Okay, look, this is a perfectly fine book! Katie Henry can write! She knows how to create a character and a world and populate it, her dialogue is solOkay, look, this is a perfectly fine book! Katie Henry can write! She knows how to create a character and a world and populate it, her dialogue is solid, her narrative is fine, and she can tell a story! But! She's too into religion! And it's boring! And fucking weird! I think a lot of what my review of Heretics Anonymous said applies here too: there's empathy and intelligence and teenagers questioning the world they've been handed, but in the end there's too much religious belief and too much confidence in that religious system.
Like, this knows LDS doctrine, it knows the church, and it even points out so much of what makes it such a sinister entity (same as the last book did with the Catholic Church) but in the end Ellis remains enthusiastically bound to a flawed system that would hate her for even questioning it and that's fucking depressing. She has an argument in a grocery story where she says the wrongs committed by her Mormon """ancestors""" including slaughter and child abduction are bad but because they were persecuted, it's "not a contest," and I just couldn't stop staring at those words and wondering how Tal who was there pointing out what evil the church had done was obviously supposed to go on and kiss this girl? Like, are you kidding me?
As mentioned in that other review, the romance here was unnecessary too, and also kind of cowardly to be honest. Ellis likes girls! She has to reckon with that! But don't worry, she's bisexual, so she'll just kiss a boy instead and that will be kind of the same because it's breaking church rules. Except for the part where the organizing body of her church is one of the most anti-Queer entities in the entire world. Lovely.
Also, she's so fucking snide about being from Berkeley at times. Like, bro sorry you were lucky enough to be born into one of the most liberal and well-educated cities in the US but your religion makes you feel icky about people having fun.
Anyway, Henry's writing is really so solid and it sucks that it's being wasted with a weird-ass hyperfixation on religion. What's next, a teenaged Scientologist that loves being isolated and not getting an education and being sent to Sea Org? Christ.
Merged review:
Okay, look, this is a perfectly fine book! Katie Henry can write! She knows how to create a character and a world and populate it, her dialogue is solid, her narrative is fine, and she can tell a story! But! She's too into religion! And it's boring! And fucking weird! I think a lot of what my review of Heretics Anonymous said applies here too: there's empathy and intelligence and teenagers questioning the world they've been handed, but in the end there's too much religious belief and too much confidence in that religious system.
Like, this knows LDS doctrine, it knows the church, and it even points out so much of what makes it such a sinister entity (same as the last book did with the Catholic Church) but in the end Ellis remains enthusiastically bound to a flawed system that would hate her for even questioning it and that's fucking depressing. She has an argument in a grocery story where she says the wrongs committed by her Mormon """ancestors""" including slaughter and child abduction are bad but because they were persecuted, it's "not a contest," and I just couldn't stop staring at those words and wondering how Tal who was there pointing out what evil the church had done was obviously supposed to go on and kiss this girl? Like, are you kidding me?
As mentioned in that other review, the romance here was unnecessary too, and also kind of cowardly to be honest. Ellis likes girls! She has to reckon with that! But don't worry, she's bisexual, so she'll just kiss a boy instead and that will be kind of the same because it's breaking church rules. Except for the part where the organizing body of her church is one of the most anti-Queer entities in the entire world. Lovely.
Also, she's so fucking snide about being from Berkeley at times. Like, bro sorry you were lucky enough to be born into one of the most liberal and well-educated cities in the US but your religion makes you feel icky about people having fun.
