but my favorite part of this was the food descriptions.
unfortunately, the rest was extremely repetitiveof course i want to read about magic fox girls.
but my favorite part of this was the food descriptions.
unfortunately, the rest was extremely repetitive. we have two perspectives, one of a fox girl and the other of an aging investigator, both of which sound interesting and aren't. each perspective just follows its respective protagonist as they go from the same place to the next, looking for the same thing, unchanging in themselves or in the plot. i waited for this book to pick up and it never did.
the writing was also strange—a lot of moments where something would happen, and then it would be rhetorically referred to as if it didn't. a character spots another character, and then 2 sentences later, when he starts speaking to her: "he'd managed to find me after all." like, no, he just saw you. we just talked about that. "she'd used her patron's name, hoping it would open doors. which it had." okay, why did we have to say that then. it resulted in me going back and rereading a lot of paragraphs and getting frustrated.
the ending and romance came out of nowhere, after hundreds of pages of sexual harassment, but there were parts of this i enjoyed.
i just wish there were more of them.
bottom line: more foxes, more food, less weirdness.
(2.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)...more
the worst part of this romance book is the romance.
the best part of this book is: it's genre-bending. it's bantery. it's filled with unforgettable chathe worst part of this romance book is the romance.
the best part of this book is: it's genre-bending. it's bantery. it's filled with unforgettable characters and a cool flower shop and a lovely setting in harlem. it is unrealistic in literally every way but most of the time that is fine too.
but i didn't like the love story, which is insta, and which is the story. no matter what the surroundings i can never seem to get past that one trope. it is my kryptonite.
i had so much fun with the rest of this! but not with the biggest part.
honestly, reading this book prompted a lot of shouldn't haves.
cursed bunny is strange and fascinating and unpredia utopia? for me? you shouldn't have.
honestly, reading this book prompted a lot of shouldn't haves.
cursed bunny is strange and fascinating and unpredictable. this, by the same author, led me to expect a bizarre good time, but all of these stories — while striving for weird on the surface — were one-note and easy to anticipate.
some of them were in space, some were in the future, some were...well actually most of them were in one or the other, but all of them were about technology and society, and they had simple things to say.
after two story collections from chung, i'd be interested in a novel.
toni morrison books are like cookies (i tried and failed to have just one).
this is the second book in the beloved trilogy, and therefore i had to readtoni morrison books are like cookies (i tried and failed to have just one).
this is the second book in the beloved trilogy, and therefore i had to read it after beloved, or at least theoretically did the Right Thing in doing so, but i wish i was weird and random and quirky and read them out of order.
like beloved, this explores the aftermath of a striking act of violence among loved ones, with unique perspective and writing you have to work to earn the reward of understanding. but unlike beloved, its inspiration (the titular jazz) and its characters aren't for me, and i loved its predecessor so much that this was always going to be a tough sell.
i would follow the lines of a family for 300, 400, 500 pages. i've followed them for 800+! 240 pagei love family dramas.
this one just felt too short.
i would follow the lines of a family for 300, 400, 500 pages. i've followed them for 800+! 240 pages doesn't feel like enough to see the full dimensions of their dynamics, the traces of family they carry, to develop full characters i'll remember forever.
while there are moments of this that struck me, in truth there just weren't enough moments for this to stick with me.
my new favorite niche subgenre is japanese literary fiction about cats.
if my family group chat were run through a poetic writing machine, it'd be the my new favorite niche subgenre is japanese literary fiction about cats.
if my family group chat were run through a poetic writing machine, it'd be the dog version of this book.
this is 140 pages of obsession about a pet, which is excessively relatable to anyone who has ever sworn up and down their dog / cat / bird / whatever has a full and inarguable human personality if you just OBSERVE.
this is very lovely-ly written, but felt almost too relatable to me–almost to the point of bland/one note. also i caught myself comparing it to if cats disappeared from the world, which is an impossible standard.
