Allie

I could quite literally not put this down. I mean, I read a 400-page book in two days!!! The first chapter suckered me in when I selected it for my Book of the Month club pick, causing me to forgo several other books that are also on Mount TBR in favor of this one I'd never heard of before, and it was the best decision ever. Sign Here was creepy and thriller-y but in a dryly comedic way; half of it takes place in hell, and the other half takes place at a family's summer lake house. I was completely immersed in the stories of our main character, a dude named Peyote Trip dealing with Hell Bureacracy making deals for other people's souls, and the seemingly regular family he keeps close tabs on, hoping to complete a set - making five deals within the same family. Secrets and violent shenanigans abound.

It was gripping, and I had fun.

CW: non-graphic descriptions of body horror, violence against a pregnant person, teen pregnancies, self-harm, drug and alcohol use, murder/attempted murder, sex trafficking of a minor, cult violence, suicide

I have been unable to put this book down all week, even reading in three-minute spurts while my toddler watches Coco, in the few minutes before my workday starts, and bigger chunks the second the kid is down for the night and it's time for the chores to begin. Heh. Chores? What chores? I'm busy.

Satire (obvious enough that I understood it!), horror for the perpetually-online, tongue-in-cheek white nonsense - I found June fascinating in her obsession with Athena, her friend that was both beloved and reviled depending on the moment, and how June saw her writing so intertwined with Athena's work even before June stole the manuscript. I think it was Hemingway who said something about writing requiring you to open a vein and bleed (though I see online there's some controversy to that attribution, which is fascinating as plagiarism and literary theft/ownership is the theme of this book!), and I enjoyed not only the glimpse into the pub process, but also how difficult it is to, well, bleed.

June is not a nice person, she's kind of terrible, and her indignation at perceived slights borders on unhinged. (Her teaching the college kids at the writing workshop! My gosh, she could have done like ten other things than what she actually did.) But she contains multitudes. All of these characters do. Candice with her creepy recordings of Athena's voice! Athena's previous thefts of June's stories, and the stories of her ex-boyfriend Geoff. June's conversations with Geoff as bad-guy-turned-commiserator. Kuang put together such a compelling story, with such deep characterization. And that's not even touching on the way race plays such an interesting role in both June's interactions and what she feels like she's owed, what she feels like “diverse” people have that she can't access. (June is white, Athena was Chinese.)

I had not read any other Kuang books, as epic fantasy isn't really my thing, but now I'm questioning if I should pick one of them up anyway. I'll be on the lookout for her in the future, for sure!

Book clubbbb.

So there's this girl Signa, and it turns out she is impervious to poison and also can see ghosts, and also can see Death himself. She's really hot for Death, but remember kids this is a YA romantasy. (There's more sexytimes than there should be, considering you know, Death, but it's YA sexytimes.) Oh and also all the people who are Signa's guardians end up magically dead. Didn't I just read this book?

Signa moves into this old creepy house with some cousins, and it turns out the matriarch Lillian has just died but her ghost is still here and she is REAL MAD, and also these incompetent doctors could not figure out that she was being poisoned, and now her daughter is also being poisoned and the stupid doctors are like

What a weird book. I was in the mood for a little bit of “horror-lite” and this definitely served that up - mostly just moments of creepiness in the first half until ish takes a TURN in the second. I suppose it could be considered gory, but Allen is not overly graphic in her descriptions of body horror, and for that I thank her!

Plus, it turns the “final girl” trope on its head in a very pleasing way.

If you like The Bachelor – knowing that basically none of the people on this fictional show are “there for the right reasons” – and like the idea of skewering influencer culture, plus murder/missing women on a remote island where most of the inhabitants appear to be lesbians, and also there's a Bigfoot ... whew it's a lot but maybe this is for you! I enjoyed reading it, though at the end I still couldn't quite muster up much beyond “what a weird book.” 3.5 stars.

I started a new job this week, and as it's a bigger company with Systems in place, I can't log on to Goodreads all the time like I did at the last place. On the other hand, while I was waiting for the Systems to do things like get me the software I need to do my job, I managed to get through a big chunk of this book today. So.

