Dan

This was a very tough one to succinctly review. On one hand I actually quite disliked the book. On the other, the book made me actually bawl at the ending. In summary, while I did not like the exercise of reading this book, I respect it.

Here's why I didn't like it: The entire first half of the book genuinely reminded me of some of the most insufferable and truly terminally online people on twitter I have literally actually witnessed behave the way the Norma does. Let me be clear, Norma is seriously burdened mentally with illness or disorder and that is abundantly clear from how she is written and how the audiobook (which was very good) narrates her. And none of my assessment is to be offensive to her or people like her. Earlier I mentioned I didn't like the exercise of reading this book, and that is quite a literal feeling--Enduring Norma's narration and story literally felt burdensome. In that way especially I tremendously respect Alana Saab for drawing that out of the book. However, speaking bluntly for myself, it made reading this book feel fatiguing.

Once the first half is shed and Norma has laid much of her life and trauma out and we start to really dig in and explore solving her issues, the book picks up. However, that is quite literally in the back half of the book. I enjoyed seeing progress in Norma and I enjoyed overturning the rock that is her life with her and her therapist, and I enjoyed seeing how their relationship changed over time. There was payoff to this book, and I really am glad I saw it through to experience that. Perhaps why I felt overly fatigued by this book is because I am going through therapy myself, however Norma's issues are so much more pronounced than mine, and yet I felt myself experiencing them and solving them as she was, and I again truly commend Alana Saab for weaving me through Norma's story with her.

Finally, let me share what part of this book broke me. I read this because it seemed to at some point include a breakup, or an impending breakup, as the title would imply. I was going through my own breakup still when reading this, and hoping to feel something and explore some parallels in this book. I did not get that much of that, except for near the end where we shift perspective a bit to see through Norma's girlfriend's point of view. She is who broke me. Fatiguing in more of a cathartic way, her girlfriend's narration viciously tore me to shreds with how unyielding it was in showing me another person's perspective of a breakup with someone who is in need of therapy, and it broke my heart. When the title of the book is said out loud in the book I dropped it and cried for about ten minutes before continuing. It was gut-wrenching.

I think this is a hard book to recommend because it is not for everyone and it is not easy to read and I don't think that the experience you will get from it is obvious how you will get there. However, I am not at all dismayed I read it. That's why my review for this looks a little low despite getting one of the most raw emotions out of me from a book in quite some time.

I actually quite enjoyed this book, but the reason I gave it a lower rating is because unfortunately I found reading it to be a bit grating.

Let me be clear, I found the book enlightening, I just could not get over how willing the narrator was to overlook how insufferable her partner was. To be fair to her, that was a good bit of the book's innards--Much of the book was spent on self-reflection and realization of herself. I really enjoyed this and growing and learning with the narrator. However, it was so abundantly clear to me from an early stage that her partner was just taking advantage of her in many ways. My disdain for him grew as the book went on. Unfortunately, it made reading the book a bit of a chore as I pitied the narrator and felt contemptuous towards her partner and wanted her to take action over her own life.

I think despite that, I would consider rereading this in the future. I read this shortly after a tough breakup and I think that also gave me a different lens I was reading this book through, which charged some of my feelings. Maybe with a little more time behind me I will find this book still interesting but get less upset at the narrator, because I think I felt like she needed to take so much action because she reminded me in some ways of myself.

Probably my favorite book I've read this year, due in no small part to how captivating I found Rachel Khong's writing to be. I had heard this billed as part romance novel, part inter-generational family story, and it was that, but Rachel was able to make each person's perspective so captivating within itself that I would have loved to read more on any one of the three main narrators.

The book starts with Lily, which is where the romance part takes place. I loved Lily pretty immediately. Despite her tale taking place in the late 90's and early 2000s she felt so modern and relatable to people her age today. I was so interested in where her story was going to go and page after page wanted to hear more of her inner monologue. I loved watching her romance with Matthew bud, I loved seeing the two expose themselves to one another, and I loved them questioning the families they were born to as well. I especially loved seeing Lily progressively explore the people in her life as she got older. She began to see more and more microaggressions against Asian people, which was fascinating and insightful. She began to see the frays of her family's treatment of her as she grew up. This and more, I truly loved Lily's half of the book and was frankly sad it ended as abruptly as it did.

