean that they're saints, just that intrinsically they're not bad people). I love books in which the characters are good, because they make me want to cheer for good things happening to them, which selfishly makes me feel good for caring. I even think this exact meta point comes up somewhere in this book!

On top of that, the letters between Eileen and Alice are these deep and smart discussions about society, class, capitalism, and the cult of celebrity that I really loved reading, and would love to revisit and think more about separate from the story itself.

I can't listen to Oasis without getting a bit carsick, because I spent an entire summer in high school blasting What's the Story Morning Glory while reading books on the bus, which is never a good idea for me. I hold so much of people and memories in songs, and I love hearing about other people's song memory stories. And this is pretty much this book. It also helps that the music in the book Absolutely Slaps (TM), a thing I know because a) it features a lot of guitar rock and shit and b) I found a playlist on Spotify of all the mixtapes and now I have 21 hours of bangers.

I really liked this story. I keep thinking about how even though it’s a) made up and b) from before internet times, it’s still a neat commentary of the current world we live in, where we often think we have an intimate understanding of others because of the social media personas we experience, which may or may not have anything to do with the real person behind them.

The problem with reviewing a book about reviews is that you become painfully aware of what an honest, personal, witty review should read like, yet know that you're not a good enough writer to write it. For that I give John Green 5 stars.

Jesus, things really escalated with this one.

these books are helllllla spicy but I am a completionist and they are doing wonders for my yearly book count

I'm reading silly books because my last book was devastating and sad. This is a very spicy romance, with emphasis on the spicy and not exactly on the characters, which only have romance on the mind. Will I still be reading the other 2 books in the series? Yes.

Ooof, another beautiful but devastating read. Each chapter is the story of another generation from the same family, but it's really about slavery, colonialism, the civil war and the fight for civil rights. Every page was full of heartbreak, with the physical and emotional violence done to Black people that started with colonialism and never really stopped.

I didn’t finish this. I started reading it and wasn’t really into the writing style, but then I discovered my copy was also badly bound (about 40 pages were duplicated, and the same amount of pages missing) so I took this as a sign to give up.

Really fun, easy read. You're not going to find the meaning of life or any deep life lessons in this book, but as far as stories go, I found this one very enjoyable (as evidenced by the fact that I read it in a day and a half and couldn't put it down). The premise is pretty cute (this is not a spoiler): a girl makes a badly worded deal with the devil and as a result gets to live forever, but without anyone remembering her; Faust but like... readable.

I put off reading this book for a while because the setup hits too close to home these days: it's 2025 and climate change has made California dry, often on fire, poor and violent af. But it turns out it's about hope and rebuilding and only a little bit about starting a cult. It's a nice cult so that's ok.

I like sci-fi where we don’t focus on how we got the technology or how it works, but rather on how society looks like around the technology. You know… books about people, but also people in a different future. Anyway, this is a good book about people, and faith and loyalty.

This is a very strange little book. It reminded me a lot of Theatre of the Absurd plays.

I’ve been trying to figure out what bothered me about this book, since the premise was alright, and I think it’s that i felt the author was gaslighting me throughout. The main character is depressed, has mental health problems and is suicidal, and somehow the book wraps them all neatly in a “well if you just try to see the good bits and try a bit harder, everything will be ok!!!” bow which is a pretty messed up message. I thought I was going to get something about magic, got a really insensitive self-help soup instead. Sigh

Fun read! Sass, thievery and shenanigans.

People thought that being one of a kind made you special. No, it just made you lonely. What was special was belonging with someone else."

A really well written (and not entirely untimely) exploration of identity, from gender and race to queerness and economic class. I loved how the story is being told as a generational saga, where each generation of women struggles with a different gap between their identity and how society sees them, as if identity is a kind of family curse we all inherit.

I like cute romances where the characters have actual lives and personalities outside of just trying to date one another. They make for a lovely and happy read.

An intimate letter about being raised by an immigrant, about coming out, about belonging and death. I really wanted to love this because it's got everything I like in a book, but I just couldn't get into the writing. Even though I like poetry and lyrical writing (I'm looking at you "starless sea"), I felt like this was trying too hard to read like poetry and (for me) ended up sounding a bit disingenuous.

