Perry

This made me sad that Aaron is apparently dead. Gods, I am loving this series, though.

3.5 stars. Review later.

My first book by Ms Morrow, even though I intended to read Mem. I'm definitely going to read that now.

Cherish Farrah is about the (basically toxic) friendship between Farrah (our titular narrator, who is also probably clinically psychopathic) and her bestie Cherish (the other titular character, who is White Girl Spoiled by her white parents, though she is Black). Their relationship is incredibly intense, so intense that it comes off as a bit queer, though both girls are either crushing on or involved with boys; they also don't have sexual tension, so much as romantic.

Farrah's parents are upper middle class and end up losing their house. Farrah ends up staying with Cherish, as the former's parents move into a smaller place that she want nothing to do with. So, mind full of machinations, overthinking, paranoia, and obsession over Cherish, Farrah plots ways to stay with Cherish and her family.

A very mild spoiler

Farrah has mother issues and is convinced her mother is just like her. She's obsessive when it comes to Cherish and only really loves Cherish. You might think this will be about a girl trying to supplant another girl in the affections of rich parents, but it isn't. By the time one character was giving another character a very specific gift, I knew things were going very badly indeed.

I found this book interesting not just for the social horror aspect, but because of our heroine. She's not likeable. She's sinister and functions on a completely different level than Cherish. Farrah is incredibly intelligent. She lacks empathy for most people. She's downright awful sometimes. She's obsessed with Cherish; the feelings are apparently mutual, even though Farrah often hurts Cherish's feelings. Farrah is dangerous but functional and uses Cherish to learn how to gauge people. She's endlessly fascinating.

In all, I plowed through this book. I enjoyed it immensely, flaws and all. And Farrah is one of the more fascinating anti-heroes I've read in a while. I didn't like her, but I loved her.

If I see either of the Sejic's names on anything, I'll read it. It's always charming art, lovely backgrounds, and a fun story with endearing characters.

I enjoyed this. The art is bright and busy and fun, although the full-spread splash illustrations are interrupted by the binding of the hardcover, which is unfortunate. The story is mostly narration and exposition, and therefore weakened. We need to be shown, so to speak, more than have the fourth wall broken on every page.

That being said.

I thoroughly enjoyed this and loved the found family. I'm a sucker for found family. The characters are precious babies, and I adored them. I loved the diversity and calling out white feminism. I loved the politics, even though it was handled in a heavy-handed way. I'll forgive that if it's positive and fun. Which this was.

I'm hoping to read more from Ms Clarke, whom I adore, and Ms Bennett.

I didn't finish. Looking at the reviews makes me want to skip to the middle chapters. But so far, in the first three chapters, I'm dying here. So much use of the passive verb. This book seems to be the author's attempt at poetic prose, but it's unbearable. It's vague at best, confusing and pointless at worst. The author makes lovely assumptions about weight and health that shows me she hasn't read up on recent findings. A couple of things she said regarding syndromes made me want to throw the book. It's like unbearable literary nonfiction. I can't handle literary fiction, but literary nonfiction might be worse. At least, when it's a half-arsed attempt at pretentious poetics. Ugh. I wanted history, not this writer's vanity project. The reviews on the back went on and on about how her writing is art. It's worse than bad art: It's annoying, pretentious art too busy showing off to actually get to any point. Bleah.

Review to come, but I'll definitely be reading the next one.

Very minor spoilers.

Thank you to Mr Starling for an ARC of his novel for a fair review.

And my review is that I had great good fun reading this book. There was so much strange, small town, folk horror delight in this book. And a bit of a surprise with the monsters. I became invested in the mythology of the novel, and I'm intrigued to find out more about the whys and wherefores of everything.

As for the characters, I actually quite liked Ellen and Aaron Dreyer–especially Ellen. That's not the norm for me. Usually, I'm not the biggest fan of het couples in horror; often, they follow prescribed gender roles. But in this, Ellen has herself together, and she's actually pretty tough. Aaron is the one who falls apart more easily, and he's a stay-at-home dad whilst he looks for a job. They consider the dog to be part of the family. And the dog lives. This is important. Pets rarely live in horror. But Mr Starling guarantees the dogs live. For which I am immensely grateful.

I digress. Anyway, strange things are afoot in the new town to which the Dreyers have moved. People are dying violently, and a strange creature traipses through their yard every night. Their child has nightmares. They lose time. Their dog is disturbed. And then, events become more personal.

