Book Review

The Man Who Died Seven Times by Yasuhiko Nishizawa

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Rating: 3 out of 5 time loops

That was certainly a wild ride. An interesting Who Dun It, translated from it’s original language to English, Nishizawa certainly brought a murder mystery with a CRAZY side of family drama.

We have the story of Hisataro, a 16 year old in a family fighting over an inheritance that hasn’t even come to fruition yet. His grandfather has been inviting the whole family to his home for the last few years so that he can “choose” an heir to his fortune, should his childless daughter ALSO pass, who is his initial heir. His other two daughters left the family as soon as they could, as he was not a great dad, gambling a lot and basically making them grow up in poverty. Hisataro, however, has a special ability: he can relive a specific day, over and over again, a la Groundhog Day. He’s not able to PICK what day he relives, though, and this time, he ends up reliving the day his grandfather dies mysteriously. So he spends the next few “time loops” trying to find out who could have killed Grandfather. Hilarity and family drama ensue.

There is definitely lots of cultural differences between Japan and the US, especially in terms of marriage. Generally, we try NOT to marry our first cousins, and we try to marry when we are of age…not 16/17 years old, if we can help it. Since a lot of that seemed to be cultural (especially given that I believe the book was originally published in the late 90’s, I gave that bit of the book a pass. The rest of the drama though?? Oh man there was so much tea the pot was OVERFLOWING. I can’t count how many times I covered my own mouth in disbelief of what was happening!

Unfortunately, what brought the whole thing down from 5 stars to 3, was the last two chapters. The epilogue was COMPLETELY unneeded and honestly, the explanation for why everything happened seemed…too tidy? I don’t know. I just didn’t really vibe with how those two chapters went with the rest of the book. So because of that, I cannot give this a full 5 star rating. I did enjoy myself immensely and had a fund time for the rest, and I can’t say I saw the “twist” coming, but yea. I think if nothing else, the epilogue could have remained out, for sure.

“I once read somewhere that when we make a mistake, the blood rushes to our heads, causing us to make even more of them.” – Hisataro

See what is on my TBR, what I’m currently reading, and more, on my Goodreads profile here.

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

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Rating: 5 out of 5 Twitter mentions

WHEW CHILE! I am still reeling from how good this book was! I listened to this on Libro.Fm, if you haven’t used them, you should!!!

Wow. I have never, and I mean NEVER, hated a protagonist more in my life. Which is a testament to how much I loved this book and the author, that I still rated it 5 stars because of that. It’s like hating the evil villain so much in a movie but it makes the movie SO GOOD because of it!

Juniper Hayward is a mediocre white woman writer who is friends with Athena Liu, a rising Asian woman author. She has seen so much success, it’s actually made June jealous. When she witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she manages to also steal the last manuscript that Athena was working on. It’s about Chinese laborers in France during WWI, but June believes she can publish it-as her own-and that no one will know. She finds a publisher and lets them rebrand her as Juniper Song, ambiguous enough, and the story skyrockets her into fame. Juniper is on cloud 9 and attending workshops and speaker series and all kinds of things. Sure, there’s some pushback, but she is good at deflecting and lying her way through why she thought a white woman could tell this story. It isn’t until a blogger finds some *interesting* similarities that suspicion falls on Juniper and so to combat it, she writes another story….which becomes her downfall.

I’m not going to lie, listening to her downfall had me cackling with glee the whole time. Juniper was SUCH a horrid person that I literally could not wait for her to be “canceled” as they call it. She was the epitome of white savior complex and just didn’t want to take accountability at all. You would think this would make me hate the book, but I think, as a Latina woman who sees this happen all the time, I was so gleeful to FINALLY feel like I was seeing justice. I believe that the point of the book is to hate her, that her place in the narration is to be unreliable and unlikeable. I think there tries to be sympathy, but I just could not muster any. I was so invested in seeing her complete and utter destruction. I felt almost bad about it, but I also felt safe enough in the narration to feel ok about feeling those feelings.

The last few chapters though, she becomes completely unhinged. At first, I’m so invested in like, WHO is doing this? To what end exactly?? She is masterfully manipulated, and it was by someone I definitely did not see coming. It was pretty cruel…but also, she needed to just let the lie out. Her delusion was getting to be so much. June Hayward was a terrible and fantastic character.

