Having gained the skill of DNFing I now seem unable to control myself. Anyway this book was ... you guessed it! Boring. At first I really found myself enjoying the setting and hearing about the same places I have visited and explored in the Bay Area. I thought I would learn to love the characters, get over their obnoxious song discussions, and instead I just kept disliking them more and more. There was a weird scene where the one notable (?) person of color (I think they were half Mexican and half white) makes a comment about privilege and that even if white people did invent country music (they did not) it would have been poor white people not annoying teenagers in college. I say weird because (I know this is the 2000s) she's dismissed basically for being middle class herself ... huh?? 

I didn't know people were comparing this to Daisy Jones and the Six (which I admittedly rated highly at first but looking back I'd rate much lower today) and I think had I known that I would have hesitated in picking this up. I know there's a movie coming out staring Saoirse Ronan sometime in the future, so I might end up picking this up again if I like the movie. Time will tell. 

Híjole! This was not good. 

This book is fairly well rated and I was excited after reading the inside cover, but wow I just ... am I a massive hater? Is this a me problem? The writing was just not good and doing multiple POVs without distinctive voices made it all that more boring. The weird use of second person in parts of Mila's chapters to throw off the reader felt annoying. I'm like 90% sure my predications are right, but I don't care enough to skim read to check. Moments like these make me so glad I make use of my library.

I read a lot of reviews that mentioned "not feeling smart enough for this book" and I feel like you don't have to be smart to enjoy this book. I truly feel that this book is 60% vibes and if you enjoy the vibe then you will enjoy this book. Definitely felt more like an interesting examination of what working a "dead end" job feels like (even just working retail honestly lmao). I think the three characters fit really interesting archetypes of a workplace and it was fun getting to read about them interacting. A criticism on the way that management is forever elusive and doing everything in their power to pinch every penny. I honestly liked that there was no answers in the end, felt very realistic. 

I will start by saying that I think this book will work for others, but I really just failed to connect with it. While I understand how it is to be the black sheep of the family, at some point I feel like you're doing yourself a disservice by refusing to accept that part of yourself. 

I don't want to criticize the overall material in the book because, despite how I might feel about the actions she chose to take, it was all very personal to her and this was her story to tell. I think that this book had a really strong start and I was really enjoying getting to learn about Susan Lieu and her family. A little less than halfway through I realized that this would not be exactly what I thought it was going to focus on like the details surrounding her mother's death, but instead her own personal journey trying to understand it all despite her family's refusal to talk about it. This definitely needed some editing because it was honestly really repetitive and not in the way that healing is not linear, but in the "wait you just told us that a chapter ago" way. There was a moment where she asks her mother's spirit something and then immediately in the next chapter she details finding out this specific detail as if she hadn't just mentioned it.

I put this down initially cause it was too slow and the story wasn’t interesting enough to power through. I decided if I liked his other book I’d keep going but I ended up dnfing that one too lmao. I just don’t think his writing is for me and it’s time to move on. 

I admittedly did not do my due diligence and was unaware this was actually a romance book, I was thinking it’d be more lit fic with slight background romance. Anyway, I’ve read romance books before so I was willing to keep going. Man was this so boring lmao just long chapters of the most mundane conversations and “quirky” humor I couldn’t stop rolling my eyes. Any time I picked it up I could not wait to put it down. Also way too many taylor swift references for me personally.

I had to really sit with this one. 

I feel like too much of this story went over my head, but also that this story was almost too board in that you can derive almost any meaning from it. Had this had a more definitive message that I could draw an idea of what the author was aiming for I think I would have rated it higher. Kitamura really created a unique story with writing that both pulled me in and made me feel as if I was two steps behind the story the whole time. There is one scene in particular in the second half of this book that just made me roll my eyes. It just felt so completely out of left field and took away from the overall story.

I'll be honest, I forgot exactly where I read the connection of the möbius strip (if it was in the book itself or an interview except I read), but that's where I drew my own conclusions about the book. The book is broken into two parts with the second part taking place some time after the first. It reminded me of a physics lecture where my professor talked briefly about quantum mechanics and how the future affects the past. Admittedly I am not at all versed in quantum mechanics, but I thought about how the actions taken in the second part of the book could have affected the first part of the book. How time is not linear like we might feel and how our actions can actually travel "backwards". For that reason I did like this book enough to give it 3 stars. It made me think more overall about the actions we take and how we might unknowingly be reacting to future moments.

Ultimately, after sitting with it .... the vibe was there for me and left me questioning some things.

I really tried to power through this but HOTDOG! it was so boring and it just kept going on and on and on. I think this book was interesting in that it attempted to explore how it's not just Fox News that leads to an Alt-Right thinking. There are different pipelines like "crunchy" mom influencers, ads that prey on you during vulnerable times, and a lack community/friendship. However, it almost takes on a silly tone after a while of just repetitive scene after repetitive scene. The message becomes jumbled and I was just so bored I didn't care to see how any of this ended. 

This would have been much better left as a short story which I believe is what it originally was and then got stretched to 300+ pages. 

I overall liked the premise of this book, but the execution was just not it. Truly 50% through this book, it does a complete 180 and becomes something else. I think had this been two separate books they would have been so much more entertaining. Personally having to make sense of the way the story goes in another direction took away some of the pleasure of reading this. I also did not really care for, what I considered, to be a too shallow conversation about how race, beauty, and money play into being an influencer. I think this could have been explored much deeper, but because of strange change up halfway through the book it was hard to truly convey it. Also ... that ending ... yeah not a fan. 

Liann Zhang is amazing writer though and I cannot wait to read what else she has in store. She has a way of gripping me with the story and despite whatever confusion I was feeling I still wanted to keep reading.

With all the publicity this book has and is currently still getting, I had higher expectations. Admittedly I'm still relativity new to non-fiction and still trying to find out what I would constitute a good or not good book. With this I think I would ultimately say: did not live up to the potential it presented.

I think this book is good for people who have not kept up with or know anything regarding Facebook and the impacts it has had on the world for the last almost three decades. It provides a decent entry way into topics that expand beyond America in a very easy to read writing style. For that reason I give it at least 2 stars.

My problems with this book are mainly regarding Sarah Wynn-William's constant attempt to distance herself from the actions taken by Facebook and executives. There are some really awkward conversations included throughout the book where she makes sure to position herself as the only one who told Mark the "hard and honest" truth about his course of action. And I'm not going to argue about her needing healthy insurance or most likely than not being paid handsomely during her time to afford quitting. I believe it is possible to both acknowledge the want that having a constant paycheck provides and also the role played in these consequential moments. I can admit that some of this probably to save her own ass in case of any legality issues, but it's hard to let go of the feeling of what that entails for how she recounts of the some stories being told throughout this book. 

My second problem with this book is that it fails to focus on what I would consider some of the more important topics. The role that Facebook played in Myanmar reduced to one chapter. Facebook's role in collecting data on teenager's moods to advertise when they are most vulnerable also reduced to one chapter. Facebook wanting to focus on alt-right groups in countries where they could use more sway political reduced to what felt like a single paragraph. When there are so many stories being played out in a very casual manner I feel it takes away some of the seriousness and importance of the information being relayed.

I am going to discredit the harassment and horrible work environment that Wynn-Williams faced at Facebook and I think that she did a good job of talking about those things. However I feel that for people who are already aware of Facebook's history, this book offers nothing really new.