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Happy Sunday,

I’ve been a busy little bookworm!

The cruel hand of fate (aka the Toronto Public Library) sent me a full stack of books at once. I had no choice but to hunker down and power through them all, lest I squander my holds.

The TPL is my dominatrix, cracking the whip on my monthly page count.

She giveth, and she taketh away.

She keeps a heel on the neck of my reading goals.

She has me walking around the Beaches like this:

Onto the books

Luckily, I enjoyed every book I read this month!

My mistress is cruel, but she knows me oh so well.

The theme of my April reading was “sex, drugs, and meticulous record keeping,” which are also the markers of a great weekend.

These titles span secret poisonings, public poisonings, secret sex, public sex, addiction, and a shocking amount of bird facts (but not from the book with birds on the cover. That book didn’t really mention birds at all, which was misleading and frankly disappointing)

1. 🧛🏻‍♀️ Hungerstone, Kat Dunn ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

   A feminist interpretation of Carmilla, the OG sexy vampire novel.

   Finally! Someone has done it. A lesbian vampire novel that delivers!! It only took five tries to find one I liked! I’m overjoyed!!!

   

2. ⛪️ Fancy Gap, Zak Jones ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

   A cult-infused, Southern Gothic-inspired novel following three estranged generations in Appalachia

   Off the rip, I’m biased. Zak Jones is one of my husband’s pals. This is his debut, and we could not be prouder! This story is dark, batshit, and very vibey (my three favourite words to describe any book). If you liked the first season of True Detective and/or have ever been fascinated by Jonestown, you should pick this one up. Go support a local artist!!! Go read something weird!!!

3. 🤢 Famesick, Lena Dunham ⭐️⭐️⭐️

   Reflection on illness, fame, and sex from the voice of the Millennial generation…or at least a generation.

   Look. I’ve been a proud Lena Dunham apologist for years. I know people find her annoying, but her writing was a formative part of my humour. Reading Famesick has inspired me to rewatch Girls for the third time, and that’s enough to earn it 3 stars!

   Now, was this the best memoir I’ve ever read? No. There are some interesting moments about chronic pain, invisible disability, and whatever the heck Adam Driver has going on…Overall, what I've been enjoying more than the actual book is Lena Dunham’s press tour about the book, where she is dropping bars left, right and centre.

4. 📬 The Correspondent, Virginia Evans ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

   A life told in letters from a kind of bitchy old lady

   Every book club in North America has this book on their list, and for good reason! This was so lovely! Sybil is such a memorable character, and who doesn’t love an epistolary novel??? Texting is over! Bring back letters!! All in all, I think The Correspondent is worth the hype, and a rare novel from my roundups that you can recommend at work without everyone looking at you differently. Mom, if you’re reading, this is one you’d like!!

5. 🍎 Flesh, David Szalay ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

   Snippets of a man’s life over the course of decades.

   This is a book I should hate. It breaks literally every rule of writing. Every conversation is banal. Every scene is clunky. Life is happening to this person, and he (and by extension, we) never explores how he feels about anything. It’s a portrait of detachment, and yet I found it hypnotic…

   

   Leah isn’t wrong….but like, in a good way???

   Don’t get used to this! This is the one and only time I will ever recommend a collection of slice-of-life moments!!! Many of you know that I’ve long had a personal feud with the movie Boyhood.

   Men love that movie.

   Men feel seen by that movie.

   I think 12 years was a long-ass time to spend on something so boring.

   Flesh is what Boyhood could have been if it had literally anything interesting happen in its three-hour run time.... God forbid a story have drama! God forbid we add some stakes to the plot!!

6. 📚 Is This A Cry For Help? Emily Austin ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

   A librarian comes back to work after a mental breakdown, only to confront book-banning crusaders and general debauchery in her workplace.

   Mom! This is another one you can read!! Two in one email!!! Holy cow, that never happens!!!

   Is This A Cry For Help is a love letter to public libraries. It’s dark, but full of heart and empathy. Emily Austin also wrote We Could Be Rats, which was one of the most memorable novels I read last year. She’s writing a specific kind of quirky, depressed woman fiction that I love. If you’ve ever spent 1:1 time with the Big Sad, you should give her a try! If, somehow, you’re reading my writing and have never been depressed1… how did you get here? What is this doing for you???

Last Thought:

Epilogue

• What did you read this month?

• Anything I should add to my TBR?

Subscribe now

Happy Easter!

I hope you are all gorging on Mini Eggs and contemplating resurrection.

Not in a religious sense, but resurrection in the everyday:

….The unflattering trends that come back in style.

….The weird hair on your chin that regrows thicker and thicker.

…The former situationship that reacts to your Instagram story with fire emojis after years of no contact.

….The pop stars who reinvent themselves with each album release.

….The reality TV stars who have a new face every season.

…The desire to have long hair when your hair is short, but short hair when your hair is long.

….The old sitcoms that insist on rebooting.

…Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez.

Life is but one giant cycle of crucifixions and comebacks.

Onto the books

1. 🛏️ The Dream Hotel, Laila Lalami ⭐️⭐️⭐️

   In the not-too-distant future, a new mother is detained based on her likelihood to commit a crime, calculated through dream data and surveilled behaviour

   If my dreams were being monitored like this, I would have been locked up years ago. Not for a threat of violence, perse, but for genuinely concerning levels of mental instability. Such is the curse of a huge imagination! You never know what the subconscious will hold! Mass layoffs on a company-mandated surfing trip where everyone is in matching boardshorts and bikini tops. Libraries overrun with dinosaurs who eat people with late fees. A day where everything is exactly the same, but one of my arms is 1/6th of the size, and no one says anything about it while I try and fail to do normal tasks…. Just to name a few of my recent adventures in slumber!

   This book, unfortunately, was less interesting than 95% of my dreams. The Dream Hotel gets 3 stars on the premise and premise alone. Everything else — the plot, characters, and setting — was forgettable.

2. 🐇 We Love You, Bunny, Mona Awad ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

   A prequel/sequel to the cult classic, ‘Bunny’. billed as ‘Heathers’ meets ‘Frankenstein’.

   Listen. Heathers meets Frankenstein is my exact brand of catnip. There is no other combination that would fill me with more glee. Mona Awad dove deep into the wells of my brain and delivered a level of niche joy I didn’t know was possible. AND! The whole story is an allegory for the creative writing process!!! Like, come on, Bunny!! This was made for me to love! It was weird. Dark. Hilarious. Stupid. Brilliant. JUST the perfect amount of annoying (who in their right mind is using smiley faces in their prose???). I adored it!! Even more than the original!!! :) :) :)

   

3. 🦬 The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones ⭐️⭐️

   An ‘American Indian revenge story’ featuring vampires, a priest, and more than one scene spent inside a buffalo carcass.

   Another book with a premise I should love, but didn’t. Alas! This was the first book I read all year that was written by a man (brag). Unfortunately, it felt like it. By that I mean it was too long, too meandering, and too up its own butt. I genuinely struggled to understand what was even happening for large chunks of text. Part of my confusion was from the language choices (having a main character recount a story in semi-broken English was….something), part was from the long detours and huge pockets of time we simply did not need to go over, and part was the 3x timelines for a story that really only needed 2.
   Now, the horror elements were awesome! I appreciate any new spin on vampire lore, which The Buffalo Hunter Hunter achieved without using the word “vampire” once. Very fun! I also loved the gory and visceral details peppered throughout. Very yucky, but very memorable!!
   Overall, this draggggggeddd. Halfway through, I actually gave up reading the physical copy and switched to the audiobook, hoping it would make it easier. It did not.1
   All this to say, I would love a different Native American vampire novel if anyone knows of one! I think this premise could be amazing in different hands. There’s so much symbolism there! Just think of what Sinners did!!!

4. 🗽 The Golem Of Brooklyn, Adam Mansbach ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

   An art teacher makes a golem out of stolen clay and brings it to life.

   This book is a modern-day take on Jewish folklore from the author of Go The Fuck To Sleep, one of the greatest books of all time. This novel is magical realism at its best: wacky, fun, and with a clear point-of-view that justifies the supernatural elements. I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I laughed. I learned a lot about golems. I appreciated the topical cultural commentary. I was moved by the ending, which left the story on a surprisingly philosophical note for a book whose plot hinged on a buddy-comedy-inspired road trip.

Last Thought:

Epilogue

• What did you read this month?

• Anything I should add to my TBR?

Subscribe now

Happy International Women’s Day!

I would love to be out galivanting with the ladies. Alas, the public library is yanking my leash tighter and tighter.

Between the work travel, social calendar, and ongoing correspondence with Flavor Flav, my reading has taken a hit.

Past Jamie had no way to know!

She was too trigger-happy with the “place hold” button!

She was gluttonous!!

Now I must hide in my dungeon and catch up on titles while the Toronto Public Library watches like the sick freaks they are.

I think I’m going to die in this house on this hill…

Speaking of freaks!

In the spirit of discourse, I wanted to resurface my review of Wuthering Heights from June 2024: “I respect that this is a classic, but damn, was it boring.”

…It’s a wonder the Times hasn’t asked me to be a full-time reviewer.

The novel is a multi-generational gothic story, made unnecessarily complicated by giving every character a variation of the same name (Heathcliff, Earnshaw, Catherine Earnshaw, Edgar Linton, Linton Heathcliff, Catherine Linton, Hindley Earnshaw, etc.)

The movie solves that problem by cutting out an entire generation of characters, making everything hornier, and giving Heathcliff a slutty little gold tooth with a matching earing.

A win-win!

I think Wuthering Heights was exactly 179 years ahead of its time. This book was always meant to be scored by Charli XCX and given a BDSM subplot. It was always meant to be slightly camp!

Emily Brontë died 50 years before the invention of Jell-O, but surely she would have seen its erotic potential.

The most surprising part of the movie adaptation wasn’t the casting, the sex, or the complete disregard for historical accuracy. It was the sheer number of teens in the theatre squealing over Heathcliff.

I fear Fennell has turned this horror novel into a modern-day situationship blueprint.1

The toxicity!

It’s astounding!

This is their Twilight, and I’m equal parts thrilled and scared for them.

However! It should have been even more destructive.

The movie spent so much time finding things that looked vaguely like vaginas that it forgot to include any ghosts. Fennell created an entire room out of images of Margot Robbie’s skin, but somehow eliminated the whole haunting part of the story???

How???

Why????

We needed more spook!

Emily Brontë didn’t get to experience Tumblr or kink-positive communities,2 but this bitch was on a whole other level of sinister shit that these kids will now never know!

Where was the corpse-digging!?!

Where was yearning beyond the grave!?!

Where was the floating through the moors!?!

Emerald! You had the power to single-handedly f*ck up a whole generation of pubescent kids, and you half-assed it. You coward!!

Onto the books

1. 🧛🏻 The Songbird and The Heart of Stone, Carissa Broadbent ⭐️⭐️⭐️

   A necromancer and a vampire/sun-god-worshipper go on a quest to the underworld.

   This is a spinoff set in the same universe as The Serpent and the Wings of Night - a rare romantasy novel that I loved the whole way through! I had high hopes since the main character of this book was one of my favs in the original duology; however, something about this story felt too surface-level. Both main characters’ backstories and motivations were compelling, and I love any kind of underworld backdrop. Still, there was so much going on (worldbuilding, gods interfering, traumatic memories, political implications, grumpy-sunshine flirting dynamics, etc.), that everything ended up feeling rushed. I think this would have benefited from fewer ideas, or (and I hate to say this about any romantasy), more pages to really sit with each plot point. That said, I will be reading the second one, mostly because I have a soft spot for Carissa Broadbent’s author bio:

   “I’ve been concerning teachers and parents with mercilessly grim tales since I was roughly nine years old. Since then, my stories have gotten (slightly) less depressing and (hopefully a lot?) more readable. Today, I write fantasy novels with a heaping dose of badass ladies and a big pinch of romance.

   When I’m not writing, I’m working at my day job in cybersecurity marketing, watching too many movies, or drawing. I live with my fiance, one very well behaved rabbit, one very poorly behaved rabbit, and one perpetually skeptical cat in Rhode Island.”

2. 🐈‍⬛ We’ll Prescribe You a Cat, Syou Ishida ⭐️⭐️⭐️

   A collection of short stories where, no matter the issue, the doctor prescribes each patient a cat.

   What a great premise! Cats really do fix everything!! Overall, this was a very cute and quick read. It only ended up with three stars because there weren’t any characters or stories that I found super memorable. The author also tried to tie all the stories together with a magical angle that I don’t think the book needed. Just let it be quirky and weird without explanation! I’ll follow you there!

3. 🤬 Are You Mad At Me? Meg Josephson ⭐️⭐️⭐⭐

   Must-read nonfiction for people-pleasers

   A very, very, very rare self-help title that I will recommend! Meg Josephson focuses on the long-term effects of fawning as a survival instinct. This was an easy audiobook listen with a lot of real-world examples from her work as a psychotherapist that made the lessons extremely relatable. If you’ve ever woken up with hangxiety (✅), felt like everyone hated you (✅), had a hard time saying ‘no’(✅), or are a perfectionist (✅), you should read this book.

4. 🤖 Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor ⭐️⭐️

   Half literary family drama, half sci-fi about robots.

   You know what. I didn’t like this. I wanted to like it! It had lots of cool stuff going on! There was a disability and technology angle. A cancel-culture angle. An AI storytelling angle. A robots love stories angle. A wealth makes you lose touch with reality angle…. Only, none of those plots really paid off. The whole time, I was thinking about other books that did those themes better (ie, Yellowface, Playground, Set My Heart To Five, Sea of Tranquillity, etc.) It took me so long to finish this book, and I found myself skimming over pages because the plot dragged. Ultimately, I would have loved to just read the sci-fi story within this story. The extra layers and twists diluted any of the pieces I found interesting.

Last Thought:

I said what I said.

Disagree? Haunt me, then!

Epilogue

• What did you read this month?

• Anything I should add to my TBR?