In which even a spinster gets married to a Bridgerton.

No surprises here. You know exactly what you’re getting into and that is: straight forward 1800s romance with weak spirited men.

Because the back cover described this book as a rebirth of Russian literature, I was worried about reading it: I expected beautiful but unrelenting writing, sad and depressing, like every other Russian lit book I’ve read. Instead, between the tragedy and hardship you get a story of love, endurance, survival, tenderness. My heart is maybe not fully uplifted, but is definitely warm after it.

I listened to the audiobook because it’s narrated by the author and a) her voice is great and b) after 365+ days in the pandemic hearing a voice that isn’t my husband’s was a blessed opportunity. Anyway, this book is very funny if you enjoy self deprecating humour about life and anxieties and inabilities to adult and gross health problems which you know i absolutely do.

I listened to the audiobook because I was interested in the wework trash fire and can confirm: it was an entertaining trash fire.

This book won the Governor General Literary Award in 1976. It’s a book about a lady who goes up north and gets biblical with a bear. Was it a dry spell for books that year? No, Margaret Atwood AND Michael Ondaatje had releases. Was the jury made of just bears? Maybe, but Alice Munro AND Mordecai Richler, humans, were on it. Yet, this book won. I obviously have to read it.

Update: oh man this is not a good book. I was hoping there was a metaphor, or some deep arc about humanity and loneliness, or romance satire. It isn’t either of those things, though the really awful Winnie the Pooh erotic fan fiction is occasionally hilarious (i can’t even make this up: there’s a scene where she literally slathers honey on herself to attract the bear). Imagine being Margaret Atwood and losing to this badly written bear porn that wouldn’t even pass muster in harlequin romance land. JUST IMAGINE.

I really liked this, though I think it’s again one of those books I like that not everybody likes (I’m looking at you Starless Sea). I think it’s the kind of book that I would want to write, breaking all the rules, writing intimate, tweet sized discombobulated thoughts rather than paragraphs.

Big cheese. I don’t love the rom com trope that women know better and need to (nay must) fix their love interest, which this had in spades.

I didn’t dislike this book, but I also didn’t love it. It’s a sweet and soft story about life and friendship, with both humans and cats, but it felt a bit simple in how it was written.

This is a very clever story of letters about letters. It’s also a story about what happens when society follows rules blindly, but I wouldn’t take that one too seriously.

It was exactly what I thought it was gonna be: run of the mill romance, good for an afternoon read.

Ooof, I don’t know about this one. The writing was kind of painful and the story was a bit bonkers.

Ok look. I came in wanting to read a light book because I’m bummed about the world, give it a solid 3 stars, and then go back to my Serious Literature Novels™️ deserving of more stars. Turns out that’s a load of shit; this book is great and I loved every bit about it, especially the fact that all the characters are like, nice, dorky people. They have a nice little romance, and they’re never really dicks to each other and it was a joy to read. Also there’s casual mentions of cults which is EXTREMELY my shit.

I’ve read too many serious books so now I need to read some trash, and I wanted to compare the Netflix series to the og book. This would’ve been a 3 star-er if not for the “domestic rape is ok if the rapist is pretty” glorifying of rape bit, which is pretty gross.

This is a really lovely book about families and trees.

A quick vacation read. Since you don’t find out who dies until the end it also means you have no chance to figure out who did it, so maybe it’s less of a murder mystery and more of trashy thriller.

It is what it is. The writing certainly hasn’t improved from the first book (I think the rate of pop culture references per meter squared has actually increased?? Maybe as a big fuck-you to the haters? Like “y’all thought the first book was bad, check this out”) but the story was entertaining I guess.

Halfway through this book I didn’t think I’d like it. It was a silly story that didn’t seem to go anywhere, but by the end I really liked all the nice people that lived in this silly story.

