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crispycritter's Reviews (516)
Well, the whole vampire pillow that must feed for eternity part was unexpected.
I'm remembering now why I don't read 'book club' books. And maybe this just makes me an asshole - but this book, like many other Reece's/GMA/Jenna's picks are so middle of the road I come away wondering what the point of it all was. They don't meaningfully explore what it means to be a slowly decaying flesh puppet hurtling around a dying star on some dying rock. They aren't overly silly or irreverant or fun or macabre. It's like they're all about watching someone else's life that is just slightly worse or slightly better than your own do something mundane for 300 pages. Is this what well-adjusted people like to read? I think I'm just too mentally ill for these books. They don't make me FEEL. They just make me feel. Only a little. And that feeling never lasts.
I'm sure at least one person is reading this review and being all like, 'oh you can't review a book if you don't even like the genre,' but listen - even from a craft perspective this book isn't stellar. It's just ok.
I'm sure at least one person is reading this review and being all like, 'oh you can't review a book if you don't even like the genre,' but listen - even from a craft perspective this book isn't stellar. It's just ok.
- There is a 'mystery' that's not really a mystery when you give said mystery its own POV chapters. *gasp* who could this character be??? Why are they important??? I figured out exactly where we were going ~20 pages.
- I definitely don't think authors have to keep you guessing till the bitter end. In fact, solving mysteries or riddles can be one of the most satisfying parts of reading a book. I love a good ah ha! But, you know. Later. Much later. You solve The Big Mystery in Remarkably Bright Creatures in basically the beginning of the book. So rather than satisfaction, I just felt sustained frustration watching the characters slowly work their way toward answers. Dramatic irony works when there's a reason for this disconnect. I get into it a bit more below, but the 'conflict' of the book could have been solved by three characters having a conversation.
- Leading the reader by the nose and just generally a lack of nuance. I didn't save any page numbers for this, so going off vibes, I just felt like - I was GETTING there, Van Pelt, and now I'm annoyed because you whacked me in the face with a newspaper right before I made the connection you wanted me to make.
- The prose was nice. But distant. But nice. Like I said, I'm here to FEEL. Not feel.
- The characters get interrupted throughout the book, once they have almost figured things out, in overly convenient ways. Example: Ethan MUST tell Tova something. She tragically
uses his grateful dead tee to clean up a wine spill and is so embarrassed she storms out before Ethan can tell her. 1. That's SO convenient. 2. The woman is 70. She doesn't move that fast. TELL HER NOW. Cameroncalls his boss Terry to tell him he's leaving town but can't use his phone to communicate with his girlfriend - naturally, the universe conspires so that Avery doesn't get his in-person message. His phone breaks because we need a convenient way for Cameron to be gone but not able to communicate with the other characters. - The romance. As a voracious reader and defender of the genre of Romance, it grinds my gears that there's all this wonderful romance with beautiful interiority and character development that's not taken seriously because ~spice~ meanwhile, Cameron's romance is equivalent to La Croix - the barely-there suggestion of flavor. This book didn't need the hint of a romance for this little unrepentant dirtbag (who I actually liked as a character).
- Speaking of characters - did anyone really grow? Or change? Cameron still seems like an unrepentant dirtbag, but he's just held down a job for a bit. Ethan is the same. Tova moves. Some of her friends move away. She makes a few more. I really didn't see enough to indicate that her relationship with
Ethan was anything beyond platonic, which is fine. But like I said, she had friends. So then he's just a new friend. Marcellusends up in the ocean and we're to assume he died. That's a change in character, I suppose? :/ - Marcellus: both unnecessary to the furtherance of the plot and the most enjoyable part of the book. Seriously, I got misty eyed reading his latter diary entries. Because this was a good book? Nah. Because the life of an octopus is intrinsically tragic - to be so brilliant and to live such short, violent lives in the wild. And to live such small lives in captivity. If you wrote a book where the dog died, even if it's the worst book in the world, I'm probably gonna cry. Some elements are just going to prey upon reader's emotions, even if they're not written well.
- K1ll Your Darlings hot take - Marcellus. Sorry. All these characters end up in the same small town without his help. They all know each other. Some of them work together. Some of them are friends. To settle the plot of this book, they all really just needed to sit down and have a cup of coffee together. An octopus was cute and clever and witty - but at the end of the day, unnecessary.