Subscribe now

Happy Sunday!

I am fresh off a beach vacation, feeling incredibly refreshed and (most importantly) incredibly tan.

There is nothing like salt water and sun to recharge the body, mind, and spirit.

Alas, I absent-mindedly used tap water to brush my teeth one night and paid the ultimate price of puking blue Gatorade into an airport garbage can.

We cannot know peace unless we also know suffering.

Onto the books

The theme of my January reading was ‘negative effects of technology, trauma, and Tyra Banks.”

Each horrors in their own right.

Each non-ideal beach reads.

What can I say? There is no setting in the world that will make me pick up another Colleen Hoover novel.

Conversely, I would sell my soul to spend a day observing Tyra Banks on the set of America’s Next Top Model…1

This woman! An enigma!! A master of torment!! A virtuoso of smizing!!!

And don’t get me started on SMiZE & DREAM Hot Mama Ice Cream…

I just got back from vacation and simply do not have the time or energy to figure out wtf Tyra is on about with her Australian “hot ice cream” venture.

It doesn’t make sense.

It will never make sense.

She is crazy, but she is free…

Fairy Dough Diva down.

1. 🥀 Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, V.E. Schwab ⭐️⭐️⭐️

   A fantasy novel about toxic lesbian vampires

   Listen. I love V.E. Schwab. Her podcast is a delight, and I have learned so much from it. However, I think it’s time for me to admit that her books are not for me.

   There were moments of Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil that I loved: The characters were interesting, the line-level writing was vibey, and I appreciate any new take on vampire lore... That said, I don’t feel like the plot went anywhere interesting. This was a loooonnnggg 535 pages to have the ending rushed…And! For a book promising toxic queer vampires!! I wanted less backstory and more toxicity!

2. 💾 Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age, Vauhini Vara ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

   Creative non-fiction leveraging AI to explore how tech companies are reshaping human language(derogatory)

   My first 5-star start of the year! This book is a masterpiece and deserves all of the awards! Part personal reflection, part tech history, part dialogue with ChatGPT. I’ve read memoirs about sexual assault, incest, and abuse. I’ve read bonkers erotica about doors and airplanes. I’ve read horror novels that describe cannibalism and torture in great detail. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, is as vulnerable as dedicating an entire chapter to your Google searches… That is absurd. This is my history from the last few days, and I am deeply ashamed.

   

   Predictably, Goodreads reviewers are already debating the ethics of using AI for a book… which is… exactly…the point??? Like, hello???

3. ✏️ Half His Age, Jennette McCurdy ⭐️⭐️⭐

   A lonely teenager pursues an affair with her creative writing teacher

   Pretty yikes! Jenmette McCurdy’s pull-no-punches writing served her memoir, but for some reason, it felt gratuitous in this novel. Why is that? I’m not sure! This is a Lolita-esque story from a 17-year-old’s perspective, with the added elements of online shopping and TikTok. On paper, this is exactly the kind of book I’d love. In reality, I found the story more driven by shock value than emotion. I think that’s why it lost me, but I’m truly still trying to figure it out…If you’re keen to read this, I’d recommend starting with My Dark Vanessa instead.

4. 🕵️‍♀️ The Return of Ellie Black, Emiko Jean ⭐️⭐️

   A missing teenager is found alive after two years, but won’t tell anyone where she’s been.

   Every year, someone tries to convince me that I secretly love thrillers.

   Every year, we find ourselves in this exact moment, where I have to gently remind everyone that I do not.

   Is it Emiko Jean’s fault that she’s writing in a genre I don’t like? No. But I’m giving this two stars because she almost had me! A lot of the plot hinges on Ellie Back navigating the trauma of what happened to her. She’s jumpy, confused, and non-cooperative with law enforcement. I liked the tension of a victim not wanting to pursue justice in favour of moving on (a real issue!!). BUT!!! Jean had to go and fill the end with a bunch of unnecessary, weird, and implausible twists! We didn’t need to do all that!! The hook was interesting enough!!! GAH! Why do thrillers insist on making me their enemy!!!!

5. 📸 You Wanna Be on Top?: A Memoir of Makeovers, Manipulation, and Not Becoming America’s Next Top Model, Sarah Hartshorne ⭐️⭐️⭐️

   A tell-all memoir from the only “plus size” contestant from Cycle 9 of ANTM

   This was exactly what I wanted and expected. Nothing more. Nothing less.

   If you’re at all interested in the BTS of this show, give this audiobook a listen! Sarah reads it herself and is super charming to listen to.

   Please keep in mind that I was obsessed with this show. It’s the reason I got a pixie cut in grade 8 (unfortunate). It contributed to all of my body image issues (doubly unfortunate). It single-handedly sparked an obsession with jeans and heels as my freshman go-see university outfit of choice (unfortunate only because I could not walk in said heels…)

   As you already know from my Google history, I desperately want to be eyeballs-deep in an America’s Next Top Model rewatch (especially with the Netflix doc and counter-doc on the horizon). Sadly, none of the 12073,1831,00088 streaming services I pay for have it available…

   Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.

Last Thought:

An important addendum to my last essay:

Epilogue

• What did you read this month?

• Anything I should add to my TBR?

• Do you know where I can watch ANTM cycles 1-10?????

Subscribe now

We’re back, baby!

It’s a new year.

Hilary Duff is putting out new music.

The NHL is pretending to like gay people.

Smoking is cool again.

One of my credit cards is going to expire.

Change is in the air!

Before I can embrace 2026, I must honour my Millennial heritage and post a recap of 2025.

I don’t make the rules, sorry!

Tell Orpheus to buckle up, because we’re looking back at my favourite reads of the year.

Turning the page on 2025

This year, I read 56 titles across 16 genres. There is no easy way to distill this year of books. It was pure chaos from start to finish.

I read about: Mother-daughter cannibals, Harriet Tubman as a hip-hop artist, anthropomorphized depression monsters, vampire death tournaments…

I’m curating a Kobo library so unpredictable, so unsettling that every celebrity book club is quaking in fear!

From the pile, six (mostly normal) titles rose to the top.

Of course, these aren’t all of my 5-star reads. I tried to narrow the scope to books published in the last five years, and spanning a mix of genres.

Picking favourites is hard, but it must be done! That’s parenting 101…

• 🙅‍♀️Rejection, Tony Tulathimutte

  A collection of interconnected short stories that have moved me, changed me, completely tore apart and rebuilt my understanding of the world.

  Coming in at #1, Rejection is a Millennial fiction masterpiece. I simply cannot comprehend how Tony conceptualized and executed this level of satire. From the first page to the last, I was transfixed. This is genius. This is perfection. Tony, you are a mastermind! I bow down to you, my literary king!!!! I can write no greater review than the one you’ve already given yourself:

• ⚽️ Spectacular Things, Becky Dorey-Stein

  Contemporary fiction about sisters, soccer, and sacrifice.

  A rare title that Reese and I agree on. Don't be fooled by my freak-forward writing! I am a softie! A certified cry-baby (behind closed doors, obviously).

  With Spectacular Things, Becky Dorsey-Stein ripped my heart out and dribbled it across the field. I adored everything about this: the family dynamics, the writing style, and especially the nods to real women’s soccer stars. “What a gift.”

• 🪦 I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy

  The holy grail of mommy and food issues, written by a former Nickelodeon star.

  I know I’m late to the party on this memoir, but holy moly was it ever amazing. That opening??????!?! Jennette, are you kidding???!? I plowed through this audiobook in a day, clocking almost 30,000 steps so I could keep listening. I gasped. I cringed. I paused to stare into the void and process the most horrific mothering I have ever read about. Yikes.

  “Well, sweetheart, if you really want to know how to stay small, there’s this secret thing you can do… it’s called calorie restriction.”

• 🍩 I Hope This Finds You Well, Natalie Sue

  A depressed employee accidentally gains access to her entire workplace’s private emails. Hilarity ensues.

  Another sentimental book made it on the list! Maybe I’m losing my edge, but this witty workplace romantic comedy had me giggling and kicking my little feet the whole time. I Hope This Finds You Well was a scathing portrait of corporate culture, yet somehow humanized your most annoying, microwave-fish-for-lunch colleagues. If you’ve ever felt personally victimized by working in a cubicle, bump this to the top of your inbox!!

• 🏚️ Model Home, Rivers Solomon

  A modern haunted house about racism in American suburbs

  Of the 16 horror novels I read, this is the only one that made it to the top of my list! If you’re into stories about trauma and ghosts, this is worth a read. The writing is beautiful, the premise is topical, and the cover is 🤌

• 🥂 Local Heavens, K.M. Fajardo

  A cyberpunk retelling of The Great Gatsby

  I mean, what else do I have to say??? This is a debut novel that made me appreciate a classic even more. That’s pretty damn hard to do! Especially since Fajardo changed the entire genre to sci-fi, but still somehow retained the Fitzgerald feeling… Crazy work. This book was also gifted to me by my writer pal (so go give her some love)!

Honourable mentions

These were not 5-star reads, but were too memorable to leave out! I’ve broken my picks into two categories: books with heart, and books that are batshit crazy…

Starting with the

• 🐀 We Could Be Rats, Emily Austin

  A story split between two sisters — one contemplating suicide, the other grappling with her sister’s mental health.

  Obviously, I picked this one up because of the title, but I’m so glad I did. No spoilers, but this completely caught me off guard in the best way. For that surprise (and also because this book is a crisp 256 pages), I’m recommending it to everyone. Scurry over to your local bookstore now!

  Also, if this passage isn’t my brand, idk what is:

  “If I could have picked what I was born to be, I would be a fat little rat at a fair. I would ride the Ferris wheel all night. All the carnival lights would reflect in my happy, beady eyes. I would feast on candy apple cores, discarded peanuts, and melon rinds. I would spook the ladies and carnival workers for kicks. When the lights went out, and the gates were shut, I would scurry around on the ground, rummage through the trash cans, and squeak happily with my rat pals. I would live to be about two years old, which is as long as most rats live. I would get my money’s worth out of my little rat lifespan, and I would leave the earth happy to have been there.”

  Might as well be an excerpt from this newsletter…

• 🧀 When The Moon Hits Your Eye, John Scalzi

  One day, the moon turns to cheese.

  What a premise! Kafka crawled so John Scalzi could moonwalk! When The Moon Hits Your Eye was beautiful, moving, and crafted like a collection of short stories. I laughed. I cried. I Googled things about the moon. I was reminded of the hopelessness of lockdown. The uncertainty of …well, everything, right now. I added cheese curds to my grocery order. 10/10 reading experience (and 15/10 cheese puns)

Now for the unhinged books…

Ya. The airplane porn book is here. What are you going to do about it????? Unsubscribe????1

• ✈️ Sky Daddy, Kate Folk

  For this one, I must use the actual synopsis:

  Linda knows that she can’t tell anyone she’s sexually obsessed with planes—nor can she reveal her belief her destiny is to “marry” one of her suitors by dying in a plane crash, thereby uniting her with her soulmate plane for eternity. But when an opportunity arises to hasten her dream of eternal partnership, and the carefully balanced elements of her life begin to spin out of control, she must choose between maintaining the trappings of normalcy and launching herself headlong toward the love she’s always dreamed of.

  This book has appeared on at least five different ‘Best of 2025’ lists, so no, I’m not crazy. Or, at least, I have like-minded company.

  Sky Daddy is more of a dark comedy than its description lets on. What I thought would be uncomfortable object-based erotica was actually a sweet story about a troubled woman making friends. The story is anchored by a healthy recognition that her sexual fixation is abnormal, and we’re slowly given enough backstory about her childhood (aka daddy issues) to make it make sense. While bizarre — a major plot point is the protagonist’s belief that her quarterly vision boards are altering the universe — the story was also heart-warming??? And, more importantly, it was hilarious!

  I figured none of you would trust me on this, so I pulled quotes…

  Sky Daddy has witty workplace commentary:

  “It was unclear whether we were meant to eat the bagels or if they were merely the mascots of the meeting, and so they remained untouched.”

  Honest interiority:

  “And Judy, with the long neck.”

  “Judy’s my best friend from high school.” Karina paused. “I don’t think her neck is that long, is it?”

  “I suppose not,” I said to be polite, though Judy’s neck was indeed freakishly long.

  Incredible depictions of envy for a female friend group (@Ashley Tisdale IYKYK)

  “I emptied my bladder into Esme’s chic black toilet. The dimmer switch was turned low. A cone of incense burned on a ceramic plate set on the toilet’s tank. Beneath the sink sat a metal wastebasket the size of a juice glass, within which lay a single, seemingly unsoiled cotton ball. The sight of the tiny trash can filled me with self-loathing. Compared to the women of the VBB, I felt like a soiled tissue deposited in a seatback pocket. The universe had shone favourably upon them, bestowing them gifts like this condo and Nikki’s robust infant. I hoped the secretion of their success would ooze onto me.”

  Visionboard criticism that genuinely made me lol:

  “I noted they didn’t directly ask for higher salaries— overt material requests must have been considered gauche. Instead, their boards featured items like the satisfaction of helping younger coworkers, learning from their mentors, or, in Nikki’s case, revamping her business website. All of these seemed like tasks that could be accomplished without the collaboration of an infinitely powerful universe.” ¹

  Philosophical thoughts on flying:

  “Flight was suspended animation, a period in which a person was exempt from obligation, cut off from the grounded world.”

  And, if none of that convinced you that this book could be worth a read, this blurb from the author’s acknowledgements really says it all:

  “Many books and sources contributed to the writing of this one. Foremost among them is Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, with which Sky Daddy is in casual conversation.”

  Kate Folk, I don’t know what kind of drugs you’re on, but please keep taking them. Because of you, I will never board a plane the same way again.

• 💻 Several People Are Typing, Calvin Kalsuke

  A work-from-home comedy told entirely through Slack messages.

  The plot starts when an employee accidentally uploads his consciousness into Slack. That sentence alone should be enough for you to buy this book. This was delightful! Weird!!! Existential!!!

