emma's bookshelf: read en-US Wed, 09 Jul 2025 06:34:28 -0700 60 emma's bookshelf: read 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America]]> 60741783 Julia Lee is angry. And she has questions.
What does it mean to be Asian in America? What does it look like to be an ally or an accomplice? How can we shatter the structures of white supremacy that fuel racial stratification?

When Julia was fifteen, her hometown went up in smoke during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The daughter of Korean immigrant store owners in a predominantly Black neighborhood, Julia was taught to be grateful for the privilege afforded to her. However, the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King, following the murder of Latasha Harlins by a Korean shopkeeper, forced Julia to question her racial identity and complicity. She was neither Black nor white. So who was she?

This question would follow Julia for years to come, resurfacing as she traded in her tumultuous childhood for the white upper echelon of elite academia. It was only when she began a PhD in English that she found answers―not through studying Victorian literature, as Julia had planned, but rather in the brilliant prose of writers like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. Their works gave Julia the vocabulary and, more important, the permission to critically examine her own tortured position as an Asian American, setting off a powerful journey of racial reckoning, atonement, and self-discovery.

With prose by turns scathing and heart-wrenching, Julia lays bare the complex disorientation and shame that stem from this country’s imposed racial hierarchy. And she argues that Asian Americans must work toward lasting social change alongside Black and brown communities in order to combat the scarcity culture of white supremacy through abundance and joy. In this passionate, no-holds-barred memoir, Julia interrogates her own experiences of marginality and resistance, and ultimately asks what may be the biggest question of all―what can we do?]]> 248 Julia Lee 1250824672 emma 4
(reading till i find a five star on substack)
(review to come)]]> 4.34 2023 Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America
author: Julia Lee
name: emma
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/07/09
date added: 2025/07/09
shelves: non-ya, nonfiction, authors-of-color, diverse, 4-and-a-half-stars, to-review, to-buy, recommend, favorites-2025
review:
entering my nonfiction era

(reading till i find a five star on substack)
(review to come)
]]> <![CDATA[Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object]]> 59557244 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

From the critically acclaimed author of Happy All the Time and Home Cooking, a wise and witty tale of a woman struggling to overcome her grief and find her future.

When Sam Bax, a charming daredevil of a Boston lawyer, sails his boat into a storm off the coast of Maine, Elizabeth "Olly" Bax, his wife, is widowed at twenty-seven. With no pretense of courage, and a vague dislike for what she feels is the cheap availability of her emotions, Olly grieves the husband she probably would have divorced, while coping with the warmth and awkwardness of family trying (and failing) to distract her from their own grief. As she learns to rethink her life and her love, she becomes close to Sam's brother, Patrick—and begins to realize Sam's recklessness and passion may not be as foreign to her as she thought.

Laurie Colwin depicts Olly—the “More Life Widow of the More Life Kid”—with humor, compassion, and a decided lack of sentimentality, creating a real heroine who tries to remain true to her heart while keeping her head.

This edition features cover art by Olivia McGiff.]]> 192 Laurie Colwin 0060958960 emma 0
(reading till i find a five star on substack)]]> 3.63 1975 Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object
author: Laurie Colwin
name: emma
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/07/09
shelves: tbr-owned, owned, non-ya, contemporary, currently-reading
review:
even laurie colwin's titles are good

(reading till i find a five star on substack)
]]> How to Dodge a Cannonball 217388187 A cutting, revealing caricature of the American Civil War, told through the eyes of a white teenager who joins an all-Black regiment of soldiers, for fans of Colson Whitehead and James McBride.

Razor-sharp and hilarious, How to Dodge a Cannonball tells the story of Anders, a white teenager who volunteers to be a Union Army flag-twirler to escape his abusive mother. In desperate acts of self-preservation, he defects—twice—before joining a Black regiment at Gettysburg, claiming to be an octoroon. In his new and entirely incredulous unit, Anders becomes entangled with questionable military men and an arms dealer working for both sides. But more importantly, he bonds with the other soldiers, finding friendship and a family he desperately needs. After deploying to New York City to suppress the draft riots and to Nevada to suppress Native Americans, Anders begins to see the war through the eyes of his newfound brothers.

Dayle’s satire spares no one, whether he’s writing about Anders' naivete and unexpected love interest, the quirks of Confederate and ​Union soldiers, those out to make a quick buck off the tragedy of war, or the theater of war itself (spoiler: literally theater​ as the novel includes a one-act play the troop obsesses over while they wait for action).

Uproariously funny and revelatory, How to Dodge a Cannonball is an inimitable take on which America is worth fighting for.]]> 336 Dennard Dayle 1250345677 emma 3
(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the arc)]]> 3.71 2025 How to Dodge a Cannonball
author: Dennard Dayle
name: emma
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/07/08
date added: 2025/07/08
shelves: arc, authors-of-color, from-publisher-author, non-ya, owned, literary-fiction, historical, 3-stars, to-review, unpopular-opinion, eh
review:
you never know when you might need that advice

(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the arc)
]]> Family Happiness: A Novel 56913183 A modern classic from Laurie Colwin (Home Cooking), one of the most beloved romantic comedy authors of all time; the story of a woman who has everything... at least on the surface.

Polly Solo-Miller Demarest has it all: a dashing lawyer husband, two beautiful children, and a cushy Uptown apartment. And yet... she feels trapped. Trapped by the pressure to be the perfect daughter to a distinguished family. Trapped in her marriage. Which is why Polly, much to her own shock, finds herself embarking on a thrilling affair with a painter--and a search to discover what she really wants from life. A thoroughly charming novel about finding balance and content, Family Happiness is a delightful yet thought provoking work of romantic comedy from an author at the peak of her powers.

The cover for this 2021 reissue is by Olivia McGiff.]]> 288 Laurie Colwin 0593313542 emma 4
only she could write a book whose entire plot, such as there is one, is about a woman making herself miserable and overwhelmed and trying to decide what to do about it only to end the book abruptly and without any sort of decision, and have me come away charmed.

this book was often very frustrating and repetitive, but you wouldn't know it by how much i enjoyed reading it. colwin's dialogue, the way she writes families, the eccentricities of her characters...i can't get enough!

ever since happy all the time, i keep picking up her books about things i don't want to read about — gelatin-based dinner parties, women who mourn their days of being r&b backup singers, mothers sabotaging their lives — and i still enjoy them.

bottom line: i wonder if there's anything she could write that i wouldn't.

3.5]]> 3.78 1982 Family Happiness: A Novel
author: Laurie Colwin
name: emma
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/07/08
shelves: owned, non-ya, literary-fiction, 3-and-a-half-stars, recommend, reviewed
review:
laurie colwin books are all about family happiness. and i love them all!

only she could write a book whose entire plot, such as there is one, is about a woman making herself miserable and overwhelmed and trying to decide what to do about it only to end the book abruptly and without any sort of decision, and have me come away charmed.

this book was often very frustrating and repetitive, but you wouldn't know it by how much i enjoyed reading it. colwin's dialogue, the way she writes families, the eccentricities of her characters...i can't get enough!

ever since happy all the time, i keep picking up her books about things i don't want to read about — gelatin-based dinner parties, women who mourn their days of being r&b backup singers, mothers sabotaging their lives — and i still enjoy them.

bottom line: i wonder if there's anything she could write that i wouldn't.

3.5
]]> The Jungle Books 20888207 448 Rudyard Kipling 0141394625 emma 0
this is another installment of project long classics, a campaign in which, in theory, i read a chapter a day of a scary old book over a month to make it approachable, and in execution i fuel my penguin clothbound addiction and make puns.

i love feeling smart while reading a book written for 6 year olds. that's what children's classics are for.


MOWGLI'S BROTHERS
little baby mowgli arrived amongst the jungle creatures, who have called a town hall meeting to see whether he's going to be homeschooled or lunch. then 10 years passed and they called another town hall meeting to kick him the hell out.


KAA'S HUNTING
backtracking in order to talk about how monkeys kidnapped mowgli so he could teach them architecture and then kaa put the fear of god in them.


TIGER TIGER
back to present day. mowgli got a human job as a cowherd and immediately lateraled his cattle into the killing of a tiger.


THE WHITE SEAL
if you're wondering what the through-line is of these stories, i can officially tell you it is neither mowgli nor the jungle. we just spent 20 pages hanging out with a seal who lost his wig and formed a 10,000 creature army.


RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI
this is about a verbosely named mongoose who becomes some kid's pet and kills an entire family of cobras to secure his position. kind of a metaphor for pulling the ladder up after you.


TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS
i don't believe elephants should have to have jobs beyond being elephants. and you can quote me on that.]]> 3.65 1895 The Jungle Books
author: Rudyard Kipling
name: emma
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1895
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/07/08
shelves: to-buy, classics, children-s, library, currently-reading, project-long-classics
review:
welcome to...THE JU(LY)NGLE BOOKS.

this is another installment of project long classics, a campaign in which, in theory, i read a chapter a day of a scary old book over a month to make it approachable, and in execution i fuel my penguin clothbound addiction and make puns.

i love feeling smart while reading a book written for 6 year olds. that's what children's classics are for.


MOWGLI'S BROTHERS
little baby mowgli arrived amongst the jungle creatures, who have called a town hall meeting to see whether he's going to be homeschooled or lunch. then 10 years passed and they called another town hall meeting to kick him the hell out.


KAA'S HUNTING
backtracking in order to talk about how monkeys kidnapped mowgli so he could teach them architecture and then kaa put the fear of god in them.


TIGER TIGER
back to present day. mowgli got a human job as a cowherd and immediately lateraled his cattle into the killing of a tiger.


THE WHITE SEAL
if you're wondering what the through-line is of these stories, i can officially tell you it is neither mowgli nor the jungle. we just spent 20 pages hanging out with a seal who lost his wig and formed a 10,000 creature army.


RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI
this is about a verbosely named mongoose who becomes some kid's pet and kills an entire family of cobras to secure his position. kind of a metaphor for pulling the ladder up after you.


TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS
i don't believe elephants should have to have jobs beyond being elephants. and you can quote me on that.
]]> The English Understand Wool 59468833 Maman was exigeante—there is no English word–and I had the benefit of her training. Others may not be so fortunate. If some other young girl, with two million dollars at stake, finds this of use I shall count myself justified.

Raised in Marrakech by a French mother and English father, a 17-year-old girl has learned above all to avoid mauvais ton ("bad taste" loses something in the translation). One should not ask servants to wait on one during Ramadan: they must have paid leave while one spends the holy month abroad. One must play the piano; if staying at Claridge’s, one must regrettably install a Clavinova in the suite, so that the necessary hours of practice will not be inflicted on fellow guests. One should cultivate weavers of tweed in the Outer Hebrides but have the cloth made up in London; one should buy linen in Ireland but have it made up by a Thai seamstress in Paris (whose genius has been supported by purchase of suitable premises). All this and much more she has learned, governed by a parent of ferociously lofty standards. But at 17, during the annual Ramadan travels, she finds all assumptions overturned. Will she be able to fend for herself? Will the dictates of good taste suffice when she must deal, singlehanded, with the sharks of New York?]]> 69 Helen DeWitt 0811230074 emma 0 4.05 2022 The English Understand Wool
author: Helen DeWitt
name: emma
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/07/08
shelves: to-read, literary-fiction, non-ya, nowhere
review:
i do not remember adding this book, which is crazy because it has one of the most memorable titles i've ever seen
]]> Intermezzo 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 emma 5
somehow, it still exceeded my life-altering, world-centering, unrealistic-to-the-point-of-being-annoying expectations.

with every book, sally rooney seems to challenge herself in a new way, showing that in the years since her last release while we've all been pining and watching paul mescal fan edits she's been ever (somehow! still!) building on her craft. in beautiful world, where are you, for example, she displayed a totally new and mesmerizing use of visual language and natural motif that i fell in love with.

here, her use of perspective is stunning. i'm a multi-pov hater, but this manages to feel like something entirely different even as it follows the interiority of three characters. it seamlessly transitions between the three while still being vividly distinct: peter's staccato trains of thought, margaret's quiet self-reflection, ivan's anxious rambling. i've never read anything like it.

decisions like the little we see from within the two female characters in peter's orbit, and are immersed in the world of ivan's, feels so true to their characters and to their stories — and such an interesting facet to the characteristic sociopolitical explorations that are the true gem of rooney's writing.

rooney also challenges herself to create characters who are simultaneously unlikable and real, making decisions that threaten to get you to put the book down and sigh while being mercilessly relatable and easy to understand.

that's what we're working with here. a novel in which every choice is so thoughtful that you can spend a minute reading a page, then pause for five minutes just to consider it. which is basically what i did (read: make myself spend a month reading this because i so dreaded not having any more of it to draw out).

peter and ivan each represent a shade of misogyny, of straight-white-man-ism in modern society, that doesn't forgive itself even while it refuses to let you ignore their own humanity and histories.

peter's perspective, made up of brief ulyssean phrases and stunning descriptions, varies as much from ivan's terminally introspective one as the two brothers do from each other. 

rooney's past books have focused on waxing and waning romantic (and semi-romantic) relationships; beautiful world also features a platonic one at its core. this one takes as its subject siblings, at first nearly estranged, as they struggle toward each other.

anyway. i often hate multiple perspectives because it always feels there's one the author is more comfortable with, that the choice to distinguish the two is because they have to be different because they're different characters. rooney's decision is deliberate, each perspective difference thought out, and because of that both are wildly impressive.

i loved this book.

bottom line: all the it girls love intermezzo and all the it girls are right.

(thank you from the bottom of my heart to the publisher for the arc)
(buddy read of a lifetime with my favorite girl elle)]]> 3.84 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: emma
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/25
date added: 2025/07/08
shelves: non-ya, literary-fiction, owned, from-publisher-author, arc, recommend, i-love-these-characters, beautifully-written, reviewed, 5-stars, favorites-2024
review:
this book was the most exciting news of my year and i got engaged the week it was announced.

somehow, it still exceeded my life-altering, world-centering, unrealistic-to-the-point-of-being-annoying expectations.

with every book, sally rooney seems to challenge herself in a new way, showing that in the years since her last release while we've all been pining and watching paul mescal fan edits she's been ever (somehow! still!) building on her craft. in beautiful world, where are you, for example, she displayed a totally new and mesmerizing use of visual language and natural motif that i fell in love with.

here, her use of perspective is stunning. i'm a multi-pov hater, but this manages to feel like something entirely different even as it follows the interiority of three characters. it seamlessly transitions between the three while still being vividly distinct: peter's staccato trains of thought, margaret's quiet self-reflection, ivan's anxious rambling. i've never read anything like it.

decisions like the little we see from within the two female characters in peter's orbit, and are immersed in the world of ivan's, feels so true to their characters and to their stories — and such an interesting facet to the characteristic sociopolitical explorations that are the true gem of rooney's writing.

rooney also challenges herself to create characters who are simultaneously unlikable and real, making decisions that threaten to get you to put the book down and sigh while being mercilessly relatable and easy to understand.

that's what we're working with here. a novel in which every choice is so thoughtful that you can spend a minute reading a page, then pause for five minutes just to consider it. which is basically what i did (read: make myself spend a month reading this because i so dreaded not having any more of it to draw out).

peter and ivan each represent a shade of misogyny, of straight-white-man-ism in modern society, that doesn't forgive itself even while it refuses to let you ignore their own humanity and histories.

peter's perspective, made up of brief ulyssean phrases and stunning descriptions, varies as much from ivan's terminally introspective one as the two brothers do from each other. 

rooney's past books have focused on waxing and waning romantic (and semi-romantic) relationships; beautiful world also features a platonic one at its core. this one takes as its subject siblings, at first nearly estranged, as they struggle toward each other.

anyway. i often hate multiple perspectives because it always feels there's one the author is more comfortable with, that the choice to distinguish the two is because they have to be different because they're different characters. rooney's decision is deliberate, each perspective difference thought out, and because of that both are wildly impressive.

i loved this book.

bottom line: all the it girls love intermezzo and all the it girls are right.

(thank you from the bottom of my heart to the publisher for the arc)
(buddy read of a lifetime with my favorite girl elle)
]]> The Pairing 199440249 definitely not.

Theo and Kit have been a lot of things: childhood best friends, crushes, in love, and now estranged exes. After a brutal breakup on the transatlantic flight to their dream European food and wine tour, they exited each other's lives once and for all.

Time apart has done them good. Theo has found confidence as a hustling bartender by night and aspiring sommelier by day, with a long roster of casual lovers. Kit, who never returned to America, graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school class and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris. Sure, nothing really compares to what they had, and life stretches out long and lonely ahead of them, but—yeah. It's in the past.

All that remains is the unused voucher for the European tour that never happened, good for 48 months after its original date and about to expire. Four years later, it seems like a great idea to finally take the trip. Solo. Separately.

It's not until they board the tour bus that they discover they've both accidentally had the exact same idea, and now they're trapped with each other for three weeks of stunning views, luscious flavors, and the most romantic cities of France, Spain, and Italy. It's fine. There's nothing left between them. So much nothing that, when Theo suggests a friendly wager to see who can sleep with their hot Italian tour guide first, Kit is totally game. And why stop there? Why not a full-on European hookup competition?

But sometimes a taste of everything only makes you crave what you can't have.]]> 432 Casey McQuiston 1250862744 emma 4
some of my honorable mentions: banter, wine, flirting, hot people, scenery, public transit, cities, fun facts, desserts, getting drunk, the lgbtq+ community, old friends, inside jokes, sluts, and movies. 

all of those things, and also more things, are in this book.

i have spent my whole life (or the last few years) wanting to like a casey mcquiston book. prior to today i have tried three times, and i have failed three times. some, including a fictionalized version of albert einstein (potentially the college dorm room poster version with his tongue sticking out), would say this meets the definition of insanity.

i'd call it perseverance.

and i'd point you in the direction of this book as exhibit a.

when i first started this, i chanted "i am going to have fun" like a mantra, hoping my sheer stubbornness and inability to learn a lesson would translate into a minor miracle. and guess what. it worked.

this book was A Lot, including in its overlong page count and overwritten yearning (ESPECIALLY by the end), but otherwise in all the ways i like. lots of dumb hot people doing dumb hot people things, and lots of food, and lots of bad jokes. 

it's what life is all about.

bottom line: huge win for being stubborn.

--------------------
tbr review

if i do not find a romance that makes me swoon, giggle, and want to die of emotion in the next 3-5 business weeks, i may pass away.

update: phew.

(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.68 2024 The Pairing
author: Casey McQuiston
name: emma
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/25
date added: 2025/07/08
shelves: non-ya, romance, arc, 3-and-a-half-stars, recommend, reviewed
review:
my three loves in life are books, travel, and food.

some of my honorable mentions: banter, wine, flirting, hot people, scenery, public transit, cities, fun facts, desserts, getting drunk, the lgbtq+ community, old friends, inside jokes, sluts, and movies. 

all of those things, and also more things, are in this book.

i have spent my whole life (or the last few years) wanting to like a casey mcquiston book. prior to today i have tried three times, and i have failed three times. some, including a fictionalized version of albert einstein (potentially the college dorm room poster version with his tongue sticking out), would say this meets the definition of insanity.

i'd call it perseverance.

and i'd point you in the direction of this book as exhibit a.

when i first started this, i chanted "i am going to have fun" like a mantra, hoping my sheer stubbornness and inability to learn a lesson would translate into a minor miracle. and guess what. it worked.

this book was A Lot, including in its overlong page count and overwritten yearning (ESPECIALLY by the end), but otherwise in all the ways i like. lots of dumb hot people doing dumb hot people things, and lots of food, and lots of bad jokes. 

it's what life is all about.

bottom line: huge win for being stubborn.

--------------------
tbr review

if i do not find a romance that makes me swoon, giggle, and want to die of emotion in the next 3-5 business weeks, i may pass away.

update: phew.

(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> Sunrise on the Reaping 214331246 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 387 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 emma 4
our generation's tragic backstory is these books. this level of devastation should be kept away from 14 year olds.

even with this one, i know exactly where it's going! i know haymitch is alive with 25 years of alcoholism-fueled depression and loss under his belt in the future. and yet i'm sitting there like :) surely happy stuff will happen too :)

i hated the last book — who ever wanted more snow? — and this one did bring all the annoying-ass songs (suzanne collins for all your talents lyrics are not one. and that includes the radio edit of the hanging tree as performed by jennifer lawrence, why am i in the club being asked about a man who murdered three) and some of the annoying ass character energy.

but i am a haymitch girl till i die.

and this, i'm pleased to share, had traces of that catching fire magic.

bottom line: however many hunger games books are released, i'll be reading them.]]> 4.54 2025 Sunrise on the Reaping
author: Suzanne Collins
name: emma
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/07/07
shelves: ya, dystopian, 3-and-a-half-stars, recommend, sci-fi, reviewed
review:
i'm ready to be hurt again.

our generation's tragic backstory is these books. this level of devastation should be kept away from 14 year olds.

even with this one, i know exactly where it's going! i know haymitch is alive with 25 years of alcoholism-fueled depression and loss under his belt in the future. and yet i'm sitting there like :) surely happy stuff will happen too :)

i hated the last book — who ever wanted more snow? — and this one did bring all the annoying-ass songs (suzanne collins for all your talents lyrics are not one. and that includes the radio edit of the hanging tree as performed by jennifer lawrence, why am i in the club being asked about a man who murdered three) and some of the annoying ass character energy.

but i am a haymitch girl till i die.

and this, i'm pleased to share, had traces of that catching fire magic.

bottom line: however many hunger games books are released, i'll be reading them.
]]> Reservoir Bitches 210678433
Life’s a bitch. That’s why you gotta rattle her cage, even if she’s foaming at the mouth.

In the linked stories of Reservoir Bitches, thirteen Mexican women prod the bitch that is Life as they fight, sew, skirt, cheat, cry, and lie their way through their tangled circumstances. From the all-powerful daughter of a cartel boss to the victim of transfemicide, from a houseful of spinster seamstresses to a socialite who supports her politician husband by faking Indigenous roots, these women spit on their own reduction and invent new ways to survive, telling their stories in bold, unapologetic voices. At once social critique and black comedy, Reservoir Bitches is a raucous debut from one of Mexico’s most thrilling new writers.]]> 160 Dahlia de la Cerda 1761385992 emma 0 4.12 2019 Reservoir Bitches
author: Dahlia de la Cerda
name: emma
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/07/07
shelves: to-read, authors-of-color, diverse, literary-fiction, library, non-ya
review:
you had me at "In the linked stories of Reservoir Bitches, thirteen Mexican women prod the bitch that is Life as they fight, sew, skirt, cheat, cry, and lie their way through their tangled circumstances."
]]> Freshwater 43268788
"[A] witchy, electrifying story of danger and compulsion . . . Freshwater recounts the ‘litany of madness’ suffered by Ada in a serpentine prose that proceeds by oblique, hypnotizing movements before it sinks its fangs into you . . . As striking and mysterious as the ways of the gods who narrate it." — Wall Street Journal

Longlisted for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction]]> 230 Akwaeke Emezi 0571345409 emma 4
(review to come)]]> 3.98 2018 Freshwater
author: Akwaeke Emezi
name: emma
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/07/07
date added: 2025/07/07
shelves: magical-realist-urban-whatever, literary-fiction, non-ya, diverse, authors-of-color, to-buy, to-review, recommend
review:
magical realism about being a haunted woman...wow

(review to come)
]]> I Hope This Finds You Well 200987323 In this wildly funny and heartwarming office comedy, an admin worker accidentally gains access to her colleagues’ private emails and DMs and decides to use this intel to save her job—a laugh-till-you-cry debut novel you’ll be eager to share with your entire list of contacts, perfect for fans of Anxious People and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text colour to white so no one can see. That is, until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.

When an IT mix-up grants her access to her entire department’s private emails and DMs, Jolene knows she should report it, but who could resist reading what their coworkers are really saying? And when she discovers layoffs are coming, she realizes this might just be the key to saving her job. The plan is simple: gain her boss’s favour, convince HR she’s Supershops material and beat out the competition.

But as Jolene is drawn further into her coworker’s private worlds and secrets, her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble—especially around Cliff, who she definitely cannot have feelings for. Soon she will need to decide if she’s ready to leave the comfort of her cubicle, even if it means coming clean to her colleagues.

Crackling with laugh-out-loud dialogue and relatable observations, I Hope This Finds You Well is a fresh and surprisingly tender comedy about loneliness and love beyond our computer screens. This sparkling debut novel will open your heart to the everyday eccentricities of work culture and the undeniable human connection that comes with it.]]> 338 Natalie Sue 0063320363 emma 4
i expected this to be a sarcastic dry funny edgy book. instead it is a kind sweet corny kinda cringey occasionally funny book. and it turns out i'll take that trade!

i caught myself teary eyed (?!) at the nice moments at the end of this, and even if it felt unrealistic and a bit much in parts, it's also the book kind of therapy where everything starts bad and then ends magically. so i'll take it.

bottom line: feeling: well.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.73 2024 I Hope This Finds You Well
author: Natalie Sue
name: emma
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/20
date added: 2025/07/07
shelves: contemporary, non-ya, arc, 3-and-a-half-stars, recommend, reviewed
review:
emails never find me well.

i expected this to be a sarcastic dry funny edgy book. instead it is a kind sweet corny kinda cringey occasionally funny book. and it turns out i'll take that trade!

i caught myself teary eyed (?!) at the nice moments at the end of this, and even if it felt unrealistic and a bit much in parts, it's also the book kind of therapy where everything starts bad and then ends magically. so i'll take it.

bottom line: feeling: well.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> <![CDATA[Men Have Called Her Crazy: A Memoir]]> 203931803 A powerful memoir that reckons with mental health as well as the insidious ways men impact the lives of women.

In early 2021, popular artist Anna Marie Tendler checked herself into a psychiatric hospital following a year of crippling anxiety, depression and self-harm. Over two weeks, she underwent myriad psychological tests, participated in numerous therapy sessions, connected with fellow patients and experienced profound breakthroughs, such as when a doctor noted, “There is a you inside that feels invisible to those looking at you from the outside.”

In Men Have Called Her Crazy, Tendler recounts her hospital experience as well as pivotal moments in her life that preceded and followed. As the title suggests, many of these moments are impacted by men: unrequited love in high school; the twenty-eight-year-old she lost her virginity to when she was sixteen; the frustrations and absurdities of dating in her mid-thirties; and her decision to freeze her eggs as all her friends were starting families.

This stunning literary self-portrait examines the unreasonable expectations and pressures women face in the 21st century. Yet overwhelming and despairing as that can feel, Tendler ultimately offers a message hope. Early in her stay in the hospital, she says, “My wish for myself is that one day I’ll reach a place where I can face hardship without trying to destroy myself.” By the end of the book, she fulfills that wish.]]> 304 Anna Marie Tendler 1668032341 emma 2
the best mental health memoirs are wildly brave, willing to relate moments of what seems to be stunning selfishness or carelessness or cruelty in the aim of carrying across the reality of these illnesses. 

you’d be hard pressed to find a moment in which anna marie tendler is willing to let you see her at her worst. as a teen or almost teen fighting with older men, she speaks in lengthy, therapist-approved paragraphs while they struggle to get sentences out. she spends substantial time in intensive mental health treatment, but she makes sure to tell us she completes her postgrad program with barely even an extension.

ultimately, she wanted to write a book that would prove her to be a victim of everything: circumstances, relationships, her career. 

i think tendler has been through a ton, and i think (especially based on the diagnoses we share) her brain must be a truly hostile place to be. 

but i don’t think she needs to convince us as readers that her repeated tendency to financially rely on men (often right before ending the relationship) is a bad thing that somehow happened to her. i don’t need to be convinced that her career is one of accomplishment, when it seems like that wasn’t possible for her. 

i didn’t come to this book for a tell-all about a shocking celebrity divorce (although i will say, the traces found here paint a very different picture from the public perception). i came for honesty, the kind of honesty that feels brave and destigmatizing and beautiful. and i didn’t get it. 

i came away from this book thinking that anna marie tendler is a complex and interesting person, trying her best to be kind. that didn't come from her writing, but in spite of it. she writes with walls up, trying to convince us that she is good and likable, telling us time and again the times that she was angry and chose peace, spending the last chapter of the book refuting excerpts of her psychological analysis, telling us why she is not mad, she is not hateful, she is not not not. she tells, never shows.


the best memoirs are shockingly vulnerable, and the best moments of this one are too—the chapters spent with tendler's beloved dog petunia left me teary eyed. 

but by and large, this is defensive. 

on top of that, there's a really unhealthy-feeling sense of competing that anyone who has suffered bad mental health spells in high school will recognize. sharing how much she weighed, or how stunned professionals were by just how bad her mental health was, or the insertions of her exhausting monologue to every inane moment...it's a different version of the same desire to impress the reader as her lack of vulnerability.

also the writing is not very good. sorry! now i'm done.

bottom line: an unpopular opinion that surprised even me.

(thanks to the publisher for the arc)]]> 3.41 2024 Men Have Called Her Crazy: A Memoir
author: Anna Marie Tendler
name: emma
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/18
date added: 2025/07/07
shelves: nonfiction, non-ya, from-publisher-author, arc, owned, unpopular-opinion, eh, 2-stars, reviewed
review:
this book is compulsively readable, but it isn't honest. 

the best mental health memoirs are wildly brave, willing to relate moments of what seems to be stunning selfishness or carelessness or cruelty in the aim of carrying across the reality of these illnesses. 

you’d be hard pressed to find a moment in which anna marie tendler is willing to let you see her at her worst. as a teen or almost teen fighting with older men, she speaks in lengthy, therapist-approved paragraphs while they struggle to get sentences out. she spends substantial time in intensive mental health treatment, but she makes sure to tell us she completes her postgrad program with barely even an extension.

ultimately, she wanted to write a book that would prove her to be a victim of everything: circumstances, relationships, her career. 

i think tendler has been through a ton, and i think (especially based on the diagnoses we share) her brain must be a truly hostile place to be. 

but i don’t think she needs to convince us as readers that her repeated tendency to financially rely on men (often right before ending the relationship) is a bad thing that somehow happened to her. i don’t need to be convinced that her career is one of accomplishment, when it seems like that wasn’t possible for her. 

i didn’t come to this book for a tell-all about a shocking celebrity divorce (although i will say, the traces found here paint a very different picture from the public perception). i came for honesty, the kind of honesty that feels brave and destigmatizing and beautiful. and i didn’t get it. 

i came away from this book thinking that anna marie tendler is a complex and interesting person, trying her best to be kind. that didn't come from her writing, but in spite of it. she writes with walls up, trying to convince us that she is good and likable, telling us time and again the times that she was angry and chose peace, spending the last chapter of the book refuting excerpts of her psychological analysis, telling us why she is not mad, she is not hateful, she is not not not. she tells, never shows.


the best memoirs are shockingly vulnerable, and the best moments of this one are too—the chapters spent with tendler's beloved dog petunia left me teary eyed. 

but by and large, this is defensive. 

on top of that, there's a really unhealthy-feeling sense of competing that anyone who has suffered bad mental health spells in high school will recognize. sharing how much she weighed, or how stunned professionals were by just how bad her mental health was, or the insertions of her exhausting monologue to every inane moment...it's a different version of the same desire to impress the reader as her lack of vulnerability.

also the writing is not very good. sorry! now i'm done.

bottom line: an unpopular opinion that surprised even me.

