this may seem like a beach read, but it's actually a fantasy novel about a millennial who is able to live in a major city, own a home in california, ethis may seem like a beach read, but it's actually a fantasy novel about a millennial who is able to live in a major city, own a home in california, eat takeout every night, and take luxury vacations on a copywriter's salary.
to which i say: lol.
by far the best part of this was the food descriptions.
everything else was mediocre to bad, ranging from silly characters to silly plots to silly writing (for example, trying to describe how time moves slower in this setting and saying "Everything was longer in Italy. Even time," when in fact time is the only thing being described).
on top of that, this is the perfect romance for all those readers out there who prefer their love interests to take advantage of drunk and/or weeping and/or mid-mental breakdown women.
dreamy!
bottom line: i want a cold glass of wine and a tomato-based appetizer in a seafront restaurant now, the lack of possibility of which will be the second way this book disappoints me.
at no point was i able to tell where this book was going.
and at no point did i really want to.
at the very beginning of this book, you think you have mat no point was i able to tell where this book was going.
and at no point did i really want to.
at the very beginning of this book, you think you have met your male lead, due to the fact there is banter happening and an allegedly good-looking man is present. but then you read about a series of unfortunate events, of the X-rated variety rather than of the charming evil children's book category i prefer, and you're like, never mind. can't be him. he's bad at sex.
but it is.
it is him.
and the romance in question will come to fruition (if you'll forgive the disgusting and accidental pun) as our female lead teaches him how to, you know. hanky panky. get the car rockin' so you don't come a-knockin'. attend a session of sexual congress. knock boots. delight in the afternoon.
whatever you want to call it.
unfortunately, even in the face of these bizarre and frankly undesirable circumstances, i found these characters to be the unthinkable: boring. and it turns out that is kind of an important part of a romance book. or maybe a book in general.
on top of that, i found all of the morals around this arrangement to be pretty off-putting and blah. fairly immediately, because i forgot to mention that finn (the guy) is a c-list (generous) celebrity writing a memoir (okay) that we are supposed to pretend anyone would care about (they would not) and it is ghostwritten by chandler (the girl) (his employee), the ol' mind palace jumps to oh, this is sexual harassment.
no matter how shy or freckly or Old World Charming he is, your boss asking you in a shared hotel / airbnb situation to teach him how to hanky panky is...pretty high on the Icky And Illegal charts, no?
even later, once these two are In Love, their conversations veer into a new grosso dynamic i like to call You Should Follow Your Dreams And Stand Up For Yourself, But Not With Me Tho.
because don't worry — chandler decides to chase her dreams and write books of her own. she just inexplicably decides to finish this one, even though it will mean a lifetime of lying, first.
generally and beyond all of that insanity, there's a lot we're trying to accomplish here—social issues we attempt to address range from aging parents and ocd and anti-semitism to bullying and hollywood and Finding Your Passion.
none of it is discussed satisfyingly or fully, or even in a very fun or interesting or non-"what is happening what are we doing here" way.
but that's par for the course.
bottom line: not even one moment of this made sense to me.
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc / 1.5 stars)...more
sure, this book is pretty ridiculous, and all of its lines of dialogue feel like punch-ups on a netflix show written by millennials about gen z, and tsure, this book is pretty ridiculous, and all of its lines of dialogue feel like punch-ups on a netflix show written by millennials about gen z, and there's an unnecessary love triangle, and all of the characters are pure evil or worse, annoying, and it's inexplicably and clumsily written from the point of view of a teenage boy who is forced to learn a lesson about how Women Are People Too at the end à la an after-school special or a video you'd watch in health class...
sure, become a mermaid because of the weight of bigotry in the world...but do you have to be SO DRAMATIC about it.
i loved the idea of this book so mucsure, become a mermaid because of the weight of bigotry in the world...but do you have to be SO DRAMATIC about it.
i loved the idea of this book so much (satirical ish literary horror about a swimming star who chooses to become a mermaid because of the weight of misogyny and homophobia and racism), but the execution...not so much!
the language felt sloppy and imprecise in that hard-to-define underedited-debut way, and despite being categorized as a horror novel i would say only one scene really qualified as such.
otherwise it tended more toward melodrama and hit-you-over-the-head themes and arguments. here's an example, when our protagonist has recently sustained a head injury and is conspicuously refusing to answer her doctor's very normal question (how's the pain): "He misunderstood.
