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sometimes i wish i could shut off copyeditor mode when i read because otherwise i notice shit like "webcomic episode 4" being timestamped later in the day than "webcomic episode 5" when they're clearly chronological, and then i'm mildly annoyed. but despite "messy/anxious white MC meets magical butch of asian descent" immediately reminding me of casey mcquiston's one last stop (which i started the year with), the dialogue was definitely on the better side here. i didn't even feel like shaking any of the characters by the shoulders, which probably means the miscommunication and misunderstandings common in this genre weren't as offensive as they could've been, and i thought ellie's anxieties were portrayed fairly gracefully (though some in my book club found the constantness grating).

club gripes included loose ends, angry brown tertiary characters, inheritance tax, and only surface-level mentions of korean heritage. i was stuck around the 75-80% progression mark for weeks for some reason and i wasn't really sure what that meant, besides delaying getting into the conflict pages (or prioritizing watching exciting new episodes of television, ahem arcane).

stray note: the author commissioned some gorgeous story-related art from venessa vida kelley that had us wishing that had been the cover instead.

oh, i just don't know about this one. this was a book club read for spooky month, it didn't keep my interest enough for me to finish it before the meeting, and then book club meeting came and went, and i still took forever to finish it afterward. this was disjointed (at first i thought it was the audiobook narration and swapped to hard copy, but no, it was the choppy and overly convoluted writing), and weird shit would happen without giving me a reason to care why. so there's a racist old white lady haunting the house, and all the food is rotting on purpose, and colonialism is bad, and the MC is bi and closeted, cool. i guess we're supposed to root for the MC to make it out of there intact? was that it? if we were supposed to have takeaways about rekindling family connections among the various threads in the novel, that was not executed well.

i somehow ended up simultaneously reading two books by debut authors about bi, viet american teenage girls visiting vietnam (the other being she is a haunting) and i think maybe i shouldn't have because i started to get small details mixed up between the two titles despite the different genres. there are orchids in front of this house, hydrangeas in front of the other. this mother works long hours in a nail salon, this other mother used to sleep alone in one. loads of food references in both. whoops.

a bánh mì for two is pretty fluffy, maybe a tad saccharine; the book itself has a flowery pink fore-edge design that reflects its vibe. the story ends up basically being a series of cute dates between the MCs, with a premise vaguely tacked on. the surface-level family and culture details are generally fine, but the other ones are fairly thin: lan works her family's bánh mì stand that regularly has long lines that "wrap around the neighborhood," but vivi happens to stop by one morning (four chapters later) and it's slow enough that lan just leaves right then and there (and there's no indication má or triết are also present to hold down the fort, but it's also made a big deal that lan works hard so her mom doesn't have to, and the cart is their whole livelihood, and so on). vivi and cindy somehow end up doing their first semester of college abroad (which is already strange and unusual) but are only ever really stationed at their dorm that's right across from lan's bánh mì cart. they don't go to class, except that one time vivi can't stay out too late because she has "class in the morning" and that other time she supposedly attends courses but can't focus all day. and i have to really squint to accept that vivi ends up in a completely different location for study abroad than she told her parents because in this world, you can avoid alerting them while having them sign a bunch of paperwork, going to the embassy, getting a student visa, and using the same SIM card (i assume)/calling them from abroad without incurring roaming costs. the whole lying subplot i didn't pay too much attention to as a result. am i an overthinking party pooper? why do i do this to YA novels? should i stop reading YA, or have the last bunch i've read just been unrealistic in the name of fiction?

my biggest gripe was how the author seemed to have scenes visualized in her head, but often failed to give stage directions, so the characters became unmoored from their gorgeous surroundings. one second they're having a conversation at the café, the next they're on a motorbike with no transition. vivi fidgets with the spoon. (what spoon? the one in lan's egg coffee?) lan walks into her house sopping wet and dripping puddles everywhere after somehow riding a scooter through knee-high stormwater, then sits on some furniture and flops onto her mattress. (or you do you, i guess.) they take their shoes off on wet concrete on a rooftop and fall sideways onto a presumably dry picnic blanket(?). my editor brain would do this: instead of going straight from dialogue in the café to "i help vivi hop onto my motorbike, our fingers brushing against each other," i'd change it to "when i help vivi hop onto my motorbike, our fingers brush against each other." way less jarring, and a small hint that we've jumped forward in time. i'm not saying i need to have my hand held as a reader to imagine—just try not to give me whiplash.

finally, i really don't know about stuffing nearly all of the book's conflict and reconciliation into the last fifty pages, complete with contrived lovers' quarrel. it was kind of a relief to have the inevitable all out in the open at last, but it felt rushed and over too soon. some pretty big life decisions get made in just a short chapter or two.

i definitely wanted to like this! too bad it was disjointed and hard to follow in parts. my notes above don't even really get into the "major" family arcs/character development. i was somewhat aware things were moving along in a certain direction but the reading experience just felt so scattered.

dnf as the first couple rotations of POVs with character backstories weren't that compelling to me. i even tried listening to the audiobook on 1.25x speed while also reading to keep me on track (at least the narrator's use of accents helped distinguish the cast a bit?), and finally gave up and very roughly skimmed the rest of the book, only slowing down for scenes where emilie and josefa got stuck in tight spaces together, inches apart, or were practicing calligraphy on each other (wow romantic).

eh, i don't know. i was thinking i'm just not in the right mood for this right now, but the last heist book i tried was portrait of a thief, which was similarly ambitious yet lacking. i guess outlining character motivations and skill sets for this kind of plot—and not relying too heavily on suspension of disbelief—is pretty difficult. i still plan on giving adiba jaigirdar's other works a try, likely after rani choudhury must die is released.

was juggling three books at once (this, space politics, and horny queers fighting zombies) and this was the lightest fare and the narration was fun. (and i don't even like/drink coffee) turns out this homebody really enjoyed the soft, cozy companionship and reno projects. the cast is very sweet and tender 🥹 i wanna be friends with viv and tandri and cal and thimble 🥺 also lol at all the other characters commenting on viv's obliviousness regarding a certain someone.

if you liked these, you'll like this: disney's mulan (1998), monstrous regiment by terry pratchett, and the legend of the condor heroes franchise (teenage me was mildly obsessed with one of the television adaptations and even accumulated most if not all of the manhua volumes, even though to this day i still haven't read either the wuxia novel or the manhua, oops). anything with a roving band of bantering adventurers in wartime, really, but especially if loyalties aren't straightforward.

this novella came up as a passing mention in book club a little while back, and now that i've read it, i'm compelled to hunt down more of zen cho's works. maybe spirits abroad, first, then black water sister? (after i make my way through my current library stack.)

stray thoughts:

• it baffles me how anyone could think this took place in tang dynasty china (per a zen cho interview in locus). even if it's got fantasy elements, it's very specifically southeast asian.
• i meant to write a bit about the english translation for the night of baba yaga and how i thought sam bett did a good job of deciding what to translate, what to put in romaji, and what to give footnotes for, but even though this wasn't translated, i had similar thoughts about the use of malay phrases (and some sentence structure quirks in dialogue) throughout. i had google in my pocket, but most meanings i could pick up from context. not all writers do this well, so i wanted to make note of it.
• it was a quick and relatively easy read, but i still kept going over the same paragraphs again and again, brain empty. not sure what to make of that.
• like my previous read, this is definitely queer but i really hesitate to drill down more or call any character this or that. i'm cringing at some goodreads reviews that assign identities to some of the cast; god forbid we have nuance or context?