Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

The Woman in Me

By Britney Spears.

I listened to this on audiobook. I sort of had reservations about reading (or “reading”) this, but it was available on Libby, so what the heck. (NYT rundown of takeaways from the book.) I do concur that Michelle Williams does an excellent job of reading “Britney.” Britney herself reads aloud the beginning of the book, but you soon forget that someone else is reading it because Michelle feels very Britney. (And the “fo shiz, fo shiz” moment is definitely standout.) As to whoever ghostwrote this book–excellent job. I admit part of why I had reservations about reading it was I’ve seen Britney’s Instagram writing style, but this book gets downright poetic in a lot of points, and her voice is very clear and very forthright.

You really feel for Britney. She has a shitty family–indeed, the book starts out with ugly family history–and how these people abused and tortured her is near constant. She went from enjoying stardom early on and being madly in love with Justin to getting weirder and uglier treatment in the media. Justin cheats a ton of times and nobody cares, Britney makes out with one dude and here come the nasty songs. And yet Justin wrote her a long letter and gave it to her, framed, after the breakup saying he can’t breathe without her. THEN WHY DID YOU BREAK UP WITH HER, THEN?!? I yelled in my car. She still has the letter under her bed, she says. 

Her awful father, and the rest of the family happily going along with everything he dishes out, is fucking disgusting. I really, really, really hope karma gets these people someday. Insisting that Britney’s an addict and sending her to rehab (or frankly, rehab jail) multiple times when she gets caught with energy supplements? Tracking her every move down to when she’s allowed to pee? Being punished for weeks or months for taking off a mask outside or wanting to change a dance move? Putting her through HOURS of cognitive testing and then telling her she utterly failed? (By comparison, I asked for an appointment with a neurologist to check and see if I was losing my mind during Mental Breakdown Induced By Work Time and that was about oh, two minutes and he said I was fine.) HOURS?!?! To “fail?” I hope to god these “medical professionals” get sued for malpractice.

She’s surprised she didn’t try to kill herself, I’m surprised she didn’t either. She repeatedly wonders why her family considers her “dangerous” when she isn’t. Other than making sure the gravy train doesn’t end, I suppose. I suspect if these people could have gotten away with physically abusing her (beyond starvation for years), chaining her to a bed, lobotomization, they would have tried it. Really, they just want a BuffyBritneyBot to perform her songs like a robot with no changes every night. Kill her soul, turn her into a mindless automaton.It triggered some shit for me for her to say that they told her all the time she was bad and she believed them, because she was surrounded, trapped and abused. Please, karma, come get these people. 

And finally, she calls 911 to report her dad of conservatorship abuse, and it ends, on a happy note (albeit now that's a little awkward hearing the "happy with my husband bits" now, sigh). 

Go Britney.

Four stars. I'm glad you survived, girl.

Repeat After Me

By Jessica Warman.

Quote from the author:

"I think this is a book readers will either love or hate. I expect it to be polarizing in that sense. I decided very early in the writing process that I was going to let my freak flag fly and just see what happened, instead of constantly second-guessing myself or trying to write something safe and broad. I wanted to get weird, and I think I accomplished that goal."

This is the weirdest book I have ever read in my life. 

That’s perhaps saying something, for me. Had I been asked to name what I thought the weirdest book I’ve ever completed is, I probably would have said something like, “I dunno, Cloud Atlas?” but this takes the damn cake. I will have to go through LAYERS OF SPOILER SPACE to even discuss it all. I honestly can’t recommend this as a read–I’m giving it two stars–but I did read through it in a few hours, riveted to the crazy.

It’s not just the weird premise, or the fact that it’s a book about a time loop, or that it’s horny teens on an island having sex and relationship drama. This book goes to incredibly weird, weird, squicky places, both for comedy and for sheer squick. Things get SUPER WEIRD, especially for one character in particular. There’s a lot of grossout humor and if you can’t take reading lots of descriptions of vomit and flying spooge (the author restrains herself from diarrhea jokes, at least) and especially one character’s obsession with his dingaling and the ways he can make it ring, this isn’t for you. That's why it's a two star review, really. It has moments, but it's very, very strange and definitely not for everyone. 

