nerdyprettythings's Reviews (515)

Around the middle, before the author’s involvement begins, I lost interest a little bit - there’s a good amount of “and then they lied about this again” and technical language. But in all, I really enjoyed this, it’s a (obviously re: above) thoroughly researched and look into the company, and does a great job of showing the real human injury done by it. The rich people who lost money? They seemed really quick to give away hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maybe being a rich white person shouldn’t be enough to gain your trust. 

The audiobook is *fantastic.* by the time I’d met each character through their POV, I was so invested in their family and in the magic they felt in their native Hawaii. 

This book was really thoroughly and lovingly researched, and mostly featured the lives of the victims, the bars, and the people who pushed the police to take crimes against queer people seriously in the 80s and 90s. I liked this style a lot, focusing on the victims one at a time, peppering in the history of the bars and the true crime element of the investigation. Like the writer himself, I’m baffled that I hadn’t heard this story, especially in a time when true crime is an obsession and serial killers are like celebrities. I’m really happy this book exists and was so well-researched and well written. 

2024 reread edit: My original rating was a three and I think maybe the typos in my copy affected me more than they should have? I once again enjoyed myself so so much, and I love all the bi vampire craziness so what more could it really do to make me love it??
Original review:
This book was fun. It’s more paranormal romance than horror IMO, but if you think you’d be into that, check it out! I do think the writing was pretty inconsistent throughout, with some sections really pulling me in and some being a kind of boring string of metaphors and repeated lines. Also, it doesn’t do a great job of keeping up with the vampire rules and contradicts things you were just told, and you kind of have to roll with it. At the very beginning Dracula is in the sunshine. Why? I don’t know! They’re never able to go outside in the sun again! But… it’s a vampire book and everyone is bi, so I enjoyed myself. 

A new book from the Queen of Mystery?? Sort of! A Deadly Affair is a collection of Agatha Christie short stories, all with a theme of love and relationships (gone wrong). Over the last couple of years, I’ve read seven Agatha Christie books, and I was well acquainted with many of the characters in these stories - we get Miss Marple, Tuppence and Tommy, Hercule Poirot and more. These stories aren’t quite as satisfying as her full-book mysteries (of course), but they were a lot of fun, especially reading one or two at a time over a few weeks. Reading them that way reminded me of my childhood love of Encyclopedia Brown and Cam Jansen, and made me imagine how much fun it must have been for Christie’s readers to get these bite-size locked room mysteries she was so skilled at writing. 

Detransition, Baby is smart and challenging and seemed to anticipate any “hey but what about”s I had as I read. It’s raw and messy and human, all while feeling like queer-theory-turned-fiction. Wow.