book review

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…

I had read quite a few critically-written books lately and was in the mood for a more casual comfort read and had added Alexis Hall’s Boyfriend Material to my reading list last year during my post-Red White and Royal Blue movie watch (yes, I still have not read the book itself, working on fixing that soon). While Boyfriend Material is indeed comfortably casual at the surface, I was pleasantly surprised at how relatable and earnest it was. Beyond the expected laughs and genZ pop culture references, I found the story itself to be consistently-paced, well-executed, and quite solid all-around. I was skeptical (as I usually am for all top-rated books here) that it ranked so high on Goodreads’ best romance category in 2020, especially since queer romance novels are usually ranked much lower than heterosexual romance books, but I now understand and agree with the hype. Side note, although it has nothing to do with the book’s content, I love the graphic design for the book’s cover design that’s simultaneously English-looking and also very classy and appealing. Beyond being British, I would be lying if I said the book’s cover didn’t have any influence over me choosing this to read…

Don’t let the page count and novella length fool you, Martha Wells is a literary wizard for packing so much action and content into All Systems Red’s 150 pages. I kept seeing The Murderbot Diaries popping up in book lists and booktuber recommendations, and winning a Hugo Award certainly helps give it some critical street cred. Despite its short length, I thoroughly enjoyed this and breezed right through in one day. This is a pretty short read so I’ll try and keep this review appropriate short. While many sci-fi works get bogged down with heavy exposition and detailed world-building, All Systems Red doesn’t have the luxury of length and immediately takes off running from the get-go. This novella is pure plot, though surprisingly a bit light in terms of fighting/gunfire action. Despite being called Murderbot, Murderbot isn’t a killing machine (at least on paper) and acts as a defensive security unit for hire. And they’re a weaponized tool that could care less about what happens to their human clients, at least initially. The premise of an indifferent narrator is clever in concept, allowing the book to get away with skirting heavy world-building with an effective mechanism of “I never bothered…

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…