My friends! With Summer here, and after a few false starts, I'm finally in a position to relaunch our Book Club! (Is it even a relaunch if I never got the thing off the ground in the first place properly? Don't answer that.)

I've been crisscrossing the country for work and will be for the foreseeable future, so in the spirit of getting something done, we'll be reading just one book in June: I Deliver Parcels in Beijing by Hu Anyan, which chronicles the grueling realities of working in China's gig economy.

Because we're going to keep it light and fun for Summer.

Weeks 1 and 2 are for getting the book and reading it! I'll post my review in Week 3. Happy June!

Hi friends — and welcome to the very first Wild Card Dispatch. This is my newsletter to share with you my thoughts and book rants and updates to how this Bindery works! First of all, thank you so much for being here, it really means the world to me. 🥹

So I literally just moved to new apartment this weekend after six years. Moving has been chaos in the best way, but the part I'm genuinely obsessed with is plotting out my little reading nook with bookshelf galore and my plants and a cosy sitting spot and ahhh!!!

Because May was AAPI Month, I made a real point of filling my stack with AAPI authors. And because I'm physically incapable of staying in one genre for more than five minutes, the haul ended up being a horror, a satire, two romances, a literary mystery, and a historical fantasy epic — which is the most "me" sentence I've ever typed and exactly what Wild Card Reads is supposed to feel like.

So let's get into it, in literally no particular order at all.

The Winged Game — Sophie Kim ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

You know that feeling when you need a book to just remind you that reading is fun? This was that book for me. It's a fantasy SPORTS romance — yes, both of those things, together, and I had no idea I needed it — with enemies-to-lovers banter so good that Taissa and Kion's internal monologues had me cackling out loud. There's real depth under all the humor too, with backstories and a found family I got genuinely attached to, plus I learned an alarming amount of Scottish slang along the way. I'm a Sophie Kim girl now, no notes, and I will be reading 800 more pages in this world if she'll let me. It really brought joy to my heart.

Out of Her League — Ava Rani ⭐⭐⭐

A cute, sparkly beach-day read, and I'm being honest with you the way I always am: it was a solid time, not a life-changer. What I loved was an FMC who refuses to sacrifice her career for anyone, real rep for women in medicine, a genuinely sweet and understanding MMC, and that supportive-best-friend energy I'm always a sucker for. It lost a little shine for me with some repeated lines and an ex-boyfriend storyline I expected more tension from. But if you want something low-stakes and warm to read with an iced coffee in the sun, this does the job nicely.

Yellowface — R.F. Kuang ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The moral of the story? White women are crazy. June steals the work of her Asian friend Athena (who's dead) and then somehow convinces herself she's the victim, and watching her gaslight everyone — including herself — was a hilarious ride. It's a razor-sharp look at how publishing decides which books are "bestsellers" and how Asian authors basically have to be brilliant just to get in the door. I listened on audio and cannot recommend it enough; the narrator's sarcasm is hysterical. This is literary satire for sure and I know a lot people didn't like it but I think I came in with such low expectations that I ended up being surprised.

The Girl with a Thousand Faces — Sunyi Dean ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This one starts as a ghostly detective tale set in 1940s Hong Kong, post-invasion, and slowly unfolds into something so much bigger — a story about war's scars, revenge, and how generational trauma lingers even thirty-plus years later. The layered structure absolutely hooked me, and the blend of real history with the supernatural felt both completely fresh and deeply moving. There were parts of the book told in second person as well and it was weird because I don't think I've read that much second person POV. If you're drawn to ghost stories that actually have a beating heart and historical weight behind them, this might be for you. It's not really scary or horror I would say, so if you were apprehensive let that change your mind and try it out!

Men Like Ours — Bindu Bansinath ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Let me be upfront: this book made me deeply uncomfortable, and I think that was entirely the point. It's set in a South Asian suburban enclave in New Jersey where a man is found dead in his BMW and the women of the neighborhood get pulled into figuring out what happened. The mystery kept me turning pages, but what it's really about is what happens to people when community becomes a pressure cooker of unfulfilled lives. It takes some of the most painful tendencies that can exist in South Asian culture and concentrates them all into one street, and it's stressful precisely because none of it is invented — but it's also not all of us. One of the main characters, Anita, lived in my head rent-free because you wanted to hate her but you also deeply sympathized with the cards she got. It was bleak, dark, strange, but oddly hard to put down.

Burn the Sea — Mona Tewari ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I genuinely did not expect a book about Portuguese colonizers reimagined as giant half-snake sea monsters to wreck me this much, but here we are. Watching Abbakka go from a reluctant queen shoved onto a throne she never asked for into an actual hero for her whole country was everything — you feel every ounce of her doubt and grief, so by the end she's earned every inch of that strength. What stuck with me most was how the book handles grief: the way sometimes you don't get to stop and fall apart, you just keep moving until you're somewhere safe enough to actually feel it. The South Asian culture on the page was so beautiful I felt genuinely seen, and knowing this is Mona's debut, written because she wanted to see herself in fiction, makes it land even harder. (Tiny proud-aunt moment: this one's a Bindery Books title, and championing debuts like this is exactly why I'm here.)I am THIRSTING for book two.

Suprise: the Wild Card Book Club is officially happening 📚!

Woooo! So, the whole reason I built Wild Card Reads was to have a place where we could actually talk about books beyond a 60-second video where I'm gesturing wildly at a cover. So I'm genuinely thrilled to tell you the Wild Card Book Club is here.

Here's how it works:

• Everyone — free members too — gets into the Discord, where we hang out, scream about plot twists, and post unhinged reactions in real time. Come say hi!

