Hello and welcome back to the Erin Can Read Bookz show. In this episode, we’ll be recapping the second half of March which I can’t even remember anymore, but here we go!

9. Charming as a Verb – Ben Phillipe

I apparently gave this a 4 but after having some time to let it simmer, I think it was more of a 3. Main dude Henri is trying hard to get into Columbia because he hasn’t yet realized that this is really his dad’s dream. Meanwhile, his school nemesis who also lives in his building blackmails him into helping her become more “social” because one of their teachers wrote her a college recommendation letter that mentioned her lack of social skills. Yadda yadda yadda, you know the drill. Of COURSE there is a conflict and I don’t want to give it away but it gave me so much anxiety and also has me dreading the college application process which is fast-approaching since freezing Chooch in a block of ember to keep him a smol child did not work.

10. Writers & Lovers – Lily King

Completely blown away by this book. Legit gave a shit about the main character. Rooted for her so hard that I gave myself a headache. The writing IS SO RAW AND BEAUTIFUL. We’re following Casey, who I believe is in her early 30s, mourning the recent death of her mom, drowning in debt, working an emotionally abusive and toxic job as a waitress in some fancy restaurant in Boston, all while struggling to write a novel. There were parts of this book that gave me a visceral reaction, and by the end, I just put my head down and cried. Like C-R-I-E-D. Not because it was depressing or tragic, per se, but just…it was so real and I FELT THAT. I just want Casey to be happy, you know?

Also, this takes place in 1997 and it gave me strong pre-mumblecore vibes. I could picture it as an indie movie starring, I don’t know, Parker Posie or Hope Davis.

This book was totally my style.

11. Elatsoe – Darcie Little Badger

This book was all over Booktube and it sounded interesting – it’s set in a world where the supernatural is present and known and our main character Elatsoe is tasked with solving the murder of her cousin and I liked that her parents were involved too!  I thought it was cute and the dialogue was sweet and snappy and even made me laugh a few times, but I was also kind of bored. I think I would have loved this a lot if I read it as a young teen though! The ghost dog was e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.

We get a lot of Native American mythology taught to us in this, which was interesting. Also, the main character is a 17-year girl who is asexual and I think that is fucking amazing. But at the end of the day, I was just the wrong demographic for this book.

12.  Too Good to Be True – Carola Lovering

Oh shit this hooked me from the start and I was so excited about it! I love books with multiple narratives, especially when it’s not immediately clear how everyone is connected, and one of the narratives was even set in the past so that was extra intriguing!

I have a pretty low bar for domestic thrillers because I don’t really go into that genre expecting to be blown away by the writing. I just want to be entertained! And this one did entertain me, until the last quarter. I absolutely hated how it ended. It was so unbelievable (and I know, most thrillers are super far-fetched!) but this one was even far-fetched in the way some of the characters reacted to/handled the conflict. I really just didn’t buy it at all.

Also, I pretty much hated everyone in this book, so I really didn’t care who came out on top.

13. Memorial – Bryan Washington 

We’re following two guys, Mike and Benson, who are at a crossroads in their relationship. The book is split into two parts: Mike’s POV and Benson’s POV. It’s uncomfortable, sad, sometimes light-hearted, but by the end of the book, I was kind underwhelmed. I don’t necessarily need novels to be wrapped up nicely with a bow and a gift tag by the last page, but this one was just kind of like…pointless to me? I really really really loved Mike’s mom who visits from Japan, and the quiet relationship she forms with Benson while Mike is back in Japan spending time with his dad. I really thought that that part of the book would have been my favorite, because I love when books are set outside of the US, but Memorial just didn’t leave a lasting impression on me and I am sad because I really expected to LOVE IT LOVE IT.

14. The Project – Courtney Summers

After obsessing over Summers’ last book, Sadie, I was highly anticipating the release of The Project. SADLY, it was a dud for me. The writing itself was wonderful – Summers is a fantastic writing – but the characters and story just wasn’t it, sir. And I was shocked by how bored I was because it was about A CULT and one girl trying to save her older sister from their hold on her.

The cover is pure art though, isn’t it??

15. A Pho Love Story – Loan Le

This is a very modern Romeo & Juliet retelling: the son and daughter of two rival pho restaurants meet in high school and fall in love, but have to keep it a secret from their families. Turns out, the rivalry predates the restaurants and the reveal was actually my favorite part of the book because the adults were fascinating characters and I would LOVE to read a spin-off featuring both sets of parents!

This book was just really cute with perfectly placed dollops of heaviness, Vietnamese culture, and LOTS OF FOOD DESCRIPTIONS so get a snack ready before you sit down with this one!

16. They Never Learn – Layne Fargo

A book about a female serial killer? OH HELL YES. Told from dual POVs, this was wonderfully fast-paced, infuriating, with a twist I wasn’t expecting. Super entertaining and a quick read. I was so happy I ended the month on a high note and it also gave me a much-needed booster shot of GIRL POWER.

Hello. I read a bunch of books in March. These are the books that I read.

1. Super Fake Love Song – David Yoon

I love David Yoon. I read his book “Frankly In Love” last year and adored it so I could not WAIT to pick this one up. Classic “boy likes girl, girl thinks boy is someone he’s not, hilarity and cringe ensues” young adult romp but David Yoon writes characters that feel so real, it makes the trope feel fresh.

2. If I Disappear – Eliza Jane Brazier

I was really excited for this. I mean, get a load of that cover! And the plot? A true crime podcast host goes off the grid and her number one fan GOES TO HER HOMETOWN to search for her? Unfortunately, it just didn’t do it for me. I did not feel thrilled, nor did I care about a single character. It just lacked tension. However, it’s being developed into a series, I guess, so maybe I will check that out because like I said, the synopsis seemed very compelling to me.

3. Behind Her Eyes – Sarah Pinborough

OK, speaking of books-to-TV, this one was recently made into a Netflix show and I am super glad I read it before watching it because this was a motherfucking TRIP. I mean, you have got to REALLY suspend disbelief with this one or else you will probably just hate it. But I was really into this and by the time I got to to the end, I was laughing out loud and screaming WHAT? Not because it was hilarious, but because it was a WILD RIDE. I was thoroughly entertained!

I did start to watch the series but it was so similar to the book that it felt kind of like I was just wasting my time since I had *just* finished reading the book. Although, I might just go ahead and skip to the last episode because I’m interested in how that was lifted from page to screen.

Anyway, if you like super cray domestic thrillers, try this one lol.

4. Smash It! – Francina Simone

A fresh take on the classic “bucket list” trope, written by a well-loved Booktuber. I needed a fun and upbeat audiobook to listen to one weekend when I was going out for a walk and this book did a fine job of distracting and entertaining me but I have to tell you a secret. The day I started listening to this book, it was a windy but super sunny and beautiful Saturday. Henry and Chooch had left to go pick up takeout from a new African restaurant and I was like I AM GOING TO GO FOR A NICE LONG WALK AND ENJOY THIS EARLY SPRING WEATHER, BITCHES so I left the house for a good hour at least and when I came back, THE FRONT DOOR WAS WIDE OPEN. And we do not  have a screen door anymore so if the front door is open, WELCOME TO MY HOUSE, STEP RIGHT UP, COME ON IN! I have no idea how long the door was open, but after I tentatively stepped in and yelled HELLO IS ANYONE HERE, the cats came out of the basement looking scared as hell, like, “OMG LADY A GHOSTESS BLEW OPEN THE DOOR WHILE YOU WERE GONE AND WE HERE ALL ALONE WITH IT AHHHHH!!!”

Of course this happened because I do not have a house key (Henry had a new one made for me and I lost it and then I found it and then I lost it again lol) so when I leave the house I have to leave it unlocked and apparently I also did not shut the door all the way either so, that’s how that happened.  Anyway, I 100% did not tell Henry about this but then the secret was causing me physical pain so one night last week when we were on a walk, I blurted out, “SOMETHING HAPPENED.” And then I told him and he just murmured, “ohmygod.”

So now I will always associate this book with that. Lol. I’m so good at book reviews!

5. The Inheritance Games – Jennifer Lynn Barnes 

When I was in elementary school, I was obsessed with this book called The Westing Game, which was about a millionaire who died and named a bunch of seemingly unrelated people in his Will, but they had to play a game in order to win the inheritance. LOVED that book and to this day, I still have an urge to swish with Bourbon when I have a toothache. This was a super valuable lesson I learned at the ripe age of like….8.

Anyway! This book is similar: super fucking rich guy kicks it and leaves everything to some rando teenager but of course there is a game involved and four super hot grandsons to work with. Not as good as The Westing Game by any means, but this was FUN and basically just what I  needed at that time – a nice, fun read that wasn’t going to add additional stress or heartache to my life. Evidently, this is going to be a series so I will definitely pick up book two when it comes out!

6. & 7. Heartstopper, Vol. 1 & 2

I’m not an avid graphic novel reader but I am always hearing about how great this series is, and having read Oseman’s “Radio Silence,” I’m already moderately familiar with her.  So finally, I requested Volume 1 from the library and proceeded to accidentally devour it in one sitting. THE HYPE IS REAL. If something like this was available when I was in high school, wow. I would have loved it even more but even as a crusty old broad, I was basically swooning as I flipped my way through this. What an adorable, realistic exploration of sexual identity and love for teenagers.

Charlie and Nick for-fucking-ever. I can’t wait to read Volumes  3 and 4!

Oh!! And this is also being turned into a series!! I CAN’T WAIT.

8. The Lost Apothecary – Sarah Penner

The book cover and concept of The Lost Apothecary are fabulous, but the actual book was…it just wasn’t it for me. Basically we have some broad who catches her husband in an affair right before they’re set to take a 10-year anniversary trip to London so she’s like “fuck it, I’m going by myself” and while there she goes “mudding” in the Thames and unearths a super old apothecary jar and then sets off to find out more about it while rediscovering her dreams that were “lost” after she was married.

Then we travel back in time to some Victorian era where we follow the broad who runs the secret apothecary that exists for women to kill the shitty men in their lives. I really wanted more from this book. The characters were so flat to me and the chapters where we went back in time were so boring where I expected them to be the juicy parts, you know?

I just didn’t care for this book, sadly. But maybe you will!

OK, that’s the first half. I think I read about 6 more book in March so I will recap those ones later this week because right now my stomach hurts and I want to watch some coaster videos before hopefully being well enough to exercise and probably watching the new SHINee video 18 more times, wow, now you know my Monday evening agenda.

I am really a great blogger and book reviewer, don’t you think?

Anyway, here are the remaining 5 books i read last month while they’re still fresh on my mind, LOL,  that’s a joke, nothing stays fresh on my mind longer than 20  minutes these days.

8. Theme Music – T. Marie Vandelly

Hot damn, I was REALLY looking for a legit creepy horror novel and this bitch served. The premise is that the main character, in her 20s, discovers that her childhood home is for sale. Oh yeah, this is also the place where her father ax-murdered her entire family in the kitchen when she was a baby, sparing her. So she does what ANY of us would do and…

you know, buys it.

