This is just tortureporn.

But I would have stopped reading anyway after Rizzoli says that having a uterus is the only thing that makes you a woman.

85% of this should have been edited out for being unnecessary and exceedingly boring. The remaining 15% that was the actual plot solely revolved around characters who were so weird and/or annoying that I literally could not make myself care who lived or died.

I enjoy Tolstoy's writing, but this is so very Russian. Unsatisfying ending, navel-gazing, the whole shebang. The afterword discussing Tolstoy's tumblr-like whining for his whole life really enhanced the effect.

A twisted fairy tale where Cinderella gets to the castle and realizes she maybe doesn't want to get married at the tender age of fifteen. I liked it well enough as a kid, but as an adult I feel it tried to do too many things and didn't get deep enough into any of them.

I loved the premise, but thought Aladdin was an idiot from the get-go. He gets three wishes, and he wastes the first one on wishing to go home to escape a fistfight? Why not wish for the ability to travel anywhere anytime, or to win every battle, or a hundred other things that would be actually useful?

I also was unimpressed by the handling of the djinn magic. It's stated over and over that Zarah doesn't have a physical body, she just makes it appear that way, so why would being slapped hurt her? It should be impossible for her to be in any danger from humans.

Where the book really lost me was when Aladdin was supposed to get married to the princess and he says he can't because he's in love with the djinn. BRO. FUCK YOU. The princess can't be queen unless she marries you or the son of the main villain, and you're really going to fuck up your whole entire country and let the evil vizier take over? No thanks. That's not the hero I'm looking for.

This book about a group of retired people in England who are solving murders soothed my morbid little heart. It was funny, it was clever, it was fast-paced, and I did not see the end coming. All you can ask for in a murder mystery, with the bonus feature of a soft focus on mortality and what it means to grow old.

Steinbeck does a great job of building characters and forcing you to change your mind about them as they grow. He has a knack for seeing into human nature.

But his writing is mediocre at best. This would have had more emotional impact if it had been interlinked short stories and about 200 pages total. It just feels like a product of its time that didn't age super well. Like, the narrator's sister wants to be a boy, which was fascinating because it means enough people were trans back in the day that it was an unremarkable thing to put in a novel -- but Steinbeck ruins it by saying she grows up to be glad she is a girl, and then never mentioning her again. So.

Just perfect.

Every book for me starts as a 5 star read, and loses point as it goes along.

Lowen behaving like an idiot over her mom and Random Citizen (aka Future Love Interest) and just generally being whiny made it a 4 star read pretty quickly, but that's still solid in my book.

We got to a 3 star on page 103 when Verity has an entire page describing how one's "conscience" is "our mind, our soul, and all the intangible parts." Babe, no. Your conscience is what stops you from stealing and makes you give a sad friend a hug. Consciousness is the noun you're looking for, and I'm embarrassed for Hoover and her editor.

It became a 2 star read

Spoiler

when Jeremy fell for Lowen, because it made literally no sense except that he was looking for someone to be the mother to his children again, which is hella icky. And predatory, because Lowen has so many issues. Normal people don't encourage men they have known for three weeks to murder their wives in cold blood because they want to sleep with him.

This was all still fine because the thriller parts did thrill me and the sex parts were pretty entertaining so I was happy to be along for the ride.

But it became a 1 star read for me

Spoiler

at the very end when Lowen finds the letter that Verity left, claiming that the entire autobiography was a lie and she loved her children blah blah blah. Jeremy didn't even know about that hiding space, which made the whole thing feel almost as stupid as the fact that she printed the autobiography in the first place. Who does that? Also, it's not even an autobiography, it's a memoir, because it's about a portion of her life, not the whole thing.

Firstly, even without addressing whether Verity lied or not, it's canon that Jeremy already read the autobiography, and lied to Lowen. She needs to leave him because he is unhinged at best and now the new baby's parents are both murderers, so perhaps we should do something about that.

So let's say Verity is a monster. She's dead, everyone is safe (for now, because Lowen and Jeremy are still murderers). Personally I choose to believe she was a monster. (I think Crew's name is the biggest clue for me, because she writes that she wanted him to have a nautical name because he was conceived in the boat.)

But let's say she was innocent. Well. She's still dead, and Lowen and Jeremy are still murderers.

I think this reveal happened too late to really make a difference, which is a shame, because it could have been interesting. But the real problem is it's just lazy. Hoover put it at the end so you would go "ooh" and then move on with your day, but all I can think is, if Lowen just asked Jeremy about whether Verity breastfed, she would know the answer immediately. That was such a big scene when Verity actively rejected her baby for nursing, and if she really did , then Jeremy would know that the autobiography was a lie -- and if it was, well, HE'S STILL A MURDERER.

It seems to me that Jeremy is the real villain no matter what.