I had this on my Kindle, and I mistakenly thought it was a capital-R Romance novel, and while it does feature a friends-to-lovers romance, this is not the main focus of the book. Our heroine Angie is a third-year medical student doing hospital rotations and such, and so there's a lot of her friends, and family, and school stuff, and oh yes there's a very hot painter guy who she falls in love with but it is complicated because she builds this relationship up in her mind, and breaks it down in her mind, and is super wishy-washy about basically everything that isn't Becoming A Doctor. (Have a conversation! I say. Except they DO eventually and it doesn't make it better! It's confusing why these two can't just Be Happy!!)

Obuobi is very clearly well-versed in the medical world and provided helpful footnotes for some things that I didn't already know from watching Scrubs. And also, Angie is Ghanaian-American, so I liked getting those peeks into a different culture. I didn't love the extensive use of the footnotes outside of these, though - sometimes they felt distracting, and so I started skipping over them unless it was about a term I didn't know or something.

Overall, I enjoyed it, didn't love it.

CW: racism, death (including that of a teen), drug addiction (off-page), accidental pregnancy

Two words: penis piercing.

Necessarily heavier than some of his previous works - addressing the death of his father, and his sister's sexual assault allegations against their father. Also pandemic. This is the closest I've come to actually wanting to hear about Covid in my reading, he always tells a good story along the way, but some of his behavior during lockdown was appalling and risky to others' health, and he doesn't much seem to be bothered by that. As always, the audio was good.

Meh. DNF at pg. 219.
Georgina is an obnoxious caricature. Lots of unhappy people who think that swinging is going to solve all their problems. Very few partners on board with this plan. HAVE A CONVERSATION! I feel like I say this in every romance novel review, though I absolutely WOULD NOT count this as a romance. I feel a little like I got bait-and-switched, and don't particularly care if Georgina gets her HEA. Oh well. Next!

The premise of this is fairly ridiculous, but it was still a good time.

I saw where this was going from a mile away, but I'm not mad at it. 3.5!

I don't have a lot to say about this. It was fine, and I enjoyed the first half a lot, then it seemed to drag, and had a lot of Things to Say About Life, and also the kissing didn't start until like three chapters from the end.

But my real problem?
The author doesn't know how paragraph breaks work.
Like, most sentences were on a new line even when it was continuing the thought from the previous one.
So. Many. Poor. Broken. Paragraphs.
It was constant!
It was distracting!!

See what I did there? eyebrow waggle – 2.5 stars

I loved this book. I basically read it in every spare second I had over two and a half days, and it was delightful to sink into. I kept trying to - inexplicably! - talk myself out of five-starring it while I was reading, but then Henry would turn a phrase that made me laugh out loud, or Charlie and Nora would start emailing, and their banter was just chef's kiss. I thought about highlighting things on my Kindle and now I'm regretting the choice not to, but I was too busy tearing through the pages. I also loved the glimpse into the novel-writing-editing-publishing process, as that's something I'm interested in but am not cutthroat enough to ever succeed in that world.

If you like shows like The Office (U.S.) and The Good Place, you will love the sense of humor in this. (I have not seen Parks & Rec yet, but that is on our list once Matt and I finish 30 Rock.) I laughed out loud a lot, because it turns out Kant is kind of ridiculous and Schur presents him as kind of a stick in the mud, and also one would hope that a seasoned comedy writer would be funny, and he is.

Schur manages to take a topic that I have little interest in (navel-gazing erm, philosophy) and presents a whole bunch of different people's attitudes toward it (utilitarianism! the golden mean! existentialism! which people should fear being hit by trolleys!) in a way that it's not only understandable, but somehow simultaneously hilarious and earnest about ways we can always do better at being human? Which, just today I told Matt that I wished people were better, also very earnestly, and Matt is now well on his way since I put this book in his nightstand book stack! (jk he's already a way better person than I am, but he will still enjoy this book as much as I did, and also he bought it for me for Valentine's Day but he told me he wanted to read it when I was done.)

