Genre: Adult

Not sure if it’s because I’ve watched endless true crime documentaries, procedural dramas like Criminal Minds and Mindhunter, or I just have high standards for the murder mystery genre, but A Flicker in the Dark did not catch or hold my attention. I felt like I was coasting while reading the first 1/3 of the book and the overall reading experience went downhill the farther I progressed through the story. Most of my negative impression can be chalked up to Chloe Davis’s personality and trauma attributed to her upbringing and exposure to the media/local community associated with her Dad’s arrest. I liked the concept of her backstory and how it affected her mindset, career choices, and paranoia, however the execution felt clunky and off-putting. I hate to stereotype novels into specific demographics, but the Chloe’s monologue skewed so heavily toward a female audience I felt like I was being beaten over the head repeatedly for 100 pages about how dangerous and unfair life can be for an independent woman. Her character’s personality and background as a psychologist with a phd also constantly conflicted with the choices she makes and thoughts she has. The book makes an attempt to highlight anxiety…

Tom Hazard has been alive for four hundred and thirty nine years and over the course of history has spent many of them caught up in the past, protecting himself and loved ones from potential harm in the future, all while rarely truly living in the present. How to Stop Time is a unique read that presents the reader vignettes across Tom’s life (sometimes in and out of chronological order) loosely divided between five arcs that each focus on a particular theme and state of his life. While there are a lot of fun cameo appearances by famous historical figures that pop-up in the narrative (my personal favorite is William Shakespeare, I wish I was more cultured to have appreciated other cameos more), most of the bulk content involves Tom in a state of existential crisis. The overall story reminded me a lot of the 2015 movie Age of Adeline in concept while executed in a more introspective manner. While Age of Adeline was firmly focused on a romance drama, How to Stop Time’s romance serves more as a foundation and event pushes Tom to be the person that he is… hundreds of years later. This is first and foremost…

Full disclosure, I decided to read The Glass Hotel purely because I had purchased a copy of the Sea of Tranquility not realizing there’s a bit of overlap and a cameo appearance by the character of Mirella who has a supporting role in The Glass Hotel and a main arc in Tranquility (they’re both standalone but I wanted to read them in order regardless). I had little expectation based on the vague and convoluted synopsis for the Glass Hotel, but perhaps having no expectations enhanced the reading experience as I was blow away by the back half and ending of this book. This was an absolute page-turner for me from the half-way mark but not in a traditional sense or one that most readers will agree with. It’s difficult to describe and summarize, but the gist of The Glass Hotel involved the reveal and collapse of a large-scale Ponzi scheme involving investments and the impact it has on a giant cast of characters (money and wealth is a constant theme throughout but that’s not the only fallout involved). Reading the Glass Hotel feels like watching Mandel play a game of chess with herself. The novel includes no less than at…

Note: The following original review for this book is old and does not meet current review standards. A fully rewritten review is planned. A Holiday TV-movie taken straight off ABC family given a queer spin with harder hits and surprisingly solid pacing, in Boy Meets Boy #2 Janovsky takes everything that was good in #1 and refines it. While I enjoyed the first book in the series, I sometimes felt like I was over-scoring it because of how cute and breezy it felt vs directly looking at its objective qualities. This one beefs up all of the weaker elements with better execution. The pacing is better, characters (especially the side characters) are more developed and complex, the overarching plot being more compelling and involved, I was pleasantly surprised given how predictable most holiday fairs can be. There are still the usual tropes of a Grinch warming to the holiday cheer but the plot twists and it’s conclusion help elevate the material beyond simply being cute. It also helps that the comedy is cranked up to an 11 thanks to the protag’s overdramatic spoiled rich boy persona. The first 50 pages of diva material can be off-putting but we love a good…

A Hugo award winner, this novel is classic sci-fi through and through and a fond callback to when sci-fi stories were less focused on immense world-shattering or convoluted epics and were instead more grounded while presenting various “what if’s”. While there is a plot involving the status and future of Way Station, an intergalactic stop/rest point similar in purpose to a bus transfer station, the bulk of the book is more abstract in nature. Rather than immediately delving into Enoch Wallace’s tale of an “immortal” Civil War veteran chosen as a caretaker for this Way Station, it presents various short stories of Enoch’s counters with both the extraterrestrial and (surprisingly more threatening) humans that encourage you to think about what it is that makes up the human existence and frame of mind. As an 120+ yr old veteran (returned my library copy, can’t recall exactly what yr this took place) who has had more interactions with intergalactic travelers vs humans, there’s a lot of interesting commentary layered with each story that cover topics from language, isolation, culture, bits of existential crisis, and the self-destructive nature of of human kind and war. Despite the topics, Simak’s writing style is still an…