How was I supposed to differentiate between the pain due to the concussion and the pain due to the agony of everyday human life?"
yikes.
if i am being fully honest—and to the eternal chagrin of myself, my loved ones, and the world around me, i usually am—this was annoying and boring. in our main character, in the frustrating writing, and in how obvious and repetitive all the themes are.
i cannot stand being talked down to as a reader, especially for themes as simple as "bigotry abounds."
bottom line: my biggest, hardest NOPE in a while!...more
give me a group of losers with tragic backstories striking out on their own and building banter alongthere is no trope i love more than found family.
give me a group of losers with tragic backstories striking out on their own and building banter along the way? i'm in heaven.
that's what this book is ostensibly about. i saw the synopsis (four misfits on the run) and simply thought...goals.
but it's as if there was no love there.
i feel like we reallytruly got to know 2 men who hate women as they make one extremely gross and convoluted exception apiece, but the aforementioned one-gal-each ration of women doesn't seem to get in on the lovefest.
bought a book because it was cheap and pretty again...
and this time, the expression "don't judge a book by its cover" won.
i've read a lot of books expbought a book because it was cheap and pretty again...
and this time, the expression "don't judge a book by its cover" won.
i've read a lot of books exploring the relationship between mother and daughter recently, and i've read a lot of literary fiction that dares to be difficult lately, and the setup of both of those comparisons was to this book's detriment.
it wasn't necessarily terrible, in and of itself, but it wasn't memorable, and it didn't hold up in the lineup.
to be honest, i started writing mini reviews for each story, but then eventually i realized i felt the exact same way about each one.
which was that ito be honest, i started writing mini reviews for each story, but then eventually i realized i felt the exact same way about each one.
which was that i didn't like them.
i have something i do not want to say, and i do not know how to say, and i wish i did not have to say, but it is the difficult to pin down point that all of my feelings on this book revolve around, so:
this has that certain je-ne-sais-quoi Debut writing style. kind of overwritten. kind of cliché. kind of nonsensical, like not every sentence connects to the next. kind of trying to be impressive. kind of giving the same vibe as, like, instagram poetry.
unfortunately, i decided i didn't like this book early, and despite my best efforts and the fact that stories began to be slightly different from each other, all of them continued to value drama and impressive writing over characters or story or themes or relatability or sense.
y'know. the little things.
bottom line: it should be illegal for me to dislike a book with a cover like that.
(thanks to the publisher for the copy)
--------------------- tbr review
a weird dark collection of lit fic stories exploring women's grief?? yeah. i'm interested...more
if you've ever wanted to read a sciencey, quirky romance filled with tumblr-esque pop culture references and toddler-age memes about a huge, serious, if you've ever wanted to read a sciencey, quirky romance filled with tumblr-esque pop culture references and toddler-age memes about a huge, serious, no-nonsense dickwad man who manages to have gleaming abs and marvel-esque biceps despite being a nerd who ostensibly lives inside of a laboratory, lifting nothing heavier than chalk and bunsen burners, as he meets a goofy not-like-other-girls Woman In Stem whose various traumas and backstories and mildly inconvenient past relationships mean she's searching for a daddy to daughter her up looking for love in all the wrong places, i.e., not looking at all because she doesn't need a man, only science, bad internal dialogue, and her own personality (read: allotted ration of problematic personal relationships, adorkable food obsessions, and single nerdy non-academic interest), plus a sex scene or two that will include at least one turn of phrase cursed to sear into your retinas for the rest of time...
the most wicked, evil, devious part of this thriller was the romance.
for a long time i couldn't decide if this was overwritten or underedited. plot twthe most wicked, evil, devious part of this thriller was the romance.
for a long time i couldn't decide if this was overwritten or underedited. plot twist: the answer is it's both!
there's just too much information in here, and very little of it is necessary. on top of that there's the writing-based stuff: many instances of the same word being used in back to back sentences (one of my hundreds of pet peeves), plus the overall sense that this was written at a desk with an open thesaurus on it...
this was an incredible premise that overcommitted and underdelivered, offering disappointing characters who treat each other terribly, no development, and a disappointing plot.
and again, just about the worst romance i've ever read. negative chemistry. terrible influences on each other. continually calling each other ugly and/or terribly personality'd in their truest and most internal thoughts.
bottom line: the horror.
(thanks to netgalley for the e-arc)
--------------- tbr review
selecting the single mystery/thriller book i'll read this year...more
i have a good feeling about this one, she says for the infinitieth time
update: well.
i wanted to like this book. in fact, i was convinced i would, due i have a good feeling about this one, she says for the infinitieth time
update: well.
i wanted to like this book. in fact, i was convinced i would, due to the following factors: 1) it seems like i haven't liked a romance in a while, which is unfair, and life is supposed to be kind and sweet and nice to me always; 2) i have liked other books by this author, or actually one other book, in the singular, which is still more than most can say; and 3) i wanted to.
but alas. apparently — and this is news to me — i don't make the rules???
huh.
regardless, this was immediately girl hatey, in an insane, like, 2000s level, toward not one but two women! the only other two women, in fact, who exist in the first chapter at all and aren't our protagonist.
which is kind of a feat, if you think about it.