I’m not sure what to make of it, myself. Like I’m a big ol’ fan of The Book Of Mormon musical (Hasa Diga Eebowai, anyone?) and this is definitely Up That Alley and it even gave ME and my dirty mind pause. I’m kind of flabbergasted this is a teen book, even though obviously it’s written for teens/teen audience. The cover says the book is intended for 17+ (true), may not be suitable for all audiences (oh yeah), and there’s a detailed sensitivity warning, both by the publisher (“blood, violence, death, murder, injury, choking, sexual harassment, loss of family, divorce, cheating, graphic language, drowning, drug use, alcohol use, vomiting, suicide, mistreatment of animals, disordered weight and body thoughts, bullying, and sexual activity”) and by the author, who says she’s using “an extreme, satirical alternate reality with absurdist humor,” giving the characters “a safe space to explore and tackle these problems,” and “the resulting shenanigans in these pages may strike some readers as absurdly over-the-top, or, perhaps, indelicate.” 

Now, none of reading that before I started fazed me. I reasonably assume if you read or watch anything with a time loop, there’s gonna be some violence/death/murder/suicide/drunkness, etc, we all know that from Groundhog Day, Palm Springs, every other time loop thing ever. But I will say this: on page 150, we find out that something incredibly gross/traumatic happened to our heroine, Emma. It was an explanation of what she hates the song “What’s Going On” (I dunno, do you need an explanation for hating that song? It’s annoying as is), and it was just so incredibly squicktastic that I nearly quit reading the book at this point (see spoiler space #1 below the spoiler cut for why). I nearly put it down. And then thought, “This is the weirdest book I have ever read in my life. I think I still need to find out how this ends.” I said this to a friend of mine the next day and she said, “Indubitably.”

So, before you buy, be forewarned: this book goes to weird, gross places. It may not be for everyone. Or possibly most people. Or you could be me, who’s into weird shit, and still be all, “Whoa.”

The plot: Xavier Academy (lol) groups seniors into cohorts and sends them on strange senior trips, and Emma and her cohort have been sent to a mystery island where they are shucking oysters for a week. The teens are a bunch of dubious-ish kids: ranging from out lesbian to still closeted lesbian to Christian hypocrite to class horndog. The teacher in charge of them, Max, is a supposed “cool teacher” who’s:

1. been forced into a teaching career at his dad’s school and he hates it, hates the kids, hates everything,
2. has been having a flaming sexual affair with a lady named Greta,
3. has been diagnosed with ALS.

To that end, Greta and her rich inventor dad Gus have donated a lot of money to the school to get Max to their island, where they feed him a cure. Well, sorta a cure. Eat this magical seafood we give you and it makes you (a) immortal, (b) stuck in a “everyday is Friday forever” time loop. This means that while Max may be getting laid and not getting worse, he’s stuck waking up to a horrible hangover and he’s stuck with teenagers for 15,000+ Fridays. Max, at this point, isn’t very involved in managing most of the teen drama. 

A few other kids end up consuming or being injected with the magical seafood, which comes from a sweet, telepathic, immortal octopus named Sibyl. Greta introduces Emma to Sibyl and feeds her magical ceviche using a chopped off tentacle (don’t worry, Sibyl grows it back), and Bradd ends up killing himself with his own invention (the “H2Blow, patent pending”) and being saved with an injection of Sibyl. 

Hooooooooooo boy, Bradd. Rich man politician’s son, handsome but stupid, fancies himself an inventor, pretty much does nothing but think about getting off. The biggest comedy moments in this book are what Bradd does with the ability to come and come back to life every day, including finding some kind of magical island cocaine and doing wackadoo experiments, all involving his dick. Your mileage may vary on Bradd, to say the least. I’m not sure what to make of the dude and his….activities. I do wish some of them had had more of it made–I'll say, the useful ones–but after giving it a game try, the book goes back to SNAFU again.  (Spoiler space #2 below the cut)

Anyway, Max, Emma, and Bradd (and presumably Gus and Greta?) keep reliving Friday in varying ways, while we find out some of the other teen dramas:

