fizzy

“ I liked the sound of Carral's mouth as she took a huge bite out of one of the golden apples and crushed the sweet flesh between her teeth. The soft yellow of the peel was almost the same as her hair. “

Pros
- beautifully rich and vulnerable prose
- easy to get through
- palpable atmosphere of humid, hazy queer confusion
- piss and decay

Cons
- symbolism with not much substance
- overused garden of eden theme
- unconvincing characters
- sorta reductive gender roles

“‘I'd imagine you'd be uncomfortable, with your heart full of so many forgotten things.'
‘No, that's not really a problem. A heart has no shape, no limits. That's why you can put almost any kind of thing in it, why it can hold so much.'”

“I go back to what I was before, the boy who intrigues, not the boy who satisfies. I tell myself that pleasing him was just an illusion, and that pleasure itself lasts only as long as an embrace in a closet.”

Really enjoyed Ari & Hector's dynamic and the cute art style. Personally I liked that the characters were imperfect and sort of annoying at times because that's how real life is, and perfect characters are bound to get boring after a while. The plot and dialogue and all wasn't anything special to me but I always like the gay bakery trope so! It was good overall but I felt that there was a bit of an unfinished feeling to it.

“And then she realized how dumb, pointless, childish, and princess-like it'd been to think any part of her body could be kept sheltered and untouched and loved. The thought went up in ashes without remorse or sadness.”

this book is written with such an intimately personal touch that i felt like Wendy was a friend by the time i finished reading. the style of writing is more stream-of-consciousness than i usually prefer, but it lends itself to the storyline, which is ultimately not plot-driven. unlike many books (mostly written by cis authors) featuring a trans protagonist, this felt like an insightful character study of a regular girl living in the world.

the only clichés in this book were ones also found in real life. despite my trans experience being very different from wendy's and that of most transfem people, this book felt incredibly realistic and really resonated with me. everyone is flawed, loose ends are not tied up, people get hurt, and Wendy still keeps living.

I was gonna rate this three stars but the ending put it over the edge to four. The art style and main character are really cool but the story was a little boring for me personally. But Coyote's interactions with others felt very genuine and I like her a lot

“He wanted to go down on me, but I didn't want him to. He got angry and left, slamming the screen door so hard my spice rack jumped from its nail and crashed to the floor. My dog lapped up the nutmeg, and I had to force-feed him salt to make him throw up. Revved from adrenaline, I made a list of animals I have had in my life—seven, including my two betta fish, who died within a week of each other when I was nine—and a list of the spices in pho. Cloves, cinnamon, star anise, coriander, ginger, cardamom pods.”

Really superficial materialistic popular-girl themes and I'm not quite sure if the whole Caroline bathroom incident was supposed to be metaphorical and deep or something, but it wasn't executed that well. However I love the art style and it was really entertaining, even if the charactees are kind of insufferable lol

“ I can't dream of clouds, but I can see the knife on the kitchen counter. I can dream of it inside me, opening me up and closing me down. “

scott's prose reads like a shitty YA thriller with quippy one-liners, unrealistic dialogue, and cheesy, unnecessary formatting choices for no other reason than to be dramatic and quirky.

ultimately i see no reason this book should have been written. it was an easy and quick read because of the formatting and oversimplified plot, but to me it has little to no literary merit. it's a typical predictable kidnap story, but with some graphic sexual violence/pedophilia sprinkled in for shock value. newspapers publish much more vivid descriptions of the same horrible things happening to REAL people, so “showing the ugly reality of the world” does not strike me as a valid reason for this fictional book to be published.

TWs for those planning on reading:
- kidnapping
- semi-graphic CSA, pedophilia, physical abuse
- forced starvation/ED
- addiction
- mentions of suicide/ideation

Pros

- Entertaining
- Decent purely as a crime novel
- An easy and quick read
- The premise could've made for a solid book if it stuck to one theme or the other (a gut-wrenching story of violence and generational trauma, or an over-the-top campy horror about a messed up backwoods family) rather than attempting and failing to integrate aspects from both.

Cons

- This is more of something i was confused by and is not necessarily a con, but it didn't live up to the “hype” of being an extreme horror read. Yes, the subject matter is very disturbing and some parts could be gross for readers who are a bit more squeamish, but people have made this book sound like it is practically unreadable due to how explicit and disgusting it is, which i didn't at all find to be true
- Extremely predictable “plot twists” that feel cheap and hinge on shock factor and violation of taboos rather than meaningful character/plot development
- Annoying love-at-first-sight plot derailment purely to further a random plot twist
- Cliché horror tropes galore as well as schlocky dialogue, especially from Alice towards the end
- Bland prose with little to no character or stylization
- Though there were occasional glimpses of complexity in the characters, as a whole they did not feel multifaceted despite their extensive trauma which in reality would more drastically complicate their personalities and experiences. Instead, most characters are framed as either good or bad, and were sometimes even explicitly named as such. Michael and Misty are the heroic martyrs while everyone else is labeled as evil and unsympathetic despite everyone being victims of some sort of awful abuse and having all committed the same crimes.

“I'm smiling as I let the smoke out of my lungs and into the warm July night. In my mind, I'm already unwrapping the bandages.”

wow, this was god-awful. how many times can one book repeat the line “i fuck dead girls”? like, i think we get it: you have an “dark and edgy” sense of humor and hate women! get in line with all the other male shock horror authors. the writing style, dialogue, and character development were all absolute dogshit.

literally every page is a corny description of necrophilia and/or cannibalism to the point where i was bored and cringing not even at the graphic content but at the complete lack of any semblance of talent or self awareness that the writing displays. you can definitely do exploitative and disturbing content well, but Morrison clearly does not understand how.

“To love another man—is to leave
no one behind
to forgive me.
I want to leave no one behind.
To keep & be kept.
The way a field turns its secrets
into peonies.
The way light keeps its shadow
by swallowing it.”

NSFW/
This felt really male gaze-y to me :( It was entertaining and I really tried to like it but it felt shallow and unrealistic. It promoted some unsafe BDSM practices and there were a lot of problems with consent among the friend group.

“I felt as though the vessel of my suffering had become empty, as if nothing could interest me now. I had lost even the ability to suffer.”

Reading through the pointless and seemingly endless ramblings of yet another depressed man who hated women made the 177 pages of this book feel like an inescapable eternity of politely dodging a man who is trying to talk to you at a house party. The fact that this book is a highly acclaimed semi-autobiography depicting the bleak individualistic orientation of Japan in the ‘40s does not make up for the fact that it was boring, unnecessarily convoluted, and generally irritating.

“That night I had an odd dream, which I remembered very clearly the next morning. A red ocean was rimmed with a shore of darker crimson sand. In the ocean a woman played in the waves.”

pretty underdeveloped characters and predictable plot, but for such a short graphic novel i thought it was done well despite its simplicity. i liked the quiet snippets of Corinna's daily life sprinkled into the narrative and it's always cool to see east asian representation in media.

“It occurred to me that the wrinkles in the sheets would probably never be smoothed out, the sweater never put away in the drawer, the mathematics problems never completely solved.”

“It was as though the very constellations knew our impending sorrow. For against that great – wide – sweep of sable there came the burst of a single jewel-like star, and I saw it shimmer, and break, and streak down the cheek of that one coal-black sky like a reluctant and solitary tear...”

“If you concentrate really hard, you can actually get to a place where it doesn't hurt any more.”

“This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.”

The author has a very pretty, almost effortless-looking art style. I really liked the little moments she chose to document, they felt so familiar that by the end of the book I felt like I knew her and she was my friend.