on top of that, while there were moments when this was funny and even charming, it wasn't ever close to enough to overcome the terrible beginning or how unlikable our main characters are.
good god, those main characters! hallie piper (oof) is a not-like-other-girls lab-created disaster whose only two personality traits are having red hair and getting on my nerves. she is, apparently, immediately Special, not like these Dumb Other Women, and is also hot, which is where the tragedy occurs.
she attracts the attention of a straight-up nightmare monster. but sadly this not descend into a gory horror bloodbath. she lives happily ever after with the gruesome figment we meet in chapter one.
he is our love interest, jack.
he objectifies. he harasses. he doesn't take no for an answer. he repeatedly deliberately sabotages a relationship his so-called best friend is really excited about, via childish antics and blind entitlement.
he is, worst of all, boring.
i'm forced to say it. this book has a 4.04 average rating, but it's cringey, outdated, unromantic, silly, creepy, and weird.
so here we are again. here it is:
bottom line: i'm back in my unpopular opinion era.
when i first saw this book, i was filled with a personality-changing, life-defining, character-destroying rage. HOW COULD THEY NOT TELL ME ABOUT THIS when i first saw this book, i was filled with a personality-changing, life-defining, character-destroying rage. HOW COULD THEY NOT TELL ME ABOUT THIS BOOK, i demanded of a THEY that does not exist. WHY DID NO ONE SEE FIT TO INFORM ME OF ITS EXISTENCE, i followed up, also of the nameless THEY that had swiftly become my enemy.
but it turns out that the enemy i thought was my enemy was actually my friend.
not telling me about this book is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. and because no one told me about this book, everyone in the world is, it turns out, actually nice.
so the good news is we can probably have world peace now.
the bad news is: this book sucks.
the first installment of this series was very fun. it had several things that made it that way — mainly a sick and lovely new-england-in-the-fall boarding-school-yay setting and a fun original mystery from History.
those things are no longer here.
over the four (!) books since that first promising start, those things have slowly faded, and they have been replaced with a series of nightmares.
the things that made this series good were not here, and the things that made this series bad — our protagonist stevie's never-progressing identical character arc, side character david as a presence, david as a romantic lead, stevie in general, the attempts at emotion — were here in spades!
and to prove it, this book, WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE FIFTH BOOK IN WHAT IS ALLEGEDLY A MYSTERY SERIES, had a cliffhanger centered around the romance that i, as indicated, ABHOR.
a cliffhanger that acts as a warning not to continue...interesting tactic.
and yet, sadly, i will probably just keep reading these, continuing to grow the hate in my heart like a reverse grinch.
bottom line: i love everyone and i hate this book.
well. i thought i was back in my magical realism era.
i have been having a lot of success lately with Experimental Literary Fiction About Mothers And Dwell. i thought i was back in my magical realism era.
i have been having a lot of success lately with Experimental Literary Fiction About Mothers And Daughters, and since the synopsis implies that this book is literally exactly that, i thought we had a success on our hands.
also, look at that cover.
but spoiler alert, we did not! this book had 900 half-baked side plots, from stray dogs to greek retellings to lexicography to weird made up language words to Alzheimer's to OH MY GOD NO WAY PLEASE TELL ME THAT ISN'T WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT, and then also just about no time spent on that.
this started off frustrating and ultimately became annoying! and over the course of my life, i have been an eldest sibling, a teacher's pet, an introvert, and a hater.
i don't do well with being annoyed.
bottom line: weird! and not in the way i'm a fan of....more
this committed the biggest crime than a romance can commit: it isdoing the unthinkable (reading a booktok book)...
and receiving my karmic retribution.
this committed the biggest crime than a romance can commit: it is not fun!!!
there is literally no tension here. these people fell in love in 2 days, ten years pass, they are still in love with each other and there is no obstacle. not even a miscommunication. not even a separation. not even a trope.
the love interest is so perfect and boring. i thought this would have some SPICE to it. some BANTER. but no. the dialogue is unforgivable.
keep the jesse eisenberg interview out of your mouth...do not mention andrew garfield x chicken shop girl...chris evans is also boring but even the gq article this steals its entire plot from is more interesting than this.
bottom line: making fiction more of a snooze than life is almost impossible. this achieves that and also makes it look easy....more
i truly believe, from the bottom of my heart, that at any given time i could make a fortune via heists and scams.
i also believe i could do it with a hi truly believe, from the bottom of my heart, that at any given time i could make a fortune via heists and scams.
i also believe i could do it with a hell of a lot of more charm and likability than every character in this book combined.
welcome to the fraud squad, a work of fiction following the lives of the worst people in the world.
i was excited for this book because i love schemes and misadventures and i hate capitalism, but these people are the worst. and not even the worst due to the usual character crimes, like "they annoy me" or "i personally do not care for them," which are, as we all know, unforgivable. the worst for their actual behavior!
