Grace Lavery was my favorite professor in college, and I took tons of her classes even though they fulfilled no requirements for my major, just because I really enjoyed her lectures. I think she's brilliant, and I've really liked keeping up with her work online since.

I think this book was well-written and interesting, but I found a lot of it hard to follow. I'm not sure how much of that is a me problem vs how much is the book's problem. The biggest factor in how well I could follow along was whether I was familiar with the material she was referencing--the sections on The Old Curiosity Shop, The Silence of the Lambs, George Eliot, and egg theory were easier for me to understand, because I knew more about those topics and had read/seen those books/movies/authors. But when I was unfamiliar with her references I found it really hard to keep up, and I would end up feeling bored and confused. To be fair, I also just haven't read a lot of theory since graduating, so part of this could definitely be a me problem.

I'd recommend it to anyone interested, but I wouldn't recommend it unprompted, if that makes sense.