(thanks to the publisher for the arc)
]]> Oddbody: Stories 220161342 Striking, visceral, and brutally honest, Rose Keating’s Oddbody is a captivating short story collection that delves into the weirdness of bodies and of existence itself through the voices of social outsiders and outcasts.

In her debut collection, Rose Keating takes you on a bold journey through the intricacies of sex, shame, and womanhood. With ten enchanting short stories, she crafts an emotional masterpiece that challenges us to reflect on the movement and needs of our bodies. Strange yet utterly mesmerizing, Oddbody is a provocative exploration that feels both surprising and sincerely authentic.

In “Oddbody,” a woman finds herself navigating a codependent relationship with a ghost, while “Squirm” portrays a daughter tending to her father as he devours himself from the inside out. “Pineapple” introduces us to a woman who opts to have feather wings surgically attached to her back. In “Eggshells,” a waitress gives birth to an egg during her breakfast shift. Each narrative in this collection is immersive, bizarre, and deeply empathetic, shining a light on women who dare to defy societal norms and invite you to question the conventions and milestones that determine success.]]> 208 Rose Keating 1668061503 emma 0
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.71 Oddbody: Stories
author: Rose Keating
name: emma
average rating: 3.71
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/07/07
shelves: tbr-arc, tbr-owned, non-ya, literary-fiction, arc, currently-reading, mystery-thriller-horror-etc
review:
relatable

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> <![CDATA[If You Love It, Let It Kill You]]> 217387666 A refreshingly irreverent novel about art, desire, domesticity, freedom, and the intricacies of the twenty-first-century female experience, by the acclaimed novelist Hannah Pittard

Divorced and childless by choice, Hana P. has built a cozy life in Lexington, Kentucky, teaching at the flagship university, living with her boyfriend ( a fellow academic ) and helping raise his pre-teen daughter. Her sister’s sprawling family lives just across the street, and their long-divorced, deeply complicated parents have also recently moved to town.

One day, Hana learns that an unflattering version of herself will appear prominently—and soon—in her ex-husband’s debut novel. For a week, her life continues largely unaffected by the news—she cooks, runs, teaches, entertains—but the morning after baking mac ’n’ cheese from scratch for her nephew’s sixth birthday, she wakes up changed. The contentment she’s long enjoyed is gone. In its place: nothing. A remarkably ridiculous midlife crisis ensues, featuring a talking cat, a visit to the dean’s office, a shadowy figure from the past, a Greek chorus of indignant students whose primary complaints concern Hana’s autofictional narrative, and a game called Dead Body.

Steeped in the subtleties and strangeness of contemporary life, If You Love It, Let It Kill You is a deeply nuanced and disturbingly funny examination of memory, ownership, and artistic expression for readers of Miranda July’s All Fours and Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend.]]> 304 Hannah Pittard 1250910277 emma 4
(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the arc)]]> 3.59 2025 If You Love It, Let It Kill You
author: Hannah Pittard
name: emma
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/07/06
date added: 2025/07/06
shelves: arc, non-ya, literary-fiction, 3-and-a-half-stars, to-review, unpopular-opinion, recommend
review:
sounds good to me!

(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the arc)
]]> Stag Dance 215362032 The kaleidoscopic follow-up to the bestselling Detransition, Baby

In this collection of one novel and three stories, Torrey Peters’s keen eye for the rough edges of community and desire push the limits of trans writing.

In Stag Dance, the titular novel, a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the broadest, strongest, plainest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition.

Three startling stories surround Stag Dance: “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones” imagines a gender apocalypse brought about by an unstable ex. In “The Chaser,” a secret romance between roommates at a Quaker boarding school brings out intrigue and cruelty. In the last story, “The Masker,” a party weekend on the Las Vegas strip turns dark when a young crossdresser must choose between two guides: a handsome mystery man who objectifies her in thrilling ways, or a cynical veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood.

Acidly funny and breathtaking in its scope, with the inventive audacity of George Saunders or Jennifer Egan, Stag Dance provokes, unsettles, and delights.]]> 288 Torrey Peters 0593595645 emma 3
(when you really liked an author's debut and you're nervously anticipating their next book)

(or in this case, three stories and one novel)

and the problem with having a collection that is three stories and one novel is that it really invites you to notice if the novel is not the strongest of the group.

i thought the first and last stories in this book were fantastic, and covered a lot of topics we tend to not grant nuance in extremely layered ways.

the two middle stories, which include the long title one, not as much.

and unfortunately, none of it blew me away like detransition, baby.

bottom line: good! but we've seen great.

(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.95 2025 Stag Dance
author: Torrey Peters
name: emma
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/07/06
shelves: arc, literary-fiction, non-ya, 3-and-a-half-stars, recommend, reviewed
review:
welcome to sophomore novel watch

(when you really liked an author's debut and you're nervously anticipating their next book)

(or in this case, three stories and one novel)

and the problem with having a collection that is three stories and one novel is that it really invites you to notice if the novel is not the strongest of the group.

i thought the first and last stories in this book were fantastic, and covered a lot of topics we tend to not grant nuance in extremely layered ways.

the two middle stories, which include the long title one, not as much.

and unfortunately, none of it blew me away like detransition, baby.

bottom line: good! but we've seen great.

(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> Hot Girls with Balls 217299700 In this outrageous and deeply serious satire, two star indoor volleyball players juggle unspoken jealousies in their off-court romance ahead of their rival teams’ first rematch in a year

Six is 6’7”, scheming to rejoin the starting lineup, and barely checks her phone. Green is 6’1”, always building her brand, and secretly jealous of her more famous girlfriend. Together, they’re going where no Asian American trans woman has gone before: the men’s pro indoor volleyball league. Our hot girls with balls just thought playing with the boys would spare them some controversy . . . haha.

Besides playing for rival teams, they’re also lovers tending to their relationship between away games, time zones, and their weekly Instagraph live show. Soon, they’ll reunite for the championship tournament, the first to accommodate in-person fans since the COVIS pandemic struck the world a year ago. Just as they enter an airtight bro bubble of the world’s best, they’re faced with a public crisis that necessitates an indisputably humiliating task: make a public statement online.

Can Green stock up enough clout for her post-ball future? Can Six girlboss her team’s seniority politics? Can they both take a timeout to just grieve? Their rabid fans and horny haters await their next move. We’re all just desperate for a whiff of the feminine sweaty energy that makes that ball thwack with such spectacular force.]]> 288 Benedict Nguyễn 1646222474 emma 4
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.93 2025 Hot Girls with Balls
author: Benedict Nguyễn
name: emma
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/07/06
date added: 2025/07/06
shelves: literary-fiction, non-ya, authors-of-color, diverse, arc, 3-and-a-half-stars, to-review, recommend
review:
already found the best title of 2025

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> Native Son 1410525 594 Richard Wright 0060812494 emma 0 3.96 1940 Native Son
author: Richard Wright
name: emma
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1940
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/07/06
shelves: to-read, authors-of-color, classics, diverse, library, non-ya
review:
i love a classic that never feels old
]]> Margo's Got Money Troubles 199534613
Now, at twenty, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge of eviction. She needs a cash infusion—fast. When her estranged father, Jinx, shows up on her doorstep and asks to move in with her, she agrees in exchange for help with childcare. Then Margo begins to form a plan: she’ll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, and soon finds herself adapting some of Jinx’s advice from the world of wrestling. Like how to craft a compelling character and make your audience fall in love with you. Before she knows it, she’s turned it into a runaway success. Could this be the answer to all of Margo’s problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price?

Blisteringly funny and filled with sharp insight, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a tender tale starring an endearing young heroine who’s struggling to wrest money and power from a world that has little interest in giving it to her. It’s a playful and honest examination of the art of storytelling and controlling your own narrative, and an empowering portrait of coming into your own, both online and off.]]> 304 Rufi Thorpe 0063356589 emma 4
this rocked beyond my wildest guesses. so quirky, so funny, so one of a kind: everything these weirdo characters did was unpredictable, and yet somehow they felt so real, and i cared about them and their relationships and their bizarre plans.

i will say the thing that keeps this from a 5 star is the fact that the baby at the core of the plot mostly feels like some sort of nearby puppet, in that his name is mentioned a lot but i don't really get his vibe. but that's fine too.

i just have baby fever of the literary variety. i can't explain it either.

bottom line: my first book by this author and now i have to read them all.

(4.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.85 2024 Margo's Got Money Troubles
author: Rufi Thorpe
name: emma
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/16
date added: 2025/07/06
shelves: non-ya, literary-fiction, arc, 4-and-a-half-stars, to-buy, recommend, reviewed
review:
in THIS economy??!

this rocked beyond my wildest guesses. so quirky, so funny, so one of a kind: everything these weirdo characters did was unpredictable, and yet somehow they felt so real, and i cared about them and their relationships and their bizarre plans.

i will say the thing that keeps this from a 5 star is the fact that the baby at the core of the plot mostly feels like some sort of nearby puppet, in that his name is mentioned a lot but i don't really get his vibe. but that's fine too.

i just have baby fever of the literary variety. i can't explain it either.

bottom line: my first book by this author and now i have to read them all.

(4.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> The Travelling Cat Chronicles 40961230
An instant international bestseller and indie bestseller, The Travelling Cat Chronicles has charmed readers around the world. With simple yet descriptive prose, this novel gives voice to Nana the cat and his owner, Satoru, as they take to the road on a journey with no other purpose than to visit three of Satoru's longtime friends. Or so Nana is led to believe...

With his crooked tail—a sign of good fortune—and adventurous spirit, Nana is the perfect companion for the man who took him in as a stray. And as they travel in a silver van across Japan, with its ever-changing scenery and seasons, they will learn the true meaning of courage and gratitude, of loyalty and love.]]> 281 Hiro Arikawa 0735235244 emma 3
this is kind of like , except instead of a magical librarian solving the problems of the various unhappy people in her community, it's a cat up for adoption within a friend group doing the happy magic.

i like cats only slightly less than librarians (this is goodreads after all), which matches my feelings about these respective books.

also the fact that it is SIGNIFICANTLY SADDER, and made me feel UPSET and EMOTIONAL instead of spiritually healed.

but in a nice way.

i guess.

bottom line: boo emotions, yay cats.

3.5]]> 4.35 2012 The Travelling Cat Chronicles
author: Hiro Arikawa
name: emma
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/12
date added: 2025/07/06
shelves: literary-fiction, non-ya, diverse, authors-of-color, 3-and-a-half-stars, recommend, reviewed, japanese-cats
review:
i've said it before and i'll say it again: i love the niche subgenre of japanese lit fic about cats!

this is kind of like , except instead of a magical librarian solving the problems of the various unhappy people in her community, it's a cat up for adoption within a friend group doing the happy magic.

i like cats only slightly less than librarians (this is goodreads after all), which matches my feelings about these respective books.

also the fact that it is SIGNIFICANTLY SADDER, and made me feel UPSET and EMOTIONAL instead of spiritually healed.

but in a nice way.

i guess.

bottom line: boo emotions, yay cats.

3.5
]]> The Waves 863768 This is an alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182711, found here.

Set on the coast of England against the vivid background of the sea, The Waves introduces six characters—three men and three women—who are grappling with the death of a beloved friend, Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Virginia Woolf draws her characters from the inside, revealing them through their thoughts and interior soliloquies. As their understanding of nature’s trials grows, the chorus of narrative voices blends together in miraculous harmony, remarking not only on the inevitable death of individuals but on the eternal connection of everyone. The novel that most epitomizes Virginia Woolf’s theories of fiction in the working form, The Waves is an amazing book very much ahead of its time. It is a poetic dreamscape, visual, experimental, and thrilling.]]> 228 Virginia Woolf 0141182717 emma 0 4.14 1931 The Waves
author: Virginia Woolf
name: emma
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1931
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/07/05
shelves: to-read, library, non-ya, classics
review:
y'all mind if i enter my virginia woolf era
]]> Theft 217006044 In his first new novel since winning the 2021 Nobel Prize, a master storyteller captures a time of dizzying global change.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, three young people come of age in Tanzania. Karim returns to his sleepy hometown after university with new swagger and ambition. Fauzia glimpses in him a chance at escape from a smothering upbringing. The two of them offer a haven to Badar, a poor boy still unsure if the future holds anything for him at all. As tourism, technology, and unexpected opportunities and perils reach their quiet corner of the world, bringing, each arrives at a different understanding of what it means to take your fate into your own hands.

]]> 296 Abdulrazak Gurnah 0593852605 emma 4
add to that the fact that i maybe find one character i truly love per year and i found him in this book...and everything's coming up me.

badar, a semi-adopted boy who is shipped off to be the servant of his cousin's family, probably never has an emotion straight up written to the page, and yet he is so sensitively and evocatively portrayed that my heart wrenched just to read about him.

my main complaint is that this book is three-ish perspectives and not all about him. every other character paled in comparison. 

this was interesting on the subject of tourism and free will, but badar will be what i remember.

bottom line: sound off in the comments below to join my badar fan club.

(thanks to the publisher for the arc)]]> 3.90 2025 Theft
author: Abdulrazak Gurnah
name: emma
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/07/05
shelves: arc, authors-of-color, diverse, literary-fiction, non-ya, owned, from-publisher-author, 4-stars, recommend, reviewed
review:
an author i like won the nobel prize. so i'm basically on the committee.

add to that the fact that i maybe find one character i truly love per year and i found him in this book...and everything's coming up me.

badar, a semi-adopted boy who is shipped off to be the servant of his cousin's family, probably never has an emotion straight up written to the page, and yet he is so sensitively and evocatively portrayed that my heart wrenched just to read about him.

my main complaint is that this book is three-ish perspectives and not all about him. every other character paled in comparison. 

this was interesting on the subject of tourism and free will, but badar will be what i remember.

bottom line: sound off in the comments below to join my badar fan club.

(thanks to the publisher for the arc)
]]> <![CDATA[The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store]]> 85148114
    As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.]]> 400 James McBride 0593422961 emma 2
(they say if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. but i just said that nice thing so now i get to complain.)

this has a kind of folksy and imprecise style that charmed me at first but eventually got on my nerves, with lots of run on sentences and descriptors like "strangely odd" and dangling participles. i'm sorry to be a nerd, but i'm still the same person who enjoyed copyediting so much i designed my own 300-level class on it.

it's a writing style that is mirrored in the never-ending list of quirky characters we meet. this book never quite coalesces into a story: we start off with a mystery, but we never hear about it again. in each chapter, we meet a new Black or Jewish or Italian person with a memorable name and an amusing backstory who is down on their luck, hardworking and yet marginalized to chicken hill (a falling-apart neighborhood in pottstown, pa) and little opportunity by the town's white people.

i cannot even tell you how goddamn frustrating this got. on the off chance one character's solo chapter piqued your interest, you're sh*t out of luck. i tried to care about chona and dodo, and what i got in return is watching unbelievably horrific things befall them, only to exit their story for the next 9 chapters while we hear about people chuckling and hamburger bars. 

i was unable to build connections or feel for any of these characters, because there were 982 of them and who knows if i'd see them again before the author remembered he'd promised us a mystery to solve anyway.

(if you, like me, thought that mystery would be any sort of plot, you're sh*t out of luck too.)

bottom line: it's a rare thing to actively dislike a book i don't think is objectively bad. rare in a bad way.]]> 4.24 2023 The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
author: James McBride
name: emma
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/07
date added: 2025/07/05
shelves: literary-fiction, diverse, non-ya, authors-of-color, unpopular-opinion, nope, 2-stars, reviewed
review:
oh how i love a good title...

(they say if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. but i just said that nice thing so now i get to complain.)

this has a kind of folksy and imprecise style that charmed me at first but eventually got on my nerves, with lots of run on sentences and descriptors like "strangely odd" and dangling participles. i'm sorry to be a nerd, but i'm still the same person who enjoyed copyediting so much i designed my own 300-level class on it.

it's a writing style that is mirrored in the never-ending list of quirky characters we meet. this book never quite coalesces into a story: we start off with a mystery, but we never hear about it again. in each chapter, we meet a new Black or Jewish or Italian person with a memorable name and an amusing backstory who is down on their luck, hardworking and yet marginalized to chicken hill (a falling-apart neighborhood in pottstown, pa) and little opportunity by the town's white people.

i cannot even tell you how goddamn frustrating this got. on the off chance one character's solo chapter piqued your interest, you're sh*t out of luck. i tried to care about chona and dodo, and what i got in return is watching unbelievably horrific things befall them, only to exit their story for the next 9 chapters while we hear about people chuckling and hamburger bars. 

i was unable to build connections or feel for any of these characters, because there were 982 of them and who knows if i'd see them again before the author remembered he'd promised us a mystery to solve anyway.

(if you, like me, thought that mystery would be any sort of plot, you're sh*t out of luck too.)

bottom line: it's a rare thing to actively dislike a book i don't think is objectively bad. rare in a bad way.
]]> Kitchen 50144 Kitchen, the dazzling English-language debut that is still her best-loved book, is an enchantingly original and deeply affecting book about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan. Mikage, the heroine of Kitchen, is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, she is taken in by her friend Yoichi and his mother (who was once his father), Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale that recalls early Marguerite Duras. Kitchen and its companion story, "Moonlight Shadow," are elegant tales whose seeming simplicity is the ruse of a writer whose voice echoes in the mind and the soul.]]> 160 Banana Yoshimoto 0802142443 emma 4
this is one of the wildest debuts i've ever read: fully formed, inventive, unique. it creates searing emotion out of everyday images and tells two stories that somehow come together as one, all while employing what can feel like almost overly simple prose and dialogue.

additionally or maybe relatedly, it's so weird.

bottom line: cult classic for a reason.]]> 3.91 1988 Kitchen
author: Banana Yoshimoto
name: emma
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/30
date added: 2025/07/05
shelves: authors-of-color, diverse, non-ya, literary-fiction, 3-and-a-half-stars, to-buy, recommend, reviewed
review:
the best kind of classic is cult.

this is one of the wildest debuts i've ever read: fully formed, inventive, unique. it creates searing emotion out of everyday images and tells two stories that somehow come together as one, all while employing what can feel like almost overly simple prose and dialogue.

additionally or maybe relatedly, it's so weird.

bottom line: cult classic for a reason.
]]> Central Places 61021929 A young woman's rootless past and uncertain future collide when she brings her white fiancé home to meet her Chinese immigrant parents, toppling her carefully constructed life in this vibrant, insightful debut from an exciting new voice in fiction.

Audrey Zhou left Hickory Grove, the tiny town in central Illinois where she grew up, as soon as high school ended, and she never looked back. She moved to New York City and became the person she always wanted to be, complete with a high-paying, high-pressure job and a seemingly faultless fiancé, Ben. But if she and Manhattan-bred Ben are to build a life together, in the dream home his parents will surely pay for, Audrey can no longer hide him, or the person she's become, from those she left behind.

But returning to Hickory Grove is . . . complicated. Audrey's relationship with her parents has been soured by years of her mother's astronomical expectations and slights. The friends she's shirked for bigger dreams have stayed behind and started families. And then there's Kyle, the easygoing stoner and her unrequited crush from high school that she finds herself drawn to again. Ben might be a perfect fit for New Audrey, but Kyle was always the only one who truly understood her growing up, and being around him again after all these years has Old Audrey bubbling up to the surface.

Over the course of one disastrous week, Audrey's proximity to her family and to Kyle forces her to confront the past and reexamine her fraught connection to her roots before she undoes everything she's worked toward and everything she's imagined for herself. But is that life really the one she wants?]]> 288 Delia Cai 0593497910 emma 3
that's girlboss

(3.5 / review to come)]]> 3.47 2023 Central Places
author: Delia Cai
name: emma
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/07/04
date added: 2025/07/05
shelves: non-ya, literary-fiction, diverse, authors-of-color, free-library
review:
mostly wanted to read this book because the author got kicked out of jury duty for tweeting that the fbi agent on the stand was hot.

that's girlboss

(3.5 / review to come)
]]> Same As It Ever Was 199344873
She’s unprepared, though, for what comes next: a surprise announcement from her straight-arrow son, an impending separation from her spikey teenaged daughter, and a seductive resurgence of the past, all of which threaten to draw her back into the patterns that had previously kept her on a razor’s edge.

Same As It Ever Was traverses the rocky terrain of real life, —exploring new avenues of maternal ambivalence, intergenerational friendship, and the happenstantial cause-and-effect that governs us all. Delving even deeper into the nature of relationships—how they grow, change, and sometimes end—Lombardo proves herself a true and definitive cartographer of the human heart and asserts herself among the finest novelists of her generation.]]> 498 Claire Lombardo 0385549555 emma 0
(reading till i find a five star on substack)
]]> 3.80 2024 Same As It Ever Was
author: Claire Lombardo
name: emma
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/07/03
shelves: non-ya, library, literary-fiction, currently-reading
review:
every once in a while i just think i'm destined to like a book

(reading till i find a five star on substack)

]]> Cursed Daughters 223955096 No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace...

So goes the family curse, long handed down from generation to generation, ruining families and breaking hearts. And now it's Eniiyi's turn - who, due to her uncanny resemblance to her dead aunt, Monife, is already used to her family's strange beliefs, as well as their insistence that she is a reincarnation. Still, when she falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family's history. Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak, or can she escape the family curse and the mysterious fate that befell her aunt?]]> Oyinkan Braithwaite 1805463373 emma 0 i wish my family had a curse 4.44 2025 Cursed Daughters
author: Oyinkan Braithwaite
name: emma
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/07/03
shelves: to-read, unreleased, authors-of-color, diverse, literary-fiction, non-ya
review:
i wish my family had a curse
]]> Thirst Trap 221188099 Sometimes friends hold you together.
Sometimes they’re why you’re falling apart.

Maggie, Harley and Róise are friends on the of triumph, catastrophe, or maybe just finally growing up. Their crumbling Belfast houseshare has been witness to their roaring twenties, filled with questionable one-night stands and ruthless hangovers. But now fault-lines are beginning to show.

The three girls are still grieving the tragic death of their friend, Lydia, whose room remains untouched. Their last big fight hangs heavy over their heads, unspoken since the accident. And now they are all beginning to unravel.

Thirst Trap by Gráinne O'Hare is a blazing, bittersweet, bitingly funny, and painfully relatable story about the friendships that endure through the very best and the very worst of times.]]> 288 Grainne O'Hare 1035046229 emma 0 to-read, nowhere 3.95 2025 Thirst Trap
author: Grainne O'Hare
name: emma
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/07/03
shelves: to-read, nowhere
review:
sometimes i feel like a cigarette in a barbie shoe
]]> The Coin 199349912 A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman's unraveling, far from home, as she gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags

The Coin follows a Palestinian woman as she pursues a dream that generations of her family have failed at: to live and thrive in America. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys in New York, where her eccentric methods cross conventional boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler and the two participate in a pyramid scheme reselling Birkin bags, the value of which "increases, year by year, regardless of poverty, of war, of famine." The juxtaposition of luxury and the abject engulfs her as she is able to con her way to bag after bag, preoccupied by the suffering she knows of the world.

Eventually, her body and mind go to war. America is stifling her—her willfulness, her sexuality, her ideology. In an attempt to regain control, she becomes preoccupied with purity, cleanliness and self-image, all while drawing her students into her obsessions. In an unforgettable denouement, her childhood memories converge with her feelings of existential statelessness, and the narrator unravels spectacularly.

Enthralling, sensory, and uncanny, The Coin explores materiality, nature and civilization, class, homelessness, sexuality, beauty—and how oppression and inherited trauma manifest in every area of our lives—all while resisting easy moralizing. Provocative and original, humorous and inviting, The Coin marks the arrival of a major new literary voice.]]> 240 Yasmin Zaher 1646222105 emma 4


i think so often in modern literary fiction, books either underestimate the intelligence of the reader or overestimate the intelligence of themselves.

i've read lots of books that overexplain themselves, making every theme and symbol and intention very obvious and taking all the fun out of analyzing on your own. and i've read lots of books that fall apart under pressure, revealing that their various choices, in spite of (usually) heavy style or pretension, don't coalesce into anything.

this, finally, balanced each perfectly. a striking, disturbing, intense, complex read with something to say. i'd say it was a treat to read, but it wasn't — and that was the point.

bottom line: the sweet spot.

(thank you to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.49 2024 The Coin
author: Yasmin Zaher
name: emma
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/24
date added: 2025/07/03
shelves: authors-of-color, diverse, literary-fiction, non-ya, from-publisher-author, owned, recommend, reviewed
review:
i love books about women unraveling.



i think so often in modern literary fiction, books either underestimate the intelligence of the reader or overestimate the intelligence of themselves.

i've read lots of books that overexplain themselves, making every theme and symbol and intention very obvious and taking all the fun out of analyzing on your own. and i've read lots of books that fall apart under pressure, revealing that their various choices, in spite of (usually) heavy style or pretension, don't coalesce into anything.

this, finally, balanced each perfectly. a striking, disturbing, intense, complex read with something to say. i'd say it was a treat to read, but it wasn't — and that was the point.

bottom line: the sweet spot.

(thank you to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> Priestdaddy 38389522 From Patricia Lockwood--a writer acclaimed for her wildly original voice--a vivid, heartbreakingly funny memoir about balancing identity with family and tradition.

Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met--a man who lounges in boxer shorts, loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates "like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972." His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the Church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide.

In Priestdaddy, Lockwood interweaves emblematic moments from her childhood and adolescence--from an ill-fated family hunting trip and an abortion clinic sit-in where her father was arrested to her involvement in a cultlike Catholic youth group--with scenes that chronicle the eight-month adventure she and her husband had in her parents' household after a decade of living on their own. Lockwood details her education of a seminarian who is also living at the rectory, tries to explain Catholicism to her husband, who is mystified by its bloodthirstiness and arcane laws, and encounters a mysterious substance on a hotel bed with her mother.

Lockwood pivots from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the deeply serious, exploring issues of belief, belonging, and personhood. Priestdaddy is an entertaining, unforgettable portrait of a deeply odd religious upbringing, and how one balances a hard-won identity with the weight of family and tradition.]]> 352 Patricia Lockwood 0399573267 emma 4
this was the very weirdest, and possibly the funniest too.

patricia lockwood is such a one of a kind writer, like if the funniest person you know who was also terminally online could write poetry. which i guess is maybe too on the nose of a description to be a comparison.

i liked this so much, but reading it made me think i might like her other book even more than i thought.

all the best writers are so unique and consuming that reading them makes you want to pick up everything they've done in a neverending cycle.

bottom line: if patricia lockwood only has 2 books, catch me constantly revisiting those books.]]> 4.04 2017 Priestdaddy
author: Patricia Lockwood
name: emma
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/22
date added: 2025/07/03
shelves: non-ya, literary-fiction, 4-stars, recommend, owned, reviewed, funny
review:
i love a weird one.

this was the very weirdest, and possibly the funniest too.

patricia lockwood is such a one of a kind writer, like if the funniest person you know who was also terminally online could write poetry. which i guess is maybe too on the nose of a description to be a comparison.

i liked this so much, but reading it made me think i might like her other book even more than i thought.

all the best writers are so unique and consuming that reading them makes you want to pick up everything they've done in a neverending cycle.

bottom line: if patricia lockwood only has 2 books, catch me constantly revisiting those books.
]]> Luminous 214151232 A highly anticipated, sweeping debut set in a unified Korea that tells the story of three estranged siblings—two human, one robot—as they collide against the backdrop of a murder investigation to settle old scores and make sense of their shattered childhood, perfect for fans of Klara and the Sun and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

In a reunified Korea of the future, robots have been integrated into society as surrogates, servants, children, and even lovers. Though boundaries between bionic and organic frequently blur, these robots are decidedly second-class citizens. Jun and Morgan, two siblings estranged for many years, are haunted by the memory of their lost brother, Yoyo, who was warm, sensitive, and very nearly human.

Jun, a war veteran turned detective of the lowly Robot Crimes Unit in Seoul, becomes consumed by an investigation that reconnects him with his sister Morgan, now a prominent robot designer working for a top firm, who is, embarrassingly, dating one of her creations in secret.

On the other side of Seoul in a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through scraps looking for robotic parts that might support her failing body. When she discovers a robot boy named Yoyo among the piles of trash, an unlikely bond is formed since Yoyo is so lifelike, he’s unlike anything she’s seen before.

While Morgan prepares to launch the most advanced robot-boy of her career, Jun’s investigation sparks a journey through the underbelly of Seoul, unearthing deeper mysteries about the history of their country and their family. The three siblings must find their way back to each other to reckon with their pasts and the future ahead of them in this poignant and remarkable exploration of what it really means to be human.]]> 391 Silvia Park 1668021668 emma 3
it also has multiple perspectives, which i'm a recorded hater of. there are simply very few books in which several POVs are necessary, and also varied, and also equally strong. this did not meet all 3 of those standards.

there was a lot going on, which was both its greatest strength and its biggest weakness.

overall, i thought this was crazy and interesting.

bottom line: maybe we will live in a world of silicone robots soon, but after this i pray not.

(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.66 2025 Luminous
author: Silvia Park
name: emma
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/07/03
shelves: arc, diverse, literary-fiction, non-ya, recommend, 3-and-a-half-stars, authors-of-color, lgbt-plus, sci-fi, reviewed
review:
this book has everything: speculative aspects, childhood trauma, murder, estrangement, forbidden romance, a robot sibling.

it also has multiple perspectives, which i'm a recorded hater of. there are simply very few books in which several POVs are necessary, and also varied, and also equally strong. this did not meet all 3 of those standards.

there was a lot going on, which was both its greatest strength and its biggest weakness.

overall, i thought this was crazy and interesting.

bottom line: maybe we will live in a world of silicone robots soon, but after this i pray not.

(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> Promise Boys 61144954
The prestigious Urban Promise Prep school might look pristine on the outside, but deadly secrets lurk within. When the principal ends up murdered on school premises and the cops come sniffing around, a trio of students―J.B., Ramón, and Trey―emerge as the prime suspects. They had the means, they had the motive . . . and they may have had the murder weapon. But with all three maintaining their innocence, they must band together to track down the real killer before they are arrested. Or is the true culprit hiding among them?

Find out who killed Principal Moore in Nick Brooks's murder mystery, Promise Boys ― The Hate U Give meets One of Us Is Lying.]]> 304 Nick Brooks 1250866979 emma 3
(review to come / 3.5)]]> 3.94 2023 Promise Boys
author: Nick Brooks
name: emma
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/07/03
date added: 2025/07/03
shelves: dark-academia, diverse, ya, mystery-thriller-horror-etc, authors-of-color, 3-and-a-half-stars, to-review, romance
review:
dark academia!!!!!!