• Emma has been dating a Christian hottie named Auggie and while she may not exactly be in love, she’s about ready to lose that virginity! It is her goal this year! Little does she know that Auggie’s been cheating on her.
• Emma’s obvious true love is her best friend Louis, who rejected her romantically and described her as an amorphous blob at one point. Obviously Emma is trying to move on, obviously these two are MFEO, and I’m still not entirely sure why Louis turned her down since obviously this tale is angling towards getting these two together.
• Bradd’s girlfriend Allison is secretly in love with Lucy and vice versa.
• Emma and Allison are ex-friends, pretty much because Allison is publicly a jerk most of the time. Having them share a room is a bad idea.

And then there’s the time loop stuff, which is…okay, eating magical octopus puts you in a time loop, that’s it. I’m not sure what the heck Gus and Greta are getting up to and I’m not sure Gus and Greta are sure what they are getting up to either. I like how they’re trying to solve death by "giving people more time" and whatnot, but other than “we have an immortal octopus,” what else are they doing? I’m still not sure. As for the actual time loop, I’ll go into it in the spoiler space, but the ending of the book makes you continue to do a giant “HUH?” (Spoiler space 3 below the cut)

So, lotta mixed bag stuff here. What’s good is that I kept on reading it, despite page 150, and that it’s weirdly compelling despite all the grossout stuff and the vagueness of the time loop. The developing Emma/Louis relationship is sweet, Emma’s love of Sibyl (more Sibyl, please) is intriguing, and kind of hilarious when compared to Bradd and Sibyl's total antipathy towards each other, which Emma cares not about. Having some of the teen characters make improvements despite the time loop helps.

Anyway: read the descriptions here: If this sounds good to you, then go to it, reader who found this off a Google search! If this sounds like a turnoff to you, then do not. That's what I got, recommendation-wise. 

And here we go with the spoiler space. It's a jungle in there. 

The Unmaking of June Farrow

By Adrienne Young. 

The Farrow ladies are one of those notorious small town families where the ladies are kinda regarded as “witches” because everyone knows there’s just something weird/unusual about them.  In the case of the Farrows, they all lose their minds sooner or later. June’s mother disappeared while pregnant and June was found abandoned at seven months old, her mother was never seen again. June was raised by her grandmother, Margaret, who’s recently lost her mind and died. Now June’s starting the same process: seeing things that may or may not be there, including a horse, a man, and a door. June’s decided to never fall in love/get married/have a kid so she can end the Farrow curse with her, and she’s never gotten involved with her best guy friend Mason for that reason. Now that her time is approaching, she’s going to have to admit to more than her doctor that she’s deteriorating.

Or is she?

June’s grandmother sends her a photo from beyond the grave–and it’s June’s mother in 1911, married to notorious past murder victim Nathan Rutherford. Upon investigating, Susannah had a daughter named June, who died (or “died”) at seven months old. After getting a few more super cryptic clues, including a family friend barely giving her any information, June walks through the door she’s been seeing and finds herself in the year 1951, where everyone knows her name and is not happy to see her. Because she’s been there before in the 1940’s, where she did get married, have a kid, and disappeared again despite having told her family she wouldn’t. Turns out the family curse is having a few chances at time travel (and finding love), but at the eventual cost of their sanity and mentally being in two places at once. June has no idea how she’s showed up here when she’s been here before, and her relatives are being uncomfortably weird and cagey as heck, and oh, the police are looking for her since she disappeared a year ago…. And that’s around the time when Nathan was murdered, and since Nathan was basically stalking June since she arrived in town, having ID’d her as his “dead” daughter, she’s the #1 suspect. 

This is an intriguing tale, if kind of hard to figure out time-wise. June having a daughter when she never intended to pass on the curse apparently led June to try to figure out how to end the curse once and for all, which is why June’s particular timeline is more scrambled than previous Farrows and makes less sense. It does kind of seem like things get… fudgey.. Timey-wimey… though (like how many times can June time travel despite having hit the limit?), and that’s confusing. I guess she got things to work out at least somewhat, but it makes your head hurt trying to deduce HOW, and it seems like she only manages to fix one major aspect of it but everyone still has to go through what they did. If you’ve figured it out, please explain it to me? I found an interview with the author in which she talked about how hard it was to keep track and how many people checked holes, but...More discussion of this goes below the spoiler cut. 