  Calvin wrote a novel for the girlies who gossip in side Slacks. This is for anyone who’s had futile conversations with Slackbot (a pivotal character). This is for professionals who’ve bullshitted their way through a directionless brief. This is for anyone who’s looked at their computer screen and felt like it would be better to howl into the void than spend another day online.

  The only reason Several People Are Typing isn’t in my top six is because of a body-swapping plot point that I didn’t love, but am willing to overlook for the sheer joy this story brought me! :dustystick:

  

• 🏩 All Fours, Miranda July

  A middle-aged woman leaves her family to find herself on a cross-country road trip, only to spend two weeks unravelling in a motel 20 minutes from home.

  This book was complete and utter mayhem from top to bottom. At every turn, the main character made choices from a place of incomprehensible lunacy. The woman had a tickle trunk full of terrible ideas, and I could have stayed in her delulu mind forever! That other characters could follow her fabricated fantasies was mindboggling to me. We should all be so lucky to have friends and romances that allow us this level of creative depravity (ie, renovating a hotel room as a nest for an affair, FBI telephotographer role-play, open source menopause advice, interpretative dance social media posts as love letters, street trash graffiti as a proclamation of devotion…). Not to mention the applicator-less tampon foreplay or marriage breakthrough over dog poop…I thought this book was hysterical and fascinating, but it lost points for the overuse of shock value and the glamorization of open marriages.

  Anyway, here’s how I imagine Miranda July writes books:

My next chapter

2026 is all about the library!

I’ve renewed my card.

I’ve placed my holds.

I’ve already wrestled one rubber band off a plastic-coated spine, and I’m ready to be a force of good in my community.

Bring on the neighbourly small talk!!

Bring on the non-commital head nods of recognition!!

This year, I’m waving to local residents, learning names, and finding out where to buy this t-shirt:

Epilogue:

With everything happening in the news, writing this newsletter feels a lot like this:

Some of us are called to serve.

Some of us find God.

Some of us have undiagnosed mental illnesses….

Thank you for being here and indulging my madness! My Sundays are sacred because I spend ‘em with you 💕

Subscribe now

Happy Sunday!

The Jays lost, spooky season is over, and nothing matters.

Expect some lacklustre reviews today because I am simply not in the mood.

Onto the books

The theme of my October reading was ‘holy shit, do you remember the pandemic?”

If that sounds bleak to you, you’re not wrong!

The books below include a lockdown love story, work-from-home drama, and a portrait of incel culture.

Was I ready to be thrust back into a 2020 mindset? Absolutely not!

1. 🖼️ The Art of Vanishing, Morgan Pager (2.5)

   A love story between a woman and a piece of art. No, not figuratively.

   The Art of Vanishing was magical realism done to the most ‘meh’ degree.

   The mustached man from Matisse’s The Music Lesson (below) falls in love with a down-on-her-luck janitor. A Harold and the Purple Crayon-style romance ensues. It could have been cute (who wouldn’t love to run through famous paintings all night???), but I was mostly bored. A LOT of the plot was lamenting, yearning, and generally not communicating.

   The audiobook also suffered from an unfortunate French accent… I know that’s not the author’s fault, but it kind of is for choosing this leading man. Why not the statue of David? Why not a Greek God? Surely art is filled with more bonified hoties than this dude with the sausage fingers???

   

   Anyway… I’m giving this 2.5 stars purely because of the pandemic section. I enjoyed reading about lockdown from the perspective of famous artworks who grappled with not being seen or admired.

2. 👁️ Of The Flesh, (3)

   A collection of modern horror stories, including a child with an eel in his belly who craves broccoli and an African immigrant attaining citizenship via violent trials.

   Rating short story collections is tricky. I liked some, I disliked some, and based on the Goodreads synopsis, I forgot the majority…not a great sign! Was the book uninteresting, or am I just forgetful? A question we simply cannot answer in the time we have today.

3. 🎤 Harriet Tubman Live in Concert Bob The Drag Queen (3)

   Historical figures have come back to life, and Harriet Tubman teams up with a music producer to make a hip-hop album

   If there’s one thing I love, it’s a batshit crazy premise. Bob delivered; however, I don’t think this went far enough! I never felt like I really got inside the main character’s mind and emotions, which I could have overlooked with more wacky antics. Who is Harriet following on Instagram? How does she feel about Labubus?? Facelifts?? The WNBA?!? Ultimately, this felt more like a screenplay than a novel, especially since Bob produced two original songs as Harriet Tubman for the audiobook. Hello!?! Put this on Broadway ASAP!

   Wanted a chance to write some good music
   I mean some hood music
   I’m talking ’bout I wish a motherfucker would music
   Liberate my people through the swamps and the woods music
   Never would have made it if I didn’t know I could music

4. 💻 Several People Are Typing, Calvin Kalsuke (4.5)

   A work-from-home comedy told entirely through Slack messages.

   The plot starts when an employee accidentally uploads his consciousness into Slack. That sentence alone should be enough for you to buy this book.

   This was delightful! Weird!!! Existential!!!

   Calvin wrote a novel for people who like Severance, but also want to giggle. This is for the girlies who create gossip side Slacks. This is for anyone who’s had futile conversations with Slackbot (a pivotal character). This is for professionals who’ve bullshitted their way through a directionless brief. This is for anyone who’s looked at their computer screen and felt like it would be better to howl into the void than spend another day online.

   Several People Are Typing lost .5 stars because there was a weird body-swapping thing at the end that I didn’t love, but I’m willing to overlook it for the sheer joy this story brought me! :dustystick:

   

5. 🙅‍♀️Rejection, Tony Tulathimutte (5)

   A collection of interconnected short stories that have moved me, changed me, completely ripped apart and rebuilt my understanding of the world.

   Holy shit. I don’t even know what to say. This is a Millennial fiction masterpiece! I listened to the entire thing in one sitting. I was transfixed. Gobsmacked! Flabbergasted!!

   I simply cannot comprehend how Tony conceptualized and executed this level of satire. This is genius. This is perfection from top to bottom. The end?!! TONY!! I BOW DOWN TO YOU, MY LITERARY KING!!

   I will be buying a physical copy and re-reading ASAP, to do a better review with annotations. Right now, I am too stunned to provide any commentary beyond “wowzers.”

   Also, he left himself this 5-star rating, and I love that:

Last Thought:

Epilogue

• What did you read this month?

• Anything I should add to my TBR?

Subscribe now

Happy Sunday!

The state of the world has me feeling like Simon Cowell in a spirit tunnel: panicked, overwhelmed, and unsure of what to do with my hands.

@jenniferhudsonshowThe GOAT! @simoncowell

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Despite looking like an alien in a skin suit, this is the most relatable Simon Cowell has ever been. Look at him smiling through the uncertainty!

He is my new poster boy for social anxiety.

If you ever see me clapping like this, just know I’ve taken several edibles in preparation to leave my house.

Onto the books

The theme of my September reading was ‘unhinged hypotheticals.’

What if Hell were modelled after a university campus?

What if the moon were made of cheese?

What if I split myself into two people, one naughty and one nice?

What if I spent $20,000 renovating a motel room to avoid talking to my husband?

These are the big questions I want literature to grapple with! Lucky for you, all of the answers are in the texts below:

1. 🧀 When The Moon Hits Your Eye, John Scalzi (4.5)

   One day, the moon turns to cheese.

   What a premise! Kafka walked scurried so John Scalzi could run!1

   To quote the acknowledgements:

   “…you should know that the science in this book is, and here is an obscure technical term, extremely loosey-goosey”

   Extremely loosey-goosey and extremely entertaining. This book was everything I wanted and more. I came for cheese puns. I left feeling moved.

   When The Moon Hits Your Eye was beautiful, heartfelt, and crafted like a collection of short stories. I laughed. I cried. I Googled things about the moon. I was reminded of the hopelessness of lockdown. The uncertainty of …well, everything right now. Do yourself a favour and pick this one up!

2. 🍈 Everyone’s Seen My Tits: Stories and Reflections from an Unlikely Feminist, Keeley Hazell (3)

   A memoir & essay collection from a former Page 3 model.

   Keeley Hazell’s audiobook reading charmed me enough to give this three stars. I hadn’t known that Keeley from Ted Lasso was based on a real person, and that — coupled with the incredible title and cover — was enough for me to hit play. Her story is interesting, but there wasn’t anything transcending this book from a woman’s individual journey to a must-read. The fame and self-image commentary was poignant, but Emrata’s My Body hit these themes harder in 2021. Still! Worth a read if you’re looking for feminist nonfiction.

3. 🎓 Katabasis, R.F. Kuang (3.5)

   Two graduate students follow their advisor into Hell.

   If you’ve ever seen videos of dog owners saying all of their pet’s favourite words on a fake phone call, that’s what this book was to me. Cambridge as a setting?? An absurd amount of philosophy references?? A journey through Hell?? Nerds falling in love?!? Truly, no combination of words would make me pick up a book faster.

   While I thoroughly enjoyed reading Katabasis, it didn’t change my life the way I hoped. Were my expectations too high? Probably. But something was missing. Salomé, a Goodreads reviewer, articulated the issue perfectly:

   The most revealing flaw in Katabasis is its lack of a clear target audience. The novel gestures toward many readerships but satisfies none:

   1. Too academic for a general audience, yet too shallow for readers steeped in classical or theological traditions.

   2. Marketed as a romance, yet offering none of the emotional or narrative beats of the genre.

   3. Potentially aimed at fans of hell-as-setting, yet doing nothing new.

   …All of this leads to the central problem: Katabasis lacks purpose. It does not advance mythology in new directions, it does not interrogate misogyny with depth, it does not develop its disturbing content into critique. It offers spectacle, but not meaning.
   
   For an author who has positioned herself as a serious voice in contemporary literature, interrogating empire in The Poppy War and language in Babel, this regression is striking. Katabasis is not ambitious, but hollow..

   If anyone else had written this book, I probably would have liked it more.

   I love R.F. Kaung because of the commentary she tackles in her books (ie: Yellowface), and this book was not that. Can’t a girl just write a fun adventure without political satire? Maybe! But it’s hard not to hold Kaung to the standard that she set.

   Also! If the intention was to deliver some cheeky fun, it should have at least been better than that other book about university students going to Hell from two years ago…

4. 🏩 All Fours, Miranda July (4)

   A middle-aged woman leaves her family to find herself on a cross-country road trip, only to spend two weeks unravelling in a motel 20 minutes from home.

   In the most complementary way possible, what the fuck did I just read?

   This book was complete and utter mayhem from top to bottom. At every turn, the main character made choices from a place of incomprehensible lunacy. Just when you thought she might level out, she upped the stakes with something pulled from the tickle trunk of terrible ideas. I could have stayed in her delulu mind forever. That other characters could follow her fabricated fantasies was mindboggling to me. We should all be so lucky to have friends and romances that allow us this level of creative depravity — renovating a hotel room as a nest for an affair, FBI telephotographer role-play, open source menopause advice, interpretative dance social media posts as love letters, street trash graffiti as a proclamation of devotion. Not to mention the applicator-less tampon foreplay or marriage breakthrough over dog poop… I thought this book was hysterical and fascinating, but it lost a star for the overuse of shock value and the glamorization of open marriages.

   Anyway, here’s how I imagine Miranda July writes books:

   

5. 🐍The Thorns, Dawn Kurtagich (1.5)

   A woman reconnects with her best friend from boarding school and is forced to reckon with past trauma.

   This was a flop, and it didn’t have to be! Dawn Kurtagich did so much right: The tween-girl bullying dynamics were nuanced, and the main character’s processing of sexual abuse felt extremely real. If this had been a coming-of-age story, I think she would have nailed it.

   Instead, this was billed as a horror, and none of the scary elements landed. There was mention of a Glass Man? Never showed up. Thorns were scattered places sometimes? Never paid off. The ‘big’ twist was a classic psychological thriller trope, and it fell flat. If I’m being kind, I think the author had some really cool ideas and “killing past trauma” metaphors in her head that simply did not translate on the page.

   Dawn! Your editor should have helped you more!!! You’re talented, but this was bad, and it didn’t have to be!!

• 🧪Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson (4)

  Surely we all know what this book is about….

  One of my favourite and least favourite parts of classic novels is how they read like gossip. Some guy telling some other guy about a spooky story that barely involved him. I feel like there’s a market to remake all of these in a similar format to The Real Housewives...

  Anyway, for a book about a doctor who split himself in two via potion, a lot of these pages are focused on his will and estate. Property law is, and will always be horror fodder (see also: Wuthering Heights, Dracula, Bleak House, A Christmas Carol, etc.) A disfigured beast will be murdering people for sport, but 1800s novelists will spend 25-50% of the book discussing contracts. I guess those are scary, too…

  Beyond being a foundational text in horror, this book gets four stars for one line and one line only:

Last Thought:

Simon Cowell core

Epilogue

• What did you read this month?

• Anything I should add to my TBR?

Subscribe now

Happy Monday!

I’m scheduling today’s newsletter while en route to a bachelorette in Scottsdale — hello from the past!

Future Jamie is most likely puking on the plane home after 3 straight days partying in 40-degree heat. Please send your thoughts, prayers, and electrolytes.

Speaking of which! I so appreciate all the kind messages and support after Sunday’s post.

You nosy little freaks love it when I get vulnerable, and there is nothing I love more than praise!

Onto the books

The theme of my August reading was ‘poorly timed kidney failure,” which only happened in 2 of these books, but 2/5 is a statistically improbable plot point and worth mentioning.

I will also not tell you which books, because that spoils the fun!

Notably, I am taking a break from cannibal horror and airplane romances to reconnect with the normies. I have hit the threshold on how many conversations I’m willing to make uncomfortable based on what I’m reading. At least for now.

Am I healing?

Or am I conforming to a system that wants me to BE SILENT?

Anyway…

• 🌳The Afterdark, E. Latimer (3)

  YA queer horror at a boarding school with a Lovecraftian twist.