Her boyfriend is like THE FUCK OUTTA HERE when she finally fesses up and tells him the history of the house, so he won’t move in and now their relationship is strained and oh yeah, her dead family is all “yo welcome home” and walking around with their heads caved in and shit. The descriptions were SICKENING and GORY and painted a gloriously grotesque scene for me. Also, it’s narrated by the main character and her thoughts are twisted and often HILARIOUS. I love when a horror story can effortlessly weave humor into the narrative without coming off as cheesy or slapstick.

It kept me guessing all  the way to the end – REALLY enjoyed this one a lot!

9. In a Holidaze – Christina Lauren

After Theme Music’s carnage, I was looking for some levity and Scribd had “Holidaze” by Christina Lauren available. I’m not a super big romance person but I did read another one of their books last year and LOVED IT.

This is kind of like a Groundhog Day-style scenario where a young woman (I think she is in her mid-20s) keeps reliving the same day except that she’s able to make changes, but anytime she makes the wrong choice, something inevitably falls from the sky and lands on her head, causing er to once again wake up on Day One.

What I loved the most about this book is that the main character, her younger brother and her divorced parents have decades-old tradition where they spend Christmas vacation with family friends in a cabin owned by one of the families, and that dynamic is EVERYTHING. It makes me so sad that I don’t have anything like this in my life! Anyway, the book starts with the owners of the cabin telling the rest of the crew on the last day that they can no longer afford the upkeep of the cabin and are going to sell it.

Yes, there’s a romance involved, but what I enjoyed the most is the effort that goes into trying to change the timeline in order to keep the tradition from dying.

I’m actually crying as I remember how it ends. It was so pure. This book is wonderful. I think I’m obsessed with Christina Lauren and I have two more books by them waving to me from my Scribd shelf so I gotta get on that shit soon.

10. These Vengeful Hearts – Katherine Laurin 

Is it weird that I can almost never remember characters’ names, even if it’s only been like a week since I read the book? Because I can’t remember a single person in this book and also this book was not great. Like, I think even if I was 14, I’d be like, “This book is not great.”

There’s a secret society at this high school called The Red Court and students can ask them for “favors” (eg. “make me homecoming queen;” “publicly shame my cheating girlfriend” etc) but then they eventually have to “pay” by carrying out usually really half past-bullying more toward legit crimes against a “target.” Our main girl has a plan to infiltrate the court and find out who the Red Queen is in an effort to take them down for paralyzing her older sister.

But then OMG is she ENJOYING the power? Dun dun dunnnn.

It was dumb. Sometimes I crave a good YA thriller and this wasn’t it.

11. The Winter People – Jennifer McMahon

I kept seeing people compare this to Pet Sematary except that it was really boring, the writing was kind of bad, and not a single character had any, well, character. It’s a split timeline and I surprisingly liked the one set in the 1800s better than present day.

But yeah, this wasn’t scary and then the present day characters were soooooo annoying and I 100% just wanted everyone to die. It was also shockingly difficult for me to follow the present day story line. I couldn’t keep track of who everyone was and then when the big “reveal” happened, I was like “Huh?” because I couldn’t follow how everyone was supposedly connected.

This one booktuber that I think is so lame gave this a 5 and that should have been the biggest indication for me to run far away from this book.

12. Eight Perfect Murders – Peter Swanson

This was pretty fun! I didn’t enjoy it as much as his other book, The Kind Worth Killing, but it’s perfect for anyone who loves a good murder mystery! The premise is that a string of murders have been connected to a blog post written on a book store’s website about EIGHT books featuring PERFECT MURDERS, try to keep up, guys.

The book is told from the POV of the man who wrote the blog post, who is also the co-owner of the book store. I kept picturing Joe from the TV adaption of the book “You” – if you know, you know. I gave it a 3 – it was fun, immersive, but it didn’t BLOW ME AWAY. His other aforementioned book had me screaming, but this one had me politely clapping.

I feel like this would be a great book to read on a plane. Sigh.

And that was how my February went. Henry has been obsessed with audio books lately so he tore through a bunch of books too but I’mnot even going to ask him to review any because we all know how that will go:

“I liked it.”

“It was good.”

“Eh.”

“I can’t remember.”

“To [sic] many big words.”

“Yes.”

February was a really bad reading month for me. I got duped and double-crossed left and right by booktubers and book covers — it was not a fun  time. There was some good ones, but no 5 stars, that’s for sure! Here is the first half of what I read because I still read a lot even though I said I wouldn’t but I have clearly needed the escape so back off OKAY?? Everything sucks.

1. Siege & Storm – Leigh Bardugo

OK, I’m just going to say it: Leigh Bardugo’s writing is not great. This was book two in the Grishaverse series and while I moderately enjoyed the first one, now I’m wondering how much of that was actually my subconscious attempting to convince myself that I liked it because this series is SO HYPED in the book world and has recently been adapted into a Netflix series.

This was a fucking CHORE TO READ. Books should not be a chore to read! Not even the ones assigned to us in school! I realized that not only do I not give a shit about a single character (like, some of them die and I just continued reading, unfazed), but I also HAD NO IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON. I only JUST read the first book last year and my memory is not THAT bad, but I was like, “Who dat? What now?”

One of my FAVORITE YouTubers, this American girl who lives in Korea, LOVES this series and I DON’T GET IT. Cari was the inspiration for me to get back into reading last year because she had a video of her favorite Korean authors, and she has never steered me wrong before, but SO MANY BOOKTUBERS were also in cahoots with this one because I was completely pulled down into their insidious hype.

Cari, I’ll stick with your Seoul cafe suggestions and skip the book recs from now on, I think, THANKYOUV.MUCH.

2. Fever Dream – Samanta Schweblin

Uhhhhh. This was WEIRD. Fever Dream indeed. It’s translated from Spanish (the author is Argentinian, I believe) and we’re basically just reading someone’s novella-length novella. The whole book is told from the perspective of a woman in a hospital bed, talking to a young boy who is coaxing her to describe her interactions with who is presumably his mother. It’s one of those books that, even for its short length, is NOT an easy read. I felt really tense and uncomfortable and also confused, but it was definitely something that will stick with me. It was unique, to say the least, and a great example of environmental issues masked as horror.

3. None Shall Sleep – Ellie Marney

Silence of the Lambs for kids. 100%. I have nothing else to say.

4. What Happens At Night – Peter Cameron

LOL, this was when I was trying to take actual pictures of the books I was reading so I wouldn’t have to copy/paste from Goodreads because that part of the process really irritates me for some reason. Anyway, I did this for two books then forgot to do it again oh well.

But this book was wonderful!!! The ambiance was CREEPY without anything overtly CREEPY even happening?! It gave me big Twin Peaks vibes, because this American couple is visiting some other country in the dead of winter in order to adopt a baby. I don’t think they ever specify the location, but I got a very Russian/Eastern European flavor from the details, and the locals they encounter are basically emitting SOMETIMES MY ARMS BEND BACK vibes – if you know, you know.

The names of the couple are never revealed, they are known only as “the man” and “the woman” and you get a sense of marital discord straight away. They’re staying in a super sus hotel, inhabited by a bartender who stares into space, an old woman who is fancy AF and all up in your biz, a bizarrely boisterous businessman….and the longer the couple stays in the hotel, the more estranged they become. I just can’t really explain it but I had goosebumps while reading it and whisper-laughed “wtf?” when I finished it. Recommended to me through my local library’s recommendation service and I’m starting to feel like these librarians know me too well.

David Lynch-meets-Wes Anderson, kind of?

5. Heiress Apparently – Diana Ma

I wanted to like this one so much more than I did. It was fun, but just didn’t really fulfill the wanderlust hole in my heart.

6. The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters

If you’re looking for a balls-to-the-wall haunted house book, this ain’t it, boo. But if you’re looking for gloriously sweeping writing that you can really immerse yourself in, pick this up. I was worried because this is set in postwar England and I’m just not usually interested in that, but it ended up not mattering at all because I was super swept up in the story of the Ayres family, and their crumbling estate obviously tugged at my heart and reminded me of my own grandparents’ house and the state it was in and how hard we tried to fix it. I felt a huge connection with this stupid house!!

Anyway, this book is pretty long but it’s not dry at all. I enjoyed every second of it, never felt bored, and actually became so engrossed in the relationships between the family and their doctor that anytime sometime creepy would happen, I would be totally caught off guard. There was one moment when I was sitting on the couch, broad daylight, reading it when an envelope slowly slid off the back of the couch and tapped my shoulder, nearly sending me into cardiac arrest.

Sarah Waters is a masterful writer!

After I finished it, I saw that there was a movie adaptation from several years ago, with Ruth Wilson who I like, so I put it on and lost interest pretty quickly. The book is better.

7. Ice Cream Man, Vol. 1: Rainbow Sprinkles – W. Maxwell Prince, Martin Morazzo (illustrator)

After The Little Stranger, I needed to cleanse my palate with something light and short, so I picked up this horror graphic novel. The illustrations were EVERYTHING and totally my style, and the stories were decent too. I think I will definitely continue this series, especially because I always say I want to read more graphic novels and then I never do.

I don’t feel like recapping the other 5 so I guess look forward to part 2? Lol. Lemme know what you’ve read recently that you really loved!

I got really caught up in watching Ginny&Georgia and I’m itching to get back into that so peace out, pee spout.

Oh boy here are the books I read in the second half of January, and I also want to mention that Henry just read “In the Dream House” which was one of my faves from last year and I am SO PROUD of him for giving it a chance because this is decidedly not a Very Henry Book but he read it and HE LIKED IT. (He did admit that some parts went over his head though lolol.)

(I asked him if he even felt any emotions and he was so offended and scoffed, “YES. I’M NOT DEAD INSIDE.”)

7. Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In – Phuc Tran

The tagline on the cover was enough to get me to pick me up but Phuc’s writing brought it to the next level. There was one part that stood out where he describes his immersion into the punk scene as a way to be considered a misfit or outcast for something other than the color of his skin.

Phuc’s humor & accounts of high school hijinx with his skater crew often made me feel like I was reading the script for an 80s teen movie and it was beyond entertaining, but then he would turn around and show us what he was going through at home with his Vietnamese parents who just wanted to provide the best life they could for their kids but didn’t always do that in the best ways.

Anyway, Phuc is currently a tattoo artist in Maine and I want a tattoo from him in the worst way now.

8. The Ghost Tree – Christina Henry

How is this the same person who wrote Alice, which I read in December and loved?! This book was not great!  Something about it reminded me of that guy Grady Hendrix who everyone thinks is such a great horror writer and I’m always just like, “THIS WAS SO CORNY!” That’s how this felt, except that it was targeted more for young adults, I think so Christina Henry can get away with that a bit more I guess.

I don’t even feel like discussing this, to be honest.

9. Weather – Jenny Offill 

OK excuse me please but this book was OFFILL.

Sorry, I had to.

But this book was really bad. It was like someone printed out random LiveJournal entries from 2002, bound them and then made some OK collage for a cover. I had absolutely no idea what was going on, what the point was, who the characters were…this was such a waste of time.