As for the romance, you get that June and Eamon must have had the hots for each other right away, and it’s more of a “return to love” sort of story for June rather than the development of the original romance. (Mason, alas, gets short shrift.) I did appreciate a particular surprise reveal that eventually makes sense in context between the timelines. However, the murder investigation situation resolves a bit too easily, with the most dogged character apparently being so shocked by a revelation that they don’t bother to do much more about the situation. 

Not bad, but could have used a bit more baking in the plot. Three and a half stars. 

Blitz

By Daniel O'Malley.

Previous book here (I can't find the review of it, annoyingly). 

I bought this book in September 2023 and I just finished the book nearly a year later. How sad is that for a speed reader? This is because the book is SUPER HUGE to carry around and most of the time I'm on the go, so I can’t haul a 670-ish page hardback around in my purse. I finally forced myself to read it at work during lunch. It felt super long to read even for ME, but was interesting. 

This book is essentially two books in one and I’m not sure why they’re combined together. I thought reading this they would come together at the end, but they really don’t. There’s one slight connection* between the stories and both would have been a fine 300-ish page novel on their own, one being the distant sequel to the other.

(all stars follow up below the spoiler space)

Plot A is during WWII, when Checquy operatives Bridget, Pamela and Usha get themselves into A Bit Of An Incident when Pamela can’t resist going after a superpowered Nazi, he crashes, and they have to track him down. I note that despite having an agency of superpowered people, the Checquy aren’t permitted to join the war effort, and it’s deduced that Pamela knew why this was and it perhaps made her lose her shit a bit** (see spoiler space). The ladies try to clean up this mess on their own time. Bridget, who gets the most focus of the three, does double duty when she’s assigned to go on a mission with young Henry Wattleman* (Lord of the Checquy in contemporary timeline), who’s a handsome lech. The two are assigned to track down a gang who are selling off superpowered objects that are killing people, and that’s quite an in-depth plot. I did like Tillie the gang leader, though, she’s got spice. Bridget also has a sweet boyfriend, Gerald, who predictably is about to go off to war soon. I root for them even though well, it’s war and who knows. While I enjoyed reading this, these plots got a bit convoluted (they do come together more eventually) and it was hard to remember all the details over well, a long time of reading it. 

Plot B is contemporary and follows Lyn Binns, a mom/librarian who suddenly manifests electrical powers, gets caught at it, and has to join the Checquy and go to their school while they evaluate her powers and make sure she learns how to handle them. All of that is very pleasant under the weird circumstances, albeit she is forced to fake a weird disease and go literally back to school with curious teens. Once she’s graduated, she gets moved into working for the Checquy reviewing weird cases that might be supernatural manifestation. Then Lyn finds a case where gang members are dying of electrical incidents…just like her powers. And Lyn has a very distinctive electrical signature that that absolutely will identify her as the perp. Except she knows she didn’t do it. Knowing full well that at best the Checquy will lock her up immediately if this is discovered ***, Lyn goes on the run, needing to find who did it and prove her innocence. I was reminded of The Rook in which Myfanvy I had set up a possible escape route for her future self–my impression from reading that was that it was extremely difficult/fatal to run from the Checquy. Lyn does pull it off plausibly, albeit she has a few near-catching moments, but I did wonder how doable it all was. Lyn’s husband is a cop so she had more of an idea as to how to do it, at least. And while the eventual villain is pretty one-note, I did really enjoy Lyn finding out how this was happening.**** and the potential for her personally in the future. Her plot was easier to follow, even if it takes a while, for good reason, to take off. 

In other news, I enjoy the very weird side stories of the Checquy (dueling, pregnant men!) that the author loves to get into for a bunch of pages, but sometimes they derail for so long even I, who loves crazy exposition, is all "hey, can we tie it back to the story/circle back?" It takes this author awhile.

