Unabridged Chick

Hoping to finish this New Adult romance, Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. First Son Alex thinks he loathes British prince Henry but it turns out they maybe have the hots for each other. It's pretty cute and very escapist.

After something like 28 days of rain, we're finally promised a sunny weekend so I'll be doing yard work for infinity. (My front yard is such a jungle that a landscaper actually jackknifed in the road to give me their card so if that's not a sign from the universe, I don't know what is.)

What are you reading this weekend? Or, what else will you be doing?

Her heart is breaking not to be with her daughter, just as Rae's is breaking not to be with her mother and her grandmother. The breaking is continuous - in the ouroboros of caretaking, guilt and love and fear and love continuously swallow one another.

Unbelievably, my first time reading Karen Russell. I see why she's so popular, though: dramatic, movie-like plots with narrative stylings reminiscent of Byatt, Waters, and Kingsolver.

Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell
Knopf, 2019
Digital arc by publisher/library copy

There are 8 stories in this volume. Only one I was truly meh about ("Black Corfu"); the rest were interesting to captivating. "The Prospectors" was like The Shining meets Carnivale -- it was creepy and moody and atmospheric, a historical horror that I could have easily inhaled as a full length novel. Two of Russell's stories take place in a world touched by extreme weather: "The Tornado Auction", in which tornadoes are …

What was he thinking about so intently? What was his story? Why didn't he smile for real?

This was my first Helen Hoang novel and you all: I. Am. Hooked. The Bride Test is such a delightfully cute, sweet, romantic read -- absolutely perfect for kicking off the summer reading season.

The Bride Test by Helen Hoang
Berkley, 2019
Digital ARC from the publisher
Read Harder challenge

Hoang has been on my radar since her debut of  The Kiss Quotient: I'd been given a copy right at release and my book club ended up reading it (although I missed club that month and didn't get to read it!). My plan was to read it for this year's Read Harder challenge task 13 (a book by or about someone that identifies as neurodiverse) but I was granted an ARC of The Bride Test and the rest is history.

I honestly didn't know how Hoang would make this novel work. The hero, Khai, believes himself to be utterly incapable of feeling love toward anyone and has resigned himself to life without compa…

...I was not about to learn to love myself here. It was as though they were each in competition with the other to see who could be grossest while simultaneously loving themselves the most. Is that what it meant to love yourself? To be repellent?

I've wanted to read this book since its release and it was just as delightful and as weird as I anticipated.

The Pisces by Melissa Broder
Hogarth Press, 2018
Copy from the library

It feels like the press about this book centers on the merperson sex and grossout earthiness which is not actually at the center of this read. (And there was far less gross body stuff than I feared; I was thinking it'd be Otessa Moshfegh level.)

I read this in about three hours so I was surprised with the depth Broder evoked: duality, absence, the stories we tell ourselves when the narrative thread of our lives is unclear, obsession, imagination.

Our heroine Lucy should be unlikable -- she doesn't do herself any favors -- but I found her endearing in he…

You guys. You guys! Sally Thorne's The Hating Game was a favorite of 2017. I've already reread three, four times? I love it enough to say that I was wicked impatient for Thorne's next offering and to my utter dismay, it really, really didn't land with me.

99 Percent Mine by Sally Thorne
William Morrow Paperbacks, 2019
Copy via the library

Everything about this one just disappointed, from the characters to the plot. Our heroine's obstacle to her HEA? Her own twin brother (who we're actually supposed to like, I think).

Let me go back. Characters: super flat. Premise: kind of not there, and also, dreary. Sexual tension: really, nonexistent. I mean, we're told our hero and heroine are super into each other but since the characters are just these flimsy frames, whether they figure it out or not just didn't have emotional resonance for me.

And the whole Alpha Male thing with our hero -- who is otherwise a lovely human but turns into A Savage Animal for our he…

Me on the Inside: Art is dead.

Me on the Outside: [in a very small, quiet voice] Okay. She got a cookie, and then because she was very full and tired, she took a nap.

Can't wait for my niblings to be old enough to start longer books because this will be one of the first I'll shove into their hands.

Cilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinaire by Susan Tan
Roaring Brook Press, 2017
Copy from public library
Read Harder challenge

One of the Read Harder challenges this year is to read "A children’s or middle grade book (not YA) that has won a diversity award since 2009" -- not typically something I'd read so I'm grateful for being nudged outside my usual lanes.

Tan's novel is charming, amusing, sobering, and fun. Our heroine, Cilla, wants very much to be a bestselling author and she's living her best life to do so. But life conspires to challenge her -- there's a new sibling on the way, and her classmates and teacher don't quite have the imaginati…