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" Joe lay across the stool, held between the trunks. 'May a body not rest in his bog?' said the man. 'Can't...' 'Can't never did.' '...get.' 'Is that it? Is that the hue and the cry you woke me for?' 'No way. All over. Same.' 'Move the dish cloud and shut you glims.' 'Damn' 'Do it.' 'Bloody' 'Do it.' Joe lifted his patch to his forehead and shut his eyes. 'Are you seeing me?' 'Bloody damn' 'Open a glim.' 'Piss off...' He opened his good eye. 'Are you seeing me?' 'Piss off!' 'Off or on are one to me...' "

I mean I don't think there's any meaningful way to review this book. The entire thing reads like the passage above. I wouldn't say the prose in inaccessible, but rather overly whimsical. Not in a way that can't be understood, but in a way that gives the reader pause. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy it though. There's a story here, and don't let others tell you that it's not a cohesive one. It's just clouded in this stylistic prose. I quite enjoyed the whole thing, but there's not much more that can be said other than the language was weird and the story was surreal. Unless it went over my head, there were no observable themes or motifs or higher level commentary. Just a kooky story.

I am so mad at myself for putting this book off for as long as I did. I actually checked it out from the library TWICE and didn't get around to reading it either time. I picked it up during this slow work week to read at work since no one else is working, and I was absolutely gripped. Despite some questionable structural decisions I enjoyed this the whole way through.

We are following Cara, a woman living in the fictional, ultra prosperous Wiley City, one of the many walled fortresses surrounded by desolate wastelands which are populated only by the impoverished slums existing outside the city. Cara is originally from Ashtown, one of these slums, but due to extremely lucky circumstances, finds herself as a temporary resident of Wiley city working for the Eldridge Institute, a massively influential mega corporation founded by Adam Bosch which has discovered the secrets of the multiverse, and the secret to traveling to parallel worlds. Over 300 worlds similar enough to the original "Earth Zero" were identified as being traversible, but there's a catch. One can only travel to a world where they are dead. Because of this, the wealthy and privileged residents of Wiley City are generally not suitable candidates for traversal because their parallel selves likely have a similar upbringing and would never have died. This requires the Eldridge Institute to recruit individuals from extreme life circumstances that are likely to have died in other parallel worlds, like Cara who grew up amidst extreme gang violence, addiction, and devastating environmental conditions. In fact, she is dead in almost all parallel worlds, making her an ideal traverser. In this story, we dive into some of Cara's missions on these other worlds as we learn about her complicated relationship with her work counterpart Dell, a woman Cara is clearly in love with, and her mentor Jean, a former traverser himself. We also learn of Cara's home life, her existing family, and the vicious life circumstances that she's not quite escaped, and the life the failed to escape on so many other worlds. But after a botched jump to another world and being embroiled in gang drama she managed to escape in her own world, Cara gets thrown into a vast conspiracy that threatens her position an the Eldridge Institute and shakes her sense of identity as someone who is truly between two worlds.

The back of the book blurb does not do this story justice, it is chock full of dramatic action, deeply complex character arcs, conspiracy, and thrilling twists. And there's even a sapphic, slow burn love story in here too. While long, the book did a good job of pacing the story so it didn't feel like it dragged on too much with a loose three act story. With that being said, I did find the second act to be most compelling, and it was difficult to leave that arc of the story. There was so much information revealed at the end of the second act, it did feel at times like the story was being artificially extended just to wrap up an over arching narrative. In fact, it almost felt as if the author realized half way through the book that they wouldn't be getting a book deal for a sequel, so they rushed to wrap everything up nicely. But that's not to say that the final act wasn't good, I truly did love this through the end. This story also had a LOT to say about class which I think was very well done, and had something to say about race, which I would have liked to be explored a bit more than it was.

It's hard to identify any one thing that this book did best, it was very strong throughout. The characters were all fantastic, each compelling in their own way. But what was particularly impressive was the author's ability to write characters across parallel worlds different enough based on their life circumstance, but similar enough to remind you that they are in fact the same person. I found it extremely well done. The complex world building was also expertly integrated into the narrative with minimal blocks of exposition. There is a particular funeral scene that very nearly brought me to tears with how much love and gentleness in exuded despite it being a completely fictionalized ceremony within a fictionalized culture.