in all honesty none of the so-called "villains," who are uniformly shunned / condemned / thrown into an old-timey cellar to perish by the end of the book, do anything worse than the main characters. you know, the ones we're supposed to support and root for and like.
and honestly i think they actually are better! they have, at least, traceable motivations, and sometimes even show regret or a hint of character development, something none of our main characters can even begin to claim. our protagonist in particular got off unbearably easy for lying to everyone, being very shallow, using her boyfriend, being entitled, treating her mom terribly, and actively competing in the world's worst friend competition.
but what do i know.
bottom line: this wasn't what i expected. or what it said it would be.
the thing about this book is that it is, ostensibly, a romance. we are all, by reading it, agreeing to a social contract in which we will receive apprthe thing about this book is that it is, ostensibly, a romance. we are all, by reading it, agreeing to a social contract in which we will receive approximately 300 pages covering life's grandest topic: two randos deciding they like each other more than anyone else on earth.
fun stuff. just one problem:
these people do not like each other. and i do not like them either.
they're always yelling at each other in, like, various states of undress. in between taking turns completing gratuitous acts of charity-level kindness while monster people look on and criticize them and/or innocent bystanders.
it's absurdly unrealistic, but, far more offensively, it's annoying.
i read books i don't love all the time and i never have a problem finishing them. until now! this was a nightmare to get through.
bottom line: a book unpleasant enough to make me write an actual review.
"darkly humorous, surprisingly poignant, and utterly gripping"...me when i lie!
in some ways, i feel bad for this book, which has been totally mismarke"darkly humorous, surprisingly poignant, and utterly gripping"...me when i lie!
in some ways, i feel bad for this book, which has been totally mismarketed...but in more ways, i feel bad for me, because i had to pick this up and hate every second of it.
and also, i had to both discover a dream job (this is about a guy who works in hell trying to get people to sell their souls to the devil!) and have it stolen from me (this is very boring) in one fell swoop.
that is life-changing, tragic-past, mean-guy-in-romance-novel-revealing-his-backstory level trauma.
i thought i was getting a goofy book about hell, à la the good place or layoverland, and instead i got roughly 7 pages of that and then 900 chapters of teenage trauma and pedophilia, respectively.
two plotlines i thought would be be at least related, if not interesting, that managed to be neither.
bottom line: the real hell was the book we read along the way.
this book contains two affairs, an entire friend group swinging, multiple breakups, marriage-threatening behavior, blackmail, company-wide food poisonthis book contains two affairs, an entire friend group swinging, multiple breakups, marriage-threatening behavior, blackmail, company-wide food poisoning, secret exes, long-term deception, and, in the worst sin of all, one person having to cook dinner for everyone AND do the dishes.
and no one gets mad at each other even once.
WHERE is the DRAMA??!
perhaps this is because of our protagonist, O Perfect One.
O Perfect One catches her husband graphically cheating on her, WITH HER MENTEE, at their SHARED WORKPLACE, and she is never anything but nice to that girl. including in that exact moment.
she IMMEDIATELY and COMPLETELY forgives said husband, and so in spite of reconnecting with the Love Of Her Life approx 17 pages into the story, she doesn't even THINK about him until after he was already unfaithful and she STILL is tormented by guilt because of her perfect true-north moral compass.
and least relatable of all, she cooks everyone stir fry on the first night of vacation AND washes the dishes and wineglasses when they go to sleep with not even 1 bad thought.
this book is so f*cking boring.
everyone is okay with everything!
it's ostensibly about swinging and about affairs, but it's uncomplex, cartoonish, and ill-conceived, so we land squarely in snooze city.
bottom line: i honestly don't know how you make a book that sounds this interesting this moment-to-moment boring.
in order to believe this book is anything other than disturbing for disturbing's sake, you have to buy into its worldview even a little.
and i don't!
i in order to believe this book is anything other than disturbing for disturbing's sake, you have to buy into its worldview even a little.
and i don't!
i just don't see the world this way, i don't believe that humans are this unendingly susceptible to propaganda and unempathetic in their hearts.
it feels like a creative writing 101 allegory to me - oh, factory farming is bad, so let's make animals replaced with humans and then people will REALIZE it's bad! it's neither necessary nor new nor altogether an accurate metaphor.
this got more and more difficult for me to read not because it's grotesque and awful and ugly, but because it's, to me, very silly!
and at the end, only more so!
i'm sorry but i don't think cannibalism is the same as carnivore-ism and i never will :) not even for the sake of a thrown together literary horror.
bottom line: i disliked a cool girl book. who am i. (besides not cool, which has been obvious since the day of my birth.)
---------------- currently-reading updates
quick word of advice:
i picked this one up to start during my lunch break today.
don't do that.