Grump out.
I can suffer no more.
Started out - fine? I didn’t go into this expecting Shakespeare.
Started out - fine? I didn’t go into this expecting Shakespeare.
- I felt like I was reading blocking for a play. Why did I need to know so and so was walking to the left of the couch while someone else was on the right etc etc?
- Terrible spice. Too much spice. Spice for spice’s sake. At one point the author tried to convince us that the MMC loved his super toothy bl0w j0b. It felt like this was written by a 13 year old with zero real life experience.
- Ya gotta make sure the one character isn’t so mean to the other character that a grovel is actually possible.
- Overall, the writing was ROUGH. Just because we can monetize fanfiction doesn’t mean we should.
It's a semi-pornographic beauty and the beast that is chock full of anachronisms and wildy creative scottish insults. The romance? Mercy. The rest? Silly, irreverant, does not take itself at all seriously. That's why it was so delightful.
Caroline Lee included an author's note going through the very intentional historical inaccuracies, which was amazing. No need to clutch your pearls about it. Wanna know the history of the chicken dance? Read this book my friends.
Caroline Lee included an author's note going through the very intentional historical inaccuracies, which was amazing. No need to clutch your pearls about it. Wanna know the history of the chicken dance? Read this book my friends.
This book felt like it was more about the author proving his own cleverness, explaining the perfect crimes in perfect detail, than it was about telling a good story. It would have made a funny short story. At novel length, it gave me a lot of time as a reader to pull on threads. Under a close reading, things quickly began to unravel.
Holmes never fully leaned into the macabre and the satire. The bad guys had to be completely irredeemable. The deletists had to be good people. We had to be told with the same overly academic heavy-handedness that these deaths are ethical! This didn't give the reader any room to be uncomfortable and seriously ponder the ethics of extrajudicial murder. It also made the book less fun and silly than it could have been.
The entire book is expositive. It made it difficult as a reader to emotionally relate to any of the characters.
McMasters is an absolutely bananas, nonsense place with bananas, nonsense rules. This could have been cool - but once again, Holmes kept telling us 'no no it makes perfect sense.' It does not, and that sort of disconnect was really frustrating as a reader. I'm down to read about and accept nonsense. Asking me to accept why nonsense rules are actually rational just made me bristle.
We follow three deletists and I kept wondering - why these three? I kept waiting for some artful connection at the end. Cliff and Gemma reconnect in a campy, unearned, and frankly jarring happy ever after. Doria's story never reconnects to Cliff and Gemma's after leaving McMasters. Her story was the most interesting AND the most problematic.
I generally don't give books below 2 stars unless they really piss me off - but Doria Maye's method of deletion was awful. Apparently it was evil for Fiedler to plant Communist Party pamphlets with Cliff's work documents but copacetic for Doria to lean into 1950s trans panic. Doria makes it appear as though a man dressed as a woman murdered Leo Kosta. To really sell this lie she uses another person's actual DNA - effectively framing someone innocent. Despite McMasters being about deletions not harming anyone innocent, Doria's modus operandi harms the specific human whose DNA she plants at the crime scene and an entire marginalized community.
I just don't know how you can spend the entire book bleating on about how moral all these murders are . . . and then pin the blame on a queer boogeyman? I get that within the 1950s setting this would have worked and I guess? been shocking? clever? But framing a marginalized community (AND AN ACTUAL INNOCENT INDIVIDUAL BECAUSE DNA YO) does not abide by Rule #3. What innocent person might suffer by your actions? Guy McMasters asks. The answer: A lot of innocent persons. We just don't care about them.
I know some folks out there may play devil's advocate and say, 'well maybe Holmes wanted the reader to be critical of Doria's method of deletion . . .' Then why spend so much time going over the McMaster's rule of mitigating harm to others and setting up our three deletists as good people acting ethically? Why didn't the McMaster's board permanently expel Doria the same way they did to Jud Helkampf? Isn't letting Doria live and hint at murdering again kind of implicit approval of the way she chose to go about deleting Leonid Kosta?? What does it say that they gave Gemma a second chance for saving an awful person merely because the awful person was pregnant? We care more about a fetus than we do about queer people??? You can't have it both ways.