There's so much here that any fan of science fiction will find to love. If you enjoy Blake Crouch (particularly Dark Matter) or Jeff VanderMeer, you'll likely enjoy this. And this is a specific comparison I wanted to make because I couldn't help thinking of it the whole time, but if you liked This Is How You Lose The Time War but you wish it were a bit more narratively comprehensible with a more straightforward story, this is exactly the book for you.

The Deep Sky is a gripping story of adventure, mystery, friendship and hope set on a tiny spaceship hurtling through the galaxy in the hopes of a better future for humanity, and I enjoyed every second of it. Given that this book is about a small crew on an ambitious, dangerous journey through space on a small ship with no choice but to both clash and bond, there really was no doubt that I would like this. But it's execution was so good that I think this should go down as one of the greats in contemporary science fiction.

In The Deep Sky, we are following Asuka a young, half American, half Japanese girl who achieved the opportunity of a lifetime -- leave Earth on a ship of about 80 people of the same age for a distant, habitable planet where humanity can start over. The story splits between two timelines. The first follows the family of Asuka starting from when she is about 12: climate change refugees that are reeling from the death of their son Luis, Asuka's brother. After moving back to Japan, the whole of humanity is facing a critical break point. Nations are at war, terrorist groups clash with governments, and climate change threatens the whole of humanity. This is what leads the richest woman in the world to announce an initiative to recruit young children from the world to compete on a spot among the Phoenix, a state of the art ship designed to carry a small crew to the stars where they can start over as humanity has failed. With nothing else to lose, Asuka applies along with thousands of other youths across the world. To guarantee funding, this initiative allows countries to "buy" seats for their citizens among this ship, meaning the wealthiest countries get the most representation. Being half Japanese, and with her mother unwilling to let Asuka go, Asuka submits her application to score the sole seat for Japan among the Phoenix. But applying is not all it takes. After initial acceptance of over 800 children, all of them are relocated to begin their grueling 10 year training process where they are educated and assessed to ensure they are ready to take on this mission that will span over 30 years. With each passing year, more students are eliminated as the trials become more difficult with tensions among friends rising and falling as the students compete for a coveted position. But along with personal struggles among friends, ecoterrorist groups, men's rights terrorism, and numerous other organizations have mobilized to prevent this mission from happening, which is further complicated with Asuka's mother's involvement in one of them.

Flash forward 10 years, the first leg of the journey is complete as the 80 crewmates awaken from cryo sleep, and Asuka is one of them. The second leg involves all crew awakening, doing ship maintenance, cultivating food, and most importantly, getting pregnant so their arrival after another 10 years of cryo sleep will have the most difficult years of childhood behind them. It is a requirement to get pregnant and only individuals who can get pregnant are included in the crew. But tragedy strikes when a bomb detonates outside the ship, seemingly there the whole time, and Asuka was out there to see it. With terrorist groups back on earth claiming responsibility and talks of a sleeper agent on the ship, the story turns to a full scale mystery action/thriller as Asuka is tasked with rooting out this potential saboteur while the rest of the crew scramble to get the ship back on their trajectory, or else they risk starvation in the middle of space. Iterating between the past and the present by chapter, the story comes together in a beautiful way as we see how relationships build and crumble, motivations are revealed, and teamwork rises to overcome impossible odds.

Whew, the description is long, I know. But necessary to paint the complex picture of everything this book had to offer. I find it hard to think of one thing that fell short in this read. The short chapters and the shifting from past to present kept me fulling engaged on the edge of my seat for the entire ~400 pages. Each chapter complemented the next expertly weaving a cohesive and skillful narrative between two points of view which were essentially two different genres. The characters were all incredibly well-written and diverse, with the crew being filled with women, non-binary folks, and transgender men, all with their own motivations, ethos', and character arcs. If I were to have one criticism, I actually think Asuka was one of the lesser interesting characters with her personal arc being slow and less compelling than many of the side characters. The Past story kept me interested because it was clearly leading to a critical event that let to Asuka's selection for the mission when she was the clear underdog, which may or may not have involved machinations and sabotage across the large cohort. It also painted the full story of Asuka's complicated relationship with many of her fellow crewmates who she clearly has very different relationships with while on the ship. The Present storyline was filled with intrigue, mystery, action, and heart stopping tension that paired well with the slower paced Past chapters.