---------------- tbr review
don't mind me, just adding another hot girl book to my to-read list...more
I have a sort of whimsy to me, I never want to grow up, I am naturally suited to leading a ragtag group of I'm like the Peter Pan of being unpleasant.
I have a sort of whimsy to me, I never want to grow up, I am naturally suited to leading a ragtag group of people younger than me (I was a camp counselor for many years).
And also I am a huge hater.
In other words, I had to read this book for a workplace book club, and I hated it both because it's not good and because I abhor grown-up activities of any kind.
But I'll try to focus on the book. Seeing as this is a "review of it" and all.
This shindig involves some truly stunningly bad writing.
This book doesn't understand its own characters - some, if not most, of these actions have no explanation whatsoever. When the story ends and it's wrap up loose ends time, there is both a moment in which our narrator literally says the bad guy's actions are inexplicable, AND a moment when she destroys her own characterization.
In fact, the ending is so bad, so immoral, so unintentionally convincing of our main character's soullessness and her stupid boyfriend's, that it made me consider other more interesting plot points, like me killing all of them in the first cross-fiction murder spree in history.
The single most readable bit in the whole thing is when it accidentally implies a plot twist that would create a story line approximately 100,000 times more interesting than the one we actually have, and even though in any other context I would have thought it was lame I gasped with joy and gratitude.
But no. It was just misleading.
If only.
Bottom line: Everything is bad.
----------------- pre-review
reading this for my work book club. this is the most adult thing i have ever done
You may be saying, emma, that should not be surprising. It has a low average rating and just because you sawActually stunned by how much I hated this.
You may be saying, emma, that should not be surprising. It has a low average rating and just because you saw its pretty cover illuminated as if from heaven by the sunlight streaming in a newly discovered cute indie bookstore doesn't mean you were universally preordained to like it.
And to that hypothetical statement from a person I just made up, I say: 1) it should, and 2) I like lit fic with low averages all the time.
But in this case - possibly the first time I have allowed myself to break my only-buy-books-you-have-read-and-liked rule in several years, meaning I spent $28 to have this deeply unpleasant experience - that did not apply.
This was not for me, which is a nice way of saying I hated it and think it sucks.
But I'm not saying that, because I'm polite.
In this book, we follow a girl whose name I don't remember - Anna, oops - who wants to be an opera singer. She's in school for it, but she's Not Like Other Opera Students, because she is not rich. She lives with a perfect best friend, Laurie, she has overly strict and clingy parents who Just Don't Get It, and sometimes she has to work at a jazz club (also singing) in order to afford tuition and whatnot.
How she suffers.
She is also the worst.
(As someone who had to work through college, like a normal person, having a job within the field you're passionate about that you have to do, like, 2 nights a week sounds like a goddamn daydream.) (But whatever.)
Soon she meets a rich handsome older guy at said jazz situation, and, shock of shocks, begins a toxic and financially dependent relationship with him that will ultimately be her downfall.
Point for point, plot for plot, this is a worse, deluded version of Conversations with Friends that manages to miss the entire intention of Conversations with Friends.
I learned the "Not every book about a younger woman and an older, handsome, captivating man embarking on an all-encompassing and toxic romance that talks about what it is to be an adult, in a young woman's body, and mentally ill along the way can be Sally Rooney quality!" lesson all over again.
Let's get into the specifics: - This book has a terrible main character, which can be fine and even good for me. I love evil women. I'm the same girl who once sided with an ex's mean girl roommate solely because she was mean and a girl. But Anna is not really complicated, or nuanced - she is mostly just an annoying theater kid. And that is unforgivable.
- Worse, we can never escape Anna, because THIS BOOK IS IN THE FIRST PERSON. Usually when people make a comment in a review like "this is first person present and I hate first person present!!" I am impressed, because my brain rarely works in perspective like that. But now, I get it. Now I hate first person, and it's Anna's fault. I pray for the sweet mercy of distance provided by third.
- I couldn't get into the writing. I had my pen in hand, ready to underline some outstanding passage or poetic turn of phrase or relatable moment, and that pen went unused entirely. A cap-on situation from page one.
- So much hypocrisy! I think there's intended to be a bit of questioning here, as Anna judges other women (especially my sweet angel Laurie) for not being feminist enough, but she also points out that this random play she sees isn't, even as she remains the most anti-feminist character I have ever encountered. Thankfully this book is going to be largely unread, because if it was in the hands of the general public, it would single-handedly set back the rights of women by a half-century or so.
- At one point, we pause to indulge Anna on a whiny soliloquy - the likes of which, in point of fact, makes up roughly 90% of this book as we spend it all tortuously subjected to the contents of her head - on the state of opera. I don't want opera to be like this! she says. I don't want it all to be slutty women, hurt women, assaulted women, tragedies occurring to women. And then we continue on with the book, which is completely and entirely about the exact same goddamn thing. Anna's life imitating her art, I suppose.
