altlovesbooks
Added to listSci Fiwith 68 books.
Added to list2025 Favoriteswith 2 books.
Added to listAudiobooks Readwith 155 books.
Like if Oceans 8 had a focus on Fast and Furious's family, but set in a cyberpunky space station with lots of representation. You've got a team of people set on liberating valuable items from a corporate CEO with the intent to ransom them back to him and make bank. That's basically it, but it was enough for me.
I'm gonna fly in the face of everyone here who had complaints about the boring plot and say up front that the plot is secondary to the characterization. Is the heist fun? Absolutely. It's clear the author did a lot of cybersecurity/physical security research, and it shows without being too bogged down in technical minutiae. Is it incredibly satisfying/tense/subtle/layered? Not particularly. There isn't a lot unexpected here to keep anyone guessing. But I thought the real joy in this book, and the reason for the five stars, was getting to know Edie and Angel and the complex relationship between them. Even the secondary characters, the people making up the crew, were interesting, I thought, and each had their personal strengths they brought to the table to make the heist happen.
I especially enjoyed the Hawaiian lens we experience the story through. I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator really nailed all the various slang/pidgin thrown in to really bring conversations to life. I wish that I had a bit of translation or a glossary or something to reference sometimes, though, but context clues did a good job of carrying meaning through.
Just a fun heist with colorful characters in a unique setting. Highly enjoyed it.
Like if Oceans 8 had a focus on Fast and Furious's family, but set in a cyberpunky space station with lots of representation. You've got a team of people set on liberating valuable items from a corporate CEO with the intent to ransom them back to him and make bank. That's basically it, but it was enough for me.
I'm gonna fly in the face of everyone here who had complaints about the boring plot and say up front that the plot is secondary to the characterization. Is the heist fun? Absolutely. It's clear the author did a lot of cybersecurity/physical security research, and it shows without being too bogged down in technical minutiae. Is it incredibly satisfying/tense/subtle/layered? Not particularly. There isn't a lot unexpected here to keep anyone guessing. But I thought the real joy in this book, and the reason for the five stars, was getting to know Edie and Angel and the complex relationship between them. Even the secondary characters, the people making up the crew, were interesting, I thought, and each had their personal strengths they brought to the table to make the heist happen.
I especially enjoyed the Hawaiian lens we experience the story through. I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator really nailed all the various slang/pidgin thrown in to really bring conversations to life. I wish that I had a bit of translation or a glossary or something to reference sometimes, though, but context clues did a good job of carrying meaning through.
Just a fun heist with colorful characters in a unique setting. Highly enjoyed it.
"I reckon you had a decent life and died a decent death. Ain't that enough?"
A pleasant, but not all that memorable, book about three people who find themselves in the care of Hirasaka, the man who flashes your life before your eyes when you die. Told in three separate stories, Hirasaka tends to an elderly preschool teacher, a Yakuza member, and an abused girl, when they find themselves there on death's doorstep. Two of the three stories begins with a photograph that doesn't quite develop of one of their cherished memories. Hirasaka offers to take them back in time to the period of the memory so they can retake their photograph exactly as they remember it, and we learn the backstory behind each of their memories. The final story framework is a bit different, but ultimately still follows the 'go back in time, get some backstory, take a photo' structure.
It was a decent book, but like I said, not all that memorable. The third story is definitely the most emotional, but I actually enjoyed the second story with the Yakuza member a bit more. Something about Waniguchi's interactions with Mouse and Kosaki really made the story for me, and I kind of liked how pragmatic Waniguchi was about his life in retrospect.
I do wish we learned more about Hiraska himself though, as it felt like some things were set up to make you wonder about him in the beginning, but were dropped by the end. There's no real ending to this book per se; he wraps up the third person's arc, we get a brief scene involving Yama, the guy who brings Hirasaka the information about the people/jobs, and that's the end. I kind of felt like more needed to be said, but I guess the author disagreed.
It's a decent book, but I'm not sure much will stick with me.
"I reckon you had a decent life and died a decent death. Ain't that enough?"
A pleasant, but not all that memorable, book about three people who find themselves in the care of Hirasaka, the man who flashes your life before your eyes when you die. Told in three separate stories, Hirasaka tends to an elderly preschool teacher, a Yakuza member, and an abused girl, when they find themselves there on death's doorstep. Two of the three stories begins with a photograph that doesn't quite develop of one of their cherished memories. Hirasaka offers to take them back in time to the period of the memory so they can retake their photograph exactly as they remember it, and we learn the backstory behind each of their memories. The final story framework is a bit different, but ultimately still follows the 'go back in time, get some backstory, take a photo' structure.
