Higgins has delivered less of a memoir and more of a desperate plea to be liked. Her jokes are all self-deprecating, her stories framed to make her appear helpless and likable, and her grand sweeping monologues on Irish history and the state of the world are wildly out of place in her otherwise ramshackle memoir and seem to exist only to make her appear knowledgeable (if I'm being charitable) or fill space because her life isn't that interesting (if I'm not). I used to really enjoy Higgins on the StarTalk podcast, but I'm not even sure who I could recommend this for.

I always love a fractured fairy tale so I finished this, but I can't really recommend it. It lacks any kind of storytelling sparkle, and Alice's characterization is so flimsy that she is swallowed by her own story.

Cozy mysteries aren't my favorite genre, but I did enjoy this. I liked the audio narrator, and a few lines made me laugh out loud.

A lot of it was stupid (no high school kid is running four minute miles as practice for a race, for example) but it was well crafted enough that I didn't guess the identity of the murderer. As far as the ending though, it was solid and I'm going to pretend this was a stand alone.

Truly the human life is criminally short. But Burkeman's thesis is that to ever be truly happy you just have to embrace that fact. Accept that you will never be able to do all the things you want to do, and focus instead on putting your energy into the few things that bring the most joy. Life is too short for anything less.

Wong is as hilarious as she is insane. I loved the life advice parts, but found all the behind-the-scenes stand-up information boring because I've read too many comedian memoirs.

To me this lacked a lot of the drama of the first book, just a natural dropping off of excitement. Once you've already been the the Grey Lands, it's hard to be so afraid. I did like seeing more about the world.

Went in with two strikes against it already: I hate a prequel, and I hate an apocalyptic book.

Yet Cargill never steers me wrong, and I had to pretend I was not crying on the plane while I read it. Happily for my pride, the passenger next to me was sleeping and didn't notice anyway.

This was a surprisingly fast read and it asks my favorite scifi question in several good ways: What does it truly mean to be human?