</spoiler
Holmes never fully leaned into the macabre and the satire. The bad guys had to be completely irredeemable. The deletists had to be good people. We had to be told with the same overly academic heavy-handedness that these deaths are ethical! This didn't give the reader any room to be uncomfortable and seriously ponder the ethics of extrajudicial murder. It also made the book less fun and silly than it could have been.
The entire book is expositive. It made it difficult as a reader to emotionally relate to any of the characters.
McMasters is an absolutely bananas, nonsense place with bananas, nonsense rules. This could have been cool - but once again, Holmes kept telling us 'no no it makes perfect sense.' It does not, and that sort of disconnect was really frustrating as a reader. I'm down to read about and accept nonsense. Asking me to accept why nonsense rules are actually rational just made me bristle.
We follow three deletists and I kept wondering - why these three? I kept waiting for some artful connection at the end. Cliff and Gemma reconnect in a campy, unearned, and frankly jarring happy ever after. Doria's story never reconnects to Cliff and Gemma's after leaving McMasters. Her story was the most interesting AND the most problematic.
I generally don't give books below 2 stars unless they really piss me off - but Doria Maye's method of deletion was awful. Apparently it was evil for Fiedler to plant Communist Party pamphlets with Cliff's work documents but copacetic for Doria to lean into 1950s trans panic.
I just don't know how you can spend the entire book bleating on about how moral all these murders are . . . and then pin the blame on a queer boogeyman? I get that within the 1950s setting this would have worked and I guess? been shocking? clever? But framing a marginalized community (AND AN ACTUAL INNOCENT INDIVIDUAL BECAUSE DNA YO) does not abide by Rule #3. What innocent person might suffer by your actions? Guy McMasters asks. The answer: A lot of innocent persons. We just don't care about them.
I know some folks out there may play devil's advocate and say, 'well maybe Holmes wanted the reader to be critical of Doria's method of deletion . . .' Then why spend so much time going over the McMaster's rule of mitigating harm to others and setting up our three deletists as good people acting ethically? Why didn't the McMaster's board permanently expel Doria the same way they did to Jud Helkampf? Isn't letting Doria live and hint at murdering again kind of implicit approval of the way she chose to go about deleting Leonid Kosta?? What does it say that they gave Gemma a second chance for saving an awful person merely because the awful person was pregnant? We care more about a fetus than we do about queer people??? You can't have it both ways.
</spoiler
Content Warnings
Graphic: Transphobia
Moderate: Misogyny
There was a pretty upsetting twist about halfway through that dealt with a traumatic loss of bodily autonomy - be warned. Nothing like the love interest being forced against her will to be spelled to look like her recently deceased favorite sister, force her not to be able to tell the dude she's in love with the truth, then marry her off to said dude. Tell her she must bang said dude. And then spend a lot of the book having the dude fall for her in her sister's face? Based primarily on how much he likes her physical attributes??? Is this . . . romantic?
This is a sweet, slice-of-life book with a ridiculous set up where nothing much happens. It's also a really awesome portayal of a relationship with a soft d0mme and - ahem - cReAtIvItY in the bedroom.
Loved The Kiss Quotient, loved this. The miscommunication trope is something that gets a lot of hate - for good reason. It's often a lazy way to create conflict. But it's done right in this book: after Khai accepts that Esme is going to be a part of his life and in his space for the summer, Khai and Esme slowly circle each other -desperate to be understood. And there are very good reasons for them to misunderstand each other. They come from different cultures, they struggle to speak the same language, and Esme sometimes struggles to understand Khai's neurodiverse mind. I appreciate how different Hoang's representation of Khai's autism is from Stella's (TKQ) and found I deeply, deeply related to Khai's experience with grief and love and feeling like these experiences were something he could only observe from the outside but never experience himself. Watching him fall in love with Esme was perfection.
This was almost a carbon copy of The Dead Romantics with the same glaring issue: the romance - where was it? And yeah, I’m gonna rate this lower than I did TDR because Poston somehow wrote The Seven Year Slip in between - which is one of my desert island reads. I know she can do better. I’m starting to think I need to re-read TSYS because maybe I’ve misremembered its awesomeness.
