After The Dangers of Smoking In Bed and now this, I'm convinced that Mariana Enriquez is writing specifically for me. I wish I spoke Spanish so I coulAfter The Dangers of Smoking In Bed and now this, I'm convinced that Mariana Enriquez is writing specifically for me. I wish I spoke Spanish so I could read more of her backlist right here, right now. This blend of horror, stories that read exactly like urban legends, feminism, queerness, and social issues, is EXACTLY my jam.
The stories didn't all hit, but the ones that did, hit HARD; those were "The Dirty Kid", "Adela's House", "Spiderweb", "End of Term", "The Neighbor's Courtyard", and my absolute favourite, "Under the Black Water"- I loved every single second of it. It was one of those "If I could write, I would've written something like this" moments. The other stories were also very good, but there are always those few stories in every collection that shine the brightest. You can't help but like some a little bit more.
P.S. I don't like Shirley Jackson, so I couldn't care less about comparing Mariana Enriquez to her. I still think that she's perfect for the people who tried Carmen Maria Machado and liked her themes but couldn't quite connect to her writing, though. (It's me, I'm people)
P.S. 2: Major props to the translator for clearly having done an incredible job with the stories. Megan McDowell, I'm BEGGING you to work on more of Mariana Enriquez's books. Please....more
Did you love that part in Bunny where the protagonist is inside the Bunny Hivemind, keeps saying "we" and barely knows where she is and what she's doiDid you love that part in Bunny where the protagonist is inside the Bunny Hivemind, keeps saying "we" and barely knows where she is and what she's doing? You know, the "Mona Awad Signature Fever Dream Writing"? If yes, this book is for you!
Man, was this a chore to finish. The beginning and ending were both strong, but the middle drags HARD and reads like an overwritten, bloated high school essay where the student was just trying to hit the word count like the iconic Kronk meme: [image] And kept repeating the same stuff over and over, plain ol' rewriting sentences on-page (I've found out that I kind of hate stream-of-consciousness writing styles lately), or overexplaining the point she was trying to make ad nauseam (maybe trust your readers more when you're trying to be Oh So Cryptique?? Ruins the effect when you just turn around and explain everything explicitly), or like an author that just loooved hearing themselves talk.
There's a brilliant novella inside of this book, but it's lost underneath the millionth mention of "mother/ daughter of Noelle/ Tom Cruise/ Tom Tom Tom/ jellyfish/ brightness/ red/ red, rouge, rose" and more. Not to mention the completely useless subplots of (view spoiler)[whether or not Belle will go back to Montreal/ a fucking romance with a Stereotypical Cop character/ Tad, who's suspicious in the beginning but ends up amounting to absolutely nothing despite a significant amount of time being dedicated to him (hide spoiler)] that just take up space and nothing more. This book legit feels like Mona Awad was contractually obligated to have a 300+ page book out next, had a pretty good idea with the beauty industry stuff but couldn't hit the word count, and just started typing whatever to fill the pages. I was so disappointed.
Merged review:
Did you love that part in Bunny where the protagonist is inside the Bunny Hivemind, keeps saying "we" and barely knows where she is and what she's doing? You know, the "Mona Awad Signature Fever Dream Writing"? If yes, this book is for you!
Man, was this a chore to finish. The beginning and ending were both strong, but the middle drags HARD and reads like an overwritten, bloated high school essay where the student was just trying to hit the word count like the iconic Kronk meme: [image] And kept repeating the same stuff over and over, plain ol' rewriting sentences on-page (I've found out that I kind of hate stream-of-consciousness writing styles lately), or overexplaining the point she was trying to make ad nauseam (maybe trust your readers more when you're trying to be Oh So Cryptique?? Ruins the effect when you just turn around and explain everything explicitly), or like an author that just loooved hearing themselves talk.
There's a brilliant novella inside of this book, but it's lost underneath the millionth mention of "mother/ daughter of Noelle/ Tom Cruise/ Tom Tom Tom/ jellyfish/ brightness/ red/ red, rouge, rose" and more. Not to mention the completely useless subplots of (view spoiler)[whether or not Belle will go back to Montreal/ a fucking romance with a Stereotypical Cop character/ Tad, who's suspicious in the beginning but ends up amounting to absolutely nothing despite a significant amount of time being dedicated to him (hide spoiler)] that just take up space and nothing more. This book legit feels like Mona Awad was contractually obligated to have a 300+ page book out next, had a pretty good idea with the beauty industry stuff but couldn't hit the word count, and just started typing whatever to fill the pages. I was so disappointed.