It was a decent book, but like I said, not all that memorable. The third story is definitely the most emotional, but I actually enjoyed the second story with the Yakuza member a bit more. Something about Waniguchi's interactions with Mouse and Kosaki really made the story for me, and I kind of liked how pragmatic Waniguchi was about his life in retrospect.
I do wish we learned more about Hiraska himself though, as it felt like some things were set up to make you wonder about him in the beginning, but were dropped by the end. There's no real ending to this book per se; he wraps up the third person's arc, we get a brief scene involving Yama, the guy who brings Hirasaka the information about the people/jobs, and that's the end. I kind of felt like more needed to be said, but I guess the author disagreed.
It's a decent book, but I'm not sure much will stick with me.
Added to listAudiobooks Readwith 154 books.
Added to listHorror Thrillerwith 11 books.
Added to listMysterywith 39 books.
Added to listFictionwith 93 books.
This is a hard book to rate/explain, but here goes.
Margo and Patricia are both librarians at a small public library branch in the Chicago 'burbs. Margo arrived earlier in the year than Patricia, and was a nurse prior to her (forced) career change. You see, (and this is all in the first chapter, so not a spoiler), 'Margo' is not Margo at all, and is instead a persona she created to distance herself from all the patients she killed at previous jobs. Now she's a librarian trying not to draw attention to herself, trying to acclimate to a job where people don't come in sick and reliant upon her to keep them alive, trying and sort of failing at keeping these intrusive thoughts at bay. Patricia is a failed writer trying a career change into something more reliable, trying and failing to resist the urge to write, trying to appease her loser of a boyfriend she doesn't seem to like too much. But when Margo starts behaving strangely at the library, she starts writing this down, and unwittingly turning Margo into a character for one of her books. She starts watching Margo closely, and by extension, starts drawing closer to Margo's truth.
The story is told from each of their viewpoints, and both are unreliable narrators, and also pretty unlikeable. 'Margo' is unlikeable just by merit of being a serial killer, but also because she has some pretty savage things she thinks about the patrons who come into her library (and admittedly that hits close to home). Patricia is unlikeable for folding like a lawn chair when her boyfriend tells her that basically everything she does is terrible, for stringing said boyfriend along for so long, for being so adverse to the idea of writing, and for (late story spoilers here) never turning Margo in, despite all the things she discovers about her. But unlikeable characters are sort of the point of this story, as a feature, not a bug. Most of this story wouldn't work if people behaved as they should, because this is a story about two liars, not just one.
I think my only hangup about this book was the ending. (ending spoilers here) I thought, for all the buildup we got between Margo and Patricia, I was expecting more of an explosive finale. And while the building burning down is, by definition, explosive, the actual dispute was over so abruptly. I don't know, for all of the slow burn, I feel like the ending should have been a bit more satisfying. I did like how the author turned Patricia into another Margo at the end, though. That was a really nice twist.
So, a great story marred by not sticking the landing. It's a slow burn, not quite action-packed, but psychological enough that I was entertained throughout.
This is a hard book to rate/explain, but here goes.
Margo and Patricia are both librarians at a small public library branch in the Chicago 'burbs. Margo arrived earlier in the year than Patricia, and was a nurse prior to her (forced) career change. You see, (and this is all in the first chapter, so not a spoiler), 'Margo' is not Margo at all, and is instead a persona she created to distance herself from all the patients she killed at previous jobs. Now she's a librarian trying not to draw attention to herself, trying to acclimate to a job where people don't come in sick and reliant upon her to keep them alive, trying and sort of failing at keeping these intrusive thoughts at bay. Patricia is a failed writer trying a career change into something more reliable, trying and failing to resist the urge to write, trying to appease her loser of a boyfriend she doesn't seem to like too much. But when Margo starts behaving strangely at the library, she starts writing this down, and unwittingly turning Margo into a character for one of her books. She starts watching Margo closely, and by extension, starts drawing closer to Margo's truth.
The story is told from each of their viewpoints, and both are unreliable narrators, and also pretty unlikeable. 'Margo' is unlikeable just by merit of being a serial killer, but also because she has some pretty savage things she thinks about the patrons who come into her library (and admittedly that hits close to home). Patricia is unlikeable for folding like a lawn chair when her boyfriend tells her that basically everything she does is terrible, for stringing said boyfriend along for so long, for being so adverse to the idea of writing, and for (late story spoilers here) never turning Margo in, despite all the things she discovers about her. But unlikeable characters are sort of the point of this story, as a feature, not a bug. Most of this story wouldn't work if people behaved as they should, because this is a story about two liars, not just one.