The older I get, the more I need to hear that my problems aren’t special problems. I need to know other middle aged women have joint pains, self doubt, tired faces, are unmotivated and confused and exhausted by a a long to-do list of personal improvement items that will never get done. I need to know they exist, so that I can stop worrying about what’s “normal” and not “too much” for someone my age, or what things I should be doing as a “correct” feminist in the apocalypse. I just need other women that I can relate to, and this is what this book did for me.

I’ve genuinely and truly wondered before what would happen if I just spent the rest of my life sleeping, and I guess now I know.

I liked this book less than I liked the first one, because the first is all story and no explanation, and this one tries to explain things and make you a better citizen of the world. Stopping to think about what you’re doing to help the world is harder than reading a scifi about aliens. It’s tough work being an author, so I appreciate this one going straight up for the hard work.

Anyway, this was good; I enjoyed the story, I even surprised myself by enjoying the pop philosophy bits about humanity (“how ardently [we] believe in [our] individuality while simultaneously operating almost entirely as a collective”), reality (“not what is true, but what we pay attention to”), and power (“ability and desire without restriction”).

“The solution is, everywhere and always, the decentralization and redistribution of all forms of power”, and maybe if we communicated this to teenagers more through stories rather than stuffy philosophy books written in the antiquity, maybe more of us would believe it.

I really, really, really love Erin Morgenstern’s writing style. It’s dreamlike and lyrical and probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but it is mine. This is a lovely story about stories within stories, bees, honey, and people who love books. And I love all those things.

About half way through I got this feeling that i got the first time I read Ender’s game when I was little. Because they’re sort of similar books in some aspects. Aliens pick a random human; shenanigans happen. Ender’s game was a bit sexist, stuck in the 80s, and only Ender was smart enough to solve puzzles; this book has a bi protagonist, a bunch of smart women, and everyone dreaming and solving puzzles as a team. It’s a very millennial book, with tweets and brands, and maybe you won’t like that, but if you’re a millennial like I am, who found out about this book on twitter and is reviewing it on goodreads, you might enjoy someone speaking your language. I for one, really really did.

A while back I decided I would read all of Emily St John’s books. She’s from Comox, a place an ex boyfriend used to spend his summers in. In a past life, maybe they ran into each other on the way to the beach. In a future life, maybe her and I will run into each other in a cafe and discover this fact as I apologize for accidentally taking her coat that looks just like mine. We’ll comment on how small the world really is, and I’ll say hey, it’s just like your books eh? In all of her books, characters weave in and out of each others’ lives, without anyone other than you, the reader, really putting it together. It’s a little secret Emily lets you in on. In some of her books (like this one) it works, in some (The Lola quartet) it doesn’t. Still, I’ll keep reading them all because I like being in on secrets, or because maybe i’m a character in someone else’s book.

Ehhhh this wasn’t my favourite. It’s a very long book that could have benefitted from better editing. I know that sci-fi authors have this problem where they want to build a solid and detailed world, and they want to tell you everything about it in painful details, so that 5 books from now something very obscure makes sense for a very obscure reason, but the problem is that you end up with a very long book with a lot of explanations I didn’t care about and was just bored. Also, it’s a bad sign when after 1700 (larger font) pages on my e-reader I really didn’t care what happened to the main character.

This book was very cute! It’s good to read a cute book every once in a while.

This is the only book I’ve e-read and highlighted anything in, and I highlighted something in every chapter. This should be a required reading in my opinion for everyone in 2020. I saw times in my life when I was a well meaning racist; I saw times in my life when I wasn’t a racist, but I also wasn’t an anti-racist. I hope that when I reread this again I’ll see times in my life when I was deliberately an anti-racist, and be proud about that.

I am HERE for spilling the tea on the tech industry but this was a 500+ page badly written medium post that was a slog to get through. It wasn’t the trashing I was promised, which is probably why this review is so long and the rating so low.

Pretty much everything you read you’ve heard before — maybe this book would’ve been novel 3-4 years ago, but who hasn’t read about the trash fire of sexism and sheer ridiculousness of tech by now? But even if I could get over the lukewarm takes and meh anecdotes, I can’t get over how bad the writing was. No exaggeration, on one page, this was the first word of every sentence: their, they, the, every, the, they, they. On top of that, almost every sentence has at least one (adjective)(adjective)(noun) flourish which just....isn’t great.