  I’m starting to realize that when people say “Lovecraftian twist,” they mean an unknown creature that comes out of a body of water.Any creature. Any body of water. In a way, Aquamarine has a Lovecraftian twist, but I digress…

  I did not realize this was YA when I picked it up, and that impacted my initial thoughts. The ‘spooky boarding school in a forest’ setting had me hooked, but I was missing some emotional depth and reflection from the main character. As a teen, I would have eaten this up. As an adult, it was just okay.

• 👯‍♀️ Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves, Sophie Gilbert (4)

  Dissecting feminism through pop culture from the late 1990s to present day.

  Reading this was like flipping through a nightmare yearbook of every pop culture moment that impacted my self esteem. Yeesh. While not groundbreaking, Sophie Gilbert added interesting causality by going chronologically to find intersections between pop culture, feminism, and porn. I’m really glad this book exists, and it feels like prerequisite reading for fans of this newsletter. On that note:

• ⚽️ Spectacular Things, Becky Dorey-Stein (5)

  Contemporary fiction about sisters, soccer, and sacrifice.

  Do yourself a favour and go buy this book! Becky Dorsey-Stein ripped my heart out and dribbled it across the field for sport. I adored everything about this, especially the nods to real women’s soccer stars and moments. “What a gift.”

• 🐕 In Tongues, Thomas Grattan (3)

  A man becomes an assistant and plaything to a rich New York couple.

  I really wanted to like this queer coming-of-age story, but was mostly annoyed by it. The main character was selfish and flawed and not in a fun way. In a ‘discovering himself at the expense of other people’ way. He did evolve over time (spoiler alert), but the ending was too coincidental for my opinion to evolve with him.

• 🌊 All The Water In The World, Eiren Caffall (4)

  The Day After Tomorrow, but from the perspective of a young girl with autism (allegedly).

  The glaciers have melted, New York is underwater, and a group of researchers and their families have stayed behind to preserve artifacts at the American Museum of Natural History. What a set up! I loved the dystopian world. I loved the lyrical writing. I loved the distinction between “The World As It Is” and “The World As It Was.” However, the narrator being so young and openly bad at relating to people kept me at a distance from the other characters. I was way more interested in what the researchers perspectives would have been — put me inside the mind of a professional nerd any day of the week! More importantly, climate fiction is hitting a littttttllllee too close to home as of late. I prefer my anxiety to come from spooky monster stories than the news, thank you very much...

Last Thought:

Live footage from this Arizona bachelorette:

Epilogue

• What did you read this month?

• Anything I should add to my TBR?

Subscribe now

Happy Sunday!

For the first time ever, my press-on nails have lasted a full week.

I am aghast.

Who knew that following the instructions would yield better results!?! Not I!

Having cute nails changes my entire demeanour. For once I possess the hands of a woman and not a grubby little chimney sweep.

I’m waving my fingers around like that guy with hands for eyes in Pan’s Labyrinth.

I’m pulling on socks with the care of Edward Scissorhands.

I’m clickity clacking on my keyboard like a glittery Nosferatu.

Alas, the longer my nails are, the more typos I find.

These fake-manicured hands are meant to be seen, not heard read.

Sadly, my opinions simply must be blasted onto the internet. And so we persevere.

Onto the books

The theme of my July reading was ‘straight up concerning,” meaning I haven’t been able to discuss any of these books in polite conversation all month.

I fear I have strayed so far away from Reese’s Book Club that I may never be excited for a celebrity casting announcement ever again…

Then again, what is better summer reading than a reincarnated cult leader using the edge of a porcelain figurine to cut off women’s faces??

What else would you pack on vacation if not a novel featuring sexy blood play and an army of decomposing vampire-zombies???

What makes a good beach read besides a story about a woman masturbating on commercial flights in the hopes of climaxing during a plane crash????

I’m curating a Kobo library so foul, so despicable, so unsettling, that it might be time to start a serious BookTok account (iykyk)…

• 🏠 Listen To Your Sister, Neena Viel (3)

  A sister trying to protect her two brothers accidentally creates multiple murderous versions of herself.

  Starting strong with yet another horror novel that I wanted to love, but couldn’t. Unlike other books that have been compared to Jordan Peele’s work, Listen To Your Sister delivered on the smart premise and comedic voice. The concept of sacrificing parts of your identity to be a caregiver was fresh and memorable, but the execution was messy. Many scenes were rushed or confusing, the writing was overrun by adjectives, and I wanted more from the settings (especially in the dreamscape sections). Shoutout to this Goodreads reviewer for pulling one of the more egregious lines from the book…

1. 🔬 Blood Over Bright Haven, M.L. Wang (4)

   The first-ever woman to enter the High Magistry uncovers the secret cost of magic with the help of her janitor-turned-assistant.

   No spoilers in this review because I think everyone should read this book!

   I love a standalone fantasy. I love an allegorical, politically relevant text. I love a romantic subplot. Somehow this book manages to touch on sexism, racism, environmental concerns, and violent protesting, while also establishing a fully realized magical world complete with clear rules, systemic corruption, and nepotism. This is a great title for new-to-fantasy readers (and also my mom! You asked for a recommendation, and I think you might like this).

2. 🩸 Mary: An Awakening of Terror, Nat Cassidy (3.5)

   A middle-aged woman starts hallucinating and hearing voices as she enters perimenopause

   Nat Cassidy won me over with his sincere author’s note. I wasn’t expecting a man to dive into menopausal horror, but his preface set a great tone and emphasized how much Carrie inspired him to write this novel. Sadly, I didn’t love this book.

   The beginning started with so much promise: Mary can’t look in the mirror or at other women her age without watching their faces decompose, and every doctor she sees tells her her symptoms are ‘textbook’ perimenopause.

   This setup could have built to a Carrie-esque female rage finale, and it would have been enough for me! Instead, there were a bunch of additional narrative strands, including a reincarnated serial killer and a religious cult, that I thought distracted from the best parts of the menopause metaphor (although there was a ritual scene with heavy misogynistic themes that will stick with me forever). TLDR: I wish the author had narrowed the scope of this project, and I need more horror novels about menopause. Please and thanks!

3. 🪙 Quicksilver, Callie Hart (4)

   A faerie/vampire romantasy featuring a talking metal substance, a pet fox, and a male lead inexplicably named Kingfisher.

   Alright y’all. We did it! We found another romantasy that didn’t piss me off! Was it perfect? No. Did the writing amaze me? Also no.

   However! The world was interesting! The pacing was great!! The side characters were delightful and not annoying!!! The obligatory morally grey and tattoo-covered shadow daddy came with a bonus mental illness!!! This is exactly the kind of addictive fun I want injected straight into my veins!!!!

   Unfortunately, we do have to discuss the cover. While I might enjoy some spicy fae fun, I would rather not scream it to the world so blatantly. Whatever happened to shame??? If adult stores can give out unbranded shopping bags, we can create more discreet covers! Sex positivity and all that ya ya ya, but for the love of god, I don’t want to traipse about town with a horny-looking cartoon man on my book…

   

4. ✈️ Sky Daddy, Kate Folk (4)

   Speaking of shame…For this one, I must use the actual synopsis:

   Linda knows that she can’t tell anyone she’s sexually obsessed with planes—nor can she reveal her belief her destiny is to “marry” one of her suitors by dying in a plane crash, thereby uniting her with her soulmate plane for eternity. But when an opportunity arises to hasten her dream of eternal partnership, and the carefully balanced elements of her life begin to spin out of control, she must choose between maintaining the trappings of normalcy and launching herself headlong toward the love she’s always dreamed of.

   I won’t lie: I really liked this book.

   I know I know I KNOW! But hear me out… Sky Daddy was more of a dark comedy than its description led on. What I thought would be uncomfortable object-based erotica was actually a sweet story about a troubled woman making friends. The story is anchored by a healthy recognition that her sexual fixation is abnormal, and we’re slowly given enough backstory about her childhood (aka daddy issues) to make it make sense. While bizarre — a major plot point is the protagonist’s belief that her quarterly vision boards are altering the universe — the story was also heart-warming??? And, more importantly, it was hilarious!

   I figured none of you would trust me on this, so I pulled quotes. Sky Daddy has workplace humour:

   “It was unclear whether we were meant to eat the bagels or if they were merely the mascots of the meeting, and so they remained untouched.”

   Honest interiority:

   “And Judy, with the long neck.”

   “Judy’s my best friend from high school.” Karina paused. “I don’t think her neck is that long, is it?”

   “I suppose not,” I said to be polite, though Judy’s neck was indeed freakishly long.

   Incredible comparison of the other women in her outer circle (who hasn’t felt like this in another woman’s home?)

   “I emptied my bladder into Esme’s chic black toilet. The dimmer switch was turned low. A cone of incense burned on a ceramic plate set on the toilet’s tank. Beneath the sink sat a metal wastebasket the size of a juice glass, within which lay a single, seemingly unsoiled cotton ball. The sight of the tiny trash can filled me with self-loathing. Compared to the women of the VBB, I felt like a soiled tissue deposited in a seatback pocket. The universe had shone favourably upon them, bestowing them gifts like this condo and Nikki’s robust infant. I hoped the secretion of their success would ooze onto me.”

   Commentary on visionboarding in general that genuinely made me lol:

   “I noted they didn’t directly ask for higher salaries— overt material requests must have been considered gauche. Instead, their boards featured items like the satisfaction of helping younger coworkers, learning from their mentors, or, in Nikki’s case, revamping her business website. All of these seemed like tasks that could be accomplished without the collaboration of an infinitely powerful universe.” 1

   Some pretty sound transportation logic:

   “…all plans are male in spirit, just as all boats are female, and helicopters possess the souls of mischievous children.”

   Philosophical notes on flying:

   “Flight was suspended animation, a period in which a person was exempt from obligation, cut off from the grounded world.”

   And, if none of that convinced you that this book could be worth 4 stars, this blurb from the author’s acknowledgements really says it all:

   “Many books and sources contributed to the writing of this one. Foremost among them is Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, with which Sky Daddy is in casual conversation.”

   Kate Folk, I don’t know what kind of drugs you're on, but please keep taking them. You’re reminding me that the best art is freaky, weird, and more than a little taboo.

   Because of you, I will never board a plane the same way again.

Last Thought:

How it feels reading Romantasy

Epilogue

• What did you read this month?

• Anything I should add to my TBR? Maybe something nice and normal and inoffensive???

Subscribe now

Happy Sunday!

Despite my best attempts, Olivia Summer has yet to catch on.

My inbox continues to be peppered with Summer 2025 name suggestions that span every possible interest and/or dietary preference.

Some are fruit-themed:

Fish-themed:

Vegetable-themed:

@spam.cgwaffle.for.fansi laughed out loud😭 #fyp #viral #forupage

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The current state of America-themed:

And, my personal favourite, ‘beach bum but make it #girlboss’-themed.

I fear we are way too late to meet quorum for this decision.

Instead, overworked marketers will continue bludgeoning email subject lines with more and more desperate attempts to coin the season…. At least until the Pumpkin Spice Latte resurfaces sometime in mid-July.

The spinning wheel of time is relentless and cruel.

Anyway! Onto the books…

The theme of my June reading was “uncomfortable fixations,” which should probably also be the tagline of this Substack.

This month’s books spanned:

• Binge eating

• A woman hellbent on getting married on a plantation

• Another woman hellbent on making croquembouche the morning of her wedding

• An artist obsessed with her hero’s personal life

• A clown obsessed with a magician

To be fair, who among us didn’t have a crush on Criss Angel, Mindfreak?1

• 👻 When The Reckoning Comes, LaTanya McQueen (3)

  A woman attends her childhood friend’s wedding on a haunted plantation.

  I love horror with a point to make, and this premise promised a lot. Sadly, the execution fell flat.

  I get it! It’s hard to land a horror novel. You run the risk of a Scooby Doo ending (it was the janitor all along!), or leaving parts of the plot unresolved (was it really a ghost? Or my imagination!?!). This book somehow managed to do both and glossed over the spookiest bits. Where, pray tell, was the reckoning!!!?!

  Unfortunately for McQueen, Jordan Peele set the bar for race-themed horror way too high. I picked up this book hoping for new, ghost-filled commentary on modern brides romanticizing the Antebellum period, and I left with an even deeper appreciation for how incredible Get Out is.

1. 🤡 Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One, Kristen Arnett (3)

   A struggling clown in Florida becomes infatuated with an older magician and questions her commitment to the craft.

   This book was delightfully niche. How many LGBTQ+ coming-of-age clown novels can you name?? One thing I love about Kristen Arnett is her dedication to Florida culture. She has crafted a full fleet of books about gay women in Florida with hyper-specific interests. The novel that turned me on to her writing, for example, is about a Florida-based taxidermist grappling with her father’s suicide.

   Her writing is visceral, gritty, and strange, but I do find the plots slow. Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One wasn’t my favourite, but it earns bonus points for its title, the opening scene, and for the experimental section where an affair plays out in the same steps as a magic performance.

2. 🎨 My Friends, Fredrik Backman (4.5)

   A young artist meets her hero and learns about the childhood friends who encouraged his career.

   There is not a man on earth who has made me cry more than Fredrik Backman. He is a beautiful writer and also a sadistic monster who must be stopped because I simply cannot take it anymore…

   My Friends leans on the timeless tradition of an older person taking forever to tell a younger person a story (see also: The Princess Bride, Definitely Maybe, How I Met Your Mother, my grandfather describing his route to dinner, etc.).

   At it’s core, this was a book about farts — a divisive topic in this newsletter, especially for one specific reader.2 Let it be known that bodily functions do have a place in literature, and Stephen King would do well to learn from this example!

   Despite my love of all things Backman, this book lost half a star because it felt like he was adding twists for the sake of twists, and I’m not a huge fan of the “let me tell you our life story” narrative structure. That said, this line has already made its way into my lexicon:

   “..art doesn’t need critics, art has enough enemies already. Art needs friends.”