10. Moshi Moshi – Banana Yoshimoto 

I think this book cover is so lovely.

Moshi, Moshi was a very short book yet it took me nearly the entire month to read it. First of all, it’s not broken up into chapters and books like that make me nervous. I need to have a solid place to end my reading sessions! Second, it’s just a very slow-moving, quiet exploration of the grieving process. The main character’s (Yoshie) father has been murdered and she moves out shortly thereafter, only to have her mother follow. Her mom claims that their old apartment is haunted now, which gives a false impression that this book is going to be a ghost story. It’s really not. It’s more about how Yoshie and her mother each find different ways to move forward from the death.

I didn’t NOT enjoy this book, but it wasn’t something that I am going to find myself ever thinking about again, if that makes sense. You know me and my wishy-washy book reviews. The best part about this book was that I learned from a Goodreads review that Japanese people say “Moshi moshi’ when they answer the phone because ghosts can only say it once. THAT IS THE COOLEST FACT I’VE LEARNED RECENTLY. (I don’t know very many cool Japan facts since Korea is my wheelhouse.)

Anyway, I don’t even know if that’s true.

11. The Music Shop – Rachel Joyce

I didn’t know how badly I needed to read this book. I had never even heard of it and then one day it was recommended on Scribd and I wanted something to listen to while working – UGH IT WAS SO TOUCHING. Anyone who loves music will relate to this.

The side characters are like a British Stars Hollow motley crew, and the two main characters (Frank, who owns a record shop in the 80s and is violently resisting the growing demand for CDs; and Ilse, a woman visiting from Germany who has her own love story with music) are so well-written and I was rooting for them bigly.

I cried like a baby at the end. This book was so sweet.

12.  You Say It First – Katie Cotugno

This was OK. We have a girl in Philly who is super into politics and works at a voter registration call center after school, where she cold-calls a house in Ohio and has a combative conversation with the teenage boy of the family who starts questioning her spiel and OMG HOW DARE HE and of course this turns into some kind of sketchy long-distance frenemy sitch until suddenly they realize that they’re more real with each other than they are with their actual friends. Yadda yadda yadda – we all know this story, but now add politics into the obligatory teen drama.

It actually reminded me of when I worked at Olan Mills as a telemarketer when I was 18 (can you imagine!? I was actually extremely great at it because this was back when I had a super outrageous personality before life and toxic work places beat me down into the bland, insecure pulp I am today. Anyway!! This one night, I ended up calling a guy who declined my offer for a photo package because he was actually a photography major at the Art Institute yet we hit it off for no reason other than we were both young and opposite sex and you know how when you’re young, it doesn’t take much. My manager was like majorly side-eying me for being on the phone for too long so we exchanged numbers and then when I got home that night we talked for HOURS to the point where our conversation took its natural course to us getting married, moving to Montana*, and getting a sheepdog.

*(Weird because I literally can’t imagine myself ever living there so he must have caught me in a good mood.)

I can’t even remember this guy’s name now – JOE?! – but we did end up meeting in real life at the mall. My friend Brian took me there and made sure I was OK before leaving and then JOE?! and I took the bus (literally the first and last time I was ever on a PAT bus) to his apartment in Southside, messed around (lol), and then he took me to a nearby cafe to meet his friends at which time he turned into a different person and I was like EW I DO NOT LIKE YOU ANYMORE and he was like “stay over” and I was like “NO THANK YOU” and had to call my mom to come pick me up at 2am because I didn’t have my license yet LOL.

I think we talked on the phone occasionally after that (I have a recollection of him moving out of state – I think he wasn’t from Pittsburgh and had moved home – and then moving back and getting in touch?) but I was like “Dude you can shove your Montana dreams, I was already in one shitty relationship and I will not be treated like common trash just because you’re trying to look cool in front of your friends” and this is the part that I related to in the book because they end up meeting up IRL and he takes her to a party and all his friends are total rural bros who make misogynistic jokes and think all women are meant to fetch beers, and now the dude isn’t acting like he normally does when they’re on the phone and I FELT THAT.

God, what was that guy’s name!?!? I used to have a picture of him too and now I don’t even know where that is. I just remember he wore JNCO pants and had several piercings because ART SCHOOL.

Anyway, those are the books I read in January. You’re welcome.

Hey word-nerds. I figured I would keep up this book list on here because it’s fun and I don’t have much else going on. I decided at the end of my 2020 challenge that I definitely do not want to read over 200 books again. I mean – that was nuts and I would like to have more time like, watch a k-drama or something.

I think I set a goal of 50, which seems reasonable and not hyper-obsessive. Right? Except that I still have all this momentum and ended up reading 12 books in January regardless, but I am going to make a conscious effort to slow the eff down from here on out, I swear to myself.

Anyway, here are the first 6 books I read in January, which was an “OK” reading month.

1. Pizza Girl – Jean Kyoung Frazier

What a weird little effing book this one was! Every so often, I take advantage of my library’s recommendation service and the librarian this time around gave me some right recs. We follow an 18-year-old pregnant Korean American, out of high school and lost, working at a pizza shop, when one day she takes a call from a frenzied mom begging for pickles to be added to her son’s pizza. Intrigued by this, the girl then goes out of her way to procure  the pickles and after delivering the pizza, she starts to become obsessed with the lady.

This book was so uncomfortable at times, funny, sad — there’s an underlying exploration of grief that I could relate to more than I wanted to, as it becomes clear that the girl never fully mourned the semi-recent death of her alcoholic father.

I don’t know, I really vibed with this and it was a great book to kick off the new year! Also, the cover is amaze.

2.  The Party – Robyn Harding

LOL this book was so bad. In regard to the blurb on the front cover: This was more like if a 12-year-old binged Big Little Lies and then tried to write her own version of it. Every single character was written SO POORLY.  The pizza in the book above had more personality than anyone in this book, which is a shame because it was multi-POV and I usually really enjoy books written that way.

Dumb dumb dumb. I hate being a shithead toward published authors because obviously what have I published, but not only was the plot just….huh??….but the writing was bland and unexceptional. Basically, this is something that a mom would grab at an airport bookstand last minute and forget about by the time the plane lands. Skip this!!

3. Us Against You (Beartown #2) – Fredrik Backman

My friend Eve commented a few months ago and told me that she liked Beartown but she LOVED Us Against You. I thought these were strong words because I LOVED BEARTOWN and couldn’t even imagine how a sequel could best the original.

And then I read it and with saline-swollen eyes and a stuffy nose, I wailed, “SHE WAS RIGHHHHHHHT.” This book is everything. I have since also gotten Janna and Henry to read both and we are like a small little Pittsburgh chapter of the Beartown Bros.

We’re still following Hockey Lyfe in Beartown, most of the characters from the first book are back but we get some new ones too and I can’t stress enough how masterful Backman is at writing characters. Every character has a purpose. Every sentence matters. I sobbed my face off numerous times during my reading journey because the people in this book feel so fucking real to me, my heart aches anytime something bad happens to them.

Drew was actually staring at me with huge concerned eyeballs when I finished the last page because I was legit ugly-sobbing. Like, CRYING OUT LOUD.

You do not have to be a hockey person to enjoy these books. Please read them. A third one is coming out at some point and I am considering medication before I start reading it. Oof.

4. Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng

This one kept getting bumped off my TBR last year but I made a point of getting it read in 2021. By now, you probably have at least heard of this thanks to the Reese Witherspoon Hulu adaptation, which I have not seen.

I thought this book was OK! I enjoyed the references to Bethel Park, which isn’t shocking since the author grew up in Pittsburgh, but overall I didn’t really connect to it like I had hoped to. I read “Everything I Never Told You” last year and thought that one was INCREDIBLE. The emotions felt so tangible to me while reading it and I guess I had expected the same from Little Fires. I think if I had read this one first, I would have liked it more but I did think the plot was super interesting and really gave you a lot to think about (if you read this, I’m sure you will know which side I was on).

I needed more Izzy though. She was fucking amazing. Give Izzy her own story!!

5. All the Birds, Singing – Evie Wyld

HOLY.FUCKING.SHIT. Is Evie Wyld a master at timeline fuckery? Yes, I believe she is. After I read “The Bass Rock” last year, I was really eager to devour more of her words and All the Birds did not disappoint. It’s weird how I can handle the most gory horror, abuse, rape etc in books, but as soon as you start adding “animal stuff” I am like, THIS BOOK IS HARD TO READ. And that’s how it was this. Lots of sheep killing, there are some pretty graphic scenes, but everything matters. It didn’t feel gratuitous.

Like The Bass Rock, this one took me a bit to decode the timeline, but once I did, I kind of sat up straight and said out loud, “Wait…is this…did she really…wow.” It’s just….WYLD. Lol.

I actually need to re-read this one at some point, now that I have a better understanding of the timeline. I love it when you’re reading a book and it just suddenly clicks. This book is a treasure!

6. Harrow Lake – Kat Ellis 

I actually kind of liked this more than I thought I would considering it’s a YA thriller/mystery. The daughter of a famous horror movie director goes back to the town where his most famous film was set, and accidentally falls into a mission to find out what really happened to her mom. Is this something that I will remember years from now? Nope. Did it provide some entertainment via audiobook while I was slogging through a miserable workday? Yeah boi. And that’s really all I can ask for.

Wow hi here I am on another thrilling [insert literally any day] with an update of no value or importance.

Earlier this week, I was reading Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (review/ thoughts will come later!) and for as short as the book was, two separate coincidences happened. There is another word I’m looking for too for what these things are and I can’t think of it…not idiosyncrasies…it will come to me at 3:00am probably.

Anyway, during one of my reading seshes, I had Depeche Mode playing gently in the background & just as I read the line gripping the steering wheel, not only was the song Behind the Wheel playing, but Dave Gahan was singing the verse “I’d rather not be the one behind the wheel.”

Then I picked the book back up one night right after Chooch & I finished our nightly exercise session with Jillian Michaels, when the character of “Omar” was introduced:

Which is whatever, except that I hadn’t turned off Jillian and it had gone to the next workout. Right as I read the name Omar, Jillian said Omar because she was talking to one of her Body Revolution people named OMAR.

I mean that’s kind of weird right because Omar isn’t like, I dunno, John.

SYNCRONICITY. That is the word I was thinking of: when you hear & read the same word at the same time.

To add to that, this morning I was listening to an audio book while helping Henry package greeting cards and one of the characters was called Gudman AND THAT WAS ALSO THE LAST NAME ON ONE OF THIS MORNING’S ORDERS.

Love that. Adds absolutely no value to my life but it sure is creepy good fun!

[CONTEST IS OVER! ANSWERS ARE NOW LISTED!]

I guess because I love to abuse myself, I decided that in lieu of just typing out the titles of my favorite books that I read in 2020, I would decorate cookies in the “likeness” (used very loosely in this context) of their covers. Because you know me and kitchen stuff. We go hand in ha—no, that’s  not the right saying.

WE’RE LIKE OIL AND WATER.

Yes, that’s the one.

