As soon as you discover this is about a 13 year old and mid 20s guy having a romance, you ought to be reading this critically. And it’s my view that doesn’t do near enough work to earn the ending or to not be purely a romanticization of problematic issues without nuance, proper characterization, and believability.

For one, the characters characterization is built up prior to their relationship changing from a caregiver family friend to a sexualized one. As soon as it begins the story becomes plot driven, though still somewhat believable in terms of character driven plot.

However, as soon as that happens, every POV up until the aunt discovering their relationship completely romantizes every interaction they have. Even other people, usually girls, characterize Wavy as powerful, sexy, and beyond her years. And everyone else just sort of succumbs to her newly found mystique. As though she is wise beyond her years and somehow has agency.

Here’s the thing: the author frames the story so this isn’t objective. We are out into the headspace of purely the people who do not object to this, with the very small occasion of an adult being idk man, but does seem like they care about each other from what I can see.

There is no detail or scene given as much time as the sex and romantic aspects of their relationship. And every other perspective of people who aren’t Wavy’s cousins or friends are framed as antagonistic without us granted the same headspace as those people who approve of their being together. Even the apparent consent of the parents to the couple is glossed over to feed a plot point, rather than give nuance to the actual relationship.

Afterward the sexualization of Wavy, at 13, the agent of sexual awakening, apparently, and for the later entire half of the entire novel, there’s little to no characterization whatsoever. They no longer feel like they’re going to be fleshed out as actual people as their headspace is dominated by their thoughts of one another and there is no description, action, or any work at all to demonstrate that they’re lived in. And it also skates over things that would have had to have happened in this case.

Yeah, they’re broken people but even people who do not emotionally develop because of trauma are still situated in time and place and move through the world. Why did Wavy get no counselling? I’m not sure she could have actually refused a medical examination, or did she never go to the doctor ever in her life? Which would have negated a anticlimactic reveal.

They do not feel like real people, just vehicles for a question the author wants explored: Is there a situation in which this kind of relationship would be okay? The answer being, in a long enough time line and environmental factors adding two broken people, it’s the only way they can be okay, possibly.

Yet, the decision is made already by virtue of whose voices are given screen time, how those voices are slanted, and what information we are restricted from having. In a broken sort of way, a broken relationship can still be beautiful and true, right?

Except we don’t even get a full picture of the ways in which those traumas actually affect them at the time, nor the full effect. The only external factors are the system that rejects their relationship and their internalized beliefs about their relationship. Both serve no nuance. I don’t even buy the judge granting the other based on what Wavy said. Especially without a psych evaluation.

The head hopping wants to give the illusion that this is objective but reality is the farthest from intruding. The only thing the story succeeds at is romanticizing a very problematic relationship, in which no consent is possible - and the fact that the system does not support people with trauma.

Though, what the contours of their trauma actually are, who possibly knows.

Fantastic dark humour about a gay 28 year old woman living with an anxiety disorder, navigating unemployment and a series of events mostly steeped in verisimilitude. There is a kind of through line that occurs about a quarter of the way in, when it appears that someone may have been murdered, but most of the narrative is about the lived experience of someone with a disorder and probably mental issues of some kind (I don’t think it mentions any formal diagnosis in the text?).

What is so different about this is how unassuming the narrative is. The narrator at times feels like a diary discussing the events of the day, skipping time often. But it’s also voyeuristic, enabling a compelling kind of humour that doesn’t feel like it’s laughing at the character but the reader is included in a narrative constructed to counter a lot of the notions the protagonist has about herself—caused by her anxiety, no doubt. I found her to be relatable and smart and incredibly endearing. One of the easiest characters in a long time to root for.

The plot, as far as there is one as it’s pretty loose, also operates appropriate to the story. Often, it shows that what she’s anxious about doesn’t come to pass and she worries for “no reason”, but that’s not how anxiety works. The stereotypes about people suffering from anxiety are countered with her characterization, which I really appreciated and I found augmented the humour. Reminded me of Fleabag somewhat, but far less sexual content.

I loved the movie and thought the book might be even better. Unfortunately, that’s not really the case. All the interiority is on the wrong character for much of it. Either with a precocious but sociopathic kid, or the father of a kid in the same school. The movie recenters and films the more bombastic and hilarious scenes, while the book, because it attempts to ground so much of it in this meandering and circuitous trifecta, fails to jibe with the action sequences.