I really can't recommend this enough. I usually try to think of similar books one might have enjoyed in order to more accurately recommend the one I'm reviewing, but honestly I think if you are a fan of science fiction, you'll enjoy this book.

I do this thing when I buy books where I will read the description at the bookstore, decide that I want to buy it, and then never read the description again. Then when I pick it up to actually read months later, I have no idea what it's about, but I trust my past self to have had good taste when I picked it up. And while I am not going to stop doing that, this is a wonderful example of a book where that strategy failed me.

In Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller, we follow Neffy, a woman in a tumultuous point in her life after being laid off from an aquarium job for releasing their octopus into the sea and being made to pay them back. Without any other goals, Neffy volunteers for a vaccine trial for a particularly vicious disease that's ravaging the world. However, just as the trial begins and she is given the vaccine (and the disease to ensure she is fully inoculated), a new extremely deadly and extremely contagious strain of the virus breaks out and plunges the entire world into chaos. After a 7 day stint of in-and-out sleep, Neffy wakes in the empty clinic to changed world as plagued people wander the streets and bodies litter the outside. She finds that four other trial participants have stayed in the clinic, Leon Rachel, Yahiko, and Piper, who did not end up receiving the vaccine or virus -- Neffy is perhaps the only one in the world who is vaccinated. The five of them start this new uncertain life in the clinic as they have to monitor food and water, emergency power while being careful to keep the unvaccinated isolated as pressures mount for Neffy to venture out for supplies. Also there's this plot of Neffy going back to revisit her memories of the death of her father.

I have had a sneaking suspicion for a while that dystopian books just aren't for me. I read The Passage, The Light Pirate, The Wall, even Station Eleven (which I enjoyed, but is my least favorite ESJM book), and all of them were some level of disappointment. So I don't know why I picked In Memory of Animals up but it followed the same route.

Overall, I'm just not quite sure what this book was trying to do. This was obviously written during the COVID pandemic, and relied heavily on evoking all too familiar feelings around isolation and avoidance, but beyond that it was a bit of a mess. We have this primary theme of struggling with letting go of what is lost to focus on protecting the people that you can now, and a secondary theme of regret at the death of Neffy's father when there's a chance she could have helped him. We sit extensively with Neffy and her stepmother Margot, and explore her complicated relationship with her mother and her lover/step-brother Justin. But none of these side plots really resolved into anything. And the medium by which we are diving into Neffy's memories is this overly complex introduction of "Revisiting," a VR like device that one of her fellow vaccine participants worked on that lets you vividly revisit memories of the past, which also introduces a not-fleshed-out theme of like.. addiction to Revisiting? It felt as if it was so sloppily integrated, and I wonder if it would have been better to just have Neffy ruminate on her past rather than introduce this overly complicated plot device that had no place in a dystopian story.

Aside from Neffy, the characters were all both flat and unpredictable. Their actions and reactions did not at all feel like the way real people would act. Their dialogue was stilted, and their decisions strange. However none of them really changed throughout the book. Even though they all grew closer to Neffy, and Neffy had a dynamic character arc, none of the other characters did which made following them tedious. And this makes me question why we spent so much time hyper-focused on the development of relationships between Neffy and her companions in a dystopian novel which had little else to say. If the story wanted to be about developing relationships in the midst of hardship, it should have left Revisiting behind. If it wanted to be about reconciling regret and grief in a world where there's nothing but that left, it should have not even included other survivors. If it wanted to be a tense dystopian story about struggling to survive, then it should have devoted more to that than the ending 50 pages.

Anyway, this just felt like a bit of a mess. Not terrible, I didn't NOT enjoy myself. I just feel like it was poorly constructed. But hey, if you're one of those people who loves dystopian fiction, you'll probably find something to like here; particularly if you liked The Wall. This is like a worse version of that.

Another banger from the science fiction (and fantasy) powerhouse that is Ann Leckie. Translation state is an exhilarating ride filled with political intrigue, complex human-alien dynamics, and a sprinkling of body horror. It's more of a departure from the other installments in the Imperial Radch universe, but it still feels like a natural progression in unveiling the fascinating universe Leckie has built.