There are two monsters here. One is the Night Bastard. I want to know all about the Night Bastard. Because that name! Also, I love villains.

Anyway, I enjoyed this one and am looking forward to the next book.

I love winter isolation stories. When I expect horror or gothic thrills. This took a fantastic location and potentially creepy premise and just...scrapped all over it. Farfetched, dull, uninspired. The characters were boring or absurd. The prose itself was wholly unoriginal. Don't lie to me and tell me this is gothic. It's just another mediocre thriller.

To quote Cogsworth: “Dusty, dull, very boring.”

3.5, not quite 4. Intriguing read, right up in my wheelhouse. The end fell apart for me, and I'd have liked more weird resurrection action. More about Value brother. The ending for all the side characters was frustrating, since most of the rest of the book was interesting.

2.5 Stars

Amusing enough, but it's a thriller; of course, there's a nonsense twist. It's actually a bit tedious at times and just plain silly. But it passed the time. And now I can say I read it, since I dearly wanted to when it came out.

Oh!

I wasn't expecting a story with such sweetness. The friendship between our heroines was incredible, and I'd have loved more of it. This is really a coming of age story, one with a vast heart and lots of hope.

I enjoyed The Return quite a bit when I read it, but this is even better, more lighthearted. I mean, there is an adorable spider in this!

Annie is dumped by her boyfriend and moves to a small upstate NY town called Rowan. Rowan has a secret: It has a resident witch–Sophie. People fear her, hate her, honor her, and avoid her. She latches onto Annie. Their relationship is dysfunctional, but, as Annie figures her shit out more, things even out more.

Yes, I fully acknowledge that Sophie's relationship with the town is fraught. It's toxic. And Annie's relationship basically becomes that. But it's interesting that it's mostly the men who take the worst offense at their witchiness. I don't think this book necessarily glorifies that toxicity of these relationships. It's blatant for everyone to see. But Annie had to choose between someone she came to love and the town itself. And she chooses that for which she cares most. Women aren't perfect, but I still understand Sophie's bitterness. Everyone fears her, even when she isn't harming them. This book understands the fear certain women provoke in others, just for being themselves, and it doesn't shine it up to make it look pretty by making them kind.

Also, it's cathartic seeing a raging a-hole get scared.

In the end, it is about women helping each other. Because Annie helped Sophie just as much.

Also, Ralph. Just. Ugh, spiders! SO CUTE!

Basically my intro to Ratajkowski

I'd vaguely heard of her a couple years ago, but had no clue who she was until this book came out. And she's a good writer. If one views this as essays about a young woman trying to figure life and feminism out, it will work better for the reader. She is young, she is contradictory, but she knows it. Even were she not a model, I feel like she delves into the complications of being hot, hounded by men for that hotness, and trying to maneuver her way around those things. I appreciate that she's vulnerable and honest about her need for male validation, even as she realizes that's a monumentally bad idea. I get some people hated this. That's completely valid. But I couldn't be more than frustrated by her, in the same way there are women I love who are treated similarly by men and crave their validation. Yes, she's a hot girl; but why does the world feel like it has a right to a woman's body, no matter who she is, how she looks, or what she shows to the public? This is just her story, her experience with that, even if it's a narrow one. Basically a woman can't win. Really, I just wanted to scold her and then give her a big hug.

3.5

Anna, a middle-aged British Gen X biracial woman, mother of an adult professional woman with an eating disorder and estranged wife of a white guy who cheated on her, is also dealing with her mother's recent death. Her mother leaves her their apartment, where she discovers the journal of her unknown father, an African exchange student. So she hunts him down–and he's the former president/possible dictator of a tiny nation. There is debate about whether he's a brutal dictator or a respected leader who brought prosperity to the country.

The second half of the novel follows Anna as she meets her father and some siblings and had some misadventures, including random sex with a man who is barely an acquaintance and a night in jail, prompted by someone she didn't expect–but who is obvious to the reader.

The ending indicates she sort of finds herself in Africa, but I don't totally buy it. That being said, I enjoyed this novel and it's sparse prose. There's some humor here and some fear and the upheaval of life. But there is hope here too. She just needs to watch out for that newly-discovered family.

Almost done. Just a few pages. So I decided I would just cut to the chase and review it now, because I'll be done this weekend, and I don't want to have to think about it. I highly doubt the last few chapters can save this one.

