Ben Saufley

Another book that gets the "I'm clearly too dumb to fully appreciate this" bump. It took me a long time to get through, even on audio. I set it aside a lot. The writing is very poetic and often abstract, and it jumps between times, places, and perspectives regularly. On audio, at least, some of these jumps are very disorienting and hard to follow. I think it's a very artful book, but I can't say I _enjoyed_ it.

The novel has a fascinating premise and it's very well-written but I feel like for a book dedicated to Christine Blaisey Ford, choosing to set this in the fifties really hamstrings the message. I know there are people who yearn for those days, but those people aren't reading this book. The misery of a much more overt and unashamed patriarchy (which has not gone away, but has found ways to rebrand into something more subtle and insidious) in the fifties is, it seems to me, pretty widely acknowledged. So much of the book hinges on that premise and I think it undercuts any timeliness, for me.

This is by no means a bad book. It's a good book—by some more artistic measure, it's certainly better than the rating I've given. But for me, a personal rating also accounts for impact and while I can see it hit a lot of people the right way, and I'm happy about that, it fell short for me.

The novel has a fascinating premise and it's very well-written but I feel like for a book dedicated to Christine Blaisey Ford, choosing to set this in the fifties really hamstrings the message. I know there are people who yearn for those days, but those people aren't reading this book. The misery of a much more overt and unashamed patriarchy (which has not gone away, but has found ways to rebrand into something more subtle and insidious) in the fifties is, it seems to me, pretty widely acknowledged. So much of the book hinges on that premise and I think it undercuts any timeliness, for me.

This is by no means a bad book. It's a good book—by some more artistic measure, it's certainly better than the rating I've given. But for me, a personal rating also accounts for impact and while I can see it hit a lot of people the right way, and I'm happy about that, it fell short for me.

I had kind of forgotten how the first one resolved so it took me a bit to catch up to events. Fun thriller. The twists and turns were fun, kept me guessing, and didn't usually feel cheap once revealed. I hope—expect?—there will be a third book that wraps up Sarah's arc. If I'm supposed to be satisfied that she just keeps getting away with it… I'm not. It's not that her adversaries are good, but she's, you know, also not good.

Pretty far outside my wheelhouse and the "spicy" scenes were prolonged and graphic, which I don't judge it's simply not what I read books for, but the relationship was absolutely charming and as a soccer fan I had a lot of fun with the setting—it's also clear the author is immersed in the woso world for a bunch of reasons, and that added to the authenticity. Very fun read.

My recollection is that I liked but didn't love The Woman in Cabin 10, although I don't remember specifically why. This one, I loved. Even when I thought I'd figured it out, or even when I kind of did have it figured out, I didn't. Fun, twisty, engaging. Ware is such a great thriller writer.

Boy, people like to make fun of fantasy books for their emphasis on world-building but that's basically all that happened here. A simple scenario plays out with endless flashbacks explaining the life stories of everyone involved. Very literary, and certainly not _bad_ but it's funny to think about how this world-building is received in comparison to that of genre novels.