(review to come / 3.5)
]]> Death Takes Me 213870075 From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Liliana's Invincible Summer, a dreamlike, genre-defying novel about a professor and detective seeking justice in a world suffused with gendered violence.

A city is always a cemetery.

When a professor named Cristina Rivera Garza stumbles upon the corpse of a man in a dark alley, she finds a stark warning scrawled on the brick wall beside the body, written in coral nail “Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert.”

After reporting the crime to the police, the professor becomes the lead informant of the case, led by a detective with a newfound obsession with poetry and a long list of failures on her back. But what has the professor really seen? As more bodies of men are found across the city, the detective tries to decipher the meaning of the poems, and if they are facing a darker stream of violence spreading throughout the city.

Death Takes Me is a thrilling masterpiece of literary fiction that flips the traditional crime narrative on its head, in a world where death is rampant and violence is gendered. Written in sentences as sharp as the cuts on the bodies of the victims—a word which, in Spanish, is always feminine—Death Takes Me unfolds with the charged logic of a dream, moving from the professor’s classroom into the slippery worlds of Latin American poetry and art, as it explores with masterful imagination the unstable terrains of desire and sexuality.]]> 320 Cristina Rivera Garza 0593737008 emma 2
i'm telling you these things because they really paint a picture i wish i was aware of going in.

when books are intensely stylized (and i would say the writing of this is so pretentious as to qualify), i have a little test i do to see if this is brilliance or laziness.

in my purview, a lot of books try to be unique and/or abstract and/or artistic, and some of them do so because that is the Author's Vision while others see a shallow attempt as the easiest path toward being classified a Work Of Art.

i measure whether it's one or the other by the internal discipline.

sure, go crazy on the adverbs, suddenly dedicate 30 pages to an encyclopedic bio of a poet with footnotes included, make every chapter 2 pages long and at least two-thirds of it dedicated to describing penises, but: remember what you wrote and stick to it.

within one of these tiny chapters, a man previously described as totally naked is said to have pants on, and a detective and assistant for the department of homicides list their work as drug-dealing and international missing persons cases.

that point is when i lost my patience.

this book is a lot of things it tries to be — unique, boundary-pushing, full of phrases like “Too heavy a comforter (comfort-her? for her comfort?” — but it's not worth your time.

bottom line: so frustrating and yet so forgettable.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 2.78 2007 Death Takes Me
author: Cristina Rivera Garza
name: emma
average rating: 2.78
book published: 2007
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/21
date added: 2025/07/02
shelves: arc, literary-fiction, non-ya, diverse, authors-of-color, unpopular-opinion, nope, 2-stars, reviewed
review:
this is very stylized fiction with a protagonist that has the author's name and chapters randomly in verse or footnotes and several astonishingly literary sex scenes.

i'm telling you these things because they really paint a picture i wish i was aware of going in.

when books are intensely stylized (and i would say the writing of this is so pretentious as to qualify), i have a little test i do to see if this is brilliance or laziness.

in my purview, a lot of books try to be unique and/or abstract and/or artistic, and some of them do so because that is the Author's Vision while others see a shallow attempt as the easiest path toward being classified a Work Of Art.

i measure whether it's one or the other by the internal discipline.

sure, go crazy on the adverbs, suddenly dedicate 30 pages to an encyclopedic bio of a poet with footnotes included, make every chapter 2 pages long and at least two-thirds of it dedicated to describing penises, but: remember what you wrote and stick to it.

within one of these tiny chapters, a man previously described as totally naked is said to have pants on, and a detective and assistant for the department of homicides list their work as drug-dealing and international missing persons cases.

that point is when i lost my patience.

this book is a lot of things it tries to be — unique, boundary-pushing, full of phrases like “Too heavy a comforter (comfort-her? for her comfort?” — but it's not worth your time.

bottom line: so frustrating and yet so forgettable.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> Still Born 59115451
In prose that is as gripping as it is insightful, Guadalupe Nettel explores maternal ambivalence with a surgeon’s touch, carefully dissecting the contradictions that make up the lived experiences of women.]]> 219 Guadalupe Nettel 1913097668 emma 4
(reading till i find a five star on substack)
(review to come)]]> 4.29 2020 Still Born
author: Guadalupe Nettel
name: emma
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/07/02
date added: 2025/07/02
shelves: non-ya, literary-fiction, authors-of-color, diverse, 4-stars, to-review, to-buy, recommend
review:
i fear i'm falling in love with yet another edition

(reading till i find a five star on substack)
(review to come)
]]> <![CDATA[Good Girl, Bad Blood (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #2)]]> 44047222
With the help of Ravi Singh, she released a true-crime podcast about the murder case they solved together last year. The podcast has gone viral, yet Pip insists her investigating days are behind her.

But she will have to break that promise when someone she knows goes missing. Jamie Reynolds has disappeared, on the very same night the town hosted a memorial for the sixth-year anniversary of the deaths of Andie Bell and Sal Singh.

The police won't do anything about it. And if they won't look for Jamie then Pip will, uncovering more of her town's dark secrets along the way... and this time everyone is listening. But will she find him before it's too late?]]> 416 Holly Jackson 1984896407 emma 4
and this was a more fun and satisfying mystery than the first one! i've learned that, like many mystery writers, i like holly jackson's setups without liking the endings, but i felt more the opposite way about this one, which was interesting.

i also thought that pip's various trials and myriad tribulations were handled well. like, you know what, maybe if a 16 year old is single-handedly responsible for the crime solving and well-being of an entire midsized town, she WOULD fall apart a little bit. maybe homework wouldn't get done!

there were also a few things in this that i thought would come up again or be explained and never did or were, which is fine i guess. one way to look at a red herring. 

is what i would say if i were an optimist, and not a hater with a heart of coal.

bottom line: i never expected to like these books, because i'm a spoilsport and my #1 pastime is raining on parades, but here we are!]]> 4.30 2020 Good Girl, Bad Blood (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #2)
author: Holly Jackson
name: emma
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/15
date added: 2025/07/02
shelves: mystery-thriller-horror-etc, ya, 3-and-a-half-stars, recommend, reviewed
review:
when i like a book even once i will chase that series for the rest of time.

and this was a more fun and satisfying mystery than the first one! i've learned that, like many mystery writers, i like holly jackson's setups without liking the endings, but i felt more the opposite way about this one, which was interesting.

i also thought that pip's various trials and myriad tribulations were handled well. like, you know what, maybe if a 16 year old is single-handedly responsible for the crime solving and well-being of an entire midsized town, she WOULD fall apart a little bit. maybe homework wouldn't get done!

there were also a few things in this that i thought would come up again or be explained and never did or were, which is fine i guess. one way to look at a red herring. 

is what i would say if i were an optimist, and not a hater with a heart of coal.

bottom line: i never expected to like these books, because i'm a spoilsport and my #1 pastime is raining on parades, but here we are!
]]> When the World Tips Over 203820262 An explosive new novel brimming with love, secrets, and enchantment

The Fall siblings live in hot Northern California wine country, where the sun pours out of the sky, and the devil winds blow so hard they whip the sense right out of your head.

Years ago, the Fall kids’ father mysteriously disappeared, cracking the family into pieces. Now Dizzy Fall, age twelve, bakes cakes, sees spirits, and wishes she were a heroine of a romance novel. Miles Fall, seventeen, brainiac, athlete, and dog-whisperer, is a raving beauty, but also lost, and desperate to meet the kind of guy he dreams of. And Wynton Fall, nineteen, who raises the temperature of a room just by entering it, is a virtuoso violinist set on a crash course for fame . . . or self-destruction.

Then an enigmatic rainbow-haired girl shows up, tipping the Falls’ world over. She might be an angel. Or a saint. Or an ordinary girl. Somehow, she is vital to each of them. But before anyone can figure out who she is, catastrophe strikes, leaving the Falls more broken than ever. And more desperate to be whole.

With road trips, rivalries, family curses, love stories within love stories within love stories, and sorrows and joys passed from generation to generation, this is the intricate, luminous tale of a family’s complicated past and present. And only in telling their stories can they hope to rewrite their futures.]]> 528 Jandy Nelson 0525429093 emma 4
and this one does all of that and adds family drama and road trips and colorful rvs and mythology and souffles and immortal dogs and wine into the mix. so. even better.

this took a long time to win me over, and i really didn't care for this "dave" character or the multitudinous outs given to a variety of characters who abandoned their various children or some certain genetic plot twists or some characters' endings or lack thereof, and i've come to accept that nothing on god's great green earth will capture the magic that i'll give you the sun did, but the long and short of it is that this was worth the wait.

which is saying a lot, because the wait was without exaggeration 10 years. 

spoilery section: [spoilers removed] for a 500 page long book that took 10 years to write, i expected a little more polish and a few less loose ends.

so, not perfect. but good.

bottom line: generally, i'm just so grateful to live in a world in which jandy nelson is writing.

(3.5 / thank you to the publisher for the arc)

--------------------
multitudinous tbr updates

OH MY GOD

Working on it this minute! <3

— Jandy Nelson (@jandynelson)


ALL IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD

------

this is your semiregular reminder that it's been 6 years since jandy nelson published a book

------

it's that time again...the time when i desperately ask if ANYONE KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT WHEN THIS IS COMING OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!

------

DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY INFORMATION ON THIS. the anticipation is too much



------

Update 3/30/17: Jandy Nelson says on Twitter, "Been asked a lot recently when my next novel will be out. So! Working hard on it! Sorry so slow and thank you for waiting/asking/caring!"

STILL CAN'T WAIT BUT WILL BE PATIENTLY UNABLE TO WAIT.

]]> 4.19 2024 When the World Tips Over
author: Jandy Nelson
name: emma
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/09
date added: 2025/07/02
shelves: contemporary, ya, arc, from-publisher-author, owned, 3-and-a-half-stars, recommend, reviewed
review:
nobody writes about hating everything and loving everything and doing art and living life and family and romance and identity and everything in the world that's good like jandy nelson!

and this one does all of that and adds family drama and road trips and colorful rvs and mythology and souffles and immortal dogs and wine into the mix. so. even better.

this took a long time to win me over, and i really didn't care for this "dave" character or the multitudinous outs given to a variety of characters who abandoned their various children or some certain genetic plot twists or some characters' endings or lack thereof, and i've come to accept that nothing on god's great green earth will capture the magic that i'll give you the sun did, but the long and short of it is that this was worth the wait.

which is saying a lot, because the wait was without exaggeration 10 years. 

spoilery section: [spoilers removed] for a 500 page long book that took 10 years to write, i expected a little more polish and a few less loose ends.

so, not perfect. but good.

bottom line: generally, i'm just so grateful to live in a world in which jandy nelson is writing.

(3.5 / thank you to the publisher for the arc)

--------------------
multitudinous tbr updates

OH MY GOD

Working on it this minute! <3

— Jandy Nelson (@jandynelson)


ALL IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD

------

this is your semiregular reminder that it's been 6 years since jandy nelson published a book

------

it's that time again...the time when i desperately ask if ANYONE KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT WHEN THIS IS COMING OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!

------

DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY INFORMATION ON THIS. the anticipation is too much



------

Update 3/30/17: Jandy Nelson says on Twitter, "Been asked a lot recently when my next novel will be out. So! Working hard on it! Sorry so slow and thank you for waiting/asking/caring!"

STILL CAN'T WAIT BUT WILL BE PATIENTLY UNABLE TO WAIT.


]]> The Nimbus 217387673 A brilliant debut novel about a child whose literal enlightenment sets the stage for an exuberant tragicomedy of marriage, religion, and parenthood.

On an otherwise ordinary fall day on a university campus in Chicago, the toddler son of an ambitious divinity school professor named Adrian Bennett mysteriously starts to glow. The nimbus, as the strange, soft light comes to be known, offers no clues to its origin and frustrates every attempt at rational explanation.

Though the nimbus appears only intermittently, and not to everyone, the otherworldly glow quickly upends the lives of all those who encounter it, including Paul Harkin, Adrian’s broke and feckless graduate student, who likes being a graduate student a little too much for his own good; Renata Bennett, Adrian’s omnicompetent wife, who can’t see her son glowing even though the nimbus is turning her life upside down; and Warren Kayita, a down-on-his-luck librarian and aging divinity school alumnus on the run from a violent criminal. As news about the nimbus spreads around the university and beyond, Adrian, Paul, Renata, and Warren are set on a collision course that will threaten their lives and put their deepest convictions to the test.

At once a rollicking intellectual satire, a searing portrait of a family in crisis, and a thrilling metaphysical page-turner, The Nimbus offers a comic and profound examination of the persistence of spiritual belief in a secular age and humanity’s timeless search for meaning.]]> 352 Robert P. Baird 1250392659 emma 3
(thanks to the publisher for the arc)]]> 4.02 The Nimbus
author: Robert P. Baird
name: emma
average rating: 4.02
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/07/01
date added: 2025/07/01
shelves: arc, from-publisher-author, literary-fiction, non-ya, owned, 2-and-a-half-stars, to-review, unpopular-opinion, eh
review:
oh to be a toddler who develops an otherworldly glow

(thanks to the publisher for the arc)
]]> The Lantern of Lost Memories 204593511 From acclaimed Japanese author Sanaka Hiigari comes a heartwarming, life-affirming novel about a magical photo studio, where people go after they die to view key moments from their life—and relive one precious memory before they pass into the afterlife.

The hands and pendulum of the old wooden clock on the wall were motionless. Hirasaka cocked his head to listen, but the silence inside the photo studio was almost deafening. His leather shoes sank softly into the aging red carpet as he strode over to the arrangement of flowers on the counter and carefully adjusted the angle of the petals...

This is the story of the peculiar and magical photo studio owned by Mr. Hirasaki, a collector of antique cameras. In the dimly lit interior, a paper background is pulled down in front of a wall, and in front of it stands a single, luxurious chair with an armrest on one side. On a stand is a large bellows camera. On the left is the main studio; photos can also be taken in the courtyard.

Beyond its straightforward interior, however, is a secret. The studio is, in fact, the door to the afterlife, the place between life and death where those who have departed have a chance—one last time—to see their entire life flash before their eyes via Mr. Hirasaki's "spinning lantern of memories."

We meet Hatsue, a ninety-two year old woman who worked as a nursery teacher, the rowdy Waniguchi, a yakuza overseer in his life who is also capable of great compassion, and finally Mitsuru, a young girl who has died tragically young at the hands of abusive parents. 

Sorting through the many photos of their lives, Mr. Hirasaki also offers guests one guests a second a chance to travel back in time to take a photo of one particular moment in their lives that they wish to cherish in a special way.

Full of charm and whimsy, The Lantern of Lost Memories will sweep you away to a world of nostalgia, laughter, and love.]]> 208 Sanaka Hiiragi 1538757435 emma 3
(review to come)]]> 4.11 2019 The Lantern of Lost Memories
author: Sanaka Hiiragi
name: emma
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/07/01
date added: 2025/07/01
shelves: authors-of-color, diverse, fantasy, non-ya, 3-and-a-half-stars, to-review, recommend
review:
sounds nice

(review to come)
]]> A Catalog of Burnt Objects 214986176 The story of a girl struggling to figure out her estranged brother, a new love, and her own life just as wildfires beset her small California town—by the acclaimed author of As Many Nows as I Can Get, herself a native of Paradise, California, destroyed in the 2018 Camp Fire

Seventeen-year-old Caprice wants to piece her family back together now that her older brother has returned home, even as she resents that he ever broke them apart. Just as she starts to get a new footing—falling in love for the first time, uncertainly mending her traumatized relationship with her brother, completing the app that will win her a college scholarship and a job in tech—wildfires strike Sierra, her small California town, taking from her more than she ever realized she cherished. A response to the terrifying, heartbreaking events of Paradise, California, where the author grew up, and a love story of many stripes, this is a tale that looks at what is lost and discovers what remains, and how a family can be nearly destroyed again and again, and still survive.]]> 368 Shana Youngdahl 059340551X emma 3
it was a clear stubborn-off and i won.

but also i anticipated this book for 6 years, after kind of liking the author's debut. there was no way it was going to live up to the hype i gave it.

in truth, though, it came pretty close. this was intense and emotional, and i liked the complex relationships our protagonist had: with her brother, her town, herself.

i just wanted more from the other ones. i thought the grand first love depicted was kind of flimsy, and i was more interested in the parental and best friend dynamics than the story permitted. 

but i will still await the author's next book.

just maybe with less intensity.

bottom line: worth the wait but not the hype i gave it.

(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.81 2025 A Catalog of Burnt Objects
author: Shana Youngdahl
name: emma
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/07/01
shelves: ya, contemporary, 3-and-a-half-stars, recommend, reviewed
review:
i added this book when it had no cover, no synopsis, and no release date. then i waited.

it was a clear stubborn-off and i won.

but also i anticipated this book for 6 years, after kind of liking the author's debut. there was no way it was going to live up to the hype i gave it.

in truth, though, it came pretty close. this was intense and emotional, and i liked the complex relationships our protagonist had: with her brother, her town, herself.

i just wanted more from the other ones. i thought the grand first love depicted was kind of flimsy, and i was more interested in the parental and best friend dynamics than the story permitted. 

but i will still await the author's next book.

just maybe with less intensity.

bottom line: worth the wait but not the hype i gave it.

(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> <![CDATA[Deaf Utopia: A Memoir—And a Love Letter to a Way of Life]]> 56921930
Before becoming the actor, producer, advocate, and model that people know today, Nyle DiMarco was half of a pair of Deaf twins born to a multi-generational Deaf family in Queens, New York. At the hospital one day after he was born, Nyle “failed” his first test—a hearing test—to the joy and excitement of his parents.

In this moving and engrossing memoir, Nyle shares stories, both heartbreaking and humorous, of what it means to navigate a world built for hearing people. From growing up in a rough-and-tumble childhood in Queens with his big and loving Italian-American family to where he is now, Nyle has always been driven to explore beyond the boundaries given him.

A college math major and athlete at Gallaudet—the famed university for the Deaf in Washington, DC—Nyle was drawn as a young man to acting, and dove headfirst into the reality show competitions America’s Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars—ultimately winning both competitions.

Deaf Utopia is more than a memoir, it is a cultural anthem—a proud and defiant song of Deaf culture and a love letter to American Sign Language, Nyle’s primary language. Through his stories and those of his Deaf brothers, parents, and grandparents, Nyle opens many windows into the Deaf experience.

Deaf Utopia is intimate, suspenseful, hilarious, eye-opening, and smart—both a memoir and a celebration of what makes Deaf culture unique and beautiful.]]> 317 Nyle DiMarco 0063062356 emma 4
this book actually provided more insight into the Deaf experience than anything else i've read ever. it was enlightening and cute and fun without glossing over things or going easy on people.

i loved the first half of this the most, writing about growing up in a Deaf family, and i didn't love the back half as much, when it was synopses of reality television episodes, but overall this was SO MUCH better than i thought it would be. kind of a slay for low expectations.

bottom line: rare win for celebrity memoir!]]> 4.23 2022 Deaf Utopia: A Memoir—And a Love Letter to a Way of Life
author: Nyle DiMarco
name: emma
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/09
date added: 2025/07/01
shelves: non-ya, nonfiction, 4-stars, recommend, owned, reviewed
review:
this is my sister's boyfriend's mom's celebrity crush's memoir. and that's why i read it!

this book actually provided more insight into the Deaf experience than anything else i've read ever. it was enlightening and cute and fun without glossing over things or going easy on people.

i loved the first half of this the most, writing about growing up in a Deaf family, and i didn't love the back half as much, when it was synopses of reality television episodes, but overall this was SO MUCH better than i thought it would be. kind of a slay for low expectations.

bottom line: rare win for celebrity memoir!
]]> <![CDATA[The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)]]> 19161852
Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She'll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.]]> 468 N.K. Jemisin emma 4
it was a good choice!

this book was creative and fun to read while also having traces of more serious themes, a combination that is my personal ideal in fantasy books. the beginning of this was confusing, but i'd rather have that than boring weird forced-feeling info dumps. the world-building is impressive, what it points out about our own world is striking, and on top of it there's a fairly solid chance it'll break your heart.

i don't know why it took me so long to read it, and i regret in advance how long it'll probably be until i pick up the next one.

bottom line: this made me wish i were a fantasy reader.]]> 4.28 2015 The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: emma
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/05
date added: 2025/07/01
shelves: authors-of-color, diverse, fantasy, non-ya, 4-stars, recommend, to-buy, reviewed
review:
on the one day a year i decided to pretend i read fantasy, this is what i chose to read.

it was a good choice!

this book was creative and fun to read while also having traces of more serious themes, a combination that is my personal ideal in fantasy books. the beginning of this was confusing, but i'd rather have that than boring weird forced-feeling info dumps. the world-building is impressive, what it points out about our own world is striking, and on top of it there's a fairly solid chance it'll break your heart.

i don't know why it took me so long to read it, and i regret in advance how long it'll probably be until i pick up the next one.

bottom line: this made me wish i were a fantasy reader.
]]> <![CDATA[We Love You, Bunny (Bunny, #2)]]> 220595449 Bunny, Samantha Heather Mackey, a lonely outsider student at a highly selective MFA program in New England, was first ostracized and then seduced by a clique of creepy-sweet rich girls who call themselves “Bunny.” An invitation to the Bunnies’ Smut Salon leads Samantha down a dark rabbit hole (pun intended) into the violently surreal world of their off-campus workshops where monstrous creations are conjured with deadly and wondrous consequences.

When We Love You, Bunny opens, Sam has just published her first novel to critical acclaim. But at a New England stop on her book tour, her one-time frenemies, furious at the way they’ve been portrayed, kidnap her. Now a captive audience, it’s her (and our) turn to hear the Bunnies’ side of the story. One by one, they take turns holding the axe, and recount the birth throes of their unholy alliance, their discovery of their unusual creative powers—and the phantasmagoric adventure of conjuring their first creation. With a bound and gagged Sam, we embark on a wickedly intoxicating journey into the heart of dark academia: a fairy tale slasher that explores the wonder and horror of creation itself. Not to mention the transformative powers of love and friendship, Bunny.

Frankenstein by way of Heathers, We Love You, Bunny is both a prequel and a sequel, and an unabashedly wild and totally complete stand-alone novel. Open your hearts, Bunny, to another dazzlingly original and darkly hilarious romp in the Bunny-verse from the queen of the fever-dream, Mona Awad.]]> 496 Mona Awad 166805986X emma 0 we really do 4.14 2025 We Love You, Bunny (Bunny, #2)
author: Mona Awad
name: emma
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/07/01
shelves: to-read, tbr-arc, tbr-owned, arc, from-publisher-author, mystery-thriller-horror-etc, non-ya, literary-fiction
review:
we really do
]]> The Lone Pilgrim 56212909 Home Cooking and Happy All the Time--lets loose, probing further the themes that have preoccupied her for her entire career. Across these thirteen tales are stories about love and romance, about growth and change, and about the complications of being human. Marked by the same wit and compassion that define all of her writing, The Lone Pilgrim showcases Colwin at her very best.

Contains 13 stories: "The Lone Pilgrim," "The Boyish Lover," "Sentimental Memory," "A Girl Skating," "An Old-Fashioned Story," "Intimacy," "Travel," "Delia's Father," "A Mythological Subject," "Saint Anthony of the Desert," "The Smile Beneath the Smile," "The Achieve of, the Mastery of the Thing," and "Family Happiness."

This edition features cover art by Olivia McGiff.]]> 224 Laurie Colwin 0593313569 emma 0 4.50 1981 The Lone Pilgrim
author: Laurie Colwin
name: emma
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/30
shelves: to-read, non-ya, literary-fiction
review:
i never want to run out of laurie colwin books
]]> Saving Five: A Memoir of Hope 211934934 A revelatory and powerful memoir by the Nobel Peace Prize nominee Amanda Nguyen, detailing her tumultuous childhood and groundbreaking activism in the aftermath of her rape at Harvard.

At a Harvard fraternity party in 2013, the trajectory of Amanda Nguyen’s life was changed forever when she was raped.

The American-born child of Vietnamese refugees, Nguyen had long dreamed of attending Harvard, and it had become a place of refuge from a childhood filled with turmoil and trauma. Determined to not let her rape derail the life she’d worked so hard to create, she opted for her rape kit to be filed under Jane Doe, knowing that an active court case tied to her name could hurt her odds of working for NASA after graduation, a goal she’d been working toward for years.

But she was shocked to learn this choice meant she had only six months to take action before the state of Massachusetts destroyed her kit, rendering any future legal action impossible. Nguyen knew then that she had two options: surrender to a law that effectively denied her justice, or fight for a change—not only for herself but for survivors everywhere.

A deeply affecting memoir of grief, survival, and hope, Saving Five details Nguyen’s winding journey of recovery and action, which ultimately led her to create the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights, one of the only unanimously passed laws in the history of the United States. Both a tribute to resilience and a lesson on healing, Saving Five is an inspirational story for the ages.]]> 224 Amanda Nguyen 0374615918 emma 3
first of all (or i guess second of all), i want to say this author is an amazingly strong person. the things she has accomplished for the world in 30 years rival entire national outputs, and what she went through on the way there is more than anyone should have to face in a lifetime.

the next thing i want to say is that she's really good at making instagram reels.

when i finished this book, i felt like i wanted something more. i channeled that into looking the author up on social media, where i found countless short-form vertical videos outlining how she overcame the worst moment of her life, put her dreams on hold, channeled her passions into global justice, and then STILL fulfilled her dreams.

that is roughly what we're told in this book, which is divided between her real journey toward justice and a fantastical trek through the stages of grief alongside her inner children, too.

i have to imagine things are a bit more complicated than that, and they are. the politicians that made amanda nguyen's rape justice legislation into law are unnamed in this book, because those she depicts as "good guys" and those she writes as "bad guys" are not who we'd imagine. the billionaire's pet project that is sending her to fulfill her space dreams is not mentioned in her social posts. when she chooses to put her CIA / NASA dreams to the side in order to get her law passed, we are not told what she does instead.

in short, this author is amazing. she's a hero. her name should and will go down in history. but this book is very simplified, and i wanted to know more. i think the rough moments are even more inspiring, because nguyen is not superhuman. she is a complicated person, and her accomplishments are all the more amazing because of it.

i wish we got to see that.

bottom line: an incredible story i want to dive deeper into.

(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 4.30 2025 Saving Five: A Memoir of Hope
author: Amanda Nguyen
name: emma
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/06/30
shelves: nonfiction, non-ya, memoir, arc, authors-of-color, diverse, 3-and-a-half-stars, recommend, unpopular-opinion, reviewed
review:
i love memoirs!!!

first of all (or i guess second of all), i want to say this author is an amazingly strong person. the things she has accomplished for the world in 30 years rival entire national outputs, and what she went through on the way there is more than anyone should have to face in a lifetime.

the next thing i want to say is that she's really good at making instagram reels.

when i finished this book, i felt like i wanted something more. i channeled that into looking the author up on social media, where i found countless short-form vertical videos outlining how she overcame the worst moment of her life, put her dreams on hold, channeled her passions into global justice, and then STILL fulfilled her dreams.

that is roughly what we're told in this book, which is divided between her real journey toward justice and a fantastical trek through the stages of grief alongside her inner children, too.

i have to imagine things are a bit more complicated than that, and they are. the politicians that made amanda nguyen's rape justice legislation into law are unnamed in this book, because those she depicts as "good guys" and those she writes as "bad guys" are not who we'd imagine. the billionaire's pet project that is sending her to fulfill her space dreams is not mentioned in her social posts. when she chooses to put her CIA / NASA dreams to the side in order to get her law passed, we are not told what she does instead.

in short, this author is amazing. she's a hero. her name should and will go down in history. but this book is very simplified, and i wanted to know more. i think the rough moments are even more inspiring, because nguyen is not superhuman. she is a complicated person, and her accomplishments are all the more amazing because of it.

i wish we got to see that.

bottom line: an incredible story i want to dive deeper into.

(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> Henry Henry 182108722 Henry Henry is a queer reimagining of Shakespeare's Henriad, transposing the legend of Henry V's wayward youth into 21st-century Britain in the years leading up to the Brexit referendum.

Henry Henry follows Hal Lancaster—22, gay, Catholic—as he spends his first years out of Oxford floating between internships, drinking with his actor friends, struggling through awkward hook-ups, and occasionally going to confession to be absolved of his sins.

When a grouse shooting accident-—funny in retrospect—makes a romance out of Hal's rivalry with fumblingly leftist family friend Harry Percy, Hal finds that he wants, for the first time, to be himself. But his father Henry is an Englishman: he will not let his son escape tradition. To save himself, Hal must reckon not only with grief and shame but with the wounds of his family's past.]]> 336 Allen Bratton 196188402X emma 4
and also shakespeare is somehow involved, i guess. i (like many people who dare to call themselves bookworms) have not read any of shakespeare's history monarch-y plays, so much of the henriad retelling was lost on me even though i very bravely read the wikipedia.

like moshfegh (more so than melissa broder), it delights in being crass and gross-out without being cheerful about it. i thought it was very good, if a little shallow in places, which is a critique i have of moshfegh and not at all of taylor.

if anything with taylor it's the opposite. please stop being so deep about everything. i'm haunted by a description of an underenjoyed potluck submission i read 3 years ago.

anyway.

my only other real thought about this is that no one on earth could possibly eat as much lamb as these people do. is that how you have to be rich in britain? maybe i'm ok with being a middle class american after all.

anyway again.

bottom line: i read this 2 months ago but it still stands out for me. even if a lot of that is lamb.

(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.59 2024 Henry Henry
author: Allen Bratton
name: emma
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/27
date added: 2025/06/30
shelves: diverse, lgbt-plus, literary-fiction, non-ya, arc, 3-and-a-half-stars, recommend, to-buy, unpopular-opinion, reviewed
review:
this is like if ottessa moshfegh wrote a brandon taylor book.

and also shakespeare is somehow involved, i guess. i (like many people who dare to call themselves bookworms) have not read any of shakespeare's history monarch-y plays, so much of the henriad retelling was lost on me even though i very bravely read the wikipedia.

like moshfegh (more so than melissa broder), it delights in being crass and gross-out without being cheerful about it. i thought it was very good, if a little shallow in places, which is a critique i have of moshfegh and not at all of taylor.

if anything with taylor it's the opposite. please stop being so deep about everything. i'm haunted by a description of an underenjoyed potluck submission i read 3 years ago.

anyway.

my only other real thought about this is that no one on earth could possibly eat as much lamb as these people do. is that how you have to be rich in britain? maybe i'm ok with being a middle class american after all.

anyway again.

bottom line: i read this 2 months ago but it still stands out for me. even if a lot of that is lamb.

(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> Jude the Obscure 43611442
Jude Fawley’s hopes of a university education are lost when he is trapped into marrying the earthy Arabella, who later abandons him. Moving to the town of Christminster where he finds work as a stonemason, Jude meets and falls in love with his cousin Sue Bridehead, a sensitive, freethinking "New Woman." Refusing to marry merely for the sake of religious convention, Jude and Sue decide instead to live together, but they are shunned by society and poverty soon threatens to ruin them.   Jude the Obscure , Hardy’s last novel, caused a public furor when it was first published, with its fearless and challenging exploration of class and sexual relationships.