This is definitely high on my list so far this year!

ARC: Finding Northlane by D.M. Henderson

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Rating: 4 out of 5 guitars

Romance instalove, which is pretty normal in the romance genre, so I’m not mad at it! We begin by meeting Dallas Northlane and his pregnant wife, Samantha, having a picnic by the water. We then fast forward a few years, and Dallas and his daughter are heading to a funeral. A few more years, and we are in the present, Dallas is taking his daughter to school and he meets her music teacher, Annabeth Harrington. And what a Meet Cute (or Meet Lust!) it is! They are both completely enamored with each other right away. Dallas is nervous for a variety of reasons, one of which is the age gap between them, and Annabeth is scared because, well, he’s the parent of one of her students! But they just can’t seem to stop running into each other all over this small town. The side characters are also fleshed out to give them some substance, which I appreciate. I loved Dallas’s brother Colt, and Annabeth’s friend group, especially Ella, her roommate and best friend. I loved the setup of the POV’s for this, I think books where we get both MC’s perspectives are my favorite. The spice was SPICING and Dallas definitely knew what he was doing in the bedroom…whew! Made me almost blush! I also loved how vulnerable Dallas was when he finally talked to Annabeth about his past, especially about his wife. That vulnerability and willingness to open up is so sexy to me. Honestly, the only thing that made this not a 5 star for me was the incredibly fast time they took to say I love you. That took me right out of the story. I thin kif they had said something like “I could see me falling in love with you” that would be one thing, but they barely knew each other-I think the timeline is something like 2 weeks-so that was just so unrealistic, especially given the emotional trauma both Dallas and Annabeth had gone through in their lives. Plus, as a dad, he was very clearly thinking with his dick and not his brain. As someone who is a single parent (though I’ve been with my partner for a decade now), it took me almost 3 years before I said anything along those lines and it was almost a year before he even MET my kid. Granted, Annabeth knows his daughter, but still. That’s a big shake up for an 8 year old. His daughter was also written as if she was a teenager, not a child, so that threw me a little. Occasionally, there would be some dialogue that would show her age, but not always. Either way, these issues were not so egregious that I needed to rate this any lower than a 4 star for me. This was certainly a great story and I cannot wait to get into the second book!

*I received this ARC from the author in exchange for an honest review*

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

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Rating: 4 out of 5 fathoms

Well that was certainly something. I haven’t listened to an audiobook in a long while, but I am glad I did for this one. Having the two narrators was a fantastic choice, since it really gave us the sense of the two women and their struggles. I do wish that the book touched more on Leah in the “after”. I liked getting the “during” but we only get Miri’s version of the “after” and it’s skewed. I would have like to know how Leah was feeling…even if it was gibberish…I think it would have added to the horror element. Which, honestly, only really happened toward the last 20% of the book, which was kind of a let down. The book stayed mostly on the topic of the two women and their dissolving relationship in the wake of Leah coming back from her research trip down in the sea and how she had changed. Miri was not really someone I cared too much for, I feel like she was kind of shallow, but I could tell that she did love Leah a lot. There was definitely a lot of repetition when it came to the water elements of the book, lots of water imagery, which could be a bit much (I saw that comment in a lot of reviews), but overall, by the time I was done, I was kind of staring into space and feeling. It was a good way to end, I think.

(art from Elizabeth von Oehsen/The Washington Post)

Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones

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Rating: 5 out of 5 wine coolers

“Everything makes sense if you look at it long enough.”

