iamsalonip
Saloni (she/her) 🌱 Vegan 🤳🏽 Kobo owner 🏃🏽♀️ Sweet romance ✨ Women's fic, contemporary fic, & YA. 🧬 Informative non fiction, health education 🫠 Drowning in ARCs 🎯 HRYCED 3.0 1/25
10647 points
3.73 average · 678 reviews
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This was the book I didn't know I needed, but I absolutely did. I loved it! The writing is wonderfully witty and a mixture of mystery, romance, and humor. The one that stood out the most to me was humor! It had me laughing out loud all the time with the antics the MCs get into. One would imagine translating physical comedy to writing might be a challenge, but Walters nailed it. She ate with her hilarious way with words, and I'm instantly a fan.
There is something magical about having a romantic suspense with MCs that have loved and trusted each other, and they're at this beautiful level of comfort with each other where they are 'friends' above all else and can bicker like nobody's business. I'm super fond of second chance romance, and the story didn't disappoint on that front either. Yes, everything made sense, and I wasn't left hanging and annoyed. Their backstory shown through both MCs individual perspectives and seeing their past feelings colliding with present ones in real time is a treat. I loved that it is all low spice, because the dramatic mystery plot has it all.
Despite this toss of many genres, at no point did I feel the characters were not crafted well enough or too one dimensional. You can easily see the thought and care and love that the author has put into crafting Cybil and Ben both. They work so well as a duo and it doesn't hurt that they are very entertaining. I can comfortably rave about this book for a long time, so I think it's no surprise that I'm reading anything else by the author I can get my hands on. I do hope there is more in this universe of romantic suspense that she's cooking fingers crossed.
And of course the narrators did a fabulous job. I just know they added so much chaos and liveliness to the already great manuscript by voicing Ben and Cybil. I loved their accents and their work on this project, so I'm keeping my eyes peeled for anything Andrew Eiden and Dominique Salvacion have given their voices to. I highly recommend getting the audio version of this book if you can, because I promise it's such a treat!
Goddess of the River
Vaishnavi Patel
As an Indian, I'm already so happy with the choice of narrator! Sneha Mathan has the perfect accent for this. It's not too American and the transition to an Indian accent for certain words feels natural and beautiful. Glad these pronunciations didn't get painfully whitewashed and I'm delighted that this gives non-Indian listeners the opportunity to learn the right way to say these names.
iamsalonip commented...
This process scares me too. I saw a comment saying that AI could then have the power to alter events of history as recorded and then we will be left with no evidence a few decades down the line. These robots can operate independently outside of human guidelines and structure, they can wreak havoc as they already have starting in minute ways and now building up. We are losing our own creativity and just our basic ability to do simple tasks ourselves, needing AI to do everything for us. I do get scared sometimes about the ways in which I too rely on AI at times.
We need physical keeps of our cultures and this timeline and it pisses me off that AI is actively destroying paper that was created from another precious resource that we won't have much of soon- trees. And that's going to have such a big impact on all our livelihoods.
Humans just piss me off in general. All of our species (me included) selfishly using everything we can lay our hands on from the Earth and beyond because we feel entitled as the smartest living species. I find myself wishing more times than not that the meteor all those years ago missed Earth and didn't kill dinosaurs so us humans wouldn't be destroying the planet.
First off, I cannot fathom the idea that this is actually happening, some inner subconscious part of me refuses to believe that multi-millionaire AI companies are actively taking physical books and manuscripts, some of which have only single copies (that was genuinely horrifying to me, like there's no tangible evidence of this document having existed anymore once they're done with it??), cutting off their spines, essentially decimating them, then scanning their texts to FEED AND IMPROVE THEIR OWN MINDLESS, SOULLESS, UNTHINKING ROBOTS SO THAT THEY CAN PROFIT? And yet, I know it's true, I know it's happening because I know that people can do this and not give a second thought about it. Can you tell that I'm seething? Second off, I know people are comparing this to Fahrenheit 451 and 1984, which is a completely apt and vaguely terrifying comparison, because it's always haunting to read a book that presents something in a less than admirable way and to see it take shape in your world, in front of your very eyes is, honestly, genuinely upsetting and rage-inducing to me. But personally, more relevant than either of the above-mentioned books, is a book I read a long time ago called Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine. While it isn't exquisitely written or even too conventionally "out-of-this-world", I just love it for its originality and world building and general plot. So when I found out about Anthropic and its drive to scan all these books to enhance the text-based element of their AI models, hence effectively the only way to access these destroyed physical books is through AI, I was reminded of Ink and Bone, where physical books are banned and the only way to access any book is through a tablet-like device called a Codex, which can pop up any book you ask for from its own pre-decided specific registry. And that struck me as so similar to where we're headed, it's honestly scary. That's why I always ask people to read this book, lol. Anyway, I had to share this and Pagebound was the only place I could think of. What are your thoughts?