This edition uses the unbowdlerized text of the first volume edition of 1895, and also includes a list for further reading, appendices and a glossary. In his introduction, Dennis Taylor examines biblical allusions and the critique of religion in Jude the Obscure , and its critical reception that led Hardy to abandon novel writing.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 528 Thomas Hardy 0241382696 emma 2
is this a good pun, or am i losing my mind? either way, this is PROJECT LONG CLASSICS, my life mission a lighthearted attempt to make big books more approachable by dividing them up into small chunks and smacking some wordplay on top.

i don't know what this is about (it's only on my tbr for penguin clothbound collection purposes), and i will be reading 3 chapters of it per day this month.

they should call me emma the obscure.


PART I, CHAPTERS 1-3
i too spent most of my adolescence thinking if i could just live in a city it would fix me. in my version it was new york because i was obsessed with NYU, but jude longing for the town his teacher moved to also works.


PART I, CHAPTERS 4-6
dreams of "knowing latin" have now taken a firm backseat to the first girl jude made eye contact with.


PART I, CHAPTERS 7-9
wow. the "she faked a pregnancy in order to keep him" style of misogyny has deep roots.


PART II, CHAPTERS 1-3
jude has gone to the teacher's town to chase his hot cousin, sue. (he ditched his pregnancy-faking wife. not unlike season 1 of glee.)


PART II, CHAPTERS 4-6
jude gets his hot cousin a job with the teacher he's a fan of and what does he get? the teacher going for the cousin. women, am i right?


PART II, CHAPTER 7; PART III, CHAPTERS 1-2
so far, jude has married a girl he hooked up with repeatedly and then consented to her leaving, whined a lot about wanting to be some kind of educated person and continually not done anything about it, and chased his cousin around even though he's married and she's about to be. not that sympathetic of a character as yet.


PART III, CHAPTERS 3-5
it appears sue has spent her life reading books, refusing to get married, and hanging out with guys she rejects when they declare their love. a modern woman.


PART III, CHAPTERS 6-8
sue is married and arabella is back from australia. can jude's life get any worse! (i don't think jude's life is all that bad.)


PART III, CHAPTERS 9-10; PART IV, CHAPTER 1
arabella is married to a different guy (in spite of being also married already) and told jude not to tattle. cool!


PART IV, CHAPTERS 2-4
sue's husband came in her room while she was asleep and she promptly got out of bed and jumped out the window. it goes without saying they no longer live together.


PART IV, CHAPTERS 5-6; PART V, CHAPTER 1
awww, the cousins are getting matching divorces.


PART V, CHAPTERS 2-4
congratulations to sue and jude on the illegal adoption of jude's nameless and unchristened heretofore australian son!


PART V, CHAPTERS 5-7
sue just turned to jude and said our lives are literally perfect! there's only one problem. this kid is dumb. (but now their lives aren't perfect even outside that obvious flaw, because everyone knows they don't accord with social laws and they're being chased across kingdom come [read: rural britain] by the rumor mill.)


PART V, CHAPTER 8; PART VI, CHAPTERS 1-2
i had a few different jokes written here but now i have to delete them all. basically...the aforementioned dumb son killed himself and the two other kids jude and sue had. and then sue was pregnant but that baby died too.

can't say i saw that one coming.


PART VI, CHAPTERS 3-5
sue just married the teacher again (conveniently she never married jude) because she thinks her kids died for her sins. okay yikes!


PART VI, CHAPTERS 6-8
arabella got inspo from that, i guess. we're back where we started re: marriages.


PART VI, CHAPTERS 9-11
if you didn't know jude was going to die in this section, you don't know my boy thomas hardy.


OVERALL
with this book i conclude my reading of the penguin clothbound thomas hardy editions, and this is by far my least favorite. all of them are very melodramatic and moral and didactic, but they vary in believability and timelessness.

this one was the worst offender. outdated and over the top.
rating: 2.5]]> 3.82 1895 Jude the Obscure
author: Thomas Hardy
name: emma
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1895
rating: 2
read at: 2025/06/30
date added: 2025/06/30
shelves: non-ya, classics, library, project-long-classics, 2-and-a-half-stars, to-buy, reviewed, unpopular-opinion, eh
review:
welcome to...JUNE THE OBSCURE.

is this a good pun, or am i losing my mind? either way, this is PROJECT LONG CLASSICS, my life mission a lighthearted attempt to make big books more approachable by dividing them up into small chunks and smacking some wordplay on top.

i don't know what this is about (it's only on my tbr for penguin clothbound collection purposes), and i will be reading 3 chapters of it per day this month.

they should call me emma the obscure.


PART I, CHAPTERS 1-3
i too spent most of my adolescence thinking if i could just live in a city it would fix me. in my version it was new york because i was obsessed with NYU, but jude longing for the town his teacher moved to also works.


PART I, CHAPTERS 4-6
dreams of "knowing latin" have now taken a firm backseat to the first girl jude made eye contact with.


PART I, CHAPTERS 7-9
wow. the "she faked a pregnancy in order to keep him" style of misogyny has deep roots.


PART II, CHAPTERS 1-3
jude has gone to the teacher's town to chase his hot cousin, sue. (he ditched his pregnancy-faking wife. not unlike season 1 of glee.)


PART II, CHAPTERS 4-6
jude gets his hot cousin a job with the teacher he's a fan of and what does he get? the teacher going for the cousin. women, am i right?


PART II, CHAPTER 7; PART III, CHAPTERS 1-2
so far, jude has married a girl he hooked up with repeatedly and then consented to her leaving, whined a lot about wanting to be some kind of educated person and continually not done anything about it, and chased his cousin around even though he's married and she's about to be. not that sympathetic of a character as yet.


PART III, CHAPTERS 3-5
it appears sue has spent her life reading books, refusing to get married, and hanging out with guys she rejects when they declare their love. a modern woman.


PART III, CHAPTERS 6-8
sue is married and arabella is back from australia. can jude's life get any worse! (i don't think jude's life is all that bad.)


PART III, CHAPTERS 9-10; PART IV, CHAPTER 1
arabella is married to a different guy (in spite of being also married already) and told jude not to tattle. cool!


PART IV, CHAPTERS 2-4
sue's husband came in her room while she was asleep and she promptly got out of bed and jumped out the window. it goes without saying they no longer live together.


PART IV, CHAPTERS 5-6; PART V, CHAPTER 1
awww, the cousins are getting matching divorces.


PART V, CHAPTERS 2-4
congratulations to sue and jude on the illegal adoption of jude's nameless and unchristened heretofore australian son!


PART V, CHAPTERS 5-7
sue just turned to jude and said our lives are literally perfect! there's only one problem. this kid is dumb. (but now their lives aren't perfect even outside that obvious flaw, because everyone knows they don't accord with social laws and they're being chased across kingdom come [read: rural britain] by the rumor mill.)


PART V, CHAPTER 8; PART VI, CHAPTERS 1-2
i had a few different jokes written here but now i have to delete them all. basically...the aforementioned dumb son killed himself and the two other kids jude and sue had. and then sue was pregnant but that baby died too.

can't say i saw that one coming.


PART VI, CHAPTERS 3-5
sue just married the teacher again (conveniently she never married jude) because she thinks her kids died for her sins. okay yikes!


PART VI, CHAPTERS 6-8
arabella got inspo from that, i guess. we're back where we started re: marriages.


PART VI, CHAPTERS 9-11
if you didn't know jude was going to die in this section, you don't know my boy thomas hardy.


OVERALL
with this book i conclude my reading of the penguin clothbound thomas hardy editions, and this is by far my least favorite. all of them are very melodramatic and moral and didactic, but they vary in believability and timelessness.

this one was the worst offender. outdated and over the top.
rating: 2.5
]]> The Setting Sun 32860650 I wonder how it would be if I let go and yielded myself to depravity.


This powerful and tragic novel vividly paints life in a nation in social and moral crisis. Set in the early postwar years, it probes the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. Ozamu Dazai died, a suicide, in 1948. But the influence of his book has made "people of the setting sun" a permanent part of the Japanese language, and his heroine, Kazuko, a young aristocrat who deliberately abandons her class, a symbol of the anomie that pervades so much of the modern world.]]> 175 Osamu Dazai emma 4
(reading till i find a five star on substack)]]> 3.93 1947 The Setting Sun
author: Osamu Dazai
name: emma
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1947
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/30
date added: 2025/06/30
shelves: authors-of-color, diverse, literary-fiction, non-ya, free-library, 4-stars, to-review, to-buy, recommend, classics
review:
"written by osamu dazai" would get me to read anything

(reading till i find a five star on substack)
]]> <![CDATA[Looking for Love in All the Haunted Places]]> 197510933 415 Claire Kann 0593336666 emma 1
and we found so many:

the names in this — lucky, maverick, rebel — are so insane as to actually continually take me out of the story. it's like reading a quirky romance novel while a series of "unique baby names i love but am not going to use" instagram reels autoplays at the same time.

beyond that, the romance (which is, yes, the plot), centers around maverick (sigh), who is a supernatural ghost hunter type tv show guy, being extremely protective of lucky (don’t even get me started), who is…also a supernatural type tv show ghost person. 

i do not like Alpha Male Protection type setups at the best of times and this particular one is just ridiculous. this is the rough equivalent of the vp of your department calling you at 9:45 am every monday through friday while you write emails because he’s worried for your safety. THIS IS JUST WHAT BOTH OF YOU DO FOR A LIVING. 

she also says at one point, completely seriously, that she avoids anywhere she thinks ghosts might be. she says this in conversation with her ghost-hunter love interest, while in their second haunted location, while in the midst of filming their second ghost-centered project. 

there are so many moments like that: very self-serious, emotional conversations that actually have no connection to what is literally going on. i don't know if i've ever felt this before, let alone said it, but it seems like this book was written on vibes. no plot, no plan. just whatever happens happens, logic be damned.

this book is so weird, and so unnecessarily long, and so frustrating. i can't quote to you from my ARC but it also feels...the polite term would be "under-edited."

i can really see why so many of the reviews are from readers who couldn't get through it.

bottom line: i didn't DNF this book, but i might as well have.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.57 2024 Looking for Love in All the Haunted Places
author: Claire Kann
name: emma
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 1
read at: 2024/06/26
date added: 2025/06/30
shelves: non-ya, romance, fantasy, authors-of-color, arc, diverse, unpopular-opinion, nope, reviewed, 1-star
review:
the REAL haunting was the disappointment we found along the way.

and we found so many:

the names in this — lucky, maverick, rebel — are so insane as to actually continually take me out of the story. it's like reading a quirky romance novel while a series of "unique baby names i love but am not going to use" instagram reels autoplays at the same time.

beyond that, the romance (which is, yes, the plot), centers around maverick (sigh), who is a supernatural ghost hunter type tv show guy, being extremely protective of lucky (don’t even get me started), who is…also a supernatural type tv show ghost person. 

i do not like Alpha Male Protection type setups at the best of times and this particular one is just ridiculous. this is the rough equivalent of the vp of your department calling you at 9:45 am every monday through friday while you write emails because he’s worried for your safety. THIS IS JUST WHAT BOTH OF YOU DO FOR A LIVING. 

she also says at one point, completely seriously, that she avoids anywhere she thinks ghosts might be. she says this in conversation with her ghost-hunter love interest, while in their second haunted location, while in the midst of filming their second ghost-centered project. 

there are so many moments like that: very self-serious, emotional conversations that actually have no connection to what is literally going on. i don't know if i've ever felt this before, let alone said it, but it seems like this book was written on vibes. no plot, no plan. just whatever happens happens, logic be damned.

this book is so weird, and so unnecessarily long, and so frustrating. i can't quote to you from my ARC but it also feels...the polite term would be "under-edited."

i can really see why so many of the reviews are from readers who couldn't get through it.

bottom line: i didn't DNF this book, but i might as well have.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> How to End a Love Story 63247365
Helen Zhang hasn’t seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever.

Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She’s even scored a coveted spot in the writers’ room of the TV adaptation of her popular young adult novels, and if she can hide her imposter syndrome and overcome her writer’s block, surely the rest of her life will fall into place too. LA is the fresh start she needs. After all, no one knows her there. Except…

Grant has done everything in his power to move on from the past, including building a life across the country. And while the panic attacks have never quite gone away, he’s well liked around town as a screenwriter. He knows he shouldn’t have taken the job on Helen’s show, but it will open doors to developing his own projects that he just can’t pass up.

Grant’s exactly as Helen remembers him—charming, funny, popular, and lovable in ways that she’s never been. And Helen’s exactly as Grant remembers too—brilliant, beautiful, closed off. But working together is messy, and electrifying, and Helen’s parents, who have never forgiven Grant, have no idea he’s in the picture at all.

When secrets come to light, they must reckon with the fact that theirs was never meant to be any kind of love story. And yet… the key to making peace with their past—and themselves—might just lie in holding on to each other in the present.]]> 384 Yulin Kuang emma 2
and you can probably skip it.

this was a weird book.

it uses the word vague a lot, and it loves to murmur. it has a lot of italics, for no real discernible reason. there's a whole scene where it seems like it might be sponsored by scrivener? (credit to halle on that one.)

more seriously, it creates a very troubled romance with very troubled characters and puts them in a love story it will take 300 pages to untangle into something resembling a happily ever after, except we never really get to their individual personal issues.

helen never makes real friendships, and grant doesn't either. parental relationships are left unresolved. they get back together, but the why feels unsolved at best.

and then there's the worst crime of all...this is so devastatingly unfunny.

a lot of the time in modern life, rom coms are more like rom drams, featuring characters navigating wildly upsetting interpersonal crises with a romance in the background and the occasional line of banter.

i actually don't mind that much, because i'm obsessed with drama and it helps to soothe the part of me that is constantly one bolt of confidence away from asking my acquaintances why they broke up.

but the drama in this was SO crazy, and the jokes SO unforgivably bad (to the point that i wouldn't know they were supposed to be jokes if it didn't literally say "he joked"), that i was more like...why would i root for these people at all.

while questioning if i know what jokes are at all, in the emotional equivalent of when you use the word "joke" so much it doesn't look like a word anymore. which is also happening.

it also relies on chemistry instead of intimacy, with a lot more sex scenes than romantic ones.

i read an interview with the author in which she says that she wrote this early in the morning and late at night while working on an emily henry script, and i hate to say it shows. this reads like the compiled discarded bits of something distractedly written by emhen.

that would be the meanest thing i've ever said if i didn't love emily henry so much.

bottom line: what a bummer.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.60 2024 How to End a Love Story
author: Yulin Kuang
name: emma
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/04/25
date added: 2025/06/30
shelves: non-ya, romance, from-publisher-author, arc, owned, unpopular-opinion, eh, 2-stars, reviewed
review:
pssst...emily henry's screenwriter for beach read wrote a romance novel...

and you can probably skip it.

this was a weird book.

it uses the word vague a lot, and it loves to murmur. it has a lot of italics, for no real discernible reason. there's a whole scene where it seems like it might be sponsored by scrivener? (credit to halle on that one.)

more seriously, it creates a very troubled romance with very troubled characters and puts them in a love story it will take 300 pages to untangle into something resembling a happily ever after, except we never really get to their individual personal issues.

helen never makes real friendships, and grant doesn't either. parental relationships are left unresolved. they get back together, but the why feels unsolved at best.

and then there's the worst crime of all...this is so devastatingly unfunny.

a lot of the time in modern life, rom coms are more like rom drams, featuring characters navigating wildly upsetting interpersonal crises with a romance in the background and the occasional line of banter.

i actually don't mind that much, because i'm obsessed with drama and it helps to soothe the part of me that is constantly one bolt of confidence away from asking my acquaintances why they broke up.

but the drama in this was SO crazy, and the jokes SO unforgivably bad (to the point that i wouldn't know they were supposed to be jokes if it didn't literally say "he joked"), that i was more like...why would i root for these people at all.

while questioning if i know what jokes are at all, in the emotional equivalent of when you use the word "joke" so much it doesn't look like a word anymore. which is also happening.

it also relies on chemistry instead of intimacy, with a lot more sex scenes than romantic ones.

i read an interview with the author in which she says that she wrote this early in the morning and late at night while working on an emily henry script, and i hate to say it shows. this reads like the compiled discarded bits of something distractedly written by emhen.

that would be the meanest thing i've ever said if i didn't love emily henry so much.

bottom line: what a bummer.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> Tess of the D'Urbervilles 6471067
When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future. With its sensitive depiction of the wronged Tess and powerful criticism of social convention, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the most moving and poetic of Hardy's novels.]]> 592 Thomas Hardy 0141040335 emma 4
and welcome back to another installment of project long classics, in which i spend a month reading an intimidating work from the literary canon mostly as an excuse to a) make bad title puns and b) excuse my penguin clothbound addiction.

tess was my childhood family dog's name so i'm sure i'll be able to relate to this one.

this has 59 "chapters" (normal) divided into 7 "phases" (why), so i'll read 2 chapters a day. ish. (also, all of these reviews contain spoilers for books that are a million years old, if that counts as a spoiler to you.)


CHAPTERS 1 & 2
now we have met tess's dad, a drunk guy who just learned he's related to some knights (this is a big deal), and tess, who is really hot in a kind of not like other girls way and, case in point, has a red ribbon in her hair (this is a bigger deal).


CHAPTERS 3 & 4
well, tess was responsible for the gruesome death of her dad's horse, which has directly ruined her family. things are looking real bad at the moment. i understand why people did not have a great reaction to me assuming i could relate based on my childhood dog's name.


CHAPTERS 5 & 6
oh boy. our girl is being crushed on by a real creep.


CHAPTERS 7 & 8
tess's mom being like "maybe i should have double checked that the guy i just shipped my daughter off to isn't evil...oh well! hindsight is 20/20!" meanwhile the guy in question is using equestrian danger to manipulate said daughter into premarital kissing before they've even finished their commute.


CHAPTERS 9 & 10
so tess just manually brought each and every chicken on the property to be felt up by her blind great-aunt (?), took whistling lessons from her stalker, and nearly had to fight the town's hot girl while she was half-naked and covered in treacle. and none of that is a euphemism.


CHAPTERS 11 & 12
oh good lord. this is horrible. now i feel bad about all my dumb jokes.


CHAPTERS 13 & 14
ok, tess...i get that life is a series of unrelenting miseries, each one taking up the mantle of the last in a never-ending world of suffering...but do we really need to name the baby SORROW? he's going to have to live with that name his whole life.

...okay. so it does turn out that the rest of sorrow's life was 1 page. damn this book is sad.


CHAPTERS 15 & 16
we have entered "phase the third," and tess has a new job as a milkmaid. i have less than no confidence that life is going to get better — we're only at the 25% mark.


CHAPTERS 17 & 18
oh god, tess's former crush is one of her coworkers. STAY AWAY FROM HIM, TESS. MEN HOLD EVIL WITHIN AND YOU'RE VERY SUSCEPTIBLE. i don't care if his name is angel.


CHAPTERS 19 & 20
i can't believe that tess is the most beautiful girl in the land and her life still sucks. everything fairytales taught me was wrong.


CHAPTERS 21 & 22
the inciting incidents in these chapters are that angel is receiving cheek kisses from other maids, and the dairy accidentally invented garlic butter and british people are disgusted by seasoning so they have to manually locate and remove all of the garlic plants in the vicinity. across the board, some things never change.


CHAPTERS 23 & 24
workplace romances are weird when the workplace in question is a dairy. tell me why angel just declared his love from under a cow.


CHAPTERS 25 & 26
phase the fourth: the consequence. sounds like we're due for sunshine and rainbows.


CHAPTERS 27 & 28
probably the only book in global history in which the love interests take their relationship to the next level while breaking up masses of curds and putting them in vats.


CHAPTERS 29 & 30
far be it from me to criticize a woman...but it's stressing me out that tess is all "yeah, angel, i'll marry you. I WISH I HAD NEVER BEEN BORN!!! what? no i have no secrets." it's very love is blind to be like oh my motherhood? not really relevant to our relationship, babe.


CHAPTERS 31 & 32
okay. i will say we're on our 14th consecutive chapter of Angel Loves Tess And Tess Loves Angel And Is Spending Every Spare Second Loving Him And/Or Obsessing Over Whether To Share Her Tragic Backstory. we have got to wrap this one up sad as it's going to be.


CHAPTERS 33 & 34
okay now tess is just pissing me off. she slides an envelope under angel's door containing her confession a week before the weeding, never brings it up again, lives life as normal, and then decides THE MORNING OF to check if it's there, unopened, somehow under the carpet. YOU HAD FIFTEEN CHAPTERS, TESS.


CHAPTERS 35 & 36
i'm doubling up today because tess finally told angel, HER HUSBAND, who as it turns out also had a 48 hour hookup with some broad, and i have to know what happens next. surely his own experience and their holy matrimonial bond will make him understanding, i say sarcastically because this will certainly go poorly.

oh boy.


CHAPTERS 37 & 38
getting dumped and having to move back in with your parents...a nightmare rite of passage throughout time.


CHAPTERS 39 & 40
it's so funny that angel goes home to have dinner with his parents and they just so happen to essentially be throwing him an "A Godly Woman Is The Greatest Gift, And She Who Hast Not Sinned Is More Than Worthy Of Our Son" theme night. tess can't catch a break.

he just almost brought another girl to brazil??? this is wild.


CHAPTERS 41 & 42
well, tess just spent the night in a pile of leaves on a random farm after running away from her former harasser only to wake up and mercy-kill a large number of wounded birds. you can never guess where this book is going, only "sadly."


CHAPTERS 43 & 44
took like a full week off of this project because i was at my fiancé's parents' house. sorry, but when i am in a paradise of homemade pho and melona bars, this book is just not conducive to my vibe.

tess finding out that angel tried to take izz to brazil and being like "my fault, i should have written to him more." girl if you don't stand up...


CHAPTERS 45 & 46
welcome to phase the fifth: the convert. tess's ex is back, my friends. and he's a preacher now. and he still sucks.


CHAPTERS 47 & 48
casterbridge mentioned! funny to learn that this takes same place in the same universe as that relatively chill and fun book. although i guess it intended to be equally morally didactic.

well thank god! tess finally smacked one of these losers across the face.


CHAPTERS 49 & 50
foolishly i have allowed myself to believe that this book was going to be sad for a very long time, and then potentially have a nice little happily ever after. it is clear to me now that things will only get worse.


CHAPTERS 51 & 52
much more so than tess is sympathetic, the men in her life are the most lowly and detestable literary characters of all time. the only kind of happy ending i would accept is brutal death for alec (her baby daddy) and angel (her deadbeat husband).


CHAPTERS 53 & 54
i keep telling myself that actually i don't even care if angel, who is now flying through england in various belated and annoying attempts to find tess, tracks her down. but i think if he finds her in alec's clutches and rejects her again i might tear this book in half, so.


CHAPTERS 55 & 56
i was going to throw this book across the room, but now i'm glad i didn't. turns out i can't predict everything!


CHAPTERS 57 & 58
see, this is why you don't DNF books. i could never have predicted how much i would love where this book has gone. although i wish i could make it end right after chapter 57.


CHAPTER 59
oh, brother. [spoilers removed]

OVERALL
i've read three books by thomas hardy this year, and this one is definitely the best. through a relatively interesting plot (minus a few chunks of okay-we-get-it-you've-made-your-point), hardy conveys a lot of messages about great families, religion, temptation, and good versus evil. the fact that it pissed me off continually is part of the intent.

if quarter stars existed (lol when we don't even have half stars) i'd give this book 3.75, but as is:
rating: 3.5]]> 4.02 1891 Tess of the D'Urbervilles
author: Thomas Hardy
name: emma
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1891
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/06/29
shelves: classics, non-ya, project-long-classics, to-buy, reviewed, recommend, 3-and-a-half-stars
review:
welcome to...TESS OF THE DECEMBERVILLES.

and welcome back to another installment of project long classics, in which i spend a month reading an intimidating work from the literary canon mostly as an excuse to a) make bad title puns and b) excuse my penguin clothbound addiction.

tess was my childhood family dog's name so i'm sure i'll be able to relate to this one.

this has 59 "chapters" (normal) divided into 7 "phases" (why), so i'll read 2 chapters a day. ish. (also, all of these reviews contain spoilers for books that are a million years old, if that counts as a spoiler to you.)


CHAPTERS 1 & 2
now we have met tess's dad, a drunk guy who just learned he's related to some knights (this is a big deal), and tess, who is really hot in a kind of not like other girls way and, case in point, has a red ribbon in her hair (this is a bigger deal).


CHAPTERS 3 & 4
well, tess was responsible for the gruesome death of her dad's horse, which has directly ruined her family. things are looking real bad at the moment. i understand why people did not have a great reaction to me assuming i could relate based on my childhood dog's name.


CHAPTERS 5 & 6
oh boy. our girl is being crushed on by a real creep.


CHAPTERS 7 & 8
tess's mom being like "maybe i should have double checked that the guy i just shipped my daughter off to isn't evil...oh well! hindsight is 20/20!" meanwhile the guy in question is using equestrian danger to manipulate said daughter into premarital kissing before they've even finished their commute.


CHAPTERS 9 & 10
so tess just manually brought each and every chicken on the property to be felt up by her blind great-aunt (?), took whistling lessons from her stalker, and nearly had to fight the town's hot girl while she was half-naked and covered in treacle. and none of that is a euphemism.


CHAPTERS 11 & 12
oh good lord. this is horrible. now i feel bad about all my dumb jokes.


CHAPTERS 13 & 14
ok, tess...i get that life is a series of unrelenting miseries, each one taking up the mantle of the last in a never-ending world of suffering...but do we really need to name the baby SORROW? he's going to have to live with that name his whole life.

...okay. so it does turn out that the rest of sorrow's life was 1 page. damn this book is sad.


CHAPTERS 15 & 16
we have entered "phase the third," and tess has a new job as a milkmaid. i have less than no confidence that life is going to get better — we're only at the 25% mark.


CHAPTERS 17 & 18
oh god, tess's former crush is one of her coworkers. STAY AWAY FROM HIM, TESS. MEN HOLD EVIL WITHIN AND YOU'RE VERY SUSCEPTIBLE. i don't care if his name is angel.


CHAPTERS 19 & 20
i can't believe that tess is the most beautiful girl in the land and her life still sucks. everything fairytales taught me was wrong.


CHAPTERS 21 & 22
the inciting incidents in these chapters are that angel is receiving cheek kisses from other maids, and the dairy accidentally invented garlic butter and british people are disgusted by seasoning so they have to manually locate and remove all of the garlic plants in the vicinity. across the board, some things never change.


CHAPTERS 23 & 24
workplace romances are weird when the workplace in question is a dairy. tell me why angel just declared his love from under a cow.


CHAPTERS 25 & 26
phase the fourth: the consequence. sounds like we're due for sunshine and rainbows.


CHAPTERS 27 & 28
probably the only book in global history in which the love interests take their relationship to the next level while breaking up masses of curds and putting them in vats.


CHAPTERS 29 & 30
far be it from me to criticize a woman...but it's stressing me out that tess is all "yeah, angel, i'll marry you. I WISH I HAD NEVER BEEN BORN!!! what? no i have no secrets." it's very love is blind to be like oh my motherhood? not really relevant to our relationship, babe.


CHAPTERS 31 & 32
okay. i will say we're on our 14th consecutive chapter of Angel Loves Tess And Tess Loves Angel And Is Spending Every Spare Second Loving Him And/Or Obsessing Over Whether To Share Her Tragic Backstory. we have got to wrap this one up sad as it's going to be.


CHAPTERS 33 & 34
okay now tess is just pissing me off. she slides an envelope under angel's door containing her confession a week before the weeding, never brings it up again, lives life as normal, and then decides THE MORNING OF to check if it's there, unopened, somehow under the carpet. YOU HAD FIFTEEN CHAPTERS, TESS.


CHAPTERS 35 & 36
i'm doubling up today because tess finally told angel, HER HUSBAND, who as it turns out also had a 48 hour hookup with some broad, and i have to know what happens next. surely his own experience and their holy matrimonial bond will make him understanding, i say sarcastically because this will certainly go poorly.

oh boy.


CHAPTERS 37 & 38
getting dumped and having to move back in with your parents...a nightmare rite of passage throughout time.


CHAPTERS 39 & 40
it's so funny that angel goes home to have dinner with his parents and they just so happen to essentially be throwing him an "A Godly Woman Is The Greatest Gift, And She Who Hast Not Sinned Is More Than Worthy Of Our Son" theme night. tess can't catch a break.

he just almost brought another girl to brazil??? this is wild.


CHAPTERS 41 & 42
well, tess just spent the night in a pile of leaves on a random farm after running away from her former harasser only to wake up and mercy-kill a large number of wounded birds. you can never guess where this book is going, only "sadly."


CHAPTERS 43 & 44
took like a full week off of this project because i was at my fiancé's parents' house. sorry, but when i am in a paradise of homemade pho and melona bars, this book is just not conducive to my vibe.

tess finding out that angel tried to take izz to brazil and being like "my fault, i should have written to him more." girl if you don't stand up...


CHAPTERS 45 & 46
welcome to phase the fifth: the convert. tess's ex is back, my friends. and he's a preacher now. and he still sucks.


CHAPTERS 47 & 48
casterbridge mentioned! funny to learn that this takes same place in the same universe as that relatively chill and fun book. although i guess it intended to be equally morally didactic.

well thank god! tess finally smacked one of these losers across the face.


CHAPTERS 49 & 50
foolishly i have allowed myself to believe that this book was going to be sad for a very long time, and then potentially have a nice little happily ever after. it is clear to me now that things will only get worse.


CHAPTERS 51 & 52
much more so than tess is sympathetic, the men in her life are the most lowly and detestable literary characters of all time. the only kind of happy ending i would accept is brutal death for alec (her baby daddy) and angel (her deadbeat husband).


CHAPTERS 53 & 54
i keep telling myself that actually i don't even care if angel, who is now flying through england in various belated and annoying attempts to find tess, tracks her down. but i think if he finds her in alec's clutches and rejects her again i might tear this book in half, so.


CHAPTERS 55 & 56
i was going to throw this book across the room, but now i'm glad i didn't. turns out i can't predict everything!


CHAPTERS 57 & 58
see, this is why you don't DNF books. i could never have predicted how much i would love where this book has gone. although i wish i could make it end right after chapter 57.


CHAPTER 59
oh, brother. [spoilers removed]

OVERALL
i've read three books by thomas hardy this year, and this one is definitely the best. through a relatively interesting plot (minus a few chunks of okay-we-get-it-you've-made-your-point), hardy conveys a lot of messages about great families, religion, temptation, and good versus evil. the fact that it pissed me off continually is part of the intent.

if quarter stars existed (lol when we don't even have half stars) i'd give this book 3.75, but as is:
rating: 3.5
]]> The Book of Love 157981682 The Book of Love showcases Kelly Link at the height of her powers, channeling potent magic and attuned to all varieties of love—from friendship to romance to abiding family ties—with her trademark compassion, wit, and literary derring-do. Readers will find joy (and a little terror) and an affirmation that love goes on, even when we cannot.

Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are.

With them in the room is their previously unremarkable high school music teacher, who seems to know something about their disappearance—and what has brought them back again. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the three agree to the terms of the bargain their music teacher proposes. They will be given a series of magical tasks; while they undertake them, they may return to their families and friends, but they can tell no one where they’ve been. In the end, there will be winners and there will be losers.

But their resurrection has attracted the notice of other supernatural figures, all with their own agendas. As Laura, Daniel, and Mo grapple with the pieces of the lives they left behind, and Laura’s sister, Susannah, attempts to reconcile what she remembers with what she fears, these mysterious others begin to arrive, engulfing their community in danger and chaos, and it becomes imperative that the teens solve the mystery of their deaths to avert a looming disaster.]]> 628 Kelly Link 0812996585 emma 4
why do we not like this book?

the average rating is 3.5. and i totally get it. but for argument's sake, or just for laughs or whatever...explain it to me like i enjoyed it.

as if, for example, this was so funny and weird and magical and emotional. 

i will admit that for the first, like, 200 pages, it was an absolute chore to pick up. i dreaded it. i could only make myself do it by sandwiching chapters between chapters of other books i wasn't really enjoying (otherwise there was no way i was returning to it).

matters were made worse by the fact that i was reading an ebook with a tiny font, meaning i had to read 4 normal-sized pages for what counted as 1 page, and by the end my laptop was so overwhelmed it required 10 seconds to turn those pages, and 10 seconds is actually a long time if you think about it in that context, the context being that this book is 637 pages long. so, to me, 2,548 pages.

i now understand sisyphus completely.

but at some point, my feelings did a 180. even when i was reading books i liked, or listening to enjoyable audiobooks, or picking up my most anticipated read of the year, or even - gasp - watching tiktoks...i kind of always low level wanted to be reading this.

it's that good.

it's very one of a kind: three kids die and come back, and there's a death-like figurehead and a magical music teacher and a cursed splinter and a moon woman and a haunting carousel and a child named carousel. there's an unforgettable unrealistic town. there's a series of weird annoying romances. there are twists and laughs and tragedies, and all of them made me actually feel something, which - to those of you who know my whole thing - is not nothing. (see: my cold dark chunk of christmas coal of a heart.)

when i got past the rock-pushing task of the page count and the brain-murdering task of the first third, i had a really good time.

that's not nothing, either.

bottom line: i'm having the fun kind of unpopular opinion again.

4.5

-------------------------
tbr review

me at a horror movie: :)
me at a haunted house: :)
me at a long book: AHHHHHHHHHH

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.44 2024 The Book of Love
author: Kelly Link
name: emma
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2025/06/29
shelves: non-ya, mystery-thriller-horror-etc, fantasy, magical-realist-urban-whatever, unpopular-opinion, to-buy, recommend, i-love-these-characters, funny, 4-and-a-half-stars, reviewed, that-setting-tho
review:
uh, guys...i'm definitely with you and everything...absolutely one of the cool kids, having the popular opinion, agreeing with the mainstream, etc...but um. just remind me.

why do we not like this book?

the average rating is 3.5. and i totally get it. but for argument's sake, or just for laughs or whatever...explain it to me like i enjoyed it.

as if, for example, this was so funny and weird and magical and emotional. 

i will admit that for the first, like, 200 pages, it was an absolute chore to pick up. i dreaded it. i could only make myself do it by sandwiching chapters between chapters of other books i wasn't really enjoying (otherwise there was no way i was returning to it).

matters were made worse by the fact that i was reading an ebook with a tiny font, meaning i had to read 4 normal-sized pages for what counted as 1 page, and by the end my laptop was so overwhelmed it required 10 seconds to turn those pages, and 10 seconds is actually a long time if you think about it in that context, the context being that this book is 637 pages long. so, to me, 2,548 pages.

i now understand sisyphus completely.

but at some point, my feelings did a 180. even when i was reading books i liked, or listening to enjoyable audiobooks, or picking up my most anticipated read of the year, or even - gasp - watching tiktoks...i kind of always low level wanted to be reading this.

it's that good.

it's very one of a kind: three kids die and come back, and there's a death-like figurehead and a magical music teacher and a cursed splinter and a moon woman and a haunting carousel and a child named carousel. there's an unforgettable unrealistic town. there's a series of weird annoying romances. there are twists and laughs and tragedies, and all of them made me actually feel something, which - to those of you who know my whole thing - is not nothing. (see: my cold dark chunk of christmas coal of a heart.)

when i got past the rock-pushing task of the page count and the brain-murdering task of the first third, i had a really good time.

that's not nothing, either.

bottom line: i'm having the fun kind of unpopular opinion again.

4.5

-------------------------
tbr review

me at a horror movie: :)
me at a haunted house: :)
me at a long book: AHHHHHHHHHH

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> The Wall 59532092
A woman takes a holiday in the Austrian mountains, spending a few days with her cousin and his wife in their hunting lodge. When the couple fails to return from a walk, the woman sets off to look for them. But her journey reaches a sinister and inexplicable dead end. She discovers only a transparent wall behind which there seems to be no life. Trapped alone behind the mysterious wall she begins the arduous work of survival.

This is at once a simple account of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the use of one's name, and simultaneously a disturbing dissection of the place of human beings in the natural world.

**PERFECT FOR FANS OF THE YELLOW WALLPAPER, STATION ELEVEN AND THE MARTIAN

VINTAGE EARTH is a collection of novels to transform our relationship with the natural world. Each one is a work of creative activism, a blast of fresh air, a seed from which change can grow. The books in this series reconnect us to the planet we inhabit - and must protect. Discover great writing on the most urgent story of our times.]]> 246 Marlen Haushofer 1784878030 emma 4
i expected more of an Anarchist Feminist vibe from this one, and instead what i got was kind of a grown-up version of the kind of island of the blue dolphins / boxcar children type kiddie survivalist classics i used to buy three for a dollar from my library booksale with, like, quarters i'd scrounged up from couch cushions.

who knows where kids acquire money, is what i'm saying.

that was a fun ride in and of itself, minus the fact that it had the kind of devastating ending that should make it infamous everywhere around the world. i'm not even of the opinion that animals in books are all that great, or that their deaths are the most upsetting of any character type.

until now, i guess.

sorry for the spoiler? but i'm actually sparing you unexpected suffering. so never mind. you're welcome. welcome to my version of does the dog die dot com.

anyway. in addition to all that, this is a pretty striking exploration of the role of humans in the world, and it made me wish all of us were dead except for maybe one lady who can help the cows and pet cats.

that's my new political perspective. also i'm calling not it.

bottom line: so good, so sad, so special.

----------------------
pre review

WHY WAS THIS DEVASTATING????

(review to come when i'm healed enough)]]> 3.96 1963 The Wall
author: Marlen Haushofer
name: emma
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1963
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/19
date added: 2025/06/29
shelves: sci-fi, non-ya, classics, to-buy, recommend, dystopian, 4-stars, reviewed
review:
groundbreaking feminist literary classics is like my family.

i expected more of an Anarchist Feminist vibe from this one, and instead what i got was kind of a grown-up version of the kind of island of the blue dolphins / boxcar children type kiddie survivalist classics i used to buy three for a dollar from my library booksale with, like, quarters i'd scrounged up from couch cushions.

who knows where kids acquire money, is what i'm saying.

that was a fun ride in and of itself, minus the fact that it had the kind of devastating ending that should make it infamous everywhere around the world. i'm not even of the opinion that animals in books are all that great, or that their deaths are the most upsetting of any character type.

until now, i guess.

sorry for the spoiler? but i'm actually sparing you unexpected suffering. so never mind. you're welcome. welcome to my version of does the dog die dot com.

anyway. in addition to all that, this is a pretty striking exploration of the role of humans in the world, and it made me wish all of us were dead except for maybe one lady who can help the cows and pet cats.

that's my new political perspective. also i'm calling not it.

bottom line: so good, so sad, so special.

----------------------
pre review

WHY WAS THIS DEVASTATING????

(review to come when i'm healed enough)
]]> Funny Story 194803835 A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it... right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned-up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?]]> 400 Emily Henry 0593441281 emma 3
i'm three starring this book.

i adore emily henry, and i have since her magical realism days. i'd happily read her to-do lists if she released them once a year, and i'm sure even those would have more banter and loveliness and whimsy than your average full-length release just by virtue of being written by her. i'd say the same about her grocery lists, but i already do read those. (the woman writes a mean substack.)

there were a few things i didn't love about this book. it tries to fit so much into a few hundred pages: our protagonist, daphne, is left by her fiance weeks before her wedding, causing her to: move in with miles, her fiance's new girlfriend's ex-boyfriend; realize she has no friends; begin a quest to find herself; get over the fiancé and fall in love with miles; join a variety of community groups and neighborhood activities; make her current job her dream job; repress some CLEAR mommy issues i thought we were going to address, and fully get over her daddy issues.

all of this is happening so much.

it comes at a cost, which is that typical emily henry magic (and i don't just mean the bygone magical realism i mourn every day and never shut up about).

this book is not quite as funny — jokes feel forced, sometimes to the point that you can only identify something as reaching for funny because the character "joked" or "played along" instead of "said."

it is not quite as polished, with writing feeling a bit unconfident, full of words italicized for emphasis and, you know, the whole verbs that aren't said thing. (there are a LOT of dialogue attribution words that aren't "said.")

and the characters have none of their usual better-version-of-reality charm. miles' nick miller archetype would never work for me personally, but my real issue with him is that his character traits fade once we're supposed to see him as a romantic prospect. our side characters, ashleigh and julia, feel like interchangeable joke-bots to the point of being vaguely threatening. (when they pop up on page in tandem i feel a sense of unease.)

and to be honest, daphne has no self awareness. because there's so much happening in this book, everything has to be incredibly simple: daphne's issue with her dad, AND daphne's issue with miles, AND daphne's friends' issue with daphne all has to be the same. it makes for some moments of ridiculousness — like how can daphne be melting down about being wronged on the same city block where she realized several hours earlier she had wronged someone in that exact same way? how could she be so unwilling to give the grace she expects for herself? and how could emily henry set scenes of this book on a cherry farm in michigan when she knew what it would do to me, specifically?!

sorry. that's the last time i'll bring up magical realism. i think.

ol' daph just has too much to figure out about herself. i think this abandonment would be so completely traumatic even if she HADN'T built her entire life around her fiancé only to be left entirely alone, and even if it WASN'T eerily similar to her daddy issues, and even if she DIDN'T have a bunch of unresolved things going on up in ye olde memory palace, that the last thing she'd be doing is sticking around someone else's hometown flirting with her new roomie.

especially since what she ends up doing is repeating the exact same cycle with no awareness at all.

bottom line: like anything emily henry has ever written, this is better than a lot of books. it just isn't better than most emily henry ones.

----------------------
currently-reading update

me arriving to the world's biggest emily henry fan contest but my competition is all of goodreads

(GUYS IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING)

thanks to the publisher for the e-arc

----------------------
tbr review

i would like to request that no one talk to me about anything that isn't this for the next 3 to 5 business years.]]> 4.17 2024 Funny Story
author: Emily Henry
name: emma
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/21
date added: 2025/06/29
shelves: romance, non-ya, arc, from-publisher-author, unpopular-opinion, eh, 3-stars, reviewed
review:
my heart is broken. i feel like i'm dying. the world holds nothing for me anymore.

i'm three starring this book.

i adore emily henry, and i have since her magical realism days. i'd happily read her to-do lists if she released them once a year, and i'm sure even those would have more banter and loveliness and whimsy than your average full-length release just by virtue of being written by her. i'd say the same about her grocery lists, but i already do read those. (the woman writes a mean substack.)

there were a few things i didn't love about this book. it tries to fit so much into a few hundred pages: our protagonist, daphne, is left by her fiance weeks before her wedding, causing her to: move in with miles, her fiance's new girlfriend's ex-boyfriend; realize she has no friends; begin a quest to find herself; get over the fiancé and fall in love with miles; join a variety of community groups and neighborhood activities; make her current job her dream job; repress some CLEAR mommy issues i thought we were going to address, and fully get over her daddy issues.

all of this is happening so much.

it comes at a cost, which is that typical emily henry magic (and i don't just mean the bygone magical realism i mourn every day and never shut up about).

this book is not quite as funny — jokes feel forced, sometimes to the point that you can only identify something as reaching for funny because the character "joked" or "played along" instead of "said."

it is not quite as polished, with writing feeling a bit unconfident, full of words italicized for emphasis and, you know, the whole verbs that aren't said thing. (there are a LOT of dialogue attribution words that aren't "said.")

and the characters have none of their usual better-version-of-reality charm. miles' nick miller archetype would never work for me personally, but my real issue with him is that his character traits fade once we're supposed to see him as a romantic prospect. our side characters, ashleigh and julia, feel like interchangeable joke-bots to the point of being vaguely threatening. (when they pop up on page in tandem i feel a sense of unease.)

and to be honest, daphne has no self awareness. because there's so much happening in this book, everything has to be incredibly simple: daphne's issue with her dad, AND daphne's issue with miles, AND daphne's friends' issue with daphne all has to be the same. it makes for some moments of ridiculousness — like how can daphne be melting down about being wronged on the same city block where she realized several hours earlier she had wronged someone in that exact same way? how could she be so unwilling to give the grace she expects for herself? and how could emily henry set scenes of this book on a cherry farm in michigan when she knew what it would do to me, specifically?!

sorry. that's the last time i'll bring up magical realism. i think.

ol' daph just has too much to figure out about herself. i think this abandonment would be so completely traumatic even if she HADN'T built her entire life around her fiancé only to be left entirely alone, and even if it WASN'T eerily similar to her daddy issues, and even if she DIDN'T have a bunch of unresolved things going on up in ye olde memory palace, that the last thing she'd be doing is sticking around someone else's hometown flirting with her new roomie.

especially since what she ends up doing is repeating the exact same cycle with no awareness at all.

bottom line: like anything emily henry has ever written, this is better than a lot of books. it just isn't better than most emily henry ones.

----------------------
currently-reading update

me arriving to the world's biggest emily henry fan contest but my competition is all of goodreads

(GUYS IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING)

thanks to the publisher for the e-arc

----------------------
tbr review

i would like to request that no one talk to me about anything that isn't this for the next 3 to 5 business years.
]]> When We Grow Up 211004059 For fans of Fleishman is in Trouble and Such a Fun Age, an electrifying novel about six longtime friends whose tropical vacation is interrupted by an unexpected crisis, forcing them to ask how strong their bonds really are

Clare is supposed to be the grown-up one. Married to the love of her life, with a major deal for her first novel, she has everything she thought she wanted. So then why does it all feel so wrong? When she agrees to a weeklong vacation in Hawai'i with five of her oldest friends as they each approach thirty, she is hoping for an escape with the people who know her best. There is Jessie, who won’t stop talking about her new boyfriend; Mac, trying to pretend he hasn’t outgrown the group; Kyle, the eternal peacemaker; and Renzo, who brought them all together but keeps picking fights. And then, of course, there’s Liam, who Clare has barely seen since high school but somehow can’t get out of her head—or her bed.

But when a terrifying news alert shatters their peace, it becomes harder to ignore how much the world has changed since they were teenagers. As the resentments and tensions that have always simmered just beneath the surface begin to boil, Clare must ask if their shared history is enough to sustain their friendships, or if growing up might mean letting go.

With crackling wit and emotional fearlessness, When We Grow Up is a provocative portrait of friendship in a world that feels ever more unrecognizable and a searing exploration of what it means to be a good person.]]> 288 Angelica Baker 1250345774 emma 2
then i could have avoided this one.

oof. this was just not good. 

i like character driven books, i like books about unlikable characters, i like stories that are 99% dialogue of people having philosophical conversations.

so it wasn’t that. 

this is not a well written book, and it isn’t an interesting one. it’s 300 small-print pages of six unbelievably privileged people debating whose guilty-conscience liberal politics are the most correct. it’s five white people and one Black person all noticeably created by a white woman talking about race. it’s a protagonist having an affair with a guy who is so pushy and traitless that an unsexier flight of passion cannot be imagined. it’s an all-star lineup of literature’s most punchable faces and our main character is worst of all. 

there were moments i had to actually put this down and breathe through it. 

the tough part is that a lot of this is intentional, and a lot of it isn’t. and somewhere between the 7th and 13th time our cast ate ceviche i stopped caring enough to determine which was which. 

bottom line: not the book it thinks it is.

(thanks to the publisher for the arc)]]> 2.71 2025 When We Grow Up
author: Angelica Baker
name: emma
average rating: 2.71
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/06/29
shelves: arc, from-publisher-author, literary-fiction, non-ya, 2-stars, nope, reviewed
review:
i'll know i'm fully healed when i can resist adding every low-rated lit fic i see.

then i could have avoided this one.

oof. this was just not good. 

i like character driven books, i like books about unlikable characters, i like stories that are 99% dialogue of people having philosophical conversations.

so it wasn’t that. 

this is not a well written book, and it isn’t an interesting one. it’s 300 small-print pages of six unbelievably privileged people debating whose guilty-conscience liberal politics are the most correct. it’s five white people and one Black person all noticeably created by a white woman talking about race. it’s a protagonist having an affair with a guy who is so pushy and traitless that an unsexier flight of passion cannot be imagined. it’s an all-star lineup of literature’s most punchable faces and our main character is worst of all. 

there were moments i had to actually put this down and breathe through it. 

the tough part is that a lot of this is intentional, and a lot of it isn’t. and somewhere between the 7th and 13th time our cast ate ceviche i stopped caring enough to determine which was which. 

bottom line: not the book it thinks it is.

(thanks to the publisher for the arc)
]]> Sweet Heat 220217814
Juggling a new job, the prospect of her parents' restaurant being sold, and keeping her best friend from going full bridezilla, dealing with The Ex is the last thing she needs. But somehow the spark between them is only getting hotter—and threatening to ruin everything.]]> 496 Bolu Babalola 0063306964 emma 0 4.15 2025 Sweet Heat
author: Bolu Babalola
name: emma
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/29
shelves: to-read, tbr-arc, tbr-owned, authors-of-color, non-ya, romance, diverse
review:
there is nothing more coveted to me than finding a new romance author to obsess over
]]> War and Peace 28010569
At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon's army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants to soldiers and Napoleon himself. In War and Peace, Tolstoy entwines grand themes - conflict and love, birth and death, free will and faith - with unforgettable scenes of nineteenth-century Russia, to create a magnificent epic of human life in all its imperfection and grandeur.

Anthony Briggs's superb translation combines stirring, accessible prose with fidelity to Tolstoy's original, while Orlando Figes's afterword discusses the novel's vast scope and depiction of Russian identity. This edition also contains appendices, notes, a list of prominent characters and maps.]]> 1440 Leo Tolstoy 0241265541 emma 0
folks. it's with great sadness that i inform you that when you're asked "when did you know you were seeing emma's downfall" you can tell them september 1, 2024.

today i begin the project that will surely bring about my mortal end.

on this day, elle and i will read one chapter of tolstoy's war and peace, and then we will do that again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and so on and so forth for the following 357 days, shaking our heads to show we disagree with war and nodding to show we agree with peace.

it's project long classics like you've never seen it before.

(because this book has 361 chapters, and because goodreads has a character limit, i'll only be updating this periodically. don't worry. you'll see me daily in other places annoying the sh*t out of you.)



VOLUME I, PART I
hello again. we're 25 days and a hundred pages into this project and essentially haven't made a dent.

how to summarize...there's war, there's peace. there are a lot of descriptions of mouths and beautiful princesses. people have died, people have been disinherited, people have inherited. guys are shipped off and girls are knocked up. eventful, and yet this has been 99% people going to each other's houses.


VOLUME I, PART II
coming to you live from 6 weeks and 200 pages into this to tell you: we have stopped going to people's houses and we have gone to war. it's bad vibes here. no one seems to be having much fun at this point. even people who get to ride on top of a tank (fun) are only doing so because they're severely wounded and being dragged out of battle (bad vibes).


VOLUME I, PART III
i thought we might get a complex look at the psychology behind war in this book, but i didn't expect the insight would be "all the soldier guys have huge crushes on the tsar and are showing off for him."


VOLUME II, PART I
it's pretty nice that in this version of war, you get to go home for as long as you want to hang out and lose your family fortune at cards and make impromptu rejected proposals of marriage. the war parts are really boring so i'm happy to mix it up.


VOLUME II, PART II
another thing about war i didn't expect: these guys are seeing napoleon and tsar alexander all the time. if i'm either of them i'm eating grapes in a tent somewhere and having people give me live updates, not sharing some dialogue on the front lines.


VOLUME II, PART III
532 pages in. four months have passed. we've spent so much time in these pages that a character has abandoned one wife, lost her to "death," mourned, become an asshole, healed himself spiritually, met a much younger woman, determined that he has never felt like this before and it's totally not because she's young and hot, and gotten re-engaged. and we're not even close to halfway done.


VOLUME II, PART IV
i really didn't expect engagements would be such a bad vibe in this book. i don't think we've come across a single grand declaration of love that was treated like "oh, nice! good news!"


VOLUME II, PART V
"With every fibre of his being he was convinced of what his instincts told him: there was no other way to live than the way he was living, and he had never done anything wrong in his life." okay me af!


VOLUME III, PART I
we're over halfway done this book both in pages read (755) and in time elapsed (more than 6 months), and i'm ready to call it. this is tsar fanfiction.


VOLUME III, PART II
if you are a historian who has ever once dared to weigh in on whether or not napoleon and the tsar and their groups of war-planning friends were smart...you are ON NOTICE. we just spent 150 pages (and, for me, a month and a half) being told how wrong you are.


VOLUME III, PART III
can you imagine moving with your family and you find out you're dragging the guy who dumped you along because he's wounded. and meanwhile the guy in love with you is getting arrested for beating the sh*t out of a soldier immediately after saving an ugly baby from a fire.

that's war, my friend.


VOLUME IV, PART I
just read perhaps the most disturbing description of what it feels like to die ever. and it took place, like, in a room. in a house. no battlefields in sight. maybe the real war is peace.


VOLUME IV, PART II
napoleon, you look so stupid right now.]]> 4.38 1869 War and Peace
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: emma
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1869
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/28
shelves: to-buy, non-ya, classics, currently-reading, project-long-classics, owned
review:
welcome to...YEAR AND PEACE.

folks. it's with great sadness that i inform you that when you're asked "when did you know you were seeing emma's downfall" you can tell them september 1, 2024.

today i begin the project that will surely bring about my mortal end.

on this day, elle and i will read one chapter of tolstoy's war and peace, and then we will do that again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and so on and so forth for the following 357 days, shaking our heads to show we disagree with war and nodding to show we agree with peace.

it's project long classics like you've never seen it before.

(because this book has 361 chapters, and because goodreads has a character limit, i'll only be updating this periodically. don't worry. you'll see me daily in other places annoying the sh*t out of you.)



VOLUME I, PART I
hello again. we're 25 days and a hundred pages into this project and essentially haven't made a dent.

how to summarize...there's war, there's peace. there are a lot of descriptions of mouths and beautiful princesses. people have died, people have been disinherited, people have inherited. guys are shipped off and girls are knocked up. eventful, and yet this has been 99% people going to each other's houses.


VOLUME I, PART II
coming to you live from 6 weeks and 200 pages into this to tell you: we have stopped going to people's houses and we have gone to war. it's bad vibes here. no one seems to be having much fun at this point. even people who get to ride on top of a tank (fun) are only doing so because they're severely wounded and being dragged out of battle (bad vibes).


VOLUME I, PART III
i thought we might get a complex look at the psychology behind war in this book, but i didn't expect the insight would be "all the soldier guys have huge crushes on the tsar and are showing off for him."


VOLUME II, PART I
it's pretty nice that in this version of war, you get to go home for as long as you want to hang out and lose your family fortune at cards and make impromptu rejected proposals of marriage. the war parts are really boring so i'm happy to mix it up.


VOLUME II, PART II
another thing about war i didn't expect: these guys are seeing napoleon and tsar alexander all the time. if i'm either of them i'm eating grapes in a tent somewhere and having people give me live updates, not sharing some dialogue on the front lines.


VOLUME II, PART III
532 pages in. four months have passed. we've spent so much time in these pages that a character has abandoned one wife, lost her to "death," mourned, become an asshole, healed himself spiritually, met a much younger woman, determined that he has never felt like this before and it's totally not because she's young and hot, and gotten re-engaged. and we're not even close to halfway done.


VOLUME II, PART IV
i really didn't expect engagements would be such a bad vibe in this book. i don't think we've come across a single grand declaration of love that was treated like "oh, nice! good news!"


VOLUME II, PART V
"With every fibre of his being he was convinced of what his instincts told him: there was no other way to live than the way he was living, and he had never done anything wrong in his life." okay me af!


VOLUME III, PART I
we're over halfway done this book both in pages read (755) and in time elapsed (more than 6 months), and i'm ready to call it. this is tsar fanfiction.


VOLUME III, PART II
if you are a historian who has ever once dared to weigh in on whether or not napoleon and the tsar and their groups of war-planning friends were smart...you are ON NOTICE. we just spent 150 pages (and, for me, a month and a half) being told how wrong you are.


VOLUME III, PART III
can you imagine moving with your family and you find out you're dragging the guy who dumped you along because he's wounded. and meanwhile the guy in love with you is getting arrested for beating the sh*t out of a soldier immediately after saving an ugly baby from a fire.

that's war, my friend.


VOLUME IV, PART I
just read perhaps the most disturbing description of what it feels like to die ever. and it took place, like, in a room. in a house. no battlefields in sight. maybe the real war is peace.


VOLUME IV, PART II
napoleon, you look so stupid right now.
]]> The Vet's Daughter 1073750 The Vet’s Daughter combines shocking realism with a visionary edge. The vet lives with his bedridden wife and shy daughter Alice in a sinister London suburb. He works constantly, captive to a strange private fury, and treats his family with brutality and contempt. After his wife’s death, the vet takes up with a crass, needling woman who tries to refashion Alice in her own image. And yet as Alice retreats ever deeper into a dream world, she discovers an extraordinary secret power of her own.
Harrowing and haunting, like an unexpected cross between Flannery O’Connor and Stephen King, The Vet’s Daughter is a story of outraged innocence that culminates in a scene of appalling triumph.]]> 152 Barbara Comyns 1590170296 emma 4
(reading till i find a five star on substack)]]> 3.92 1959 The Vet's Daughter
author: Barbara Comyns
name: emma
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1959
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/28
date added: 2025/06/28
shelves: literary-fiction, non-ya, 3-and-a-half-stars, to-review, to-buy, recommend
review:
someone said this is like and i have never been more sold

(reading till i find a five star on substack)
]]> The Girls Who Grew Big 219520677 From the author of Oprah's Book Club pick and New York Times best seller Nightcrawling, here is an astonishing new novel about the joys and entanglements of a fierce group of teenage mothers in a small town on the Florida panhandle.

Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck.

The town thinks the Girls have lost their way, but really they are finding it: looking for love, making and breaking friendships, and navigating the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood.

Full of heart and life and hope, set against the shifting sands of these friends’ secrets and betrayals, The Girls Who Grew Big confirms Leila Mottley’s promise and offers an explosive new perspective on what it means to be a young woman.]]> 352 Leila Mottley 0593801121 emma 4
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 4.18 2025 The Girls Who Grew Big
author: Leila Mottley
name: emma
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/27
date added: 2025/06/27
shelves: arc, authors-of-color, diverse, literary-fiction, non-ya, 3-and-a-half-stars, to-review, recommend
review:
waiting 3 years for a follow-up after an excellent debut is cruel and unusual

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> <![CDATA[How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir]]> 221772304 A brutally funny mother–daughter memoir that asks the question, How can you lose something you never had?

Molly Jong-Fast is the only child of Erica Jong, author of the feminist autobiographical novel Fear of Flying. A sensational exploration of female sexual desire, it catapulted Erica into the heady world of fame in the early 1970s. Molly grew up with her mother everywhere – on television, in the crossword puzzle, in the newspaper. But rarely at home.

How to Lose Your Mother is Molly’s delicious and despairing memoir about an intense mother–daughter relationship, a sometimes chaotic upbringing with a fame-hungry parent, and how that can really mess you up. But with her mother’s heartbreaking descent into dementia, and Molly’s realization that she is going to lose this remarkable woman, it is also a story of love, of loss, of confusion and of deep grief.

Honest, moving, sharp and funny, How to Lose Your Mother takes us behind the scenes of a fascinating and sometimes tumultuous family dynamic, revels in the gossipy details of Erica’s famous friends and enemies, and leaves us with a better understanding of our own most precious relationships.]]> 256 Molly Jong-Fast 0593656474 emma 3
(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the copy)]]> 3.66 2025 How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir
author: Molly Jong-Fast
name: emma
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/06/27
date added: 2025/06/27
shelves: arc, from-publisher-author, non-ya, nonfiction, memoir, owned, 3-stars, to-review, unpopular-opinion, eh
review:
my personal mother and grandmother got a real kick out of this title, so i feel sure i'll get a kick out of the book

(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the copy)
]]> When the Sky Fell on Splendor 40390513
In the wake of the tragedy, Franny found solace in a group of friends whose experiences mirrored her own. The group calls themselves The Ordinary, and they spend their free time investigating local ghost stories and legends, filming their exploits for their small following of YouTube fans. It's silly, it's fun, and it keeps them from dwelling on the sadness that surrounds them.

Until one evening, when the strange and dangerous thing they film isn't fiction--it's a bright light, something massive hurtling toward them from the sky. And when it crashes and the teens go to investigate...everything changes.]]> 384 Emily Henry emma 4
Typically, I have reservations about making love-based declarations about people I don’t know on the internet. Seems a lil weird. Like, how would Rami Malek feel if he knew I was writing sonnets about how he manages to be devastatingly attractive even with weird fake teeth? How would Bill Hader feel if he knew about how many clips of his interviews I’ve watched in a row on YouTube?

Both of those are, of course, completely made up examples.

In the case of Emily Henry, though, I’m willing to make an exception. This is for several reasons:
1) Because of the sheer volume of adoring things I’ve written about her and her books, in places like my blog and my reviews and, uh, the comments of her Instagram posts, I’m pretty sure Emily Henry already knows.
2) I love Emily Henry’s books with my whole heart.
3) Emily Henry and her books mean a lot to me.

One of my very favorite movies ever is pretty at odds with everything else I love. It is a movie called “About Time.” About Time is a cheesy British rom-com (brought to you by the mind behind every other cheesy British rom-com) about Domhnall Gleeson as a time traveler and Rachel McAdams as his charming and devastatingly lovely love interest.

I do not cry ever, and I have never seen that movie without full-on weeping.

The ending of About Time is Domhnall Gleeson’s realization that he doesn’t need to travel through time anymore, because the single most beautiful and valuable thing he can do is live through every day and really notice it. Really be present for it. That’s the best possible use of his time.

