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sometimes i wish i could shut off copyeditor mode when i read because otherwise i notice shit like "webcomic episode 4" being timestamped later in the day than "webcomic episode 5" when they're clearly chronological, and then i'm mildly annoyed. but despite "messy/anxious white MC meets magical butch of asian descent" immediately reminding me of casey mcquiston's one last stop (which i started the year with), the dialogue was definitely on the better side here. i didn't even feel like shaking any of the characters by the shoulders, which probably means the miscommunication and misunderstandings common in this genre weren't as offensive as they could've been, and i thought ellie's anxieties were portrayed fairly gracefully (though some in my book club found the constantness grating).

club gripes included loose ends, angry brown tertiary characters, inheritance tax, and only surface-level mentions of korean heritage. i was stuck around the 75-80% progression mark for weeks for some reason and i wasn't really sure what that meant, besides delaying getting into the conflict pages (or prioritizing watching exciting new episodes of television, ahem arcane).

stray note: the author commissioned some gorgeous story-related art from venessa vida kelley that had us wishing that had been the cover instead.

oh, i just don't know about this one. this was a book club read for spooky month, it didn't keep my interest enough for me to finish it before the meeting, and then book club meeting came and went, and i still took forever to finish it afterward. this was disjointed (at first i thought it was the audiobook narration and swapped to hard copy, but no, it was the choppy and overly convoluted writing), and weird shit would happen without giving me a reason to care why. so there's a racist old white lady haunting the house, and all the food is rotting on purpose, and colonialism is bad, and the MC is bi and closeted, cool. i guess we're supposed to root for the MC to make it out of there intact? was that it? if we were supposed to have takeaways about rekindling family connections among the various threads in the novel, that was not executed well.

(6/27/2023) this was a reread. i last read this a few months ago (or late last year) while doing a pass of books on my shelf to donate/sell, but i've read it at least twice before that.

originally impulse-bought as a used book at a now-defunct local games and comics store in northampton for $5.99.

the POV shifts throughout are interesting and it can be a fun puzzle to figure out what is happening (unless you “recently” read it, like me) and who is who. it's a very short read, though, and there's not much time to get attached to the characters, and they show up kinda like assholes in many scenes. i think i kept the book this long because there's some gay intrigue (back from my “will consume content for breadcrumbs” days) but it's not earth-shattering.

i just put together on this particular readthrough that there were some context clues about a part of the story happening on 9/11. that was a “huh.” moment.

(11/13/2023) whoops, i thought i'd written a review of this one already... i guess not. hurray for BIPOC creators and truly diverse BIPOC cast! but i think that's as far as it goes for me, unforch. even though there are characters who are deaf, who use mobility devices, who have chronic aches/pains, who are queer, who are trans, and so on, the small blurb you get on the book jacket about each ensemble character is just about as far as their personalities go. kind of a bummer for a title that i otherwise should be all about: “a queer, witchy Fast and the Furious.”

this is on the shelf at the little queer, witchy library inside the like magic exhibit at mass moca, alongside titles like jeff vandermeer's annihilation, bora chung's cursed bunny, some ursula k. le guin, octavia butler, and audre lorde's the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. its placement tickled me. if you're here, there are also multiple copies of johanna hedva's who listens and learns, each tied to its own display table with a thin braid of human hair.

extremely cute sapphic offering from the creator of the internet-famous “pink in the night” comic and also PG's lil bro henry is spot on in that sometimes, people want words!!! (everyone should learn this lesson but then romcoms would be a whole lot shorter if we did)

give me more softie gaysian heartthrobs any day. i also very much relate to momo's people-pleasing tendencies. i feel like 3 stars is not a super high rating but it does accurately describe how i feel about it, which is that i “liked it”

i tend to want to look up every word i don't recognize when reading, a holdover of terrible academic study habits, so i deliberately relaxed my eyes and let the stories wash over me and i think it worked out.

this collection was... interesting. the melding of folklore, cautionary tales, and body horror in the opening pages made me think i was in for a spooky ride, which isn't generally my thing, but fear and terror simmered much more gently than maybe i wanted in the end? also hell, reading about nonstop vaginal bleeding while on my period was hilarious timing.

i want to say something real smart about sexuality throughout being stripped of any and all e(x/r)oticism and fleshy bellies and compulsory motherhood and insincere narrators and girls with their hands in their underwear (“groping around like a physician giving a pelvic exam,” 53) but i'm too dumb for that so all goodreads gets from me is word salad. you're welcome.

this was another one of those “oh shit, i'm out of renewals and it's due back at the library in a week, better get cracking” kind of reads.