- There is so much selfishness and entitlement in this book. If you cannot really sit down and suspend your disbelief and buy into the idea that the single worst thing going on in the world today is that opera is a bit elitist, you won't have a good time.
- What was the point of any of this? I can try to buy into the idea that any of these awful things were intentional, but if I do, they don't provide any clarity on what we're doing here. By the end, we remain immersed in a toxic wasteland of middling happiness and repeated mistakes, trapped in a watery and half-baked ideology that is neither how I see the world nor how I want to.
- The ending pissed me off. Bad. Permanently.
I think I'm done complaining, but in a much more real way I will be hating on this for the rest of my life.
Bottom line: Least enjoyable book I've read in recent memory! A fun superlative.
We all know the phrase "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
But is there an equivalent phrase about when you read a booWe all know the phrase "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
But is there an equivalent phrase about when you read a book and rate it 3 stars only to come back a little over a month later to realize you actually, in point of fact, don't have anything nice to say?
I'm looking for advice.
I don't know why I initially three starred this. Maybe I was just so slumpy that I assumed it was an "it's not you, it's me" situation?
How many human-interaction-based clichés can I fit into one review.
Anyway: This book seems like it has a lot going for it. Mainly in that it's a rom com with a cute cover and the idea of a boyfriend project is cool to me, as a project obsessive. (Don't even look at how many of my Goodreads shelves have the word "project" in.)
But take that promising feeling off the table entirely, because...
There is no boyfriend project.
DUN DUN DUN.
Literally nothing at all that could qualify. I'm furious even thinking about it.
And even worse, this is one of those rom coms with SO MUCH ELSE GOING ON that the actual rom is a weird afterthought, and there's no com to speak of at all.
For example: These two and their work.
The male love interest is a deep-undercover tech-based US government secret agent for, like, money laundering, so you just have to accept that as a normal and reasonable thing if you want to continue with the book without screaming or throwing things. Fine.
But if you can believe it, that's not even the most distracting part?
Our protagonist, who is just a normal human woman doing tech stuff, makes SO MANY bizarre and inexplicable work decisions - not calling out a coworker even though she herself is beloved and respected, in spite of the coworker undermining her and taking credit for her work; turning down an opportunity that sounds like a once in a lifetime chance to better herself and the world for something she could do at the same time - that I wanted to tear pages and/or my hair out.
I felt the chemistry between these two at the beginning, but both characters' insane work plot lines took up all the page time and my patience.
AND, on top of everything else, our protagonist is in a viral video mocking a previous date that led to her making a new group of friends, which I almost forgot about in spite of the fact that it also takes up more time than the romance.
There's too much going on.
Bottom line: I wrote myself into dropping this to 1.5 from 3. What a day.
----------------- pre-review
instead of a "boyfriend project" i'm continuing romance novel quest.
they both result in disappointment, but only one of them helps my reading challenge.
review to come / 3ish stars
-----------------
reading books by Black authors for Black History Month!
I have been putting off writing this review for a very long time, for a very simple reason:
I don't want to think about it.
I was forced into reading thI have been putting off writing this review for a very long time, for a very simple reason:
I don't want to think about it.
I was forced into reading this books through a lil comedy of errors, which is just a more charming (and pretentious) way of saying that I accidentally nabbed the e-ARC of the sequel to this on Netgalley for cover love alone, tried to read it, was confused beyond human comprehension, realized my mistake, and then had to read this.
I never had interest in doing so, AND I only realized I would have to after reading enough of its little sibling to know I probably wasn't going to like it, AND when I read reviews before reading (which I normally try never to do, because I cave to peer pressure like it's my job even when it's unintended, but did this time in an attempt to learn if I reallyreally had to read it), I learned things that did not make it seem more promising.
Like for example, the fact that this was marketed as a romance even though it does not have a happy ending, which is in truth possibly the only genre requirement for a romance, and also it was never said it would be a duology, which makes everything seem like the second book was rushed into production to avoid backlash.
This would be like the funniest prank of all time, excluding the fact that I had to read both of them, and excluding the fact that the other point in favor of the sequel having been an unplanned rush job is that is is very terrible.
But I digress.
To me it felt obvious this was chick lit written by someone who typically writes indie/dark/smutty contemporary romance, which is not my scene or vibe. I am more of a chick lit / rom com reader than I am...that, and so having the writing style feel so similar and also not have a real romance was a bit of a lose lose.
FURTHERMORE.
The thing about having your protagonist say "oh my gosh, this is like a soap opera," is that you should maybe also realize that you are thereby forcing your readers through a soap opera when you told them you were giving them a fun and fluffy romance, and maybe this should be an epiphany roughly equivalent in feeling and effectiveness to being woken up with a tub of ice water thrown over your hear.