Merged review:
Did you love that part in Bunny where the protagonist is inside the Bunny Hivemind, keeps saying "we" and barely knows where she is and what she's doing? You know, the "Mona Awad Signature Fever Dream Writing"? If yes, this book is for you!
Man, was this a chore to finish. The beginning and ending were both strong, but the middle drags HARD and reads like an overwritten, bloated high school essay where the student was just trying to hit the word count like the iconic Kronk meme: [image] And kept repeating the same stuff over and over, plain ol' rewriting sentences on-page (I've found out that I kind of hate stream-of-consciousness writing styles lately), or overexplaining the point she was trying to make ad nauseam (maybe trust your readers more when you're trying to be Oh So Cryptique?? Ruins the effect when you just turn around and explain everything explicitly), or like an author that just loooved hearing themselves talk.
There's a brilliant novella inside of this book, but it's lost underneath the millionth mention of "mother/ daughter of Noelle/ Tom Cruise/ Tom Tom Tom/ jellyfish/ brightness/ red/ red, rouge, rose" and more. Not to mention the completely useless subplots of (view spoiler)[whether or not Belle will go back to Montreal/ a fucking romance with a Stereotypical Cop character/ Tad, who's suspicious in the beginning but ends up amounting to absolutely nothing despite a significant amount of time being dedicated to him (hide spoiler)] that just take up space and nothing more. This book legit feels like Mona Awad was contractually obligated to have a 300+ page book out next, had a pretty good idea with the beauty industry stuff but couldn't hit the word count, and just started typing whatever to fill the pages. I was so disappointed....more
My "dipping my toes into reading an entire Amazon Originals collection for the first time" journey has begun!
Sadly, not very well. The story isn't unrMy "dipping my toes into reading an entire Amazon Originals collection for the first time" journey has begun!
Sadly, not very well. The story isn't unreadable or anything, but it's definitely dull and goes absolutely nowhere. I liked the mix of poetry and prose, though all of the poems sounded pretty much the same....more
The beginning and middle of this book are much, much stronger than the ending. The premise, setting, chaLet's get the negatives out of the way first.
The beginning and middle of this book are much, much stronger than the ending. The premise, setting, characters, writing are all much greater than the execution (especially the pacing, which dragged and dragged in the leadup to the finale) and the final resolution, which, I'm not gonna lie, I lowkey hated; (view spoiler)[it's so overly sappy and trying hard to be the happiest ending possible, everything wrapped in a sweet little bow, every character getting everything handed to them in a silver platter. (hide spoiler)] I know I just sound like a miserable old bitch, but I don't care. I hate it when books do this.
Special (negative) shoutout goes to the (view spoiler)[Opal/ Eleanor scene at the end, when Opal tells her that she deserved better; she did deserve better indeed, but not in this stupid cliche "Don't take your revenge against those people who absolutely deserve it!! You're better than this!!!!" bullshit, no- the opposite. The "don't become the villain when you've been suffering for years!! You'll become just like THEM!" thing is so tired. Sorry that my suffering is inconvenient for you and that the people who caused it don't deserve to get away with everything unscathed, I guess?
Not to mention how she suddenly had Opal, a random girl, telling her that Starling House belonged to her now so, like, leave. I was a bit offended FOR her lol. (hide spoiler)]
Possible plot hole: (view spoiler)[Of course there was another way into Underland besides the one in Starling House itself, conveniently, and we're told about slivers of mist coming out of the mine. So.... shouldn't Beasts be materializing there, too? Or were we supposed to think the rotten boards were holding them back lmao? Some of the people in the book club I read the book with said that they thought the 'river' there held them back, but unless we'd been told that Beasts can't cross rivers/ moving water like vampires or something, that doesn't work either, and it undermines what we've been told before. Starling House's location/ 'only one door, only one key, hidden'/ the Wardens having to patrol the grounds all the time just lose their entire meaning if there was another entrance right there all along, pretty much wide open, that only seems to exist so that Opal can conveniently join Arthur in Underland. (hide spoiler)]
The book is also definitely not horror. This is a magical realism/ fantasy book with gothic undertones. It's about as scary as The Raven Cycle is (the books share a few similarities, I'm not pulling this comp out of my ass), which..... isn't at all. A few mildly spooky scenes here and there aren't enough to make up a horror book.
