Genre: Comedy

Light-hearted, good-natured, and comfortably predictable, Kristy Greenwood’s The Love of My Afterlife is a perfect example of understanding the assignment and hitting all the bullet points to get the job done, nothing more nothing less. This book is a casual read that’s catered directly to fans of cozy chick lit rom-com novels looking for an easy and pleasant time. Devoid of anything that could be remotely triggering or controversial and full of the genre’s expected hijinks and romance tropes, it’s a competently written book that doesn’t really have any glaring weaknesses. On the flip side, it also takes zero risks and feels complacently good but not great. For me personally, I found The Love Of My Afterlife to be a bit underwhelming although I thought its overall tone and plot were great. I picked this book up purely based on the intriguing premise (before it started trending on booktok I might add) fully knowing it probably wasn’t going to be to my taste, but I was surprised by how pleasant and quick it was to read. Unlike other romance novels with magical realism elements that skirt or cheapen their gimmick, The Love of My Afterlife sticks pretty close to its…

Bury Your Gays’ title alone is one way to get someone’s attention followed by an earnest bit of social commentary on media culture wrapped up in a comedically ridiculous premise. Sub 300 pages complimented by a casual and functional prose, Chuck Tingle’s Bury Your Gays is a light campy horror novel that is easy to like and has a lot of things going on. With bits of body violence/gore, homophobia, and child neglect, it’s not always a rosy read, but it’s still quick and generally light-hearted. Despite appreciating its aspirations and blend of different elements, I personally found it to be a bit dry to read and disjointed in content. It’s certainly ambitious with its themes and plot, but it feels like it was trying to do too much without excelling at any one area. An established screenwriter known for campy horror movies/tv-shows with underlying queer elements, the narrative switches back and forth between the present day in LA vs Misha’s memories of his upbringing. Without giving away too many spoilers, these flashbacks are told out of chronological order and are meant to give the reader insight into how Misha’s interest in storytelling was shaped by a tumultuous childhood where…

Full disclosure, I shockingly had neither read nor watched (apart from a few short clips) Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, so went in completely blind to Lies and Weddings. TLDR, I found Lies and Weddings to be solidly written, well-researched, tightly plotted, and at times, genius in its satire and social commentary. Following (from what I’ve been told) similar themes and commentary as his previous works, Lies and Weddings was a great book that wasn’t quite for me. I was stuck between a 3 or 4, objectively it’s good but my enjoyment was much lower. However, my reservations and disinterest with the novel’s content are all subjective reading preferences and despite not personally enjoying the read, I have to commend it on its story’s strengths and accomplishments. It took me a long time to grow interested in the main plot and I think most of that could potentially be attributed to the book’s synopsis and description. While the printed description does an excellent job at highlighting the zany and drama-filled moments, I found it to be a surprisingly inaccurate summary of Lies and Weddings. Yes, there are lots of lies and several weddings and yes, Rufus Gresham is put into…

Cute, cozy, hints of the supernatural, and a habitual schemer, Happy Medium had a genius premise and all the elements of an amazing romantic dramedy. I had previously read Mrs. Nash’s Ashes so I had an idea of what I was getting into, and I had hoped that Sarah Adler’s sophomore novel would be able to improve on Nash’s disappointing and contrived climax/conclusion. Despite being paced more evenly and feeling more refined page to page, overall I found Happy Medium to suffer from similar issues of dumb character logic (2nd half only), melodrama that doesn’t have sufficient build-up (again 2nd half only), and a concluding plot twist that ruins most of its intriguing plot potential. On the plus side, I quite enjoyed FMC Gretchen’s spiky personality and devious wit. Constantly trying to plan out her moves, both to convince Charlie that his farm is haunted and to safeguard her investment with her spirit medium client, I thought the first half of the book worked quite well; albeit feeling a bit slow for my taste. Although her sparring and enemies to friends to lovers arc with Charlie was good, her enemies to friends banter with the ghost Everett was the real…

Easily one of the most creative and whimsical novels I’ve read in many years. Simon Stephenson’s Set My Heart to Five is a thoughtful (and occasionally edgy) commentary on human behavior and societal culture wrapped up in a seemingly light-hearted, meandering AI bot adventure. Despite being compared to Vonnegut’s ideologies and writing, the book’s content reminded me a lot of Daniel Keye’s Flowers for Algernon (which is one of my all-time favorite novels) in which both stories feature an innocuous narrator who does not understand the complexities of human behavior and terrible people around them. Set My Heart to Five’s premise of an AI bot developing feelings admittedly isn’t new territory, but the style of delivery and humorously dry character voice puts it in an entirely new area. First and foremost, Set My Heart to Five is not going to be for everyone, nor does Stephenson make an attempt to be mass-appealing. Jared’s character voice is somehow both frank and dry, yet also entirely comical in a witty, dark humor kind of way; you know that one friend who always talks about the unspoken elephant in the room that’s not socially acceptable, yeah that’s Jared. Full of fun wordplays and…