Engaging sure. I didn't find any of the twists to be particularly

I really liked this, but I out-and-out LOVED [b:The True Love Experiment 62361081 The True Love Experiment Christina Lauren https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1677786623l/62361081.SY75.jpg 98186716], so I was expecting this one to be absolutely fantastic too. And it was good, but I just wanted more. The conflict was completely different than what I expected the conflict to be (People magazine figuring out that Jess was being paid to hang out with River, but nope that was never mentioned again; instead it was about two of the guys in the company forging River and Jess' genetic data so they'd be a Diamond Match), which was fine but the implications for the company were more serious than the implications for the relationship. More more more! More what? I don't know, but give me more!Fizzy continued to be the best character, and Juno was also pretty awesome, and it was neat to see a romance with a single mom.

At this moment, I am all about the ridiculous premise. She is an environmental protestor, and he is the sheriff of the small town who has to keep arresting her when she continually chains herself to things. It was all, sweet-cute-banter - 50% mark - smut-smut-banter-smut-HEA. Not mad!

I'll probably read the second one in the series, Sheriff's brother who reads romance novels and is in love with his best friend and oops there's only one bed. Yep, just talked myself into one-clicking that. I need all the happiness I can get this week!!!! Forget all those other book club books and library books on my nightstand!

I went into this thinking it was a romance, and I'm kinda glad it didn't turn out to be — Yinka spends a lot of time being fairly unlikeable because she's clearly desperate for a relationship (and the thinking is that, if she can get a “huzband” — any huzband — her family will finally stop bugging her, to which I say hahahahahahaha but then babies!!!). She makes all these changes to try to become someone else, someone whom she perceives as being more worthy of love, and lies to all her friends and is generally kind of a jerk to everyone she loves for most of the book.

I was thankful Yinka did get a redemption arc towards the end of the book, when she hits her rock bottom and gets into counseling. And I suppose there's still the potential for a happy ending, off-page.

CW: death of a parent (in the past), colorism, sexual assault (unwanted groping)

2.5 stars - it was entertaining enough. I'm not really a fan of thriller type stories, so take this as your grain of salt. Usually my complaints are that I don't like civilians investigating murders (check), I don't believe conspiracies are as common as writers like to use them (check), and no matter how many hints are dropped, I will never figure out whodunnit on my own (check). When the killer was finally revealed, I didn't believe their motivations, and then the story wrapped up super fast with little closure. I did enjoy the aspects of this around social media influencers, and the use of technology in ways that felt fresh.

I flew through this book and enjoyed it a lot. I liked Elizabeth as a character, loved the interplay of Elizabeth and Miss Frask especially as the book went on. Loved Harriet and the few friends that Elizabeth/Mad managed to cobble together especially as the book went on. Loved how Elizabeth treated the cooking show, as an extension of chemistry even though she wasn't able to work in a lab, and how that resonated with her audience of women wanting to be taken seriously.

Got irritated because I couldn't figure out how old Mad was supposed to be. I get that she's supposed to be brilliant, but if she is truly supposed to be four, there is no way she's understanding The Sound and the Fury. One of my favorite childhood movies was Matilda, but even that seemed more realistic, as a very serious six-and-a-half year old who loves to read. Now I have a couple of six-year-old niblings, so maybe Matilda wasn't exactly a realistic portrayal either, but it made more sense to me than this. And I didn't dislike Mad at all! I just wanted ... some element of her character that didn't read like a pretentious 32-year-old. And that ended up extending to Six-Thirty as well. Dogs are smart yes, but you can't know how many words your dog knows and understands. He's allowed to just have an internal dialogue without having a measuring stick to prove he's smart.

I found the ending a little bit confusing, it all felt kind of rushed with Elizabeth meeting the Parker Foundation people and Calvin's relatives and all that ... I didn't need it to wrap up so neatly, especially since so little of Elizabeth's life had been easy or neat.

So, I liked it, didn't love it.