Anyway, Henry's writing is really so solid and it sucks that it's being wasted with a weird-ass hyperfixation on religion. What's next, a teenaged Scientologist that loves being isolated and not getting an education and being sent to Sea Org? Christ....more
Oh I just loved this! The illustrations are so beautiful and the story is so sweet; it makes me wish I had a kid in my life who needed a good bedtime Oh I just loved this! The illustrations are so beautiful and the story is so sweet; it makes me wish I had a kid in my life who needed a good bedtime story read to them and Watson's increasingly sleepy faces in the, "And since Watson wasn't sleepy..." insets were especially charming....more
DNF-ing at page 52 because to be quite honest the writing in this is just complete dog shit. The narrative voices are indistinguishable, the dialogue DNF-ing at page 52 because to be quite honest the writing in this is just complete dog shit. The narrative voices are indistinguishable, the dialogue is awful, and the whole thing feels unbelievably dated somehow. I hated the first one of these, but I guess it's been long enough that I forgot how much/why I hated it and boy was I punished for that. I didn't know gay sex could read just like the heterosexual slop I've stumbled into before, but I guess that's a lesson learned! Also ripping off the thingsmydickdoes guy's shtick was certainly a choice....more
This was fine! It was so low-stakes as to be pretty boring which isn't really my bag, but I know will make a lot of people happy and it's also likely This was fine! It was so low-stakes as to be pretty boring which isn't really my bag, but I know will make a lot of people happy and it's also likely that the issue of infertility and those potential consequences run throughout will feel higher stakes to different readers, but because this changes POV and we get very clear glimpses of the idea that those consequences aren't actually real in the way Suriya believes they are, the entire story amounts to a series of miscommunications designed to torture Suriya for seemingly no reason at all, especially since those fears ultimately don't even come to fruition.
I know that Omegaverse and mpreg type stuff is a fan fiction trope that has made it's way to publishing and I'm not particularly bothered by that, but to be quite honest I think it's one thing to have someone who writes something like this and puts it on the internet for free and to read that kind of thing and accept the precepts of the trope, but it's another thing to pay money for it and still end up with the same question: where does the poop go?
I respect the hustle and I respect the effort and this is a very sweet story that I think is vaguely trying to address the question by kind of out of nowhere explicitly introducing magic about 70% of the way through the book (and also doing a There Are Mysteriously Very Few Omegas Now type bit) but ultimately if I am paying for world-building, I just feel like handwaving the digestive track's intermingling with the reproductive one feels kind of goofy and distracting, especially when it's so clearly being written around because it knows it's nonsensical.
I'm not asking for extensive logic or the medical details of self-lubricating buttholes and anatomical drawings of where exactly the cervix is located -- human(oid) bodies are weird! there's a lot of room up in there for stuff to be going on -- but so many of these problems would be solved by giving omegas another hole and my wife wouldn't have to hear me plaintively drop my Kindle every night and go, "But where does the poop go?!" as though lamenting my seafaring husband lost to the icy waters of the Arctic....more
Fun as always and the art is just so lively and great, I haven't gotten bored of it yet!Fun as always and the art is just so lively and great, I haven't gotten bored of it yet!...more
I don't know how many times I can say I feel like I'm being grifted when I read Fitzpatrick's books... I guess as many times as she keeps publishing tI don't know how many times I can say I feel like I'm being grifted when I read Fitzpatrick's books... I guess as many times as she keeps publishing them, though I do hate to sound like a broken record. There's nothing wrong with them at all -- I don't fall anywhere on the side of the (apparently) average romance reader who is afraid of third person and terrified of present tense and apparently shuddering at the mere thought that a narrating character might be slightly hard to connect with -- so these books are actually pretty refreshing, especially after reading so much sports romance that makes their men miserable and angry.
David's fine! I think it's good that he's so easily read as neurodivergent and that the books still make it clear that he has friends and operates in the world just fine mostly, since that's how it is for so many of us, but I do think Fitzpatrick makes him cling to his fear too much, like it's a security blanket, and that ends up making him a lot more boring than he really is. Thankfully, the characters around him somehow continue to make up for that, and I was grateful to get more of them in this one, since it made for a more lively story and a sense that David will continue to grow and develop relationships beyond the pleasantly satisfying ending.