In Translation State, we follow three perspectives. Enae is the grandchild of an immensely powerful, and bitter woman who ended up dying and leaving no one in her sprawling family anything, and in fact, it was revealed she had no money at all, but an unknown benefactor was left to manage the estate. Enae was the only family member who was to receive anything, which was an allowance and an assignment: find a suspected alien fugitive that went missing 200 years ago. Reet is a 30 something year old mechanic living on a station who knows little about his background given that he was adopted. After meeting an ethnic social club who insists he is a descendant of their long lost leaders, he's thrust into the middle of an active rebellion, but he's having some physiological anomalies popping up that cast doubt on his true heritage, and why has he fantasized about eating humans his entire life? Qven is... something else entirely, a juvenile Presger Translator. The Presger are an extremely secretive and powerful alien empire that has entered into a necessary treaty with the other empires given how deadly and alien they are. To negotiate the terms of this treaty, the Presger created an entirely new species, the Presger Translators, who interact and negotiate with the other species. But even though they look human, they are odd and often dangerous, particularly the juveniles who engage in an almost insect-like upbringing filled with cannibalism, body horror, and the necessary ceremony of "merging" which involves integrating with another individual else they die entirely. After a merging incident, Qven is thrust into a tenuous position among the Presegr Translators with very few options and very little time before they die.

Each of these stories weave into a very interesting overall narrative filled with intrigue and action alike. There were some aspects of the story I liked more than others, and those familiar with some of Leckie's standalone works might agree that her endings often feel a bit rushed and ill-thought out, but the entire journey to the end of the book was fantastic. The short chapters and consistent cycle of POVs made this very easy to binge, and I hardly ever felt like any POV outshone another. Character wise, this had a large cast of characters, and while some of the smaller characters blended together, overall I found the main characters to be interesting and likeable, but I had some issues with each of their character development arcs.

While all of Ann Leckie's books have been character focused, I think Translation State was a more concerted attempt at being relationship focused, and for a few reasons, I don't think it was wholly successful in telling a relationship focused story. As the story progressed, Enae seemed to take a backseat to the overall plot, making me question why they were still involved by the end, despite the narrative desperately trying to justify their importance to a story that has clearly left them behind. As Qven and Reet became the main focus, I was disappointed in how their relationship developed. The political intrigue was fascinating, but I can't help but feel that I was constantly pulled out of the meat of the story and Qven's interesting, alien experience as a Presger Translator child to watch them become like an.. UwU I want to cuddle and eat dumplings and watch tv all day every day. Like.. their arc towards the end of the book was so disappointing, it affected my perception of the entire story.

Perhaps it is unfair to compare this to Ancillary, The Raven King, or Provenance when it should be judged on its own merit, and even though it was a good story, I was really hoping for so much more because I have come to expect the best from the author. But regardless, this was a good book. If you are a fan of any of Leckie's works, Martha Wells, Becky Chambers, or even James S.A. Corey books, I think you'll really like this.

Haven by Emma Donoghue is a quiet, but harsh examination of the way religious devotion to institutions or individuals can mislead and lead good people to do awful things in the name of God.

In 7th century Ireland, Artt is a saintly priest visiting a local abbey and finds himself disgusted at the way the monks have allowed themselves to fall into lives lacking discipline and piety. During his visit, he has a prophetic dream where he and two of the monks live in complete isolation on an unknown and undiscovered skellig off the coast. Taking this as a directive from God, he demands the two monks in his dream accompany him to find this skellig to start their new lives. So Artt departs with his new, small congregation comprised of Cormac, an old monk who formerly had a family and was a fighter in his young years, and Trian, a young man brought to the abbey at 13 by his parents for a mysterious reason. Following Artt's (their Prior) direction, they bequeath almost all of the resources they planned on bringing to their new home including rations, tools, and even instruments that were to be used exclusively in praise of God. After coming upon their newly discovered home, the monks begin their brutally secluded and desolate life on a tiny island with nothing but rocks and puffins (fun fact, this is Michael Skellig, the skellig that Luke is found on in the Star Wars sequel trilogy). As resources dwindle, illness and injury affect the men, and under the thumb of Artt's blinding piety, the other two monks start to question the reason God has sent them here and consider that their Prior's interpretation of their scarce life is perhaps misguided.

