DNF 9% in. The main premise and first chapter stressed me out too much. Contemporary books are very hit-or-miss for me and I didn't like anything the character in the very first chapter did. 

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book.  

DNF 10% in. This is a political thriller/murder mystery which is detail-laden in an attempt to give context, but I don’t care enough about the political machinations being described in order to devote the mental energy to piecing together their importance. Also there’s a weird thread of subtle misogyny which isn’t confined to any one character but feels like a problem with the book as a whole (at least the part of it I got through). The police procedural bits were the most interesting so far but the prose even in those sections was so flat that it felt like it was trying to be boring on purpose and the conversations were closer to dialogue transcripts than full scenes. This might be for someone, but it’s not for me.

DNF 188 pages in. 

This is my second attempt at reading Star Daughter and it just doesn’t click with me. I think the thing that’s irking me is that it’s full of pining for the status quo to be different but we don’t actually spend any time in the status quo she’s objecting to. So changes don’t feel important, it just feels like I’m getting jerked around. Almost as soon as we meet her kind-of-boyfriend we find out he knows her secret so it doesn’t feel like a betrayal to me as a reader because I don’t have the emotional weight of liking him first... I struggled so much with this book.  The MC will say what she thought her state of mind was going to be and then tells us what it actually is... but when the first time we find out what she thought it would be is when it's something different it just feels confused.  A minor example that shows this issue without really being a spoiler: the first time we ever hear about Little India in/near her neighborhood is when she finds out it has a magical night market. Cool, yay? But since we didn’t visit it at all or have the mundane side of it discussed previously my reaction isn’t “wow Little India has a magical night market!”, it’s more like, “oh sure, this new story location (Little India) has a particular feature (a magical night market). I’m not excited because I had zero expectations as to the existence or non-existence of this place. This really is a minor example, but it comes on the heels of several like it that are definitely spoilers. 

I didn't get as far as the actual competition part of the narrative, so I can't vouch for how any of that plays out. If you want a story that spends at least the first half feeling like the aftermath for something you didn't get to see, you might like this. I like the MC's best friend, she feels so much more vibrant than the MC, so much so that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that in the second half the book reveals the MC's emotions were dampened by being on Earth or something, that's really the only thing I can think of that would make the flat characterization and lack of tension around the MC's narration feel purposeful. But, for me, I spent almost half the book waiting to care about the story and that just never happened, so I'm calling it quits.

DNF 112 pages in. 
It had the makings of a strong commentary on sexism, imperialism, and the way we treat those who either can’t speak for themselves or are never given the space to do so. I liked it at first, but it’s an emotional roller coaster because of the blend between kinds of bigotry which are clearly intentional and examined in the narrative and ones which don’t seem to be on purpose and are various kinds of casual racism/xenophobia or using words now understood as slurs. What made me stop was the realization that the portrayal of the titular character felt like an ableist and allistic understanding of an autistic person, complete with extremely literal interpretations of vernacular, and stress reactions which are difficult to describe without using the world "meltdown". This character was raised by aliens and is new to Earth, which was further troubling because it seemed to be associating classically (but not exclusively) autistic traits with being a literal visitor from outer space. It's possible that it gets better later, but I was too stressed out to see if it did.

DNF 36 pages in. It was dry and very slow, replicating the ableism and racism from the original plus adding some sexism (I'm not sure if the sexism was in Robinson Crusoe or not, since it's been a while since I tried reading that). Maybe it was going to examine some of those problematic aspects, like colonialism, but I wasn't ready to stick around and find out.

DNF 45 pages in. I don't normally read slice-of-life books but I tried this and it's just not for me. 

DNF at 25%
It’s sweet and cute and the plot hinges on a relationship trope that stresses me out to the point that I basically can’t watch any sitcoms ever. It’s not right for me. 

I did not finish Collected Ghost Stories, I made it four stories in (just shy of 50 pages). 

I love the cadence of writing from the late 19th and early 20th century, but that's the only thing I liked about this, and that wasn't enough for me to keep going. Contemporary racist and ableist ideas about what is scary played a part a couple of the stories I read (e.g.: casually invoking “gipsies” as being blamed for a child’s disappearance but not actually responsible for it; describing an apparition as dark, sub-human, and low-intelligence based on appearance alone, etc.). 

I was disappointed by the endings of the first several stories, they end with the mystery being explained, usually by a narrator, then that’s it. No resolution, nothing. Just the explanation of the event and it ends. My understanding is that the later stories get a bit better, but for me it wasn't worth pushing through. If you want to know what a late-19th/early-20th century white professor wrote as ghost stories, then it's fine for that, but I wouldn't pick this up if I want to read something scary. A couple of the concepts are really cool (a tree full of giant spiders that grows where a woman burned as a witch was buried is a neat story idea), but the actual stories weren't very engaging (even when they weren't actively racist).

I did not finish Ship of Smoke and Steel, I got 110 pages in and had to stop because I had a weird mix between apathy and dread every time I thought about it. This one just never gripped me, I think I had trouble relating to a MC who treats allies as so completely disposable. If they’re not going to care about the secondary characters, why should I? Even this early on there is a hint of possible queer romance that will develop later on in the book, but since the protagonist has already demonstrated that they are completely capable of

murdering men they've been in relationships with

, being offered a f/f pairing doesn't sit right with me. As a bi person, having a character who seems to be written as bi or pan also be a character willing to

murder their partners

is really unsettling because it plays into biphobic stereotypes. If the book handles it by making her have been lesbian and not really bi or pan... that would make it worse, not better because it would play off of a different facet of biphobia. I didn't get far enough to know which way it was going to go, but I got far enough to know that I wouldn't be comfortable with either solution.

The pacing was very slow and I was creeped out by the age gap in a romance where one person was a minor. I love queer books and thought the movie was okay, but this just felt off.