Joe Kessler > Recent Status Updates

I am beginning to suspect this book was only written to show off what the author has learned about the whaling history of Nantucket.

18y/o guy is in college, which definitely makes the budding 16/18 romance worse. It's one thing to be crushing on an older student in your high school. It's something else entirely for a college student to be crushing on a 16y/o.

And the other love interest is 19. Are there really no boys the mc's own age anywhere in Nantucket??

Also not to be a prude. But. 16y/o heroine, 18y/o love interest, getting drunk together and now talking about playing (sigh) strip dreidel?

This book is just not it for me, folks.

Also, gotta say: really not a fan of the love interest continuing to call the mc by a nickname she's repeatedly told him she doesn't like. That's a big turnoff for me; it's usually a microcosm for a wider attitude of ignoring boundaries and not caring about feelings (in fiction or real life).

Sigh. I don't mind a Jewish protagonist with a non-Jewish love interest. (My spouse isn't Jewish!) But it's always frustrating for a story to spend so much time on someone explaining fairly basic Jewish things, rather than just trusting readers to either know already or google on their own time.

Okay, well, at least Ballard wasn't too far behind me on this, and we still have the entire back half of the book to see the investigation play out to prove the case.

‪This killer's identity could not be more obvious 🥱‬

"You are a new parent" -- he's literally NOT??? My man has a five-year-old, what are you even talking about

Gee, Eli! How come your mom lets you have TWO manic pixie dream girls?

I know this is kinda the ESJM brand, but these two people who have already been in contact with each other happen to connect in the middle of Montreal? Really?

This character of a linguistics grad student who's been working on his thesis about endangered languages for years without headway, to the point where he thinks his department has forgotten about him, that's, uh.

That's hitting a bit close to home.

Oh, you didn't have to remind us that Dex's full name is Dexter Jettster. There's no call for that.

This is much better -- and more straightforward -- than The Fable of the Swan so far.

I swear, this series can be as bad as Animorphs with its generic and unmotivated titles. Why not call this one The Midnight Men (the alias of the current villains)? In six months I guarantee you I will not be able to remember which Bosch book The Dark Hours was.

I might be hate-reading this now.

Wait, that's. That's not what linguistics is. What?

Wait, that's. That's not what linguistics is. What?

The high school kids are watching conspiracy videos on YouTube? Not TikTok?

This is probably my favorite Lincoln Lawyer book yet, *and* the best incorporation of Covid into fiction that I've seen to date.

This upcoming twist about who the other werewolf is could not be more obvious.

Hey, that's the name of the book!

Aiming to finish this ebook by Halloween / before it's due back to the library again. We'll see!

Worldbuilding / big-picture plot here is... fine. But wow is it all slow with only the semblance of momentum. This is like a streaming series that spends ten episodes building up to *maybe* one scene of actual significance.

Trying this one again... I DNFed the ebook at 33% back in 2019, because it just seemed to be dragging so much and I didn't have time for it. Hoping the audiobook goes smoother for me now.

Lady, you have a son!! I know you had a legitimate fear that the government was going to take him away, so that's why you left him and his father -- already problematic, but we'll get into that later -- but don't equate what you're going through to these people whose child was shot to death. Good lord.

"I'm sorry someone you should have been able to trust turned out to be a monster." 😭

Sally fawning over Queen Elizabeth II 🤮

Sally having parents from another world is a *very* strange retcon, but okay.

"My wife Sally and I are off on our honeymoon," he announces, grinning, showing off all his corn-kernel teeth. "We'll be back tomorrow."

Jack, sweetie, that's not a honeymoon.