The audio is so good.

I kept saying this felt like a movie, and then in the afterword found out that the author also wrote the screenplay at the same time and it is a movie. So. I was right?

I don't think this deserved as much hype as it got, but I did enjoy it. I don't generally like apocalyptic fiction because I always kind of feel like "what's the point" but this one had enough depth and tension that I was on the edge of my seat, and I loved the ending.

Probably my favorite part of reading this was telling my sister about it and her going "oh yes mushroom horror" and me going "WHAT" and her going "yes it's called sporror."

So I have a new favorite word and a new top 3 zombie novel (along with World War Z and Forest of Hands and Teeth).

I generally hate an unreliable narrator, so it was very frustrating to get going because Harrow has mind-wiped Gideon out of her brain in order not to absorb her and become a proper Lyctor. Once I figured out what was happening I loved it, because even though the two of them hated each other they still cared about each other more than anyone else because they understood each other in a way that no one else could.

I still have a lot of questions. Did Harrow really see Alecto when she was a child, or was the Emperor right? Did Alecto really escape? What's going on with Blood of Eden and is Harrow really just going to sleep while Gideon runs around in her body? Is the emperor really dead? Is Gideon special because her mom was a Lyctor and her dad was the Emperor? How, exactly, does the River work?

I love Muir's writing style and think she is absolutely batshit insane in a good way. The memes made me cringe over 9000 times. But reading this definitely feels like reading a book through a kaleidoscope.

This was so extremely cheesy, but still very cute. I loved the romance and I loved rolling my eyes at the fanfic-esque tropes.

My favorite thing was when Bailey and Porter went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's open ocean room, because I've had that exact livestream up on my computer as a soothing visual at work for the past week.

Super cute, and I LOVED David Tennant's narration for the audiobook.

SO GOOD. Love villain friendships.

Also I enjoyed reminiscing about the good old days of Tumblr when I followed gingerhaze.

This is the most guy-in-your-MFA shit I have ever read in my life. Douglas must be absolutely unbearable in person and I truly feel bad for every library patron who had the misfortune to meet him.

In this memoir he makes fun of trans people, disabled people, random library patrons, children, teens, adults, and the elderly. He uses the word "crazy" to describe people with mental illness, and he uses it derogatorily throughout the entire book. He has such a specific idea of who should be allowed in the library (conservative Christian teetotaling white college-educated men like him, of course) and if you don't fit that idea, he mocks you.

Nearly as agonizing as all this is his insipid footnotes, his insertions of random uninteresting history facts because he believes his reader doesn't have the attention span for a full length book (I'm not kidding, he actually says this), and the fact that there is no cohesive through-line other than his self-praise and belittlement of others.

At a certain point I realized I had to start noting the gems so . . .
On p 167 he insinuates that construction workers don't go to libraries.
On the next page he makes a joke that only "crazy" people take the bus to the library.
A personal favorite: on page 205 he notes that one of his favorite tv shows is the Office, which is so prevalent on dating apps that it's as much of a joke as white guys holding fish.
On too many pages to count, he actively threatens teens and says things to frighten them.
On p 245 is casual trans-shaming and dead-naming. Great job, asshole.
On p 253 he shames people who go to trade school.