Overall this was good though not as riveting as The Guest List. I guessed 1 of the maybe 8 main plot twists ahead of time (as in more than a few pages in advance) so I felt slightly accomplished.

What I liked about The Guest List (this also happens in The Hunting Party) is that there is the double mystery: you don’t know who has died nor do you know who has killed them so you’re kept guessing for quite a while. In The Paris Apartment we immediately know who is missing which is fine for a regular thriller but I came in knowing the author’s work so was a little let down.

Not much happens in the first half other than slight creepiness/general suspense. In the beginning after something strange happens and you’re wondering “wait who did that?? who had motive here??” then in the very next chapter we switch POVs and read “I did that thing because of x reason.” So we aren’t left pondering for long. Overall I do like the short chapters and quickly switching POVs, it was good pacing, allowed for some good cutaways, and meant something was always happening.

I read this so quickly because I needed to finish it within 8 days for a book club, otherwise I would’ve waited for the audiobook at the library and it would’ve taken me longer to get through. The last 50 pages flew by though and my Fitbit tracked my increased heart rate because I was stressed!!!

Let me proclaim my bias: I’m not normally a huge fan of thrillers (I don’t like being scared) so I haven’t read many nor do I like traditional thrillers that much. I am still giving this 4 stars because I enjoy her writing, there were several surprises I didn’t anticipate at all, and overall I had a good time reading it.

I’d rank her thrillers as: The Guest List (excellent, 5 stars) —> The Paris Apartment (pretty good, 4 stars) —> The Hunting Party (fine, 3 stars).

Very cute. I listened to this in one day and loved the diversity of experiences, backgrounds, cultural contexts, and countries represented. Eid Mubarak!

This is a second chance romance where one protagonist, Hudson, never tells his parents that he and his bf, Kian, have broken up. Thus they must fake date while Hudson’s parents are in town for the weekend. That is a perfectly plausible scenario in romancelandia so I was all in.

Here’s the thing. I was prepared to LOVE this book: two Black men in Boston fake dating??? That is all I want in a book, it’s all of my favorite things, plus it made me laugh out loud SEVERAL times. There were so many perfect pop culture references, I had a very good time.

And YET!!!!! We never learn WHY the two initially broke up!!! Halfway through the book I was like “well surely it’s coming now.” And then 80% through I think “in order for this to be resolved, first we must know why they broke up so that they can make sure that doesn’t happen again, right?” BUT NO. We never learn why, but we do read all about Kian’s absolute devastation over their break up.

I don’t love second chance romances in the best of times, but in order to make the second chance work you must address what went wrong to begin with! That’s the whole trope! Learning to then do better. How can Kian learn to trust Hudson again if they never discuss why that trust was lost in the first place? Also I don’t think Hudson ever even apologized for dumping Kian! Rude.

Other notes:
-the perfect level of sly wokeness for a romance
-absolutely loved best friend Divya
-I can’t listen to Kian say one more time “I’m a journalist.” Um, no my friend, you are an unemployed grad who majored in journalism. I majored in econ and yet am certainly not an economist
-Hudson’s family are billionaires and his wealth and privilege are NOT discussed enough.

Quotes I wrote down:
Isn’t visiting someone’s home after 10:00 pm considered bad manners? Like telemarketers calling before 9:00 am or a top not paying for dinner when he fully intends to break a bottom’s back.

With my intrusive thoughts left outside to wait Like an angry Pomeranian tied to a bike rack, I smile and push my way into the restaurant.

Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Or in gay terms, always the one holding the camera in the fire island gangbang, never the one in the center getting Eiffel towered. (The tragic emotion in the narrator’s voice as he says that one

The end wove together a little bit too neatly with all the parts coming together but I quite enjoyed this. I loved the inclusion of the dog’s thoughts (very unexpected and amusing) and the nosy neighbor Harriet becoming so essential to the protagonists’ life.

It was a bit disconcerting reading this now, as the Supreme Court leak about overturning Roe v Wade fills the news. There is an long chapter talking about an unwanted pregnancy, not wanting to be a mother, the emotional and physical toll pregnancy takes on a woman’s body which often leads to death/permanent ramifications that was just a little too prescient. This is not a criticism of the book, just a criticism on those wishing to overturn safe abortion access.

I am obsessed. I love gay romances and reality show cooking competitions so this one had a lot going for it. I’ve never read a book where one of the main protagonists is non-binary so that was cool to experience. There was a bit of gender discussion in a very natural way, and I enjoyed it. The author did a great job of narrating in a very amusing way without being too much/over the top.

This was the perfect light funny interesting spicy read. I am glad I purchased this book, I’m sure I’ll reread it at some point.

This book could be summed up as: science doesn’t know much about eels but let’s speculate.

I’m honestly unclear on the point of the book. Most books about animals are jam-packed with facts and fun tidbits but we simply don’t know much about eels so a lot of this book is tangents about other animals, more memoir-style reflections than expected, and the history of how we came to know each of the few slivers of knowledge we’ve obtained.

What I didn’t like (this boils down to mostly pacing/organization):
-The Book of Eels begins by stating all the facts we know about eels (very few as we discover) and then works through the history of how they were painstakingly discovered. The author frequently said “Aristotle didn’t know yet about x” when discussing his erroneous misconceptions, which is unusual for a history book, normally we start with the oldest info and work our way to the newest.
-About 80% of the way through, the author starts talking about a massive tracking study of 700 eels someone conducted - which was highly informative and yet was not mentioned until Chapter 15. There were a lot of interesting tidbits revealed in that study, I can’t believe none of them came up sooner.
-Also not mentioned until Chapter 15: the existence of the Japanese eel. The whole book the author made it sound like there were only two types, European and American, and that was it. Suddenly in Chapter 15 we learn not only that Japanese eels exists, but also that Japanese scientists have successfully found their spawning grounds, found 3 alive adults in that area, and also artificially bred them successfully. This is huge news compared to what success they’ve had finding the same info for the other two species (no success, to be clear) and yet this was only mentioned in passing in Chapter 15?
-A full chapter is dedicated to discussing the details of other animals that have gone extinct, I suppose to illustrate the point that the eel could also go extinct. However I do understand the concept of extinction, I don’t know if we needed an in depth analysis of dodo birds and the steller’s sea cow.
-Speaking of extinction, we only learn in the second to last chapter that eels are quite threatened and a lot of countries have taken major strides to ban/restrict fishing for them. This is a pretty important fact (especially given that we know so little else about them) I am surprised the author waited so long to reveal it.
-Unexpectedly long and detailed description of his father dying of cancer. There are many soliloquies about the two of them fishing for eels together in the author’s childhood so I knew his father is an important figure in his life but this chapter was still unexpected.

Interesting parts:
-The first chapter where we learned the overview of the animal was great and very interesting. We also learned about “the eel question” which is a great name and an enduring mystery
-I enjoyed the philosophical discussion of time, and how time must be different for an eel because it’s not necessarily correlated to aging or seasons as it is for humans.
-More philosophical discussion: we cannot think about, understand, or even conceive of how beings with such different senses experience the world. Eg we can understand how echolocation works and we can potentially use it ourselves but we do not know what it is to BE a bat with that sense whose brain and processing is extremely different than ours.
-Discussions of the various philosophers (including Aristotle and Freud) work on eels was interesting. I didn’t know so many people, starting centuries ago, had dedicated so much time and energy to answering the eel question, which is still to this day unanswered. A constant reminder that science doesn’t know everything.

Overall I did learn some things but I was disappointed. I barely know more know than when I started. I can’t believe this is called The Book of Eels, what a misnomer.