The Final Girl Support Group (by Grady Hendrix)

This was my pick for the "weird horror" category in the Read Harder Challenge. I honestly don't know if it qualifies as "weird" horror specifically, but I'm not super familiar with the genre.  But as soon as I picked it up, I couldn't put it down. (Well, I kind of could, because it put me in a very weird headspace, but it is for sure a page-turner.) 

The premise of this one is fun too - it's a world in which slasher movie serieses (series? seri?) are based on true stories of women who have been the "final girl" to survive a slasher spree. They are all takeoffs on real series, so the "Dream King" is Freddy Kreuger, and the "Panhandle Meathook" series is Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  The names are little Easter eggs too, and if even I (who does not enjoy slasher movies) picked up on them, I'm sure a horror fan would love it.

Anyway, the Final Girls are all in a support group, trying to process their trauma. Our narrator has become severely agoraphobic and paranoid, and it's fun to be inside her unreliable and extremely (justifiably) paranoid narration.  Of course, then someone starts coming after the Final Girls. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you, after all.

You'll probably know if this one is for you or not but, if it is, I highly recommend it! 

 

One by One (by Ruth Ware)

I wanted to find a thriller to read on Halloween and this one was recommended on a list of books with good twists, I've enjoyed Ruth Ware before, and it was available from the library.

Do not bother! It's a take on And Then There Were None, where a group of tech workers and a couple of workers get snowed in by an avalanche, and people begin to die. But the mystery is structured so poorly. They reveal the murderer two thirds of the way through the book (and it's obvious) so I kept reading thinking surely now will come the twist!

There's no twist. It's just boring all the way to the end. Most of the characters aren't even trapped, they leave the chalet! So we're left with two people, and of course you can guess what that means if you've read any murder mysteries at all.  

As the kids say, or probably stopped saying already, it's very mid.

Rock Paper Scissors (by Alice Feeney)

My book of choice for the long weekend was Rock Paper Scissors, which I'd had recommended as a good thriller with an unreliable narrator. I tried not to learn any more about it than that, but it kept popping up in my library holds and it felt like a vacation weekend was a good time to dig in.

It does have a really good twist, but then piles some more twists on top of that twist to the point where it gets kind of ridiculous. Definitely an ending that benefits from not thinking about too hard. But nonetheless, a really entertaining and page-turning poolside read.

Boys Weekend (by Mattie Lubchansky)

Like Shamshine, this is a Tournament of Books entry; unlike Shamshine (in my opinion) this graphic novel has an undercurrent of real profundity.

It's about a trans-femme named Sammi who is invited to be the "best man" at their friend Adam's wedding, along with a truly horrifying group of tech bros, a cop, and one "not like the other girls" woman. The bachelor weekend is on a capitalist, libertarian hell island version of Las Vegas, with clone strippers, a party submarine, and an odd group that looks like it might be a cult. And as Sammie navigates dealing with their gender in this group, they are either seeing real monsters or having a psychotic break.

I loved everything about it, from the tiny world-building easter eggs to the central metaphors representing Sammi figuring out what vestiges of their old life are worth hanging onto and what may be worth leaving behind. A super quick read but I found myself going back to savor panels, and I think I will probably at least skim through it once more before I return it to the library.

Highly recommend! 

The It Girl (by Ruth Ware)

I'm in the middle of reading an overly long, overly writery, quite depressing memoir for the Read Harder Challenge - it's good, but I have to do it a few chapters at a time. I took a break to start The It Girl when my library offered me a "skip the line" seven-day loan, and of course, it's Ruth Ware, so once I picked it up I couldn't put it down. I love a good mystery to tear through on a lazy Sunday!

Not to say too much about the whodunit of it all, but I think it's quite a fair play mystery - the clues are definitely there to find.  I saw some complaints that the pacing was a little loose and the middle part was too long, but it was such a page-turner (and a refreshing change from the other book I have going) that it wasn't a problem for me.  

If you like modern thrillers with a bit of an Agatha Christie feel, I definitely recommend it!

A Study in Honor (by Claire O'Dell)

This is a gender-swapped Sherlock Holmes homage, read for the category "a political thriller by a marginalized author (BIPOC, or LGBTQIA+)" in the Read Harder Challenge.

I won't bury the lede: As much as I love Sherlock stories, and love that this one stars two Black women, I had a lot of problems with it.  First of all, we don't even meet Holmes until a third of the way through the book, with the mystery not getting started until well past the halfway mark, this thing is agonizingly slowly paced and then just ends with an abrupt info dump.  This is the first book of a series so I figured it's just a first-book info dump and future books will be structured better. (Based on Goodreads reviews, the pacing of the second one is somehow even worse.)