It seemed like a great idea until I remembered that I hate baking and suddenly found myself extremely exhausted just thinking about googling “Sugar cookie recipe” so Henry, who is only sometimes good at reading my mind and thankfully this was one of the few times, asked, “Oh for God’s sake, do you want me to make the cookies??”

Yes! Yes, I do!

So he baked the cookies and then I was like NOW WHAT so then he got all the icing ready for me too. But don’t worry, all of the actual decorating was done by me, no cheating. And I am CLEARLY not getting into the cookie icing biz any time ever! What a fucking pain in the ass! But after three separate icing sessions starting on Friday, I finished the last cookie today and am now ready for whatever because after three days of Chooch popping in to criticize and ridicule my progress, I’m pretty numb.

Because some of them (all of them?) are so bad, I thought it would be fun to just share them here at first with no corresponding book title to see who can get the most correct guesses. I’ll come back later in the week and update this with the answers! Maybe there will be a prize?! Like a surprise grab bag from me to you!? Full of Bit-o-Honeys and Whoopie cushions?!!?* oh em gee it’s like 2012 Blogging Erin is back.

*(It will be better than that, I promise.)

HINT: Not all of these books were published in 2020.

1. I’m Thinking of Ending Things – Iain Reid

Pro Tip: The audiobook makes the ending EVEN BETTER and also, this is is way better than the Netflix adaptation which has mostly a completely different ending. Henry & I buddy-read/listened to this together, and some of it was in a cemetery which made it even more tense and atmospheric. This one got a lot of very mixed reviews and I know some people were like “I FIGURED IT OUT RIGHT AWAY” and like, OK, good for you. It’s still an excellent fucking book and it made me have legit chills and then when I finished it, I started furiously googling for explanations and reviews. Henry and I talked about it for quite some time after finishing it!

2. My Year of Meats – Ruth Ozeki

I think this is the oldest book on my list. It was published in the late 90s and I just randomly came across it, I think when I was compiling my TBR for Asian Readathon? As a vegetarian, this was definitely not something that sat well with me, since we’re literally following a woman on the production team of a reality show that details the meat industry and how important meat is for the American family. The whole purpose of the show is to get Japanese people on board with consuming more meat, as the meat industry is trying to break into Japan. Our main character starts to see the hidden horrors of slaughterhouses and the industry in general, such as inhumane treatment of livestock and the grotesque and harmful side effects of added hormones. Ugh, I just found it so engaging and compelling, and I LOVED the characters.

3. Girl, Woman, Other – Bernadine Evaristo

This book does so much. It was a solid five star for me, so fucking smartly written, you will fall in love with every character, gasp with excitement when you start to see various connections, and honestly if you don’t lose yourself in the lives of these characters, are you even reading it?

4. The Bass Rock – Evie Wyld

I cannot even describe how wonderful this book is and also, I just did a shoddy review of it last weekend and don’t feel like rehashing it again, lol. Just go read this book please. IT IS EXQUISITE.

5. Beartown – Fredrik Backman

Henry is currently listening to the audiobook and therefore felt that he deserved to eat this cookie, and he did so with a certain smugness that I did not appreciate. Anyway, I also recently wrote about this book too so I will just say that, even though the subject matter was difficult, heavy and maddening, it still felt like a comfort read to me because it’s set in a cozy small town where everyone knows each other and you just get that warm sense of familiarity while reading it, like you know all these people too, and maybe it’s just me but I really cared about a lot of them except for Kevin who can kindly go fuck himself.

6. We Ride Upon Sticks – Quan Barry

My #1 favorite of the year was We Ride Upon Sticks. It was just so witty, fast-paced, irreverent, quirky, flush with 80s references, and the writing was TOTALLY MY STYLE.

7. The Great Believers – Rebecca Makkai

I was on some very strange 1980s AIDS kick for a while and this book ripped my heart out. I promise you that my face was swollen from all the crying I did but I read it at a time where I really needed that – you know how sometimes a good fucking cry can just feel so cleansing? That’s what this book did for me. I’m getting misty just thinking about how much Yale (the character, not the university!) means to me.

This is supposed to be a “lite” version of A Little Life, which I keep putting off reading because I’m afraid it will kill me.

8. In the Dream House – Carmen Maria Machado

This is the one non-fiction that made the cut and it is a gem, an actual slice of the author’s soul, bound and presented to the undeserving us. Please read this. It’s beautiful, scary, painful, funny, creative, surprising – I promise it’s unlike any memoir you’ve ever read and it still visits me in my dreams, months later.

9. Luster – Raven Leilani

I had no idea what I was even getting into when I picked this one up but how is this a debut novel?? Raven Leilani can WRITE, yo. You will laugh, feel uncomfortable, learn some shit, feel your hatred of men increase a bit, all the while rooting for the damn girl to get her shit together and succeed. Also, this made Obama’s top 20 list of the year and it is a certain brand of glee to imagine him reading it!

I do think  this is a terrible book cover though (I mean, yeah, my cookie version of it is shit, but the actual cover didn’t give me much to work with! The UK version is much better but isn’t that usually the case?).

10. The Devil All the Time – Donald Ray Pollock

Um, this book fucked me up. It’s gritty and violent but there are also some incredibly bizarre and hilarious vignettes in here too which made me think about those dumb short stories I used to write and I actually felt inspired to start writing again for like 5 seconds until I got distracted by a new Kpop video. Henry and I buddy-read this together because we wanted to watch the Netflix adaptation and I am so glad we read it first. The movie was good but, as it is in most cases, the book is superior.

11. Bunny – Mona Awad

I read this is in the beginning of 2020 and while I was reading it, I kept thinking, “YES! THIS IS WHAT I MISSED ABOUT READING!” – that feeling of “I don’t want to put this book down, OMG what is going to happen, that was a perfect description!” It was just FUN. WEIRD. BIZARRO. I want it to be a movie but also don’t want someone manhandling it and snuffing out the magic within these pages.

But I will say, it’s probably not for everyone. People seem to either love it or hate it.

12. The Ghost Notebooks – Ben Dolnick

Chooch cracks up every time he sees this and I want to smash it into his face, if I’m being Honest Mother up in here.

Anyway, I think that I actually gave this book a 4, but when I was scrolling through my Goodreads list to get my favorites, I saw this one and immediately knew I wanted to include it. It was just so good, and I can’t really explain why, but it sort of felt like I was sitting with the main character as he was telling me, personally, about the time he moved to some small town in New York with his wife to live in some old ass house-cum-museum for an obscure writer because she got a job as basically a docent I guess? Anyway, it’s a slow burn, very conversationally written, emotional, tense, funny at times.

It’s one I need to read again.

13. Nothing To See Here – Kevin Wilson

First of all, this author has the same name as this mysterious guy I met over the phone in high school so that’s something. But anyway,  this book was so wonderful! Perfectly flamboyant characters with just the right amount of magical realism sprinkled on top of an endearing plot? I was all in.

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Just leave your answers in a comment. I’m privatizing them for now so people can’t steal each others’ answers!

UPDATE: HERE ARE THE ANSWERS

Here are the cookies I was actually moderately proud of:

Chooch was like, “can we please start eating these cookies now” so I made him eat the one he hated the most.

Plus, my #1 book of the year, which was probably the easiest one to make!

If I wasn’t making cookies, my list would have been an even 20 and these are the ones that would have made the final cut:

• Kim Jiyoung Born 1982 – Cho Nam-Joo
• Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman
• Death of Vivek Oji – Akwaeke Emezi
• Queenie – Candice Carty-Williams
• The Night Tiger – Yangsze Choo
• The Diviners – Libba Bray
• Sadie – Courtney Summers (THE AUDIOBOOK THO OMG.)

Anyway – congratulations to Janna who correctly guessed 6, woo hoo!

We made it to December!! I have to hurry up and get this recap done because I want to do a 2020 FAVORITES list and two of my favorites actually came from my December reads!! Gonna try to bust this out into one post!! Let’s go, Lucy!

1. Watch Over Me – Nina LaCour

Talk about starting the month off on a bad note. This book was pretty awful. Boring. Cold. Flat characters. The reviews I read were gushing over how no one writes sad girls like Nina LaCour, queen or emo and loneliness, etc etc. I got none of that. I got “try hard,” “disjointed,” “boring,” “what a gorgeous cover wasted on an empty book. I felt nothing and at times I even forgot what was happening. Hard pass.

2.  The Black Flamingo – Dean Atta

Fuck yes – I love me some good coming of age / coming out books, add in some drag and I am there for it, Mary. I feel the most emotions when reading about marginalized people finding comfort in their skin and a community where they can spread their wings and really fucking fly. This was an exceptional journey through Michael’s life, starting from his joy of Barbies as a child to flourishing in drag as a young adult. Also, it’s written in verse so if you like Elizabeth Acevedo, why haven’t you picked this one up yet?

I feel like this should be required reading in school. Honestly, if I were a teacher, I’d want my students to read books like this.

3. The Graveyard Apartment – Mariko Koike 

Japanese horror movies are my favorites, so I figured I would enjoy this book. Typical with Japanese (and Korean) horror/thrillers, this one was slow and quiet. Basically, a young family moves to a new, luxury apartment complex across from a cemetery, but there are only a handful of other units occupied. It seems it’s because people just don’t want to live across from a cemetery, but then some spooky shit starts happening and our fam is eventually like “OK, UNCLE. WE’RE CALLING IT. UNCLE” and they decide it’s time to find new digs BUT WILL THE COMPLEX LET THEM LEAVE?!!?

There were some chilling moments but nothing that TRULY scared me. However, I really felt attached to the main family (the dog too!!) and rooted for them so hard to win at the end. And speaking of the end – I genuinely liked it but I wonder if that’s an unpopular opinion…

4. Real Life – Brandon Taylor

I had high hopes for this book because it seemed like something I would like based on the fact that I’m obsessed with books in the vein of The Great Believers, but ultimately it was just kind of a drag. We follow the main character, a gay Black grad student, who has some pretty dysfunctional and toxic relationships with a group of friends, and I just didn’t care about him nor did I care about any of his friends, and he becomes involved with one of the guys in his group who is kind of like his frenemy? And also straight?

Was this just too academic for me? Should I ask Alexa?

5. We Ride Upon Sticks – Quan Barry

It’s been several weeks since I finished this and I still can’t stop thinking about it. Is Quan Barry my new favorite author? Am I considering getting a tattoo to celebrate (and consummate???) my love of the words on these pages? Will I ever get over these characters? Am I currently listening to She Bop on repeat?

YES YES NO YES.

I wasn’t expecting to find what is I THINK the best book I read in 2020 so late into the reading year, but holy-fucking-shit this blew me away. It was also 100% NOT what I was expecting. The synopsis, no matter how many different ways I try to frame it, always comes off sounding like some cheesy young adult romp through an I Love the 80s VH1 special but it’s so much deeper and complex than that. First of all, it’s not YA. Second of all, the pop culture references don’t feel cheap but instead act as a warm fucking hug, like Jane Fonda leg warmers for the soul.

