i read the dune series more than once, so a book where nothing really happens in the desert does not phase me. i was just pleased to hear all the places in arizona this is set in. it leans super into the romance trope where woman is so tiny and scared and little and man is so big and angry. that doesn’t really put me off of this particular book, but i don’t like romance usually so im not worn out on the trope yet. i am going to pretend i do not see the weird age gap thing. she actually didn’t write that in the book i just imagined it. on a sentence level this book is so competent? you won’t catch me believing for a second it’s not YA but it’s not the vapid, empty shell of a novel you’d expect if you hated all the twilight books (i did not hate the twilight books, i have taste). the worst sin this book actually commits is how in every fiber of its being it is the first book in a trilogy, and yet i can’t read the other two. i think it’s interesting that meyer’s metaphors for both satan and mormons were so mixed, and if i was less employed i’d write an essay about it or something. also the audiobook was read by the same lady who read A Wrinkle in Time, Kate Reading stays reviving my childhood interests

in no particular order my favorites are: after reading lucretius i go to the pond good morning little crazy love song i woke the hummingbirds franz marc’s blue horses forgive me the fourth sign of the zodiac what gorgeous thing

the pacing for this book felt sort of all over the place? at some point towards the end he mentions it has been 4 months since Vera died and i swear it felt like a few weeks where the events took place. we had all sorts of time to sit with him and his grief in the beginning, and i think that i would have liked a little more of that, as well as some space for the supernatural elements to progress instead of happening all at once. the horror itself kinda felt lost, like too much was trying to be fit into one story. i actually forgot about the itza entirely for a while? the standout of this novel is of course the grief of it all. i was nauseated by the first part of this book and i probably will be for a while. that was actually so scary and so well done that it pushes all the disjointed parts of this story back in line. i’d be equally as horrified by this book if most of it was just that

good for them

Reality isn’t real but i still want to let her into my home and bathe her and feed her and let her sleep with her head in my lap. there’s some genuinely smart and touching and funny writing in this really crazy style that inspires me. sometimes its like, wow this is the most seen i can feel by a character before they say my full legal name on the page and tragically i realize this is just how being a 23 year old girl was. yolo, but you also live millions of lives through every shared experience on this earth

hear me out i feel like this book takes on like a parallel to American Psycho from time to time? when she’s with the VBB girls for sure, istg the scene where they are all touching the sideboard in that lady’s condo? i love a book about a freak (affectionate) doing what she has to do and getting along in the late stage capitalist hellscape of the world and i love karina dearly, what a sweet friend. i will stay diagnosing a character i personally connect to with ocd and i think that’s healthy and good to do

meg murray one of the earliest incidences of “she’s just like me FR” i can remember. it’s so sweet and full of love and it stands up as a great book about how your dad ain’t shit sometimes. i chose a weird and poignant time to hear it again

the author’s understanding of modern poverty cut like a knife sometimes. i’ve felt these things and never seen them written out before. i truly think the plot and characters were very interesting and engaging, but the best parts of them sort of fell to the wayside in favor of an incredibly repetitive cycle for our main character who becomes unlikable as he refuses to learn anything until the very last minute. there were characters and threads in this book, like the mushrooms for instance, that i was very excited about that just got dropped completely which was so sad. i don’t think there’s a problem with making the main character kind of an ineffectual loser, it’s actually very cool to do that, it just got old being in his head. a lot of things he and other characters said also felt very out of place. and as far as the audiobook goes, the narrator gets so grating to listen to