Joe Kessler > Recent Status Updates

Oh... This isn't going to be my type of book at all, is it?

This is just... marginalization tourism. "I changed reality so that I'm gay, and now I understand how hard it is to be a gay guy! I changed reality so that I'm a girl, and now I understand how hard it is to be female!"

Oh good, at least the boyfriend (/narrative?) calls him out on it. But it still feels like we're glossing past that way too easily.

So much of this novel is just absurdly tone-deaf. Your boyfriend tells you he's going to come out soon so you might want to distance yourself if you don't want to get outed... so you call everyone's attention to yourself in the crowded cafeteria and kiss him? That's not a romantic gesture; it's a theft of his moment to decide when and how to come out himself.

"Turns out it was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. The perfect day for my 'special customers' to repent from their drug habit." Ugh. I know Shusterman is Jewish, but... no.

Why would you tell a white teenage boy he's the literal center of the universe?

So much whitesplaining.

This dude is really self-centered and oblivious.

This is so good. I don't know if I love it quite as much as the first book -- it's feeling more like a 4star than a 5 so far -- but it could definitely still kick up another gear and surprise me.

I've been saving this one to read at the right moment, knowing from the first book how special it would probably be, and coming on the heels of an awful novel that also had a title about lies seems like just that time.

Well, that was certainly a book.

Also, do the British police just... not trace calls when someone phones in harassment and literal bomb threats to a place on a weekly basis? They don't in this story!

I try not to post spoilers here, but that twist is really obvious and really bad. (There are literally only three meaningful characters in this timeline. Who could have guessed that the person making threatening voice-disguised calls to two of them would turn out to be the only other person in the cast??)

I said before I wouldn't 1-star this book, but I might be changing my mind.

Literally the only way this could pick up is if there's a twist like the historical sections being a novel-within-a-novel recreation by the protagonist in the present. And even that would only do so much to redeem either half of the book.

This probably isn't bad enough to 1-star or DNF... but it's just so boring. No particular stakes or meaningful goals anywhere.

Okay, we have characters now at least. But maybe not a reason to care about them yet.

There hasn't been a single character yet in this "novel." Is it literally just an extended reflection on dictionaries??

Oh good, angry girl likes the boy better when he snaps at her.

Look, either the grandmother is a household name as a beloved author or her book is impossible to track down. You have to pick! Similarly, you can't have the protagonist set up an eBay alert to find a copy to read and utterly ignore that her friend loves and probably owns it.

"A text as long as a bible passage" you do know those are different lengths, right?? Sorry, I might be hate-reading at this point.

Already super uncomfortable with how this narrator demonizes/pathologizes things like babies and engagement rings in passing.

This is supremely unsatisfying.

I think I'd actually like this better without the weird time loop angle. And I love time loop stories! But this one just isn't adding anything to the plot.

None of these scenes have been obviously related to one another so far, nor do I have any real grasp on what the actual plot / premise is supposed to be.

Probably not gonna be able to finish this one before Tuesday.

More like Parker Pyne instigates, tbh

Parker Pyne does not, in fact, investigate very much.

Dexter Palmer himself is a character in this book, because of course he is.

This is super weird so far. I've never read Ulysses, but it's sort of how I've imagined that would be.

Drastically losing interest in these later time hops.