Next it flung us forward in time to follow Nick. Nick himself was so interesting to follow. I loved how relatable he felt as a teenager, but without feeling like "just another teen" rebelling in his own way--He was very vindicated. As a person of mixed race, white-passing myself, I felt a kinship with some of his issues, though they went far further than my own. I really loved this part of not only Nick's story but of the larger one on display in this book. It was especially fascinating seeing Lily in this time period and how she developed past her story's ending.

I won't speak about the final part, but this would be the weakest part of the book in some ways, in my eyes. It was a bit slow and was when I started to lose interest at some small parts, but it was by far the most illuminating too. It provided context for all the other stories as well as serving as a neat conclusion to them as well, and was so interesting in how it was executed.

In the end, Lily stands out as my favorite character from all of this. I loved seeing her story unfold, and as some small twists that explain her behavior at points unfold I felt so sympathetic to her. Some of the last pieces written about her were in some ways so sad, but it gave me such relief to see her at least at peace with herself and her life in the end. I would so have loved to read more about her alone, but of any of the characters in this book.

I try to keep my reviews on the shorter end, but I feel like I could not get enough of this book, truly. I wasn't finished by the time I closed the cover on this one.

This year I took a concerted effort to read more books from series. A lot of what I tend to read are one-off books and I want to explore more series, especially longer ones. The Rook was a recommendation by a friend and seemed perfect for this effort, being one of 3 in a series, and something a little less popular than some long standing series that I've also been afraid to approach.

Right from the outset the book is intriguing. Waking up with amnesia surrounded by assumed assailants, and then entering the strange sci-fi James Bond-esque world the main character's previous self was a part of is compelling. I really enjoyed the drip feed of information about the world of espionage she's been dropped in and the ways the author separated out the two identities of the main character to take us through learning about things ourselves. I also thoroughly enjoyed following her piece together the strange world and try to discover an insidious plot from within. It was a thoroughly enjoyable story that was a bit like reading an action movie, and that was a lot of fun. However, I did feel like there was quite a lot going on at points, dealing with many villainous parties that I wasn't sure connected and by the end of the story really didn't feel super relevant. It felt like plot padding, and because it lacked presence in the greater story I did feel myself losing attention at times on these B-plot adventures that were gone off several times. Despite this, I'd gladly read more into this world as I found it a fun romp way more often than not.

I listened to the audiobook of this and I also must call particular attention to the voice actress who did a fantastic job at voicing some of the different European dialects, particularly some of the villains.

I wish I liked this book more than I ended up liking it. To be fair to it, I started it in something of a lackadaisical mood and that hurt my impression of the first half, which was by far my favorite part of it. Reading about the bookstore itself and exploring two disparate but connected humans finding out about one another was very fun and exactly what I was hoping for in the book. The second half of it, however, completely lost me, and it's really a shame because I wish I knew why, too. I think I lost interest in the "new" character introduced and explored there, and was really looking forward to spending more time with those in the first half of the book. By the end of the book I felt sufficiently done with this story, which did leave me feeling sad. I give this overall a review right down the middle because when I liked it I was really thriving but when I did not like it I was just wholly uninterested, and it felt like that was squarely half and half.

Although my sentiment towards this movie was simple, I really struggled with how to say it here. I liked this book, overall. However, I also spent so much of the book teetering back and forth from being intrigued to being completely over the main character.

The premise really is as simple as everyone said it was. A housewife thinks she's turning into a dog. Of course, the themes become incredibly clear almost as soon as you get into the book and start seeing her life for what it is, but there really was something about this that kept me curious. It's about motherhood, and about losing one's self to the duties of it. It's about finding community, it's about letting out the literal beast within you when it needs to say something. It's about expression, really. And I liked all of these themes and how they were explored.

However, I would say that the book did often spend too much time languishing in it, which is why I am a little soured by it at the same time. While I did like the book I also felt like I spent an agonizing amount of time with the protagonist just struggling to figure out what was really going on in her situation. it made some of the middle of the story seem, honestly, pointless. We treaded the same sort of water for so much of the book, not getting any clearer. I see now that that may have been because it's how introspectiveness sometimes feels, but it did make the book seem at times lacking focus. As well, while I liked the book and its "twist" ending in hindsight, I did feel something akin to a groan without audibly groaning when I saw where we were going. On reflection I really appreciate that, but contextually it did feel a bit lame in the moment.

