People pleasing, necromancy, and erotic Jell-O
Everything I read in February + a Wuthering Heights review
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
🧛🏻 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.”
🐈⬛ 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!
🤬 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.
🤖 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?
Guillermo del Toro inexplicably turning Frankenstein into a father-son forgiveness story is still worse, btw.
A damn shame, really