I feel like this book couldn't decide if it was trying to be a cowboy story, religious cult, or social commentary. Any of those elements could have carried the story, but none of them were developed enough to do so, and the book wound up feeling jumbled and misguided.

I wish there had been more exploration of the world and social commentary aspects of the story. The society is based on the premise that barren women are often executed for witchcraft. The main character is infertile and wants to figure out why women are infertile, but it didn't really go further than that. I loved the beginning because I thought it was a set up for a really nuanced look at women's role in society, but it didn't do much more than sexism bad.

The book also tried to tackle race (not well) and gender identity (AFAB characters were all basically treated as women). I think she had good intentions, but bad execution.

I dunno. If you're looking for a feminist cowboy story or good social commentary, I think this will fall short of the mark, but it was still fun. Just not one I'd really recommend.

I wanted to like this, but I mostly wound up not caring. It's half memoir, half about his friend who was killed when they were in college together, mostly centered on how pretentious and self absorbed Hsu was as a teen/young adult. He grew up in the 90s, very into zines and underground bands, and very judgmental of anyone with different tastes. He's obviously writing this as an adult with a lot more self awareness, but I did find it incredibly insufferable to listen to. He was an irritating kid (as many are, definitely me as well) and I just had a bad time with that aspect of the book.

Because of that, my interest in the memoir aspect of the story was pretty limited. I loved hearing about his family and especially his father. I really enjoyed when he talked about larger sociocultural issues, because he's quite insightful and has a lot to say, but I struggled.

In terms of his friend's death, he did a brilliant job capturing the emotion. It was heartbreaking, but in a quiet, real sort of way. Definitely had me tearing up even while listening to the audiobook, so I'd recommend it for that alone.

Overall it was fine. A lot of high points, but I was kind of disinterested.

This was just a really well done book. Like everything about it was so good and I have basically no criticisms. Rachel Joyce is a fantastic writer.

The only thing I kind of struggled with was some of the second hand embarrassment type stuff, just because I'm super sensitive to that. I hate when people don't realize their the butt of the joke and play into it kind of.

But it was really great. I devoured this in basically two sittings and had such a good time. The characters were great, the writing was wonderful, and I really loved following Marjorie and Enid on their relationship. It was wonderful.

It reminded me a lot of Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine, so if you enjoyed that, I would highly recommend this book.

I don't have many thoughts on these books. They're not amazing, but I'm really interested to see where this story is going overall. It's actually funny because as I was reading this, I was thinking how repetitive it's getting. The kids hide, they decide to go investigate the war some more, they make something go boom. Only the end of this book was a lot different and kind of implied the story is taking a sharp left turn.

I was definitely getting a bit bored of this series, but I'm excited to see where it goes next.

This book was much more fun than the first, probably owing to the fact that all the characters have been fully introduced so we only need the briefest of introductions in this one. There was more time spent on the story and the action, and less explaining what's going on (although there was still a decent amount). It was quick and fun. Not amazing by any means, but I'm glad I continued after the first one.

My biggest issue with this book is that it's very poorly described. It claims (at least on my edition) to be largely about her relationship with her father and his conviction for rape, especially as Ford is a rape victim herself. But it barely touches on that. Her father's presence, and absence as the case may be, is important to her story, but the knowledge of his conviction is barely more than a troubling aside.

Even if that hadn't been how the book was sold to me, it felt so odd to hardly discuss that at all. A lot of this book is about feminism and rape culture, and what it means to grow up as a woman in this environment. Yet her father's conviction of rape was basically mentioned as he did a terrible thing. It bothered me that it was so present in the story and still so disregarded. The book didn't need to be about that, but the way it was written, it didn't work for me.

Beyond that, I really enjoyed this. She spends a lot of time discussing her relationship with her mother and the abuse she suffered as a child, as well as just what it meant to be her. It was fantastically written and she did a great job with the audiobook. I loved listening to it so much and was fully engrossed from start to finish.

Even with its flaws, I'd highly recommend this. Ford is a fantastic storyteller with a lot of insights.

I found this so boring. Mouillot writes about her grandparents' marriage and divorce, but without much actual knowledge of their marriage or divorce. They divorced when her mother was very young and as far as I could tell, haven't spoken in decades. So Mouillot doesn't have a whole lot to go on when she was writing this and it wound up mostly being conjecture and figuring out when they were in the same cities together. I get that she cares deeply about their relationship, but she failed to make me as a reader care.

The truly unfortunate part was that the marriage was the least interesting part of both her grandparents' lives. Her grandmother was a doctor, I believe a psychiatrist, in France in the 30s, and her grandfather was a Jewish translator at the Nuremberg trials. I was way more interested in both of those things, but both were relegated to short asides, or only brought up as they related to the marriage.

I get why the author cared, but there was very little in this book for me as a reader. I was so bored while reading this. It took me almost two weeks because I couldn't make myself read more than thirty or forty pages a day.

I loved this. It was such a fun time. Maud is an 88 year old woman who's never met a mild inconvenience that couldn't be solved with murder. A neighbor makes some annoying noise? Murder. Someone wants to buy her flat? Murder. Her exboyfriend who dumped her 70 years together is getting married? Murder.

She plays up the fact that she's just a little old lady and it's a great time. It's basically what you'd expect from a collection of super short stories about this old serial killer. Great writing, great characters, fun murders. What's not to like?

This is a book that suffered from my overly high expectations. It was really fantastic, but I so badly wanted this to be the best book I'd ever read. It's just not a realistic expectation for any book, and I feel more negatively because of my own mindset.

The writing was gorgeous. There's a sparse brutality to it that really lends itself to the subject matter. Kandasamy is sometimes lyrical and gorgeous and sometimes abrupt and blunt, and it made the subject matter more powerful. You felt the brutality as a reader and it was wonderful.

I felt like this worked better as individual pieces rather than a whole. As essays, as concepts, so unbelievably gorgeous. But as a singular novel, I'm not sure it worked all that well. 

I loved this and I wish I could go in with a fresh eyes and experience without my tainted mindset. I would highly recommend.

My thoughts on this were pretty much identical to the first book. It was a great deal of fun and I enjoyed following Kate as she investigated the mystery.

I still don't like the alpha male romance that's going on. I still think at times she's a little bit too snarky in a trying too hard kind of way. I still found some of the magic/world building confusing. And I still found myself bored in the first half, but really engrossed in the second.

Definitely want to read the third book, but I'm still not sure I'm committed to the whole series yet.