So, what are the positives? Everything else. The setting and premise are awesome, Alix E. Harrow really knows how to set a scene and the small rundown town is icredibly evocative. The writing is lush and dark/ romantic/ funny (because this book is also pretty funny at times, a bit reminiscent of T. Kingfisher's style)/ whatever else the author wants you to feel at exactly the right times. The characters are interesting, not as developed as I'd have liked but rendered well enough that you like and care for them.
I just can't stress this enough: the finale doesn't exactly ruin the entire thing, but it definitely makes the book much weaker than it could've been....more
I was expecting a lot more from this for some reason. Not sure why, I'd never read from the author before. It had a strong beginning and metric TONS oI was expecting a lot more from this for some reason. Not sure why, I'd never read from the author before. It had a strong beginning and metric TONS of potential, but it ended up being too gimmicky, shallow and pedestrian for me despite having a really, really great and polished writing style. Oh well....more
Takes its sweet, sweet time to finally get going. I was about to DNF it when it finally kicked into gear at around 30% (or 100 pages), so be prepared Takes its sweet, sweet time to finally get going. I was about to DNF it when it finally kicked into gear at around 30% (or 100 pages), so be prepared for that. I also imagine that having read the previous books in "The Rat" series would generally help with the reading experience, but I'd been reassured that DDD can be read as a standalone; indeed it can. Just putting that out there for the doubters, like myself.
Look, let's not mince words. Murakami can write a book, and he's one of those few artists whose creations are the closest you'll get to experiencing a dream awake (David Lynch is also on that list, for a very, very obvious shoutout) Particularly "dream logic" of absolutely surreal things happening, and the characters also acknowledging that, but it all still making a lot of sense in-context, and I consider that a talent. There are some fantastic things in here, and I loooove hotels as settings for stories- not sure why. I also love hotels in real life, and I bet that all ties into my love for liminal spaces. Anyway.
That said, when he's not writing about the most creatively weird scenes you'll ever read, his dull-everyman-who-somehow-gets-laid-every-other-page protagonists are unbearable, and so is most of his characterization of women in particular. I remember seeing one review that said something like "I don't believe Murakami is a misogynist, but he IS the kind of man who thinks that women are some kind of otherworldly beings he admires but doesn't even try to understand" and I couldn't possibly agree more.
Also, another major con of this book was that it (view spoiler)[explained the title very early on? I understand that the main character needed the nudge to 'dance dance dance' (=basically live his life and make connections with people), (hide spoiler)] but that was basically one of the biggest ~intrigues~ of the book over and done with before we were even halfway done. I personally didn't like that, and neither did I like Murakami doing a ~pArOdY~ character of himself in Makimura (I know, I know, he made it so obvious that I don't think he considered it clever or anything, but that doesn't mean I had to appreciate it?)
Started absolutely brilliant, with the magical realism elements being expertly threaded throughout and somehow making perfect s3,5 stars, rounded up.
Started absolutely brilliant, with the magical realism elements being expertly threaded throughout and somehow making perfect sense despite not being explained at all (especially the part about the entirety of Wolfe Studios big heads all being some kind of fae/ demons/ am I forgetting some other entity that loves making "deals" with humans for greatness?) but lost it somewhere around the 60% mark when it started vaguely hand-gesturing instead of properly showing us anything of the siren movies, the part I was looking forward to the most.
Those movies are what finally makes Luli famous, what she wanted all along, what she sacrificed so much to get, and her chance to showcase her talent; I don't understand why it was passed over like that. Whatever few snippets we got, I enjoyed a lot, but they were exactly 2 and I wanted a lot more. For anything more than that, just use your imagination, loser. I also didn't like how the epilogue got the exact same hand-wavey treatment, it felt like the author got bored after (view spoiler)[the kiss scene (hide spoiler)] and just wanted to wrap it all up and go home even though she had a bunch more plates up in the air still....more
No idea what I just read or how to rate it, especially as someone who couldn't care less about Shakespeare. Definitely made me think, but I'm not sureNo idea what I just read or how to rate it, especially as someone who couldn't care less about Shakespeare. Definitely made me think, but I'm not sure I enjoyed any of it. The only truly memorable scene is (view spoiler)[the first time the fat man shows Miranda the Trick (hide spoiler)]....more
Okay, this book kind of blew me out of the water. I was expecting it to be good because Ali recently recommended it and our tastes very much align 90%Okay, this book kind of blew me out of the water. I was expecting it to be good because Ali recently recommended it and our tastes very much align 90% of the time, but still. I'm a grinch. I don't give out 4 stars willy nilly.