but it was a good time!
bottom line: pets have personalities. that's it....more
magical dark academia horror about scary girls...it felt fated that i would like this book.
and i did. for a while.
in fact, i LOVED!!!! the first pagesmagical dark academia horror about scary girls...it felt fated that i would like this book.
and i did. for a while.
in fact, i LOVED!!!! the first pages of this — so atmospheric and intriguing, and unlike anything i'd read since ninth house, a book high i've been chasing for years.
unfortunately i do believe that 3 characters is too many to follow this closely and with unique points of view, that we embarked on our plot too quickly, and that there was so much gore and grossness and vomit as to reduce the impact of the ultimate climax.
similarly the ending was sweet, but these characters leaned too heavy into their stereotypes to be really memorable. that's what happens when we have too many to follow: we end up with The Rebel, The Witch, and The Nerd.
but contrary to all the complaining i just did...i'm going to follow this author.
bottom line: a lot of good! not enough. but a lot.
i was so excited to read this book, which is so many of my favorite things: women who spy! family drama! historical fiction about an under-discussed gi was so excited to read this book, which is so many of my favorite things: women who spy! family drama! historical fiction about an under-discussed geopolitical moment!
its purpose — to show WWII and the era leading up to it from the british- then japanese-ruled malaysian perspective — is excellent.
unfortunately, the way this book conveyed it undermined the message.
so much tragedy occurs here. violence of every type, deaths of multiple main characters, colonization, war, labor camps, comfort stations, racism, sexism, assaults, murders, torture. it's wrenching and difficult to read.
that isn't a con of this book, obviously. all of those things really happened, and the forgotten stories of the people that experienced it deserved to be told.
it's the fact that these don't feel like real people, or real stories. our characters kill people without regret. they see untold horrors and don't feel them. they keep unforgivable secrets, commit crimes, experience trauma, and give none of it a second thought. characters change from page to page, and motivations, development arcs, and things we hold to be true aren't consistently upheld.
there is nothing that will allow us to ground ourselves in order to really feel these stories as they deserve to be felt. a character who can't pick up a stick in one paragraph is running across a camp and doing his own stunts in the next. 4 people we've been following for hundreds of pages die within one chapter. these people do terrible things without the painful justification that would allow us to feel it alongside them.
bad things happen for no reason, to people who don't feel real—nor does their suffering, keeping us on the outside as one horrible scene after another unfolds.
bottom line: i am glad this story is being told. i wish it was better equipped to be shared.
this one's for all my true crime haters out there.
and also for my general haters out there. because i didn't like this book.
like s'mores, or the kind this one's for all my true crime haters out there.
and also for my general haters out there. because i didn't like this book.
like s'mores, or the kind of chocolate chip cookie that's currently popular where it's essentially grainy dough in the middle, this is a great concept that does not achieve what it sets out to. in the first two cases, it's to be yummy. in this case, it's to remind us that behind every garish crime headline, there are real people trying their best.
we are presented with a potential crime and some of the people that surround it: lucy, a lonely child who may have committed a murder; carmel, her distant onetime teen mom; richie, carmel's alcoholic brother; john, their withholding father; the specters of john's first and second wives; and tom, the journalist who's set out to write about all of them.
the goal of this book is to humanize this cast. and much like the outer bites of the aforementioned chocolate chip cookies, or the part of the s'mores process where you're toasting the marshmallow and you haven't yet undergone the gunky sticky textural nightmare eating of it, there are moments where it's very effective.
this is true of carmel's case. richie has moments of searing sympathy, too. but i felt equally left outside of lucy, john, rose, and tom by the conclusion as i did at the outset. we never get much insight into the first three, and what we do hear from tom happens early and contradicts itself often.
i like the intention here, which it shares with penance, a book i was very impressed by. but like the author's first novel, i think it fell a bit short.
bottom line: the disappointing cookie of books....more
Loading...