The prose is mostly serviceable. Until you hit an action scene; then it's awful and awkward. Or, if you hit a scene that is supposed to ramp up suspense and terrify you. Then it's just hokey and over-wrought. There is nothing notable in her prose. It isn't lovely or particularly compelling.

Now, I was interested in the setting, New Mexico, since I have never been there and would quite like to go someday. I was also interested in the Native American mythology motif, and the racial tension in the Southwest. But since the writing is so mediocre, there is no power in any of it. It is merely awkward.

This novel follows certain horror novel tropes of the 70s and 80s, and I think those tropes suck. I've read a number of novels from that period, and I rarely, if ever, like them. They are weak stories with badly drawn characters and stupid twists.

I also really hate the two lead women in this. They both bang Chato fairly quickly, and we're supposed to believe through Ptacek's lack of compelling buildup, that both women are pretty into him, if not in love. And I found her handling of Laura and Sunny to be fairly sexist. This might change; I suspect not. Laura is a career women, apparently a liberated woman–educated, smokin' hot, pampered. Sunny is apparently a prostitute, but she's a tough, Cool Girl who doesn't scream at every little thing like Laura. I'm fine with her being a sex worker. But Ptacek pits these two women against each other, at odds, and they are there mostly for Chato to have the hots for and bang. They are objects for him to use, only existing in relation to him for the duration of the story.

I also felt like any of the Native American social commentary was forced, but that might be because this books sucks so badly. Chato keeps doing things and going places that end up being pointless for him to do, so nothing really works in this book. I can't expect social commentary to work in something so poorly organized and so vapid.

I was pumped about this book–a female horror writer writing about Native American mythology, about the Southwest. But because I was so pumped, my hatred is even deeper than it otherwise would have been. No, this book were crap.

I finished it officially earlier this evening. Oh, no, it sucked. What a sad disappointment. OH, WELL, HAPPY NEW YEAR'S!!

What a relief to have this back. I maybe liked this even more than the first arc? Though maybe it's because I could read it straight through. Some nice AI horror in there too, and delightful art.

What struck me most about this was the prose. You can absolutely tell it's written by a poet. There are some absolutely gorgeous sentences here. A very good, beautifully written first novel. I will be keeping a lookout for more.

So, toward the end, with less than 40 pages to go, I got stuck in one chapter for about a week and a half. Because every time I tried to read this chapter, I would fall asleep. Part of it was being tired. But part of it was sheer boredom.

This was my least favorite. I didn't buy any of the relationships. Simon is blandly nice and good. Supposedly. I thought he was milquetoast and stupid.

Sadly, the author is definitely a one-trick pony. She is obviously intelligent. But I don't understand the ruminations on religion. Maybe that's because I come from a religious background (though Protestant), and I find the things Alice and Eileen think about religion to be naive, if not completely incorrect. And I don't understand why Alice and Felix are together, because they have zero chemistry; he's also a butthead. That being said, he's also the first character whom I feel like isn't merely performing his bisexuality. I believe, a little, that he is bi; I've never believed it of the other characters in her novels. I still don't believe any of them are Marxist; they all just say they are.

The quarter-life crises of the characters doesn't feel quite fleshed-out enough. I remember my friends all having quarter-life crises. There were similar worries, but less pretention.

I'm also very over heteronormativity of the characters, even the ones who aren't heteronormative. I don't know anyone personally at this point who performs gender so normatively as Eileen, Marianne, or Frances. Once again, a female character wants to be abused by a man. And once again, the characters can't communicate. Like, at all. Ever. Simon can't just come out and tell Eileen how he feels? But he can have sex with her over and over again? He's an idiot.

It's the same story, just with different details. And the style was killing me. I...I just can't. And this is purely subjective. But the lack of quotation marks. The need for more paragraphs. The run-ons. It doesn't feel experimental; it feels lazy.

That being said, I feel like this is maybe the most honest of the three books. Mostly because of the emails between the supposed besties. Who also can't communicate very well in person. I get that; that part makes sense. But the lack of chemistry when they finally meet does not.

Reading this, I know everyone thinks Alice is Rooney's avatar. But so is Eileen.

I'm sorry for the negative reviews, but her novels elude me. I don't relate. I don't see myself or my friends, most of whom are actually smack-dab in the midst of the Millennial generation. Rooney is obviously intelligent, but I'm confused by the naivete of her supposedly worldly characters, the stupidity of her male characters, and how no one can communicate properly. Maybe it's all just too cis/white/thin/privileged/heteronormative for me–because the characters are, despite their proclamations otherwise.

