What did I just read??! Very visceral (in a good way but sometimes excessively) and I'm not sure I like the frame story... it's weird, it's dark, it's slow, it's anticlimactic. Just as Eileen has no say in her life and is just carried along for the ride, so are we. Only we don't get to drink as much. She's an intensely unlikable but pitiable narrator, and the entire book is just her.

As far as a YA paranormal romance goes, this book was fun! It's also pretty predictable and oddly dark, but it's a quick read about a girl who travels with a circus where performers have real gifts...she's abnormal girl, but when she meets a local boy in a mysterious and dangerous town, she needs to step up and take a part in protecting her family.

Whaaat I thought this book was supposed to be an alternate present! But it's the real world, where a man decides to re-segregate his town to give people incentive to aim higher. Surprisingly funny (though it's a satire, so it shouldn't be surprising) and, at times, heart-wrenching, but all around good to read.

Been meaning to read this one for a while and I'm glad I did! Not what I expected, and I didn't know until the end that Yunior is from other novels, but it's a powerful book. The writing took a bit of an adjustment to get used to- I ended up using a website to translate the Spanish- and I'm sure I missed some nerd-culture references because there are so many! But I would strongly recommend reading it, the voice wasn't one I've read much before.

Ah, Margaret Atwood. I mean "Ah, Shakespeare."
Based on The Tempest, this book gets a modern Canadian update; primarily set in a prison where a washed-up and mostly insane man is directing a play with the intention of revenge on those who pushed him out of his job, it's got some funny prison moments (the inmates are only allowed to use Shakespearean curses). Of course, I have no idea what's real in the end. Intense & worth reading.

I expected some things to be revealed that didn't, so that was a nice surprise. Overall this book has some significant ups and downs; the writing was often slow and sparse (like the feeling of isolation on the mountain in Idaho) but the switching perspectives and timelines were pleasant to break it up. I never felt fully engrossed, nor was the writing particularly beautiful. There were more things than I'd have liked that were left unspoken. Okay.

Anticlimactic for sure, but this book raises a number of legitimate questions of selfhood and the mind/body split (a particular interest of mind, it turns out). There are three mysteries: who is Hopeful Doe, the body found in an abandoned house, what is Evie, our protagonist, running from, and how did Sylvia, the dead woman who Evie is channeling with pharmacological aid, die? Also, Evie is obsessed with Sylvia's husband. So, weird.

Not what I expected! I thought "oh, a fun spy YA romp in the vein of Ally Carter, Gallagher Girls (the early books)". Not a bit! When I started and realized it wouldn't be fun spying--our heroine suffers from spy parent induced panic attacks--I started to expect a complete break from spying. But no. This book is surprisingly dark and will apparently have a sequel (I'd hoped it was standalone). It's okay, but weird to categorize.

Whoa didn't expect this to be so everything! It's not a happy story; the Wangs all have an inflated sense of self-importance due to their patriarch's success and each of the children's seven million dollar trust fund, but when the economy crumbles and Charles Wang decides to road trip across the country with the kids and then take over their lost land in China, the Wangs must (mostly) learn their tragic flaws... so good! Cutting and heartwarming!

Set in two parts- 12 years earlier and now- this book tells the story of a young girl learning to deceive and steal as well as that of a rocky new marriage between an artist and a new criminal lawyer in England. Everybody sucks, I pitied a number of them but liked no one, and I mainly finished it because of all of the hype and not because I genuinely felt it was important.

It's been a few years since the Event that decimated New York and enabled ghostly images to walk among the living, but little else has changed in society. Veronica goes to high school, works at the movie theater, and goes on dates, stopping by the breakfast table every morning to see her father's ghost. But a new teen boy ghost appears in her bathroom and a murderer decides the day to claim his next victim (Veronica) approaches - weird but good!