Granted, because of the specific rules of time travel in this movie, he can’t do much else, but still.

Emily Henry’s books are, in some ways, the equivalent of that movie. And I love them all in the same heart-swelling, out of body way that I love it.

Emily Henry writes characters who are flawed. They’re mean to the people around them, or bad students, or careless. They are human and imperfect, and I adore them all. I have never read an Emily Henry character I didn’t instantly feel and understand. I almost never love book characters, and I always love hers. They’re funny and messed up and lovely and I feel like I know them right away.

She also writes about our world as magical, as a place where we can find adventure and comfort, a place filled with hardship and pain and struggle and also people we can connect with. Her books have romances in them, but more than that, they have family and friends and BANTER. (God, the banter.)

I love About Time because it knows how beautiful the ordinary can be. How an ordinary life, doing what you love with people you love around you, is the loveliest possible kind. Emily Henry’s books know the same thing.

I can’t pretend I know why Emily Henry writes (or used to write, sob) magical realism and sci-fi, books in which the extraordinary coexists with the ordinary. But I bet it’s because Emily Henry knows the most extraordinary things often seem ordinary after all.

Because that’s what her books are all about.

This is not really a sci-fi book, and it's not really an action book, and it's not really contemporary or romance or magical realism or anything else, which is both its strength and its weakness. It has too many characters, and it's overly ambitious, and it has more it wants thematically than plot-wise.

And still, here is what I have to say: Emily Henry’s books make me laugh and tear up. They make me feel happy and excited and sad and in suspense, hopeful and satisfied and understood and known. When I read her work, I don’t just want to believe that we exist in the world that she’s created -- I believe that we do.

Bottom line: I hope everyone finds an author for them like that.

-----------------------
reread review

hello, masochism, my old friend.

it's another installment of project 5 star, in which i revisit all of my favorite books to see if they are still favorites or if my heart has shrunk even further like a reverse grinch.

today, we're taking on the forgotten emily henry book, which everyone is either unaware of or not a fan of except for me.

let's see what happens.

(updated review to come)

-----------------------
pre-review

it is with great joy and absolutely zero surprise that I must tell you: Emily Henry has done it again.

this was so f*cking good I can hardly stand it.

review to come (!!!!!!!!!!!!)

-----------------------
currently-reading updates

I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

and I'm reading it immediately.

thank you emily henry I love you

-----------------------
tbr review

THIS IS DESCRIBED AS THE SERPENT KING MEETS STRANGER THINGS.

AND IT'S BY EMILY HENRY.

the fact that it is not currently in my possession is my new least favorite thing about the world.]]> 3.22 2019 When the Sky Fell on Splendor
author: Emily Henry
name: emma
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/10
date added: 2025/06/27
shelves: arc, from-publisher-author, ya, owned, recommend, favorites-2018, reviewed, unpopular-opinion, sci-fi, magical-realist-urban-whatever, 4-stars
review:
I love Emily Henry.

Typically, I have reservations about making love-based declarations about people I don’t know on the internet. Seems a lil weird. Like, how would Rami Malek feel if he knew I was writing sonnets about how he manages to be devastatingly attractive even with weird fake teeth? How would Bill Hader feel if he knew about how many clips of his interviews I’ve watched in a row on YouTube?

Both of those are, of course, completely made up examples.

In the case of Emily Henry, though, I’m willing to make an exception. This is for several reasons:
1) Because of the sheer volume of adoring things I’ve written about her and her books, in places like my blog and my reviews and, uh, the comments of her Instagram posts, I’m pretty sure Emily Henry already knows.
2) I love Emily Henry’s books with my whole heart.
3) Emily Henry and her books mean a lot to me.

One of my very favorite movies ever is pretty at odds with everything else I love. It is a movie called “About Time.” About Time is a cheesy British rom-com (brought to you by the mind behind every other cheesy British rom-com) about Domhnall Gleeson as a time traveler and Rachel McAdams as his charming and devastatingly lovely love interest.

I do not cry ever, and I have never seen that movie without full-on weeping.

The ending of About Time is Domhnall Gleeson’s realization that he doesn’t need to travel through time anymore, because the single most beautiful and valuable thing he can do is live through every day and really notice it. Really be present for it. That’s the best possible use of his time.

Granted, because of the specific rules of time travel in this movie, he can’t do much else, but still.

Emily Henry’s books are, in some ways, the equivalent of that movie. And I love them all in the same heart-swelling, out of body way that I love it.

Emily Henry writes characters who are flawed. They’re mean to the people around them, or bad students, or careless. They are human and imperfect, and I adore them all. I have never read an Emily Henry character I didn’t instantly feel and understand. I almost never love book characters, and I always love hers. They’re funny and messed up and lovely and I feel like I know them right away.

She also writes about our world as magical, as a place where we can find adventure and comfort, a place filled with hardship and pain and struggle and also people we can connect with. Her books have romances in them, but more than that, they have family and friends and BANTER. (God, the banter.)

I love About Time because it knows how beautiful the ordinary can be. How an ordinary life, doing what you love with people you love around you, is the loveliest possible kind. Emily Henry’s books know the same thing.

I can’t pretend I know why Emily Henry writes (or used to write, sob) magical realism and sci-fi, books in which the extraordinary coexists with the ordinary. But I bet it’s because Emily Henry knows the most extraordinary things often seem ordinary after all.

Because that’s what her books are all about.

This is not really a sci-fi book, and it's not really an action book, and it's not really contemporary or romance or magical realism or anything else, which is both its strength and its weakness. It has too many characters, and it's overly ambitious, and it has more it wants thematically than plot-wise.

And still, here is what I have to say: Emily Henry’s books make me laugh and tear up. They make me feel happy and excited and sad and in suspense, hopeful and satisfied and understood and known. When I read her work, I don’t just want to believe that we exist in the world that she’s created -- I believe that we do.

Bottom line: I hope everyone finds an author for them like that.

-----------------------
reread review

hello, masochism, my old friend.

it's another installment of project 5 star, in which i revisit all of my favorite books to see if they are still favorites or if my heart has shrunk even further like a reverse grinch.

today, we're taking on the forgotten emily henry book, which everyone is either unaware of or not a fan of except for me.

let's see what happens.

(updated review to come)

-----------------------
pre-review

it is with great joy and absolutely zero surprise that I must tell you: Emily Henry has done it again.

this was so f*cking good I can hardly stand it.

review to come (!!!!!!!!!!!!)

-----------------------
currently-reading updates

I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

and I'm reading it immediately.

thank you emily henry I love you

-----------------------
tbr review

THIS IS DESCRIBED AS THE SERPENT KING MEETS STRANGER THINGS.

AND IT'S BY EMILY HENRY.

the fact that it is not currently in my possession is my new least favorite thing about the world.
]]> The Familiar 134059215 From the New York Times bestselling author of Ninth House, Hell Bent, and creator of the Grishaverse series comes a highly anticipated historical fantasy set during the Spanish Golden Age

In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family's social position.

What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England's heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king's favor.

Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition's wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.]]> 400 Leigh Bardugo 1250884268 emma 2
for better or worse.

guess which one it is in this case.

welcome to THE FAMILIAR, the genre-bending, worst-of-both-worlds historical fantasy universe of luzia. luzia is a maid. she is also magic. she is also boring.

luzia is an orphan who works in some middle class evil lady's house cleaning stuff all day. she is obsessed with her aunt, who has a lot of money. you may be like "why doesn't she live with her aunt, then?" because she is a kept woman. you might then wonder why luzia's girlboss self is so bothered by this: she is not. she sleeps on a dusty floor instead of on, like, glamorous cushions with her dear family member because her (dead) dad thought her aunt's reputation was bad and that's the worst thing that can happen to a girl. the concept of being near a bad reputation. because of wanting to get married.

do not dwell on that too long, because we're going to ignore it for the rest of the plot.

we're hot in the middle of the SPANISH GOLDEN AGE, and it's evil to be a witch but it's very rad to be so christian it actually makes you magic. luzia sets off to participate in a god's love contest, along with her abusive employer (ignore that), her aunt's bad reputation (ignore that), a million year old creep (ignore that, he's supposed to suddenly become sexy), her aunt's boyfriend and his wife (ignore that), and a few ragtag others.

discerning readers may remember we mentioned a creepy ancient man we are supposed to find unbelievably hot about halfway through. this wannabe edward cullen makes up half of the world's most soulless romance.

somehow i'm reading about magical star-crossed lovers and their doomed soulmate status but i know couples from my high school whose stories i'm more interested in. which is maybe not a fair comparison because i love gossip, but still.

on top of being a boring romance, this is not a convincing historical fiction. that doesn't bother me really (i hate reading modern writers try to write old-timey), but the fact that it's also not a convincing teller of its own story does.

this book is not sure how our protagonist knows so much, or expects more for herself, or practices her magic. it kind of just inconsistently provides her with whatever is convenient for the scraps of plot we're navigating and hopes we don't have follow-up questions or memory of what we've already read.

the writing, too, is style-first: sentences sound good, but when you take away the drama, they don't really fit together. the sweeping gestures of characters and of wording...both of them rarely make sense.

also, for some reason our narrator is omnipotent.

yes. all of the side characters' internal thoughts and feelings pop up from time to time like an annoying bug, seeming like a shallow afterthought compared to the protagonist's, with none of it going beyond what you or the main character would assume. so why bother? who knows!

that's not the only perspective choice that left me shaking my damn head either. to have it be speaking from the future and casting opinions on the events of the story was even weirder. it's so annoying to be like "perhaps if luzia had gotten a haircut that day everything would be different." ok butterfly effect!

i can always tell i really didn't like a book if i have multiple paragraphs' worth of thoughts about a single writing element. but i force myself to digress.

in the most annoying and present sin of all, this is not a story of magic trials and sorcery.

it's about old-timey european politics.

the climax occurs when a former secretary loses his job. 

unforgivable.

bottom line: this book is nothing that it said it was, and nothing that it wanted to be, and nothing when you dig into it at all.]]> 3.71 2024 The Familiar
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: emma
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/08
date added: 2025/06/27
shelves: fantasy, non-ya, historical, unpopular-opinion, reviewed, nope, 1-and-a-half-stars
review:
leigh bardugo writes it, i read it.

for better or worse.

guess which one it is in this case.

welcome to THE FAMILIAR, the genre-bending, worst-of-both-worlds historical fantasy universe of luzia. luzia is a maid. she is also magic. she is also boring.

luzia is an orphan who works in some middle class evil lady's house cleaning stuff all day. she is obsessed with her aunt, who has a lot of money. you may be like "why doesn't she live with her aunt, then?" because she is a kept woman. you might then wonder why luzia's girlboss self is so bothered by this: she is not. she sleeps on a dusty floor instead of on, like, glamorous cushions with her dear family member because her (dead) dad thought her aunt's reputation was bad and that's the worst thing that can happen to a girl. the concept of being near a bad reputation. because of wanting to get married.

do not dwell on that too long, because we're going to ignore it for the rest of the plot.

we're hot in the middle of the SPANISH GOLDEN AGE, and it's evil to be a witch but it's very rad to be so christian it actually makes you magic. luzia sets off to participate in a god's love contest, along with her abusive employer (ignore that), her aunt's bad reputation (ignore that), a million year old creep (ignore that, he's supposed to suddenly become sexy), her aunt's boyfriend and his wife (ignore that), and a few ragtag others.

discerning readers may remember we mentioned a creepy ancient man we are supposed to find unbelievably hot about halfway through. this wannabe edward cullen makes up half of the world's most soulless romance.

somehow i'm reading about magical star-crossed lovers and their doomed soulmate status but i know couples from my high school whose stories i'm more interested in. which is maybe not a fair comparison because i love gossip, but still.

on top of being a boring romance, this is not a convincing historical fiction. that doesn't bother me really (i hate reading modern writers try to write old-timey), but the fact that it's also not a convincing teller of its own story does.

this book is not sure how our protagonist knows so much, or expects more for herself, or practices her magic. it kind of just inconsistently provides her with whatever is convenient for the scraps of plot we're navigating and hopes we don't have follow-up questions or memory of what we've already read.

the writing, too, is style-first: sentences sound good, but when you take away the drama, they don't really fit together. the sweeping gestures of characters and of wording...both of them rarely make sense.

also, for some reason our narrator is omnipotent.

yes. all of the side characters' internal thoughts and feelings pop up from time to time like an annoying bug, seeming like a shallow afterthought compared to the protagonist's, with none of it going beyond what you or the main character would assume. so why bother? who knows!

that's not the only perspective choice that left me shaking my damn head either. to have it be speaking from the future and casting opinions on the events of the story was even weirder. it's so annoying to be like "perhaps if luzia had gotten a haircut that day everything would be different." ok butterfly effect!

i can always tell i really didn't like a book if i have multiple paragraphs' worth of thoughts about a single writing element. but i force myself to digress.

in the most annoying and present sin of all, this is not a story of magic trials and sorcery.

it's about old-timey european politics.

the climax occurs when a former secretary loses his job. 

unforgivable.

bottom line: this book is nothing that it said it was, and nothing that it wanted to be, and nothing when you dig into it at all.
]]> The Compound 218460337 Nothing to lose. Everything to gain. Winner takes all.

Lily—a bored, beautiful twentysomething—wakes up on a remote desert compound alongside nineteen other contestants on a popular reality TV show. To win, she must outlast her housemates while competing in challenges for luxury rewards, such as champagne and lipstick, and communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door.

The cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: Why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation. When the producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur. If Lily makes it to the end, she'll receive prizes beyond her wildest dreams—but what will she have to do to win?

Addictive and prescient, The Compound is an explosive debut from a major new voice in fiction and will linger in your mind long after the game ends.]]> 292 Aisling Rawle 0593977270 emma 4
(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.82 2025 The Compound
author: Aisling Rawle
name: emma
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/26
date added: 2025/06/26
shelves: arc, non-ya, mystery-thriller-horror-etc, 3-and-a-half-stars, to-review, recommend
review:
of course i want to read a life or death version of love island

(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> You Deserve Each Other 50027029 When your nemesis also happens to be your fiancé, happily ever after becomes a lot more complicated in this wickedly funny, lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers romantic comedy debut.

Naomi Westfield has the perfect fiancé: Nicholas Rose holds doors open for her, remembers her restaurant orders, and comes from the kind of upstanding society family any bride would love to be a part of. They never fight. They're preparing for their lavish wedding that's three months away. And she is miserably and utterly sick of him.

Naomi wants out, but there's a catch: whoever ends the engagement will have to foot the nonrefundable wedding bill. When Naomi discovers that Nicholas, too, has been feigning contentment, the two of them go head-to-head in a battle of pranks, sabotage, and all-out emotional warfare.

But with the countdown looming to the wedding that may or may not come to pass, Naomi finds her resolve slipping. Because now that they have nothing to lose, they're finally being themselves--and having fun with the last person they expect: each other.]]> 368 Sarah Hogle emma 5 - when you perfectly toast a bagel. I mean we all know how easy it is to underdo that bad boy so it’s still a weird squishy bread circle or even more likely, burn that baby till it’s glorified charcoal but when you really find that sweet spot...(chef’s kiss)
- baking cookies and then eating them while they’re still warm, and then you eat a whole tray because if you made them they don’t count as caloric
- genuine, believable enemies to lovers where you really feel them fall in love and also it’s funny and also everything is perfect.



Aka this book.

Because I am extremely picky about books and am disappointed by most of what I read, I like to do this very adorable and charming thing where when I like one thing, I assume I will like everything that is similar to it.

I very much enjoyed The Hating Game (possibly to an extent in which I compared myself both to a jack o’lantern and a gif from Disney’s Tangled in my review, I don’t know, who’s to say), and so I assumed I would like every rom-com. Especially ones that were actually funny.

Especially-especially of the enemies to lovers.

And, like the new Star Wars movies and orange-flavored Skittles and every other disappointing thing, that was not to be.

But finally, FINALLY, my suffering has been rewarded.

Because...dare I say it…

This book is better than The Hating Game.

I KNOW.

Look at us. Hey! Look at us. Who would’ve thought?

Not me.

This is The Hating Game in terms of tropes and plot and the overall yay-falling-in-love feeling it gives off, but with better characters. And more humor.

GOD. This is so funny it doesn’t make sense. Since when are books funny? When was the last time I truly laughed at a book and I wasn’t laughing out of all the anger and hatred in my cold dark soul?

Not sure. Well before this, I’ll tell you that.

But it wasn’t just a barrel of laughs my friends. It also made my heart hurt, but in the good emotional way where you’re like, oh my god...fools...just love each other...kiss already...except also don’t because the drama and conflict and miscommunication and will-they-won’t-they (they will) is the fun part.

Not to mention this quote from this book: “I’m a miserable cynic (a newer development) and a dreamy romantic (always have been), and it’s such a terrible combination that I don’t know how to tolerate myself” Girl if that ain't me.

Basically what I’m saying is: I don’t know how to love anything without being obsessed with it, and I already want to read this eleven more times.

Bottom line: I didn’t play Animal Crossing for this! ANIMAL CROSSING!!!]]> 3.89 2020 You Deserve Each Other
author: Sarah Hogle
name: emma
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/26
date added: 2025/06/26
shelves: romance, non-ya, funny, i-love-these-characters, recommend, slump-worthy, 5-stars, favorites-2020, reviewed, owned, project-5-star, reread
review:
The best things in the world are as follows:
- when you perfectly toast a bagel. I mean we all know how easy it is to underdo that bad boy so it’s still a weird squishy bread circle or even more likely, burn that baby till it’s glorified charcoal but when you really find that sweet spot...(chef’s kiss)
- baking cookies and then eating them while they’re still warm, and then you eat a whole tray because if you made them they don’t count as caloric
- genuine, believable enemies to lovers where you really feel them fall in love and also it’s funny and also everything is perfect.



Aka this book.

Because I am extremely picky about books and am disappointed by most of what I read, I like to do this very adorable and charming thing where when I like one thing, I assume I will like everything that is similar to it.

I very much enjoyed The Hating Game (possibly to an extent in which I compared myself both to a jack o’lantern and a gif from Disney’s Tangled in my review, I don’t know, who’s to say), and so I assumed I would like every rom-com. Especially ones that were actually funny.

Especially-especially of the enemies to lovers.

And, like the new Star Wars movies and orange-flavored Skittles and every other disappointing thing, that was not to be.

But finally, FINALLY, my suffering has been rewarded.

Because...dare I say it…

This book is better than The Hating Game.

I KNOW.

Look at us. Hey! Look at us. Who would’ve thought?

Not me.

This is The Hating Game in terms of tropes and plot and the overall yay-falling-in-love feeling it gives off, but with better characters. And more humor.

GOD. This is so funny it doesn’t make sense. Since when are books funny? When was the last time I truly laughed at a book and I wasn’t laughing out of all the anger and hatred in my cold dark soul?

Not sure. Well before this, I’ll tell you that.

But it wasn’t just a barrel of laughs my friends. It also made my heart hurt, but in the good emotional way where you’re like, oh my god...fools...just love each other...kiss already...except also don’t because the drama and conflict and miscommunication and will-they-won’t-they (they will) is the fun part.

Not to mention this quote from this book: “I’m a miserable cynic (a newer development) and a dreamy romantic (always have been), and it’s such a terrible combination that I don’t know how to tolerate myself” Girl if that ain't me.

Basically what I’m saying is: I don’t know how to love anything without being obsessed with it, and I already want to read this eleven more times.

Bottom line: I didn’t play Animal Crossing for this! ANIMAL CROSSING!!!
]]> <![CDATA[Kill Joy (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #0.5)]]> 63025281 Welcome to the murder mystery party of the year! Fans of the hit series A Good Girl's Guide to Murder will love Pip's final detective case in this mystery novella from #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Jackson.

Six suspects. Three hours. One murder...

Pip is not in the mood for her friend's murder mystery party. Especially one that involves 1920's fancy dress and pretending that their town is an island called Joy. But when the game begins, Pip finds herself drawn into the make-believe world of intrigue, deception and murder.

But as Pip plays detective, teasing out the identity of the killer clue-by-clue, the murder of the fictional Reginald Remy isn't the only case on her mind ...]]> 125 Holly Jackson 0593426231 emma 3
this was no exception though.

it only provided insight into how pip decided to do her senior capstone project in the first book, which is possibly the least interesting thing it could possibly be about while still technically being in any way related to the actual mystery.

it also exclusively follows the plotline of a murder mystery dinner type board game, which are not famous for being interesting and filled with shock value.

it was a quick read and not terrible but that's the nicest i can be.

bottom line: if you're like, "i'd read holly jackson writing about literally anything," this is the novella for you.]]> 3.65 2021 Kill Joy (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #0.5)
author: Holly Jackson
name: emma
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/21
date added: 2025/06/26
shelves: mystery-thriller-horror-etc, ya, unpopular-opinion, eh, 2-and-a-half-stars, reviewed
review:
i don't think i've ever read a novella addition to a series and been like "yeah, that was necessary." but that doesn't stop me from trying.

this was no exception though.

it only provided insight into how pip decided to do her senior capstone project in the first book, which is possibly the least interesting thing it could possibly be about while still technically being in any way related to the actual mystery.

it also exclusively follows the plotline of a murder mystery dinner type board game, which are not famous for being interesting and filled with shock value.

it was a quick read and not terrible but that's the nicest i can be.

bottom line: if you're like, "i'd read holly jackson writing about literally anything," this is the novella for you.
]]> Tuesday Nights in 1980 25814192
Welcome to SoHo at the onset of the eighties: a gritty, not-yet-gentrified playground for artists and writers looking to make it in the big city. Among them: James Bennett, a synaesthetic art critic for The New York Times whose unlikely condition enables him to describe art in profound, magical ways, and Raul Engales, an exiled Argentinian painter running from his past and the Dirty War that has enveloped his country. As the two men ascend in the downtown arts scene, dual tragedies strike, and each is faced with a loss that acutely affects his relationship to life and to art. It is not until they are inadvertently brought together by Lucy Olliason—a small town beauty and Raul’s muse—and a young orphan boy sent mysteriously from Buenos Aires, that James and Raul are able to rediscover some semblance of what they’ve lost.

As inventive as Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad and as sweeping as Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, Tuesday Nights in 1980 boldly renders a complex moment when the meaning and nature of art is being all but upended, and New York City as a whole is reinventing itself. In risk-taking prose that is as powerful as it is playful, Molly Prentiss deftly explores the need for beauty, community, creation, and love in an ever-changing urban landscape.]]> 336 Molly Prentiss 1501121049 emma 3
(reading till i find a five star on substack)]]> 3.72 2016 Tuesday Nights in 1980
author: Molly Prentiss
name: emma
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2025/06/25
date added: 2025/06/25
shelves: historical, non-ya, 3-stars, to-review, unpopular-opinion, eh
review:
if i five star a book by an author, i will read everything by that author until i'm down to grocery lists

(reading till i find a five star on substack)
]]> The Dream Hotel 218695937 A novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.]]> 336 Laila Lalami 0593317602 emma 4
update: never mind. please do not check me in.

these days it's like, oh, a near future in which people are thrown in prison based on being determined close to committing a crime by a deeply flawed and capitalist algorithm created by a creep with political ambitions? who could imagine. 

in spite of feeling about a week and a half away from our current reality, this is an intense, oppressive book. i felt so surveilled and so restricted, just by virtue of the depth of both on-page.

was this a perfect read? no. there is an unnecessary POV switch that lasts exactly one chapter. there are more loose ends than there are concluded plotlines. there is a lot of redundancy, and not only of the variety that adds to the experience.

but i think it's timely and terrifying.

bottom line: i can't imagine the next time i'll be in the mood for dystopian fiction, but if you are, this one'll do.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.60 2025 The Dream Hotel
author: Laila Lalami
name: emma
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/06/25
shelves: arc, authors-of-color, diverse, literary-fiction, non-ya, 3-and-a-half-stars, to-buy, recommend, sci-fi, dystopian, reviewed
review:
i'm ready to check in!

update: never mind. please do not check me in.

these days it's like, oh, a near future in which people are thrown in prison based on being determined close to committing a crime by a deeply flawed and capitalist algorithm created by a creep with political ambitions? who could imagine. 

in spite of feeling about a week and a half away from our current reality, this is an intense, oppressive book. i felt so surveilled and so restricted, just by virtue of the depth of both on-page.

was this a perfect read? no. there is an unnecessary POV switch that lasts exactly one chapter. there are more loose ends than there are concluded plotlines. there is a lot of redundancy, and not only of the variety that adds to the experience.

but i think it's timely and terrifying.

bottom line: i can't imagine the next time i'll be in the mood for dystopian fiction, but if you are, this one'll do.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> Minor Black Figures 228788985 From the Booker Prize finalist and bestselling a perceptive novel about a gay Black painter navigating the worlds of art, desire, and creativity

A newcomer to New York, Wyeth is a Black painter who grew up in the South and is trying to find his place in the contemporary Manhattan art scene. It’s challenging. Gallery shows displaying bad art. Pretentious artists jockeying for attention. The gossip and the backstabbing. While his part-time work for an art restorer is engaging, Wyeth suffers from artist’s block with his painting and he is finding it increasingly difficult to spark his creativity. When he meets Keating, a white former seminarian who left the priesthood, Wyeth begins to reconsider how to observe the world, in the process facing questions about the conflicts between Black and white art, the white gaze on the Black body, and the compromises we make – in art and in life.

As he did so adeptly in Booker finalist Real Life and the bestselling The Late Americans, Brandon Taylor brings to life in Minor Black Figures a fascinating set of characters, this time in the competitive art world, and the lives they lead with each and on their own. Minor Black Figures is an involving and tender portrait of friendship, creativity, and the connections between them.]]> 400 Brandon Taylor 0593332369 emma 0 4.15 2025 Minor Black Figures
author: Brandon Taylor
name: emma
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/25
shelves: to-read, authors-of-color, diverse, lgbt-plus, literary-fiction, non-ya, tbr-arc, tbr-owned
review:

]]> Chain Gang All Stars 202468406
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.]]> 411 Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah 0593469313 emma 4
this book is the most surreal and the most gory, and at the same time its dystopian world is so lifelike, so painful to read because it so closely mirrors the one we live in. one of injustice, one of violence. one of innocent people locked up and one of people who do bad and change. a world where punishments are not intended to reform, but to ignore.

reading about the criminal justice system in america is opening yourself to an injustice you will ever un-know.

this does the same through fiction.

bottom line: unforgettable.

4.5

---------------------
tbr review

had me at best book of the year]]> 4.21 2023 Chain Gang All Stars
author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
name: emma
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/15
date added: 2025/06/25
shelves: mystery-thriller-horror-etc, non-ya, authors-of-color, diverse, sci-fi, dystopian, to-buy, recommend, 4-and-a-half-stars, reviewed
review:
oh my god.

this book is the most surreal and the most gory, and at the same time its dystopian world is so lifelike, so painful to read because it so closely mirrors the one we live in. one of injustice, one of violence. one of innocent people locked up and one of people who do bad and change. a world where punishments are not intended to reform, but to ignore.

reading about the criminal justice system in america is opening yourself to an injustice you will ever un-know.

this does the same through fiction.

bottom line: unforgettable.

4.5

---------------------
tbr review

had me at best book of the year
]]> Minor Detail 52045757 Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba – the catastrophe that led to the displacement and expulsion of more than 700,000 people – and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers capture and rape a young Palestinian woman, and kill and bury her in the sand. Many years later, a woman in Ramallah becomes fascinated to the point of obsession with this ‘minor detail’ of history. A haunting meditation on war, violence and memory, Minor Detail cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience of dispossession, life under occupation, and the persistent difficulty of piecing together a narrative in the face of ongoing erasure and disempowerment.]]> 144 Adania Shibli 191309717X emma 5
but the chance that a "minor detail" will strike us, as it strikes our protagonist when she encounters the story of the rape and murder of a palestinian woman by israeli soldiers that happened 25 years to the day before her birth, causes it all to collapse.

the connections it draws between our main character and the girl this violence happens to is also a disturbing, timely reminder of that same message. we are separated from those who are suffering only by minor details, in feeling and in chance.

this is a haunting and terrible story, and it's one whose twin in horror is occurring every day before our very eyes.

the least we can do is watch and feel and cry out no.

bottom line: free palestine.]]> 4.26 2017 Minor Detail
author: Adania Shibli
name: emma
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/03
date added: 2025/06/25
shelves: literary-fiction, authors-of-color, diverse, non-ya, to-buy, 5-stars, favorites-2024, historical, reviewed
review:
this is probably the most stunning exploration i've encountered of a fact of modern life that haunts me. inundated as we are with horrible news, we keep it all at a distance, our daily functioning relying on our shutting out that every murder, act of colonization, ongoing genocide is affecting or destroying or ending human lives as complicated and important as our own.

but the chance that a "minor detail" will strike us, as it strikes our protagonist when she encounters the story of the rape and murder of a palestinian woman by israeli soldiers that happened 25 years to the day before her birth, causes it all to collapse.

the connections it draws between our main character and the girl this violence happens to is also a disturbing, timely reminder of that same message. we are separated from those who are suffering only by minor details, in feeling and in chance.

this is a haunting and terrible story, and it's one whose twin in horror is occurring every day before our very eyes.

the least we can do is watch and feel and cry out no.

bottom line: free palestine.
]]> Audition 216247518 One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. A mesmerizing Mobius strip of a novel that asks who we are to the people we love.

Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an elegant and accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, and young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In Audition, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day—partner, parent, creator, muse—and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us best.]]> 200 Katie Kitamura 059385232X emma 4
i began reading this book on a train, and as the trip progressed two contradictory feelings built in me until i felt almost frenzied. the first impulse, as i tore through the pages, was that seeing as it was the only book i had brought with me for a weekend i should pause and look out the window or listen to music for the rest of the journey, in order to preserve it. 

the second was to find some means to ensure that neither the ride nor the book ever ended. 

from the moment i picked this up, and in truth even before, i had a feeling about it. as i read it i found myself revisiting sentences and paragraphs and even pages again and again, that if my focus wasn’t absolute and even if it was that i needed to immediately reread it.

bottom line: i’ve read this book once and yet i’ve read it many times. 

(thank you to the publisher for the arc)]]> 3.34 2025 Audition
author: Katie Kitamura
name: emma
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/06/24
shelves: non-ya, literary-fiction, diverse, authors-of-color, owned, from-publisher-author, arc, 4-stars, recommend, reviewed
review:
everybody needs to read this book immediately. i don't want to talk about anything else.

i began reading this book on a train, and as the trip progressed two contradictory feelings built in me until i felt almost frenzied. the first impulse, as i tore through the pages, was that seeing as it was the only book i had brought with me for a weekend i should pause and look out the window or listen to music for the rest of the journey, in order to preserve it. 

the second was to find some means to ensure that neither the ride nor the book ever ended. 

from the moment i picked this up, and in truth even before, i had a feeling about it. as i read it i found myself revisiting sentences and paragraphs and even pages again and again, that if my focus wasn’t absolute and even if it was that i needed to immediately reread it.

bottom line: i’ve read this book once and yet i’ve read it many times. 