As someone who has an adversarial relationship with religion, this was a difficult book to read. Obviously it was written in the modern day, but it did such a good job of mirroring modern debates about religion in a 7th century setting. And while it was triggering in a way, it was SO well done that I couldn't help but be thoroughly engaged as much as I was angry at everything that was happening. This story was fairly surface level in the sense that it is more of an account of everything that happened, and less of an introspective exploration of what was going through the character's minds. There was some of that, but mostly it was "watching" them rather than "listening in", so if you expect a fully fleshed out philosophical exploration of the way that religion influences the individual, you won't see those conversations happen, but you will see it play out.

I found the characters simply fascinating. Again, we don't sit with the characters internally all that much, but they still felt so well developed and fleshed out. The character development was so visceral, I loved seeing each of them grow, for better or for worse. Cormac's stories, Trian's sense of adventure, and even Artt's over-reliance of scripture to inform his every decision, I'm very very impressed with how Donoghue was able to develop such strong personalities in these characters while also giving them each a compelling narrative.

This is one of those books that I think can really be widely recommended, as I think most people would, and should, get something out of it; religious or otherwise. Lovers of history or Ireland will definitely enjoy!

A rotten showcase of the inner and outer turmoil of a sad, sad man, Moshfegh continues to be the best at writing the worst humanity has to offer. Set in the 1850s, McGlue is a “sailor” invited to work on his current vessel by what seems to be a man he met by chance and his only friend, Johnson, who he is accused of killing. The narrative shifts back and forth between the events leading up to the murder and the present day as McGlue is being apprehended and tried for the crime. Being told from the perspective of McGlue and with McGlue being a vicious alcoholic with severe brain damage, the narrative is hard to follow most of the time, but as the story progresses you learn more about the latent emotions that perhaps led to these unfortunate events.

Wrought with homophobia, homoeroticism, and blatant racism, this is a difficult book to recommend. Definitely look up trigger warnings. But with that being said, and please don’t hate me for this, in many ways I felt like this was a horrifying version of Giovanni’s Room given the complex relationship between the two main characters and their inability to confront their feelings. It was in those ways that I really enjoyed this. But the graphic, gory moments that Moshfegh is known for quickly pull you out of any introspective moment you might fall into. Did I like this book? Yes, I really did. Did I find it enjoyable? No, not at all. Falling somewhere between Lapvona and Eileen, if you enjoy Moshfegh’s darker works, you’ll find something to like here.

I'll never get over Emily St. John Mandel's ability to weave many different simple narratives into a compelling braid of a story that still manages to have surprises, twists, and turns without being overly bulky or needing extensive exposition. She always holds you right on the cusp of confusion, making you think you lost the plot, but you didn't. She will reel you right back in. This was the case for Station Eleven, and The Glass Hotel, and Sea of Tranquility was no exception.

In this book we follow a few different narratives, and those who have read her previous other works will find some familiar. Edwin St. Andrew is the lesser son of some English nobles, sent to colonized Canada in 1912 as a punishment where he experiences something extraordinary, and almost alien in the Canadian Wilderness. A man watches. Vincent (a character readers of the author's works may be familiar with), has a same experience at the same place in the wilderness in 1994, filming with a personal camera. A man watches. In 2020, Mirella, a former friend of Vincent's, is looking for her, and comes to an experimental art show put on by Vincent's brother where he shows Vincent's recording of that event in 1994. A man watches. Olive is an author from the second colony of the moon in 2203. She's doing a book tour on Earth while the beginnings of a pandemic break out. A man watches. In 2401, Gaspery is a man living in the second colony in of the moon, aka Night City, who gets wrapped up in the business of his sister who works for an agency that governs time travel.

St. John Mandel's strength has always been structure and composition. She is truly an expert at revolutionizing how a story is told without burdening the reader with knots of stories. Her character work is also always something to look forward to as well. I love how she sometimes only allows us a surface level understanding of a character, like Edwin (even if maybe they're a protagonist) while others we get an in-depth, deep dive into their psyche, like Olive. It mirrors our own relationships with the people in our lives.