Also, the not-naming of companies is just exhausting and boring. Referring to Uber as “the ride sharing startup” and to Lyft as “the main competitor with cuter branding” isn’t keeping any secrets; everyone knows who that’s talking about. This air of insider knowledge (when in fact everything is very much public knowledge) is SO ironic because Anna Wiener is writing this book from the outside perspective of a sociology major who feels like they never quite fit in the tech industry, and hates everything about it, but in fact she writes exactly like one of those elitist tech bros who’s trying to feel better than you and make their startup sound more interesting than it is.

I’ve read and loved Station Eleven and Last Night on Montreal, and I read and just average liked this book. All of her books have the same style I enjoy (a mystery that needs solving, a non linear timeline, a thing that you know but the characters don’t), but unlike in the other books, I found myself not caring about any of the characters. None are really nice people, and the ones I think you’re supposed to care about aren’t really detailed in a way to make you care.

This is the Greek myth I wish I had read as a little girl. The stories I read were written by men, about men — most women characters were weak baby makers, gossipers, pretty things to look at, who only react to things the men do, but almost never _act_. The men were the warriors, the heroes, the ones who the story was really about.

This book is the feminist answer to that — Circe is a witch nymph who gives no fucks and takes no names. She doesn’t allow herself to be controlled by men, society, or her fate, and that independence makes her powerful, the same kind of power that all our favourite male gods in the old stories took for granted. And if now I were a 6 year old really into Greek myths, I really hope someone would give me this book.

Sometimes there’s really good stories written poorly, and sometimes there’s okay stories written really well, where I sort of absorb in real life the whimsy of the writing and this book is like that.

The story is good, and the characters are fine, and it’s definitely a fun read I didn’t want to put down (a solid 3 star), but i gave it an extra star because of the writing— it’s sort of airy and magical and nice. I also realized about half way through it was written in the present tense, which I’m a sucker for — it makes me feel like a real time observer, rather than someone listening to something that already happened and you know what? It’s good to know what you like.

To me, this book feels like a really well written novel by Patti Smith, the author, as opposed to Just Kids, a super interesting memoir by Patti Smith the rock star. Year of the Monkey is a surrealist story where some people are real and some are not, and it’s not always clear which world you’re in at a given time. It was hard for me to get into it at first because I kept trying to figure out if a particular story _actually_ happened to Patti Smith or not, and it wasn’t until I let that go and accepted this book as “not actually a traditional memoir” that I started enjoying it so much more.

I liked this book, even though not all of it applies to me. It’s a book by millennials, for millennials, full of science and relatable anecdotes. If you are a person who doesn’t empathize with other women/people of colour/minorities, have ever said “but what about the men”, or struggle with the concept of privilege and with blaming things on the patriarchy: this book is not for you, and you will be annoyed reading it. Because the thing I got the most out of this book is that for a lot of us the game IS rigged, both biologically and socially, the patriarchy IS to blame, and pretending that isn’t the case is like pretending the ocean is made up because you haven’t it, even though people from the Caribbean tell you they grew up with one.

Look, it was fine. It’s a good story. Do I wish I would’ve watched the movie instead? Probably. Because it’s written like an interview, this book is 100% dialog and at that point I might as well look at people on the screen reading it.

Turns out it’s very hard to write a witty, funny, self deprecating review about a witty, funny, self deprecating book without looking like an asshole so have this: I would like to be internet friends with this book but I don’t think I’m cool enough for it.

Before I started reading this, someone described it as “devastating”, and I couldn’t understand that. But it’s true, that’s exactly what it is: devastating. It’s one of the bleakest books I’ve ever read, not because of the moments of grief and actual sadness, but because of the happy ones in between. And that’s why it’s devastating: because every time something good happens, you know it won’t last. It’s also one of the best books I’ve ever read — I don’t regret reading it, but I don’t think I can take the heartbreak of ever reading it again.