Overall I absolutely would recommend this book and I do think it was fun to read. I think I just wish it spent so much of the middle section saying new things or solving plotlines rather than spinning its wheels a bit much for me.

I can fully acknowledge and appreciate that there is a good--perhaps even excellent--book in here. However, it was a little too dense and frankly a bit too smart for me to follow at times, and that did detract from my enjoyment of it. When reviewing this, I felt like the book itself was quite good but also like I did not enjoy reading it particularly much. Don't get me wrong, there were concepts I really dug and parts that really pulled me in, but overall reading this did feel a bit muddy and like my mind often wandered FAR off from it. Would I continue reading this series? Frankly, to my disappointment, the ending really grabbed me and made me want to continue reading the series but I did know that it would probably be the same experience. Maybe I'll go dive back in, but this is a book where I needed some incredibly soft, sweet candy to chew on immediately after putting it down.

Wow I really enjoyed this. One of my favorite things about it, something I thought quite a lot especially as the book went along, is how the trauma impacts the main character very early on in the book and she appears so jaded to it from the outset that we actually never really get to see her "at her norm" throughout the book, I felt. So much of the book is spent after a very serious injury and traumatic event, one which makes you wonder if she is being the way she is because of the injury, or if she's just like that and not knowing makes this all the more intriguing.

This is a book about self sabotage, about self respect, about coping, about consent, and while all of those may seem obvious while reading they don't feel smeared on. They feel incredibly adequately thought out for someone who has had their entire life upended so quickly in ways that are dazzling to them. Despite the fact this dazzling display seems so obvious to us, the reader, to be able to determine when the good and bad are happening, I loved that things are all the more confusing to the character Alison herself. I really appreciated the lens this book lets us read from and the frankly surprising way that it unfolds.

I heard many many things about this book, all good things, and when I finally found the time to pick it up I was honestly surprised by how short it was! But, it lacked no amount of poignancy. To be honest, there were sections while reading where my mind did wander here or there but not due to a lack of interest, just due to how Joan's writing style was. For a moment we would be caught on her husband John, then we were knee-deep in details about heart conditions she read up about, then we were whisked to a memory she had with John or her daughter Quntana. It wasn't my lack of interest, it was just the way she wrote so true to herself and how she was feeling and how one thought reminded her of another and another, and that was what really stuck out to me about this book. It was lovely to hear how connected she felt to her husband and daughter so truly, but all the more tragic when considering both of them might not have known the depths of this connection. I'm not sure if I'll ever desire to read this again, but I don't think I'll forget the emotions Joan dredged up and shared that she felt.

I truly loved this book. I went into this frankly not knowing anything other than a high recommendation and an impression of what it was going to be about based on the name (and let's be honest, the name implies a very specific thing). From the outset, I was intrigued. I found the writing style captivating and casual, and especially loved how I could very easily follow Juniper's characterization and shifting attitudes throughout the book. While I read this I heard R.F. Kuang in an interview mention that this was meant to be a horror story about great loneliness, and that impacted my impression of the book in such a positive way as I was reading it. The turns this story took had me captivated to keep reading and I flew through it, absolutely no clue how it was going to end but loving it so much. I loved how nuanced the story was about the plights of consumption, creation, and critiques of media, especially when race plays a big part in the stories, as well as being a captivating satire and horror story in its own right. As a creator, it made me reflect on the act of creating so much and I was not expecting to have spent so much of this book doing that, while also entertained at Juniper and her incredibly warped perception of and experience with it as the story went on.

This was not the book I was expecting it to be, but I enjoyed it all the more because of it, I think. I went in expecting this to be more on the investigative side of things, a bit of an underdog sleuth figuring out a crime on her own with her own means, but it ended up actually being quite a wholesome found family story. I thought the plot was well-paced and fun, and it was really great to see a nearly entirely Asian American cast who all emphasized their own quirks and the baggage that they held in their lives.

At first Vera was a little annoying, but I actually felt that was pretty intentional. The rest of the cast were revealed very smoothly and I loved the approach of peeling back each of them one by one to get to know them more. Lastly, Marshall...Well, I appreciated that they made him really detestable but especially by the end of it he was almost cartoonishly a bad person, and I was happy they didn't shy away from exposing troublesome people like him.

