mmccombs's reviews
691 reviews

I just have lost what I loved about the first books I read from Emezi. The first few chapters just felt so overwritten, like endless weird metaphors and sentences that made me feel overly conscious of myself reading a book, if that makes sense. It read like it was trying really hard to be a book that would win an award, and honestly the content was not engaging enough for me to feel that was worth it. Maybe I’ll come back to this  later when I’m in a better mood but for now… eh.

I simply do not care

I think I liked this? On the whole, the story and character development was interesting. Sitting in Eliot’s brain was impactful and I appreciated that her experience with OCD directly impacted the romance/plot, which made everything feel more realistic. I do think it was a bit long and repetitive, I spent a good amount of this internally yelling at them to just talk or kiss already. And I felt weird when the author constantly described the (only) nonwhite character’s skin and eyes as honey/almond/chocolate (basically any food) while every other (white) character is not really described at all. There were quite a few awkward sentences along the lines of “copper arms enveloped me” that could have just… dropped the constant need to remind the reader that Manuel was brown. Got it! He was pretty well developed as a friend and love interest, which made their relationship interesting, but I was very distracted by the writing style. All this to say, I think this was very well done OCD rep and just fine at everything else.

On the whole, I thought this was very well done and made me think of things in new ways. I found the chapters that focused specifically on her unpacking/challenging/rethinking pop culture were the strongest (Game of Thrones, Kurt Cobain and Selena, Viking content), while the more broad essays seemed to lack focus and cohesion for me. I also had a hard time finding the “voice” in this collection, it was sometimes very academic and other times a bit casual, which again fueled that incohesive feeling. I appreciated the creative and intelligent links the author made and I had a good time thinking about them, but I do feel this could have been tighter in some way.

You ever get like 3 chapters into a book and know that it will forever be on your mind from here on out? Everything about this is what I love about reading. The plot was meandery and beautiful, the characters were interconnected in unexpected ways, and the pandemic was obviously important to the story but was more of a springboard for exploration of humanity than being just an “apocalyptic” story. It feels kind of miraculous to have read this after an actual pandemic  (not miraculous in a positive way, just in a “time is a circle” kind of way), the layers of Shakespeare’s plague context, this imagining of a fictional pandemic, and our experience living through one all came together to create even more meaning than was probably originally intended. I don’t think I can say anything more eloquent that hasn’t already been said by more adept reviewers, but I finished this book feeling stunned in the best way.

I did not expect to enjoy this as much as I did, but the weird structure of it really kept me hooked! I loved how this was a character study, but specifically a character study in which characters were revealed in opposition to one another, like in a boxing match. There is no singular girl, but a collective who create and destroy each other. I liked that we saw glimpses of each boxer into the future, showing how boxing (and this specific moment) did and did not inform the rest of their lives. Sometimes the writing got a bit meandery and overly lofty, and the ending only kind of worked for me, but I can appreciate what she was trying to do there. This was a great, quick character driven bite of a novel that celebrates the stories we all hold within us from the beginning of time to its end.

I found this by accident and absolutely loved it! I am in fact a weenie when it comes to horror movies (I can get down with a book, but something about movies makes horror feel more inescapable and immediate to me). This book was informative and scratched my nosy itch of wanting to know what happens in a movie but being too nervous to actually watch it. The book situated each movie in time and its context, helpfully noted the content warnings and reasons to watch each movie, highlighted the connective points between movies to show why they mattered, and provided really interesting facts, sources, and alternative books. 

I know for a fact that I'm too chicken to watch The Conjuring or Hereditary, but now I have a solid understanding of each movie to be able to connect it with other movies and books for deeper critical analysis. I also loved the funny and casual tone, I think even people who are not weenies and just love horror films would enjoy reading this because it might feel like they're having a fun conversation about their favorite movies with a friend. I've added a bunch of movies to my watchlist that Hughes made me feel brave enough to watch, and I am totally satisfied with the new knowledge of the scarier ones I know I won't touch!

I really did not care for the writing, but at about the halfway mark I think the plot hit its grove and from there it got much more interesting to read. Our narrator Ji-won was an compelling one, I enjoyed that she kind of sucked from beginning to end, while there still was that vulnerable center to her that enabled a bit of empathy. The topics of Asian fetishization, generational trauma, and micro aggressions sometimes felt too on the nose and not nuanced enough, so I would have liked to have spent a bit more time there to round them out. This book was a bit boring until it got pretty gross and then I was invested, the ending was mostly satisfying (though I find it very hard to believe there wasn’t video of her or multiple pieces of evidence she left behind). I don’t leave this necessarily wowed, but it was solid and the eye content was an interesting angle to this story.

A solid atmospheric read! I loved the setting and the premise, though it ended up being much more of a romance than I anticipated. The romance was still good, but I thought there’d be much more vampires! When the vampires did show up, I thought they were cleverly imagined and integrated into the story, I liked that they were more “creature” than human. Both characters were interesting and I enjoyed the complex social dynamics at play. I will say that I didn’t really enjoy the narration of this one and probably would have been more invested if I had read this physically instead. But all in all I thought this was a perfect fall read with just the right amount of spooky atmosphere and historical romance.

This is just not what I expected (and wanted)! Based off of the first chapter, I was under the impression this was going to be about wolves (e.g. how they evolved, what they do for ecosystems, general facts about them, more science-y I guess), our stories/perceptions of wolves, and how those perceptions impact human relationships with wolves. But this immediately was just a lack luster memoir? I mean, a book focusing on folktales, gender, and wolf symbolism in a woman's everyday life would be an interesting and perhaps more focused one, but that was not the book I was promised when reading the summary and first chapter. And the book it actually was did not do anything for me, the author's reflections felt shallow, disjointed, and unclear. The quotes pulled from other sources only seemed peripherally related to the arguments she was trying to make, and by the end of chapter 2 I was confused about her actual thesis. I'm thinking this book is just trying to do too much, and in doing so lost focus. I just wanted a wolf book!