Kelsey
There were parts of this book that deeply annoyed me (I can only tolerate "water-blue" and "deep-red" and "rusty-brown" as descriptors for so long...), but on the whole it had a One Hundred Years of Solitude quality about it that I quite liked.
I'm not sure if I'm just a sucker for the intergenerational story or if this was a genuinely excellent book... I guess either way, I'm a fan.
Contains spoilers
Having never read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (oops), I probably didn't appreciate this one as much as I could have.
With that being said, I still loved it. (As much as one can love a book so heavily about slavery, anyway...) The dialogue was incredible, the pace of the story was perfect, and the vengeance was just OH so sweet. It may be the first time I've ever internally cheered (and maybe even smiled a little) during an intense murder scene. I need to stew on this one a little longer to fully appreciate the themes and its message and all the reasons that made this book such a success, but for now, I'll suffice it to say: 5 ⭐️
Contains spoilers
I guess one never realizes that their worldview is entirely too narrow until they get exposed to new ones. That's what happened for me with this book; I'd never thought about motherhood or family in this way before. I'd never really taken a step back to think about the intricacies of what life as a trans woman must be like aside from the basic, "I can hardly imagine how hard it would be to have everyone question and challenge your identity constantly..." But the ways that the author explores dissociation, feminine relationships, and challenges the reader to dive deeper into new possibilities for what motherhood and intimacy can look like helped me open my eyes to a perspective I never would have considered before. And isn't that one of the main reasons to read a book in the first place?
My only qualms, really: the dialogue was often unrealistic and a bit pretentious (to me, anyway). Reese, in particular, was in turns both self righteous and gracious to such profound degrees that it sometimes felt like her character could have been two different people depending on the chapter or page.
(Slight spoiler: I also would probably argue that Amy's detransition scene toward the end was entirely too rushed, but I could be convinced otherwise.)
Hm. I wasn't unable to stop thinking about it. I wasn't bored. I wasn't floored by the writing, but I wasn't annoyed by it either. I could live without the sequel, and yet I plan to read it anyway.
It was very "good-enough-to-keep-going," I suppose. My main complaint is there were a handful of plot holes and inconsistencies that were never addressed, and it's unclear whether or not they'll come back up in the next book or two. I guess I'll find out! Eventually.
I'd be interested to dabble in Bardugo's other stuff since I rarely find high output fantasy authors that I can stand.
I rarely feel sad when a book's over, but I find myself in a funk this morning. I can't put my finger on it, but this book was unlike anything I've ever read. It didn't exactly blow my mind in the way that some books do with the prose, but there was just something about it that made feel so deeply... involved? Which I was surprised to feel, given that it was authored by a middle-aged white guy in the 50s. Normally those don't really do it for me.
I get that it was an "allegory of Genesis" or whatever (I'm due for a reread, I guess, because I think I missed ~90% of the correlations), but even without the biblical parallels (or maybe in spite of them), it was a masterfully written story about just being a human. There are tons of books out there that try and succeed at capturing various facets of our experience, but this is the first one that's ever white-knuckle gripped me like this.
Our culture is so annoyingly polarized into "good" and "bad" or "right" and "wrong" (or "right" and "left" maybe more accurately) these days, and it's easy to forget that there's a little good and a little bad in everyone (unless you're Cathy, I suppose). We're all just trying to figure our shit out and fight our own demons, ya know.
So, thank you, Mr. 50s man (admittedly very famous 50s author man) for the reminder that “thou mayest” choose to be good and kind just as “thou mayest” choose to be a shithead. We are not bound to be one or the other even if the sins of our father are seemingly insurmountable.
Neat read, highly recommend, etc.
I inhaled this.
Couldn't tell you the last time I read a “whodunnit”(or the last time I read a ~600 pager in 3 days, honestly), and I'm so happy this one got me back into the genre (temporarily at least). The setting: lovely; who doesn't love a 70s summer camp thriller?! The pace: couldn't have been better. The characters: classic posh, upper class villains; loved them. Hated them. My favorite kind.
To anyone who's in a reading rut like I was: there's no time to waste! This is your calling.