I liked the book's take on magical realism, how soft and vague the border between magic and reality was. That idea, of some places in which reality is "softer" and easier to manipulate and easier for things to fall between the cracks, is something that I first encountered in Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory, and then Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, and quickly realized that I LOVE that concept. Now Bone Gap makes three, and it was just as fascinating.
The plot was pretty basic, but it's really the character work that shines here. The book isn't particularly long, but Laura Ruby still manages to develop a rather large cast well, even when she has to lean on a few stereotypes to help her as a jumping point to show that none of those people are JUST that even when the other characters (and the reader) think so. It's the best kind of multiple narrators when one character's POV shows that what we were shown before through a different character may, just maybe, have been filtered through their own biases and experiences and may have been completely misinterpreted.
Not to mention that life isn't black and white and there's no immediately obvious answer to every dilemma, and a lot of media falls into that pitfall. Bone Gap doesn't.
The one thing I can pinpoint as a negative of this book is that, well, it's YA. We spend a significant amount of time following a teenage relationship in detail and, as an adult, I can't say I was THAT compelled by it. The YA "tag" also means that the book could probably go even darker if it hadn't been, but oh well.
Honestly, it's always hard for me to talk about books I enjoyed, because it all boils down to "It resonated with me" and that's deeply subjective. Give Bone Gap a try if you're interested in magical realism and things not being what they seem....more
Uhhhh. I'm confused. I enjoyed the book while I was reading it, but most of it is a blur now and I JUST finished it yesterday. There is absolutely notUhhhh. I'm confused. I enjoyed the book while I was reading it, but most of it is a blur now and I JUST finished it yesterday. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the actual writing or characters but none of it stayed with me for some reason. I should also mention that (view spoiler)[Frances Hardinge did the cuckoo/ changeling/ we follow the "monster" without realizing it twist a lot better in Cuckoo Song, and it's weird that I remember the middle grade book I read 2 years ago so much more vividly than the adult book I've been reading for the last 10 days. (hide spoiler)] I also didn't care for the ending. Not the climax/ resolution/ winding down bit, the very last page or so. It's a no from me....more
It may be unfair to start my review with this, but I'm doing it: Mariana Enriquez gave me everything that Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other PaIt may be unfair to start my review with this, but I'm doing it: Mariana Enriquez gave me everything that Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties didn't, so I'm starting my review with this so other people, who were also disappointed with HBAOP, know that they can get that "I want creepy, unsettling, frequently sexually explicit stories with social justice overtones" itch scratched right here.
As usual with short story collections, there were hits and misses, but overall I was very pleased. To elaborate:
Angelita Unearthed: Sets the tone for the rest of the collection perfectly, it's just the right amounts of messed up, haunting, but also kind of funny, in a pitch-black-humour way. Our Lady of the Quarry: Not gonna lie, kind of forgettable, I'd forgotten all about it until I looked at the table of contents just now. It portrayed a very specific "teenage envy", albeit petty, feeling extremely well, though. The Cart: Awesome. Dark in both conception and execution and didn't pull any punches. The Well: Kind of predictable, I'd figured out the twist earlier than its characters. Still enjoyed the ending. Rambla Triste: The first time I thought "Hey, this author is kind of brilliant". LOVED how it read like an urban legend because I have a soft spot for those. The Lookout: I straight up forgot this one even while looking at the table of contents, I had to open the actual story and read the first line to remember it. Predictable. Where Are You, Dear Heart?: The most memorable story in the book, I think (not my favourite, that one comes later). I'm not going to forget about that one anytime soon. Could have been a trainwreck in a lesser author's hands. Meat: As someone who's having a bit of a kpop phase right now and seeing fan spaces of all degrees of devotion, from casual to nearly religious, let me just say that Mariana Enriquez gets it. No Birthdays or Baptisms: I love how open-for-all-kinds-of-interpretation this was. It's almost the opposite of that twist I despise, (view spoiler)["mental illness was the BIGGEST monster after all!" coughTheLastHouseonNeedlessStreetcough (hide spoiler)] Kids who Come Back: Probably my favourite story. Did it meander a bit, and was it just sliiightly longer than it needed to be, and also kind of similar to Rambla Triste? Yes, but was I engrossed the entire time, devouring pages like mad, and have I been thinking about it since I finished it? Also yes. Didn't appreciate the use of an actual slur in it, though. I get that it was an example of "slang street talk" given the characters who said it but that still doesn't make it okay in the year of our Lord 2022. At least my brain bleeped it out every time. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: 'Twas fine. I would barely remember it if it wasn't the title of the collection. I get what it was trying to do but it didn't do anything for me. Back When We Talked to the Dead: I didn't care much for the story overall, but when Mariana Enriquez said "At that age there's music playing in your head all the time, as if a radio were transmitting from the nape of your neck inside your skull. Then one day that music starts to grow softer, or it just stops. When that happens, you're no longer a teenager." I FELT that.