This book was so disappointing and in desperate need of an editor. Anders’ eyes were described at minty over 20 times, his blonde hair looked golden in [insert time of day] ad nauseum. There was a typo on page ONE. At one point Elsy puts a tenner on the diner table to pay, and several paragraphs later she puts another tenner to pay. Woops. Forgot to edit one of those out.
Anders may have been stale bread but Elsy was mean and abusive and stale bread deserves better. She nearly runs him over with her car, she slaps him because he said some rude stuff about her ex (doesn’t justify physically assaulting a person), and when he is afraid of heights crossing a rope bridge she rocks the bridge to scare him more.*** Naturally, he apologizes.
We tried to manufacture enemies to lovers for a hot minute without any real reason for them being enemies? People keep saying there’s some grumpy/sunshine trope here but since when is sunshine this much of an asshole?
I am so tired of our leading lady being some incompetent buffoon who the love interest is unjustifiably smitten with. At one point Anders says to Elsy “I think you can do whatever you put your mind to, Eileen. You’re terrifying that way.” Who? The broad you just met who accidentally put sugar in spaghetti not for the first time? This whole scene was so bizzare - Anders offers to make her dinner and she steamrolls him and takes over because she doesn't think he knows how to boil water and open a jar. Neither does she, obviously.
At one point Poston has this silly moment making fun of The Dead Romantics -so meta! - and I kept thinking yeah, those are actually some of the things that sucked about that book. I don’t think this is having the impact you wanted it to.
I dunno. This was a massive massive miss for me. I don’t like any of these jerks. Someone said this book would have worked better as a horror novel and I’m inclined to agree.
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***Gonna get on my soapbox here - but listen, y'all, sometimes as women we really need to be more critical of our own actions and how they perpetuate the patriarchy. Why is Anders' body not worthy of the same respect as Elsy's? It's ok to almost murder him without apology and to physically assault him because he said something mean? I'm supposed to find this funny? It's not. It's ok to prey on his fear of heights and make a joke about it? He should just be a man and suck it up? It was just a joke! Jeez stop taking everything so seriously!! Seriously, no. I'm tired of this. This is not a dark romance, this is a rom-com. Be nice.
This book was so disappointing and in desperate need of an editor. Anders’ eyes were described at minty over 20 times, his blonde hair looked golden in [insert time of day] ad nauseum. There was a typo on page ONE. At one point Elsy puts a tenner on the diner table to pay, and several paragraphs later she puts another tenner to pay. Woops. Forgot to edit one of those out.
Anders may have been stale bread but Elsy was mean and abusive and stale bread deserves better. She nearly runs him over with her car, she slaps him because he said some rude stuff about her ex (doesn’t justify physically assaulting a person), and when he is afraid of heights crossing a rope bridge she rocks the bridge to scare him more.*** Naturally, he apologizes.
We tried to manufacture enemies to lovers for a hot minute without any real reason for them being enemies? People keep saying there’s some grumpy/sunshine trope here but since when is sunshine this much of an asshole?
I am so tired of our leading lady being some incompetent buffoon who the love interest is unjustifiably smitten with. At one point Anders says to Elsy “I think you can do whatever you put your mind to, Eileen. You’re terrifying that way.” Who? The broad you just met who accidentally put sugar in spaghetti not for the first time? This whole scene was so bizzare - Anders offers to make her dinner and she steamrolls him and takes over because she doesn't think he knows how to boil water and open a jar. Neither does she, obviously.
At one point Poston has this silly moment making fun of The Dead Romantics -so meta! - and I kept thinking yeah, those are actually some of the things that sucked about that book. I don’t think this is having the impact you wanted it to.
I dunno. This was a massive massive miss for me. I don’t like any of these jerks. Someone said this book would have worked better as a horror novel and I’m inclined to agree.
_________________________________________
***Gonna get on my soapbox here - but listen, y'all, sometimes as women we really need to be more critical of our own actions and how they perpetuate the patriarchy. Why is Anders' body not worthy of the same respect as Elsy's? It's ok to almost murder him without apology and to physically assault him because he said something mean? I'm supposed to find this funny? It's not. It's ok to prey on his fear of heights and make a joke about it? He should just be a man and suck it up? It was just a joke! Jeez stop taking everything so seriously!! Seriously, no. I'm tired of this. This is not a dark romance, this is a rom-com. Be nice.