Gonna have to go check out more Liz Moore and see what she's all about. We may have a good thing goin' here!
Hm. I completely fail to see the appeal on this one. It's 125 pages, and every single one of them felt like an incarnation of my new least favorite chore.
I guess one could argue it was well written? But besides that, there wasn't a single thing about it that was for me. I'm happy it's over, and maybe I can now look forward to reading again.
So long INDEED, Mr. Maxwell. Please miss me with that see you tomorrow stuff
The first half was a bit of a slog as I don't particularly care about the ins and outs of the advertising business, but once we got to the nitty gritty personal stuff, I was quite into it.
My biggest problem (and the reason it took me so long to get through this one, outside of the fact that I was moving this month) was the Gilmore Girls-style dialogue. It felt a bit like it was trying too hard to be witty... no one actually talks like that. The characters were too quirky for my taste.
On the whole, it was fine. Redeemed mainly by the fact that it covered some deeper themes about the human experience (grief, family dynamics, dissatisfaction with work, etc.) that offset the lack of believability everywhere else.
Well that was exactly as advertised: heartwarming, lovely, delightful, etc. It's not trying to be anything it isn't. Just a sweet story about a magical gal who makes new friends on her travels through small towns. A couple side quests and conflicts here and there, but nothing too anxiety inducing.
The perfect lighthearted palate cleanser for anyone in need of one :)
Whoever edited this book needs a timeout. And a very stern talking to from an adult. Because said editor must have been a child. I refuse to believe otherwise.
If I had a dollar for every time I had to read “the past harmonizes” or “the past is obdurate”, I could buy about a thousand books that might not have destroyed my faith in literature (and maybe even humanity) like this one did.
And GOD FORBID someone try to call the past by any other adjective than “harmonic” or “obdurate”, either! Sadie tried to describe it as “malevolent” once, and Jake's unbearably pompous ass just HAS to make sure the reader knows: “the past wasn't exactly malevolent, that was the wrong word...” YEAH, NO SHIT, JAKE, YOU'VE BEEN ABSOLUTELY BEATING US OVER THE HEAD WITH YOUR TWO WORDS OF CHOICE ABOUT 9,000 TIMES FOR 716 PAGES AT THIS POINT. WE GOT IT.
Besides my strong feelings about the sickeningly repetitive vocabulary, I really am impressed by one thing: despite the 850-page length, every SINGLE character is somehow profoundly underdeveloped.
Awards should be given for such a feat.
It gets two stars because I loved “On Writing”, and I want to believe that Stephen King is better than this. I must retain a semblance of hope.
But for now, I'm going to pretend like I have my own time machine, go back to before I ever knew this book existed, and do my best to restore what's left of my love for reading.
There is a class of boring book that one could categorize as “sleepy”, i.e. despite its lack of compelling storyline, it maintains a certain redeeming charm or dreaminess.
This particular boring book, to me, was neither charming nor dreamy. And maybe I just didn't get it, but I think the more likely scenario is that Rooney isn't for me. (For instance, I thought Normal People the show was far superior to Normal People the book, which I think would make me a barbarian in many people's minds.)
My only real thematic takeaway is that men need women to get their shit together. Where would Ivan and Peter be without their girlfriends? More sad and likely dead (respectively), I'd imagine. Undeniably, the book is about grief. And while there were several lovely passages and elements about the experience (which was, for me, the book's saving grace), it was overall a miss in comparison to other books on the same topic.
Last thing: I'm about to read through some other reviews in an attempt to understand WHAT IN THE WORLD is going on with the choice of writing style for Peter's character, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that there's no explanation on this planet that will convince me that it was necessary. I absolutely hated it. No amount of artistic jibber jabber will make me hate it less.
As someone who adores delightfully detestable characters, I was absolutely tickled senseless by this book. It was a bit of a slog, I'll admit, but my god it was worth it.
How someone could ever endeavor to even attempt writing a synopsis of this book, I'll never know. (Obviously, they've done it... it just sucks.) I felt at once immersed in and repulsed by the Lamberts' lives. Then I realized upon reflection that the story essentially mirrors my very own existence. I did not ask to be put into this world; I'm often repulsed by my behavior; I occasionally redeem myself; I continue to correct when possible; I often fail; the cycle continues ad nauseam, the plot, at times, thickens and thins; and eventually I will simply cease to exist (though I would like to avoid Alfred's fate, if at all possible).