We follow a high school girls’ field hockey team at a New England high school in the 80s. There is some connection to the Salem Witch Trials to the town of Danvers, and so we get some witchy/magical realism action which flows seamlessly through the story so that it’s not hokey at all and only makes us question, “Wait, is this real life?”

We follow, individually and as a whole, each player of the field hockey team, and each one of these kids has a story and identity. There is also some BRILLIANT personification (ex.: one of the girls has stereotypical Aqua Net 1980s bangs with a mind of its own, and also a name of its own: The Claw) and the dialogue is SO SMART that I actually started crying several times not because the story was sad (it’s FUCKING HILARIOUS) but because Quan Barry DID THAT. This is the kind of book that I read and think, “I am never writing again. There is no point. There is only Quan Barry.”

I do not know how else to get you to read this book. But if you’re looking for PURE FUN that somehow manages to weave in social and racial commentary without hurting the flow, you have got to give this a chance. I would love to see this as a TV miniseries, only if it stayed true to Barry’s vision.

6. The Queen’s Gambit – Walter Tevis 

After bingeing the Netflix series in November, I really wanted to read the book because I’m always curious to see how true to the pages adaptations stay. And it was PRETTY SIMILAR. A few differences but nothing too glaring.

So, I know very little about chess and I really had no desire to watch the show until my favorite YouTube couple, Sarah and Kyuho, raved about it. I decided to give it a chance and found it super compelling! I think the fact that it was set in the 60s really kept me hooked too though because I LOVE shows that are set in the 60s/70s/80s. I liked the book just fine, but I don’t think this would have ever been something I would have picked up otherwise. And yes, there were pages upon pages detailing chess moves which was like “zzzzz.” But goddamn, Beth is such an interesting character and I loved reading about her intellectually emasculating dude after dude after dude.

7. One By One – Ruth Ware

I’ve only read one other Ruth Ware book, but there seems to be a common opinion in the book community where her books are very hit or miss. Everyone seems to really love some of her books and absolutely hate others. Having really enjoyed the one book I read of hers earlier in the year, I was curious to see if this phenomenon would be true for me, too.

YEP. This book was so bad. Boring. Predictable. Characters that felt like they were fleshed out by a middle schooler writing a “thriller” in her notebook during study hall which may or may not be something I’m familiar with. Waaaaay too much talk about the stocks of this dumb company that most of the characters work for. A truly lackluster climax. I literally couldn’t believe the same broad who wrote The Turn of the Key wrote this pile of drivel.

Skip this and go read an Agatha Christie novel instead.

8. With the Fire on High – Elizabeth Acevedo

Isn’t this cover beautiful?!!? I had a long time to admire it because I snagged this book from a local Little Free Library over the summer and then proceeded to drown in library books and was in a perpetually race against due dates so this lovely lady kept getting bumped back. But I finally had time in December to tackle it and it was wonderful, as are all of Acevedo’s books. Elizabeth writes characters who are so real, brimming with family values while also craving the independence and freedom to be their own person and follow their dreams, and you will CHEER THESE GIRLS ON.

In this one, Emoni is a teen mom who dreams of being a chef, but she’s trying to juggle the very real priorities that come with being a mom while also working a part time job in order to help her abuela with living expenses, and the stress is palpable.

I always get the audio books for Acevedo’s books because she narrates them herself and it’s just a real treat. I can’t wait for her next book!

9. The Bass Rock – Evie Wyld

I was kind of intimidated by this book, not gon’ lie. There are several British Booktubers that I love and have gotten some great recs from their videos but their book tastes can be admittedly way too…intelllectual? Advanced? Literary? for my pea brain to handle. But they raved about this book all year long and I finally took the plunge.

It was not what I expected! Admittedly, it was a bit difficult to get into at first because there are three different timelines but eventually it clicked in my college drop-out head. We follow three women: Viv, in present day, who is tasked with taking inventory of her step-grandmother’s empty house; Ruth, back in post-WW2 times, who has just remarried and has moved into a large possibly haunted (dot dot dot) house by the sea; and Sarah, who has been accused of being a witch and is running from townspeople in the 1700s.

Violence against women is the heavy theme of this book, but there are still some light moments and humor which really made this story shine. I don’t want to say too much more about it because I walked into this only knowing that it was a gothic novel with some witchiness and ghosts and I think I expected it to be super dry for some reason. I love being wrong in these types of cases! I tried to explain the plot to Henry and he was just like, “ew feminism, boys are best” j/k he didn’t say that but he also had the “Don’t care” glaze over his face so now someone (maybe YOU??) has to read this so we can talk about it and by talk I mean possibly have a comment exchange that goes like “that book was amazing” and “IKR?!?!?!”

This is why I don’t do book groups.

I will probably think about Viv and Ruth forever.

10. Don’t Look For Me – Wendy Walker

This is a thriller. I have lukewarm feelings. Didn’t care much about anyone, all the men were sleazy, WTF was going on with the husband and was it ever explained or did I miss it, there is a small child that I absolutely hated and I don’t even feel bad about it. I’d recommend passing on this one, but it served as an OK filler while I looked for something better.

11. The Hollow Places – T. Kingfisher

WHOA another book that was not at all what I was expecting based on the cover! If you’re looking for true horror, probably skip this one because it’s actually more funny than scary. I heard someone say that the two main characters reminded them of Lorelai Gilmore and Michel and I would agree WHOLE-HEARTEDLY on the Lorelai front but if we’re going full Gilmore Girls comparisons with this, I would say that her sidekick reminded me WAY MORE of Kurt.

Basically, we follow a recently-divorced woman who moves back to her small hometown and moves into her uncle’s roadside attraction-esque museum in exchange for helping him inventory all of his wares. (Think: fiji mermaids, etc.) One day, she discovers a large-ish hole in one of the walls, presumably damaged by a tourist, and she enlists the barista at the downstairs coffee house to help her patch the hole. During this process, they discover that the hole actually leads to basically another dimension, and this part sort of reminded me of The House of Leaves, and I will admit that this part of the book started to lose me a little because it was just a bit sci-fi for me – I hate other dimensions/worlds/portals type of plots because my brain just don’t work that way.

But then as the book progresses, never losing the quirky and quick-witted banter, we come back to the museum and shit gets a bit Wonderfalls-y – do you guys remember that show?! IT WAS SO GOOD AND OF COURSE CANCELED AFTER LIKE ONE SEASON.

I would love to read more books with these characters, as long as it didn’t involve the exploration of parallel universes, lol.

12. Watching You – Lisa Jewell

I typically enjoy Lisa Jewell thrillers but this one didn’t do it for me. Basically, we follow a bunch of shitty neighbors spying on each other and one of them is some 50-ish year old male teacher who didn’t seem all that heart-throbby based on the description but somehow young girls obsess over him and I just didn’t get it at all.

Super far-fetched and just didn’t really work for me.

14. Long Bright River – Liz Moore

Exceptional!! Major trigger warning for drug addition. We follow a cop, Micky, who is searching for her estranged, addict sister while a string of murders are hitting her childhood neighborhood in Philly. We get glimpses into the past too to help us understand how Micky and her sister ended up on different paths and it’s actually heart-breaking to see how close they were, to being nothing to each other because of drugs. Present-day Micky is doing all she can to juggle her job as a cop with being a single mom to a young boy, and when she goes rogue to find her sister, major feathers are ruffled on the police force. Fucking popo.

This isn’t just a thriller or mystery though – this is a literary masterpiece that explores how drug abuse tears families apart. Liz Moore’s writing is really unique, the way she writes dialogue really appealed to me, but above all that, if Obama tells you this was one of his favorite books of 2020, you fucking listen to him and open the damn book.

15. Grown – Tiffany D. Jackson

Be prepared to be ANGRY while reading this. Tiffany D. Jackson is the queen of writing about those hard topics and this one will make you see red. The author claims that this is not low-key about R.Kelly but the similarities are there: a successful Black singer (in his late 20s) takes a young girl under his wing, promising her a music career, and the grooming starts IMMEDIATELY. There’s abuse, rape, gas-lighting, kidnapping – you name it, it happens in this book and it’s sickening because you know this shit is real, this shit happens to girls every day. The most heartbreaking part for me though was how hard her father fought to get her back. (I’m getting choked up as I think about this!!)

The worst part #2 for me was that I could easily picture myself, at 16, falling prey to this same type of shit. If some singer I loved started texting me, are you kidding?? I’d be all over that without even thinking that it was wrong. These men have SO MUCH POWER because they KNOW that young girls aren’t going to think twice, that these girls THINK that they’re grown enough to consent to this thinly-veiled abuse, and I am actually so thankful, as I write this, that I don’t have a daughter but it just means that I have to put in the work as a parent to ensure that my SON doesn’t become a MAN who thinks this shit is OK. Especially when we see it time and time again on TV shows. Teachers and students, mostly. (It happens in the pilot episode of Dawson’s Creek, for god’s sake!) And yeah, we mostly see it happening between men and girls, but it does go both ways! I remember watching Pretty Little Liars with Henry and he was enraged time and time again by this.

“Grown” is an extreme case of this but we know that it happens, nevertheless. Tiffany D. Jackson is an amazing writer.

16. Alice – Christina Henry 

A very (very!!) dark retelling of Alice in Wonderland. That’s really all you need to know. We have a world of murder, violence, and sex with some VERY DIFFERENT portrayals of familiar characters. For instance, the Walrus rapes his victims while eating them.

Definitely not a book to read your kids at night, but DEFINITELY a book for YOU to read if you love the Wonderland world and are looking for a much darker take on it.

I thought it was excellent and also a very quick read. Also, can we talk about that cover?!

***

So that’s it! All of the books I read in December! I ended the year having read a total of 204 books and while I’m always up for a challenge and that was a cool milestone, I am very content to going back to casually reading with no goal in mind!

*because according to my housemates, I am apparently super snippy and mean while reading but ok then STOP BEING LOUD AND DISRUPTIVE AROUND ME AND MAYBE I WON‘T HAVE TO YELL AT YOU?!?!

You guys, I did it! I completed my 200 book challenge last night and wow it was anticlimactic. I mean, what was I expecting to happen though? G-Dragon knocking on my door with a bouquet of his coveted Paranoise Nikes? Publishers Clearinghouse rolling up with local news crews to present me with a gigantic Barnes and Noble gift card? My local library revealing their secret portal to South Korea for my exclusive use?

Chooch replied to my I DID IT text with “oml” and I’m sure he’s irritated because he’s the one who egged me on probably thinking I’d fail because he clearly has learned nothing about me in 14 years.

And Henry didn’t say anything because he was already in bed and wouldn’t care anyway because whut r bookz.

Was it rewarding? Sure I guess. I mean I read a lot (clearly) of really great books that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. And what else would I have been doing anyway? I can’t go anywhere! But speaking of, I read a ton of books set in other countries and that sort of helped scratch the travel itch. I guess.

Will I do it again? Nope. Back to leisurely reading. I mean, I really am a fast reader but I was picking up another book as soon as I closed the one before it and I would like to have some free time back in case I choose to just lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling. And I have a ton of kdramas to catch up on now that I’m not too tired to read subtitles!