I digress again.
The ultimate reveal that we receive in lieu of a happily ever after (view spoiler)[that our protagonist and the magic dreamboat perfect-looking guy who fell for her, somehow immediately after she got off a million hour plane ride, are step-siblings (hide spoiler)] felt very obvious and also gross and I want it on the record that next time we can leave it at a happy fairytale, skip the unnecessary sequel, and all go home.
Metaphorically home. I never leave mine, let alone read outside it, so I'm already here.
Bottom line: The book equivalent of a jumpscare.
------------------ pre-review
once again i have accidentally received an arc of a sequel and then had to read the first book.
i requested an ARC of this on netgalley with great haste and love in my hearthello mtv and welcome to insanity.
this is THE WEIRDEST book of all time.
i requested an ARC of this on netgalley with great haste and love in my heart, because it's set partially in the boston public library, otherwise known as the single greatest place in the world.
i am a dramatic person with a flair for believing everything to be a sign from the universe, so i thought my liking this was ordained.
au contraire.
but let's back up.
this is a book within a book, kinda: an author is writing a murder mystery. half the book is the murder mystery (which follows four lame, boring friends, 2 in college and 2 grown ass people who should have something better to do, who witnessed - except not really - a murder in the BPL) and the other half is emails the author is receiving from her writing buddy, a full on loser.
the full on loser in question is based in boston, whereas our dear author is in australia (?), so a big part of this is that every chapter ends with an email intended as an unsolicited consultation on All Things American.
this would be kind of boring and weird even at the best of times, but it is truly made one of a kind in that the loser friend has a roughly 50% accuracy rate on his advice and corrections. "americans say cell phone, not phone!" he says in one email. (i always say phone). have your character say "i'm on the subway!" he adds in the next sentence, when it's (FAMOUSLY) called the T in boston.
i was waiting for this to be made a part of the story - turns out he's a freak who was never in america at all, or something! - but no. it was just error after error, as it turns out.
anyway. this has the pacing of a cozy mystery with the darkness and goriness of a thriller, derogatory. it's a combination that absolutely won't work for me, and the amount of ham-handed social commentary from immigration to US politics to the pandemic that's thrown in doesn't help.
worst of all, these characters are unbearable - oddly flat while omnipresent. there's no excuse for each of the friends having 1-2 personality traits when there are fewer sentences they don't show up in than do. they read cartoonishly, and their insta-love fixation on each other is bizarre to witness.
don't even get me started on the actual insta-love.
add in a lame reveal and a silly villain and we have a true nightmare on our hands!
i love complaining. it's one of life's great and consistent joys. like perfectly toasted bagels, or screaming into the void.
what's annoying is that i'm complaining about the same thing every time.
BECAUSE EVERY ALI HAZELWOOD BOOK IS THE SAME.
two scientists, one huge, boring, grumpy, mean, uninteresting, i mean crime-against-humanity-level dry (except that crimes against humanity would be more fun to read about) love interest dude, one tiny, quirky, very small, not like other girls, silly, jennifer lawrence 2012 tumblr gal.
they have a huge size mismatch, the guy is in love for his entire adult life, the girl doesn't notice until the 75% mark, la di da.
SNOOZE!!!
i hate Big Man Tiny Woman (because i am tall but more importantly because i am an adult, and being a small child in a paternalistic romantic relationship has less than zero hypothetical value to me), and this novella responded to that with 49 mentions of this unholy He Big She Tiny trope.
at least this book does me the favor of being horrible in new and intriguing ways, in addition to ye olde standards.
like how the central miscommunication is that the love interest thinks he sexually assaulted our protagonist. lol. tres romantic. and how generally so much of this revolves around sex that seems nonconsensual.
and how at one point our main character has forgotten her bra at his apartment and her very charming and normal love interest (whose, uh, package is, i must tell you, so large that finding a means of navigating it near and around our teeny protagonist makes up the closest thing this book has to a plot) says she can't have it back because he's been jacking off into it.
while they weren't speaking because he thought he SA'd her.
IS THAT HOT???
at the very least it seems financially inadvisable. bras are expensive.
bottom line: unbelievably nightmarish. in so many ways.
