mothumn's Reviews (377)

🪐☄️🛰️🚀 Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin

I never feel as seen as a do by an Emily Austin protagonist. Just like in Everyone in this Room Will Someday Be Dead (which ended as one of my top 5 last year), I connected this book and Enid intensely. There’s just something about Emily Austin’s character that feel like she may have been stalking me and writing about me…

Speaking of being stalked, Enid, the protagonist of this book thinks she may be being stalked, by a bald man. And she may possibly have a phobia of bald men and an obsession with true crime podcasts. She also likes space facts that she learns at her job at the space agency, and likes to tell them to her mom, who raised Enid on her own after her father left them to start a new family. And shes a lesbian. What’s not to love about her?

This was everything I wanted in a novel. Following Enid makes for such a funny and entertaining, yet also emotional and sometimes dark, ride. Ultimately this book is a story about mental illness, queer dating, complicated family relationships, about thinking you’re a bad person, and learning to open yourself up to people anyway. I loved this book so much and I really hope that you’ll all pick it up.

🔭Thank you Simon and Schuster Canada for the arc!! Interesting Facts About Space is out on January 30!

Chain-Gang All-Stars is a near dystopian story in which the American prison system has changed to a system that now offers prisoners freedom, if only they can survive through a series of gladiator style fights against each other. Those imprisoned now have the possibility of taking their life back, but only if they are willing to lose themselves. When every moment of your life is televised and sold for the profit of the system, and you must do unimaginable things to others, the same things that got many of them stuck in there in the first place, is it worth it? This book is doing a lot of really great things, tackling so many important issues that are not often talked about, particularly the American prison system, but it attempts at taking on other issues as well and I think it may just be trying to do a little too much. Chain-Gang All-Stars is told through many different povs; different prisoners, prison staff, police, tv presenters, fans of the fights, inmates family members, protesters, and more. And they do add a lot of important perspective, but it also ends up feeling very overwhelming and like too much is happening which is just my main issue. It resulted in a very disconnected feeling story at times, which is unfortunate because I think aside from that, this is such an important book and a must read. The disjointed nature of the narrative did make it difficult for me to read this book which is unfortunate, however with the audiobook, the different narrators aided in the process quite a bit so I would recommend checking out the audiobook if you are interested in this title.