Anaheim Reads

Spent last week traveling for work again and finished three books, so here's a summary!

Make My Wish Come True (by Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick) 

I waited until December to read this, a sapphic romcom in two alternating points of view by the authors of She Gets the Girl, which I really enjoyed. Like this one, more new adult than young adult vibe.  This is a classic Hallmark movie vibe - city girl who has made it big in Los Angeles comes back to the small town and has a fake relationship with the girl she left behind. Charming characters, delightful writing, excellent chemistry - very cute.

Liars (by by Sarah Manguso) 

A Tournament of Books entry abut an extremely toxic marriage. I had to read this in what I called "rage-snippets" because it's about a man who is such a classic tool of the patriarchy (and the woman who stays with him) that I found it enraging to read.  I gather it's somewhat autobiographical, which is why this man has no redeeming qualities, but watching a woman throw away years and have a baby with a man who is awful in every way doesn't make for a fun read.  Anyway, I snippeted my way towards the end. The patriarchy is garbage.

The Last Love Song (by Kalie Holford) 

Another young adult (see, I needed a palate cleanser after my rage-snippets) and it requires a whole lot of suspension of disbelief.  The main character is from a small town, her mother was a famous country star who died young, and she gets sent on a scavenger hunt around the town (by her deceased mom) at her graduation day.  Why wouldn't her grandparents ever even mention how her mother died? (It's not even some dramatic reason.) If her mom's so famous, why wouldn't she just check Wikipedia? The town is dedicated to her mom yet nobody who knew her as a person has ever had a single conversation with her only child? And the fight that gets in the way of the romance at 80% just makes the love interest look like an asshole. (Yes, Mia isn't very brave or bold. But you allegedly are in love with her and she clearly never has been. Also Mia is so emotional about her dead mother's letter she has literally just vomited. And this is the time to have a fight and break up? It's too contrived to believe that anyone would actually behave this way.)  Anyway, I liked the song lyrics and I liked the characters, I just needed a bit more believability.

Service Model (by Adrian Tchaikovsky)

Justice for Annie Bot! This was a fun read (also about a sentient - or is he? - robot) but not nearly as thought provoking as Annie Bot. But this is the one that made the Longlist so here we are. And it was good, just not as good, to me.

Even so, I already had this checked out because I was interested in it beforehand. It's about a robot valet who murders his master (for a reason unknown even to him) and goes on a journey of self-discovery as a result. I particularly enjoyed the ways in which each part was a homage to a classic author - to copy the cheat sheet from Goodreads: Part I KR15-T: Agatha Christie, Part II K4fk-R: Franz Kafka, Part III 4w-L: George Orwell, Part IV 80rh-5: Jorge Luis Borges, Part V D4nt-A: Dante Alighieri). 

The Christie and Kafka sections were my favorites but the whole thing is very well done. Our protagonist, Charles (or Uncharles) is a naive narrator and he encounters his Virgil, a fellow robot (or is she?) named The Wonk.  If you're interested in speculative fiction and you wish Ishiguro had written a combination of Klara and the Sun and The Remains of the Day, this is the novel for you!