I continue to be impressed with everything I read from Emily St. John Mandel, and I will read everything she's written at this point. I should warn potential readers, while not necessary, it would be beneficial for you to read, at the very least, The Glass Hotel before you read this book. If you want some more small Easter eggs, you should also read Station Eleven before reading.

The Man Who by Thom Cree is a diverse short story collection covering stories from traditional westerns to Russian espionage. As with most short story collections, this is hard to give a rating, with some stories being hits and others misses. This collection in particular is difficult to rate because of the vast diversity in the kinds of stories included, but I'm happy to say that I enjoyed the collection for the most part. Based on the table of contents, the book is broken into three different themes of stories: Historical Western, Contemporary, and Cold War Espionage. I found that the author's talented writing style was on full display in the four historical western stories. They were all uniquely rich, complex, and deeply engaging if not terribly brutal at times. I appreciated how the prose complemented what we would call "flowery" language of the time (think Ulysses Everett from O Brother, Where Art Thou). The hyper-focus on the individual experience from seemingly random people of that time painted a really interesting picture of what life might have been like. Is it authentic? I don't know, I don't really care. I enjoyed them all. The contemporary stories I remember less of. There were only two of them, and they didn't stick with me. I remember being surprised that the bordering on purple prose didn't carry over to the contemporary stories, and I think that's a testament to the author's versatility. Lastly we have the cold war espionage, this was actually one story, and took up most of the book. I suppose it was less of a short story and more of a novella, but I have mixed feelings about it. While a high level summary of the story might lead one to think it was very engaging and fast paced, I found myself confused and struggling to keep the characters straight in my head for the majority of the time. It all came together nicely in the end, but the confusion I had made this story really drag on for me. Overall, a mixed bag when it came to the stories, but I enjoyed the collection as a whole. I find myself wishing there were more western stories, and I would have really liked to see more installments in the contemporary category, but this was very strong.

Classic Moshfegh, Eileen is an atmospheric tale of addiction, obsession, and depressing delusion. We follow Eileen, a young 24 year old living in New England, living and caring for her retired, alcoholic ex-cop father who has nothing but disdain for her. The story is recounted by an older Eileen, telling the reader what led her to "escape from X-ville," her home town she disliked so much, she wouldn't deign to share its actual name. Eileen works in a juvenile detention center, managing the visits between the boys and their mothers. Her life is wholly unremarkable and her time is spent in toxic introspection, hyper focusing on her lack of self worth and desirability, obsessive vanity but without self awareness, enabling her father's alcoholism, and accepting all of his verbal abuse day after day. We get hints of her pathological obsessiveness when we learn that she regularly stalks one of the guard at the boy's prison who she doesn't even necessarily like, but because he is a man she has proximity to, she yearns for his approval and desire.

This all changes when Rebecca's starts at work. A new director of education brought in to teach the prisoners, Rebecca is seemingly everything Eileen wants to be, chic, elegant, witty, and sharp. For some reason, Rebecca takes a liking to Eileen and they spend time getting to know each other as Elieen's obsession shifts to focus solely on Rebecca. This results in a climactic, violent outcome.

Moshfegh is an expert at crafting the most pitiable, unlikable characters imaginable, but makes them more pathetic than they are bad, so you can't help but to feel sorry for them. For main characters, this makes them compelling to follow. For side characters, it can be a bit of a chore reading about how irredeemable they usually are. The pacing of this story was strange. Narrator Eileen often hinted to the climax that was coming, but the climax ended up happening within the last 25 pages, making the end feel rushed. In fact, considering this story is really about Eileen's obsession with Rebecca, I was surprised to see that Rebecca doesn't even enter the story until about half way through the book, with the first half setting the scene for Eileen's sad, Sisyphean life. Aside from the rushed ending, this didn't really bother me because I enjoyed the whole story, but I was surprised that it took so long to get to the central plot of the story for a rather short book.

There were a few moments of disgusting depravity here, but it was no Lapvona. I was expecting worse, but not necessarily hoping for it. Check the trigger warnings before picking this up though. If you like Moshfegh's other works, you'll love this even if it feels a bit tame in comparison.