while i do love me some tamaki collabs, i put off reading this (in general, not just during my loan period) because its jacket synopsis didn't grab me, and an initial quick flip of the pages didn't do much to dissuade me from thinking this was a messy late teens/early twenties type of book. which it is, but it takes place in 2009, so it's like my generation's chaos, right? (give or take a small handful of years.) like, i know these characters, i know these archetypes, i've probably had or been around very similar conversations and wreaked similar havoc—nostalgia mode activated.

i originally found the ending a bit underwhelming, as we're conditioned to want justice and a neat resolution, but i think how it played out was true to life. i loooved jillian tamaki's illustrations throughout, and the use of flickr references of NYC back then. the uses of flashback were really well done, from recounting conversations early on (retelling a line or two from another character) to visual transformations on the page in the final chapter or so. and dialogue from mariko tamaki was subtle and deftly youthful without being juvenile and was also so very new york.

overall, really well done, even (especially?) the bitch from a long line of bitches that i wanna sucker punch.

been following vel's rarepair fanart shitpost account for a while now and had to pick this up after learning it was based on the overwatch league (OWL) fandom. i think vicky starts out a bit too meek for comedic effect (she can't even tell her brother what food she hates?) but i was pleasantly surprised at the groundedness of her growth trajectory and how the backstories of/with her teammates and brother played into that (particularly opal's). also, the esports setting felt very true to my own experience both as a gamer who used to scrim OW at least twice a week and an OWL follower, and i thought the details about being a woman in competitive, team-based pvp—and gaming more generally, but i think team-based pvp, ranked systems, and competitive play do have specific toxicities to them—were well integrated across multiple characters without being heavy-handed.

definitely shelf-worthy. i think some parts could have been slightly less goofy (small scenes with eric, maybe, and some panels with anime/manga visual gags?) and stuff with virgil wrapped up a tad too quickly even though i quite liked the eventual confrontation. minor nitpicks, really, for a coming-of-age story that was really well put together.

i was a tad intimidated by the page count before i started (this was part of a book swap where the picks were meant to be on the shorter side) but it moved pretty quickly. this was a relatively “easy” read, but the high school setting stressed me out and so did one of the major plot points even though there was a content warning for it at the beginning so i theoretically should have been prepared.

most of this was consumed while driving. i listened to the last chapter or two or three on fast speed while mowing the lawn, and halfway through my yard, the book ended what felt like weirdly and abruptly in an unsatisfying way. i'd consider this an “i only finished because i'm a damn completionist” book. i didn't so much dislike it as i was disappointed by it. i guess i don't read that many mysteries but since i wasn't really invested in the mystery itself or the protagonist inserting herself into strangers' lives in the role of delulu detective, i had to force myself to continue. MC was sapphic with no real impact on the story and zero payoff, the chineseness references made me cringe (see status updates), and the dialogue felt just a tad off-kilter throughout, like it was approximated by bots (how apt given the plot). the setting was mildly dystopian wrt consumer data, machine learning, and algorithms, but it was also like the dialogue in its uncanny valleyness: just a bit too off from reality and therefore weird and not that believable.

i really wanted something juicy to happen between the MC and her blonde assassin boss and i think the author knew that.

dnf as the first couple rotations of POVs with character backstories weren't that compelling to me. i even tried listening to the audiobook on 1.25x speed while also reading to keep me on track (at least the narrator's use of accents helped distinguish the cast a bit?), and finally gave up and very roughly skimmed the rest of the book, only slowing down for scenes where emilie and josefa got stuck in tight spaces together, inches apart, or were practicing calligraphy on each other (wow romantic).

eh, i don't know. i was thinking i'm just not in the right mood for this right now, but the last heist book i tried was portrait of a thief, which was similarly ambitious yet lacking. i guess outlining character motivations and skill sets for this kind of plot—and not relying too heavily on suspension of disbelief—is pretty difficult. i still plan on giving adiba jaigirdar's other works a try, likely after rani choudhury must die is released.

(7/15/2023) the author and i share a common character in our names that's hard to pronounce in english so it was pretty interesting seeing it splashed across a triumphant spread in the conclusion. tons of relatable moments in here (also a she/they queer asian american who grew up in majority white neighborhoods, whose name was constantly mauled in class roll calls, and whose parents found immigrant community in similar ways after coming to the states – church for laura, buddhist association for me). i was pleasantly surprised to find this on the shelf at my local library after signing up for a library card the same day as it'd been vaguely (waves hand) on my to-read list.

this might've been because i read this a little at a time over a number of days (as opposed to in one sitting) but as a memoir goes, i don't think it went particularly deep on any one topic. it was more relying on the audience to be insiders at certain points, if that makes sense? the art was also a bit inconsistent throughout, being doodle-like in places and sophisticated in others. that all said, this is the first time i've ever felt the urge to write to an author right after i read something. gotta recommend a local bakery.