While I would love to read more about Vera and her cavalcade in the future, I would also be completely content leaving this story and world where it is now. I had a lot of fun with this and it was a light read that was a fun break between other books!

I have heard many things about Brandon Sanderson and his books, and his universe, and this year I made it a goal of mine to stretch into more larger series and see if I liked it. I thought this was a good place to start, with a low level of commitment if I didn't end up liking it but the option to dive more into a deeper universe if I ended up finding something I really loved. Where I ended was, frankly, somewhere in the middle, but that's okay.

There seems to be quite a lot to talk about with this book but really two things stick out the most to me. One is that, not being familiar with actually reading anything in the Cosmere universe, I wasn't aware of who or what this Hoid character was--or even that the narrator was himself an established character. I found that an interesting angle overall. Ultimately though I did find it a bit weak for a few specific points, specifically near the end. It seemed a bit of a cop-out for Hoid to explain the nuances of what was going on with Yumi and Painter to us, the reader, out of universe, while the two of them and the broader world wouldn't be able to have learned some of the facts explained. I didn't hate this, as I appreciated the explanations Hoid gave, it just struck me as fairly lazy to have Yumi and Painter discover 90% of it and then a character with essentially omniscience over the history of events explain the 10% they never would have known, but still is important to the book. I think what soured me to this was actually specifically that it didn't come from a narrator, but an actual character, who was speaking to the reader and thus came across like he was taking us aside to tell us what was really going on. I suppose, in the end, I was a little over the use of a narrator character giving his flavor in strange places I just felt were unnecessary.

Secondly, I was struck throughout reading the book how much it was like Final Fantasy X. In the end, Brandon Sanderson admitted as much to himself and it was in such a way that as I listened to the audiobook start the sentence I knew exactly what it was going to say before it said it. This book absolutely borrows from the story, and while that does in fact make it unique in many ways FFX is itself unique, that does somewhat hinder my impression of it knowing the book is explicitly based on FFX. I like FFX enough, and I like this enough, and the reasons for my positive and negative feelings for both are not identical, and that's pretty interesting to me. I think the story works quite well, and is told compellingly enough here that I was pretty gripped to continue on and rarely bored. The characters are fun and their interactions were endearing, especially Yumi and Painter, and one thing I really really did quite enjoy about the story was the emphasis on art and artists and gripping with the value your art brings to the world and to those around you. It felt sincere about this and it did speak to me on some level as someone with a relationship to this myself.

Ultimately, I think I will read some more of Brandon Sanderson here and there, but I am not finding myself compelled to dive deep into his universe, at least not at this time.

A contemptuous book. Other reviews here on the site have said what I think about this book in a far better way already, but I really did not care about this and should have DNF'd it tbh.

Talking briefly about the good. I liked the style and snappiness of the book. Chapters were often short and digestible to really coherent thoughts or streams of thoughts or actions. The narration style also was something I enjoyed, being a glimpse into the unnamed narrator's mind about different things going on. Time span was a little hard to pinpoint but also kinda irrelevant so it made it easy to view this as a memoir of notes about a person's life.

However I basically detested everything else about this book. No single character was likable, certainly including the main narrator, and I think that's largely because their viewpoint was so venomous and filled with spite. Painted in that lens nobody is going to be likable. The main character's motives were so sad and pitiable and their view of everything and everyone around them was so marred with distrust and inhospitality that I kept thinking the entire time how much I never wanted to meet anyone in this book but especially not her. The narrator really needed to get over herself but also this one guy she's following.

One thing I was particularly disappointed in was the narrator's view on race and gender. She tackled both of these social topics, and a few more, several times over the course of the book, but never with any coherence or lingering thought. It was always unbridled rage about the situation she and others like her were in. She complained endlessly about white people and about men and frankly I agree with her and I think it's important to expose those things. However, she didn't really actually SAY anything interesting or useful about them. She kinda just beat the points over with a bat and said they're unequivocally bad and that they make her life miserable. And I'm sorry if that's the case, and she's right that she is a victim of the patriarchy and of race relations. But really, is that all we're going to do here? It felt apropos to the book as it was always talked about with a sting of venom, and much like the rest of the book it was entirely pointless and didn't have anything interesting to say whatsoever.