(thank you to the publisher for the arc)
]]> Another Marvelous Thing 56212908 A romantic comedy of the very highest order: the story of an affair between two improbable lovers, from the acclaimed author of Home Cooking.

Billy Delielle and Francis Clemens are both happily married, just not to each other. Another Marvelous Thing is the story of their affair--told from their alternating perspectives across eight short stories--from beginning to end. Economists with little else--age, interests, aspirations--in common, Billy and Francis prove that opposites really do attract, embarking on a whirlwind romance that will shape both of their lives in this frank, funny, and razor-sharp examination of the curious desires of the heart.

This edition features cover art by Olivia McGiff.]]> 144 Laurie Colwin 0593313550 emma 0 3.85 Another Marvelous Thing
author: Laurie Colwin
name: emma
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/24
shelves: to-read, non-ya, literary-fiction
review:
a laurie colwin book is a marvelous thing
]]> The Möbius Book 217388128 A genre-bending story about breaking―both of the heart and form itself―from the author of Biography of X.

Adrift in the winter of 2021 after a sudden breakup and the ensuing depression, the novelist Catherine Lacey began cataloguing the wreckage of her life and the beauty of her friendships, a practice that eventually propagated fiction both entirely imagined and strangely true. She soon realized that she was writing about her relationship with faith. Betrayed by the mercurial partner she had trusted with a shared mortgage and suddenly catapulted into the unknown, Lacey’s appetite vanished completely, a visceral reminder of the teenage emaciation that came when she stopped believing in God. Through relationships, travel, reading, and memories of her religious fanaticism, Lacey charts the contours of faith’s absence and reemergence. Bending form, she and her characters recall gnostic experiences with animals, close encounters with male anger, griefdriven lust, and the redemptive power of platonic love and narrative itself.

A hybrid work across fiction and nonfiction with no beginning or ending, The Möbius Book troubles the line between memory and fiction with an openhearted defense of faith’s inherent danger.]]> 240 Catherine Lacey 0374615403 emma 4
(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.91 2025 The Möbius Book
author: Catherine Lacey
name: emma
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/24
date added: 2025/06/24
shelves: arc, literary-fiction, non-ya, 4-stars, to-review, to-buy, recommend
review:
i think breakups might be the single most interesting subject there is

(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> Annie Bot 156007669
She’s learning, too.

Doug says he loves that Annie’s artificial intelligence makes her seem more like a real woman, but the more human Annie becomes, the less perfectly she behaves. As Annie's relationship with Doug grows more intricate and difficult, she starts to wonder whether Doug truly desires what he says he does. In such an impossible paradox, what does Annie owe herself?]]> 298 Sierra Greer 0063312719 emma 4
this is a creepy sci-fi book and also an intense allegory for emotionally abusive relationships and also a damning exploration of misogyny all in one.

it's a book about a dystopian future in which men see women as only good for sex, homemaking, or parenting. in other words, our present day reality. (buh dum ch.)

reading this unrelentingly icked me out and made me feel grateful for my sentience and freedom, like when you have a cold and your nose is stuffed and you're like "i'll never forget to appreciate clear nasal passageways ever again."

i enjoyed the fact that this book did not pander or condescend to its audience in its themes, and granted the reader the ability to pick up on what was going on most of the time on their own. (although i did not enjoy the moments when it had our protagonist provide a neat summary of something that had been going on for hundreds of pages. or understand why there was a moment when a random woman was outed (?) as trans.)

it pulled its punches sometimes and felt overzealous at others, but overall this book was cool and impressive and skin crawly.

in a good way.

bottom line: i hate modern life.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.98 2024 Annie Bot
author: Sierra Greer
name: emma
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2025/06/24
shelves: non-ya, dystopian, arc, sci-fi, from-publisher-author, 3-and-a-half-stars, recommend, reviewed
review:
the future is scarier than any horror movie <3

this is a creepy sci-fi book and also an intense allegory for emotionally abusive relationships and also a damning exploration of misogyny all in one.

it's a book about a dystopian future in which men see women as only good for sex, homemaking, or parenting. in other words, our present day reality. (buh dum ch.)

reading this unrelentingly icked me out and made me feel grateful for my sentience and freedom, like when you have a cold and your nose is stuffed and you're like "i'll never forget to appreciate clear nasal passageways ever again."

i enjoyed the fact that this book did not pander or condescend to its audience in its themes, and granted the reader the ability to pick up on what was going on most of the time on their own. (although i did not enjoy the moments when it had our protagonist provide a neat summary of something that had been going on for hundreds of pages. or understand why there was a moment when a random woman was outed (?) as trans.)

it pulled its punches sometimes and felt overzealous at others, but overall this book was cool and impressive and skin crawly.

in a good way.

bottom line: i hate modern life.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> The Seven Year Slip 63347619
A Most Anticipated Book by Harper's Bazaar ∙ Real Simple ∙ BookRiot ∙ and more!

An overworked book publicist with a perfectly planned future hits a snag when she falls in love with her temporary roommate…only to discover he lives seven years in the past, in this witty and wise new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics.

Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it.

So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone—she isn’t sure her heart can take it.

And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again.

Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future.

Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed.

After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.]]> 368 Ashley Poston 0593336526 emma 4


and this time...it worked???

this was so cute and fun and unique. i really fell for these characters and more importantly, for this apartment...

this book should be jailed for convincing my city-mouse self i need a spare bedroom for my busts of dead poets and my ivy and my shelves of travel books and my robin's egg blue chair.

the romance in this was sweet, but like all romance books, i liked the character arc and the details even more: the food, the journey, the banter. to be fair, that's not a bad problem to have.

bottom line: this was such an unexpected good time.]]> 4.24 2023 The Seven Year Slip
author: Ashley Poston
name: emma
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/28
date added: 2025/06/24
shelves: non-ya, romance, 4-stars, recommend, reviewed, owned
review:
selecting the romance novel i will pin my hopes, my dreams, my next comfort read, my choice to be literate, my happiness, and all my chances at liking anything on



and this time...it worked???

this was so cute and fun and unique. i really fell for these characters and more importantly, for this apartment...

this book should be jailed for convincing my city-mouse self i need a spare bedroom for my busts of dead poets and my ivy and my shelves of travel books and my robin's egg blue chair.

the romance in this was sweet, but like all romance books, i liked the character arc and the details even more: the food, the journey, the banter. to be fair, that's not a bad problem to have.

bottom line: this was such an unexpected good time.
]]> I Am a Cat 62772
A classic of Japanese literature, I Am a Cat is one of Soseki's best-known novels. Considered by many as the most significant writer in modern Japanese history, Soseki's I Am a Cat is a classic novel sure to be enjoyed for years to come.]]> 470 Natsume Sōseki 080483265X emma 3
(review to come)]]> 3.70 1906 I Am a Cat
author: Natsume Sōseki
name: emma
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1906
rating: 3
read at: 2025/06/23
date added: 2025/06/23
shelves: authors-of-color, diverse, literary-fiction, non-ya, japanese-cats, 2-and-a-half-stars, to-review, unpopular-opinion, eh, classics
review:
i wish

(review to come)
]]> Creep: A Love Story 216497102 From a blistering new voice in dark literary fiction, an unsettling portrait of loneliness, obsession, and identity which asks: if a stranger was left alone in your house, how well could they truly get to know you—enough to fall in love with you?

Alice and Tom are made for each other. Deeply connected, they share a flat in London, go to galleries together, enjoy the same books and wine. They even share a toothbrush. It’s all picture perfect.

Except Alice and Tom have never met.

Alice has been cleaning Tom’s apartment every Wednesday for a year. With every smudge wiped from his coffee cup, every multivitamin counted in the jar, Alice spirals deeper into infatuation, imagining a love so powerful it might erase a lifetime of self-hatred and loneliness.

But as Alice prepares for the moment when she and Tom will finally meet face-to-face, she discovers that love might not be the cure she thought it was. Instead, their coming together sets off a chain of events that shatters everything Alice thought she knew and burns her world to the ground.

Told in Alice’s compelling, deliciously acidic voice, Creep is a literary study of unreliability and unlikability. Exploring alienation and loneliness, class and race, it's a skilled debut with resonance in the way that we view women, mental health, and the lost in society.]]> 256 Emma van Straaten 0063411016 emma 0 judging a book by its title 3.48 2025 Creep: A Love Story
author: Emma van Straaten
name: emma
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/23
shelves: to-read, nowhere, mystery-thriller-horror-etc, non-ya
review:
judging a book by its title
]]> Hangman 62039176 An enthralling and original first novel about exile, diaspora, and the impossibility of Black refuge in America and beyond.

In the morning, I received a phone call and was told to board a flight. The arrangements had been made on my behalf. I packed no clothes, because my clothes had been packed for me. A car arrived to pick me up.

A man returns home to sub-Saharan Africa after twenty-six years in America. When he arrives, he finds that he doesn’t recognize the country or anyone in it. Thankfully, someone recognizes him, a man who calls him brother—setting him on a quest to find his real brother, who is dying.

In Hangman, Maya Binyam tells the story of that search, and of the phantoms, guides, tricksters, bureaucrats, debtors, taxi drivers, relatives, riddles, and strangers that will lead to the truth.

It is an uncommonly assured debut: an existential journey; a tragic farce; a slapstick tragedy; and a strange, and strangely honest, story of one man’s stubborn quest to find refuge—in this world and in the world that lies beyond it.]]> 194 Maya Binyam 037461007X emma 4
this book conveys that and about a million other striking things and is surreal the whole time.

this reminded me of outline: filled with a lot of intelligent dialogue and interiority, expanding on themes deeply relevant to daily life and today's society.

and wow those themes!!! the way it surreally conveys the absurdity of colonization, of the thin line between each of us and abject poverty, of family and of death and of social status and of money and of race.

bottom line: this was one of a kind and remarkable.]]> 3.62 2023 Hangman
author: Maya Binyam
name: emma
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/26
date added: 2025/06/23
shelves: non-ya, literary-fiction, diverse, authors-of-color, unpopular-opinion, recommend, reviewed, 4-and-a-half-stars, owned
review:
is there a theme more bittersweet and stirring than the idea that you never can go home again?

this book conveys that and about a million other striking things and is surreal the whole time.

this reminded me of outline: filled with a lot of intelligent dialogue and interiority, expanding on themes deeply relevant to daily life and today's society.

and wow those themes!!! the way it surreally conveys the absurdity of colonization, of the thin line between each of us and abject poverty, of family and of death and of social status and of money and of race.

bottom line: this was one of a kind and remarkable.
]]> Land of Milk and Honey 101673225 The award-winning author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold returns with a rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world

A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles.

There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.

In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.

Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.]]> 240 C Pam Zhang 0593538242 emma 1
but i liked this about the same as i would if it were in that genre, so. fair enough.

this is just not my type of book (no more pandemicish dystopian, please, i'm too fragile) nor of writing style.

more frankly, this is overwritten, with words used for how they sound rather than what they mean. "hulkings," as a synonym for hills. "humping" instead of rising. "eloquent" for an image of a graffitied d*ck. i didn't like it when cormac mccarthy did it, and he did it a lot better.

beyond that, between piles of adjectives, this landed heavily on cliches: "it wasn't until i hung up that i realized he'd never asked my name." no way! really?

add to these its gimmicks: "my employer" unwieldily used as many as four times a paragraph, as what was a fun style choice in early pages loses its sheen by the halfway point. if only there were a short, one or two syllable thing that we could call a specific person in order to reference them.

there are haystacks of em dashes every time another language is used, in an italy surrounded by expats as our monolingual protagonist.

there's italicized dialogue instead of the proletariat quotation mark.

in other words...a lot of unearned style here.

and ultimately my interest in the idea of an illicit, hyper-gifted chef cooking in secret in a dystopian world without food died when met with an untalented line cook. that, and a nonsense plot hinging on the justification-less idea that she'd be portraying a woman of another nationality at least decades her senior. 

not to mention that goofy ending.

anyway. this book doesn't know what it wants: for us to condemn its cast of wealthy, even as they do more than the politicians it can't bring itself to frame as the good guys; to extol the virtues of our protagonist, deliberately ignorant to the selfishness and ego and greed that rival anyone's; to approve of fine cuisine or skewer it, same with capitalism and global travel and age- and power-gap relationships and money and philanthropy and and and.

it's mealy mouthed in every way you can imagine, and it leaves a sour taste.

bottom line: not yummy.

---------------------
tbr review

i just like reading about food]]> 3.50 2023 Land of Milk and Honey
author: C Pam Zhang
name: emma
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2024/04/23
date added: 2025/06/23
shelves: non-ya, literary-fiction, authors-of-color, diverse, unpopular-opinion, nope, dystopian, sci-fi, lgbt-plus, reviewed, 1-star
review:
i'll never be able to see the words milk and honey without thinking of instagram poetry. thanks rupi kaur.

but i liked this about the same as i would if it were in that genre, so. fair enough.

this is just not my type of book (no more pandemicish dystopian, please, i'm too fragile) nor of writing style.

more frankly, this is overwritten, with words used for how they sound rather than what they mean. "hulkings," as a synonym for hills. "humping" instead of rising. "eloquent" for an image of a graffitied d*ck. i didn't like it when cormac mccarthy did it, and he did it a lot better.

beyond that, between piles of adjectives, this landed heavily on cliches: "it wasn't until i hung up that i realized he'd never asked my name." no way! really?

add to these its gimmicks: "my employer" unwieldily used as many as four times a paragraph, as what was a fun style choice in early pages loses its sheen by the halfway point. if only there were a short, one or two syllable thing that we could call a specific person in order to reference them.

there are haystacks of em dashes every time another language is used, in an italy surrounded by expats as our monolingual protagonist.

there's italicized dialogue instead of the proletariat quotation mark.

in other words...a lot of unearned style here.

and ultimately my interest in the idea of an illicit, hyper-gifted chef cooking in secret in a dystopian world without food died when met with an untalented line cook. that, and a nonsense plot hinging on the justification-less idea that she'd be portraying a woman of another nationality at least decades her senior. 

not to mention that goofy ending.

anyway. this book doesn't know what it wants: for us to condemn its cast of wealthy, even as they do more than the politicians it can't bring itself to frame as the good guys; to extol the virtues of our protagonist, deliberately ignorant to the selfishness and ego and greed that rival anyone's; to approve of fine cuisine or skewer it, same with capitalism and global travel and age- and power-gap relationships and money and philanthropy and and and.

it's mealy mouthed in every way you can imagine, and it leaves a sour taste.

bottom line: not yummy.

---------------------
tbr review

i just like reading about food
]]> Nothing Serious 213344055 A disillusioned tech executive goes into an obsessive spiral when her best friend—and longtime crush—is implicated in a woman’s death.

Edie Walker’s life is not going as planned. At thirty-five she feels stuck: in her career, in her love life, and in her tiny San Francisco studio apartment. It doesn’t help that her best friend, Peter Masterson, is basically the über successful male version of her—and she’s hopelessly, unrequitedly in love with him. But when Peter breaks up with his girlfriend of seven years, Edie thinks her life might finally be turning around. He’ll discover how toxic dating-app culture is and realize Edie has been right for him all along.

Except Peter almost immediately lands a date with Anaya Thomas, a gorgeous, whip-smart professor and writer of feminist literature whom even Edie—reared in the culture of tech bros—is smitten by. Unlike the women Peter has dated before, Anaya is like an alternative-reality version of Edie—one with shampoo-commercial hair and a meaningful career, who definitely doesn’t spend her weekends scrolling social media alone in her apartment. It’s only a matter of time before Peter falls head over heels for this woman; Edie herself is infatuated after one meeting.

Then Anaya is found dead in her apartment—right after a date with Peter.]]> 272 Emily J. Smith 006338583X emma 2
this is one of those books where the protagonist is so unlikable it's actually difficult to get through. but also it's probably intentional? so it feels unfair to not like it for that reason.

but i also don't like anywhere this book went, so.

anyway, misleading title. this book is very serious.

i think the cover and synopsis give off a vibe that this is going to be goofy in some way, but it is very much not. it is very self-serious and very much not self-aware. its plot revolves around drugs, and it is set in san francisco, but there is not so much as a nod to the debilitating impact of addiction or of housing. our villain is depicted as a piece of sh*t rich dude, but he works on behalf of the climate, whereas our protagonist has...a soulless and extremely lucrative tech job.

i guess my real problem with this is that its scope begins and ends with our main character. the most unprivileged person you can be in the world is a straight white woman with a mid 6 figure income whose friends venmo request her for half of dinner. end of list.

i don't like when books occupy themselves with an extinct version of feminism, in which we've never heard of intersectionality and there are no people of color in sight. i just don't happen to believe that i am facing the worst of all biases. this has a few gay characters in it, but it doesn't go any further than that.

don't even get me started on the bizarro version of criminal justice that happens here.

bottom line: i do think a lot of what is so annoying about this book is supposed to be annoying. just not all of it.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.17 2025 Nothing Serious
author: Emily J. Smith
name: emma
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/06/23
shelves: mystery-thriller-horror-etc, non-ya, arc, 2-stars, nope, reviewed
review:
what if you had a crush so bad that a committed murder couldn't cure it? that's the real horror story.

this is one of those books where the protagonist is so unlikable it's actually difficult to get through. but also it's probably intentional? so it feels unfair to not like it for that reason.

but i also don't like anywhere this book went, so.

anyway, misleading title. this book is very serious.

i think the cover and synopsis give off a vibe that this is going to be goofy in some way, but it is very much not. it is very self-serious and very much not self-aware. its plot revolves around drugs, and it is set in san francisco, but there is not so much as a nod to the debilitating impact of addiction or of housing. our villain is depicted as a piece of sh*t rich dude, but he works on behalf of the climate, whereas our protagonist has...a soulless and extremely lucrative tech job.

i guess my real problem with this is that its scope begins and ends with our main character. the most unprivileged person you can be in the world is a straight white woman with a mid 6 figure income whose friends venmo request her for half of dinner. end of list.

i don't like when books occupy themselves with an extinct version of feminism, in which we've never heard of intersectionality and there are no people of color in sight. i just don't happen to believe that i am facing the worst of all biases. this has a few gay characters in it, but it doesn't go any further than that.

don't even get me started on the bizarro version of criminal justice that happens here.

bottom line: i do think a lot of what is so annoying about this book is supposed to be annoying. just not all of it.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> As You Wish 219520676 They say be careful what you wish for…

For Lydia, Jenny, and Selene, au pairing in Seoul is the opportunity of a lifetime. Lydia wants nothing more than to transform into a leading lady; Jenny is determined to swear off love for good 5,955 miles away from her ex; and Selene is convinced working in Korea will finally lead her to her biological mother.

During a combined family vacation with their host families, the women visit an enchanted waterfall on Jeju Island and make a wish under a full moon. Overnight, everything changes. Suddenly, Lydia is the girl everyone wants—except, strangely, her mysterious art class partner from Spain. Jenny is having secret, no-strings-attached fun with her host mom’s irresistible younger brother. And Selene is finally getting somewhere in her search for her mother thanks to a research-savvy photographer.

But when Jenny’s romantic feelings begin to deepen, she realizes her wish is standing in the way of true, lasting love. Her decision to return to the waterfall will have unexpected consequences and force the au pairs to confront a new question altogether: Could it be that their friendship was the real magic all along?]]> 368 Leesa Cross-Smith 0593476182 emma 3
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.62 As You Wish
author: Leesa Cross-Smith
name: emma
average rating: 3.62
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/06/21
date added: 2025/06/21
shelves: arc, authors-of-color, romance, non-ya, diverse, 3-stars, to-review, eh
review:
judging books by their covers again

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> Work Nights 220161402 A young queer woman finds herself in a love triangle with an unobtainable intern and a quick-tempered musician in this charming debut that combines Triple Sec with The Devil Wears Prada.

Jane Grabowski hauls herself to her nine to five office job at New York City’s most acclaimed newspaper to sit in stale air under severe florescent lights and mask her rage by sending emails with too many exclamation points.

Luckily, Jane has a reason to keep coming into the office: Madeline, the distractingly beautiful intern. Madeline has never dated a woman and is uncomfortable with labels but with carefully timed lunch breaks and painstakingly crafted texts, Jane works her way into her life. Meanwhile, Jane’s free-spirited artist roommate tries to keep her from falling for a straight girl by dragging Jane to gay bars and queer Shabbat dinners, where she meets the decidedly uncool and morally righteous musician, Addy.

Caught between Addy’s readiness to commit and Madeline’s alluring unpredictability, Jane is pulled down a slippery path of lies and deceit, leading to a plane ticket that threatens to take everything down in one fell swoop.]]> 256 Erica Peplin 1668050870 emma 4
(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.52 2025 Work Nights
author: Erica Peplin
name: emma
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/21
date added: 2025/06/21
shelves: arc, contemporary, from-publisher-author, lgbt-plus, non-ya, owned, 3-and-a-half-stars, to-review, unpopular-opinion, recommend
review:
did somebody say the devil wears prada

(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> Universality 214269374 Remember—words are your weapons, they’re your tools, your currency: a twisty, slippery descent into the rhetoric of power.

Late one night on a Yorkshire farm, in the midst of an illegal rave, a young man is nearly bludgeoned to death with a solid gold bar.

An ambitious young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding the attack, connecting the dots between an amoral banker landlord, an iconoclastic columnist, and a radical anarchist movement that has taken up residence on the farm. She solves the mystery, but her viral exposé raises more questions than it answers. Through a voyeuristic lens, and with a simmering power, Universality focuses on words: what we say, how we say it, and what we really mean.

The thrilling novel from one of the most acclaimed young writers working today, Universality is a compelling, unsettling celebration of the spectacular, appalling force of language. It dares you to look away.]]> 152 Natasha Brown 0593977300 emma 3
high expectations can be a curse.

assembly, the author's debut novella, came out 4 years ago, and my anticipation for its follow-up have only grown since. that book is compelling and clever, vague as a means of rendering complete a story that feels sharp and specific. it's been years since i read it, but i think of it often.

this book is very dissimilar.

it crams a lot of details into its 176 pages: many washed-up and amoral journalists, several wannabe hippies, one or two half-formed aspiring movements, a quasi-mystery, a viral article. it's mixed media and multi-perspective, but its extreme level of specificity barred me from learning a lot from it. we all know about political "perspective" in the news, the rising voice of the malcontent white middle class the world over, the suffocating tide of income inequality. this book felt like it didn't give me more to consider, but fictional examples of the same. there were moments i really enjoyed, but the biggest pro and the biggest con of this for me were how realistic it felt! it didn't come together in the way fiction can, but all of it felt astonishingly real.

maybe it's because i'm not british.

bottom line: feeling slightly disappointed by things you're excited for builds character.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.39 2025 Universality
author: Natasha Brown
name: emma
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/06/21
shelves: literary-fiction, authors-of-color, diverse, non-ya, arc, 3-stars, unpopular-opinion, eh, reviewed
review:
writing a book that blows me away and then not publishing anything else for a million years is cruel and unusual.

high expectations can be a curse.

assembly, the author's debut novella, came out 4 years ago, and my anticipation for its follow-up have only grown since. that book is compelling and clever, vague as a means of rendering complete a story that feels sharp and specific. it's been years since i read it, but i think of it often.

this book is very dissimilar.

it crams a lot of details into its 176 pages: many washed-up and amoral journalists, several wannabe hippies, one or two half-formed aspiring movements, a quasi-mystery, a viral article. it's mixed media and multi-perspective, but its extreme level of specificity barred me from learning a lot from it. we all know about political "perspective" in the news, the rising voice of the malcontent white middle class the world over, the suffocating tide of income inequality. this book felt like it didn't give me more to consider, but fictional examples of the same. there were moments i really enjoyed, but the biggest pro and the biggest con of this for me were how realistic it felt! it didn't come together in the way fiction can, but all of it felt astonishingly real.

maybe it's because i'm not british.

bottom line: feeling slightly disappointed by things you're excited for builds character.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> The Bluest Eye 28807242 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780099759911

Toni Morrison's debut novel immerses us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family – Pauline, Cholly, Sam and Pecola – in post-Depression 1940s Ohio. Unlovely and unloved, Pecola prays each night for blue eyes like those of her privileged white schoolfellows. At once intimate and expansive, unsparing in its truth-telling, The Bluest Eye shows how the past savagely defines the present.]]> 212 Toni Morrison emma 5
there's no one like her on race, beauty, the cruelty of society, the way we carry past wounds with us, the attempt to love selflessly by people. 

the fact that this is a debut is unbelievable. possibly the best first book i've ever read.

pecola is an unforgettable character, and the way this manages to tell her story even when it's through the perspective of others is masterful. everything in this book is thoughtful, everything down to the blue shirley temple cup contributing to the story of an unloved little girl, victim to the tragedy that befell her parents before her. 

i feel at a loss for words. i desperately want to convince you to read this painful and upsetting and brilliant book — likely my favorite of the year.

bottom line: my 2000th read was a perfect one.]]> 4.12 1970 The Bluest Eye
author: Toni Morrison
name: emma
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1970
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/18
date added: 2025/06/21
shelves: authors-of-color, diverse, non-ya, literary-fiction, 5-stars, to-buy, recommend, favorites-2024, reviewed
review:
i'm scared of who i'll become when i don't have any more toni morrison to read.

there's no one like her on race, beauty, the cruelty of society, the way we carry past wounds with us, the attempt to love selflessly by people. 

the fact that this is a debut is unbelievable. possibly the best first book i've ever read.

pecola is an unforgettable character, and the way this manages to tell her story even when it's through the perspective of others is masterful. everything in this book is thoughtful, everything down to the blue shirley temple cup contributing to the story of an unloved little girl, victim to the tragedy that befell her parents before her. 

i feel at a loss for words. i desperately want to convince you to read this painful and upsetting and brilliant book — likely my favorite of the year.

bottom line: my 2000th read was a perfect one.
]]> The Go-Between 258079 The Go-Between is edited with an introduction and notes by Douglas Brooks-Davies in Penguin Modern Classics.

'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there'

When one long, hot summer, young Leo is staying with a school-friend at Brandham Hall, he begins to act as a messenger between Ted, the farmer, and Marian, the beautiful young woman up at the hall. He becomes drawn deeper and deeper into their dangerous game of deceit and desire, until his role brings him to a shocking and premature revelation. The haunting story of a young boy's awakening into the secrets of the adult world, The Go-Between is also an unforgettable evocation of the boundaries of Edwardian society.

Leslie Poles Hartley (1895-1972) was born in Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, and educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford. For more than thirty years from 1923 he was an indefatigable fiction reviewer for periodicals including the Spectator and Saturday Review. His first book, Night Fears (1924) was a collection of short stories; but it was not until the publication of Eustace and Hilda (1947), which won the James Tait Black prize, that Hartley gained widespread recognition as an author. His other novels include The Go-Between (1953), which was adapted into an internationally-successful film starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates, and The Hireling (1957), the film version of which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

If you enjoyed The Go-Between, you might like Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

'Magical and disturbing'
Independent

'On a first reading, it is a beautifully wrought description of a small boy's loss of innocence long ago. But, visited a second time, the knowledge of approaching, unavoidable tragedy makes it far more poignant and painful'
Express]]> 326 L.P. Hartley 0940322994 emma 0 to-read 3.99 1953 The Go-Between
author: L.P. Hartley
name: emma
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Snares 215805843 A Punjabi American lawyer at a mysterious new federal intelligence agency fights to keep his career, marriage, and morality intact in this gripping post-9/11 drama from a thrilling new voice.


“Are you happy where you are? Toiling in the trenches of the Justice Department?”

In the waning months of George W. Bush’s presidency, Neel Chima, a former Naval officer and federal prosecutor, is recruited to join a new federal intelligence agency—one with greater-than-usual powers and fewer-than-usual restrictions. Neel soon finds himself intimately involved in the surveillance of domestic terrorism suspects and the selection of foreigners for drone assassination—men who often look just like his Sikh family members. As both his ambitions and moral qualms mount, he is drawn further and further away from his wife and two young daughters. When he makes a critical mistake at work, he is left vulnerable to shadowy figures in the intelligence world who seek to use him in their own, still more radical counterterrorism missions. If he agrees, the world of power will open up even wider to him. If he doesn’t . . .

Is Neel an insider or an outsider? The hunter or the hunted? An idealist or a mercenary? What truths, and whose lives, is he willing to sacrifice? The novel plunges readers into the human turmoil behind the faceless operations—the torture, secret assassinations, and drone strikes—of the American security state, creating an eye-opening meditation on morality, violence, and the price of a human soul.]]> 320 Rav Grewal-Kök 0593446038 emma 3
(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.68 2025 The Snares
author: Rav Grewal-Kök
name: emma
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/24
date added: 2025/06/21
shelves: authors-of-color, arc, non-ya, literary-fiction, historical, mystery-thriller-horror-etc, to-review
review:
seems timely!

(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> The Prince of Tides 16735 Spanning forty years, this is the story of turbulent Tom Wingo, his gifted and troubled twin sister Savannah, and the dark and violent past of the extraordinary family into which they were born.]]> 679 Pat Conroy 0553381547 emma 0 to-read 4.25 1986 The Prince of Tides
author: Pat Conroy
name: emma
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Flashlight 219743621 A novel tracing a father’s disappearance across time, nations, and memory, from the author of Trust Exercise.

One night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the beach. He’s carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later Louisa is found washed up by the tide, barely alive. Her father is gone, presumed drowned. She is ten years old.

In chapters that shift from one member to the next, turning back again and again to that night by the sea, Susan Choi's Flashlight chases the shockwaves of one family’s catastrophe. Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past. Her father, Serk, an ethnic Korean born and raised in Japan, lost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to the DPRK. Her American mother, Anne, is estranged from her family after a reckless sexual adventure in her youth. And then there is Tobias, Anne’s illegitimate son, whose reappearance in their lives will have astonishing consequences.

What really happened to Louisa’s father? Why did he take Louisa and her mother to Japan just before he disappeared? And how can we love, or make sense of our lives, when there’s so much we can’t see?]]> 464 Susan Choi 037461637X emma 4
(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.80 2025 Flashlight
author: Susan Choi
name: emma
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/20
date added: 2025/06/20
shelves: non-ya, literary-fiction, arc, authors-of-color, diverse, 4-stars, to-review, to-buy, recommend
review:
if a book is long and character-driven, there's a 90% chance i'll like it

(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> <![CDATA[Miss Kim Knows and Other Stories]]> 205478795
A woman is born. A woman is filmed in public without consent. A woman suffers domestic violence. A woman is gaslit. A woman is discriminated against at work. A woman grows old. A woman becomes famous. A woman is hated, and loved, and then hated again.