All that cryptic, useless philosophizing is simply to say: I think it was a book about how being a self-aware human is really fucking hard.
From the moment you become conscious, other humans start expecting things from you. Inevitably, those things will come into conflict with other influences: your own worldviews, the expectations of people outside of your nuclear family, the standards of your society and community. Over time, sometimes little by little and sometimes all at once, you make decisions about what to sacrifice. Do you give up something of yourself to meet the expectations of others? Do you disappoint others so that you can keep yourself intact?
Then after a while, you may wake up one day (like Enid) and realize you're desperately unhappy and you need to correct some of the decisions you've made. Maybe you've lost yourself trying to please everyone else. Or maybe (like Denise) you've lost yourself in yourself, and you finally see how your behavior is affecting others.
I don't know, that's just my take. It was a really fucking good book.
So, now what? Well. Despite the shameful accumulation of backlogged books gathering dust on the untouched piano in my bedroom, I will now proceed to order every other novel Jonathan Franzen has ever written.
It was impossible for me to tell if I loved or hated this book... and to me, that must mean it was love. At the start, it felt a bit like the author was trying too hard to accomplish a certain type of style (I want to say she was going for a Crime and Punishment sorta thing, but what do I know). After a while, though, she finally settled in and it seemed a bit more natural.
Once I got past that hump, the reading experience was actually quite nice if you can get past the ever-present themes of infidelity and sexual abuse. (Somewhat of an aside as it's not entirely this book's fault, but WHY DO WE NOT GET TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR BOOKS LIKE THIS?!)
Anyways.
A lot of this one hit way too close to home for me, and I probably wouldn't recommend it to any of my friends. So why 4 starts? I appreciate a book that can do that... a book that's not for the faint of heart. It was powerful.
I just never want to see or hear about it ever again.
This is one I may want to revisit later in life. It was really good, it just didn't strike the chords with me that it likely did with most other readers that have experienced grief in this way. I'm certainly not looking forward to the time when I'll want to revisit this book, but... it's good to know that I have it when the time comes.
Ok, well that was stunning. Yes, I cried a little.
Each character is so sympathetic and flawed in their own special way, and I couldn't decide who I loved and who I hated. All the feels were felt in turns.
I'm that annoying type of person who usually thinks any book that's ever called a “classic” is probably overrated... but gosh darn it if I haven't been proven wrong today.
I love to be reminded that even people with vastly different stories can undergo the same beautiful, tragic, and bittersweet human experiences. There were moments in this book where it felt like Casey was describing an emotional episode that I've lived through but have never been able to put into the correct words to explain to someone else. When writers are able to do that, I almost immediately fall in love.
But despite enjoying the prose and the story, I was a bit disappointed by the ending. It felt unfinished or rushed, at best. I wanted to hear more about his self-discovery, self-acceptance, and overall transformation. The whole purpose of the memoir was to walk himself to a point where he could figure out how he ended up where he was, right? But then he doesn't really tell us where he ENDED UP. He sort of just left the reader (or at least ME) feeling lost and confused like John Travolta in that Pulp Fiction gif.
It also doesn't help that the last few memoirs I've read were some of my favorite books of the last decade... So I went into this one with a relatively high bar. And while it didn't necessarily disappoint, it also didn't quite blow me away.
Fun, fun, fun.
I'm no sci-fi expert, having only read, like... Dune? But this was a great time. Whether or not any of the math and science was realistic, it all felt feasible to me (it's my world and I'm livin' in it after all). I'll be impatiently counting down the days until I can watch Ryan Gosling hang out with what I can only imagine will be the cutest – sorry, I mean “fierce” – lil Hollywood alien to ever grace our screens.
Now I'm just left wondering... Will we get a sequel, question?