Some people I follow on Booktube read more than this every year, no challenge required, and those people are the real MVPs.

I’d like to round up my top 10 favorite books I read this year (2 of them are from this month!!) and perhaps bake book-shaped cookies and then decorate each one with its respective book cover?! SHOULD I? Henry and Chooch both emphatically said no because I hate baking and cookie decorating makes me angry, but I feel like that’s a level of Shit Show perfect for sending off 2020. Right?

(It might have to be a bakers dozen though because I’m having a hard time narrowing it down to just 10! I read some real winners!)

Shall we continue onto the second half of November? YES, ME THINKS WE SHALL. (Books 1-7 can be found here.)

8. Sourdough – Robin Sloan

I watch a lot of different Booktubers on YouTube, which puts Henry and Chooch to sleep, but listen Linda: I have gotten so many good recs from watching these videos and also discovered that I actually things like, I dunno, historical fiction (some of it anyway). I have found also that I share similar likes and dislikes with some of these people. And this is how I learned about Sourdough, by watching Noelle Gallagher do a book haul in which one of her viewers sent her a copy of this book and said it was her favorite. Now, Noelle hadn’t yet read it, but the book itself seemed intriguing to me and I found it immediately on one of my library/book apps.

WHAT A FUCKING DELIGHT! Literally, the entire book is about a woman named Lois who works at some tech company that programs robots, and how she falls in love with the food from this clandestine sandwich shop which is take-out only. Turns out that it’s run by two Mazg brothers from their apartment but then they have Visa issues and have to return home, but they leave Lois with their sourdough starter and it unleashes some latent bread-baking passion in her, which leads her to eventually quit her job and join some avant garde farmers market where they strive for innovation.

You guys, I read a review that said this book felt like a friend and honestly I can’t argue with that.

It was such a comforting read! It was light-hearted and humorous, made me utterly craze fresh bread (Chooch, can you try your hand at that again?!?).

This book is adorable and also will make you want to drop your adult priorities and finally start molding those Danny Bonaduce beeswax candles you always wanted to get into what that wasn’t me that was you.

9. Tender is the Flesh – Agustina Bazterrica

In this book, some type of disease has made the consumption of animals lethal so essentially all animals are eradicated and now humans are bred for meat-making purposes and honestly, I couldn’t handle this book at all.

It’s VERY cold. There really aren’t any characters to cozy up to, the descriptions of the various processes of the slaughtering industry are excruciatingly detailed, and I just hated the dry, dystopian atmosphere. Maybe I read this at the wrong time, or maybe it just isn’t the book for me. I also didn’t feel bad AT ALL that this shit was happening to humans, because hello card-carrying vegetarian here.

10. The Subtweet – Vivek Shraya

THIS!!! Oh holy shit, I related to this on so many levels that it was actually painful at times. We follow two characters: one is an artist in the Toronto indie music scene, who is beloved and respected by her peers, but never really “made it.”

The other is a woman, Rukmini, who sings cover songs on her YouTube channel. When she covers a song by indie singer Neela, it takes off and obviously Neela feels a certain type of way about this. They end up meeting and developing a deep friendship, but that’s tested when Rukmini gets invited to go on a world tour with a super big white pop star.

So we have the exploration of selling out and catering to the white crowd (who attend the concerts and attempt to do various Indian dances along to the music) and leaving behind a friend in the process.

Meanwhile, Neela is like, ‘Fuck this I’m going to put out the best album of my life” and when she sends it to Rukmini, she doesn’t hear back from her. Of course Neela is like, “Wow, Rukmini is too good for me now” but really Rukmini is panicking because she listens to it and is crushed because it confirms the fact that she’s not the one with the talent, Neela is, and Rukmini only got where she did by riding on Neela’s coattails (ie. covering one of her songs).

It was very frustrating because I was so Team Neela and to watch her constantly get overlooked for something that was more marketable to the white people made me want to flip a table.

It’s interesting to me because I have felt a lot of these things over the years, especially back when I used to actually “write.” I would sit here and pour my everything into blog posts, essays, short stories, just to watch the MOST VANILLA and bland blogs take off and get tens of thousands of subscribers. I never wanted to change who I am, to become a basic bitch mommy blogger, or to start some dumb DIY or food blog, because what’s the point?

Also, I’m such a sucker for subtweeting. It’s so fucking immature and passive aggressive but I cannot break myself of it.

Yeah, this book is wonderful. Vivek Shraya is a superb writer!

11. Young Jane Young – Gabrielle Zevin 

I have never heard of Gabrielle Zevin or this book, but I was in-between physical copies of books from the library and was looking for an audio book to help coast me through a work day and this seemed like it was going to be good and fluffy.

GUYS. Do you like Gilmore Girls? Then this book might be for you. It was so much fun but also deep and I connected to every character and it’s also infuriating and made me scream, “WE HATE MANS IN THIS HOUSE, DON’T WE?!?!” to the cats and they were like *blink* (it’s not ‘men,’ it’s ‘mans’ but nice try).

We follow several women (each one gets their own section) who are all connected and it’s quirky and endearing and explores different mother/daughter relationships and there’s a teenager named Ruby whose entire chapter is told from her side of emails to her international pen pal….and, it’s everything. Read this book. I loved it. I’m definitely going to add more of Zevin’s books to my TBR!

12. Out – Natsuo Kirino 

Oof, this book was SO HARD TO READ. Don’t get me wrong – it was excellent. But the font was weird and my eyes had a really hard time with it, am I getting old?

I’m getting old, aren’t I?

Oh my god.

Anyway, it’s no secret that I love translated Japanese thrillers, and this one was no exception. We follow a group of women co-workers who become bound together via a murder and while it’s definitely dark and there are some very graphic and explicit scenes that were even a bit hard for this horror fanatic to handle, the interactions and quirky dialogue between the women sometimes added a much needed reprieve from the violence.

It was good but just a bit slow-moving (the character building was STRONG though).

13. Beartown – Fredrik Backman 

I stayed up until like 2am one night because I was so close to finishing and couldn’t bear to put it down for the night. I honestly can’t remember the last time this happened.

This book made me feel so many things. I loved everyone (well, the ones worth loving). Benji and Bobo forever! HOCKEY!!! (Even if you don’t like hockey or know anything about it, it won’t hinder your reading journey if you pick this up, trust me.)

Oh, what’s it about? The small Swedish town of Beartown lives and breathes hockey, and their high school team is LIFE for them. There is so much drama and politics surrounding the team, which is one big plot point. But when the school’s star player (literally is being scouted by the NHL) rapes the daughter of the league’s GM, the town is divided (to say the least). It was infuriating and heartbreaking to watch this play out, to see how the daughter was actually holding it together better than her mom, who is an attorney and struggling with the reality that she couldn’t protect her own child. And then the dad who has to choose between his family and the team.

This was so well-written, the characters were SO ALIVE, the town felt so real. My heart is aching just writing about it but it’s actually not some huge depressive missive: yes, it’s dark and dramatic, but there’s love and friendship too, and some big hero moments which made me gurgle on my own tears while I laid in bed reading it and then I couldn’t fall asleep after it ended and I think about it every day. Five stars. You’re my favorite.

Apparently, Nordic Netflix adapted it into a series, which was released last fall and some light (OK, obsessive) google searches have learned me that the US is picking it up sometime in 2021 and I hope that means we’re getting the original with subtitles, please god.

This is my first Fredrik Backman book, although I have definitely seen his other books around the block, and this will definitely not be my last!

***

So, November was pretty good for me! December is also going well (I’m currently reading my 200th book of the year!) and I have ANOTHER five star book that has completely taken over my mind and I can’t wait to tell you about it in my December wrap-up!

Me: wow November was a bad reading month for me. I only read 13 books.

Henry, murmuring: ohmygod.

However! Most of the books I read ranged from ‘pretty good’ to ‘great’ so I’m not complaining.

1. Beach Read- Emily Henry

I don’t usually gravitate toward romances but I had been hearing great things about this and honestly needed something that I could listen to while going on walks. I’m very particular on which kind of books I can listen to without also having the print copy, and this was one definitely falls into the easy to follow along category. I latched onto it immediately. The main guy had a very Luke (of ‘s Diner fame) vibe to him, totally surly but you know there’s gonna be a warm mound of cotton-candy mush inside of him.

Also, the premise was FUN: the two main characters are both published authors and happen to be residing in neighboring beach houses for the summer while writing their next books. January is a writer-blocked romance author, Augustus writes literary fiction.

They challenge each other to swap genres and really that’s all you need to know.

The one thing I thought was ill-fitting was the cult sub-plot. Augustus had originally been writing a book about a real life cult and takes January on some investigative interviews with him but it didn’t really drive the plot.

I dunno. I love cult shit but every time it went down that road it felt like I was reading an entirely different book?

Overall though I thought this was just a really sweet book and I LOVED the tension between the two!

2. Playing Nice – JP Delaney

I had no idea what this was about when I ordered it from the library but it ended up being a really excellent domestic thriller about a couple who finds out their two-year-old was actually switched at birth with another couples’ and what ensues is a truly frustrating and chilling fight to keep their child.

I’m always down for a good thriller and this one did it for me.

3. The Night Swim – Megan Goldin

This book is set in a small east coast seaside town where a high profile rape trial is going on. A popular true crime podcast host travels to the town to record her podcast and while she’s there, she begins receiving anonymous messages asking her to help solve the 20-some year old murder case of another girl who was raped there.

The chapters go back and forth between real life and the podcast, which was cool. I thought this book was interesting and pretty well-executed but it left me feeling…empty. I didn’t really connect much with anyone and I don’t think this is a book I will remember. But! I never felt like DNFing and I was definitely interested.

4. The Kind Worth Killing – Peter Swanson 

Oh shit this book was a real trip! Every character WAS SO UNLIKABLE but that was the point and it didn’t turn me off from the book at all.

Basically, some dude meets some broad at an airport lounge and after several drinks, says he caught his wife cheating on him and airport broad is like let’s kill her.

Tons of twists, perspective shifts, and wonderful pacing.

Also, a lot of REALLY SHITTY PEOPLE lol.

5. When No One Was Watching – Alyssa Cole

Ok listen. Alyssa Cole is a Black romance novelist and this is her first foray into the thriller genre, and let me tell you: I AM A FAN and I hope this isn’t her last.

In this book, we follow two alternating perspectives: one of Sydney, a young Black woman struggling to save her tight-knit Brooklyn neighborhood from the rapid onset of gentrification; and Theo, a white guy who recently moved to the community with his Lululemon-personified snob of a girlfriend.

Strange shit starts happening in the community, neighbors begin disappearing, and Sydney starts to investigate. It’s similar to Get Out in that it’s the very social commentary of the thing that makes it scary.

I thought it was extremely smart and well-written, the psychological tension had me reading with my shoulders scrunched up, and I just wanted everyone to be OK. I loved that each chapter ends with transcripts from the community message board – it added a bit of levity while making me feel connected to the community.