I know I'll buy another if she writes one, regardless of the universe, so I guess grifted, I will continue to be....more
Quitting this one at about sixty pages because my loan is up at the library and I just didn't really feel bad about that. I didn't love the tone of thQuitting this one at about sixty pages because my loan is up at the library and I just didn't really feel bad about that. I didn't love the tone of this, though some of the writing IS solid, so I went to read reviews (very unusual for me!) to see if my suspicions were correct and instead got completely different information that made me wildly disinterested in continuing.
To be honest I know in my heart that if this had been written in third person, I would have devoured it regardless of the bad reviews and my hesitancy about the tone, but there just is not enough here to make me drag myself through a first person narrative. It makes the whole thing feel lazy and juvenile and as always I just cannot imagine going to all the trouble of writing a whole entire book and blowing it (including a fantastic cover!) on first person....more
This was great! Really fantastic character design and art and a lovely, relatable well-articulated story that continues to feel relevant and timely, uThis was great! Really fantastic character design and art and a lovely, relatable well-articulated story that continues to feel relevant and timely, unfortunately....more
I liked this... enough? I guess? Technically I only read about half of it; I was so, so into the first section following Claire and then all the momenI liked this... enough? I guess? Technically I only read about half of it; I was so, so into the first section following Claire and then all the momentum and interest it had built was blown on a sudden transition through time and POV and I decided within about a hundred words that I simply Would Not Be Reading That, so I spent the rest of my time with the book scrolling through to get back to the Claire sections and in those sections I did find the writing to be lovely and engaging and moving and I wish very badly that the book had simply been about Claire and the life she led in spite of her fear and the wonderfully strange portrait that acted as a catalyst for everything in her life that followed. I think that book would have been a five star for me. This one is not....more
I had such a fun and unexpectedly emotional time with this. I was invested in the ride very much, but I did wonder how Gramazio was going to find her I had such a fun and unexpectedly emotional time with this. I was invested in the ride very much, but I did wonder how Gramazio was going to find her way out in the end and I was both surprised (because I had assumed a, perhaps, cheaper? or easier? ending) and pretty satisfied with it!...more
I thought this was really good initially and I do think it's extremely technically adept at blending real world references and the fictional ones (ColI thought this was really good initially and I do think it's extremely technically adept at blending real world references and the fictional ones (Columbine vs Cherry Creek etc) and having done some cursory googling, I also think Clark probably did a good enough job of using inspiration from other real life cases to develop the fictional elements -- there are a couple one star reviews that are REALLY angry about it but I don't really think it undercuts Clark's thesis here the way they do, but I also don't think she really has the thesis at all, so -- but by the end of it I just didn't quite understand what it was doing.
It was doing a good job of pointing out how scummy and gross the true crime industry is -- I care less about teenagers being fucking weird on the internet, teenagers have been fucking weird on the internet since the dawn of the internet and have obsessed about the same weird stuff off the internet well before that, so a lot of the time spent on that part felt wildly wasted to me -- but the podcasts and writers and tv shows and Netflix all making mad money off of the suffering of real people? That deserves the scrutiny and the shame that I thought using the fake book and the fake author and the interview at the end would bring, but instead it fumbled what had been well established with, like, cartoon villainy in that last interview. Like, we already know the people in the book felt misled enough to become litigious about it, why even include the interview? Why not have the article wrapping up what the families said and say Carelli responded to the request for an interview with, "Fuck off." It just felt so strange to have it presented as badgering this guy who has nothing to say except the phrase "emotional truth" or whatever and expecting the reader to get something from that.
