Zell

In case you're curious, the number of times this author references that her husband was a Navy SEAL is 4, although it feels like more. The number of times she says she lives in Carmel/NorCal/by Big Sur is.... too many to count (I counted, it's at least 12).

This has u/iia vibes. A NoSleep story turned novel. I hated every minute of it. Fantastic.

Ghostwritten, unfortunately.

5 stars for Kamala as a human, 2 stars for using ghostwriters (PLURAL) to write your memoir, 4 stars for the competent job those ghostwriters did at making it sound like Kamala wrote this. Averaged out to 4 stars.

The sheer volume of fake reviews here is funnier than anything Gelman managed to write in this book.

• no egg in a fried rice recipe
  - TWO caesar recipes with no anchovy paste
  - a mac and cheese recipe with mozzarella as the only cheese
  - basically no seasonings besides salt and pepper
  - “I use white wine but you can use whatever you enjoy drinking” sorry no, red and white wine are not interchangeable in cooking.

Really thought-provoking, sparse and hard-hitting. I wish the stories were a little more concise and shorter, there was a little too much exposition for a short story collection.

Stunning historically accurate information and a captivating plot. Heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time.

Beautiful art and a really intriguing plot. I would have loved a little more character development and less insta-love with Goldie and Violet, but the overall atmosphere and pacing were perfect.

Complex and interesting. I loved how much time this spanned and how intertwined the characters were. A wonderful compelling narrative with fun Easter eggs throughout.

Beautiful pictures, but I struggle with a vegan cookbook trying to make things exactly the same but vegan- it won't taste the same, so I'd rather the recipes were more innovative with flavor profiles and “naturally vegan.” The pictures were lovely but some of them were weirdly double-printed and hurt my eyes? The format was also a little odd.

I love a novel about someone's life spinning out of control, and this scratched that itch perfectly. The descriptors were perfect, the plot was tense and pulled you in, and the characters were all flawed and human. Minus one star for food poisoning/a vomiting scene right at the end.

This book had a really strong premise and plot, but the characters felt two-dimensional and there was no real resolution or settling, it just felt cut off.

Really well written and approachable exploration of censorship and the power of activism. I would have loved more information about the dad character, as I feel like A. S. King's normal exploration of mental health topics was lacking here.

Interesting commentary but hard to follow with too many characters and no character development throughout the story. A “meh” 3-star read, minus one star for food poisoning/eating rotten meat.

Smart and ruthless, I loved the style of writing here and the different perspectives. The chapter structure with different people's narratives really worked for me, I enjoyed this a lot.

This book was a wild ride. The characters and politics were super interesting, and the descriptions were fantastic and lush. It felt a little slow paced and had a lot of characters, but was still a really good time.

This is the weirdest shit I've ever read and I'm in love. One of the best books of the year (and maybe ever) for me.

Would have loved more pictures, and the way the recipes were laid out really didn't help my to visualize the dishes and flavor profiles. But really interesting ideas!

Interesting concepts but I felt that this went way too broad and kind of all over the place, and didn't dive deep like I wanted it to into gender and sexuality binaries. It is definitely educational, but not what I was hoping for.

Everybody in this book was so immature and the plot ended up so insanely far-fetched as a result. All these people getting mad and not being over things from 10 years ago, and there are no realistic characters to make it more enjoyable. Plus, nausea/vomiting as a plot point is NEVER okay. Authors need to stop.

Some of these stories were just okay, but I really enjoyed The Starlight on Idaho (5 stars) and Strangler Bob (4.5 stars). ‐1 star for including a food poisoning scene.

I feel like some of the twists were a little obvious as I was going through, which in a thriller is disappointing for me. But the characters were incredible, the plot was a wild ride, and the ethics discussed here were also deeply interesting to me.

Generally when I pick up a book with infertility and pregnancy as the plot, it's by accident, and I'm disappointed. This one was also picked up by accident, but WOW was I surprised by how much I loved it. The characters are complex and feel like real people, the plot is emotionally gripping, and I mourned Yejide's losses more than I expected to.

Really interesting info and a cool past/present split like Maus has, but I struggled to distinguish the characters in the past narrative.

Some hits and some misses for me here, but the theme and the vibes were do consistent and yet diverse. I really enjoyed this collection.