They Both Die at the End (by Adam Silva)

A great premise: a service called Death-Cast calls and warns you on the day you're going to die.  Two boys, Rufus and Mateo, each get the call and their lives intersect on their last day.

I thought this was going to have me weeping at the end but it didn't impact me nearly as much as More Happy Than Not, which similarly has a sci-fi hook and a M/M love story.  Some of the things that didn't quite work for me: the chemistry of the main couple (which barely existed), the interstitials by other characters (which either needed to be more fleshed out or not there at all), the number of near-escapes (characters who are destined to die but still somehow survive car crashes, explosions, and gunfire.   

 This had a lot of potential and I like Silva's work, but this one ultimately didn't gel for me. 

If the Shoe Fits (by Julie Murphy)

The premise of this is, like The Charm Offensive, a Bachelor-style reality show. This one is essentially a retelling of Cinderella with a plus-sized heroine, shoe designer Cindy, who goes on the show (run by her not-so-evil stepmother) to try and get her fashion brand off the ground.

Cindy was a great and very rootable character.  I did not get good sense of romance from our leads, however - good chemistry, but nothing deeper beyond that - and the ending falls flat for me as a result. I liked Cindy and her choices but it did feel too fairy-tale for me. Would Henry never even think twice about dating a fat girl on TV? Why would they not have any kind of conversation about how the show was going to play out? 

Maybe this was all deliberate, but I wanted to root for the central couple more.

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (by Dawnie Walton)

This is a faux oral history in the style of Daisy Jones and the Six about a Black woman who teams up with a white, English singer-songwriter in the 1970s.  It interweaves many real events, musicians, and bands from the time period and beyond.  The "author" is an editor of a Rolling Stone-style magazine whose father (a drummer, also Black) died in a riot at one of Opal & Nev's concerts. We get her story as interstitial "editor's notes" between chapters.

The result is an immersive and gripping read. with revelations I wasn't expecting.  I also thought Walton did a great job making the interview snippets and "oral history" parts seem very authentic.  For example whenever I read a quote that uses [brackets] I always like to go back and think about what the original sentence was. (Does anyone else do this?) This always seemed well thought out and made total sense although of course there were no "original" quotes. It adds to the verisimilitude of the interviews. 

Definitely recommended as an enjoyable read. 

Milk Fed (by Melissa Broder)

Oh I really liked this one. It's erotic and strange. It's about a secular Jewish woman with an eating disorder and a fraught relationship with her mother, who falls in love with a fat Orthodox woman who works at a frozen yogurt shop. 

It's not a long book but there's a lot going on. Some of the folks on Goodreads felt her description of Miriam was "fetishizing" but it all made sense to me.  Our narrator, Rachel, is obsessed with her own thinness and experiences Miriam's body as an erotic object representing her desire for food, her fears about her weight, and also authentic attraction. None of it feels dismissive or simplified.

I would love to see this in the Tournament, I think there's a lot of food (ha) for discussion here and I find Broder's writing compelling. Another good ToB find!

Several People Are Typing (by Calvin Kasulke)

And the longlist is out early! It's the most wonderful time of the year.  

In previous years I tried to guess what was most likely to make the shortlist and inevitably failed. My new strategy is just go through and see what books I find interesting, and read those first.  So I tried all my libraries (I have cards for five different libraries) and ended up checking out 10 books and putting 7 more on hold. One, Matrix by Lauren Groff, I already had checked out. 

More than likely I won't be able to get through all of these (one library only does two-week checkouts, for example) especially since I was already in the middle of a 750-page nonfiction book, but I'm excited to have all these options. 

Several People Are Typing was one I already had on hold at my main library, but ended up finding available at another library when I went through them all in the ToB deep dive. A satire where a tech worker gets his consciousness uploaded to Slack sounded right up my alley and I read it in one sitting because it's all told through Slack messages.  Overall cute, funny, clever. My biggest qualm was the non-consensual sex, treated as kind of amusing and no big deal? Clearly the author was not framing it that way at all but yeah what happens is rape. And that's not... amusing?

My prediction is that it's too lightweight to make the shortlist, but I have been wrong before.

Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television's Most Famous Couple (by Warren G. Harris)

Not tagged "library" because I actually went ahead and purchased this after having it on my wishlist for several years! And I finished it yesterday, just in time to see the horrifying trailer of Nicole Kidman (OH GOD WHY) trying to be Lucy in a biopic. Javier Bardem is also completely wrong for Desi Arnaz. Like, what is this casting. 

Anyway, this biography was an interesting read for Lucy fans, although it is somewhat dated (it was written in 1991 and you can tell) and completely devoid of sources. There are lots of quotes but I was very curious what the sources of some of them were. Especially some conversations just between Desi and Lucy that are rendered in dialogue. Who reported this dialogue?

Anyway this mostly made me want to reread The I Love Lucy Book, one of my favorites from childhood that goes episode by episode through the series.

Staycation Reads (More YA)

I went to the coast last weekend and read a couple more YA books. They seem to have all gotten off library hold at the same time! Also I am anxiously awaiting the Tournament of Books longlist so I can get a head start on next year.

Our Way Back to Always (by Nina Moreno) 

This is about Luisa and Sam, who had a falling out in middle school and now reconnect to finish their "before we graduate" list they made when they were 12. This was cute, and I liked the individual arcs of the two main characters. I didn't feel they dealt with the falling out at all, which was odd.  And the "cameos" from a previous book were shoehorned in very awkwardly.  (Like a random character appears and has a heart to heart with one of our characters and it's like who is this? Why is she here? Where did she come from? And the answer is, a different book.) 

Early Departures (by Justin A. Reynolds)

The premise of this was cool: through some magical technology, people can be brought back to life for a few days or weeks to say their earthly goodbyes before they die again. This technology is presented very ominously like, of course this is going to turn out to be a terrible idea and there will be exciting twists. But no, not really. So it's just a bizarre narrative choice. Our "comedian" character isn't very comedic. (At one point he's making jokes about airplane pretzels, like, that is Seinfeld in the 1990s. I refuse to believe he "killed" with this.) I did love the voice of our main character Jamal, and really the entire cast of characters. I also really appreciated the focus was on grief and friendship vs. romance.  And the premise didn't go where I expected but I always enjoy a speculative fiction moment. So thumbs up on this one overall.

The Heartbreak Bakery (by A. R. Capetta)

Very fluffy young adult book about a magic baker who infuses their bakes with emotions - but very well written!

The representation in this book is... exhaustive. We have an agender protagonist, a demisexual and genderqueer love interest, and everything from an aroace side character to a polyamorous brunch bunch. I think the author just loves the queer community so much they wanted every element represented! And the bakery is also a queer community space, so it mostly works.

This is just a fun, fluffy, and diverse romp through Austin's queer community. A genderqueer cupcake of a book.