I don't really know how to articulate what was so disappointing about the whole thing, but I feel like it just falls apart under the most gentle scrutiny. I'm a true crime hater, back to the days when all the true crime there was was like, America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries and maybe Court TV and watching it turn into a huge exploitative industry has been genuinely distressing and gross to me and I thought this was going to give me something satisfying about that but it just-- didn't....more
This was very much one of those stereotypical contemporary novels where nothing really happens and it feels like there's no real reason for the readerThis was very much one of those stereotypical contemporary novels where nothing really happens and it feels like there's no real reason for the reader to be witnessing it, the narrator just listing events as they happen and the author, presumably, hoping their audience will eke out some kind of meaning that way. As much as that's not something I'm generally interested in reading, Grattan managed to keep me here with some exceptionally lovely writing and page count of less than 300 pages and some days that's all you can really ask for....more
Another very solid entry that felt much more coherent than volume eight. I think the best things about these books are really the frank and easy way tAnother very solid entry that felt much more coherent than volume eight. I think the best things about these books are really the frank and easy way the characters talk to each other, regardless of how close they might actually be, like Esther dragging Ed out for drinks is obviously serving a little bit of a plot purpose, but it's also just fun to see characters who aren't afraid to actively engage their friends into a deeper kind of friendship. It's fun to be a little overbearing!...more
This took me so, so long to read because large swathes of it are almost indecipherable if you don't already know like, a lot, about this era of politiThis took me so, so long to read because large swathes of it are almost indecipherable if you don't already know like, a lot, about this era of politics -- which I do, actually -- but even that could not make it coherent enough to stay immersed in. I have read quite a few older queer novels, stuff mostly from the 80s and 90s, that use a totally, freely omniscient POV, which is honestly very weird and I'd like a paper about it -- is it queer stuff in particular? I know it was a little bit vogue for a while, but it just seems so common... someone has to have had a thesis by now, right? -- but this was far and away harder to follow than any other one I've read, partially because that POV has been out of style for so long and is genuinely difficult to remember how to parse when you've spent all those years reading much tighter POVs but also specifically because this book is so hellbent on being true to the era that it's like reading another language.
Anyway, this felt very 2007 once I saw that was when it was published and very of the gay misery of the era. I probably would've DNF-ed because it's so clearly Mallon just exorcising his own obsession with the politicking of the time, but the horny Catholic guilt and the often extremely overwrought but still lovely writing kept me hanging on. For more than a month! Insane!
Honestly, I think you could rip the entire middle out of this book and get the point -- no one gets a happy ending, everyone settles -- and I sort of wish I had quit despite how much I highlighted and saved. I wish this book had used Tim and Mary's friendship as the real throughline it so desperately wanted to be because I think there's a really lovely, coherent version of this story that follows their intersecting and intertwining lives even through all the meaningless minutiae Mallon is so desperate to foist on his readers that would have been so impactful and I am going to be sad for such a long time thinking about not getting it.
Frankly the most insulting thing of all to me about this book is that when I borrowed it, I didn't know it was a miniseries or whatever and so I read Hawk and Tim meeting and it was so charming and engaging and then I saw someone mention the show and I'm supposed to believe Matt Bomer could pull off the Hawkins Fuller that lives in this book? Matt Bomer? Get the fuck out of here....more
Oh this was lovely. The writing is very sharp and very spare and yet still able to articulate the awful mess of being a teenager both externally and iOh this was lovely. The writing is very sharp and very spare and yet still able to articulate the awful mess of being a teenager both externally and internally and so good at taking Lulu from a character we think we know and judge preemptively to one we actually know and like and care about. I don't see myself in Lulu or the people that surround her (though like Romanoff I grew up fifteen minutes/an hour in traffic from the beach in LA) this is one of the first renderings of growing up that felt something like it did for me, that horrible moment when you realize you're not really the person you want to be for the first time and the first stirrings of hope that you can be, even if you don't really know who that person is yet. I loved the scene with Lulu and Bea in the grocery story and all the fluttery feelings Lulu had for Cass that felt so much like what it's like to be young and that even in it's most awful, frustrating moments, the story continues to be about agency and what it means to claim it for yourself when you've made so much of your own passivity.
Maybe the feminism is heavy-handed! Maybe the rich white patriarchy bad guy is a little bludgeoning! Maybe the Bluebeard metaphor runs a little hammy! But maybe that's just an extension of what being a teenager is like, when everything is obvious and embarrassing but you still convince yourself you're cool and aloof and subtle.
