This is SO fun and charming!! And tho I'm not Black or queer it still felt very relatable in terms of like Midwestern misfit vibes. Also I waffled on 4 or 5 stars but in the end awarded a bonus star for Steak n Shake trip.

I have this kind of dumb mental block where when I'm confronted with like, Adult Literary Historical Fiction, my brain is like "BORING!! IT'S GONNA BE BORING!" even though for example I love all of Louise Erdrich's books. And I loved this book too even though I'm not sure I would have prioritized picking it up if it weren't for my book club.

From the start it's just so engaging and compelling, and I really marvel at the way the theme of identity and "passing" was used in so many different settings. I couldn't put it down.

I love the Wayward Children series so much, and I love how each entry in the series gives me new ways to look at familiar fantasy tropes while still validating how powerful and important these tropes and these stories are. Also very cool to have an intersex protagonist here, which I think is very under-represented in media.

okay yes i read this to prepare for the upcoming HBO series starring Mark Ruffalo and yes I do see why Ruffalo would be drawn to these mumbley/yelly twins

anyway I knew this opened with the schizophrenic twin chopping his own hand off in a public library, which obviously yikes, but I was not at all prepared for each subsequent chapter to casually reveal some EVEN MORE OFF THE RAILS ACTION and not from the severely mentally ill character, just from like randoms.

(Stefon voice) this book has EVERYTHING, casual gay panic, casual misogyny, monkey fucking, witchcraft, murder, and every single hot button issue of the early 1990s.

I really struggled with Dominick's misogynist narrative voice, especially at the beginning when I wasn't totally sure how intentional it was supposed to be given that he kept pointing out how sexist his friend was. It turns out it was intentional and was addressed within the narrative but honestly I'm just tired of reading books with exhausting narrators. Can't I just read a book narrated by a nice person with chill vibes. please. Anyway it's not Wally Lamb's fault that it's currently 2020 but i do feel like the target audience for this book would be a non-woke man living in the year 1992.

I am interested to see how this becomes an HBO series because it is very grounded in some problematique 1990s issues.

Anyway that said it was compelling and a page turner mostly because I felt like anything could happen at any goddamn time.

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re-read for the podcast, shook that I gave this 3 stars?? I must have read this on the tail of something worse. IDK. Tho it was a page-turner as I stated before...hmm. Ratings are subjective!

https://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/episode-157-i-know-this-much-is-true/

I'm glad I read this with the warning that I would be confused at first, because I was, but it wasn't my fault! I think this one was a little scarier than the first one but it's okay because I skimmed the scary parts. Also I think I preferred Gideon as a narrator. But still, good stuff.

MT Anderson is CONSTANTLY doing shit where I read the description and I'm like "well who wants to read that" and then I read it anyway because it's MT Anderson and then I'm like "ok me I guess" but I do think this would be a hard sell to most...teens? Like I feel like the target audience here is...people who are already fans of MT Anderson, or people who are fans of Breton mythology, I guess??

Anyway once you get here, it's gorgeous and sharp, but just...............who is this for? I do not know.

I recently re-read the first Wayside School book and I was like, wow this holds up and still feels basically relevant?? So a new one just felt like stepping back into a pair of comfortable slippers. There was no effort made to "modernize" this because it didn't need it. Also wow a book about a Cloud of Doom coming out in March 2020........prescient.

I loved the specificity of this Los Angeles brujx world! Yadriel was such a cute, awkward narrator and I was all in on his spoopy ghost romance.

One thing of interest to me is that the brujx magic is so gendered, with one crux of the story revolving around Yadriel getting affirmed as a ghostbusting brujo rather than a bruja who have healing magic...in this world what kind of magic would a nonbinary or genderqueer person be able to access? HMM perhaps a question for a sequel!

Still, a great book for fans of urban fantasy/paranormal romance!

Inspired by Legends of Tomorrow, I decided to check out some Hellblazer comics and y'all.........................this shit is WILD. Truly living for the knowledge that Swamp Thing possessed Constantine's body and got a tattoo of a tree on his butt cheek.

This was a weird read but a pretty good pick for a newbie to Hellblazer comics. It has a lot of 1st issues of iconic Hellblazer runs with some interstitial explanatory essays/notes. Kind of like an appetizer platter for Hellblazer. A lot of truly unhinged content. Also Sting wrote the introduction (because Constantine's lewk is based on Sting) but Sting wrote it in character as Constantine, I guess, but at first I was like, whoa Sting what the FUCK?

it's interesting what a product of its time the earlier issues are. Like a frankly startling amount of talking about AIDS and AIDS testing for a supernatural comic. In a good way? Like a little dated but not offensive. Constantine will do some dumb-ass shit with demons but he won't have unprotected sex, and good for him.