I know it's good when I listen to the audiobook during my free time and even LOOK for chores to do just so I can finish it!
Humorous and such a fun concept, I really enjoyed this book! Kinda an opposite of Levithan's Every Day or Couch's If I See You Again Tomorrow.

Excellent dark fantasy with body horror and a tense, grim atmosphere. This was recommended by a student at my high school book club and it didn't disappoint!

Your average fantasy book with dragon riders. Someone is always special and bonds with a dragon that is different somehow and with their specialness they have the answer to defeating the big evil that has been plaguing the world and has recently gotten worse.
Don't get me wrong! It's not a bad book at all! It didn't really hook me, but it was interesting enough I read it all the way through to see how it would end. Since it's book 1 in a series though, of course nothing was concluded and that was fine. It's a decent enough book with dragons and Ash is a sweetheart. But I didn't feel compelled enough to read the rest of the series.

I agree with our book club's consensus of this book: the first 2/3 are the best parts. Scary, mysterious, you're not sure what's going on but you're happy to drive along with Keisha and experience the weirdness and the terror and follow the clues as she tries to find Alice.
Then they try and put a face/give a name on/to the baddies and it loses some of its luster.

Spoiler

And the final battle just seemed rushed. How in the world did Praxis "win" with their lack of guns and their inexperienced fighters? What even was Thistle's endgame? They spoke about them having the government in their pocket and could make them look the other way, and yet they choose to kill truckers on the roadside? Why aren't they killing more influential people? I understand they're also killing people that are getting too close to uncovering their secret, BUT WHAT IS THAT SECRET?? We aren't told. Instead we have this brief, confusing battle, and then a sweet ending (which I was glad for).

Yes, yes, I understand it's possibly an analogy of people in today's society turning a blind eye to evil and how we all know war is happening and people are dying but just choosing to not act feeling we can't do anything to change it. But still....that ending was rushed and unsatisfying.

3.5 stars. I'm always a fan of those "pick 'em off one-by-one" horrors and this certainly satisfies, as the cast and crew of The Bachelor The Catch are on a small island near Seattle. Once a tourist destination, especially for the LGBTQ crowd in the 90's, it is now struggling. Oh, and it also has a wild ape woman running around killing newcomers. And so the contestants are picked off one by one during the night of their final filming. One contestant will find love and acceptance, but maybe not quite in the way they imagined...

4.5 stars. I thought this was a pretty cute, funny and a great retelling of the Merlin and King Arthur mythos. And no love triangles (yet) to drive me crazy. I loved the characters and Emry was a great, strong, female MC. I recommend it!

What an excellent audiobook! The reader really brought Mary's character to life! I started reading this as an ebook and wasn't getting much out of it, and I really happy that I picked it back up again and started over when my audiobook came in on hold.
The narrator really made you feel Mary's horror when she looked in mirrors, or the crazed thought spirals she would get stuck in, or even just the generally creepy thoughts she would have. That, together with the strange setting of a tiny desert town and some truly horrible characters, by the end of the book I was rooting for Mary!

Spoiler

It also had my favorite "good for her" endings.

I appreciated the author's preface and afterwards talking about how he wrote this book and his thoughts on a white, cis male writing a horror novel about a 50 year old woman going through the horrors of menopause, a misogynistic world, and returning home to a town and family that did nothing to help or love you. I would rather take seeing dead women in bathtubs and my face rotting in a mirror than go through all that.

I really liked this graphic novel, but there was one thing that bothered me and made me think: The Cute Girl Network. Are there really such shallow women out there? Are they really so stupid about relationships? So the Cute Girl Network works like this: All across the faux town of Brookport, in this comic, hundreds of girls have created a network to inform each other, and new members, of all the men they have dated. Met a new guy? The CGN recommends meeting with at least three of his exes to get the dirt on him. So, the main plot to this book is what I had a big problem with. The story is built around a new girl, Jane, who really likes a soup vendor she meets, Jack, but her roommate happens to be his ex. She demands that Jane meets up with other exes and hear the dirt on Jack (who is a completely great guy, just simple, a bit lazy, and absent minded, but not mean, malicious, or a playboy). Thankfully Jane's reactions are a lot like mine, she doesn't care what the others say, thinks they're petty, and loves Jack for who he is. Did anyone else think all the other characters were just blown out of proportion with bitchy-ness?

Anyway, while I loved the two main characters and the artwork, the CGN itself is an idea that I hope is too mean and petty to be a real thing. Sure, I absolutely loathe my ex, he was a terrible person, but if another girl wants to date him, either they will be more compatible than I was for him, or they'll figure out soon enough on their own he's a psycho.