I wanted to write snotty intellectual comments about how Eve’s story was brilliant and the Charlie plot line was weak etc. but the fact of the matter is I couldn’t put this book down, I stayed up till 2am so that I could finish it, and if I’m too generous with the rating: tough cookies. They’re made up points anyway.

I don’t normally read a series this long, or this silly. I read these mostly on my phone: jetlagged in the middle of the night, in airports, at the dinner table, waiting for something or other to happen, or to stop happening. I read this particular book around toddlers who would interrupt me every 3 sentences, so I needed a book where the story would survive skipped sentences. If you’re ever in those situations, maybe these books will be there for you too.

This book is kind of brilliant! The premise is super smart (this isn’t a spoiler, it’s literally on the book cover): someone has to solve a murder by inhabiting 8 different witnesses and reliving the same day. It’s a bit slow in the middle while you’re figuring some things out, but the reveal is great, and makes the premise even neater. Very happy I read this.

I love all of Heather O’Neill’s stories, even as they break my heart in little pieces. That’s how a Heather O’Neill do. I loved this story too, but for some reason I didn’t love the writing style; I kept noticing the (definitely deliberate) short and choppy sentences which didn’t work out for me this time as they normally do. Still: happy I read this, sad when I was done reading it.

I love love love Warsan Shire. Love.

I read this because I so badly wanted it to be a Warsan Shire. It wasn’t, and that’s not really its fault, but that’s why I won’t like it more.

If you’re into occasionally reading trashy books to pass the time: this is primo trash and you’ll enjoy it.

Fine for reading on a beach. It’s a story about rich, white, privileged people, having rich, white, privileged family problems that they have to deal with on their casual trip to Mallorca. Honestly, if you have a vampire book series to read on the beach, maybe do that instead.

This is a lovely book about 2 generations of women being strong and badass and charming in their own ways. The plot is really well thought out, and the three seemingly separate story lines weave in and out in a way that doesn’t seem forced. A great feel-good read.

I listened to this as an audiobook, and it felt a lot like what I imagine hanging out with David Sedaris over a bottle of wine is: hilarious and full of absurd stories.

Whimsy whimsy whimsy!

The happiest I’ve been is when I finished this book knowing that it was over and I didn’t have to read any more of this just to “see what happens at the end”. All these books made me so angry. Weak af female protagonist that’s supposed to be a brilliant academic but is like really basic and defers to a man, and that man is a boring, rapy, rude one. A yikes from me.

It’s still not good, but I just need to know how it ends now.

Look. It’s definitely not well written. And the plot is basically Twilight for adults but instead of vampires sparkling they’re like really grumpy and surly and into virginity and for some reason say “dieu!” a lot even though they’ve lived outside of France for decades and are scholars at the fanciest house in Oxford. But I read it in one night while jet lagged and I now need to know what happens in the next book so I feel I need to give it some stars because of this.

You can’t really go wrong with any DFW, if you like DFW (which i absolutely do) but I found this book had a couple essays I wasn’t all that interested in, like reviews of books I hadn’t (and wouldn’t) read.

I really didn’t enjoy reading this book. I thought the premise was interesting and promising (women trying to find independence through going on an adventure), but the writing felt so alien I couldn’t enjoy it. It was like someone was trying to hard to be avant garde, and it just read really forced. Argh.

I am obsessed with Sally Rooney (like everyone else in the world), but I liked this slightly less than “Conversations with friends”. With Conversations, I felt sad while reading it, but happy and hopeful at the end; with this one I felt hopeful while reading it and rather sad at the end, and that’s 100% why I feel I liked it less.

I feel the author needed an ending and didn’t have an ending planned so a whole bunch of things that didn’t make sense happened with no credible explanation just so that the story would finish.

I can't believe I didn't leave a review for this book. I think this is my favourite book that I've read in a long time. I thought so the first time I read it, and after re-reading it again today, it's still true. I think I see myself possibly too much in Frances, in a weird and emotionally unhealthy way, but empathize with and cheer for everyone in the book. It's all so beautiful and human and I love it.