I liked all of the characters (rooting for Bridget and Gerald!), even naked horny Henry. I felt for Lyn both having to start a new life, then being on the run (justified), and then having more surprises turn up..I miss Myfanwy (who had a cameo). I realize it might be hard for the author to tie her into everything now that her main life problem has been...grown into, I guess? ("Resolved" doesn't seem quite right). Odette had a nice cameo.

Overall I give it four stars, but definitely think this book could have been two separate ones. I enjoy this world and will continue to return. 

 

With Love, From Cold World

By Alicia Thompson.

This takes place at an amusement park? Sign me up! Cold World is in Florida, and sounds like it’s in a big ol’ warehouse, with a snow globe and ice skating. Cold World isn’t exactly a major park, more of a minor one, but the employees seem to enjoy it and the owner, Dolores, is a nice lady who enjoys the holidays.

The book focuses on two employees:

• Asa, a longtime employee and jack of all trades, who gets along with everyone, runs the holiday gift exchange, and has cool blue hair. Asa is bisexual and from a religious family who kicked him out for his bi-ness, and he’s been estranged from them ever since and isn’t sure what to do when his sister wants to reconnect. He also volunteers at a hotline, which is sweet. 
• Lauren, the bookkeeper. Lauren is rather prim and proper, uptight, not great with people or holidays. She grew up in foster care and is alone in the world, and is trying to volunteer to work with other foster kids as an advocate. She also has the hots for Daniel, the owner’s son, who is good looking but otherwise a complete waste when you get to know him.

Ash and Lauren find each other attractive, but also things have been awkward at work ever since Lauren suggested getting rid of the gift exchange. She’s not a Scrooge, but given her background, that sort of thing is not her skill set.

Dolores assigns Asa, Lauren and Daniel to work on a project to come up with new ways to improve the place. Lauren looks at the money, Asa looks at getting the snow globe to drop actual snow because Lauren said that would look magical, and Daniel wants to spend a billion or so on setting up skiing there, something Lauren, despite her crush on Daniel, thinks is ridiculous. The book jacket makes it sound like this is a “save our business” plot, which it tentatively is, but that’s really not focused on much in this book like I was expecting, and the business seems to do its usual middlingly fine throughout. 

The book is about the romance between Asa and Lauren, which starts to defrost and bud when they both end up accidentally locked in the building and can’t get out. I found myself getting more and more into this as the book went on because it really entwined Asa’s family issues and Lauren’s lack of family issues, and Lauren’s kid client, and it was really endearing. I found myself falling for the relationship, and while there’s a requisite Big Mis/temporary breakup I thought was a bit much, it quietly works out happily in the end. Lauren starts out as “this girl seems un-fun, I dunno how into her I am,” but darned if the author doesn’t make her work. 

Four stars. 

Bruised

By Tanya Boteju. 

Daya is a recently orphaned teenager whose parents died in a car accident. Daya feels like the accident was her fault–she was a boxer and her father drilled her to be “hard,” her mother (more of a “that which yields is not always weak” personality, I kept thinking of Kushiel’s Dart while reading this) came to the match and Daya pulled her punches, parents starting yelling in the car…. Well, you know, that would give you a complex for sure.

Daya’s now living with her uncle and aunt, Priam and Vicki, who are ADORABLE theater dorks. However, Daya got raised by her dad to be a hardass jock, and even though Daya’s quit boxing, she still kind of has “that stuff’s weak” going on in her brain. Also, she enjoys–on some level–getting bruised up and injured these days. So she’s doing skateboarding, and then is introduced to roller derby, which is exactly the sort of thing she’s looking for. There’s also fun moments in the book, as it sounds like a fun and crazy sport (and relates to theater), and there’s older ladies that are into roller derby, etc. 

Daya admires Kat, the hardass team captain, but is attracted to her sister Shanti. Shanti is definitely a “that which yields is not always weak” personality and Daya respects that, even if she has her own issues on the topic (the book has a lot of flashbacks to her home situation pre-accident). I respect Shanti, she may be quiet but she’s firm and reasonable. Kat seems to scorn her for being “soft” (this is uncomfortable to read), but the dynamic between the sisters does relate to Daya’s inner conflicts. By the time Daya starts facing her inner demons and talking to people about her feelings, I was very touched.

Four stars.