Wow. I’m really glad I did not read any of the reviews on this book. Like The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, it took me a bit to get into it because of SGJ’s writing style. But once I was hooked, it was over. I simply devoured this book (no pun intended). The story of the unnamed narrator as he navigated growing up as, essentially, a nomad with his aunt and uncle, was made more exciting by the twist of them being werewolves. There then became this underlying tension of will he or won’t he also come into his wolfness. Darren and Libby, his uncle and aunt, are not married, they are twins, and our narrator’s mother died in childbirth, and was their sister. Grandpa was their father, and most of what we know about werewolves come from stories told by him and Darren. Like most stories, these were embellished but held some truth to them. And thus, this is how our narrator saw the world. The family moves frequently because once you cause havoc, you can’t stay in one place. Too many animals dying can make people suspicious, as can human body counts. When you are the outcasts, the first fingers pointed are pointed at you. Libby and Darren take on jobs when they can, and they are pretty good about trying to be good citizens too, paying taxes (even if it’s with falsified identification) and sending the narrator to school. I think what I loved best was the chapters calling him a name based on what he was in that moment (mechanic, reporter, biologist, etc.). The narration of the book is very disjointed, but at the same time, makes so much sense, because you can tell it is coming from the voice of someone who is trying to remember events as they happened but also will remember when something happened at a different time of life. So the age jumps around, sometimes we are reading when he was 8 and sometimes 12, then sometimes 16, then 8 again. It is not a linear story, but we get all the necessary parts to capture the whole of his life with his family and his feelings about becoming a werewolf. There is high school romance, cut short, but there nonetheless, and even some growing pains of boyhood.

All in all, this wouldn’t be one of my favorites of his, I’m not a HUGE coming of age book reader, but it was still very good and I did enjoy it a lot. I am really enjoying going through SGJ’s body of work, as this is my 3rd by him, and I have more to go.

See my reviews of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter and I Was a Teenage Slasher on Goodreads.

“That’s how it is with werewolves. You have something, then you just have the story of it.”

The Wild Card by Stephanie Archer

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Spice rating: 3 of 5 pucks

Overall rating: 5 of 5 pucks

Yep. I knew it. I knew I was going to love this story so freaking much. After the last book, I knew Jordan and Tate’s story was going to just crush me in all the best ways. And I was right. I loved Jordan’s character, watching her figure out how to trust and learn to lean on people. I loved how devoted Tate was to Bea, and how well he had a relationship with Bea’s mother. That was so fun to watch. And Bea!!! She was the shining star. Stephanie Archer truly captured the hilarity of kids (“I won’t let you die alone, Dad.” She gives me a worried look. “I’ll be with you. I’ll hold your hand as you stop breathing.” -I FREAKING CACKLED 🤣) Jordan and Tate though, it was a like watching two people who needed each other and just couldn’t realize it until it basically slapped them in the face…but it was also so gradual. I’m fairly certain this is my favorite of this entire series, hands down.

Check out my thoughts on Behind the Net, The Fake Out, The Wingman, and Gloves Off. I truly loved this series. I would read them over and over again. They were great, feel good romances and very quick reads. Good palate cleansers if you need them with just enough plot to make the characters people you want to root for.

On: Reading

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I read. A lot. Hence the blog, and the many other avenues of social media attempts to become more bloggerish. I’ve been a huge reader since about the third grade. I was introduced to chapter books then, and I fell in love. Finally, I could read LONG STORIES!!! From there, I read just about anything I could get my hands on. When I was 10, my mom died. Books were my only solace. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Sorry UK folks), was my lifeline (fu*k you, JK Rowling). I still re-read that in my darkest of times, when I’ve had other losses. But I would go on to read all the major books like Twilight, The Maze Runner, Divergent, Fifty Shades, etc. I even manage to get my hands on Flowers in the Attic and Forever, way before I probably should have been able to read them. I read Goosebumps, RL Stine, Ask Alice, Animorphs, Tamora Pierce…the list goes on. Safe to say, no genre was off limits, I even read the Dear Diary series and the American Girl books. Nancy Drew? Yep. Baby Sitters Club? You got it! SO many books, so little time in life.

All this is to say: I read books yes. I listen to them, I e-read them. But I also am a voracious Fan Fiction reader. I will NEVER let anyone besmirch fan fiction. I think it is such an integral part of reading and the art of creative writing. Many books start, occasionally, as fan fics (notably Twilight and Fifty Shades, from my list above). I started in Live Journal, moved to FFnet, and have been with Archive of Our Own (AO3) since 2013. AO3 is FINALLY out of Beta!!! I can’t believe I’ve made it through all these years of different versions of Fan Fic, and have lived to see the biggest archive of them all make it here. It’s been such a privilege to read these amazing authors, some who I follow religiously, and some who I find for the first time, very frequently!