   Thank you all for being friends of my art!

3. 🐷 Piglet, Lottie Hall (5)

   A woman completely unravels in the lead-up to her wedding.

   Holy shit. This book had me stressed to the max, and 98% of it was descriptions of food. The sheer restraint in this storytelling is insane — Her fiancé tells a secret that we never learn, Piglet is only ever referred to by her nickname, and dialogue is left hanging in the air while she obsessively thinks about food. It shouldn’t work, but it does because the author perfectly captures the pressure of trying to maintain composure and control over a life that is very clearly falling apart. Lottie, you cheeky little minx! How did you do this??? And a debut, no less!! Y’all KNOW I love a debut!

   “She was proud, in a way, that she could still smile as the delicious life she had been savouring turned maggoty in her mouth.”

On My TBR:

From the same woman who brought me Unhinged — the erotica novel about an inanimate door —comes another deeply concerning recommendation that I cannot believe I promised to read.

Sky Daddy by Kate Folk follows a woman who falls in love with a literal airplane.

Linda knows that she can’t tell anyone she’s sexually obsessed with planes—nor can she reveal her belief her destiny is to “marry” one of her suitors by dying in a plane crash, thereby uniting her with her soulmate plane for eternity. But when an opportunity arises to hasten her dream of eternal partnership, and the carefully balanced elements of her life begin to spin out of control, she must choose between maintaining the trappings of normalcy and launching herself headlong toward the love she’s always dreamed of.

There are no words.

But! What are books for if not to take you to places you never expected? Literature is made to expand horizons! To push limits!! To explore ideas that have never been explored before!!!

It’s also worth noting that this book has a higher Goodreads rating than every other book in this list besides My Friends.

Either it’s subversive literary genius, or the world is full of closeted airplane freaks (no offence).

Find out next month, I guess!

Last Thought:

Another one for the public’s consideration

…

Epilogue

• What did you read this month?

• Anything I should add to my TBR?

Subscribe now

Welcome to June!

The year is half over, and I’m looking at my list of goals like 🫠

Next week I’ll be coming at you hard and fast with another totally normal summer bucket list so you can all hold me accountable….

Side Piece Spotlight

A huge shoutout and thank you to this subscriber1 who started a 5 a.m. fight about my review of 11/22/63 despite never having read the book.

This is exactly the kind of controversy I aim to inspire!

What is a Substack for if not to incite rage?!

Why do you read if not to harass me before sunrise!?!?

This reader is a hero, both for responding to my pleas for engagement and for their impassioned support of the tummy issue community:

It is worth noting that they went out of their way to distance themselves from said community, but they are a vocal ally nonetheless.

A good example to keep in mind as we enter Pride Month.

Onto the books…

The theme of my May reading was “Problematic Lusting.”

We have characters yearning for married women, best friends, enemies, and grooms.

Spring is all about cheeky little crushes, after all!

At least that’s how I’m justifying the surge of this content on my TikTok feed….2

• 👻 Tell Me I’m Worthless, Allison Rumfitt (4)

  A haunted house story about the trans experience, cancel culture, and fascism.

  This one is not springtime crush-forward, but holy heck was it good!

  It’s also divisive! So many people on GoodReads didn’t finish the book because it was too transphobic, misogynistic, and racist - not realizing that was the whole damn point. Throughout the novel, The House (fascism) seeps into the city and moulds the characters’ viewpoints in polarizing directions that exploit the grey areas of intersectional feminism. It also narrates with some of the most poignant and disturbing political discourse I‘ve ever heard:

  Now, if three girls enter a house and only two leave, who is to blame? And if both girls tell a different story, but you read online that you have to BELIEVE WOMEN, what do you? Do you decide one is a woman and one isn't, so you can believe one them but not the other? Do you take the side of the woman who is most like you? Or the most intersectional one? But one is rich, and white, and trans, and the other is rich, and Asian and a lesbian, and cis (?), and fuck, who wins here? In the end it's so hard to choose where your sympathies settle. So, you go online and find an `intersectionality score calculator' on the internet…' Numbers have been known to lie. Numbers have been known to show bias, statistics often have racist undertones, for example.

  So, there's just two girls leaving a house and maybe you don't have to take a side, maybe you can empathize with them both and hope they get the therapy and help they need and can learn to forgive one another.

  No. You can't do that.

  Like come on! How perfect! I have never seen woke commentary executed so well - and in a horror novel!?!? This probably should have been a 5-star, but some of the violence felt gratuitous, and it was so rooted in present-day politics that I’m unsure how it will age. Ask me again at the end of the year.

• 💒 The Wedding People, Alison Espach (4)

  A woman at rock bottom accidentally books the only available room in a destination wedding hotel block.

  This book was delightful! The characters were quirky and interesting in a way that felt genuine (more on that later), and at least three mini-twists moved the plot forward in a book otherwise centred on a woman’s mid-life crisis. It lost one star because some sections dragged, especially after delivering one of THE BEST opening chapters I have ever read — for real, everyone should go read those first pages right now.

• 🐉 When The Moon Hatched, Sarah A. Parker (1)

  A romantasy about…something…with dragons that turn into moons…sometimes?

  I need to ban myself from BookTok, because this was billed to me as “literary fantasy” with “beautiful prose.” They meant that this book had 730 pages of nonsense that kept it from being erotica. Reading this monstrosity was a feat of endurance, and I am still not sure what happened? We shifted from a #girlboss bestie assassin revenge story to a royal family drama with an amnesia plotline? There was an Ocean’s 11-style poker scene for no reason?? Someone we’d never met was revealed to be someone else’s secret daughter??? There was a 20-page glossary that I did not read (and then paid for dearly when not a single magical creature was described beyond name). Basically:

  

• 🪄 And He Shall Appear, Kate van de Borgh (3.5)

  A Cambridge music student becomes obsessed with the campus f*ckboy who also happens to be a magician.

  Based on this description, you’d think this book was made for me. And you’d be correct!!!! I am a goth-adjacent nerd, and my deepest desire is to slurp up dark academia novels in a Pinterest-inspired book nook.

  And He Shall Appear has been added to the never-ending list of books that want to be The Secret History. It — like most — did not live up to the source text. While I found the characters and prose mesmerizing in the first act, the plot didn’t delve far enough into the occult elements to fully pay off. If I had a nickel…

  Ultimately, reading this was kind of like eating a gas station hot dog when you really want barbeque: it’s not right, but it’s okay.

• 🧀 Big Swiss, Jen Beagin (2)

  A depressed transcriber starts an affair with a woman whose therapy sessions she’s been listening to.

  This was fine. It had some insightful commentary on trauma and donkeys that I liked, but the rest of the book felt like it was trying too hard to be quirky and interesting for the sake of being quirky and interesting. Similarly, the dialogue felt unnecessarily vulgar throughout, and it takes a lot to make me say that! I’m all for being strange and yucky and visceral as long as it feels purposeful in a way that this did not. I’m sorry, Jen Beagin! You’re a funny writer, but I didn’t love this story.

Last Thought:

Me reading any dark academia release ever…

Epilogue

• What did you read this month?

• Anything I should add to my TBR?

• Who else wants to fight me???

Subscribe now

Whoops!

I accidentally took three weeks off…

Me!

This girl!!!

The same girl who cried if her homework was late.

The same girl who once listed “being punctual” as her best quality in an empowerment-themed dance class.

The same girl who wrote a blog post during her honeymoon.1

Clearly, I am becoming something new.

Something dangerous.

A bad bitch.

The type of woman who can say: “You know what? I’m too stressed to write today. I’ll just profusely apologize in next week’s article. Do you think that’s okay??? Will everyone hate me!?”

To which my husband will say, “No one will hate you.”

And I’ll proceed to mentally freak out for 15 minutes about the point of this blog and if anyone cares about what I have to say and that maybe I would be better off just quitting everything, deleting social media, and going back to school to become a plumber so that I can work with my hands and never look at a screen ever again...

‘Tis the season, after all.

My seasonal depression has officially left the building, and I am ready for a spring refresh.

I have new highlights in my hair, a hot pink pedicure on my toes, and I’m on day four of Jergens Natural Glow moisturizer.

Despite the orange tint between my fingers, you can’t tell me shit.

I can do anything.

I am not of this Earth anymore.

I am a bird.

I am from the heavens

I am Katy Perry singing What a Wonderful World to Gayle King during their 3-minute space adventure, convinced that all of womankind will accept me as their queen when I land.

Though I’m objectively very hot right now, most of my time away has not been fresh, flirty, or fun.

I’ve been neglecting My Side Piece for my main gig (the kind that pays me real money).

A tale as old as time, really.

How sustainable is it to have multiple relationships on the go?? Eventually, something has to give.

April had me thinking a lot about my blogging endurance.

Is this finally the moment I say ‘adios’ to Substack and use my weekends to feel the rain on my skin since no one else can feel it for me and only I can let it in??

Don’t let the typos, run-on sentences and niche topics fool you: My Side Piece takes work.

It’s not labour of love, exactly… More like an insanity harvest.

This is where I get the kinks out. Where I play and try new things.

It’s also the part of my process that helps me feel like a real writer with a real readership.

Without this blog, my writing would have no witnesses.

You don’t see the novel I’m working on in the background.

You aren’t invited to my early morning wordcount/freakout sessions.

You aren’t privy to the incoherent plot texts I send myself throughout the day, like these:

Or these…

Or this really confounding one…

If no one reads my writing, how can I still feel like a writer?

If Katy Perry goes to space without a PR tour, did she even advance womankind??

If I’m not posting essays about toilet seats, incest, or cicadas, how will anyone believe I’m an artist??!?!?

Basically, I need this outlet to feel good about my creative self.

My Side Piece is my emotional support blog.

It exists purely to unleash the strangest parts of my artistic nonsense, and I am dumbfounded that any of you want to be along for the ride.

Thank you for being here and bearing with all of my chaos. We’re going to bend this shit until it breaks!

No more funny business!! We’re back on schedule!!!

Onto the books..

The theme of my April reading was ‘yucky spooky,’ meaning cannibalism, full body skin-shedding, ghosts, and ritual sacrifice.

A.k.a., the usual Easter fare.

• 🥩 The Lamb, Lucy Rose (4.5)

  A dark fairy tale about a cannibalistic mother-daughter duo

  I loved this book. It was haunting, grotesque, and oddly moving?? Lucy Rose dared to ask, “What would it be like to be raised by a cannibal?” and I think she nailed it. Plus, I have not stopped thinking about this review:

• 🇺🇸 11/22/63, Stephen King (2)

  A time travel adventure surrounding the JFK assassination

  Well…it was almost about the JFK assassination. A solid 2% of the book was at least… The rest was a dude’s fantasy about how fun it would be to live in the 1960s with 2011 money and hindsight.

  Stephen… I have tons of respect for you. You are the GOAT of contemporary horror. You wrote one of the best craft books of all time. You almost got divorced because of your deep love for Mambo No. 5. In so many ways, you are my hero.

  This book, however, almost brought me to the brink. Why was this so long??? Why were there pages of diarrhea commentary and only two lines about segregation??? I can forgive a lot for a cool premise, but two things I cannot get past are poop talk and unnecessary page count.

• 🦌 Brat, Gabriel Smith (2)

  A haunted house story about grief and featuring a full-body skin shed.

  This was supposed to be a horror novel infused with deadpan humour. On both counts, I found it fell flat — not because of the writing style, but because of the plot. Too many vibes, not enough story.

• 🎨 Voice like a Hyacinth, Mallory Pearson (3)

  A group of friends turn to ritual sacrifice to better their chances in art school

  I wanted to love this book so much. The beginning was amazing — atmospheric, colourful and engaging — but it lost me by the second act. The setting, premise, and characters hooked me, but something was missing in the connective tissue. Overall, I felt like the horror elements were glossed over, the metaphors weren’t fully realized, and the ending was too clean. GAH I WANTED THIS TO BE A 5 SO BAD.

• 🏚️ Model Home, Rivers Solomon (5)

  A modern haunted house story touching on racism in American suburbs

  Wowzers, did I ever love this book. This is the first novel I’ve read by Rivers Solomon, and I feel a deep dive coming…. The writing! So gritty!! So dark!!!

  A lot of Goodreads reviewers didn’t love the ending, and I totally get why. Horror novels tend to fall apart in the third act because explanations ruin the magic (ex: Scooby Doo is more interesting when the haunting is real and not a disgruntled person with a mask). Personally, I thought the reveal worked, but I’d love to hear your thoughts! If you’re into stories about trauma and ghosts, pick this one up and send me a dm!!

Last Thought:

Me reading back my own newsletters….

Epilogue

• What did you read this month?

• Anything I should add to my TBR?

• Do you agree with my reviews!? Tell me I’m right! Tell me I’m wrong! Send me hate mail! Engage, god dammit!

Subscribe now

Happy Sunday!

Boy, is it bleak out there. Is there anything worse than a cold March day?

Get over it already, Winter. Your moment has come and gone!

My reading (and writing) always takes a hit this time of year. I am simply too busy staring out the window and trying to remember what it’s like to feel the sun.

Seasonal depression clings to the butt of this month like a dingleberry.

That was a gross metaphor, but it’s too late to change it now. I have no proofreaders anyway.

This newsletter is lawless!

I am unhinged!

This is March Madness in its most literal and nerdiest form!

Please, for the love of God, let there be blue skies soon!!

Onto the books…

This month’s theme is ‘imaginative depression,' meaning books that are sad in new and unusual ways.

No commonplace doomscrolls or family tragedies here! We’ve got a killer lineup of…

• Children fighting to the death for sport!

• A magical woman being held captive by her husband!!

• Anthropomorphized mental health monsters that consume people whole!!!

• A series of suicide note drafts!!!!

There are endless ways to be miserable, and I’m here to bring you options.

• 🕷️ The Monsters in Our Shadows, Edward J. Cembal (3.5)

  A dystopian future where some humans have ‘Shivers’ — personal, Peter Pan-style shadow monsters that grow until they inevitably eat their hosts — and the rest of civilization does their best to ignore it.