The collection gets a 4 for now and I'll bump it up later if I feel like it (EDIT 2 years later: I did). Super pleased with it....more
Awesome. The art looks beautiful, expressive and memorable; the plot is low-stakes enough to be relaxing but interesting enough to want to keep readinAwesome. The art looks beautiful, expressive and memorable; the plot is low-stakes enough to be relaxing but interesting enough to want to keep reading it forever, the characters are fantastic (AND the cast is diverse af) Overall incredibly wholesome and entertaining. 10/10.
P.S.: if (view spoiler)[Chuck'd been successful when he tried to kick Good Boy (hide spoiler)] I'd find a way to teleport myself inside the book and kill him with my bare hands. I'd find a way....more
I was originally supposed to erase this one from my e-reader, but I accidentally opened it instead and I was intrigued by the opening phrase "He was tI was originally supposed to erase this one from my e-reader, but I accidentally opened it instead and I was intrigued by the opening phrase "He was telling her about his psychic powers" so I decided to give it a go after all.
Typical creative-writing-class stories, most of them about dating or people with several neuroses, going absolutely nowhere except for "Look, isn't this sort of a weird situation?" The only reason it's getting a 2 star rating from me instead of 1 is because I really liked the stories "A Promise" and the titular "Short Dark Oracles". Short Dark Oracles, in particular, was both lots of fun and memorable, and I've caught myself thinking about it since I finished it....more
This was..... a lot better than I expected even though I don't know WHAT I expected?? It was lovely. Pretty well written, funny, sometimes spooky, andThis was..... a lot better than I expected even though I don't know WHAT I expected?? It was lovely. Pretty well written, funny, sometimes spooky, and frequently surprising me. The art was also awesome, very expressive (and, like other reviewers have said, very reminiscent of Giant Days) Overall a good reading experience. Would love to re-read it (and I probably will at some point)...more
Meh. It was fine, but I'm kinda disappointed. Everyone keeps talking about how wEiRd this is and it wasn't; this has more to do with me having skewed Meh. It was fine, but I'm kinda disappointed. Everyone keeps talking about how wEiRd this is and it wasn't; this has more to do with me having skewed expectations than the book itself. If you were expecting a typical contemporary book, this must have been SUPER weird, but if you were expecting it to be something like Geek Love like I did, it was as tame as a kitten.
The only wEiRd things about it were the characters having titles as names (which aren't their names in the narrative itself; it's just that teenage thing of trying to define yourself by something you do and naming yourself rather than just accepting the name your parents gave you. The same thing that happens in Lady Bird, the highly acclaimed 2017 movie, and by the end of both the movie and Dig. the characters just accept their given names and move on because that signifies Maturity TM) and a tiny bit of magical realism/ fabulism in one particular character's story. That's it. The rest of the story is a run-of-the-mill "hard hitting" contemporary of teenagers dealing with a bunch of issues, racism, abuse, poverty, coming to terms with their privilege, illness, etc.
