Hannah

This romance drove me crazy. The love interest is a violent and resentful man in general which makes his obsession with Caroline feel forced and unbelievable. Caroline is the "perfect woman" - a virginal porn star who is down for anything but only for the one guy so that she can at the same time remain impossibly pure and naive. Not for me.

Margo is an icon with a truly unique voice and story that somehow managed to be both ridiculous (wrestler father, only fans, pokemon dick poetry) and incredibly genuine at its essence. I laughed out loud every other page, frequently had to put the book down out of anxiety for the very stressful situations Margo found herself in, and felt deep affection for Margo, her baby, her father, her roommate - basically everyone except her mother and Kevin who both suck.

I took half a point off in my rating because the ending felt anti-climatic after all the events that had transpired. Margo enters into a situationship with one of her fans, which felt like an unnecessary sub plot and therefore felt wrong to end on. I cared about Margo and her baby. I did not care about JB and his ml advertising business idea. But it was an amazing reading experience all together.

"She felt incredibly stupid for believing him, for having the affair with him, for having a uterus"

"She kept thinking, as she nursed him, I am so fucked, I am so fucked, I am so fucked. Because all around her she could feel the echoey space of no one caring about her or worrying about her or helping her. She might as well have been nursing this baby on an abandoned space station."

"It seemed improbable that men really wanted sex this badly, and yet they did, there was an entire economy based on how badly they wanted it, and for a moment Margo understood the sexual desire she felt was mild in comparison. She would never pay fifteen dollars to look at a guy naked. You could buy two, possibly three sandwiches for fifteen dollars."

"Give me your boredom and your sadness and your anxiety: I will eat it all. I will eat the buttons off your shirt, your darkest secrets, your keys, locks of your hair, your memories. Come play with me in a world we make up together. I will only kill you a little bit, and you will like it."

"Love was not something, I realized, that came to you from the outside. I had always thought that love was supposed to come from other people, and somehow, I was failing to catch the crumbs of it, failing to eat them, and I went around belly empty and desperate. I didn't know that love was supposed to come from within me, and that as long as I loved others, the strength and warmth of that love would fill me, make me strong."

I was not familiar with the name Francis Perkins when I started this audiobook, but found myself falling in love with this historical fiction that dug into the very real accomplishments of the first female member of the president's cabinet (longest serving secretary of labor, architect of the 40 hour work week and social security, drafted law to ban child labor, fought to aid Jewish refugees feeling Nazi Germany) along with imagining what she must've been thinking while battling through a majority male government to fight for working class rights. I was left with immense respect for Francis Perkins and for FDR who broke gender conventions to empower her to change our country.

'Why economics?', I echoed gamely. 'Because many people in American believe poverty is a moral problem having to do with sloth or some other sin we can blame on individuals. But I believe poverty in America is an economic problem that can be solved...and I intend to solve it.'

Social security - which was expanded again and again to cover more Americans of every race and creed - is now so much a part of American psychology that I truly believe no politician, political party, or political group can possibly destroy it and maintain a democratic system. I suppose I should also be grateful that the reforms I fought for are bricks so firmly embedded in the edifice of national life that Americans now take them for granted.

Am I interested in reading historical fiction from the Napoleonic wars? No, not all all. But throw in some dragons? I'm all in!

This was everything I'd been looking for in the midst of a fiction reading slump. It was a fun and wholesome regency style alternative history that felt like a Jane Austen novel with more war. Not quite 5 stars because I thought the dragons would have been more interesting if given general independence and personality rather than being like a hybrid of a dog and a ship.

I was really looking forward to this release by the author of my favorite 2024 romance read, Lovelight Farm. The dialogue had a witty vibe and the sexual tension in that tiny recording room as 10/10. But the slow burn aspect felt forced and had my least favorite motivation - flimsy internal conflict. There was absolutely no real reason why they couldn't be together yet the entire book he ruins everything by being the "I'm just not made for love!" type. There were so many different external reasons that could've felt more real for slow burn purposes! What if the radio show owner had forbidden him from getting involved because they needed her out date to keep up the ratings? I would have immediately been less annoyed and more invested.

I really loved the concept of this - older women has nothing left to live for after losing her husband and adult son until she find a mouse in an old abandoned fish bowl. But several things went wrong for me with the execution. The old woman is extremely unlikable and difficult to follow. The plot escalates from the every day but meaningful to rather ridiculuous (hospital trips for mouse oxygen equipment) and the end was not satisfactory. Altogether, I felt that I didn't get much meaning or comfort from this.