Relic

An often bittersweet task approached in a friendly way. This book was gently uplifting and oddly refreshing to read.

Has some useful tips and resources, but Marie Kondo has a far more effective and practical approach and doesn't end every section with “I only have ONE of (whatever)” lowkey judging anyone who owns more. Feels like a guidebook for how to stage your home for instagram photos

Cute and fun little book with inviting illustrations! An info-packed, engaging quick read.

Very okay book. I know it's a book about a walking journey + a mental journey but it was HEAVY on the walking. I don't usually skim, but I couldn't help it during some of those walking parts. Still 100% more book than I've ever written and published, so there's that. Props for that.

Surface level and not what I expected it to be about based off the title. The only part I liked was the author's willingness to say relationships are complex and there is no right answer or way to be, that people just exist and are allowed to make mistakes. This read like a transcript from a therapy session. Like, glad she got all that off her chest I guess? Tell your friend I said good luck with her Instagram drama...? And sorry that thing happened to you in eighth grade?
If your personality is defined by always needing to have a hot take on the internet, I guess this book is for you. I think I'm too offline for this.

Holy shit.

Can't wait to read this novella when it's finished!

Oh wait, it... IS... finished?

I don't normally rate books so low or review things harshly but come on lol this is first draft The Secret History fanfic type writing with 5 pages of M. L. Rio's better book in the back to pad it. There were a handful of disjointed and incomplete characters not doing anything significant for 108 pages. I wanted something to happen so bad. I could SENSE that there were ideas here SOMEWHERE. I KNOW M. L. Rio can write! I read IWWV and really liked it! Not sure what happened here lol

This book changed my brain chemistry. As someone who grew up in a small town and moved to another small town in Northeast Ohio, the depictions of all the people and places mentioned were spot on. The drama is so real and unfortunately believable. The characters are complex, lovable at some times and hatable at others. It was easy to think of who I knew in high school and compare them to each of the high schoolers in the book. I could read another 500 pages about Bill. Vivid depictions of war, violence, trauma, sexual assault, and self harm, but that's life.

There is not a lot that will squick me out anymore when it comes to reading thrillers, but this book definitely has those few things within its pages. I mean that in the most complimentary way. Emezi does a fantastic job showing readers the world and its horrors, and kept me hooked the entire time.

I love fiction where women lose their minds while going through the worst times of their lives. Throw a desert setting in and I'm sold. The main character of this book pushes her loved ones away as a response to grief and has a hard time accepting that she's okay even though the rest of her life is a little upside down at the moment. Mood. Recommending this book to my therapist.

The way the main character just... keeps going to work even though the world is ending outside... me too girl. But also, reading this book post-2020 was haunting. I feel like it's hard to find fiction that doesn't automatically paint a pandemic-related-apocalypse as an action hero zombie event. Ling Ma does a very good job of keeping it fresh.

As someone who also went through a quarter-life crisis after a big breakup (getting a divorce) at a relatively young age, this book hit very close to home for me. I laughed and cried with the main character for all the things she thought she wanted, all the things that happened instead, and all the manic online purchases made at the height of an emotional breakdown. It was an emotional roller coaster of a book, but so is being a divorced millennial.

I adored this. I lived this, I felt this, I was this girl. It's so easy to sit here with this book and laugh at who I was and what I did growing up. What a unique time. The book reads like catching up with an old friend or explaining to your daughter the crazy things that mom used to do way back when.

If you couldn't get enough of Cormac McCarthy's Anton Chigurh, this book is for you. I have a soft spot in my heart for fictional psychopathic country boys. There is a little something wrong with everyone in this book, and the ending made me cry.

Unlikeable and pretentious but not wholly unpleasant.

I wanted to like this book but it felt like a first draft.

Weir excels at one-guy-in-space fiction. This was not that.

It's an absolute shame that this book came out after Artemis because I feel like that book drove a lot of Weir's fans away. He excels at writing one, mid-tier intelligence, white-bread-interesting type guy getting stuck in space, and he returned to that for Project Hail Mary and nailed it. He keeps the hard science fiction in his writing but makes it approachable for any audience with at least a high-school understanding of how space works. Project Hail Mary is a page-turner and very satisfying to read.

Oh man, I love Black Mirror/Severance/Devs

A book for the chronically online if I've ever seen one. It condenses Twitter and internet fame down info it's essential parts and pairs it with the bleak happenings of IRL to give you a perspective so sad that it's funny.

If you're at the point in your years of clinical depression that you can laugh at it, this book is for you. The main character is delightfully pathetic and his general demeanor makes him someone I would hate to be around for any length of time, but that's what makes him so great. Throughout the book you discover more about his problems and find out... he's just kind of... like this. So many moments where I was simultaneously relating to this guy and also screaming at him to get over himself. Love it.