Autistic fake dating trope

I picked up this book because the cover reminded me of some collages I’ve made. I liked it more than I thought I would! The alternating stories were much less confusing than I expected, and it was cool when one of the different realities exposed something that also existed in Mary’s reality. I liked the detail of Lois’s “false memories” that came from the different realities, and the placement of her story as the last one before the conclusion of Mary’s story worked well. Still a little fuzzy on what exactly went down with Mary. And the conclusion is pretty open-ended but I kind of expected that so it wasn’t disappointing necessarily. It was an interesting read but felt a little half-baked.

So many of these stories had other stories layered into them but it never felt confusing. Peking Duck was a particularly interesting exploration into these layered stories. I also enjoyed the subtle magical realism in each story. The magical elements were usually very mundane but in a really enjoyable way.

AKA The Incel’s Lament. Very interesting to me that Díaz chose Oscar as the titular character. My favorite parts of this book were exploring his ancestry, especially his mother and grandfather’s stories.

Abelar’s story was strangely my favorite. He destroyed his own life to protect his daughter, and his wife and children probably never realized that he had.

Wasn’t as into the Oscar parts. I also didn’t love that every girl he got close with had an abusive boyfriend that she chose over him. Just hard to read about at times.  

And he was so selfish at the end! Ybón begging him to leave her alone, for his safety AND her own, and he wouldn’t!

Yunior as the narrator was also interesting. He appears to be the narrator/focus of Díaz’s other two novels, and I’m curious how much the stories overlap, or why he chose to expand on Oscar’s story. But don’t think I’m curious enough to pick either of them up.

This is a DNF from a while ago, updating which of Butler’s works I want to read. Felt very uncomfortable with the sexualisation of someone who appeared to be a child

Don’t understand her hate for “Woman”!

LOVE! Aww these two. I wasn’t expecting all the mental health rep OR the ace spectrum rep!! Belongs right next to RWRB in the hall of fame

Very sad. But a beautiful way to work through family trauma. I recently looked through a lot of old, unlabeled family photos, and can relate to a lot of the feelings in this book of sorting through your parents’ memories, trying to put yourself in their shoes, while still missing so many pieces.