Personally, I thought the racism talk was way too heavy-handed. It was mentioned constantly in a "Those white kids are affected by racism TOO!" context, with barely any people of colour in the cast of characters (I can only think of three, Ian (who's a token black best friend), his girlfriend who has no speaking lines, and Jake/ Bill's Latina mum, who has no speaking lines either). While I get what A.S. King was trying to do by highlighting white privilege and kind of nudging some unaware people that "Hey, pssst, you have it, better accept that", racism is a HUGE part of... a book with a completely white cast....
Maybe she didn't think she'd do characters of colour justice so she stuck to what she knew, or didn't want to show people of colour suffering (which I understand)? It just rubbed me the wrong way and it felt self-congratulatory and a pat-on-the-back, "Hey, I talked about how racism is bad and how you can move away from your racist relatives and be better than them, that's good enough" No, I don't care about white kids discovering they're privileged, because no shit they are; the bar is at ankle height. Marla, Jean, Jake, Bill, Mike, they're never called out in any capacity, they never get the comeuppance they deserve, we only get the characters talking shit about them behind their backs. While I get it with the white supremacists (the latter 3) because they may be dangerous, but why not call out Marla and Jean at the very least? What are they gonna do, cry about it and storm away from the dinner table?
I'm a white person too so I may be COMPLETELY off the mark with this, because, the book is calling out racism and not being racist itself, at least; but I'd rather read some Own Voices writing about racism, people who have to live through it and its effects every single day (something like Queenie, that showed microaggressions someone may not realize are racist), than "Ohhhh poor white kids, they're feeling the effects of racism too, this one has a RACIST RICH WHITE MOM", written by a white author.
Anyway, for some positives, I liked the multiple perspectives and I liked the girls' chapters the most (I felt CanIHelpYou?'s fast food chapters in my very soul, I work in the hospitality industry) I liked how the book tackled families and their issues, and I liked the white privilege talk, to a point. But the book could have been so much better....more
Giving this book just 1 lone star seems harsh even to me, but a 2 feels too generous.
Katrina Leno read (or watched, or both) Practical Magic (the famiGiving this book just 1 lone star seems harsh even to me, but a 2 feels too generous.
Katrina Leno read (or watched, or both) Practical Magic (the family of witches; the story centering on two sisters; the small town setting), loved it, then read The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender (again, the small town setting; the magical realism; women turning into birds; sexual assault as drama), loved it too, and decided to combine the two into this book, that tries so hard to be lyrical and ~evocative~ and ~heartbreaking~ that it misses out on EVERYTHING else. Just to be clear, I dislike both of those stories, Practical Magic was boring and Ava Lavender was borderline offensive, so it's no wonder I didn't like this mashup of them either.
The writing wasn't evocative and lyrical at all. I didn't like a single quote and I didn't feel a single thing for the characters while reading, because they were all so underdeveloped and all tell-don't-show that they never felt like anything more than puppets, parroting whatever the author made them say. Not to mention the severely heavy-handed foreshadowing that explicitly telegraphs everything that is going to happen, just one tiny centimetre away from outright stating it. (view spoiler)[Georgina's powers are so painfully apparent from the get-go, seeing her struggle to figure it out/ it being used as a source for drama when the reader knows from the first chapter was frustrating as hell. Same goes for Mary's rape reveal, you didn't need more than 2 braincells to figure it out, especially with her acting the way she was. (hide spoiler)] Maybe that's just me, an adult, reading a YA book and having a bit more experience than the 18 year old characters, but them and Georgina in particular (she is the main character) seemed dumb as hell for the entirety of the story.
Of course, now we arrive at my favourite plot point that was also my favourite in Ava Lavender (sarcasm), (view spoiler)[the Rape as Drama plotline. That is handled so, so painfully wrong, from the book hardly bothering with the VICTIM and instead focusing on her dimwitted sister who only figures it out at the last 10%, to its existence at all (sexual assault as drama is so overdone; it's basically a staple of ~hard-hitting~ contemporaries. It's just as overdone as using 9/11 as the setting for your tragic finale), to Mary becoming ~a changed person~ after it, from a flakey, kinda bratty girl to someone who decides to leave her family and raise two random birds, as a bird herself because she can now shapeshift at will, when before she could only float as a human, at best (??) At least we never got a male character telling Mary that "I'll love you even now, despite what happened", like an actual quote from Ava Lavender, that made me cringe into another dimension. (hide spoiler)]
And, of course, the F/F romance, one of the book's selling points, that is a textbook insta-love, no-nuance, we-kissed-once-and-now-we-can't-be-apart-even-though-we-never-even-hang-out one. It's a hard no from me.