TW: sexism, rape, adoption, trauma by religious institutions (specifically thinking about the women's home lying to Calvin's mother about her son being stillborn, and when she found out it was a lie, lying to her that her son was dead again; similarly, lying to Calvin that his mother had died in childbirth)

The friendship story - of three Anglo-Nigerian friends in London and their lives intersecting with each other and the secrets they keep from their significant others - I really liked. I like getting to see grown women - Ronke, Simi and Boo are our gals here - have friends that they can get together with that are not necessarily surrounding a particular activity or kids. Maybe that's because right now my life revolves around kids, and book clubs are my means of getting together with friends outside of my kid. (This was not for book club.)

I had two main issues with Wahala, and a third that's the ol' Have A Conversation bugaboo.

1) Ronke, while being the best and nicest character, was fat-shamed CONSTANTLY. She's a foodie, and likes to cook, and likes to eat, and she wears size 14(!?!) pants but everyone's go-to is how Ronke and sad and desperate because she's a blob and needs to lose weight. Never mind the fact that she's helpful and loves her friends and is good at keeping secrets, and is always ready to lend an ear or an arm or a pan. I hated it. Justice for Ronke!

2) Isobel. The whole thriller-y element rests entirely on her shoulders but I didn't believe her motivations for messing with these women. I REALLY don't like the “it's because she's crazy!” argument, and I worried up until like the last three pages that that was all Isobel's character was going to hinge on. The real reason for her infiltration into this threesome made even less logical sense. She was entirely a chaos agent for no good reason.

3) Just Have a Conversation! I know nobody tells their partner absolutely everything, but so much of Isobel's meddling and their self-imposed problems would have been nipped in the bud if these women had had conversations with their significant others BEFORE imploding their own lives!

I did like the aspects of being multinational/multicultural, and how that can mean very different things depending on your family (Ronke much more steeped in her Nigerian heritage, Boo almost completely ignorant of her own).

I got this for myself for Christmas, and after flipping through it, my grandmother told me that this was really messed up.

She's not wrong! It was fun!

I know my reading speed has slowed considerably this year, and despite this actually taking me a whole week to read, I felt like I couldn't put this down.

And. I am so glad I didn't read this earlier. The descriptions of symptoms Finn was seeing in the ICU were terrifying, and I am very freaked out by descriptions of medical things, and if I had read this before having (a mild case of) Covid myself, I know I would have worried way more. Even though things were way worse in the early days, before we knew anything about the virus, before Delta and vaccinations and Omicron. There is a lot of trauma revisited in this book, so take care of yourself if you do choose to read this. (I know I wouldn't have if I had not been gifted this by my MIL. And if we weren't moving, and had literally less than 10 books on my nightstand that aren't packed yet. It was pretty serendipitous, I guess.)

I know Picoult has a reputation for being kind of a preachy issues-writer, but I didn't feel that this was super preachy until literally the epilogue. I am a little mad at the epilogue, even though I knew it was inevitable, I just didn't like the implication in the last few lines; it felt counter to everything that had come before it.

I feel like I can't really talk about this without spoiling major plot points, but I did enjoy learning about art in regards to Diana's job at Sotheby's, and about the Galapagos islands.

A valuable resource, full of practical information.

It was fine! For the good first half of this book it was just silly, there were no stakes, no real seriousness as to why this grown woman would think stalking a celebrity and convincing him to call off his wedding is a good idea.

It took more than halfway through to dig into any real emotions between the love interests, to get even a hint at possible motives (you know, other than “she's cuckoo-pants”), and then suddenly there are stakes based on real trauma, and that's when I felt like the book got way better, and the friends-to-lovers romance got way more interesting (though, YO - twenty years is a long freaking time to be in love with your best friend without doing anything about it!!!).

If Keanu is your thing, there are lots of references to Keanu movies and things here, comic cons and costumes, and movie sets and Easter eggs. He's not especially my bag, but I won't yuck your yum.

NOPE. Nope nope nope. DNF @ 46%. I don't do stories about possession. NOPING right out of here.

This book is Definitely Not For Allie:
mention of infant death
there was a map in the beginning
made-up fantasy language
war that makes no sense
they've spent most of the story lost in the woods (may or may not be a construct)
aforementioned possession of an irrelevant character made the MMC like, wildly horny?? HELL NOPE.