So for this musing, I say: be a reader. Be a voracious, hungry reader. Read everything. Go out of your comfort zone. Find new authors. Indulge in your tried and true authors. Do reading challenges. Participate in the Dewey 24hour Readathon! Check out local book clubs. Hold authors accountable for their morals, because reading IS political. Hold YOURSELF accountable to your own morals. Expand your horizons. Listen to an audiobook, read an e-book, read a paperback or a hardcover. Support your local libraries! Support your local indie bookstores! Read new; read old. Just READ.

Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree

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Rating: 4.5 cups of Gnomish Coffee out of 5

I am SO LATE to the reading of this! I have to say that I did enjoy it, though it took me longer than I would have liked to read it. I just couldn’t really get into it at the start. But I hate having unfinished books, unless I am TRULY DNF’ing, so I sat back down one day and completed it. I have to say, I was wrong about this book. Honestly, the half cup off is really just because it took me longer than I liked to get into it, as I said.

This is definitely a cozy fantasy, with a dash of romance, but it’s like, blink and you miss it. Viv the Orc is FINALLY retiring as what one would call a mercenary, and finds herself in Thune, where she decides to open a coffee shop. Only, no one has ever hear of this “coffee” in Thune. So she has a bit of an uphill battle here. She is also new, so she has no friends here. However, this was definitely a story that became a lot about found family and what that looks like. Cal and Thimble were probably my favorites, Amity is also up there. Tandri, Viv’s assistant, is super smart, but there just wasn’t a whole lot of character development there that made me believe in their romance. Viv definitely changed, and I guess that’s most of the story. It’s a very low stakes book so there isn’t a whole lot of action. A couple annoying characters, who get straightened out almost immediately. All in all, a good book but not one that I think I would pick up again, even as a cozy book. I have the second book, and I’ll try that, see if I like it more. It’s entirely possible that I like it more! That isn’t to say that I didn’t like this. I did! Truly. I just think it wasn’t my whole cup of tea (pardon the pun).

ARC: The Framing Game by Jessica K. Foster

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5 out of 5 paint cans

Look, I’m already obsessed with Jessica K. Foster. So I had a feeling that I was going to enjoy this latest by her. BOY WAS I RIGHT! This had me in a chokehold from page 1! I was angry, and frustrated, I laughed out loud…just had about every feeling I could until the very end. Xander and Virginia were the perfect mix of chemistry…and it’s hilarious how they come off to each other too. You can tell so much by how Virginia is around him and even how Xander is around her. What I really enjoyed was how nuanced each of the secondary characters were too. This was just such a great coming of age with some romance novel. Foster knocked it out of the park again with this one.

I want to write more, but this JUST came out and I don’t want to give out any spoilers. Suffice it to say, once I am able to get my hands on a paper copy, it’s being added to my library expeditiously!

*I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.*

ARC: How to Lose a Zombie in 10 Days by Ami Wright

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Spice Level: 1000 zombie dicks

Rating: 4/5 dragon dicks

OMG I did not fully know what I was getting into with this! Jen is just getting back into the dating game after Adam broke up with her. He was no good, anyways so she feels like maybe she shouldn’t be so upset by it. But she does miss certain…parts…of him. But then he calls one day freaking out because he’s dead. Or rather, undead. The story goes wild from there. There is a LOT of smut, so steer clear if you don’t like that. But there was definitely a lot of that story that could have made this a GOOD story, like the ending with the SEO being a thing, and the coven…heck, even the date with Astor. Adam and Jen go through some growth though, and while it may have seemed rushed, we have to remember that they had already been together before! So this was a great, quick read. Fun, but not serious, so please do NOT go into this thinking there is going to be anything serious about it. If you need something to palette cleanse, this is your go to though!

This was seriously so much fun and I was able to read it very quickly on my lunch break, though that just might be because I’m a very fast reader haha. There were definitely some folks out there who thought it wasn’t so good, and maybe they are right, but I’m here for vibes and a good time. I didn’t see any glaring plot holes or anything like that so I appreciated this work for what it was: a good time. Honestly, Adam, after going through his stuff, seemed like a good dude in the end, so I think it worked out for them.

I received a copy of this title in exchange for an honest review, so thank you Ami!