Anyway, this was great! Can't wait to go put holds on whatever else Romanoff has written....more
I had high hopes for this after enjoying Acker's first book, but I just ended up not liking it at all. The grit and grime that Acker clearly sees as hI had high hopes for this after enjoying Acker's first book, but I just ended up not liking it at all. The grit and grime that Acker clearly sees as his shtick felt so forced -- he's kind of obsessed with being gross which I get! Teenage boys are gross! But it never feels ~authentic or maybe it's so authentic that it crosses into feeling phony, like the Tiffany Problem of being obsessed with your intestines or something -- and neither of the leads were as compelling as they were so clearly meant to be.
The writing was wildly repetitive in a way I don't remember The Long Run being, the villain(s) feel like caricatures with no basis in reality, like un-killable horror movie bad guys except gay and mean, everyone is so insanely dramatic it's almost unbearable, and by the end I don't really understand why any of these kids are interested in each other as people at all.
Characters kept saying things like, "We're in New Jersey," whenever someone was surprised by homophobia in what, I assume, is supposed to be a contemporary story and it was kind of baffling to me? The way and frequency and volume with which these queer kids are treated by the homophobic dickheads around them are like, what I got hit with in high school in the early 2000s. Is Jersey in some kind of time warp I'm unaware of? Are we just supposed to know that it's, what? Like, the most homophobic place on the eastern seaboard?
Also, the writing felt so juvenile on a technical level, mix of all caps, italics, and bold was so bad -- coming from someone whose Livejournal interests used to include 'the difference between bold, italics, and caps in textually rendered dialogue' -- and while I know a sixteen year old boy probably would think of it as 'cum,' as the author, you get to decide the grammar of the book and it seems crazy to me to kneecap your story by making it so sloppy and embarrassing. The characters are already embarrassing, teenagers are inherently embarrassing, they don't need the author's help, you know?
I will, however, be thinking about, "I don't miss my baby teeth," for a long time even though I thought it lost its punch when it came back around.
Anyway, most of all this made me grateful I'm old. I'm glad it's better for kids and that even in our political hellscape, things seem to continue to improve in many ways, but frankly I'm glad I grew up when we were all considered depraved faggots and dykes and all the other queer kids were your allies, if not your friends, even if you thought the way they were queer sucked or whatever because everyone hated us the same anyway....more
I truly just do not know what to think of these books. This one had the same sort of 12 year old new vegetarian lecture tone with the, "Well of courseI truly just do not know what to think of these books. This one had the same sort of 12 year old new vegetarian lecture tone with the, "Well of course there aren't any leaders, that would just end in corruption," kind of stuff and the long passages of descriptive world-building that weren't particularly interesting, but because Dex and Mosscap's relationship developed (and got kind of romantic tbqh!), that became more compelling than simply being in Dex's quarter-life crisis interior. I thought the conversation on the beach at the end was also a pretty sweet and satisfying place to end my time with these characters.
Honestly the most baffling thing about these books to me is that they're intended for adults, I guess? They have a real children's parable tone but then Dex will be like, real horny out of nowhere and the juxtaposition was just very funny.
Oh wait, also, if the luddite beach people were going to react badly to a robot and shun it, why the fuck would you take your friend there? I thought like, oh they probably talked about it and Mosscap was like, 'Oh no, Sibling Dex, I must experience all the colors of the emotional rainbow in reaction to my existence!' but no Dex just didn't talk to Mosscap about it at all until they were already there? What the fuck was the point of that? Even if you wanted to let the one beach person be kind and have this dramatic moment with the dying fish (Yes, Becky, people do eat lambs and lambs are very cute, we get it.) why in the fuck would you do it at the cost of making Dex look like a complete thoughtless asshole when they haven't been before? Just let Mosscap want to go there anyway? Obviously? Absolutely BONKERS authorial decision that made me put the book down for a day lmao.
ALSO, fisherman don't let fish die like that, they club or spike them because letting them suffocate is unnecessarily cruel. But again, 12 year old vegetarian hours over here, so why expect anything else....more
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