  This book’s opening had me locked in. I was ready to be ruined. I mentally prepared to have my mind blown with depression metaphors. What a friggin’ premise!

  Sadly, I lost interest as the plot moved along. There were some interesting discussions around navigating the Shivers, but the book was way more fantasy and adventure-forward than I expected. This is apparently being developed into a film, which I think is the right medium for this story — super visual and plot-driven — where I would have loved a more emotional and psychological interpretation of this concept.

  This book was also a debut (y’all know I’m obsessed with a good debut!) Edward, I can’t wait to see what you come up with next.

• 🐀 We Could Be Rats, Emily Austin (4)

  A story split between two sisters — one contemplating suicide, the other grappling with her sister’s mental health.

  If there was ever a book that, based on title alone, I should love, it’s this one. Just read this excerpt:

  “If I could have picked what I was born to be, I would be a fat little rat at a fair. I would ride the Ferris wheel all night. All the carnival lights would reflect in my happy, beady eyes. I would feast on candy apple cores, discarded peanuts, and melon rinds. I would spook the ladies and carnival workers for kicks. When the lights went out, and the gates were shut, I would scurry around on the ground, rummage through the trash cans, and squeak happily with my rat pals. I would live to be about two years old, which is as long as most rats live. I would get my money’s worth out of my little rat lifespan, and I would leave the earth happy to have been there.”

  If that ain’t me….

  Despite the rodent-centric prose, I didn’t love this book at first. The voice bugged me, and I couldn’t figure out the point UNTIL EMILY AUSTIN CLOBBERED ME at the halfway point. No spoilers, but this one really caught me off guard. For that reason — and also because this book is a crisp 256 pages — I’m recommending it to everyone. Scurry over to your local bookstore now!

• 🦭 A Sweet Sing of Salt, Rose Sutherland (3.5)

  The Selkie Wife folktale reimagined as a sapphic love story.

  Another debut! This one was set in 1800s Nova Scotia, which is perfectly March-level bleak. The writing was beautiful and featured some of my favourite things: harsh scenery, gothic undertones, yearning, folklore references, and sea creatures. Yes, yes, yes!

  The pacing, however, was quite slow. It felt even more drawn out because I was never surprised by the plot. Why? This book is billed as a retelling of The Selkie Wife, but the love interest being a selkie is the “twist” at the end…

  Rose, baby, don’t give it all away for free. Let us guess a little!

  I wish I liked this book more, but my disappointment was entirely rectified by this Goodreads review:

  

• ☀️ Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins (4)

  Haymitch’s trauma origin story featuring every Hunger Games character cameo you can think of.

  Listen. Anything Suzanne Collins wants to add to the Hunger Games series, I will eat up like a little piggie in slop. Oink oink oink, Suzanne! Keep it coming! This disgusting ham is smackin’ her lips for more!!

  Now that that’s outta the way… I do have thoughts. Sunrise on the Reaping was clearly built for goop-guzzling fans like me. Every few pages, there was a new parallel or reference made to make us scream “squee squee squee” and stamp our little hooved feet. Did it work? Absolutely! Did it add anything to the universe??? Meh…

  The real ones already knew what would happen since Katniss and Peeta studied Haymitch’s Games in the original series. Suzanne had to do some revisionist history to add new details to the story. By contrast, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was a completely new view into the history of the Games (and into the psyche of one of the most iconic villains of all time). If anything, I wish this prequel had spent more time with Haymitch in the years between winning the Games and the uprising with Katniss. Instead, those 25 years are glossed over in a few pages about his alcoholism.

  Did I still cry like a baby? Yeah.

  Did I spend this whole book picturing teenage Haymitch as present-day Woody Harrelson? Double yeah.

  Should you read this book? Absolutely. And why not reread the whole series while you’re at it?

Looking for the perfect book? Let me play matchmaker!

I’m here to help you find your next funny, sexy, emotional, or “what the fuck was that” page-turner.

This is my plea to become your book selection private eye — like Veronica Mars if she were a giant nerd.

Submit your request, and I’ll share my recs in a future My Side Plot newsletter👇

Last Thought

Epilogue

• What did you read this month?

• Is March grinding you down, too?

• Anything I should add to my TBR?

• Do you agree with my reviews!? Tell me I’m right! Tell me I’m wrong! Send me hate mail! Engage, god dammit!

Subscribe now

Happy Oscars!

A night built to judge celebrities while sporting an elbow-length Ruffles chip bag on my right hand and a “smooth moves” digestive tea in my left.

That’s showbiz, babbbbyyyy

Below is my read carpet for every book that starred in my February StoryGraph.

This month’s theme is ‘mommy issues,' which is not a sandbox I play in often.

You can generally find me planting my flag deep in the “daddy issues” dirt next door, but variety is the spice of life, they say.

Let reading expand your horizons!1

The mommy issues:

• 🍩 I Hope This Finds You Well, Natalie Sue (5)

  A depressed employee accidentally gains access to her entire workplace’s private emails. Hilarity ensues.

  This debut novel(!!!) is a workplace comedy with a scathing portrait of corporate culture. It’s witty, sarcastic, and bleak, yet somehow humanizes even your worst, most annoying, microwave-fish-for-lunch colleagues. Imagine the office setting in Severence mixed with the heart and sweetness of any Fredrik Backman book. If you’ve ever felt personally victimized by working in a cubicle, please bump this to the top of your inbox!! (Also, how perfect is the title?)

  Mom drama scale: 3/5

• ♟Intermezzo, Sally Rooney (2.5)

  Two brothers navigating the death of their father go on opposite dating sprees to manage their grief.

  This book has love triangles, vivid character descriptions, and an older woman dating a guy with braces, but I cannot give it a good review. Sally, my angel. Your style is so unique. So beautiful. So melodic. But you’re abusing your own voice. Some of these pages - I hate to say it - were illegible.

  Mom drama scale: 3/5

• 🌙 I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman (5)

  A dystopian sci-fi about a group of women trapped in a bunker without any memory of how or why they got there.

  This book is mesmerizing and strange. It’s philosophical to the point that it transcends any sense of time or place - like one giant riddle or the half-baked poetry you read on a bathroom stall wall. However, Jacqueline Harpman doesn’t give us any answers (that’s too easy!). The whole book is a series of scenes about female friendship, loneliness, survival, and grappling with the meaninglessness of life. The parallels to the Holocaust are striking, but there are universal lessons woven into almost every line. Two examples that I highlighted:

  “In the absence of choice, we are left with the choice to adapt.”

  “Perhaps you never have time when you are alone? You only acquire it by watching it go by in others."

  I was torn between giving this 4 or 5 stars because of how bleak it was to read in the context of the world right now. Ultimately, the fact that it’s still so poignant and was published in 1995 pushed me over the edge. You simply cannot deny perfection.

  Mom drama scale: 4/5

• 🪦 I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy (5)

  The holy grail of mommy and food issues written by a former Nickelodeon child star.

  I know I’m late to the party on this memoir, but holy moly was it amazing. I listened to the audiobook and gasped no less than four times. That opening??????!?! Jennette, are you kidding???!? I plowed through this entire masterpiece in a day. To give you a sneak peek of some of the most unhinged mothering I have ever read about:

  “Well, sweetheart, if you really want to know how to stay small, there’s this secret thing you can do… it’s called calorie restriction.”

  Chilling.

  Mom drama scale: 17/5

• 🗞️ Like Mother, Like Mother, Susan Rieger (2.5)

  A multi-generational story about three women who are all insufferable and hold grudges about it — one going so far as to write a slander novel about her own mother.

  This book is obsessed with referencing its own characters. The youngest quoted her mother in every👏single👏 conversation👏 despite admittedly hating her for over half of the story. Who does that? Why would anyone be her friend?? How many family-isms can an acquaintance possibly endure?!? How many quotable lines can one woman possibly have?!?! Ultimately, this was a character-driven novel, and I didn’t care about a single person in it.

  Mom drama scale: 5/5

  Important side note that my actual mother bought me this book for Christmas. Don’t think she knew what she was doing there…Or maybe she did??? Mom, are we okay?

Looking for the perfect book? Let me play matchmaker!

I’m here to help you find your next funny, sexy, emotional, or “what the fuck was that” page-turner.

This is my plea to become your book selection private eye — like Veronica Mars if she was a giant nerd.

Submit your request, and I’ll share my recs in a future My Side Plot newsletter👇

My TBR

Two new releases I’ve been waiting for!

1. 🖥️ Hermit, Chris McQueer (Feb 27). The time has come! Incel fiction is officially here, and I’m ready for it to disgust me!

2. 👩‍⚖️ Saving Five, Amanda Nguyen (Mar 4). A memoir from the activist who created the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights, just in time for International Women’s Day.

Last Thought

My ratings in February:

The spirit of Wiarton Willie compelled my reviews all month... More decisive action!

“Loved it” or “hated it” rankings only!

If you ain’t first, you’re last!

Clearly, there is much to learn from our groundhog brethren (even when they doom us to endless winter).

Epilogue

• What did you read this month?

• Anything I should add to my TBR?

• Do you agree with my reviews!? Tell me I’m right! Tell me I’m wrong! Send me hate mail! Engage, god dammit!

Subscribe now

Happy Super Bowl Sunday!

There is an unbelievable amount of snow in Toronto right now.

It’s the perfect day to order in, watch the game, and finish a book.

Tight ends all around!

Before you settle in, I’m here with a play-by-play of everything I read in January.

First, a note on ratings

You can’t have a game without a referee!

To know me is to know that I love a rubric. Here’s what each rating means to me:

• 1 star = we are enemies. A book so offensively awful that I’m willing to publicly pick a fight. Do you understand how much I hate confrontation? How much reverence I have for anyone who writes a book?! I cannot in good conscience rate something this low unless it really really really deserves it.

• 2 stars = this was bad! I’m annoyed enough to have built a case for why I didn’t like this book, but there may be 1-2 redeeming qualities that have kept it safe from my full wrath.

• 3 stars = you almost had me. A solid, middle-of-the-road rating. If Marie Kondo asked, a 3-star book would not spark joy, but I might consider keeping it anyway because you never know when you might need that particular book.

• 4 stars = I liked this a lot! Something is preventing this book from getting a perfect score, but I would still happily sing its praises.

• 5 stars = you are a god and I kneel at your altar. These are my top-shelf books. This rating is reserved for titles that have left me dumbfounded, inspired, inconsolable, or somehow changed because of how amazing they were.

Generally, I treat 3 stars as my baseline. Every book starts there and is rewarded or penalized as I see fit.

Half points. I do give half points because StoryGraph lets me. Simple as that! They also have the option to do .25 ratings, but that’s outrageous and frankly overwhelming to even consider.

Down, Set, Hut! Onto the books

The overall vibe of the January was ‘get me the fuck out of here.’

As such, my reading skewed toward fantasy. I swapped the darkness, dry skin, and the impending collapse of society for shadow daddies, dragon scales, and the impending collapse of fictional societies.

• 🐠 Playground, Richard Powers (3)

  The twist in this book was, admittedly, very cool. That said, I had to consult Reddit to fully grasp the nuance, which is a red flag! I shouldn’t need to do more reading if you’ve had my attention for 300+ pages…but maybe I’m being harsh. If you’re interested in sea creatures or AI and don’t mind a slow pace, pick this one up.

• ♠️ One Dark Window, Rachel Gillig (3)

  A romantasy about a girl with a monster stuck in her head, which sounds cool, but was less interesting than I imagined. I expected it to be grittier and more metaphor-heavy than it was — and that’s on me. The only thing wrong with this book was the poems at the top of every chapter gave away every single twist? What the heck was that!?!? Ultimately, I will not continue this series (even with the cliffhanger ending)

• 🐍The Serpent and The Wings of Night (4) and The Ashes and The Star-Cursed King (3.5), Carissa Broadbent

  I love a duology, and these books had everything I wanted: vampires, a tournament to the death, major plot twists, a pinch of spice, and — of course — some major daddy issues. Just a damn good time!

  Also, I have a soft spot for this line in Carissa Broadbent’s author bio: “I live with my fiance, one very well behaved rabbit, one very poorly behaved rabbit, and one perpetually skeptical cat in Rhode Island”

• 🥪 Sandwich, Catherine Newman (3.5)

  A literary novel about a mother exploring grief while on a week-long family cottage trip with her adult children. Sandwich had funny prose, quippy dialogue, and quirky characters, but didn’t score higher because I thought the family drama needed more stakes. An enjoyable read nonetheless. PLUS! It had this quote that my longtime readers will enjoy (iykyk)

  ”The girls are on the bed, watching TikToks about somebody who filled his basement with water and turned it into an eel habitat. Or maybe I didn’t hear that right.” (pg 45)

• 🖼️ The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (4.5)

  A classic for a reason! It’s philosophical. It’s spooky. It’s even more relevant now in the era of Botox, Instagram Face, and The Substance. We are DUE for a retelling! There is an influencer story to be told, and I am screaming into the void for someone to tell it.

• 🐉 Onyx Storm, Rebecca Yarros (2)

  Without giving any spoilers….This book was confusing. I’M SORRY! IT WAS BAD! If you disagree, come fight me on it like this diva👇

A few gripes with soft SPOILERS to read at your own risk:

• The plot was 80% filler, but the important parts were so rushed that they didn’t make sense. Look me dead in the eye and tell me you knew exactly what happened in those last ten pages. I dare you.

• The main character denied or avoided the core conflict for the entire book? Literally, your man is losing his soul piece by piece, but we’re fighting about sleeping next to each other??? K.

• Side characters died and left and came back and I was completely unmoved. Why? Because none of them mattered or because the danger never felt real.

• Some plot holes were explained away with some suspiciously convenient developments. (Oh, that’s the only breed of dragon that can talk to everyone without a bond??? How strange!)

Extreme fans are trying to trick me into believing this was a good book based on clues they’re digging up from the first two books.