I think my only hangup about this book was the ending. (ending spoilers here) I thought, for all the buildup we got between Margo and Patricia, I was expecting more of an explosive finale. And while the building burning down is, by definition, explosive, the actual dispute was over so abruptly. I don't know, for all of the slow burn, I feel like the ending should have been a bit more satisfying. I did like how the author turned Patricia into another Margo at the end, though. That was a really nice twist.
So, a great story marred by not sticking the landing. It's a slow burn, not quite action-packed, but psychological enough that I was entertained throughout.
I haven't had a book make me feel more unwelcome to read it since I read Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi. The difference is that I went into Goliath knowing I wasn't the target audience and rated accordingly. For this one, I wasn't quite prepared for the amount of fights this book picked about gender and racial issues, and I had a nagging feeling the entire time that it didn't need to be this way.
I actually really liked this take on a post-apocalyptic society. Rather than the main characters being survivalists, being prepared for everything, being ready to plow through all adversaries in their way, this book focuses on two rather ordinary suburbanites from New Jersey trying to reach their daughter in California. A plague wiped out a large chunk of the world's population, leaving the rest behind immune to the disease. In the wake of the plague, society fractures, narrows in on itself, and the simple act of reaching a loved one across the country becomes incredibly difficult.
Right up front I'll say that I loved the writing in this book. I loved experiencing how a world-ending plague changes your average family's outlook, and how they grapple with old-world morals about stealing and killing and helping fellow survivors. The author did a fantastic job of painting how the world changed for average Americans.
But.....and here's a huge but.....the author really comes out swinging with a myriad of societal hangups they clearly have. The couple featured in this book are biracial, and right out the gate we get a lot of passages about how nearly everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen in the future is the fault of white males in society. Which, fine, we can talk about those issues, I have no problem with it and do see a lot of it in society, but the lengths this author goes to really pin every struggle in this book on that demographic is really quite impressive. We also get an extensive scene in the book where it feels like the fourth wall comes down and the author talks to the reader about legalization of marijuana, living in the present being optimal and 'the future' being a societal concept invented to generate stress, and other airy philosophical topics that don't seem to have a bearing on the book. It really felt shoehorned in. The ending also kind of had some vague (ending spoilers here) ideas about religion being bad and atheism being good, which, while I'm not religious, felt a bit like the author taking the mic again.
Ultimately I gave this book 3 and a half stars, but it fought me the entire way. I wanted so bad to rate it higher given how I enjoyed the premise, but it really felt like the author had a ton of axes to grind in it.
I haven't had a book make me feel more unwelcome to read it since I read Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi. The difference is that I went into Goliath knowing I wasn't the target audience and rated accordingly. For this one, I wasn't quite prepared for the amount of fights this book picked about gender and racial issues, and I had a nagging feeling the entire time that it didn't need to be this way.
I actually really liked this take on a post-apocalyptic society. Rather than the main characters being survivalists, being prepared for everything, being ready to plow through all adversaries in their way, this book focuses on two rather ordinary suburbanites from New Jersey trying to reach their daughter in California. A plague wiped out a large chunk of the world's population, leaving the rest behind immune to the disease. In the wake of the plague, society fractures, narrows in on itself, and the simple act of reaching a loved one across the country becomes incredibly difficult.
Right up front I'll say that I loved the writing in this book. I loved experiencing how a world-ending plague changes your average family's outlook, and how they grapple with old-world morals about stealing and killing and helping fellow survivors. The author did a fantastic job of painting how the world changed for average Americans.
But.....and here's a huge but.....the author really comes out swinging with a myriad of societal hangups they clearly have. The couple featured in this book are biracial, and right out the gate we get a lot of passages about how nearly everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen in the future is the fault of white males in society. Which, fine, we can talk about those issues, I have no problem with it and do see a lot of it in society, but the lengths this author goes to really pin every struggle in this book on that demographic is really quite impressive. We also get an extensive scene in the book where it feels like the fourth wall comes down and the author talks to the reader about legalization of marijuana, living in the present being optimal and 'the future' being a societal concept invented to generate stress, and other airy philosophical topics that don't seem to have a bearing on the book. It really felt shoehorned in. The ending also kind of had some vague (ending spoilers here) ideas about religion being bad and atheism being good, which, while I'm not religious, felt a bit like the author taking the mic again.
Ultimately I gave this book 3 and a half stars, but it fought me the entire way. I wanted so bad to rate it higher given how I enjoyed the premise, but it really felt like the author had a ton of axes to grind in it.
