Nora

“Society was a system for falling in love. People who couldn't fall in love had to fake it. What came first: the system or love? All I knew was that love was a mechanism designed to make Earthlings breed.”

This book is about how a child survives abuse and the pressures of society. Very strange, disturbing and heartbreaking. Quick read but impactful.

“She loves and hates this lung, a mystery to her, a tiny lung that carried her son way past his expected life span. She wants to thank it, and also spit on it for not having carried him further.”

I'm leaving this review at a 4-ish for now but this is very hard for me to rate. I want to say I loved it and I enjoyed it but I don't know if those are the right words. This is a disturbing and graphic story of a monster turned boy (?), grown from a mother's grief. Grief is the overwhelming theme here, and it is palpable. Normally I rate based on my enjoyment of the book, the writing, the characters, and the plot, but my overall enjoyment of reading the book usually stands tallest. I can't say that I enjoyed this book, but it is definitely a story that will stick with me. And as disturbing as some of the characters were they were also realistic somehow, in all the surrealism. I felt for Monstrilio towards the end, he's really just another victim of grief as well, whilst also its result in a way. I wonder if he became what he is because of how others viewed him? As unrealistic as this story is it somehow feels possible that immense grief could do what it did in this book, and that is a feat of Sámano Córdova. It's definitely the story that's made me reflect the most lately, so I'm putting a 4-ish for now, but I may bump it as I sit on this for a bit.

Bottom line: read it.

“They are happy to believe I forgot how they maimed me.”

This was a pleasant surprise! I knew nothing about it going in, and picked it up on a whim while looking for an audiobook with a narrator I could tolerate. The narration is fantastic and the different voice actors for different characters made it come alive that much more.

I can't quite put my finger on why I loved this book so much. It's not my normal type of book, and I'm not sure how to explain it. It's about Greta, a transcriber for Om, a sex coach, who becomes infatuated with one of Om's clients who she calls Big Swiss. As the transcriber she gets to hear all Big Swiss' secrets, and soon Greta meets Big Swiss at the dog park, and in a panic introduces herself with a fake name. What ensues is a quirky, funny, sad, and downright odd story. It is rare that I laugh out loud at a book. Greta is definitely an unhinged mess, yet still manages to be endearing and emotional. Very excited for the TV adaptation!

Heartbreaking, tender, passionate, loving. A beautifully sad story about a love that could never be.

“I'm seventeen years old. I don't know then that one day I won't be seventeen. I don't know that youth doesn't last, that it's only a moment, and then it disappears and by the time you finally realize it, it's too late. It's finished, vanished, lost.”

This was such a fun read. I thoroughly enjoyed it and could not stop listening. It's nicely paced, really intriguing and quite a classic type of cozy murder mystery. We follow Annie who is, through the will of her great-aunt Frances, tasked with solving her great-aunt's murder in order to inherit her estate. Based on a life-long prophecy made by a fortune teller in her youth who foretold that her death will be a murder, great-aunt Frances has spent her life trying to solve her own, not yet happened, murder. In her will she creates a game where the person who solves her murder first wins her wealth. Annie thus sets out to do just that, and we follow her journey, whilst also getting glimpses into young Frances life through her diary, which involves another mystery. Side by side the past and present unravels as we go along, culminating in a big reveal at the end. The audiobook narrator was fantastic, and I just really enjoyed myself.

Thanks so much to the publisher for the ARC provided through NetGalley!