It should be noted that I listened to the audiobook of this, narrated by the author, which I think contributed to the tone of the book significantly, so I gave it some gusto for that, but it also furthered my disdain for this book since it drove home how sad it was that the author is so clearly just fiery over this stuff she really needs to get a grip over and solve in a more well-meant manner. If she really cares so much about this one guy, and about her role as a brown skinned person, then use that power and the voice and platform she has to actually say or do something more than just spit at others blindly.

I've never read the original House of Usher story, and had no idea going into this book that it was something of a retelling. I'm not sure if that paints my opinion of this book any differently, other than the fact that as the characters revealed their names to be Usher I had an inkling that there was some homage going on. To be completely honest, what was happening throughout the book felt painfully obvious, especially from seeing the book's cover and reading just into the intro chapter. Still, I enjoyed the journey the main character took me on and how I was following their thoughts. The pacing felt great and I loved the inner monologue as I was strung along–This is both a praise and an unfortunate feature as I feel I would've loved the book more had there truly been something hair-raising on the other side of the end reveal. Still, the reveal at the end of the book was sufficient enough so I'm not going to mar the book for that. My one and only confusion was actually about the land Galatia that the main character hails from, and their very overt disdain for America. While I enjoyed these flavors and was actually curious to know more about Galatia especially, I felt wholly confused by these inclusion only because I thought they were leading to something. I'm not going to get hung up on things which amount to character quirks and worldbuilding, I just got an impression due to their prominence that they were going to amount to something significant. This small note aside, I would gladly recommend this to anyone who wants to read something haunting yet familiar.

You know, I think I liked this book? Why am I not sure though?

I was very much engrossed in this book, reading massive chunks of it every time I did pick it up, and it read so easily, but I can't say that I was super compelled by it and that was the driving force. I think there was, oddly, just something comfortable about reading it.

I say oddly because, well, no character in this book strikes me as being in a comfortable place. The one only exception might be Sasha, but even then her conclusion leads me to believe she has some level of discomfort. Drugs, sex, relationships, this book is, frankly, quite trashy in many ways but I think what I liked about that is you see the trashy state the characters live in but not that they themselves are necessarily trashy. As the book went on the main character evolved and grew and I saw her strive to become more than the world she was born into, and I was eager to follow that.

I'm getting far too ahead of myself though. When I started reading this I was hoping to like it but I certainly got some yellow flags early on because I did not relate to the characters here at ALL. I quickly got over that, however, when the dynamic between the two main sisters was explored more, and when I learned about the narrator and what she was about. There was still plenty I simply will never be able to relate to, but I was able to garner sympathy for the cast and also really wanted to see a glimpse into this life I had no business being in.

The book is about generational trauma and that is abundantly clear. It's also about sisterhood and in many ways siblinghood and growing into your own person in spite of those close to you. I don't think it was especially concise nor poignant, but I enjoyed my time reading it. The biggest mar I will give this book is that the ending, while pleasant in its own way, was rather abrupt. It was all explained decently enough but that didn't make it any less abrupt I must say...I feel very mixed on this and frankly wish there was just a little more fleshed out before the final page actually turned. Alas, such is a life like this, I suppose.

I love Joan. I see and respect and appreciate her so much. This book read a little differently than I think it was billed (I thought it was going to be much more of an intimate look at doctors and their struggles with being unsung and necessary heroes throughout events like the COVID-19 pandemic), but I still loved it because I really enjoy Weike Wang's characters and style of writing.

"An immigrant family controls nothing and so raises two average children obsessed with gaining it back, albeit in different ways." This line is from about halfway through the book, and it really stuck with me. It so simply describes what this book is about. Joan, like Weike, being an Asian American, has her own struggles that are shared by countless of this identity. Through explorations into Joan's family we see the ways Joan deals with these struggles, as well as her brother, who responds as an almost polar opposite way. We see the ways they conflict with one another and their family and the almost insidious way it strains all of their relationships.

This book is about so much more than simply the tough life of a doctor. So much of this book is spent about the treatment of oneself in the company of a harsh, overbearing family. We see the compartmentalization of one's entire person as chipped away at by their family and those close to them for years and years--the inability to even get close to anybody simply because they are so worn down and boxed up over time. And yet, despite that, Joan truly is okay. What I loved about this book, tragic though it may be, is that you can see Joan's inner monologue and she is indeed okay. But you very much want her to be more than okay but to be better, to be thriving, to be living.