I was torn on how many stars to give this one. I'm familiar with cyberpunk works and have enjoyed them in the past. Price is very obviously intelligent, knows his genre, and is excellent at worlds building. The plot is complex, but it isn't so complicated it's difficult to follow. It is the tale of mechanic Mara, who one day wakes up in the wrong body, beside a corpse she is then accused of murdering. She goes on the run, trying to find out what's happened to her.

That's just the beginning of the action. She meets seedy underworld dwellers, an off-the-grid commune, and a wannabe cowboy, who is probably one of my favorite characters.

The beginning is strong, but there came a point in the first third where I began to find Mara a bit tedious, and the story dragged for me. But then she meets the cowboy and then the protein the commune, and I regained interest. The last third was actually quite fun.

So, the strengths are plotting and worlds building. The main drawback for me were the characters. I wasn't as engaged with them as much as I'd have liked, particularly Mara. But I'd like to read more, and I'll certainly look for Price again. 3.5 stars rounded to 4.

I received an ARC for free in exchange for a review.

3.5 stars.

On the whole, I enjoy this. Though, there were several times that I found Thora and Santi tedious. When the book becomes just talking, talking, talking. Not too many ways around that, in a book like this. But it was still good. But some lives are so brief, filled with so much talking, occasionally I found myself disconnected from the characters. Except the cat.

This series is so good. If not for Covid, I'd have been buying the monthly. But I like Tynion. If he has something out, I'll probably at least take a look.

Thank you to Berkley Books for the ARC of Playing the Palace by Paul Rudnick.

First things first. Toward the end, there are some unfinished words at the end of paragraphs, a lack of punctuation at the end of some sentences, and paragraphs are accidentally split up.

That being said: Whilst this is not as good as Red, White & Royal Blue, it is still delightful fun. It's a bit more episodic and not terribly deep, and Carter and Edgar are a weird, abrupt couple. BUT it's awfully cute and hilarious. I had a laughing fit whilst my wife was on the Switch Light playing a farm game with a friend. They were quite confused. But I have a crass sense of humor, so the scene in question just killed me. This book is all about being light and feel good and fun. And it succeeds. The characters are fairly precious, although kinda quirky in that rom-com tropey way. But they're all so likeable. Except Callum. And Carter really needs to figure himself out, because everyone (almost) adores him.

I sped through this book happily. I enjoyed it immensely. It isn't perfect, and it's very like RW&RB; but if you want an HEA with lots of humor and adorability, this is a great read. I laughed A LOT.

Gods, I'm reading some real doozies. Trigger warning here for emotional abuse, rape, gaslighting, cutting, and just general entitled white male assholery.

Lilja is seeing a man she's never able to straight-up call her boyfriend. He's awful and cheats on her, coerces her into sexual positions she doesn't want, convinces her she's nuts, isolates her, is rude to her friends and family, wakes her up with sex, and is a colossally horrible person. This reads like poetic prose, and you can tell it's a novel written by a poet. Not my favorite style for a novel, but this felt so very realistic that I feel like the author has lived this. It's heartbreaking and ire-inducing. There is a small glimmer of hope at the end. A tiny one. But it's not great.

Absurdity

The synopsis I read of this book made it sound magical Aaaaaand interesting.

But it's actually just another bad thriller relying on nonsensical plot twists, the nonsense of false memories, and two women fighting over one possessive jerk. It's not that the prose itself was bad. It's that the characters were ridiculous, the plot was convolutedly and horrendously bad, and none of this would ever happen. I'm flummoxed that an editor didn't call out the complete nonsense of everything in this book.

Oh, well. At least I wasn't too bored?

I enjoyed this book. I could have used more creepy Ghostdaddy scenes, but what I got was quite fun. I was surprised by the twist at the end, actually. Depressingly, no matter how much one tries to fix things, sometimes, one is just hosed.

I also liked all the bootlegging descriptions. But I'm the person who had a lady hardon for all the descriptions of ship stuff in The Terror, so don't mind me.

So, yes, Southern Gothic fun. Yes, I would classify this as horror. But Gothic isn't always terrifying. It's a mood, an aesthetic, a subgenre. And I really liked our hero.

This isn't a very informative review, but it's been a busy day.