I don’t care how many deep cuts you can find that maybe-possibly-could-potentially allude to something down the road that isn’t confirmed yet but might actually be super cool if it happens.

That’s not why I read books.

I don’t want everything to feel like a pop quiz on how closely I remember names and dragon colours and signets and the map at the front that I honestly cannot believe people actually reference because truly does it matter that much????

This is romantasy… It shouldn’t be that hard!

If I wanted to drive myself nuts looking for easter eggs, I’d become a Swiftie…

Will I read the rest of the series? Yes, absolutely!

I love anything that brings non-readers into the fold, and I simply cannot deny that Fourth Wing has become part of the cultural zeitgeist.

I really liked the first book, and I’m on my knees begging Rebecca to stick the landing in this series. I know you can do better than this!!!

I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for you! How dare you!

INTRODUCING THE MY SIDE PLOT HELP DESK

Listen. I read a lot.

If you’re looking for the right book (ie: an alt to Fourth Wing), want a specific review, or are trying to figure out the genre that suits you best - you’ve come to the right place! Shoot me a note. I’ll take whatever request you can think of!

Looking for a hyper-specific vibe?

Want to find something similar to a movie or song that you love?

Looking for a hybrid between your two fave books?

Hit me up, and I’ll find your perfect match👇

My TBR

In 2025, I am focused on one thing and one thing only: The newest Hunger Games prequel.

Sunrise on The Reaping by Suzanne Collins comes out on March 18th. Who is coming with me to this midnight release party????

Epilogue

• What have you read so far this year?

• Anything I should add to my TBR?

• Do you have a reading goal?

• Do you agree with my reviews!? Tell me I’m right! Tell me I’m wrong! Send me hate mail! Engage, god dammit!

Subscribe now

We’re back, baby!

I’m splashing into your post-holiday inbox swamp with —you guessed it — a roundup list!

You know I love to be shocking.

Provocative.

Revolutionary.

Also this👇

It’s January and I cannot bring myself to care about anything besides my weighted blanket.

10+ hours a night isn’t enough. If I could slowly press myself into a pillow panini, I would.

Anything to escape the horrors….

The fires!!! Politics!!!!! Timothée Chalamet’s tiny little moustache!!!!

It’s relentless out there.

Not to mention the softer, more personal struggles winter brings.

My skin? Dry.

My feet? Freezing.

My social life? Dwindling.

The book draft I abandoned y’all to work on? Let’s not talk about it…

I could layer a dozen duvets and still not escape the crushing reality that making my 2025 vision board wasn’t enough. I have to actually do the things on said vision board.

How unfair!

How cruel!!

They should be more upfront about that when you’re making them!!!

But, worst of all, is the recognition that I only feel this low because my body needs sunshine.

Seasonal depression has me shrivelled up like all of the houseplants I regularly forget to water.

On Friday two Jehovah’s Witnesses interrupted my morning wallowing.

“We’re polling the neighbourhood,” they said. “Do you think peace will happen in this lifetime?”

It was a great hook.

Part of me wanted to take the bait and say “no.”

Have they not seen the news!?!

Do they not know about the Wirkin???!?!

Did they not read this bleak, albeit hilarious headline from the Guardian: I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers???!?!

The world feels hopeless enough that I almost trapped myself in their elevator pitch for post-death bliss (aka heaven).

But, despite the above moaning, my day-to-day life is peaceful.

I feel tranquillity when I eat an edible and vacuum the house.

…When 212 by Azealia Banks comes on my gym playlist.

…When I open a new notebook.

…When a friend fully grasps my party vision before seeing the Pinterest board.

…When I sip tea that’s the exact right temperature.

…When a client says they never received a document, but I have the email receipts that prove I did, in fact, send them the document.

…When I take my brain out, leave it in a bowl of salty water, and read about sexy vampire men fighting in a competition to the death.

…When a random teenager on TikTok (RIP) says something so outlandish, so bold, so brave, that I actually laugh out loud.

…When our cat does a big stretch.

…When my husband inevitably comments on the cat doing a big stretch, and I tear my focus away from the sexy vampire book or TikTok teen to agree, that is quite a big stretch, and ohmygoodness can you believe how cute that cat is??

Those are all moments of peace.

Not world peace, but something.

Enough for me to banish the Jehovah’s Witnesses without falling for their sneaky ‘lil trap. (You have to be decisive about it, or they will come back. Like 80’s fashion or the Lachey’s…. )

It turns out that telling missionaries you’re an atheist comes with its own serenity: I might be depressed, but I’m not depressed enough to take up religion.

Amen.

Back to the books!

It’s all about the scripture, after all.

🚨But first! Some shelf-keeping🚨

The My Side Plot book club will pause in 2025.

You will still receive monthly Substack book reviews and recs, but the 7 of you who follow me on Fable will no longer have to politely ignore my club updates.

📊 Annual Book Report:

Last year I read 54 books and over 20,000 pages.

Those numbers are impressive, but nothing is as telling as this StoryGraph mood map:

Yikes.

You can take the girl out of the darkness, but you can’t take the darkness out of the girl….

Anyway! Here is everything I read in 2024:

🏆 My Top 5 Picks of the Year

Drum roll, please…

5. ✍️ Yellowface, R.F. Kuang

   Coming in at #5, this satirical masterpiece is tense, moody, and equal parts hilarious and horrific. This is a one-of-a-kind book.

4. 🌊 Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

   One of our first book club picks! This kinda-sorta love story spans thirty years of an intimate creative relationship between video game designers. I cried a lot. Like a lot a lot.

3. 🌙 Talking At Night, Claire Daverley.

   Another My Side Plot read! This book reads like poetry — mostly because Daverley doesn’t abide by grammar rules. She is lawless. She does not use quotation marks. She uses run-ons. There are probably 100 commas on each page. The results (imo) are a lyrical masterpiece, but it’s not for everyone.

2. ⛓️ Chain-Gang All Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

   Holy hell. I still haven’t recovered from this one. In fact, it might be to blame for my January blues… Imagine The Hunger Games, but making a larger point about prison reform, and even more twisted because it’s undeniably plausible. Yeesh. What a book to end the year on!

1. 🍊Worry by Alexandra Tanner.

   My fave book of 2024! An absolute doom scroll brought to life that I cannot — no matter how hard I try — stop thinking about.

Last Thought:

Literally this whole blog…

Epilogue

1. What should I read this year?

2. What were your top reads from 2024??? Did you like any of mine?

3. What brings you peace?

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Happy Sunday!

As a reminder, this is my last post before going on hiatus. I’ll see you again in December!

Today, we’re turning the page on our October book The Eyes Are The Best Part by Monika Kim 👁

***BIG SPOILER ALERTS FOR THIS ONE****

My Thoughts

This is the grossest and most memorable book I’ve read all year, but Brandon already wrote the best possible review:

I don’t have much to add, but I’ll try….

Starting with a few elements I didn’t like:

• The dialogue

  • I loved the writing throughout this book (more on that later), but occasionally the conversations felt stilted. At its core, this book is about a family unravelling, and - while the plot, prose, and interiority did a great job showcasing the messy relationship dynamics - the dialogue didn’t quite match.

• The backstory about Ji-won’s high school friends

  • I don’t think this plotline was necessary. Sure, we learn she has a proclivity to psychological warfare, but I implore you to find me a teenage girl who doesn't…

• The tumour

  • This reveal initially made me really angry. I was worried we’d get an "It was just a dream”-style ending, which would have cheapened the whole book. Instead, we learn the tumour might be to blame, but Ji-won eats her mom’s boyfriend’s eyes anyway. I was ecstatic with that direction; HOWEVER, I wonder if we needed the tumour mentioned at all? I don’t know if it made her choice to kill George stronger, or if it was a distraction from her inevitable descent into eyeball-guzzling-serial-killer.

Now the good parts:

The Eyes Are The Best Part made up for any shortcomings with its creativity and general yuckiness.

This book was initially described to me as Crying in H-Mart meets My Sister, the Serial Killer, and it 100% delivered.

What I love about Crying in H-Mart is the use of food. Monika Kim made Korean dishes a huge fixture in this book as well. From descriptions of dinner to meals as central plot points to lines as simple as “..Ji-hyun curled up next to me like a cooked shrimp…” (pg 12), food is everywhere.

Of course, there’s also a horror 🤝 food element.

For example, we all know that blue is the best flavour of Gatorade.

It is also, apparently, the best flavour of eye…

At least according to Monika Kim, whose account of Ji-won eating eyes makes it really hard to believe that she hasn’t snacked on one at least once. If I have to be subjected to this paragraph, you do to:

“The eyeball is cool from being under the faucet for so long. A salty liquid trickles down my throat. The outside is crunchy cartilage. I jam it into my left cheek and bite down with my molars; jellylike matter explodes within my mouth.” (pg 163)

Side note: ‘squelch’ is now and forever banished from my vocabulary… UGH.

Beyond the literal eyeball-eating (fish or human), I loved how eye-shaped snacks became more and more prevalent. I laughed out loud when Ji-won brought cherry tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs for lunch…

Our girl was thirsting for some peepers.

Like any good horror, The Eyes Are The Best Part is about more than the spooky stuff. These two themes in particular really stood out:

• Fetishization: Making a young Asian woman obsessed with white men’s eyes is just so so so brilliant — as is the book title!!!

  “I am certain blue eyes would taste amazing, much better than brown ones. Especially George’s eyes. I have no scientific evidence to prove this, but to me there’s nothing appetizing about brown” (pg 99)

• Female rage: Ji-won’s growing anger is palpable throughout. It impacts her relationship to herself:

  • “I stare at my reflection in the graffitied mirror, expecting to see a monster, a demon, a killer, but it’s me. Just me.” (pg 162)

• The way she sees her family:

  “Hope is a terrible thing. Hope is my mother waiting by the front door for months. Hope is a table full of banchan, side dishes, carefully prepared by hand. Hope is my sister curled in my arms, her head resting against my shoulder asking, “Do you think he will come back?…”(pg 197)

• And, ultimately, develops into this intense and quiet lust for retribution:

  “…But hope is also George, crawling on the floor, collecting pieces of glass so small they are nearly invisible.” (pg 197)

• I mean woah…

  “Confuse him. Make him feel foolish. Men like him hate being wrong, hate being embarrassed, hate not being in control. Men like him don’t know what to do when that happens, and they resort to childish displays of anger, temper tantrums, sulking. In spite of this, he won’t be able to do a single thing about it because in the end he’s the one who is weak. The only power he has is the power you are willing to give him, and you give him nothing. Not a scrap.

  By the time you’re done with him, he’lll be begging for mercy. Who is he if he can’t control you? Is he even a man anymore? It will seem like a relief when you give him a hand, even if that hand is holding a blade.

  And when you take everything from him, you can say what hese men say about us: He was asking for it. He was begging for it. He must have wanted it, since he didn’t fight back” (pg 143)

Actual chills….

ANYWAY here’s one more gross eye-eating quote for good measure:

👁🍝👁🍝👁🍝👁🍝👁🍝

Rating:

I’m giving The Eyes Are The Best Part 4.5 stars.

Feminist cannibalism horror might be my new fave genre, and Monika Kim definitely has the best author Instagram bio in the game:

Monika, this was one hell of a debut!

I’ll be thinking about this one (unwillingly) for the rest of my life. Please write more weird books for me to read!!!

Well, readers…

That’s all she wrote until December.

To quote Monika Kim’s book acknowledgements (because — say it with me now — YOU SHOULD ALWAYS READ THE AUTHOR NOTES):

“I am so grateful to each and every one of you, and I will not be eating any of your eyes.” 💕

Epilogue:

1. Would you eat an eye? Fish, man, or otherwise?

2. Are you a horror reader?

3. Did you like the book?

4. Are you also looking for a man with blue eyes? Perhaps in finance, 6’5????

@attwellssolicitorsWatch out ladies 💅 #finance #lookingforaman #songofthesummer #trustfund #officetok #corporatetok

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We’re turning the page on our September book, The Snap by Elizabeth Staple 🏟

My Thoughts

If it didn't already feel like fall, The Snap fully pulled me into my autumn energy.

This book ran through the checklist of cinematic campy drama:

• Intense rain

• Impromptu phone hang-ups

• Fancy galas

• Suspicious letters

• A corn maze

• Walking in and out of offices with various accusations, dismissals, and cheesy one-line zingers

As a bonus, it also had all of the quintessential sports tropes

• Nicknaming names that have no business being nick-named (ex: B-rad)

• Wearing mittens at chilly football stadiums

• Ridiculous office pranks

• Sexism under the guise of being a great girl dad/husband/brother(whatever)

Smash those bullets together, and you get a fun, pacy novel that’s perfect for football season (especially if you’d rather be reading than watching football)

Now for the play-by-play….

The fumbles

I’ve seen two big critiques for The Snap

1. The mystery wasn’t satisfying

2. The main character isn’t relatable

Candidly, I don’t care about the mystery. Thrillers aren’t my genre, anyway.

It was pretty clear from the prologue and opening scene that Red, the murder victim, and Poppy, our narrator, had skeletons in their lockers.

The overall conclusion (no spoilers) wasn’t the best series of reveals, but this book was never trying to be the twistiest most shocking gotcha surprise ending story.

At least I don’t think it was?

To me, The Snap was less about the whodunnit and more about the pressure of working in a corrupt, male-dominated industry.

Which brings me to the second point: As a woman in sports, Poppy felt completely real to me.

Sure, she’s flawed. Sure, she’s closed off. Sure, she makes aggravating and annoying choices.

Based on her environment, that all made sense.

Let me get personal for a second.

I work for an all-female sports media company, but my last job was at a dude-filled sports-media mega centre.

At the time, I loved it. The people were great. The energy was fun. There were lots of unwarranted nicknames and lots of pranks.