I'm not the target demographic for this book, but I do love YA romance novels. Unfortunately, a lot of this just didn't hit the parts of the genre that I just love. A lot of this book was spent on exploring how out of depth Izumi was in Japan and in another culture, and while I did appreciate that and especially from a youth's POV, I was actually hoping a lot more of it was going to be about forging the relationships with those she met abroad. One thing I was especially disappointed with was the lack of the mother and father's relationship growth–while I understand they were not the focal point, Izumi made a really great case for me to want to see their dynamic more and I was sad it wasn't explored very much. In the end, I didn't hate reading this, it just wasn't the exact cup of tea I wanted it to be! It was cute and entertaining and I also admit the twists within were pretty exciting at points!

A fun, short read. My biggest qualm with this was that it felt like only half of a whole story which to be fair is literally true–a sequel to these characters and their story exists and I am looking forward to seeing their story to the end. I listened to the audiobook of this and I found the narrator's depiction of both main characters to be incredibly charming, especially in illustrating a level of neurodivergence from both characters, it seemed. The world they lived in seemed very interesting and not fully fleshed out but when those details did peek through I was intrigued enough to stay listening. Unfortunately, I did not feel the ending was particularly impactful nor was the message, but I did appreciate having read this and the story that was told here, so while not loving this book I did enjoy it just enough.

I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting this story to be what it was. For nearly half of the book I frankly was bored, waiting for some thrust into our protagonist's plight to emerge. The bulk of the intro does a great job establishing background to the characters and the type of world they inhabit–one where at any moment and for no reason at all their memories of something can disappear, enforced by the mysterious memory police. There are a lot of concepts thrown around here, ones I was excited to explore, but it spent a bit longer than I expected fleshing them all out.

So, when around the halfway point I realized the story structure was more akin to 1984, sharing more of a glimpse of someone's life within this conceptual world, rather than telling a story of that person exploring how they might break out of a problem the world puts in front of them, I started to understand why I was so bored for so long. I was expecting the pieces to amount to some adventure, a call to action to take our protagonist to explore this world for some reason or another–and there were plenty of things she could have sought after! The fates of many close characters are touched upon in a way the protagonist might want to explore them with more depth (loved ones die, neighbors disappear, a close colleague becomes indebted to her for his livelihood), maybe she is compelled to try to remember something that's dear to her, maybe there is something to be gleaned about the true nature of these police or the relationship their island has with other places outside of it, maybe there is merit to trying to escape the island, but no, the story plods along telling only of how she forgets more and more and more.

And that's okay. It just wasn't what I was expecting. I want to rate this higher because I enjoyed the concepts explored and there were some profound scenes, but I can't rate it too high because frankly, on the whole I did not enjoy reading this book. And that's okay as well. I appreciate this book for what it is, and with this knowledge now I feel confident recommending this to people, but I can't in good faith say it is a particularly entertaining read, more of a thoughtful one. In the end, I didn't grasp a singular message or sentiment from the book, and I think I was also looking for that, but I think there is plenty to the story for one to make their own conclusion and draw parallels to pieces of their own life. We all forget things the same way those in this book do, just often not about such foundational things as birds or calendars, and they don't simply cease to exist from our world when we do forget them.

The one message that stood out to me the most, about halfway through the book, was when the protagonist was losing a memory of something near to her. It was something that everyone had some appreciation for, but was of more importance to the main character. Lamenting that she would soon completely forget about this thing, she talks with a close friend about this occurrence with some mild amount of panic. The other person simply says to her that it's okay. They'll forget it, and they'll move on. The hole in their mind where that thing occupied space will fill in with other things, insinuating that since things more often disappear from their minds than get added, the space will be filled with the leftover memories that aren't lost. I found this particularly sad, on two levels. One, the dismissal of losing something precious to the protagonist was astonishingly bitter, and left me feeling so much contempt for this other person's attitude. Second, the assumption that holes in these people's minds get filled in only with the leftover memories implies that their minds only narrow and don't grow. Their perspective only shrinks. What a sad fate to be resigned to. And I drew parallels to both of these sentiments in how some people act in our daily life.

Ultimately, those thoughts will stick with me. As well, the way Yoko Ogawa describes concepts disappearing from the characters' minds is very thoughtfully done, especially near the end when much more difficult concepts begin losing themselves. I found this to be a well written and thought provoking book, but don't go in expecting a story, more a description of a concept.