Second problem: Sara Holmes makes no deductions. Zero. None. No deductions. She sometimes looks people up on some spy device she has and says things about them she's Googled or whatever. HOW IS THIS CHARACTER IN ANY WAY SHERLOCK, THE DEDUCTIONS ARE THE ENTIRE POINT. At one point Janet Watson says "is this another one of your deductions?"  What deductions!  They are completely nonexistent deductions!

More problems: Sara is too ordinary a name for a Sherlock analogue character.  Sara drugging Janet was not charming or cute, although fairly Sherlocky, I will grant you. Sara calling Janet "my love" was weird. Was this suppose to be a romance? As much as I adore a Sapphic romance, it did not work for me. Janet somehow is the first person narrator but is also, separately, keeping a journal that we read excerpts of? The whole thing is her journal. So, what?!

Okay one more thing I found this on Book Riot's rec list for this category  and it wasn't until I got to the end that I realized, even though the two main characters are both Black, the author is white.  She fits the challenge because she is a lesbian author.  But she wrote from the point of view of Janet, a Black character, and Sara is also Black. I leave it to non-white readers to decide how well she pulled it off, and there was enough subtlety there to make me think she was thoughtful about it, but... still kind of didn't sit well with me?

Things I liked: god, this thing was promising. The backdrop is a new American Civil War, basically a very near future alternate history.  Janet is a really good character, her PTSD is handled well, and her device (she has a robotic arm) is incorporated well. There is some fun tech here, like self-destroying paper.  I enjoyed Hudson Realty and the fancy apartment.  I read to the end, really hoping these were first installment kinks that would be worked out in future installments but... maybe not. 

Two Tahoe Reads

I always feel awkward about putting two books in a wrapup post. Three is fine! But two seems like the wrong number. Still, nobody actually cares at all so I will press on. I read two books while on vacation this weekend in the Lake Tahoe area.

The Maid: A Novel (by Nita Prose)

I love the (unreliable, of course) narrator here, a maid named Molly who is clearly neuroatypical in some way. This is a page-turning thriller and a fun, fast read. However, the ending is super disappointing, with multiple deus ex machinas. (Or is it deuses ex machina?) I wouldn't be surprised if the ending changed from an earlier draft, since one seemed to really fit with the clues and what is here.... doesn't, really.  There are also a few out-of-character moments that really seem off given all we know about Molly. This had so much potential but I wanted a more satisfying structure.

Mistborn: The Final Empire (by Brandon Sanderson) 

One of the Read Harder challenges this year is to "read a book recommended by a friend with different reading tastes." I am not much of a reader of high fantasy (I've read the Lord of the Rings books and that's pretty much it) and my friends have been recommending Brandon Sanderson to me for more than a decade.  Given his Kickstarter success recently, it seemed like a good time to try him once again. (I've tried in the past and have failed in the past.)

The first 200 pages or so of this book were the usual slow going. A lot of extensive worldbuilding, which I find tiresome even when done well (and Sanderson, to his credit, does it very well). But I was determined to make it through a Sanderson novel this time. (Plus I was on vacation with my Sanderson stan friends and I had promised.) By the time I hit the halfway mark though, I was all in. The world was built, and Sanderson's plot and characters pulled me forward. All my predictions for the ending were wrong but it all fit perfectly and was so satsifying. This is the first book in a trilogy and now that I've made the investment, I think I might see it all the way through!  

Two Very Different YA Books

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Firekeeper's Daughter is an #ownvoices book and as a young adult mystery/thriller, it also qualifies as  "a genre novel by an Indigenous, First Nations, or Native American author" in the Read Harder Challenge. This book does a great job of immersing the reader in Ojibwe culture and community, and I loved our protagonist Daunis, who is biracial and straddles both her father's Ojibwe culture and her mother's white family.  I loved her choices and the ending especially is powerful. I highly recommend this one as a deep dive into present-day (well as of 2004, when it's set) Native culture.

A couple of caveats with spoilers, so skip this paragraph if you don't want to know. Firstly, the romance element is pretty squicky because of how utterly unethical her romantic interest is.  I liked him as a character in many ways but it's reallllly hard to get past that.  And secondly, although the sexual assault storyline is ultimately handled well, it really seems put in there just to make a point about the lack of justice for Native women. I loved the scene with the pansies though so ultimately I was on board with it. 

