readundancies's reviews
1605 reviews

I dunno, I just never seem to be in the right headspace for Andy Marino’s writing

This is the absurdity of Senlin Ascends meets the time loop gymnastics of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle with the plot dynamics of the Knives Out franchise.

What an execution. It wasn’t flawless but it fucking worked outside of a couple subplots that didn’t quite have the same level of oomph as some of the main plot choices did. Some of it was predictable, other parts were not and genuinely surprised me and the combination of the two was so satisfying.

This was the sapphic locked room mystery time loop adventures of an exhausted single mother tale of my dreams and I could not have asked for any better.

Want the sequel yesterday, need this first one of the series to grace my physical shelves yesterday too.

i think that i liked this enough that i'm not remembering anything egregious that happened within it's pages, but i also read this at the beginning of the month and genuinely cannot recall anything of value about it either so, that's not exactly a recommendation to pick it up, ya know?

it’s a cute, childhood-crush-to-lovers hockey romance with some great sibling dynamics, some soap opera family theatrics, and some of Lana Ferguson’s charming banter, but if i’m gonna give a sports romance that focuses on hockey anything 4 stars or higher it has to be bloody fantastic and not make me cringe even once at the actual hockey discourse 

but let’s be honest, this was never gonna be a favourite with it taking place in <i>boston</i> 

because fuck boston 

i’m still giddy waiting for Lana’s 2025 release in Overruled though

i'm not sure this is at the forefront of what a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers should be, but the relationship between the two lead characters was just precious regardless

if you wanted to like <i>The Hurricane Wars</i> more than you actually did because you like a good arranged marriage/marriage of convenience situationship, try this instead because it scratched that itch for me in a way the former tried and failed at doing

awaiting the sequel - of which i can't tell is the latter half of a duology or a dreaded middle child novel of a series - with hopeful expectations 

Well I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this speculative sci-fi murder mystery debut.

We follow the single perspective of the main character Asuka, and "Alt", essentially a substitute or alternative crew member of the spaceship, The Phoenix, which is tasked with saving humanity by colonizing a distant planet as Future Earth is slowly becoming inhabitable - both based on the deteriorating environment on the planet and the humanity being unable to come together and instead slowly devolving into a global war. An explosion on the ship kills some crew members along with the ship's captain, and Asuka is tasked with leading the investigation to figure out what happened and who is behind the tragedy, all the while knowing that it all may be in vain as the explosion has pushed the ship off of it's path to the new world and there is limited time and resources to correct their course. The plot was engaging, there was a really interesting sort of AI that felt very much like it's own character outside of the ship, and the pacing was consistent. 

Asuka was such a compelling lead character; her biracial identity and the representation and discussion it brought up was everything I've ever wanted to read about as a multi-racial individual that struggles fitting in culturally at times because of how many pockets of culture that I attribute to myself. And the cast of characters in general were also incredibly diverse. I was gritting my teeth every time Asuka was called Susie, I empathized with her with every flashback that gleaned more information as to how Asuka was appointed to the crew and how her relationship with her family, especially her mother, developed and deteriorated; she was a fantastic character and I never got frustrated with her even when I didn't agree with her choices. 

There was no romance, despite there being some 2SLGBTQIA+ representation in other characters, but there were a lot of relationship dynamics explored in terms of friendship and colleagues stuck in a forced proximity by virtue of the entire present story-line taking place on a spaceship charted for a new planet for humanity to inhabit. Asuka's friendship with Ruth was contentious for almost the entirety of the story, and I did think that their conflict was resolved way too easily, more out of necessity than anything and not in any sort of elaborate way - and yet I still really enjoyed the friendship at it's core because they were different people who still cared about one another in spite of those differences. 

The ending left some questions unanswered and didn't so much conclude so much as end, but I still enjoyed myself so much more than I thought was going to. I don't exactly know what I expected out of this debut, but it delivered something that I think I needed to read anyways.

i got to the halfway mark in this book and realized that it's just very low on plot, and what was left of the story just wasn't cutting it for me