Upon finishing Severance I felt confused. I was content in having finished it, and I was engaged especially in the back half of the book, but I also felt like I didn't quite understand what themes I was supposed to have gleaned from this. On reading a bit further into the book, apparently I had somehow missed an important detail that indeed changed my perception of a few key points in the story.

To get it out in the open, there are multiple points in which nostalgia plays a key factor. Somehow, I had missed a link between nostalgia and the fever that incited the events of the book. On realization of this and reflection of the book itself, I really appreciated the theme here.

Much more clear to me was the rhetoric around rampant consumerism, which hit me a lot more than anything else. I appreciated the subtleties in some ways that the book handled this theme, but also how blatant it was at times. It's especially poignant to have picked up on the details Ling Ma put in about this after everything about COVID and the global pandemic we all actually experienced.

Which lastly brings me to the comparison of the pandemic in this book and our real life pandemic we all experienced. I didn't find anything about this book harrowing or depressing to read about, nor did I feel like it sucked me back into that time in all of our lives. I found some things surprisingly–shockingly, even–accurate to how the pandemic shook down in real life, but I didn't really have a lasting feeling of gloom looming over me like I know some who have read this post-2020 felt. I really enjoyed how insightful Ling Ma ended up being about certain things that would transpire during a global pandemic, especially on consumerism and capitalistic goals, and for that alone I wavered from a 3 to 4 star review while writing this.

Overall I was not shaken to my core over this book, but I enjoyed the themes which at times felt disparate but always purposeful–and I think that sums up my general feeling of the book. As it jumps from pre- to mid- to post-pandemic throughout, it was often hard to tell where each thread was pulling towards, or especially how they were relating to one another. However, none of the storylines felt like they were unnecessary. I felt like all had purpose and even if it wasn't obvious how some related to one another, I still gleaned something from them all, which kept me reading. I will probably not read this again, but I would recommend this book, though I'm not sure if I'll spend as much time lingering on it as some other books.

I really enjoyed this. It was a little different than I expected, and although that has actually been a bit of a pattern for the past few books I've read, this one ended up quite enjoyable despite that.

The narrator is definitely coded at first as highly autistic, and while I would still classify them as such, throughout the novel you actually come to understand that it's actually a lot of trauma and coping that set them in their ways. Despite this, an unsung quality of the narrator is that she is incredibly witty and clever despite her also very awkward outlook on some things–the inability to view life's problems as anything but parallels to chemistry is also in and of itself used as a comedic device by her, which highlights how aware she is of herself.

I was hoping for the book to be a bit more of a soul searching adventure on finding oneself after being lost and wrapped up in work for the better part of one's youthful years, and while it was some of that it wasn't quite what I hoped. Although it was broken into two distinct parts, it didn't really explore the stumblings of the narrator to pick herself back up with much depth in the back half. There was a ton of introspection and a ton of explanation of how her friends and family viewed her and their expectations of her but I think Weike's writing style just didn't explore the narrator's adversity of this and how she was going to overcome it, perhaps because it was written in a way that glided over her life quickly. I appreciated her writing style, but if there was one thing I would have liked to see explored, it would have been to see the weeks, months, and maybe even years after part two began with more depth of her actions and how she picked herself up through them. Surprisingly, it felt like there was more of her friend's that was explored–though I also think that was no coincidence!

This book did not touch me profoundly like I think I was hoping it would, as I felt like I was going through similar things to the narrator when I first heard of this book. However, I still greatly enjoyed it and am really looking forward to reading more from Weike. She has a great spirit that shows itself in this book, and her writing style is easy and fun to pick up and explore. I really enjoyed this book despite the few expectations that weren't quite met, and may very well read this again after this period in my life, on reflection.

My review is not indicative of the quality I found the book to be of, but rather my experience reading it. I had this book very very oft suggested to me and others in my demographic, so I really went in hoping to experience some company in the endeavor of loneliness. What I was not expecting, was the book to be about so much other than that. The vast majority of the book was written about the loneliness of several artists throughout the modern era and while those stories were at time captivating and interesting, for a lot of the book I felt like just saying...Okay, go off queen, but what are we saying all this for, again? I found the book lacked a focus that I was expecting from it. Again, while well written and articulated especially I just don't think this book was at all what I was expected and I unfortunately did not leave this feeling any better or relieved about loneliness.