Ugh. This was one of those books that should have been a more focused long-form article. I would've liked it WAY more. Not only did it meander (sometimes endlessly), but it was often self-promotional and just entirely off topic. Like, I didn't pick up this book to learn how to craft a compelling TikTok video or Instagram caption...
I understand that there is a connection between influencers' algorithm-driven content and the way we now speak offline, but do we really need ~100 pages about what exactly makes a good TikTok video? There were moments where it seemed like he hyper-fixated on one topic that had only a tenuous relationship to the overall purpose of the book, and, unfortunately, he dragged the reader along with him in this exploration of the corners of his influencer-content-creator-brain.
Somewhat of an aside, but... I'm curious about how he wrote this entire book about the evolution of language from ~2012-2025 and onward without once mentioning Covid? Obviously the focus was on social media, but didn't we all end up WAY more online in 2020? That seemed like a huge miss.
The only reason I finished the book at all was because there were a handful of fascinating nuggets of information buried in what I can only assume was editorial fluff. If they publish a second edition of this book, I wish they'd change the subtitle to something more apt, like: “How algorithms influence influencers and influencers influence language” (someone else can wordsmith it for me).
Unreal.
For obvious reasons, I cannot participate in any sort of discussion about a black memoir as it pertains to the experiences and the perspective. But when we read books from authors unlike us - whether that means other races, religions, socioeconomic backgrounds, sexualities, etc - we can at least start to learn more and gain empathy for someone else's experience of the world.
Some passages/themes from this memoir are overwhelmingly human, though, and were written in such a way that any reader can and should be absolutely gutted: hiding from ourselves and the ones we love; trying to love and understand someone who has deeply hurt us; figuring out the right way to live in a world that is so f***ing unjust to so many people.
I dunno. I think this should be required reading for anyone over 16. But be warned... it is, as the title suggests, quite heavy.
Having just finished “The Heart's Invisible Furies” recently (another first-person novel spanning the protagonist's entire life that I absolutely adored), my opinion of this one is probably a bit tarnished. It was a beautiful story featuring a fierce and admirable heroine, but I dearly missed the spark and style that I so loved from Allende's “The House of the Spirits”. I was hoping for more of the Márquez-inspired variety of her prose, but something about Violeta felt stale for me.
However, despite the unexpected style, I must say I still fell in love with the narrator and quite enjoyed following along with the journey of her rich life from one pandemic to the next.
Despite being less than 200 pages, this was a slow burn for me (I actually paused about halfway through it to read something else). If one were to translate the experience of people watching in a coffee shop into a book, this book would be it. It's a sleepy, meandering story (if you can even call it that, honestly) where the timeline bounces around and the characters weave in and out over the course of ~10 years... But somehow by the end, I felt nostalgic for a place I've never been and for characters I hardly understand.
If you're looking for a fast-paced, story-driven novel, then go ahead and skip this one. But if you've got a few rainy days ahead with nothing to do, then it could be a good time.
So... I grabbed this book after briefly scanning the description, seeing the cover, and thinking that it looked like a pretty decent, mindless beach read.
It was not that.
I love going into something like this without reading any reviews or knowing much about it then coming out the other side being amazed at how it impacted me. I never worked in the service industry (sad!)... I've never done cocaine (also sad!)... and I've never lived in New York (a little less sad IMO)... But I do remember what it was like to be 22. To feel everything so deeply and to perceive the world like it was still waiting for you to enter it. To have that mix of envy and admiration for someone older who both fascinates and horrifies you.
The heady writing style and the often jagged dialogue and hazy plot line (for me anyway) did an incredible job at conveying all of that excitement and hope and anxiety of being fresh in your career in a new city. So - dark themes and all - I reaaaally loved this one.
I should caveat this review with two biases: I'm a sucker for a) most coming of age stories, particularly if they're b) set in Ireland.
So, yes, I was deeply enthralled with this book. It was the perfect catalyst to get me back in the reading game after a 3-month draught. The story-telling was 10/10 and by the end of the book, I felt so invested in all the characters that it felt like it was somehow my own story. They were just human enough, just likeable enough, and just present enough to be chef's kiss lovely.
Would recommend to anyone looking for a moving portrayal of... well, humanity. Not sure what better way to describe the central plot
