A riveting explanation into the post-Covid conspiracy world. This book provides an insight into the state of today, framed through the dramatic transformation of Naomi Wolf, from a respected liberal feminist into an alt-right Covid conspiracy peddler. There's no one particular focus of this book, but all of the topics feel relevant, from the discussion of individualism versus collectivism, to the comparison between the two Canadian trucking convoys, to the written work of Phillip Roth. In particular, I found it very enlightening when Klein discussed how the history of genocide in Africa and the Americas informed the Holocaust in Europe and the genocide against Palestine in the twenty-first century. 

For me, personally, the past four years have felt like such a nightmarish blur, but this book really helped me make sense of what the world has gone through in the last four years.

My problem with short story collections is that the genius of the best stories feels dragged down by the banal, middle of the road stories. This collection had a strong theme of the psychological horror of normalcy, which helped to tie all of the stories together. My favorite stories were "The Lottery", "The Tooth", and "Colloquy".

A very interesting premise that drew on the conventions of the slasher genre but also managed to subvert those conventions to center the voices of women. Still, the depiction of women within this book feel victim the genre conventions that turn women into props. Specifically the character of Adrienne doesn't sit right with me, considering that she is the only character of color and is killed off-screen.

I guessed the final plot twist within the first fifty pages of the book. I wouldn't even say that it was foreshadowed, since it was explicitly revealed if you were reading close enough.

Stephanie Fugate is one of the killers. This was extremely clumsily foreshadowed — one of the Reddit users complaining about their hatred of final girls is u/fu(bar)gate. The connection is very obvious.

As a thriller, I enjoyed it. I liked the homages to the various horror franchises of the 70's, 80's, and 90's. As a subversion of the horror genre, I think that it needed to show the empowerment of its female characters, rather than just telling the audience that they are empowered now.

I couldn't put this book down! Tara Westover's story of her struggle to obtain an education within a survivalist family is so powerful. The writing is raw and emotional, and the story is heartwrenching and powerful. 

Westover writes about her family in a very nuanced way. Her father is a survivalist, who ironically cared very little about the survival of his children and placed their safety up to God, yet Westover is still able to understand that his actions stem from an undiagnosed mental illness and strong paranoid delusions. Her mother is complicit in the actions of her father and brother, yet Westover writes about her mother urging her in her quest for a college education. Her siblings too, fall into this grey area, as each occupies a different level of obedience to their father and loyalty to their sister.

My only criticism is that I don't think Westover wrote enough about the religious aspect of the trauma of her upbringing. Although Westover is able to criticize her family's extreme version of Mormonism, I wish she had delved deeper into the religion as a whole, and the ways in which some people utilize religion enables abuse.

Delightfully fun summer read! There was a really good balance of romance, drama, and mystery. There were a lot of really fun moments but also a lot of serious, emotional moments. I liked all of the characters, especially Traci, Livvy, and Felice. 

The mystery wasn't particularly complex of clever (I guessed all of the major reveals ahead of time), but the writing was strong enough to keep me interested. The summery atmosphere makes this book a really good beach read!

My favorite book in the Bridgerton series by far! I love an MMC who pines and Michael's pining is some of the best I've ever read. The set-up for this book was so perfectly devastating. Michael was jealous of John because he was in love with Francesca, but when John died Michael took possession of everything John had except for Francesca. I flew through this book because the set-up made me so excited to read about Michael and Francesca's story.

I loved the chemistry between Michael and Francesca! The fact that their relationship was built on a foundation of friendship made it so much deeper. 

I had really high expectations for this book because I liked Eloise so much. Eloise's personality was really able to shine in this book. It's very clear that she's stubborn, independent, scrappy, sarcastic, and outspoken. I liked how much agency Eloise had at the beginning of the novel. I liked that it was established that Eloise chose to be a spinster rather than marry a man she didn't love. Thus, it felt very in character that Eloise would take matters into her own hands and disappear in the middle of the night to live with Phillip. However, I did not like that her agency was taken away from her and she would all but forced by her brothers to marry Phillip. As a love interest, Phillip felt very middle-of-the-road to me. I liked that he was able to go toe-to-toe with Eloise, but I wish they had more chemistry together. 

Definitely not what I expected, and not in a good way. I loved Penelope — I loved her cleverness and her character growth to learn to be more outspoken. I hated Colin — his misogynistic attitude towards Penelope really turned me off of their romance. For most of the book Penelope was afraid of Colin and his reaction towards her being Lady Whistledown which really infuriated me. I wanted Colin to be proud of Penelope and her accomplishments. Overall, because the romance plotline fell so flat, I found it difficult to enjoy this book.

Decent thriller with an atmospheric setting and a lot of unexpected twists and turns. While I haven't been a fan of Alex Michaelides' narrators in his past two books (I'm just not a fan of the whole psychologically damaged narrator trope), in this book, I found Elliot to be an interesting narrator. 

The setting — a secluded Greek island in the middle of a howling windstorm — was my favorite part of this book. The descriptions were very well written. 

The set-up was interesting but the mystery elements weren't enough to save the boring plot. The characters were difficult to relate to. I could tell that the author wanted Liv and Essie (and Georgia) to come across as charming and quirky, but I just wasn't charmed by any of the characters. Liv's relationship troubles is one of the strongest plot threads throughout the novel, but I hated the way that it was wrapped up. I never got the sense that Liv's husband or sons ever actually learned to respect her.

The writing itself wasn't great. There were a lot of grammatical errors and at least two occasions where the wrong character's name was used. There was also a lot of telling rather than showing, which makes me wonder how this book made it through the editing process.