Whale is a historically and atmospherically rich story centering around a shrewd woman named Geumbok in the 1950s. It is a full account of her birth, full life, death, and the full life of her daughter as well. With elements of mysticism, this was a surreal read as we followed Geumbok and all of the women that preceded and followed her in life, manifesting as a tragic, but oftentimes funny, family epic.

In many ways, this felt like a Korean "One Hundred Years of Solitude" with the satire dialed up quite a bit. I really enjoyed that aspect, as Solitude is one of my favorite classics. All of the characters were uniquely charming in their own way, even if they were unlikable. Even the characters that were likable had moments of unlikability, painting a realistic picture of who they were as people. Many had redemption, others fell into corruption. The structure of this story jumped back and forth between characters and timelines, always keeping you just at arms reach of what was going on and why we were shifting focus to a new character or story, but never enough to feel disjointed or sloppy.

The story itself I found to be quite touching, focusing on themes of abandonment, family connections and love so deep it can't be communicated. It is a story of extreme hardship and extreme wealth, fluctuating between the two several times. What resulted was an introspective, satisfying story that keeps you thinking about it long after the fact.

This book feels like an homage to contemporary classics. If you like classical literature, generational stories with aspects of political satire and equally lovable and unlovable characters, you should pick this up.

Many thanks to the publisher for sending me an advanced reader copy of this book for review.

This book is really a series of short stories following Jamie, a young man on vacation with his newish boyfriend Alex. Jamie recently lost both of his parents in rather quick succession, and is struggling with the immense grief weighing him down. We spend time both with Jamie, Alex, and Kit (their AirBnB host), and in the past in the various memories Jamie has with his parents. In these memories, we get to learn about the complex, sometimes troubled yet kind people Jamie's parents were, and we grow to understand the deep feeling of loss Jamie has.

This story was sweet, it really was. But I feel like it was more of an attempt at endearment that didn't quite land. We got to spend a lot of intimate time with our small cast of characters, and I genuinely enjoyed learning more about them. I loved learning more about the complex relationship and love Jamie had for his parents. I appreciated Jamie and Alex's "new boyfriend" relationship, it was really well executed. And I loved Kit, their host who seemed so genuine and kind.

However, there were a few stylistic choices that I think interfered with my enjoyment of the book. Firstly, few characters really had a distinct voice. Kit and Jamie's father come to mind as very unique, but everyone else blended together in tone. While this isn't a huge deal, it became troublesome with the formatting of dialogue. You see, the author rarely included markers such as 'Jamie remarked' or 'Kit inquired' or 'Alex asked', opting instead to allow the context of the passage indicate who is speaking. But because most of the characters didn't have a distinct voice, I was often confused as to who exactly was saying what. It wasn't until the middle of the book that I realized that it was Alex who was actually a person of color and not Jamie, and it was Jamie's old house they were hoping to visit, not Alex's.

This was further complicated by the fact that the dialogue was so stilted and inauthentic, it felt like an entire book of people talking past each other. No one seemed to really be engaging in conversation, rather just speaking at whomever was in the room with them. There were other stylistic inclusions that I suppose were Jamie's thoughts appearing mid-passage, but they felt so out of place and lacking context, I felt that they took me out of the narrative, questioning "What does that mean? Where is that from? Why is that there?"

Lastly, and this is more of a funny observation, but it took me until the very end of this book to realize that Alex was not a vampire. Yes, really. In the first chapter (titled 'We don't drink beer'), Kit says to the boys "you two...need to get inside and get your beers in the fridge" with Alex's response being:

"'Oh, we don't brink... beer,' Alex said, flashing his fangs"

I had to end up looking up if 'fangs' was some UK slang term (I thought I was familiar with English slang until I read this book), and it doesn't seem to be. Was Alex flashing his... teeth... in response? Why would he do that? Why would they be referred to as fangs? Why was specific emphasis put on 'beer' implying that it was something else they drink? So bizarre it stuck with me for the rest of the book.

All in all, I found this to be okay. It was short, and it was sweet. I just wish some of those aspects had been polished up a bit more so I wasn't pulled out of the narrative as often. Otherwise, I think it would have really resonated with me.