A new fairy tale, Russian-style: generations earlier, Frost was impressed by a girl and rewarded her with a prince. Now, that girl's granddaughter is growing up in a small village in Russia, where she sees the household spirits and contends with an unhappy stepmother and an overenthusiastic priest - but something darker gathers in the forest. If you can get past all the Russian names, it's an enjoyable read; the short chapters read like fables.

I'm going to call this book a love story. It's not your traditional love story; it's about family: the bonds of blood and the bonds of proximity and the bonds of affection. After his tumultuous upbringing by child psychiatrist parents who used him as a research case, Preston Grind opens the Infinite Family Project, where pregnant teen Izzy raises her son communally with nine other children. In a not-cult. It's fairly quick to read and it's good!

A rewriting of Hamlet (with which I am, of course, intimately familiar), this book is set from the perspective of an unborn child who listens in to his mother and her lover until he realizes one day that her lover is her uncle and they're plotting to kill his father. Spoiler? Not really, it's Hamlet. Baby loves wine and is absurdly intellectual (his mom listens to podcasts, guys) and the writing is metaphysical and beautiful if far too lofty.

The story of four middle-aged friends who decide to take a white water rafting trip together, this book is ultimately about friendship and truly experiencing life. Oh yeah, and it's a disaster book. Their rafting trip is full of tropes and heart-pounding moments and it's not "fun" but about halfway through becomes fast-paced. The women are complex, though the book doesn't always explore it, and, while I wasn't often surprised, it was good.

I love Margaret Atwood. But this book makes me sad. Maybe it's because it was ultimately a short story collection that got bundled up into a novel with apparently little to no editing to make it cohesive...
Basically this book is set in a newly economically unsound and ecologically destroyed US where one couple signs on to an experimental society. But there are gaps, unresolved issues, problematic sexual relationships, and everyone sucks. So.

Descriptions as Harry Potter meets Narnia are apt, though it's aged (although the college setting does little beyond swearing, drinking, and sex). There's too much going on - Quentin is a high schooler in Brooklyn whose admittance to magic school precedes five years of classes, post-graduation hedonism, and a journey to a magical realm. But it's fun, and though I didn't like Quentin, I liked reading about him, his friends, and the world around.

After a few chapters, this book was impossible to put down! Set in a fantasy world where some people have magical affinities, this is the story of a high-stakes (end of the world type) heist featuring an unruly band of six criminals. It's a lot of fun, with all sorts of complicated and sexual tension-filled relationships and some serious backstories. Read and enjoy!

This book has it all: happy marriages, impending divorce, and teenage virgins (is that not it all...?). The plot follows two families, each with a married couple and a single child as the couples navigate their rocky relationships and the kids get involved. To top it all off, they live in an idyllic suburb of New York and were members of a band. Lost dreams, no dreams, simple dreams, and arrests abound in this funny and serious and uplifting book.

This book is pretty elaborate; it's divided into a number of different quests which each have their own subquests in true video game fashion. The book is about a teen boy who spends all of his time inside virtual reality where he attends school and quests for the hidden passage to riches. There's a lot of exposition and a lot going on (virtual reality, 80s references, space opera, evil corporation, heists, and more). It's not serious but what fun!

Sweetbitter is upfront: it will pull no punches and will experiment. I wish it did only the first. Tess is mostly unnamed, "poems" spoken in the restaurant slip in, and scenes are second person. It's too much; the lyrical language and apt descriptions would suffice, but Danler's experiment detracts. Plot-wise, elements are unresolved; characters allegorize situations. Try it but know it has failings: read it for lyrical moments peeking through.

Fun, funny, mostly lighthearted historical detective novel!
This book begins in 1914 America, with three sisters riding in their buggy that's hit by a car piloted by a rich prodigal son. Chaos ensues as the oldest sister insists on repayment for the damages and the driver's gang companions begin terrorizing the girls. Constance is a feminist and a burgeoning detective - and (bonus!) this book is based on a series of real historical articles.

