Joe Kessler > Recent Status Updates

I so deeply enjoy the fact that fictional detective Holly Gibney reads and is a fan of the fictional detective Harry Bosch.

I keep forgetting I'm reading this one too (on my kindle). I wish I had it on audiobook.

This duel sequence between Darrow and Volsung Fá is just excellent. Might be enough to boost the book from 4 stars to 5 for me; we'll see.

"I was so scared I half wanted to piss myself, but the difference between the strong and the weak isn’t that the strong don’t piss themselves. It’s that they hitch their pissy pants up after and go through with it."

At this point in the book, the protagonist is reading a manuscript from her dead step-grandfather, which is summarizing a book he read when he was younger, and just... what are we doing here, fam? Was there no way to make these concepts more immediate?

Cruising for a 3-star rating so far. Nothing egregious, just nothing particularly gripping yet either.

You went walking around New York City at night and happened to bump into the one person you know there? Sure, Jan.

So, Anya's characterization is pretty thin, which bothers me more than when I read this series as a teen. But I might be shipping Orion/Ahriman now.

Review to come tomorrow, but yeah. Easily the best of the series so far. Either a 4 or a 5 star for me; I'll probably sort out which as I write out my review.

She's only now finding her door, but this already might be the best in the series yet.

Very, very heavy themes, though (child grooming / gaslighting / emotional abuse as well as death of a parent in front of a 5y/o)

"Everybody's grandma done touched a dick."

Got slammed by meetings this morning and didn't get a chance to finish this one before it was due back to the library. I'm on the holds list again, but I might end up DNFing if that takes too long.... I wasn't really feeling it yet anyway.

Not this fifteen-year-old protagonist having a thirty-five-year-old love interest 😬

I've reread this novel on multiple occasions, but this is my first time listening to it on audiobook. Voicing the Troglotroll -- a hairy and wicked creature -- with a stereotypical New York Jewish accent is.... certainly a choice 😬

One of the audiobook readers keeps pronouncing zine like it rhymes with pine 💀

Yeah, okay. This is as good as everybody says. I worried it was being overhyped, but it's cruising for at least a 4-star rating from me at this point.

Three-quarters through the last book of the trilogy and we're finally getting a glimpse of the villain?? Be still my heart.

This is so ableist, like becoming deaf is the worst thing in the world that could happen to someone 🙄

"You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney..." I'm sorry, this worldbuilding has been weak to nonexistent overall, but you couldn't even think of a fantasy way to express Miranda rights?

I'm sorry, but the lawyer's last name is Toyer and every time they mention that I just hear Dwight on The Office saying that his dentist is named Crentist.

Happy to be proven wrong about this, but calling it now that the adult Indigo is actually her childhood friend Azure who "ran away."

This 'night watchmen' thing is so dull. Introducing a secret society this late in the book? It's either an obvious red herring or a bizarre element that won't have enough time to really matter.

I'm further now than I was when I quit this book 5 years ago, and.... still not loving it. Totally understood why I put it down before. But at least this time, I can recognize that the plot hasn't really started yet. And the Secret History parallels have me vaguely interested for when things pick up.

LMAO, the Libby app tried to restart me at 20%, which is where I was when I DNFed this book more than five years ago. I'm impressed, but no.

Definitely forgot that the titular heroine is actively planning to kill herself in chapter 2, the day of her 14th birthday.

A third of the book before the murder happens, and another third before Poirot pops up.

"Perhaps I was made for you" so we're just not doing anything to subvert the grooming angle, I guess

Why would you hire your ex as your kid's governess in the first place, though