Just not feeling this audiobook right now, maybe I’ll pick it up a different time. 

My Libby loan is about to expire, and this is honestly not the book to listen to while eating my lunch at work, as it really ruined my appetite. I don’t think I’m enjoying myself reading this, and I keep mixing up Beth and Fran in the audiobook, so I’m calling it quits. There were also too many POVs for me personally to keep track of.

This book felt like a YouTuber writing a poetry book that nobody asked for. I love a weird book, but not this, dare I say, millennial, genre of weird which seems to just be repeating silly words like “gobbledygook” or teasing at bestiality. I was so unamused for the two hours I listened to this audiobook, and I felt finishing it would add nothing to my life but cringe.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press for a free digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I tried to stick this one through, but I realized that I was forcing myself to keep going and not enjoying myself. There isn't much story to this memoir, and it was a lot more philosophizing on love and definitions of different words than I expected it to be. The writing was also a bit inaccessible to me; I'm not sure if it was too poetic or convoluted? It didn't feel like it was saying anything new to me either. The book was incredibly slow moving, and I felt like I was trudging through, so I have decided to put this aside for at least now. The mixed media nature of this book was cool though with its photographs, photography, and art sprinkled throughout. 

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher VIZ Media for a  free digital ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review. 
I ended up DNFing this manga at 34% through because although the art was lovely, the story was really falling flat for me. It centered around a very basic love triangle where the guy was childhood best friends with the main character and they maybe harbor "secret" feelings for each other and the popular gyaru girl that everyone calls "Body-Ko" to objectify her. The will-they-won't-they slow burn that I think this story was trying to achieve between the guy and the girl was so repetitive and I didn't care at all for their friendship or relationship. I think their characters and relationship wasn't developed enough for me to be invested in them, and they just were bad friends to each other in general. I did like the fashion school setting because Ai Yazawa is great at drawing outfits, so that was a plus. 
The misogyny and objectification of women in this book was just too icky for me, from like every single character. The way the women changed themselves physically to appeal to the guy weirded me out, and him acting like being a "nice guy" who doesn't like girls wearing makeup makes him the ideal man. Also, just weird comments about how "boys shouldn't have piercings anyway!," like okay... 
Ai Yazawa also isn't beating the cultural appropriation allegations with depictions of TWO non-Black characters in this manga wearing Black hairstyles (Mariko's brother wearing locs and Mikako wearing an afro in the color pages in the back of the book). Past iffy behaviors include, but surely aren't limited to, Hachi's sister in Nana and occasionally depicting Junko's design in racist caricatured ways in the anime and manga. 
Overall, the attitudes and depictions of sexuality and gender feel so cisheteronormative, and I just expected more. I was not the audience for this.

I was gifted a digital ARC of this book from the publisher.
I decided to DNF this book at 12% because it was unfortunately not for me. The lack of quote marks with the dialogue was a choice...I ended up being very confused a lot of the time about whether someone was speaking or whether the text was the main character's thoughts. This confusion was really frustrating as I kept rereading passages and getting stuck trying to understand what was being said. The writing was also really throwing me off for some reason, and I couldn't get into it. It felt like the story was trying too hard to be weird with the main character's thoughts, and I usually love a weird and deranged main character, but it just felt a bit off with this book. I'm sad that I couldn't get into this because I was pretty excited for it and have heard good things from other people online. I think fans of Milk Fed, or just Melissa Broder in general, would like this.

I’m sad because I was so into this at the beginning, but the writing got so bad and the story was so drawn out, and I didn’t care how it ended at that point. 

Way too heavy of a read for me right now.

Really weird discussion about a trans person in the bathhouse that felt pretty icky with the misgendering and the MC trying to get a look at the person’s genitals.