Written in Cho Nam-joo’s signature razor-sharp prose, Miss Kim Knows follows eight women, ranging from preteens to octogenarians, as they confront how gender shapes and orders their lives. In “Under the Plum Tree,” Mallyeo feels existential as she bears witness to her sister’s final days; in “Dear Hyunnam Oppa,” a college graduate musters the courage to leave her partner; and in “Grown-Up Girl,” a mother finally confronts her generational biases for the sake of her daughter. “Despite her characters’ hardship and disappointments, there is mischief and glee to be found in these pages” (Hephzibah Anderson, Observer), resulting in another riveting read from an essential voice in world literature.]]> 224 Cho Nam-Joo 1324095318 emma 3
(review to come)]]> 3.71 2021 Miss Kim Knows and Other Stories
author: Cho Nam-Joo
name: emma
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/06/20
date added: 2025/06/20
shelves: authors-of-color, diverse, literary-fiction, non-ya, 3-stars, to-review, eh
review:
i just love reading about being a woman

(review to come)
]]> Paradise 30137766 Oprah Book Club® Selection, January 1998: Toni Morrison's Paradise takes place in the tiny farming community of Ruby, Oklahoma, which its residents proudly proclaim "the one all-black town worth the pain." Settled by nine African American clans during the 1940s, the town represents a small miracle of self-reliance and community spirit. Readers might be forgiven, in fact, for assuming that Morrison's title refers to Ruby itself, which even during the 1970s retains an atmosphere of neighborliness and small-town virtue. Yet Paradises are not so easily gained. As we soon discover, Ruby is fissured by ancestral feuds and financial squabbles, not to mention the political ferment of the era, which has managed to pierce the town's pious isolation. In the view of its leading citizens, these troubles call for a scapegoat. And one readily exists: the Convent, an abandoned mansion not far from town--or, more precisely, the four women who occupy it, and whose unattached and unconventional status makes them the perfect targets for patriarchal ire. ("Before those heifers came to town," the men complain, "this was a peaceable kingdom.") One July morning, then, an armed posse sets out from Ruby for a round of ethical cleansing.

Paradise actually begins with the arrival of these vigilantes, only to launch into an intricate series of flashbacks and interlaced stories. The cast is large--indeed, it seems as though we must have met all 360 members of Ruby's populace--and Morrison knows how to imprint even the minor players on our brains. Even more amazing, though, are the full-length portraits she draws of the four Convent dwellers and their executioners: rich, rounded, and almost painful in their intimacy. This richness--of language and, ultimately, of human understanding--combats the aura of saintliness that can occasionally mar Morrison's fiction. It also makes for a spectacular piece of storytelling, in which such biblical concepts as redemption and divine love are no postmodern playthings but matters of life and (in the very first sentence, alas) death.

]]> 336 Toni Morrison emma 3
just kidding. that is not a problem i'm looking to solve.

morrison never holds your hand and walks you through it, even though sometimes you (read: i) wish she would.

this finale in the beloved trilogy has so much to say about violence and oppression, but still i somehow wish it said more.

we follow the residents of a town and of a convent as we crawl toward the act of violence that ends the life they know, but i was jarred by the act and how quickly and confusingly it was over. the writing didn't seem like the same standard i've come to know, and the ending was a strange abrupt where are they now while the credits rolled.

the vibes were off.

bottom line: my least favorite toni morrison, and i still liked it.

(3.5)]]> 3.97 1997 Paradise
author: Toni Morrison
name: emma
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/18
date added: 2025/06/20
shelves: non-ya, literary-fiction, magical-realist-urban-whatever, diverse, classics, authors-of-color, 3-and-a-half-stars, unpopular-opinion, recommend, reviewed
review:
help, i can't stop reading toni morrison!

just kidding. that is not a problem i'm looking to solve.

morrison never holds your hand and walks you through it, even though sometimes you (read: i) wish she would.

this finale in the beloved trilogy has so much to say about violence and oppression, but still i somehow wish it said more.

we follow the residents of a town and of a convent as we crawl toward the act of violence that ends the life they know, but i was jarred by the act and how quickly and confusingly it was over. the writing didn't seem like the same standard i've come to know, and the ending was a strange abrupt where are they now while the credits rolled.

the vibes were off.

bottom line: my least favorite toni morrison, and i still liked it.

(3.5)
]]> Happy Place 61718053
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week… in front of those who know you best?

A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.]]> 400 Emily Henry 0593441273 emma 3
that vow was this:

i would trade my firstborn to read this book. i'll locate a baby just to exchange it for this.

after i read it twice, i declared it worth it.

after the third read, i have good news and i have bad news.

the bad news is this might be my least favorite emily henry book.

but the good news is that having a least favorite emily henry book is like having a bad slice of pizza, or seeing a just-okay movie in theaters with a big bucket of popcorn and a slushie the size of your head. in other words, even the disappointing experiences are better than most things in this earthly plane.

emily henry books are always trying to balance a series of incredible things: a consuming romance; a bantery cast of characters; a charming setting; and an extremely daunting character arc that usually encapsulates a deep dark secret, a fatal flaw, daddy and/or mommy issues, and a shifting career path.

this had all of those, like the creation from god it was. (tough way to reveal i'm starting an emily henry-based house of worship.) it just didn't nail the balance. or the happily ever after.

we have a cast of four friends who suck up all the character awesomeness quota, leaving none for our two main characters. we have a very soul-sucking (i'm using the word suck too much for a book that is good) career / parent / self-esteem drama subplot that becomes the whole plot, leaving very little joy or yearning for the love story we may have thought we were in for.

it also leaves some moments of frustration. how could these two people who love each other so much they need no other relationships or dreams or pastimes fail so hard to communicate? like as in never even consider it, let alone try it? how could pottery be a career path when its whole plot-based purpose is that its career-less-ness is what makes it nice? how many times can we have a patch of dialogue that culminates in one millennial joke before a scene change, leaving you like wait, that's it, we're just going to pretend the word "kardashian" is funny like this is a youtube video from 2013?

most emily henry books give you a concerningly relatable protagonist (like, show-up-to-therapy-with-a-romance-novel-a-diagnosis-suggestion-and-a-dream level relatable), a hot love interest, their gooey steamy romance, and a dream job for your girl. it gives you, in other words, a fictional person you can see yourself in and the ability to believe that she-slash-you can have it all.

this one doesn't quite get there.

we still have more good things in between than most books can aspire to — maine! friendship! jokes! — but if you, say, decide to read this in a not at all ill advised cry for help emily henry binge reread, you're going to come away noticing this doesn't have the same magic as the others.

but it is still a slice of pizza.

bottom line: oops.

3.5

---------------------
reread update

emily henry books are a precious and nonrenewable resource, to me.

that's why i'm rereading all of them like a test before i can read the new one.

---------------------
original review

[spoilers removed]]]> 3.94 2023 Happy Place
author: Emily Henry
name: emma
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/15
date added: 2025/06/20
shelves: romance, non-ya, recommend, owned, 3-and-a-half-stars, unpopular-opinion, reviewed
review:
when this book was first announced — before it had a title, or a cover, or a synopsis, or anything other than a weird beige placeholder and the words BY EMILY HENRY stamped on it — i made a solemn vow.

that vow was this:

i would trade my firstborn to read this book. i'll locate a baby just to exchange it for this.

after i read it twice, i declared it worth it.

after the third read, i have good news and i have bad news.

the bad news is this might be my least favorite emily henry book.

but the good news is that having a least favorite emily henry book is like having a bad slice of pizza, or seeing a just-okay movie in theaters with a big bucket of popcorn and a slushie the size of your head. in other words, even the disappointing experiences are better than most things in this earthly plane.

emily henry books are always trying to balance a series of incredible things: a consuming romance; a bantery cast of characters; a charming setting; and an extremely daunting character arc that usually encapsulates a deep dark secret, a fatal flaw, daddy and/or mommy issues, and a shifting career path.

this had all of those, like the creation from god it was. (tough way to reveal i'm starting an emily henry-based house of worship.) it just didn't nail the balance. or the happily ever after.

we have a cast of four friends who suck up all the character awesomeness quota, leaving none for our two main characters. we have a very soul-sucking (i'm using the word suck too much for a book that is good) career / parent / self-esteem drama subplot that becomes the whole plot, leaving very little joy or yearning for the love story we may have thought we were in for.

it also leaves some moments of frustration. how could these two people who love each other so much they need no other relationships or dreams or pastimes fail so hard to communicate? like as in never even consider it, let alone try it? how could pottery be a career path when its whole plot-based purpose is that its career-less-ness is what makes it nice? how many times can we have a patch of dialogue that culminates in one millennial joke before a scene change, leaving you like wait, that's it, we're just going to pretend the word "kardashian" is funny like this is a youtube video from 2013?

most emily henry books give you a concerningly relatable protagonist (like, show-up-to-therapy-with-a-romance-novel-a-diagnosis-suggestion-and-a-dream level relatable), a hot love interest, their gooey steamy romance, and a dream job for your girl. it gives you, in other words, a fictional person you can see yourself in and the ability to believe that she-slash-you can have it all.

this one doesn't quite get there.

we still have more good things in between than most books can aspire to — maine! friendship! jokes! — but if you, say, decide to read this in a not at all ill advised cry for help emily henry binge reread, you're going to come away noticing this doesn't have the same magic as the others.

but it is still a slice of pizza.

bottom line: oops.

3.5

---------------------
reread update

emily henry books are a precious and nonrenewable resource, to me.

that's why i'm rereading all of them like a test before i can read the new one.

---------------------
original review

[spoilers removed]
]]> <![CDATA[Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People]]> 199534697 A surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue—and its fascinating role in Black history and culture—from National Book Award winner Imani Perry

Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for that which lies beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong’s question, “What did I do to be so Black and blue?” In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world’s favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey—an examination of race and Blackness that transcends politics or ideology.

Perry traces both blue and Blackness from their earliest roots to their many embodiments of contemporary culture, drawing deeply from her own life as well as art and history: The dyed indigo cloths of West Africa that were traded for human life in the 16th century. The mixture of awe and aversion in the old-fashioned characterization of dark-skinned people as “Blue Black.” The fundamentally American art form of blues music, sitting at the crossroads of pain and pleasure. The blue flowers Perry plants to honor a loved one gone too soon.

Poignant, spellbinding, and utterly original, Black in Blues is a brilliant new work that could only have come from the mind of one of our greatest writers and thinkers. Attuned to the harrowing and the sublime aspects of the human experience, it is every bit as vivid, rich, and striking as blue itself.]]> 256 Imani Perry 0062977393 emma 4
it's a bonus that this book was packed beyond belief with emotion, knowledge, interesting facts and gut=punching scenes, poetic moments and factual connections. each chapter follows an example of the tie between blue and Black, and each one is astonishingly interesting and well-researched. 

although i do wish they built on each other more. this could feel segmented, and i didn't always think i knew what the throughline or overall argument was. sometimes connections were grouped chronologically, or thematically, but not always, which felt discombobulating as a reading experience.

all in all, though, needing to slow down and appreciate this book was not a bad thing.

bottom line: i've read 2 books about blue, and both have lived up to the best color.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 4.34 2025 Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People
author: Imani Perry
name: emma
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/06/20
shelves: arc, authors-of-color, non-ya, nonfiction, to-buy, recommend, reviewed
review:
covercovercover.

it's a bonus that this book was packed beyond belief with emotion, knowledge, interesting facts and gut=punching scenes, poetic moments and factual connections. each chapter follows an example of the tie between blue and Black, and each one is astonishingly interesting and well-researched. 

although i do wish they built on each other more. this could feel segmented, and i didn't always think i knew what the throughline or overall argument was. sometimes connections were grouped chronologically, or thematically, but not always, which felt discombobulating as a reading experience.

all in all, though, needing to slow down and appreciate this book was not a bad thing.

bottom line: i've read 2 books about blue, and both have lived up to the best color.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> L.A. Women 221251764 An electrifying novel about the complicated friendship between two ambitious and talented female writers in 1960s Los Angeles and the ultimate artistic one writes a book based on the other's life… from the author of Reese's Book Club Pick Before We Were Innocent.

After a steady descent from literary stardom, Lane Warren is back. She’s secured a new book deal based off the life of her sometimes friend and more often rival, notorious free spirit and muse, Gala Margolis. Lane’s only problem is that Gala has been missing for months…nobody can find her.

Ten years earlier, Gala was a charming socialite and Lane was a Hollywood outsider amidst the glittering 1960’s LA party scene. Though never best friends, Lane found Gala sharp and compelling. Gala liked that Lane took her seriously. They were both writers. They were drawn to each other.

That is until Gala’s star began to rise, and Lane grew more envious. Then Lane decided to do something that she wouldn’t ever be able to take back…changing the trajectory of both their lives.]]> 416 Ella Berman 0593639154 emma 0
(this is such a dumb joke)]]> 3.70 2025 L.A. Women
author: Ella Berman
name: emma
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/20
shelves: to-read, tbr-arc, tbr-owned, non-ya, literary-fiction, arc
review:
is this a sequel to the eve babitz book?

(this is such a dumb joke)
]]> A Moveable Feast 4631 192 Ernest Hemingway emma 0 to-read 4.04 1964 A Moveable Feast
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: emma
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Wilderness 222658339 "Wonderfully ambitious.... Flournoy explores the complexity of friendship, family, and home in a voice that is expansive yet intimate, humorous yet devastating. I loved this book." — Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half and The Mothers

An era-defining novel about five Black women over the course of their twenty-year friendship, as they move through the dizzying and sometimes precarious period between young adulthood and midlife—in the much-anticipated second book from National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy.

Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood—overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequences—swoops in and stays.

Desiree and Danielle, sisters whose shared history has done little to prevent their estrangement, nurse bitter family wounds in different ways. January’s got a relationship with a “good” man she feels ambivalent about, even after her surprise pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, finds unexpected online fame after calling out the university where she works for its plans to whitewash fraught history. And Nakia is trying to get her restaurant off the ground, without relying on the largesse of her upper middle-class family who wonder aloud if she should be doing something better with her life.

As these friends move from the late 2000’s into the late 2020’s, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another—amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.

The Wilderness is Angela Flournoy’s masterful and kaleidoscopic follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut The Turner House. A generational talent, she captures with disarming wit and electric language how the most profound connections over a lifetime can lie in the tangled, uncertain thicket of friendship.]]> 304 Angela Flournoy 0063318776 emma 0 3.92 The Wilderness
author: Angela Flournoy
name: emma
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/19
shelves: to-read, tbr-arc, tbr-owned, non-ya, literary-fiction, arc, from-publisher-author, authors-of-color, diverse
review:
the meaning of life is hanging out with your friends
]]> Hunchback 214986269 A bombshell bestseller in Japan, a provocative, defiant debut novel about a young woman in a care home seeking autonomy and the full possibilities of her life.

Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka spends her days in her room in a care home outside Tokyo, relying on an electric wheelchair to get around and a ventilator to breathe. But if Shaka's physical life is limited, her quick, mischievous mind has no boundaries: She takes e-learning courses on her iPad, publishes explicit fantasies on websites, and anonymously troll-tweets to see if anyone is paying attention (“If I were to live again, I’d want to be a high-class prostitute”). One day, she tweets into the void an offer of an enormous sum of money for a sperm donor. To her surprise, her new nurse accepts the dare, unleashing a series of events that will forever change Shaka's sense of herself as a woman in the world.

Hunchback has shaken Japanese literary culture with its skillful depiction of the physical body and unrepentant humor. Winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, it's a feminist story about the dignity of an individual who insists on her right to make choices for herself, no matter the consequences. Formally creative and refreshingly unsentimental, Hunchback depicts the joy, anger, and desires of a woman demanding autonomy in a world that doesn't always grant it to people like her. Full of wit, bite, and heart, this unforgettable novel reminds us all of the full potential of our lives, no matter the limitations we experience.]]> 112 Saou Ichikawa 0593734718 emma 0 3.40 2023 Hunchback
author: Saou Ichikawa
name: emma
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/19
shelves: to-read, non-ya, literary-fiction, authors-of-color, library, diverse
review:
all i've heard about this book was from readers who were blown away
]]> Piglet 127282554 An elegant, razor-sharp debut about women's ambitions and appetites—and the truth about having it all

Outside of a childhood nickname she can’t shake, Piglet’s rather pleased with how her life’s turned out. An up-and-coming cookbook editor at a London publishing house, she’s got lovely, loyal friends and a handsome fiancé, Kit, whose rarefied family she actually, most of the time, likes, despite their upper-class eccentricities. One of the many, many things Kit loves about Piglet is the delicious, unfathomably elaborate meals she’s always cooking.

But when Kit confesses a horrible betrayal two weeks before they’re set to be married, Piglet finds herself suddenly…hungry. The couple decides to move forward with the wedding as planned, but as it nears and Piglet balances family expectations, pressure at work, and her quest to make the perfect cake, she finds herself increasingly unsettled, behaving in ways even she can’t explain. Torn between a life she’s always wanted and the ravenousness that comes with not getting what she knows she deserves, Piglet is, by the day of her wedding, undone, but also ready to look beyond the lies we sometimes tell ourselves to get by.

A stylish, uncommonly clever novel about the things we want and the things we think we want, Piglet is both an examination of women’s often complicated relationship with food and a celebration of the messes life sometimes makes for us.]]> 320 Lottie Hazell 125028984X emma 2
there is nothing new or interesting about disordered eating, which at its core is unable to shake off the embedded falsehood that women should be small or should deny themselves. these stories can try to be new or interesting, but they'll always come off as fatphobic, they'll always tie human worth to appearance, and they'll always feel outdated and overdone.

this is no exception.

this book wanted to be nightbitch + milk fed + exciting times all in one. it wanted to have a big secret but not really, and it wanted to be stylized but only in italicized final paragraphs, and it wanted to be character-driven without the pesky character development. it wanted to empower and liberate through eating, without actually having to reckon with any of the thinking that goes with that. it wanted to be literary and unique, while covering some of the most well-covered topics of all time.

like its protagonist, it wanted a lot and ended up with very little.

bottom line: EDs have taken a lot from me, but they've also given me the chance to write this review without anyone being allowed to get mad at me. so who wins, really.

1.5

------------------
pre-review

warning: reading while hungry

(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)

------------------
tbr review

judging books by their covers]]> 3.39 2024 Piglet
author: Lottie Hazell
name: emma
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/04/04
date added: 2025/06/19
shelves: arc, from-publisher-author, literary-fiction, non-ya, 1-and-a-half-stars, unpopular-opinion, nope, reviewed
review:
eating disorder fiction is just so boring. much like having one!

there is nothing new or interesting about disordered eating, which at its core is unable to shake off the embedded falsehood that women should be small or should deny themselves. these stories can try to be new or interesting, but they'll always come off as fatphobic, they'll always tie human worth to appearance, and they'll always feel outdated and overdone.

this is no exception.

this book wanted to be nightbitch + milk fed + exciting times all in one. it wanted to have a big secret but not really, and it wanted to be stylized but only in italicized final paragraphs, and it wanted to be character-driven without the pesky character development. it wanted to empower and liberate through eating, without actually having to reckon with any of the thinking that goes with that. it wanted to be literary and unique, while covering some of the most well-covered topics of all time.

like its protagonist, it wanted a lot and ended up with very little.

bottom line: EDs have taken a lot from me, but they've also given me the chance to write this review without anyone being allowed to get mad at me. so who wins, really.

1.5

------------------
pre-review

warning: reading while hungry

(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)

------------------
tbr review

judging books by their covers
]]> Book Lovers 58708383 One summer. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn't see coming....

Nora Stephens’ life is books—she’s read them all—and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby.

Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters’ trip away—with visions of a small-town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute.

If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.]]> 398 Emily Henry emma 4
i love emily henry.



i’ve loved her since the first incarnation of my reading accounts, when i discovered a million junes based on an act of love from the universe, probably, and never looked back.

i loved her fascinating, unique, sometimes creepy always lovely magical realism filled with banter and growth and stunning images.

when she moved to romance, her books felt less like My Books, ones written specifically for me, but it was kind of wonderful to see them be The Book for so many other people.

and then this one came along.

and i hate to center myself again, but…

just kidding. this is the same person who genuinely said yesterday that the rain was holding out for her walk home exclusively. i have no problem with indulging in narcissism, so:

this one feels pretty made for me.

i love sisters, and here our almost-as-important close-second relationship after the romance is between two crazy close sisters.

i love nora, our cold and tough and mean but on the inside very kind and lovely and of course book-obsessed protagonist. (it will come as no surprise that i relate to her. or, well, relate on the first and third points.)

i love charlie, who passes my single requirement for romance novel love interests with flying colors. (this single requirement is, of course, being obsessed beyond logic with our main character.)

i love banter. it is the best part of any romcom and it isn’t close. this has plenty.

i love having-it-all happy ever afters. i love when the magic perfect ending doesn’t just include love, but like 9 other neatly tied up subplots ending with confetti and rose petals or whatever too.

i love being a tall girl, and i love that this book recognizes our struggle!!!

i love dream jobs. i love tropes. i love mean-girl characters. i love little kids. i love books!!!

when it came to this book, it feels like — beyond my missing magical realism, and the not-very-enemies beginning of this enemies to lovers, and some excessive sister sneakiness — i loved (almost) it all.

bottom line: emily henry forever!!!

4.5

------------------
reread update

there's no problem that can't be solved by rereading every emily henry book

---------------
pre-review

please respect my privacy at this time (deciding whether to give my third romance five star ever).

review to come / it's either 4.5 or 5

---------------
currently-reading updates

this is the best day of my life

---------------
tbr review

anyone have any tips on hibernation?]]> 4.27 2022 Book Lovers
author: Emily Henry
name: emma
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/08
date added: 2025/06/19
shelves: romance, non-ya, owned, recommend, reviewed, 4-stars, reread
review:
welcome to my main character era.

i love emily henry.



i’ve loved her since the first incarnation of my reading accounts, when i discovered a million junes based on an act of love from the universe, probably, and never looked back.

i loved her fascinating, unique, sometimes creepy always lovely magical realism filled with banter and growth and stunning images.

when she moved to romance, her books felt less like My Books, ones written specifically for me, but it was kind of wonderful to see them be The Book for so many other people.

and then this one came along.

and i hate to center myself again, but…

just kidding. this is the same person who genuinely said yesterday that the rain was holding out for her walk home exclusively. i have no problem with indulging in narcissism, so:

this one feels pretty made for me.

i love sisters, and here our almost-as-important close-second relationship after the romance is between two crazy close sisters.

i love nora, our cold and tough and mean but on the inside very kind and lovely and of course book-obsessed protagonist. (it will come as no surprise that i relate to her. or, well, relate on the first and third points.)

i love charlie, who passes my single requirement for romance novel love interests with flying colors. (this single requirement is, of course, being obsessed beyond logic with our main character.)

i love banter. it is the best part of any romcom and it isn’t close. this has plenty.

i love having-it-all happy ever afters. i love when the magic perfect ending doesn’t just include love, but like 9 other neatly tied up subplots ending with confetti and rose petals or whatever too.

i love being a tall girl, and i love that this book recognizes our struggle!!!

i love dream jobs. i love tropes. i love mean-girl characters. i love little kids. i love books!!!

when it came to this book, it feels like — beyond my missing magical realism, and the not-very-enemies beginning of this enemies to lovers, and some excessive sister sneakiness — i loved (almost) it all.

bottom line: emily henry forever!!!

4.5

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reread update

there's no problem that can't be solved by rereading every emily henry book

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pre-review

please respect my privacy at this time (deciding whether to give my third romance five star ever).

review to come / it's either 4.5 or 5

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currently-reading updates

this is the best day of my life

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tbr review

anyone have any tips on hibernation?
]]> Fundamentally 213870133 A wickedly funny and audacious debut novel following an academic who flees from heartbreak and lands in Iraq with a one-of-a-kind job offer—only to be forced to do the work of confronting herself.

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2025*

When Nadia Amin, a witty and bighearted PhD, publishes an article on deradicalization, everything changes. The United Nations comes calling with an opportunity to put her theory into practice and lead a rehabilitation program for women caught in the crosshairs of harmful ideology. And why not? Abandoned by her mother and devastated by unrequited love, she leaps at the chance.

In Iraq, Nadia quickly realizes she’s in over her head. The UN is a mess of competing interests, and her team consists of Goody Two-shoes Sherri who never passes up an opportunity to remind Nadia of her objections; and Pierre, a snippy Frenchman who has no qualms about perpetually scrolling through Grindr. But then Nadia meets Sara, a hilarious, foul-mouthed East Londoner who was pulled into radicalism at just fifteen. The two are kindred spirits, and Nadia vows to get Sara home.

As the rehabilitation program picks up traction, Sara reveals a secret that upends everything, forcing Nadia to make a drastic choice. In the fallout, Nadia’s brown-savior fantasies crumble, leaving her to wonder if she can save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.

A fierce, wildly funny, and razor-sharp exploration of radicalism, family, and the quest for belonging, Fundamentally boldly inspects one of the defining controversies of our age and introduces a fearless new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 352 Nussaibah Younis 0593851382 emma 2
this is a very fun idea for a book, obviously. unfortunately, i didn't find it fun.

this is a humorous take on a surprising subject: our protagonist, nadia, a real hot mess / hoot whose british drunkenness and casual sex in any other bridget jones-like iteration would have charmed me, accepts a job "deradicalizing" a group of women who have been brainwashed into joining isis and are now imprisoned in a foreign camp.

i know. shock value.

i was really excited to read this because it's based on the author's real experiences, which very few people have, but she might as well have made it all up for all the insights we actually glean.

i think the commentary around the UN and other institutions is genuinely funny, and the beginnings of just how out of place nadia is, but as the book wore on and never took itself seriously on these very serious subjects, i got frustrated. this author has real expertise, but she never shows it to us.

nadia is supposed to be working to send these women home, but instead she becomes obsessed with a teen she sees as herself, [spoilers removed] in the last pages, we get a strange "where are they now" for the various bureaucrats we've met and no mention of the hundreds of women who are still trapped.

this is objectively funny and well-written, and i would love if this author could use her powers of jokes on anything i can find humorous in the future.

bottom line: i really wanted to like this one, so please don't yell at me.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)]]> 3.74 2025 Fundamentally
author: Nussaibah Younis
name: emma
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/06/19
shelves: non-ya, literary-fiction, authors-of-color, arc, 2-stars, unpopular-opinion, nope, diverse, lgbt-plus, reviewed
review:
who among us hasn't experienced heartbreak so intense we'd accept a potentially immoral international job offer from the united nations?

this is a very fun idea for a book, obviously. unfortunately, i didn't find it fun.

this is a humorous take on a surprising subject: our protagonist, nadia, a real hot mess / hoot whose british drunkenness and casual sex in any other bridget jones-like iteration would have charmed me, accepts a job "deradicalizing" a group of women who have been brainwashed into joining isis and are now imprisoned in a foreign camp.

i know. shock value.

i was really excited to read this because it's based on the author's real experiences, which very few people have, but she might as well have made it all up for all the insights we actually glean.

i think the commentary around the UN and other institutions is genuinely funny, and the beginnings of just how out of place nadia is, but as the book wore on and never took itself seriously on these very serious subjects, i got frustrated. this author has real expertise, but she never shows it to us.

nadia is supposed to be working to send these women home, but instead she becomes obsessed with a teen she sees as herself, [spoilers removed] in the last pages, we get a strange "where are they now" for the various bureaucrats we've met and no mention of the hundreds of women who are still trapped.

this is objectively funny and well-written, and i would love if this author could use her powers of jokes on anything i can find humorous in the future.

bottom line: i really wanted to like this one, so please don't yell at me.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
]]> Martyr! 139400713 A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 emma 4
so i am not surprised to agree with the popular opinion on this one.

i've put off writing this review for 4 months (instead of my usual 1-2) because i'm not sure what to say that hasn't already been said, 900 times and also better.

this really is a remarkable book, beautifully rendered and searing. it's as one of a kind, striking, and resonant as everyone says it is. i've found myself loving the novels of poets lately, because while i still struggle with poetry itself their prose tends to be understated and stunning. this is no exception.

i will say i found this to have some very debut-y moments in spite of its brilliance. it's maybe a little bit more uneven than generally indicated, with, yes, strokes of genius and also some stumbles, slightly more frustrating than i expected it to be.

but honestly, that only serves to make me more excited to read more from this author. the best is yet to come.

bottom line: no one needed me to say this book is good, but. this book is good.]]> 4.21 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: emma
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/07
date added: 2025/06/18
shelves: non-ya, literary-fiction, diverse, authors-of-color, 4-stars, to-buy, recommend, reviewed
review:
too many cool people have loved this too much for me to not want to read it.

so i am not surprised to agree with the popular opinion on this one.

i've put off writing this review for 4 months (instead of my usual 1-2) because i'm not sure what to say that hasn't already been said, 900 times and also better.

this really is a remarkable book, beautifully rendered and searing. it's as one of a kind, striking, and resonant as everyone says it is. i've found myself loving the novels of poets lately, because while i still struggle with poetry itself their prose tends to be understated and stunning. this is no exception.

i will say i found this to have some very debut-y moments in spite of its brilliance. it's maybe a little bit more uneven than generally indicated, with, yes, strokes of genius and also some stumbles, slightly more frustrating than i expected it to be.

but honestly, that only serves to make me more excited to read more from this author. the best is yet to come.

bottom line: no one needed me to say this book is good, but. this book is good.
]]> <![CDATA[Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)]]> 62047992 150 Satoshi Yagisawa 0063278677 emma 2
lost me at the other days.

it's no shock that i did like the bookshop part. and it's probably not that much of a shock that it was the entire second half of the book, which occurred after our protagonist was no longer an employee of or even a real visitor to the bookshop, focusing on the reasons why her aunt had left her father many years before, that i didn't care for as much.

and to be fair, how could i have seen that one coming? i would have seemed diagnosable if i predicted that from this title / cover combo.

it's not just that it existed at all, although anything that pulls me away from a bookshop whether literally or fictionally is my enemy. it's more that the whole plotline felt shallow and unwieldy, given too much page time and still somehow not enough exploration.

i never have that problem when i'm reading about reading.

bottom line: books about books - yes. books about inaccurate and weird emotional subplots - maybe not.

2.5]]> 3.66 2010 Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)
author: Satoshi Yagisawa
name: emma
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at: 2024/04/04
date added: 2025/06/18
shelves: authors-of-color, diverse, non-ya, contemporary, 2-and-a-half-stars, unpopular-opinion, eh, reviewed
review:
had me at days in a bookshop.

lost me at the other days.

it's no shock that i did like the bookshop part. and it's probably not that much of a shock that it was the entire second half of the book, which occurred after our protagonist was no longer an employee of or even a real visitor to the bookshop, focusing on the reasons why her aunt had left her father many years before, that i didn't care for as much.

and to be fair, how could i have seen that one coming? i would have seemed diagnosable if i predicted that from this title / cover combo.

it's not just that it existed at all, although anything that pulls me away from a bookshop whether literally or fictionally is my enemy. it's more that the whole plotline felt shallow and unwieldy, given too much page time and still somehow not enough exploration.

i never have that problem when i'm reading about reading.

bottom line: books about books - yes. books about inaccurate and weird emotional subplots - maybe not.

2.5
]]>