essjay's Reviews (635)

I was fairly recently talking with some friends about the body issue trauma we inherited from our moms, and how we're all doing our best to not pass it on to our kids. Our grandmothers all had help in the form of prescription amphetamines, so when their daughters didn't and weren't as thin, they shamed them for their bodies, and our moms did the same to us. I look back at pictures of myself before the disordered eating started, and I don't understand how my mom ever thought it was okay to make the comments she did about my body, and it's no wonder I forced myself to be underweight for so long (at which point, she still said I would never be skinny bc my hips were too wide). 

Anyway, this is primarily what Age 16 is about and it made me cry more than once. 

Last year, I read Exalted, and described it to a friend as "kinda trashy litfic, like a Millennial Marcy Dermansky," so when I grabbed the ARC of Perfume and Pain and saw the Marcy Dermansky quote on the cover, I thought "yup, fuckin nailed it."

I loved Astrid Dahl, loved that she wrote the same books Anna Dorn has written, was so sad as the percentage of book read kept getting higher far too fast, and time left in the book kept getting lower. Did not want this book to be over, but could not make myself stop reading. I'm highly allergic to most perfumes, but spent the whole time I was reading (happily) overwhelmed by olfactory hues. 

I highlighted so many passages and cackled to myself so many times that my youngest and my husband kept asking what was so funny (yes, I'm one of those queer women Astrid wouldn't want in her writing group). How to explain the Patricia Highsmith? Or that I'm definitely not a quiet person, though I no longer have a goodreads account? And have it be anything other than a barely hinged non sequitur?

brb, falling down a Messy Women Trashy LitFic rabbithole. 

Also, that cover is gorgeous (and I'm not just saying that bc I'm obsessed with pink book covers). 

Probably would have given a higher rating, but wtf was the end?!

Just a lot of fun. I need the further adventures of Mankiller Jones, please and thank you. 

Honestly, 3½ (my rating at the time of this writing) feels both too high and too low. I have both many thoughts about this book, but also none at all. Was I the right audience? I don't know. The Unit kind of didn't seem so terrible to me, but I can understand how it might seem horrifying for others. 

Really interesting look at a sort of proto-second wave feminism asking what would happen if (primarily) women were given a chance to live their lives for themselves while they were still young (for however long) instead of for others as daughters, wives, mothers, and caretakers. 

Was a little disappointed bc I thought for sure that an early mention of one of Darr's innovations (

regarding the virus that induced sterility in male locusts, but left the females able to reproduce on their own for several generations

) was going to come back around at the end. Alas. 

Full disclosure: I do not remember requesting this ARC and was mildly bemused when I got the email saying I'd been approved because...I did not actually think The Space Between Worlds was all that great. I mean, it was fine, but I've said elsewhere that it mostly reminded me of Patton Oswalt's scorned magician hate-fucking the crowd with magic. "And than THIS twist happened, OKAY? Okay. And then ANOTHER twist! OKAY? Okay." for the whole book. It was exhausting.

It took me a while to settle into Those Beyond the Wall bc even with a different lead (and despite a banger of an author's note at the beginning), I really struggled. I sat at 6-8% for WEEKS. Would pick it up, read a paragraph, think "yeah, no" and put it down again.  Finally had to force myself to sit down and finish it, since the pub date is getting so close. 

AND I'M VERY GLAD I DID. Johnson talks in her author's note about how this book was fueled by the anger many of us were feeling during the protests in 2020 and that rage drips off of every page. Reading this was so cathartic in so many ways, and there are parts of it that I'm going to be thinking about for a very long time. 

Was not expecting this book to fully wreck my emotions, but here we are. Genuinely so SO good, and will be coming back to this when I'm in need. 

I read the first book in this series over and over as a kid (thanks to RIF), but never found the rest of them. About 10y ago, I read the fourth book, but this is my first time reading THIS one. So pleased it has actually held up, and isn't full of problematic BS like so many other childhood favourites from the same time. 

More a series of vignettes than a proper novel, though everything did come together at the end. 

I read this over several weeks, a chapter or two at a time at the library while waiting for my kids. This led to it playing sort of like an anthology series on the movie screen in my mind, which was highly enjoyable.  I would watch this show, 100%. 

I feel like comparisons to Wes Anderson will be inevitable, there is a similar sort of postmodern whimsy present that can be difficult to nail. I do feel like the stakes may be TOO high for cozy purists, but I had a lot of fun.