Jared

it was a plane read that I couldn’t finish before the plane landed.

Way too much quirk for the sake of quirk, but the writing style was deeply admirable. The last 50 or so pages of the book absolutely make up for the slog that was the rest of it.

I wish the author dived more into the surrealism and less into the mundane. Big fan of the cover art, though.

This was one of the books I read in my search for something to teach my future high school English class. And while I prefer The Catcher in the Rye, I think this is a better fit than Never Let Me Go.

This book teaches the power of service and genuine kindness without being condescending to the audience. It’s powerful AND entertaining, which is important for high schoolers.

It’s definitely not perfect. The ending sucks and all the writing around Audrey is hard to read at best and deeply misogynistic at worst. But it might be useful to talk about the flaws of the book with my students.

Potential parent issues: underage drinking, sex talk about Audrey, contemplating murder, and kissing a dog.

Overall, this is the best book I found for the school year. I’m keeping The Catcher In The Rye for summer reading.

Shane is so much more than a mythical tale of a gunslinging western hero. Shane is about the importance of everyone in our lives.

We’re inclined to overlook those around us when we’re living in mundanity. Often, it takes a big change for us to really appreciate our community.

Shane was a figure of hope for this small settlement. After he leaves, Joe almost considers leaving, but Marian convinces him to stay. Because Shane is within all of us.

We need to be that inspiration. Our community is important and we need to go out of our way to keep it.

Some weird racism aside, this book was really progressive. It’s about a small town fighting against a corporation using violence to take their land. And I think it’s important for us to know that we can fight back.

We can all be Shane.

Shane is so much more than a mythical tale of a gunslinging western hero. Shane is about the importance of everyone in our lives.

We’re inclined to overlook those around us when we’re living in mundanity. Often, it takes a big change for us to really appreciate our community.

Shane was a figure of hope for this small settlement. After he leaves, Joe almost considers leaving, but Marian convinces him to stay. Because Shane is within all of us.

We need to be that inspiration. Our community is important and we need to go out of our way to keep it.

Some weird racism aside, this book was really progressive. It’s about a small town fighting against a corporation using violence to take their land. And I think it’s important for us to know that we can fight back.

We can all be Shane.

Hardcover deleted my review and I don’t have a backup. So i’m gonna say this is a lot of fun. It’s also really sad. Good balance. Triana the goat.

I really didn’t think Triana could top Gone to See the River Man but this book is so rich in symbolism and commentary.

Triana really understands how misogyny is rooted in everything in America and how it manifests itself into men. The ending left me absolutely disgusted.

I’ll probably relisten to this one some day because the way it toys with who you root for is unparalleled.

The musings of Edmund Cox are not interesting to me in the slightest. The rest of the characters are pretty cool tho.

Hardcover deleted my review and I don’t have a backup. So i’m gonna say this is a lot of fun. It’s also really sad. Good balance. Triana the goat.

I really didn’t expect any of Triana’s books to be bad. but here we are.

I respect it for trying to do something different, but at the end of the day, it’s still a slasher, the one of, if not the, worst subgenre to come from horror.

Ex-Boogeyman acknowledges tropes and the worst of the genre, but doesn’t ever subvert them. Once Jonathan makes it to the rafting center, the rest of the book becomes unbearable slasherslop.

There are moments near the end where it toys with good ideas but it never fully dives into them. honestly, the book would have a lot more interesting if Jonathan never started killing people.

Triana is good at writing kids. There’s a 12 year old girl character here who felt real and reminded me of my sister. So good on that.

Idk you can skip this one. It’s incredibly lame and generic.

I finally switched my major back to English Education, so now I need to read some books that I could potentially teach in class in the future. And I definitely think that this is a good novel to teach.

I think a large reason this book works is because of how much time we spend we spend at Hailsham. Honestly, I think the first two parts of the book are a lot stronger than the last part. Growing up, I was always more interesting in the slice of life introductions of novels than the rest of the story, so I really appreciated how much of this was just stories about Kathy's life.

I cried at the end of this book. It really is beautiful. Idk it's hard to write about novels because I spend so much time with them and I don't know what to say.

Kristopher Triana continues to show me that a lot can be done in extreme horror without having to resort to senseless shock. It’s baffling to me that he’s friends with Aron Beauregard, because Kris is so much better at writing than he is.

I loved the romance, and I really liked that it wasn’t smutty. You’re told to read a romance book and your mind immediately goes to pork written for middle aged women, but Triana was very reserved here.

I wish it was longer, to be honest. I felt like there was a lot more room for their relationship to grow and develop beyond the 100 something pages we’re given. I’d love to see Triana write another horror novel or see this one adapted to film.

Overall, I’m glad I read this. I’m gonna take a break from horror for a bit because Playground and Endless Night took a lot out of me, but I’m glad I read this before that break.

Kristopher Triana might be my #1 author of all time.

I don't have much to say about this one. It was starting to grab me, but then she started eating people and all of the psychological manipulation just kinda went out the window. The first 200 pages or so are pretty awesome though, it's just a shame they through away all of the tension building for a rushed and rather pathetic ending.

Luckily, Kristopher would improve greatly in the next two years with Gone to See the River Man, a book that's paced perfectly and has a beautifully profound while still disturbing ending.