This was a really compelling...mystery-ish? read. An interesting look at life in the Philippines and the complexity of diaspora and life in a developing country, could also serve as a kind of 101 on Duterte for readers.

This is a big chonky book but I read it all in one day. Ruta Sepetys has such a skill for evoking less-commonly-explored (in the USA) moments in history, and life in Franco's dictatorship has such chilling resonance right now :/

Spoiler

And I bought the ending, the 18-year torch burning wouldn't always work but for these two IDK, I bought it.

re-read on audio and was so glad to be able to immediately follow it up with The Raven King!
--

AUGH why isn't the 4th book out yet??? At first I was annoyed that this isn't a trilogy but I get it, there are too many threads here to be resolved in 3 books. But I don't wanna waaaait. >:(

I love these characters, I love this world, I want to go back and re-read all of these and also I want to travel forward in time and read the next one.

I re-read on audio and god! So good. It was also interesting to me to realize, upon listening to the whole series, how late in the game some developments actually were. I'd remembered them as being such integral parts of the series but then they don't appear until very late. But in some ways they'd been very quietly building up to this point. Anyway. Ugh. Crushed it.
--

This is deffo a book I'll need to re-read since I was really just plowing through to find out WHAT HAPPENS TO EVERYONE AHHHH

and now that I know WHAT HAPPENED TO EVERYONE I'll be able to re-read and savor it. Maybe I should just re-read the whole series. Definitely I should do that.

Maybe I'll just roll around on the ground here for awhile first though.

I savored reading this. It's such an engaging history of a family and a city. Broom's family history is completely different from mine yet her coming of age struggles to "find herself" were relatable. I think a lot of my RPCV friends (or others who have worked abroad) will connect with this.

This is a really fun alternate origin story for Harley! I LOVE that it brought Harley more in line with the chaotic feminist incarnation that's in the air these days.

Spoiler

And that it made the Joker a total skeezy dirtbag.

AND that Ivy is an awesome black feminist community activist?? And that Harley's found family is a group of drag queens? Ugh, who could ask for anything more?! (OK I could also for Harley and Ivy to be explicitly girlfriends in this but even without it, their friendship here is amazing.)

This is a really smart origin story/coming of age story for new and experienced comics fans alike.

The art is lovely too.

I picked this up due to my love of M.T. Anderson + the musical Six, and I was not disappointed! This is an engaging introduction to these women and this time period. It's more sexually explicit than I was expecting-def recommended for older teens+.

It's funny, I thought I had read this before--I'd bought a used copy years ago and had kept it on my shelf fondly along with the Hitchhikers Guide books. And then I started to "re-read" it for book club, and a) hated the first chapter (about the Electric Monk) and b) realized that I never had read it before, probably because I read the first chapter and was like "wtf is this" and put it down FOREVER.

I'm glad that I persevered this time around, though, because it really is a fun and clever story.

(I probably still don't like it as much as the Hitchhikers Guide books but that's fine.)

This book was billed as "We Were Liars meets Riverdale" and I was like SIGN ME UP, but that is......not at all accurate?! I think something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer would be a better (if older) comp. But, fine, that's not the author's fault. What is the author's fault is the reallllllly weak character and worldbuilding. The premise--Violet Choudhury is called to be an aideo, an ancient order of warriors trained as guardians against demons & other supernatural baddies, but she rejects it because a) her mom died (or did she?) on aideo affairs and also b) she's one of very few kids of color in her small midwestern town so she doesn't want to do anything that would make her stand out...ok, sure, I can work with that premise! Honestly would LOVE to work with that premise, I'm always looking for more diverse urban fantasy-type books to read.

But then it's just like...we learn SO little about Violet beyond the fact that she doesn't want to stand out in a crowd. And we learn so little about the aiedeo itself--like at first I assumed it was tied to Indian culture but then the main other aiedeo figure we see is a rando white dude named Lukas (who has a really weak enemies-to-romance going with Violet). also--I think this was just because of an error in the ARC formatting that abruptly inserted Lukas's POV into the middle of chapters, but it was off-putting.

Also I searched for the term "aiedeo" to see if that was an actual tradition from India, and the ONLY matches I found for it are for this author's full name, Aideo Mintie Das. Honestly kind of a baller move, if confusing, since other terms used are from aspects of Indian culture/religion (BTW I know "Indian culture/religion" is like a really broad term) like "bhoot" (Sanskrit for "ghost") are used.

Anyway then the PLOT involves her having to solve the rape and murder of the school queen bee, and Violet learns Valuable Lessons about slutshaming and not running away from her ghosthunting duties.

It's just kind of a mess and also wasn't even very entertaining (which, say what you will about Riverdale, it's ALWAYS entertaining.)

I did a heavy skim of this while preparing for a book club discussion of the [b:Dear Evan Hansen|39088507|Dear Evan Hansen|Val Emmich|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1521490556l/39088507._SY75_.jpg|60663163] novel. As a longtime theater fan I'm familiar with this genre of photo-heavy, annotated musical libretto, and this one is just fine. Some interesting behind the scenes stuff, etc. Truthfully most people who are interested enough to read it have probably already read it? Certainly only recommended for folks who are already fans of the musical.