Everything great about it is cinematic, and the movie surprisingly added quite a bit of material that is, again, more in-line with what the story does well. This is still somewhat subversive of genre, and I probably would have liked it more if I hadn’t seen the movie. There’s really nothing superior about the story in this format, which is kind of wild. It’s why I fear picking up Fight Club, too. Everyone says the movie is miles better. It’s rare, but it happens.

This is a short and fun little accounting of a friend of Jim Morrison. It’s a quick read and has nice flow. It just also feels painted with rose-coloured glasses that makes it feel a bit askew and either filled with vague details and is sometimes interesting, sometimes boring. This reads like all the details you’d put down if you wanted a sanitized version of people to wax nostalgia with friends, which led to no emotional connection and punch, for me.

Damn. Horrific, beautiful, unpredictable. Like a weird fever dream with purpose. Loved it!

Another great instalment. It’s not quite as perfectly buttoned up as the last. It’s quite ambitious, compared to the previous two, actually: Old characters returning in surprising ways, multiple suspects, sordid pasts airing, more romance, more bodies. It being more convoluted wouldn’t have degraded my enjoyment as much if the previous book was not pretty much a perfect sequel. It just felt the opposite of this. Very tightly plotted and a moment in it that I didn’t see coming and was genuinely perfect in plot and theme. In a way, nothing maybe could have followed the book.

However, the characters are back and I love them all dearly. It’s funny, sassy, intricate, and far more wild than expected. In terms of “fun” factor actually, it’s probably number one in the series. It’s bombastic and feels like an Oceans 11 movie but with murder. It feels like a book where the author had a hell of a good time writing it and it’s right there on the page. This series is still forefront in my mind for cozy, funny, Murder mysteries as a unit. Not read anything like it and doubt the quintessential aspects about it I like would translate to other characters.

Wild that this is rated so poorly. Well written, as per usual. An actual well and justified use of second person to third person use. Evocative, interesting, and structurally conveys ingrained themes.

A grieving woman dislodges from linear time as grief alters her reality. What should be safe becomes terrifying and surreal. Memory makes her dwell in situations with no agency. Almost anything can cause a spiral like this. There’s parallels to Greek myth and other tragedy. Form and structure do make it a challenging read somewhat—as we continually are pulled into heart wrenching and gut punching granular detail about death and love and general cruelties, ranging from self inflicted to the external when people lose an integral part of their makeup.

There is a lot of pain here and it has no intention of cushioning the blow. I could see how people wouldn’t want to spiral along with our protagonist. But it is exactly what it says it is on the tin, and then some.

The more I think about this, the more I think it’s a modern classic. It’s proper, classic scifi but with better prose work, on average. Form meeting function, every facet of the craft goes toward communicating small and large ideas in play, built into an atypical first contact story with horror elements. The characters are ideologues, but also contribute to plot beats in a more organic way than they usually do in “idea” books. They are understandable, not likeable (in the least), and transhumanism is explored in compelling ways. Each are modified in some way, with the protagonist being essentially lobotomized, the “leader” being a bio hacked drone controller, and the main sticking point for most people (from what I’ve seen), the de facto commander of their mission, being a bio engineered vampire, who is the only person who can communicate with the AI ship.

It’s also all hard scifi, so there are detailed explanations of everything, including the vampire. Personally, I really liked the details, which didn’t feel like so much it got boring, but natural and interesting. Without a doubt, the most interesting thing about the book are the large ideas married to the plot, and the staging of the ideas to the revelations at the conclusion. It prompts a lot of philosophical questions posed through a scientific lens. It’s also constantly tense, due to the nature of the aliens. It felt kind of like Event Horizon, but with less overt gore and visuals. It’s more creepy but similarly keeps things tense through the characters not being able to know, what they don’t know, about aliens, by virtue of the life form being so beyond what they prepared for.

This sits up there with other outstanding SFF like Solaris.

Hm, a flaw in the system! Haha. For one: it’s impractical to make people switch tracks on an audiobook. We’re driving and cooking and running. It ain’t happening. I told myself, maybe I’ll just read it with my morning tea, then. But the problem is it begins saying start at track 41 then says go to track 2, which ends saying… go to track 41. So, obviously this version from my library is borked. There was probably an updated version rural, Alberta, Canada didn’t get or something. So, I literally cannot read it regardless. Will just have to get it from the library sometime.