And, lastly, one smaller nitpick that, if I'm right, points to the author and editor not wanting to Google even the simplest shit (let alone write a good ~hard-hitting~ story about being queer, family legacy, magical realism, and sexual assault like the book was supposed to be): there is a supporting character named Elvira (Vira for short), who says her name comes from her mom having gone through an "intense vampire phase" when she was born. The name Elvira instantly evokes Cassandra Peterson's horror hostess character: [image] Who is actually a witch in her own "lore" and has nothing to do with vampires whatsoever. However, there is another character that predates Elvira by 30 years, Maila Nurmi's Vampira, who was also a horror hostess: [image] I'm not sure whether the character is meant to be a vampire or not, seeing as the persona was mostly influenced by Morticia Addams (and let's not even mention how similar the two look, Maila Nurmi sued Cassandra Peterson over this, for good reason), but she's a "vamp" for sure.
So my question is: did Katrina Leno straight up confuse the two and thought they were the same character? Did she just glance at a picture of Elvira like "Well, she looks like a vampire, so......*shrug*"? How did both of those scenarios survive trough editing? Or am I missing something and there's some well known vampire character named Elvira that I don't know of that Katrina Leno knows intimately?? Somebody help!...more
Finally done with this dry as fuck stage direction booklet (this isn't a novel and you can't convince me otherwise) Dry as fuck, awkward (none of the Finally done with this dry as fuck stage direction booklet (this isn't a novel and you can't convince me otherwise) Dry as fuck, awkward (none of the characters feel like people at any given time), but also too cutesy (there's anime bullshit like "the cute young girl puffed her cheeks in frustration"), and too repetitive (the time travelling rules are repeated ad nauseam throughout, and every single "traveller" has the exact same thoughts before, during, and after) Every single story is sickly sappy and tries so hard to make you tear up (the despite-the-odds romance! The couple that will end up like "The Notebook"! The "black lamb coming home" family story! The "mother sacrifices her own life to give birth to a child she'll never meet" bullshit!) that it ends up being the exact opposite.
Not to mention the ridiculous, vaguely sexist plots. The incredibly successful woman who speaks 6 languages breaks down because, apparently, her entire life revolves around her boyfriend who's moving away (like they can't do a long distance relationship??? He's not going to die??) The independent bar owner who has to be punished for living away from her family and is made by the plot to move back home and "learn to love" the family business? The sickly-but-always-cheerful mother who sacrifices her own life for the good of her unborn child (that she didn't need to have??? Someone explain to me why it's soooo heartwarming for a child to grow up without a mother, and the mother KNOWING this and deciding to go through with it anyway) It's fucking terrible.
I get why people seem to like this but it did absolutely nothing for me. I had to push myself to finish it when I was already at 90% and I ended up skimming that last 10%. Good riddance....more
I didn't even remember I was in the middle of this until I saw it on my GR homepage lol
First of all: why do all contemporary graphic novels look the eI didn't even remember I was in the middle of this until I saw it on my GR homepage lol
First of all: why do all contemporary graphic novels look the exact fucking same? Cartoony faces, rubberhose bodies, handwritten dialogue, completely pastel, lots of ~lingering shots~ of hair, feet and backgrounds? The Heartstopper: Volume One series (vol.1 here, standing in for the entire thing), Sheets (even though I loved the art in that one), Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, Bloom, and the list goes on. It's boring and it all blends together.
I didn't care about any of the stories above, and I didn't care about Are You Listening?. I didn't feel anything for the characters (which are basically the same person, they look alike, talk alike, act alike, their only difference is their age, and unless they were supposed to be two versions of the same character, Past and Future or something, that's terrible character writing) or the plot, which tries so hard to be a deep, philosophical metaphor about trauma/ the patriarchy/ running away from it all/ how our own existence shapes the world around us that it ends up making no sense. I wanted to laugh at the random (view spoiler)[underwater pool scene; it was just a metaphor for "delving deeper" into theis psyches by confessing secrets to each other but it was still so stupid at face value, they're supposed to be pursued by some weird creatures and they stop to go for a swim in a random pool?? (hide spoiler)]
Did I miss something? Because a lot of people are raving about this and all I saw was "Baby's first forray into magical realism"...more
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