Also, Theo’s girlfriend was a first class white cunt.

Before I picked this one up, I kept seeing people whining about how this was erroneously marketed as a thriller but guess what, it’s all white people saying that about a book that uses gentrification, racism, and prejudice as the driving force behind the plot, so I guess that went over a lot of heads…

I would 100% recommend this for any thriller lover who is looking for a fresh take. *chef’s kiss*

6. Shine – Jessica Jung

YOU GUYS, A KPOP NOVEL WRITTEN BY A FORMER KPOP IDOL FROM ONE OF MY FAVORITE GIRL GROUPS, GIRL’S GENERATION? Yes puh-lease.

The premise isn’t really that ground-breaking – a Korean American teenager moves to Korea in order to become a kpop trainee at one of the biggest agencies and gets majorly bullied by the other girls. Jessica has definitely hinted that she used some of her own experiences in this and it really sounds like this was her way of getting to write her story without doing a full-blown tell-all, which she evidently is legally prohibited from doing. It was definitely a tea-spill hidden behind the guise of “fiction.”

Also? Jessica is a great writer! This looks like it’s the first book in a series so I’m definitely looking forward to supporting her future releases.

7. Goodnight Beautiful – Aimee Molloy

One of my favorite booktubers did a reading vlog featuring this book and she was like HOLY SHIT THIS MIGHT END UP BEING A FIVE STAR READ for the first half of the book and then she quickly changed her tune and ended up giving it a very hateful 2. She kept saying that it blatantly rips off another, way more popular, thriller but she couldn’t name it because it would be a big spoiler so of course I was like WELL NOW I HAVE TO READ THIS even though she gave it a 2. Curiosity, cats, etc etc.

But yeah, the first half has a twist that’s like WTF and I was feeling it big time, but then the thing that the booktuber was angry about happened and I knew then exactly what she was talking about and I was like, “THIS IS REALLY DUMB AND LAZY.”

That first twist though, it really got me, and it’s shame that Aimee Molloy so freely used this other SUPER FAMOUS novel from a SUPER FAMOUS author to carry the plot. I mean, that book is even mentioned several times as a hat tip! So weird. Maybe it works for other people, but it just came off as so unoriginal (I mean, clearly!!!) to me.

That being said, I didn’t regret reading it. I still had fun with it for the most part until it got fucking dumb!

***

And this concludes Part 1 of my November recap. I still have an additional 6 books to shittily review, so brace yourselves.

OMG it’s part 2, right on the heels of Part 1. I bet you didn’t see this one coming at all.

****

9. Lair of Dreams – Libba Bray

This is the second book in the Diviners series and I am so obsessed. I mean, sorry, I know I say that for like pretty much everything because I have a very obsessive personality, but I really am a huge fan of these books so far. There are still two more I have to read and I have high hopes that the series will end on a high note and end up being something I will never forget.

I have to say though that listening to audiobook while reading along is 100% the way to go with this series, because it’s set in the 1920s and the narrator (January Lavoy) does the best flapper accents. I never knew I cared about the roaring 20s until l picked up these books and now I have half a mind to start watching silent films or whatever was cool back then. Did “talkies’ exist yet, who knows, too tired to google.

If you’re looking for, say, Scooby Doo, but punt it back to the prohibition and add some psychic shenanigans, this could be the jam your book-bread is desperately seeking.

10. Tuesday’s Gone – Nicci French

While we’re talking about series, the Frieda Klein series is incredible! This one is set in 21st century London and it’s basically a cop procedural mystery/thriller doo dad thingie mabob (I’m really not great at genre-placing books, you guys) but our main character is Frieda Klein, a psychotherapist with a knack for solving crimes faster than the popo.

What I like even more than the stories/plots of this series, though, is the colorful character studies. These people pop right off the page, you can hear their accents, you can feel the coziness of Frieda’s home, you want all the good guys to find happiness. Especially Frieda, god love her.

What I also find intriguing is that these books are written by a married couple and like, I can’t even imagine co-authoring a yard sale flyer with Henry, let alone an entire book series.

11. Earthlings – Sayaka Murata

Shiiiit. I honestly don’t even know how to explain this crazy ass jaunt into literary chaos. It’s pretty fucked. If you have ever seen, say, Visitor Q, this is like the print version of that psycho Japanese movie. I read it in one day and was screaming, “OH MY FUCKING GOD ARE YOU KIDDING” while reading it in bed, which Henry super-enjoyed.

Just when you start to get comfortable, it takes a series of OMG turns and then you’re in squirmy territory and I was laughing really hard for pretty much the entire last quarter of the book but…it was pretty disturbing. I can’t really say too much else because giving it away would really take a lot of the shock value away, you know?

I’m…not even sure if I LIKED this book? But it took me places. And that’s really all we can ask for, right?

12. The Snowman – Jo Nesbø

I saw this recommended in several thriller booktube videos and everyone said that even though it’s part of a series, you don’t have to read them in order. I mean, I didn’t feel lost, although there were some references to past cases but I felt like it was explained well enough that I was able to move on with my day and still get the same experience from this book.

If you’re into pretty gruesome murder cases, this is for you. There were parts where I was like, “To skim or not to skim” because I was getting a bit squeamish.

This was also adapted into a movie but I haven’t watched it yet.

13. More Than This – Patrick Ness

I have no idea what possessed me to order this from the library, but I should I have known just from the synopsis that it wasn’t the book for me. It’s borderline sci-fi, part post-apocalyptic, and it just left  me feeling very uncomfy in general.

It starts with a teenaged boy dying, not a spoiler, and he wakes up in his old childhood home but everything is deserted and wrong-feeling. While he’s trying to figure out WTF is going on, we revisit the months and days leading up to his death in flash back chapters. This was the only part of the book I enjoyed – the flashing back.

14. I’m Afraid of Men – Vivek Shraya

Listen to Tegan & Sara – this is definitely 100% percent reading for everyone. I want every fucking straight white male to be required to read this. It’s VERY short so you could probably knock this out in one sitting and feel like you read something important. If we really want to call ourselves trans allies, we need to read more ‘own voices’ books like this one.

15. Hell House – Richard Matheson 

Do. Not. Waste. Your. Time.

Talk about a book that doesn’t hold up. This is predictable, the writing was soooooo pompous. The characters were flat and I really didn’t care if any of them lived or died. I wasn’t creeped out, except for the times my mind started to wander down various optical malady paths on account of all the massive eyerolling I was doing.

I wish I had DNF’d this, if we’re being frank. I wanted a good haunted house book to read in October and this WASN’T IT, FAM.

16. John Dies at the End – David Wong

For the first 100ish pages, I was INTO THIS and really thought it was going to be a 4 star. The writing is quirky, witty, the characters full of life, and there were many times when I LOLd for real, but it doesn’t really work for the entire 466 pages. Honestly it was about 150 pages too long and there were entire chapters where I just felt bored and lost, just completely forgot what the plot was (was there a plot?). It’s actually pretty inexplicable that I even picked this up because I never even had any desire to watch the movie.

I was also not a fan of the incessant use of “retarded.” I mean, I was actually wincing every time it popped up, and it was a lot. I wish I had counted. Then the n-word & f*g was dropped several times too – that’s gonna be a big NOPE for me, Bob.

I want to give it a 2 because of the gratuitous slurs, but then there’s a dog side-kick who is so fantastic, that I have to bump it back up to a 3. Molly, you saved this book.

Honestly, could have been solid 4 and I’m actually depressed at how it unraveled for me.

Also, David Wong is the author’s pen name and he isn’t even Asian, so when I learned that fun fact, it um, really explained a lot

17. House at the Bottom of a Lake – Josh Malerman

I received an advanced reader copy of this through Net Galley. I haven’t read anything else by Jos Malerman but I know that he wrote Bird Box which everyone loves but I have only seen the movie so this was my first foray into the Malerman experience.

It’s about two teenagers who meet in a hardware store and just…you know, hit it off and then the boy takes the girl on a canoeing date, which is cool but then there is a secret lake that they access through some weird tunnel thing and I was fucking FREAKING OUT and feeling so claustrophobic.

Then it only gets worse when they discover that there is, as the book title totally spoiled for us, a house at the bottom of the lake. They become obsessed with it and start spending basically all of their free time exploring it, and then they start sleeping on a raft because they can’t even stand to be away from it.

There is a lot of suspenseful tension throughout the whole thing and I wasn’t bored, but I have to be honest and say that the writing itself sort of left something to be desired. It was very…cold and the dialogue was realllly short and not very meaty. We didn’t really get to know much about either person, and maybe that’s what Malerman intended, for the focus to be on the house.

I don’t know, it just kind of ended and I sat here thinking, “What did I just read….” It’s classified as horror and…I guess so? It was also kind of a coming of age story too, with these two kids falling in love, just in a very strange location.

Well, October was not a very fine month of reading for me. I DNF’d a bunch and even returned several to the library without even starting them because just seeing them sitting on my coffee table was the exact opposite of “bringing me joy.” I was really hoping to eye-swallow some good old-fashioned horror but…it didn’t play out that way, sadly. I read 17 books in October so let’s talk about the first 8 SHALL WE? (Now that I’m looking at my Goodreads, I see that I did have a good bit of 4s and 5s, but none of those were horror, really, I’m so sorry to let you down, October….)

1. Mayhem – Estelle Laure

As soon as I saw that this was a retelling/twist on The Lost Boys (the vampire movie, not Peter Pan), I was like WHERE DO I SIGN UP which, duh, was obviously the library website.

Ugh you guys I had such high hopes for this and perhaps that’s where I fucked up. I know better! Low expectations or GTFO!

There were a few “Oh I see what you did there” moments that referenced The Lost Boys but I just wasn’t feeling this. There was some extremely weak plot line involving a serial killer on the beach but I felt that this book was such an unorganized mess that I kept forgetting there was even an end game.

And the writing was very…cold, like if this book was a person, they’d be stand-offish with resting bitch face. If that makes sense. It does to me, OK!?

2. The Patient – Jasper DeWitt

This is mostly unrelated but the first thing I thought of when I was adding this book to the blog post was where I walked the day I listened to the audiobook of it (through Dormont) and that the new-ish restaurant in my hood unveiled a cauliflower and parsnip soup that day which I desperately needed to have so Henry got it for me after work and that’s what I had for dinner that day.

These two facts are more memorable to me than the book itself, of which I can remember the names of approx. zero characters.

The interesting thing about this about this  though was that it was supposed to be a collection of threads from some now-defunct Reddit-like medical forum, where a doctor detailed a really bizarre experience with a notorious patient at a psychiatric hospital. I was really feeling it for the first half but then it just kind of got really dumb and predictable. I think I gave it a three, though because the plot was relatively unique (to me).

3. Mapping the Interior – Stephen Graham Jones

This is my second book by this author and I think I sadly have to admit that he just sadly isn’t for me. I really want to like his books! They get such a great reviews. But his writing style just ain’t it.

This was supposed to be like a ghost story I guess but at the heart of it, it was a pretty solid coming-of-age story and I think I actually would have liked it better if it was just that and not also trying to be horror at the same time.