---------------- currently-reading updates
reading a series out of order makes me feel roughly as daring and uncomfortable as i imagine skydiving would. or skipping dessert
---------------- tbr review
injustice is: the fact that i have 4 ali hazelwood books on my tbr and none of them are out yet...more
remember those life alert infomercials from 10 years ago that were, like, peak comedy to the preteen / early teenage demographithis is a cry for help.
remember those life alert infomercials from 10 years ago that were, like, peak comedy to the preteen / early teenage demographic? i will admit, i laughed. i chortled at the hilarity of "help, i've fallen and i can't get up." i had a good giggle, a solid chuckle, a fair number of synonyms.
but not anymore. now i need the literary equivalent of a life alert. a button i can press that will inform the world, Help. I Thought I Found A New Auto-Buy Author But Actually I Have Found A Nemesis.
i've said it before (proudly) and i'll say it again (shamefully): i liked the love hypothesis. did i think it was perfect? no. did i think it was objectively good? maybe not even that!
but i Felt Things.
and as anyone who's been here before knows...that is a special occasion. probably that warrants a parade, a themed holiday, an extensive costume, and a cake with two - nay, THREE tiers. but we'll settle for a four star rating.
but then i read love on the brain. and that made me feel things too.
but more of the Rage variety.
and then, inexplicably, i read the second novella in the nightmare trifecta this author released, the installment that i, the composite goodreads average ratings, a variety of oracles, and satan himself agree is the worst of them all.
and then i read this.
so were we set up for success? to be fair, no. but i could have heard this book was full of sunshine and rainbows and double-stuf oreos and would give me the power to turn invisible and fight crime (read: take cookies that don't belong to me) and i still wouldn't have liked it.
that's primarily because of one issue:
i'm starting to think that ali hazelwood can only write huge, boring guys with enormous d*cks falling quietly in unrequited love with short, incredibly annoying (aka quirky) girls.
but there's other stuff to complain about, too. (yay!)
in fact this book bugged me from the very first page. like, to have a prologue that's literally just the first romantic moment...why? we know it's coming. this is a romance novel. all that does is take the fun out of it!!!
AND, as if that weren't enough, this is my favorite trope (enemies to lovers) with everything that i love about it (yearning and drama) taken out (cruel and unusual). so like. what are we even doing here.
and on top of everything else, the love interest is a snooze fest. like, get me my striped nightshirt, my sleep cap, my slippers, and a candle in an old-timey holder, because i'm about to go to sleep so hard i turn into a cartoon. i'm going to be all honk-shoo, honk-shoo, mimimimi. the pom pom on my sleep cap is going to be bouncing up and down in tune to my snores.
the whole enchilada.
add to that a borderline nonconsensual sex scene and even i have to just stop talking and say: i think this book is bad!
bottom line: this book is 137 pages long and i just wrote 140 pages of complaints about it.
There are a couple of reasons to ask yourself why a book exists.
One is if it is simply purposeless. For example, if it's a previously unannounced surpThere are a couple of reasons to ask yourself why a book exists.
One is if it is simply purposeless. For example, if it's a previously unannounced surprise sequel to a book that appears to be conceived solely to avoid the backlash of accidentally calling a book without a happily ever after a "romance," flying in the face of the singular requirement for a book to be called that.
I just said book so many times.
Another is if it is simply terrible, bad on every level, with characters who are unbearable to read about and a total lack of plot and a writing style that is grating, so that every moment, every page, every paragraph is a burden and a punishment.
This book, you may have guessed, is impressive because I am asking why it exists for both reasons.
It has been a long time since I read something I actively hated this much!
And there are a lot of reasons for that!
For example: this book was clearly published because at the end of the first book, the couple was not together, and the lack of HEA meant it couldn't be a romance. You can see a bunch of negative reviews of it if you don't believe me.
But when this book starts......they are together???? So I don't understand what we're doing here??
There is a breakup scene at the end of the last book, I promise. I was not hallucinating. It was too vividly bad for me to forget, and believe me, I've been trying.
But here we are. As if nothing ever happened. It feels like the first book happened, then a second book's worth of events happened, but that happened in a three-month window that we skipped entirely and find ourselves here, in nonsense land of no story or events.
In other words, this is basically if you read a romance between, like, a prince and a commoner and the end of the first book they get married, and then the second book is just her like :( and his family like :(
So all the boring stuff. And also you don't get to see the happily ever after part. So even more boring stuff instead of good stuff.
As if that weren't enough to qualify this as the silliest and most frustrating read of all time, THERE'S MORE. It's all goofy and deus ex machina-y: Three characters previously established to be straight are suddenly gay, explanation-less-ly, so they can all date each other.
I don't know why that feels like an insurmountable problem, for even one background character to be single when this miserable duology slogs to its end, but here we are.
AND! In case you were tempted to be rooting for these wayward stepsiblings (although I don't know why you would be - they are annoying apart but even worse together), they f*ck at work! Where their mom (lol) gave them jobs! And are recorded! On security cameras!
And we are expected to sympathize!
With the two most unsympathize-able characters of all time!
I need to lie down.
Bottom line: I would get a lobotomy if it would help me forget this book.
---------------- pre-review
this manages to have no plot and still be filled with drama, toxicity, and unpleasantness at every second.
it's kinda impressive, in that way.
review to come / 1.5 stars
---------------- tbr review
a pun and a pretty cover. what more can a book have
Loading...