Predictable, cliche, uninspiring: if you're looking for a standard post-apocalypse YA romance, it turns out this is the book. There's nothing exciting or great about it, and there's absolutely nothing to recommend it over any other books. The premise is that, following a nuclear attack, scientists fixed the injured up with bionic implants/replacement parts. Then the government turned against the "Bionics," who are now the underground Resistance.

Middle-aged Evie recollects her youth as a hanger-on in a Charles Mansen-esque cult in this book exploring a young girl's burgeoning sexuality and desire to fit in. The stark writing of older Evie's narration contrasts her recollections' nostalgia from the pastel-painted past she had with a drug and sex-fueled cult which turned violent. Evie's desperate desire both to be with and be older Suzanne is great at showing a young girl trying to fit in.

This beautifully written book follows generations of two family lines originating from different tribes in Ghana but with the same ultimate matriarch. It's highly anecdotal because each character gets a chapter as the generations go on. Some members of the family have it worse than others, but none are free from political, racial, sexual, or social oppression. This book is beautiful and heart wrenching and difficult but definitely worth reading.

Recently rehabbed Althea is (unreasonably?) ejected from her family home. After a wild journey in which everyone (inexplicably) betrays her (with flashbacks to her great-grandmother), she finds out the truth. I think. It's confusing, there are too many characters (many dead), nefariousness galore (without justification), and plot holes everywhere. Plus, maybe there's magic? Yeah, I usually know what happened in books. This one just doesn't cut it.

Honestly, I don't read much nonfiction. I'm interested in psychology but not sports, math, or economics. The ideal reader would be into all four, except the opening chapter is so disjointed that you only have to care about sports to get to chapter two. Ultimately this book is about two influential Israeli psychologists. I'd rather have read a biography of either man or their actual papers to learn more than vague topic and research conclusion.

Fun read: it's a cyberpunk Jack the Ripper. It's quick and fairly light, except...in true cyberpunk fashion, it has a lot of plot holes and issues where it just quickly overloads too much information or too many plot lines into one rapid series of conclusions. So, fun, but don't think too hard about it! (Also, the conclusion is absurd, so be warned.)

I spent years avoiding this book, thinking it was historical, but when I found out it was dystopian, I hopped on reading it and am so glad I did! If you have any feminist feelings, like reading about weird sexual regulations (and Scrabble), or enjoy dystopian literature at all, you should definitely grab this. Margaret Atwood is a virtuoso; the book adeptly moves between a familiar world and the utterly incomprehensible walled-in landscape.

Such a fast read! The brief bursts of morning/night narration make the action flow quickly, because it's easy to just keep reading! Every character is a bit off; it becomes possible that anyone could be the villain of the piece. The end might not be fully satisfying but the journey is worth it (the opposite of a commuter train?). Filled with cagey narrators, blackout memories, and possessive men, this book becomes a trip to discover the truth.

Woah. Not what I was expecting. Sexual repression, apocalypse, the future demise of the human race, political oppression, the onus of being in power, loss of choice, scrabble games that include words with more letters than scrabble actually allows, baby mania, and, let's not forget, enforced prostitution. Trust me, read it.

Beauty and the Beast gets a revamp: the not-so-courageous (but willful and oblivious) heroine has magic and can take care of herself (usually by magicking a new dress). So, yes, issues: gender problems, it's about two or three books packed into one, and characters drop in and out of the novel for no apparent reason. But! It's fun and engrossing, worth a read (plus, its size is deceptive; it's a quick read). Oh, and the Dragon? He's just grumpy.

The first three chapters are excellent - creepy in just the right mysterious way and delightfully incomprehensible. Past that, the villains, in true James Bond evil guy style-wait for it-explain not only their life story but also what they're doing and how. For all that disappointing exposition, we're given the sudden entry of an inexplicable character at the end who seems to have hopped over from one of Mitchell's other novels. No explanation?!