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From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is …
I read this book with my eyeballs but like the reviewer at bookwyrm.social/user/mollymay5000/review/7520325 I also found it kind of rambly and unfocused.
I wrote a more detailed review on my blog: ian.mccowan.space/2025/07/09/whos_afraid_of_gender/
The Stepford Wives meets Get Out in #1 New York Times bestselling author Nicola Yoon’s …
I wrote this review on my blog! Read it there! ian.mccowan.space/2025/07/04/one_of_our_kind/
The Stepford Wives meets Get Out in #1 New York Times bestselling author Nicola Yoon’s first adult novel, a terrifying …
The Stepford Wives meets Get Out in #1 New York Times bestselling author Nicola Yoon’s …
Jesus Christ.
Pretty well put together and kept me reading, but the characters were two-dimensional and the prose was serviceable at best. I read this with my book club because it was set in Seattle; it didn't have me super eager to read any more Baldacci.
Pretty well put together and kept me reading, but the characters were two-dimensional and the prose was serviceable at best. I read this with my book club because it was set in Seattle; it didn't have me super eager to read any more Baldacci.
The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, …
Much of this book was like talking to Measurehead in Disco Elysium. Just pages and pages and pages of the absolute most inane racist shit. Really brings home how much Abraham Lincoln hella did not end racism in America with a stroke of the pen. I read this for my book club because someone wanted an answer to the question of "How did we get from Reconstruction to where we are today?" This book doesn't explain it all—what book could?—but it accounts for a hell of a lot of it.
Much of this book was like talking to Measurehead in Disco Elysium. Just pages and pages and pages of the absolute most inane racist shit. Really brings home how much Abraham Lincoln hella did not end racism in America with a stroke of the pen. I read this for my book club because someone wanted an answer to the question of "How did we get from Reconstruction to where we are today?" This book doesn't explain it all—what book could?—but it accounts for a hell of a lot of it.
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what …
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled …
Plot, characters, themes, all flawlessly executed. A total package. Structurally really similar to Cloud Atlas—apparently an intentional borrowing on the author's part—but hangs together as a single work a lot better than Cloud Atlas did.
Plot, characters, themes, all flawlessly executed. A total package. Structurally really similar to Cloud Atlas—apparently an intentional borrowing on the author's part—but hangs together as a single work a lot better than Cloud Atlas did.
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an …
E. is content with a solitary life in her extraordinary underwater home, until the discovery of a strange, beautiful creature …
Well, the adults don't come off great in this book, but I was really won over by it nonetheless.
Well, the adults don't come off great in this book, but I was really won over by it nonetheless.
In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and …
I think this was a little more of a back-to-nature meditation than the blurb made it sound like, and it's pretty meandering. But the meandering feels appropriate, and Odell is a very engaging thinker, so it's enjoyable and engaging rather than just unsatisfying or unfocused. This resonated with a lot of stuff on my mind recently and I have a feeling I'm going to want to revisit it.
I think this was a little more of a back-to-nature meditation than the blurb made it sound like, and it's pretty meandering. But the meandering feels appropriate, and Odell is a very engaging thinker, so it's enjoyable and engaging rather than just unsatisfying or unfocused. This resonated with a lot of stuff on my mind recently and I have a feeling I'm going to want to revisit it.
A magical island. A dangerous task. A burning secret.
Linus Baker leads a quiet, …
Content warning Definitely some spoilers
Good first: the characters were generally pretty charming. The romance was cute and believable. Upbeat, positive, heartwarming.
But ultimately this didn't work for me, for two main reasons. First, the prose style and its overuse of paragraph breaks. To lend some kind of gravitas, I guess. Or to force comedic timing.
I don't know why this bothers me so much. Because it's gimmicky? It's too cutesy and twee? Or maybe—and this ties into the second issue I had with the book—because it feels condescending, like the book is trying to push me into reading it in a specific cadence rather than being confident in its own prose and trusting me as a reader.
"Not trusting the reader" is a decent way to sum up my second, deeper issue. The book is just so didactic and unsubtle, and there's no bigotry in it so bigoted that it can't be resolved or at least stopped short by some grandiose speechifying. The most interesting character in this regard is Helen, the mayor of the town, who has good intentions and comes to understand that she hasn't been bearing them out in her actions. But there's never really any conflict there, and the conflicts that do exist thenceforth get resolved easily by the aforementioned speechifying or by Helen's using her position to browbeat the townsfolk into compliance.
OK, fine. There's a third thing. I won't get into the metaphysics of what it means that Lucy exists, because the book doesn't either, but it seems emblematic of its general shallowness that the main character who is described as non-religious doesn't reckon with that in any way upon finding out that the literal Antichrist literally exists. But also: the threats that these kids pose to the world, excepting Lucy, are just ridiculously oversold. It's the son of the apparently Biblical Satan, whatever that means in a world where being non-religious is an actual thing, and a bunch of random and almost completely harmless little varmints. Why is this Level 4 Classified or whatever?
All in all: heart in the right place, enough charming moments to get me through it, but overall the execution fell flat for me.