I guess the other thing is that consider it's a thriller, it's a bit slow going. The ultimate bad guy is telegraphed very obviously very early, although there is a lot more to the twists that I did not see coming. And the pacing is pretty slow.  Still, it's worth it for the exploration of culture and for Daunis as a character.  

Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli 

Of course I'm always going to read a Becky Albertalli novel! This one also has some problems, although maybe I'm feeling picky this weeekend. This is about a girl and her gay BFF, theater kids who tend to have "communal crushes" on the same guy.  I mean, any of us former nerdy teenagers with gay BFFs (and we are legion) can relate to this unhealthy level of enmeshment, I'm sure.

Some issues: the side characters are not explored well at all. I got no sense of Matt as a character, Raina and Brandie are just kind of there, Harold might as well not exist. I appreciate the efforts at representation a lot, but it did seem a bit like Glee: throwing in the token trans character or token girl in a wheelchair, just kind of ticking off boxes rather than writing them as fully three-dimensional characters. (Some characters are great though, including Anderson, Noah, Ryan, and Kate herself.) 

Another issue: the Anderson and Kate relationship. It turns incredibly toxic and is really repetitive. I especially had issues with Anderson and how he kept having these "I love you more than anything!" talks and then giving Kate the silent treatment over nothing in the next scene.  I think the idea is good (and I like the reveal of his motivations) but the balance here is off.  I was not really rooting for their friendship as much as I think I was supposed to.

Still, did I stay up late finishing this one? Did I love the musical theater setting? Did I love Kate unreservedly? I sure did.

Thanksgiving Reads

I read a bunch of books on our Thanksgiving staycation, and here now are those books.

By the Book (by Amanda Sellet)

A YA romance about a bookish narrator named Mary, who is delightfully awkward and literary.  Very light, but enjoyable. As you know I’ve read a lot of YA recently and it definitely stuck out that the characters here were for the most part very white. These days, most YA novels have a more diverse cast of characters.  Just an observation.

Rogue Patrol (by Martha Wells)

The next book in the Murderbot series and another enjoyable installment. I must confess I don’t quite understand the big picture conspiracy (probably because it takes a while for me to read each book in the series since the library hold list is long) but I loved the story here, especially the arc of Miki, another bot who Murderbot semi-befriends. How do you not love Miki?

Long Bright River (by Liz Moore)

The 2021 Tournament of Books longlist is out, so let the reading begin! This is an atmospheric, litficcy thriller about a police officer named Mickey who is trying to find her sister, an addict who has disappeared. There are twists and turns, and a compelling plot. A page-turner.

Full Disclosure (by Camryn Garrett)

Love the premise: a girl who is HIV-positive navigating first-time romance and figuring out how to disclose to her friends and new love interest that she is positive. There was something off about this though; many weird moments that didn’t feel quite real (starting with the opening scene, Simone being all sex-positive and asking questions of her gynecologist while one of her dads is in the room being controlling, except he’s a doctor and of all people should know better).  There are numerous jarring moments like this, or where what people say or do doesn’t quite work with what has been established about them previously.  A bit rough.

Her Royal Highness (by Rachel Hawkins)

Very witty writing and a fun plotline (Millie goes off to school in Scotland and falls in love with her roommate, a princess) but torpedoed by godawful pacing. There are three long chapters before she even goes to Scotland (like, come on, we know she ends up there, we don’t need a full journey) but then the climax and denouement happen so fast it seems like the author was on some kind of deadline at the end.  And it doesn’t even quite make sense how it unfolds. Not in a rush to read the other books in this series.

I Wish You All the Best (by Mason Deaver)

Another strikeout in the world of YA. (I keep checking them out thinking something is going to live up to the amazing YA I’ve read this year, like More Happy Than Not or Stay Gold or Amelia Westlake Was Never Here). This is about a nonbinary character named Ben, great! But they are so angsty and unlikeable from beginning to end that it makes the romance part not work. (What does Nathan see in Ben? Why are they even friends?) Ben is described towards the end as “kind” and I honestly can’t recall a single instance in this book of where they were kind to someone else or even had a particularly kind thought. I also can’t help but compare it to Stay Gold, where I emerged with a visceral understanding of the main character as trans, but here I didn’t learn much about what it means for Ben to be nonbinary, and I really wanted to! Disappointing.

The Mother-In-Law (by Sally Hepworth)

Kind of a Big Little Lies-esque thriller about a woman who has a contentious relationship with her mother-in-law. When the mother-in-law is murdered, we wonder: who did it? Secrets are revealed and drama ensues. A fun little thriller with characters I liked (the mother-in-law herself especially) and an ending I enjoyed.