I love that you start in space because that's exactly where I want an Andy Weir book to start. Throw me right off the deep end and let's figure it out together.

I'm a sucker for flashbacks, so watching the events that led up to Grace's space adventure was one of my favorite parts. Weir has a gift for knowing when the tension is just high enough that switching perspectives will make the reader insane.

I was so, so sad that Grace abandoned earth to save Rocky and live on Erid. I should have seen it coming, because after the coward speech it was so clear that he had nothing to go back to earth for, but part of me was still hoping for that final triumph.

But now that I've slept on it, I'm happy he didn't go back. I don't want to know how badly humanity fell apart. Stratt told us, anyway. She knew that there would be famine and war. We don't have to see it in these pages, we can just go on Twitter to know how terrible people are treating each other already.

I was happy he got to teach his new students. The perfect end for a scientist-teacher.

I was into this until about 20%. I liked that the main character wasn't the typical YA loner, I liked that vampires were real, and I liked that her parents were actually shitty people and she wasn't just a woe--is-me teenager. I loved that her being marked as a vampire was portrayed as an allegory for coming out to religious zealot parents.

But then she finally gets to the vampire school and this girl is trying to blow a guy in a hallway? And then Zoe goes on a rant about how smart girls don't give head? Major eye roll. This entire book is a walking not-like-other-girls trope. Except Zoe is really mean. Her inner monologue is 80% insults and 20% idiocy.

I was embarrassed for the audiobook narrator and how many times she had to say "boobies."

Clove's wedding <3

THE PROPOSAL

YAY

<3

My god, this book.

The drama, the tension, the fucking incel as one of the villains. So fucking good.

As boring as a literal bowl of dust, this hefty tome is overly saccharine and predictable. I'm leaving it at that because I can't bear the thought of thinking about it anymore.

This feels like a typical stale middle book, which is really disappointing because I don't think it's a trilogy. I'm really hoping book 3 is better.

This has a much speedier solution than the first one, which I would have liked if we had gotten more out of Hawthorne. Instead, he continues to be rude, homophobic, and a mooch, with no redeeming qualities. We also get a female detective who is equally awful.

Horowitz's self-analogue is much whinier in this one, which I don't like. I loved hearing about his writing process and it was fun to see the way his family interacts with the existence of Hawthorne, but there isn't anyone who is particularly memorable.

Body-snatching is gross, and trying to turn it into a "pure" love story is just beyond problematic. The protagonist is a creep and I just can't be inside his horrible little head for this many pages.

Gave up at 11% / page 31.

Let me just say, I did not expect to sympathize so deeply with a genderless cyborg who watches tv all day.

This novella zips neatly along, a story set so far in the future that exploring planets for resource mining is not only old hat, it's thoroughly bureaucracized to the point that anyone who has experienced a commercial airline flight will immediately understand.

It's funny, first and foremost, and I loved that the character development and human/cyborg relations (yes, I read that in C3POs voice as I was typing it) felt just as awkward and touching as I would have imagined.

The ending was a little abrupt but I'm definitely going to read on.

Yes, it was sad, but it also wasn't very good. Every chapter is 1 - 3 pages, and it's not enough time to care about these characters. I respect that she chose to lean away from pathos, which is the major reason I hate WWII fiction, but I never connected with any of them. The romance felt forced. I can't remember why I picked this one up, but I really need to stop reading WWII fiction.