Also, this author really likes to kill animals in his stories and I’m not there for that at all, sorry. I won’t every tell anyone to steer clear of his books because I think he’s a great writer, but as I said – just not for me and I need to accept that and move on.

4. Pachinko – Min Jin Lee

OMG WHERE DO I BEGIN. This was a real fucking odyssey for me. I bought this book in winter of 2019, started reading it in spring of that year, got distracted, forgot to take it with me to read on the plane to Korea, came home and couldn’t find it for about 7 months and then found it randomly on Chooch’s desk, and then by then I had like 8892437982374 other books lined up to read. I kept trying to read a chapter here and there in between all of the library books that were ticking away like time bombs on my coffee table.

Finally in October I was like, “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH” and powered through it. THANK GOD I DID. This book is a beautiful, slow burn of a family drama spanning several generations, from the early 1900s to the 1980s, whether you’re interested in Korean/Japanese history or not. I will admit, the first quarter of the book is tough to get through; it was the driest part of the whole book for me, but I learned a lot of things that I didn’t already know about the strained relations between Korea and Japan (to put it into context, when we were in South Korea last summer, there were major protests happening that had something to do with trade relations with Japan).

It’s a real chunker of a book but I would consider this to be essential reading for anyone interested in historical fiction.

I’ll be thinking about this family for years to come, I think.

5. Parachutes – Kelly Yang 

After reading Pachinko, I was looking for something lighter so I picked up Parachutes, which is named after the term used for children of wealthy Asian families who are sent to America, alone, to attend school. They live with host families (unless they’re SUPER FUCKING RICH and have empty family homes to live in alone, you know, as teenagers are wont to do) who receive money from whatever host program in exchange. Which is how Claire winds up living with Dani, a super-focused debate team star who is working her ass to get into Yale. Dani’s mom is a maid and agrees to host Claire because she desperately needs the money. Claire and Dani mostly avoid each other, but each of them are dealing with really traumatic and shitty things and don’t realize how much they need each other until the end.

To me, this wasn’t a typical YA book. It made me super emotional, especially Dani’s situation involving a predatory teacher. At the end of the book, the author wrote about her own experiences as a college student at Harvard Law School and how this book was based on that. I was fuming.

I gave this one 5 stars. I think this book could help, and likely has helped, a lot of young people feel seen.

6. Home Before Dark – Riley Sager 

Booktube freaking screams over Riley Sager and while the two books I have read of his have been enjoyable, I wouldn’t like, wait in line to meet him or anything, if you know what I mean. And it’s funny because his latest book, Home Before Dark, has gotten some mixed reviews, but this is the one that I really latched on to.

Is it original? No, not even slightly. Some may call it an homage, some may argue it’s pretty blatantly ripping off The Haunting of Hill House (the Netflix series, not the book) but I was really looking for a good haunted house book to read in October, and I’m sorry horror purists – this book was fucking fun.

It alternates between present day and chapters from the book that the main character’s dad wrote about the house they lived in for, like, a month when she was a young kid. (I can’t remember her name and don’t feel like looking it up although I guess in the time it took me to type this sentence, I could have.) Basically, the dad dies and leaves the house to her and she goes back for the first time in decades to fix it up to sell, and OMG shit starts happening! There were a lot of times when I was sure I knew what was going to happen, but I was wrong and that’s all I could ever ask for when it comes to a thriller.

If there’s one thing I could say about Riley Sager, it’s that his books definitely aren’t boring.

Also, I will associate this book with the day I went to the gum doctor for a deep cleaning, because that’s the day I read this and the whole time I was in the chair, I was like, “Would it be rude to put on the audio book for this right now?”

Final review: the perfect October book.

7. The Devil All the Time – Donald Ray Pollock 

BITCH STOP. I LOVED THIS FUCKING BOOK SO MUCH, OMG. I had no idea really what it was about, just that there was a Netflix movie coming out based on it and people were freaking out and I wanted to watch it too but decided I should read the book first and Henry was also interested so I got the audiobook so that we could buddy read it together and it was an exceptional slice of literature pie

I can’t say enough good things about this book. Once I read the synopsis, I started to have doubts that this was the type of book I would like, but Pollock’s writing is…I mean, I can’t say anything else but MOTHERFUCKING CHEF’S KISS. There were moments where we were cracking the fuck up and not to sound like I’m tooting my own horn because trust me I am the biggest critic of my own writing, but there were moments that reminded me of some of the idiotic short stories I used to write, specifically the section of this book which takes place in a carny camp (woefully omitted from the movie, btw).

The characters felt so goddamn real to me, I laughed, I cried, I rooted for some, I wished death upon others. I cringed, I gagged. I ran the gamut of emotions, is what I’m saying. Henry and I exchanged many “OH SHIT!” looks throughout this journey.

I don’t even know how to summarize it, so click on the Goodreads link up there, but this really is, at the heart of it all, a family drama. With religious zealots and serial killers thrown in for good measure.

But oh my god, the writing. And this is why I will tell you now that while the movie is good, I don’t think I would have liked it if I hadn’t read the book first. So just read this damn book.

8. The Death of Vivek Oji – Akwaeke Emezi 

(My eyes started to sting with hot tears just from looking at this book cover again.)

I read Emezi’s “Freshwater” earlier this year and was blown away by their writing style. They don’t write books that are easy to read, but they’re worth the effort.

In this latest masterpiece, Emezi takes out our hearts and eats them, I fucking swear to god. It’s obviously about a person name Vivek, whose death sends their family spiraling and they eventually have to come to terms with the fact that they are mourning a son they didn’t even really know. We go back and forth between various narrators, and it culminates with the big reveal of how Vivek actually dies and HOLY FUCKING SHIT I was sobbing like a bitch with allergies trapped in a pollen storm.

The author is Nigerian and their books really have so much local flavor and atmosphere packed in those pages. To me, the best part about reading is when you accidentally learn about other cultures and heritages without having to be bored to tears in a dry, dusty classroom.

Even though the book starts off with Vivek’s death (or, the immediate aftermath, I should say), Emezi gives us just the right amount of peeks into Vivek’s past to really flesh out the character and make us care so deeply about them. I am in awe of Akwaeke Emezi and urge—nay, IMPLORE—you to read this book. If you pick up anything I have listed here, let it be this one.

Hello. Today we will be discussing the second half of the books I thumbed my way through in September. You’re welcome.

9. Allegedly – Tiffany D. Jackson

OK listen Linda, for a fucking YA novel, this book fucked me UP. In in, we follow a 16-year-old girl, Mary, who has been in the system since she was 9 (I think?) for allegedly killing the baby her mother was caring for. Sprinkled throughout the book is information from her case files, interviews, etc. and it is so frustrating reading the trials and tribs of this clearly very intelligent girl who may or may not have killed a person, as she is clandestinely studying for the SATs while being knocked down every step of the way by the other girls in Juvie and also the fucking staff members who are, naturally, hateful and pathetic at their jobs.

This was actually more chilling than I imagined it was going to be and I found myself shouting ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME several times because Mary wasn’t likeable per se but she was written so well that I immediately felt super protective of her and was over here rooting for her until the end. This was a great, if not disturbing and depressing, book. BRB, I’m about to devour everything that Tiffany B. Jackson has written.

10. The Raven King – Maggie Stiefvater

I finished an entire series this year! I didn’t think I would, but the Raven Boys cycle was pretty damn good, you guys. I have a disclaimer though: I didn’t really understand the actual plot, lol. “But Erin,” you ask, “isn’t that the whole point?” You would think! But I was SO INVESTED in every single fucking character of this book, you have no idea how much I loved them. Not quite Harry Potter levels of love, but Maggie Stiefvater really wrote so much life into these people, and….there are several love interests and one of them just kind of quietly happened and I was THERE.FOR.IT. Like, full-blown crying and cheering.

However, I really did find myself drifting off from time to time whenever it came to the thing that they were all there to do. So, as a series whole, I have to give that a 3.5 but the characters? Solid fucking 5. I will stan Gansey until the day I die.

(If you want to know about the plot, please just click the link up there because I’ll just be like, “I’unno. Raven King and magic forest, etc. Dreams & psychics. Whatever a ley line is.”

11. I’ll Be the One – Lyla Lee

I mean, if you didn’t know who BTS is already, you sure will by the time you’ve made it past the first chapter. SO MANY BTS REFERENCES. Good lord.

All that aside, I thought this was a cute book with an important, body positive message, ESPECIALLY for Koreans. Man, have you checked out their beauty standards? Unattainable. So I loved that this book was about a Korean American who tries out for a kpop talent show in LA, like, “Look, I’m not skinny, but I can fucking sing and dance my ass off and you are going to give me a chance.”

I enjoyed it. And that cover gave me color palette inspo for the next room I redo in my house (sorry, Hen).

12. Luster – Raven Leilani

OH SHIT this book was incredibly uncomfortable and made me so happy that I met Henry when I was 21 and settled down early because I can 100% guarantee my life would have been as sexually reckless and awkward as Edie’s, a young Black woman in between jobs and about to be homeless who becomes embroiled in a relationship with a man who is in an open marriage, and then accidentally becomes kinda/sorta friends with his wife and somewhat of a Big Sister to their adopted Black daughter.

There were times when I was actually cringing because it was SO UNCOMFORTABLE, I had secondhand embarrassment. But what I really want to remember about this is that Leilani’s writing IS SO GODDAMN BEAUTIFUL. It made me jealous. Every sentence has purpose and punch. Her prose is brilliant without an ounce of pretension. You will laugh out loud at times and also have your breath taken away by her effortless poignancy. Raven Leilani is the real deal, and it’s hard to swallow the fact that this is her DEBUT NOVEL.

Get ready to be uncomfortable.

13. Almond – Won-Pyun Sohn

I have read a lot of translated Korean books this year and I think it’s safe to say that Korean authors are my favorites (I know, you are shocked). Almond is mean to be a YA book but I really think by American standards, it would be more considered adult even though it does follow a young boy, Yunjae, who was born with a brain condition called Alexithymia, which prevents him from being able to feel or process emotions like fear and sadness. It’s a very cold and chilling book, really, but it’s told from Yunjae’s POV, so it really should come off with no emotion.

At its core, this is a very inspiring coming of age story, but it has some really dark elements that reminded me of Korean dramas like Come & Hug Me and The Smile Has Left Your Eyes.

Also, can we talk about how lovely this cover is?! I see all colors as potential wall hues now, sorry Henry.

14. I Remember You – Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

I hated this. Pure and simple. Not scary, it dragged, I hated the setting, everything was so cold and drab, blah blah, didn’t care a single speck about any of these goddamn insufferable characters except for the dog.

Oh, what’s it about? I don’t know, a ghost story, apparently. I wasted so much time reading it that I don’t want to waste another single second reviewing it. Go read Peter Straub’s Ghost Story instead. I just might do that as a palate cleanser.

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And that’s it! My 14 books from September. October is half over and I’ve already devoured some real good ones that I’m excited to gush about on here!