However…

• I was interrupted and talked over more times than I can count

• I compared myself to other women in the office endlessly

• I worried any compliments I gave would be perceived as flirty

• If I ever asked about women’s sports, I was informed that the priority was creating content for “avid fans” - meaning men, not women

• I was constantly told “my sports knowledge was lacking,” even though the job was selling television advertising, not coaching the fucking team

• When I left, my boss's boss told me the female-run company I was headed to was “a cool idea, but those girls need to figure out how to make money” (my current company pays me twice as much as he did)

• I had a VP be too handsy with me at a Christmas party.

I cried in the bathroom with a coworker but then, predictably, minimized the whole thing the next day.

When I brought it up with my manager, I said I was probably overreacting.

They didn’t pry or do anything about it.

I didn’t bring it up again.

No one else did either.

A year later, I met with that same VP about a potential job. I didn’t get that role, but I stayed with the company for another 2 years.

The whole time I was excited to work there. I thought my job was so cool.

I found myself playing into a Legally Blonde character to avoid conversations about sports stats. The girlier I was, the easier it was for everyone to understand how I fit into the team.

The more I catered my personality to the office, the more I understood how I fit into the team.

Years removed from that environment, I feel conflicted about the whole thing. I see how quietly suffocating and demeaning it was - even though I genuinely believe none of my colleagues had bad intentions (except for that one VP, but even now I wonder if he realized he was being creepy…)

Leaving that company allowed me to shed the skin I was building. Who knows how much that workplace could have changed my outlook, personality, and morals.

Just like Poppy.

Say what you will about the character or the plot, but I think The Snap nails the burden of working in a male-dominated industry.

It’s not just about what’s endured, but also the constant internal battle of what’s worth sticking your neck out for, what you should let slide, and how to navigate the inherent competition that’s never named but is ever-prevalent in those spaces.

If you won’t put up with something, someone else will.

If you think something is weird, you’re probably being weird.

Elizabeth Staple, I applaud you for capturing that feeling 👏

The touchdowns

A few other details I liked:

• This line, which is pretty much me at all times: “I nodded and nodded and nodded because I so badly wanted to be someone who just got it.” (pg 12)

• The blatant references to current sports scandals

  There is no shortage to choose from, but I loved the quiet digs at Kyrie Irving being flat earther, Trevor Bauer’s choking accusations, and Hockey Canada’s not one, but three sexual assault hush funds (although that part could be referencing any player or organization handing out NDAs — it’s not that rare…)

• The fresh take on a survivor story

  I really enjoyed how the book explored minimizing someone else’s experience because it’s too painful to deal with your own. This is such a common way survivors process and is an important part of the #metoo conversation. I particularly loved the witch hunt tie-in throughout —“The best defence against being called a witch was to name one yourself.” (pg 256) — but this quote really tackled me to the ground:

  “I looked down at my hands. Supposedly the totality of the cells in a body are replaced every seven years, which meant I’d had two full cycles to shed what he touched, but I could still feel it. It was like nothing of me had stayed through that regeneration but the bits of him he forced into places they weren’t allowed remained, so now I was more him than me. I carried him, I hated him” (pg 243)

Rating

I’m giving The Snap 4 stars!

This is my kind of mystery novel — meaning it’s not really a mystery, but more a character-driven emotional dilemma.

The Snap had strong visuals, a fun plot, and a fall-blockbuster feeling.

It loses a star because the murder plot conclusion was rushed and not super believable (twists are hard), but the book won a ton of favours from me because of the themes and because I want to be friends with Elizabeth Staple.

Am I biased? Probably!

The Snap lives in my exact niche of women in sports 🤝 murder AND there’s a survivor story/witch hunt angle?!?

It’s like those TikToks where owners say all their dog’s fav words on a phone call:

@2pac.thadonWhen dogs hear their favorite words #dogs #animals

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Last note: The Snap is also a debut! Y’all know I LOVE debuts! Elizabeth Staple, I can’t wait to read more!

Last last note: Whether you liked this book or not, you MUST read Sidelined by Julie Dicaro. This short non-fiction read about the sports industry tackles the dark side of sports from all angles.

Our Next Chapter is The Eyes Are The Best Part by Monika Kim 👁

Spooky season calls for horror novels!

“Crying in H-Mart meets My Sister, the Serial Killer in this feminist psychological horror about the making of a female serial killer from a Korean-American perspective.”

Read along with My Side Plot on Fable and Instagram

Also On My Shelf:

• The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins. In the last week, I’ve reread the first and second Hunger Games books. Wow wow wow do these ever hold up! Do yourself a favour, and revisit this tween classic. #TeamPeetaForever

Epilogue:

1. What did you think!?!?

2. Do you have a similar workplace experience?

3. Are you following along on Fable??

Subscribe now

Happy Sunday!

If you’re following My Side Plot on Fable, you know our September book is The Snap by Elizabeth Staple🏟

If you haven’t started yet, don’t worry! I’ll post a full review on September 30th, so there’s still time to catch up.

Quick Book Report

My reading levels have plummeted.

We have second-summer weather in Toronto, and all I want to do is listen to pop music and stroll around the block with an attitude.

Just look at this chart:

Please send your thoughts and prayers as I will myself out of this slump….

Recently Shelved

Here are the two books I’ve finished so far in September:

• 🐈 Save the Cat Writes a Novel, Jessica Brody

  Practical, clear, and concise - this is everything I want a writing book to be. I will come back to this one forever (or, that is, for as long as I’m trying to write novels) 5/5 ⭐️

• 🩸 Born of Blood and Ash, Jennifer L.Armentrout

  I’m embarrassed to have this on my list, but I had to see the series through. This is the final book of the most chaotic, nonsensical fantasy I’ve ever read.

  Do I understand the plot? No.

  Was the world interesting? Kind of?

  Were the characters fun? Not really.

  I truly don’t understand why I kept reading, but I finished all FOUR of these books. All four of these 700+ page books, I might add.

  And yet! I can’t tell you a single thing that happened? The final battle was less than a chapter?? The spicy scenes were random and kind of all the same??? They are gods but have to feed on each other’s blood sometimes and that makes them horny???? Everyone is a twin???? There’s a big prophecy that ends up not even being about the main characters anyway???????

  Even more confusing is that Born of Blood and Ash has a 4-star rating on Goodreads. How did we get here? Where even am I?? Someone take me back to the normal vampire books of my youth… 1/5 ⭐️

My TBR

No book promo has ever grabbed me like this video.

Saving Five by Amanda Nguyen is now at the top of my reading list - what a friggen’ story.

If I wasn’t sold before, this dedication from her preorder page sealed the deal: “This book is written for every survivor. May these pages help you heal. May they help you find hope. May they help to show you that you will make it through.”

I’m not crying. You’re crying.

Spineless Selects

Get it? ‘Cause they’re not books.

• 🙊 Chimp Crazy, HBO

  Truth is stranger than fiction, and this docuseries proves it. If you aren’t watching this on Crave, I need you to stop everything and put it on right now.

  Former nurse-turned-exotic-animal-broker Tonia Haddix, who refers to herself as the “Dolly Parton of chimps,” spends her days caring for animals in captivity. However, her limitless love for one chimpanzee spins into a wild cat-and-mouse game with authorities and an animal rights group.

• 🎶 At the 2024 VMAs, Everybody Wanted to Be Britney Spears, Harpers Bazaar

  This article isn’t good, but the point deserves to be shared (because it’s true).

• 🪦 Ghostly Archive

  This woman visits cemeteries and makes the recipes left on gravestones. In memori-YUM!

Last Thought:

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Happy long weekend!

I’m procrastinating cleaning the house, the cat won’t stop meowing, and we’re turning the page on our July book, Come and Get It by Kiley Reid 🐖

My Thoughts

With a summary like that, y’all already know I liked this book.

Come and Get It has a few of my fave ingredients: messy female characters, punchy writing, and uncomfortable scenarios.

It also has terrible Goodreads ratings. The people hate it, and I’m not sure why?

Let’s come and get (into) it!

I combed through the negative reviews so you don’t have to! Here are the three most common reasons readers hated this book:

1. There are too many characters

2. There’s no plot

3. The story didn’t have a point

I’m willing to overlook this list for the line-level writing (more on that below), but I also disagree!

Humour me as we go item by item…

Characters

There is, admittedly, a huge cast.

We have a financially struggling RA, a lonely student running away from a scandal, a sugar-mama professor navigating a breakup, a quiet girl who just wants a clean kitchen, and a group of sorority sisters orbiting a tomboy obsessed with getting a dog…

That would be a lot to juggle if Come and Get It was anything less than a masterclass in character study.

I cannot stress enough that Every👏 Single 👏 Person 👏 Felt 👏 Real👏

They were all interesting.

They were all flawed.

They were all inconsistent.

And, most importantly, they were specific.

Take, for example, this very relatable, very sweet, very sad moment of a college girl making her first friend at a new school:

“Kennedy walked back to her dorm a different person; a regular college person capable of making friends. She imagined Shea pulling her aside. This is boring, Shea would say. Do you want to grab a drink? Kennedy would say yeah, that she was thinking the same thing. She imagined saying other things, too. Not at the barbecue, but later on. Not to be weird, Kennedy would say, but I was kind of depressed before I met you. She would tell her that she would never have known….” (pg 144)

Who among us hasn’t fantasized about something equally as mundane? As bleak? This is so on-the-nose that it might as well be a Biore strip!

If that doesn’t do it for you, try these devastating mid-breakup thoughts:

“There were many things she wanted to say, many of which had no beginning or end. How am I supposed to. Because this feels bad. A complete nightmare. The way I feel for you. But I speak differently now. I don’t go up at the ends. I bought a vest, she thought, humiliated. It was so expensive but I did it just because of yours...(pg 274)

This is exactly what ending a relationship is like!

Your brain goes to crazy places. You think in fragments. I remember an ex telling me mid-break up, “But your friends. I like them better than mine.”

Should he have kept that to himself? YES!

But he didn’t because breakups are hard and strange and weird and these are the tiny, defining character moments that this book is all about.

As a bonus, Kiley Reid listed where she got the inspiration for each character in the acknowledgments. They came to her from other books, during research, based on interviews etc... I thought that was such a cool detail and a reminder to — say it with me now — ALWAYS READ THE AUTHOR’S NOTE.

Plot:

Though character-driven, Come and Get It culminated in an extremely tense and entangled climax.

It had the same payoff feeling as the “Darkest Timeline” in the “Remedial Chaos Theory” episode of Community.

I know. That’s a super deep cut.

For a perfect disaster scene like this to work, you need a ton of context to set the stage. Every seemingly benign conversation, backstory, and detail had a role in getting us to the moment when shit hit the fan.

What kept me reading - and therefore collecting said context - was the characters.

I found them and the writing compelling enough to trust that everything would come together eventually.

And you know what? It did.

BUT! Even if it didn’t!

I would have read to the end just to spend more time in each of their messy messy minds.

For me, that would have been enough.

On the point:

This critique is a bit harder for me to refute.

Is there a major dramatic question answered by the end of the story? I’m not sure.

There were a bunch of themes - race, class, gender, power, sexuality - but not one precise topic I can confidently say this book was about.

A couple of quotes come to mind, like this meta moment about enjoying watching people misbehave: “She liked sitting there. Even when they were at their worst, she liked letting their vernacular wash over her.” (pg 22)

Or this one about fire juggling, which seems pretty apt: “If you go slow the flames get bigger. If you go fast you don’t really see them.” (pg 193)

Ultimately, I re-read the first and last chapters looking for a thread to tie it all together. The strongest moment was this marker of growth from a character who we met in an RA uniform:

“She’d done her hair and she wore a zip-up fleece and jeans. Over the weekend she’d decided to never again receive bad news in shorts” (pg 284)

Come and Get It is a series of coming-of-age stories born from mistakes.

There are several instances where the characters reflect on the type of women they want to be (ie: I shouldn’t have used money to solve relationship issues, I should have stuck to my values, I should have worn pants etc.).

If I had to define the point of the book, I would say it’s about how every tiny decision compounds to create our understanding of self.

…At least that’s the best I can come up with right now. Idk? Can you think of something better??

Rating:

I’m giving Come and Get It 4 stars.

Like our June book pick, Worry, this book is anxiety-inducing and charged in all the right ways.

It’s character-driven, unique, and chock-full of interesting commentary on money, power dynamics, and coming-of-age moments.

If you love observing flawed people (ie: reality TV) this might be the book for you!

If you need a clear and pacy plot, go look somewhere else.

“There was nothing left to do but the best and worst thing she could” (pg 272), which, in this case, is to pick a completely new book.

Our Next Chapter:

🏟 The Snap, Elizabeth Staple.

Did someone say “more mess”???? I gotchu.

“Dangerous secrets. A toxic workplace. And an unsolved murder. . . . A football professional reckons with the choices that made her career in the boys’ club world of sports possible in this riveting and sharp Friday Night Lights meets I Know What You Did Last Summer debut”

This book was gifted to me by the author, and I can’t wait to give it a read and honest review! You can read along with My Side Plot on Fable and Instagram

Also On My Shelf

A couple of non-book recs for you

• Hollywood’s Next Marvel Moment Is Romantasy, Bloomberg

  Content adored by women and ignored by men is - quite literally - what I spend all day thinking about. This is women’s sports. This is dresses with pockets. This is ‘little-treat’ culture. This is the hill I will die on:

  “Romantasy offers producers something they haven’t had since the Twilight and True Blood craze of the aughts: A treasure trove of largely untouched, screen-ready IP beloved by women, queer individuals and others who are too often left out of the entertainment equation. There’s just one catch: Men in the C-suite will need to share or cede creative control for that huge and underserved audience to see any of it. The data alone ought to convince them to do just that.”

• 100 Swims: Last Summer’s Diaries, Hurley Winkler

  I love Hurley’s newsletter and have been participating in her Summer Writing Nights. 100 Swims is a magazine compilation of excerpts from her diary as she attempted to complete 100 swims and finish her book last summer.

Epilogue:

1. What do you think the point is?

2. Did you have a favourite character?

3. Did you love it or hate it?