• $5 members get the heart of it: our monthly live virtual book club session (real faces, real conversation, actual humans!), potential guest appearances by authors, early reveals of what we're reading next so you can grab the book in time, and a say in what we pick together. You and me, building the TBR of our lives.

• $12 members get everything above, plus first dibs on the bigger stuff I'm dreaming up for down the road — including, fingers crossed, some in-person meetups one day. 🤞

Our first pick and the full details — how to join the live session, the date, and a guest I'm very excited about — are dropping in a dedicated post later this week. Keep your eyes peeled. 👀

okay, now help me out of my slump

I hope you pick up one of these books or if you have already read one message me in the Discord chat so we can yap!

Now I need you, what should I read next? I've started a few books while I wait for my copy of The Ballad of Fallen Dragons to arrive so I need some recs. What did you read for AAPI Month that I have to get my hands on? Come yell at me in the Discord — and not for nothing, a few of these picks could be on the book club shortlist. 👀

Thank you for being here for dispatch #1. I hope someone read this to the end because I YAPPED.

Talk soon, Samia 🌷

@pxw1

June 2nd is my 8th wedding anniversary. But that's old news...here are some NEW books to be excited about!

Bookstore Girls by Kei Aono 4/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you love heart-warming stories of found family or stories set in a bookstore.

Meeting New People by Daniel M. Lavery 3.25/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoy stories with gossip and older protagonists...especially ones that may be the problem.

The Heart of the Nhaga by Lee Young-Do 3/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoy fantasy from a non-western lens. Fantasy and I are still in fight so it wasn't particularly for me, but I'm thankful we have this finally translated from Korean.

And ones that I'm excited to get my hands on:

Muneca by Cynthia Gomez

Why it interests me: gothic and queer, yes please.

Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim

Why it interests me: a speculative fiction take on an immigration story. I was happy to see that it was an Aardvark Book Club pick for this month.

They All Fall in Love at the End by Haili Blassingame

Why it interests me: messy young queer people.

Mad Eden by Morgan Thomas

Why it interests me: it's been praised for beautiful prose, and is said to "challenge us to confront and reinvent questions of language, sex, prejudice, identity, and the shifting scales of morality."

Jellyfish Problem by Tessa Yang

Why it interests me: it sounds strange (a jellyfish that changes people?). I'm in.

There's Only One Sin in Hollywood by Rasheed Newson

Why it interests me: another gay, Black historical fiction book from the author of My Government Means to Kill Me.

The Secret World of Briar Rose by Cindy Pham

Why it interests me: I've followed Cindy's process to get here on social media and am so excited to see it out in the world. This is queer sleeping beauty retelling.

Hello Froomies and Friends!

It is Pride Month and a new month! We are finally shifting into the summer, and I am loving it so far! So many fun plans as well as planning all of my outfits and such for July when my Ren Faire comes back!

And I am sooooooo glad to be back!

As touched on in one of my most recent posts, I am slowly getting back into routine posting, as well as sharing this focus on my Instagram as well. I want to challenge myself to not just focus on posting whenever I finish a book, but adding more of my creative side when it comes to my bookish content. This could be integrating fashion once more where I bring out the vibes of a book with my clothing, doing more short form content like DOBS, or just chronicling during my reads so I can snapshot the moments that really stick with me.

(Is it just me or do you also forget a book after reading it, but you know you loved it?)

So, adding more smaller quests when it comes to my bookish journey, I think will help me to not be overwhelmed and get stuck in that mentality where I need to "keep up with the Joneses".

Anywho, here is the schedule I am planning again!

Monday: Bi Weekly reading goals/plans. Planning to give myself more than just a week for any goals as well as time for the fun and short reads!

Wednesday: I am still planning to do the weekly check ins, using this for any book reviews/book unboxing. I will also pose a poll or question for my Fairy Circle friends as a writing challenge that will be posted on Saturdays, as well as any prep work

Friday: Fantasy Friday is back!

Saturday: As previously stated, I will be posting snippets and character analysis on my writing or working on the writing prompt that was voted for on Wednesday.

Okay, now that the technical things are out of the way, let us talk TBR for Pride Month!

The books that I am aiming to read within the first two weeks are:

Queerleaders by Olivia A. Cole and Ashley Woodfolk

You X Me by Ayla Vejdani

A Prince Among Pirates by Katie Abdou

Galaxy: The Prettiest Star by Jadzia Axelrod & Jess Taylor

Now this is not an exhaustive list of everything that I am planning/wanting to read during the month of June, these are some books that have stuck out to me the most and I want to include. Especially stories about Nonbinary and Trans characters as well as explorations of other identities within the LGBTQIA+ umbrella.

I cannot wait for all the fun to be had this summer as well as getting back into a routine that works best for me. I want to continue creating this cozy community with you as I continue growing in my whimsy and creativity.

I adore all of you. Stay safe, keep being you, and happy Pride!

I only care about books where women go insane. That's primarily what I read, and what I want to read, and what I write and want to write. This is because I have always wanted to go insane. 

Since becoming a mother in January, I've realized that all I needed to do to go insane was have a baby. 

A baby is a little unit of madness. There is no reasoning with a baby. They are thoroughly dysregulated — digestion, sleep, limb control. They rely on you to shepherd them into the realm of the living. This is how we eat. And this is how we sleep. And this is how we distinguish between day and night. And this is how we receive comfort when we are upset. And this is how we come to know and depend on one another. 

Onboarding someone to human existence would be a tough job if I were in peak condition. But I did it as most mothers do: my brain demented by lack of sleep, my taint in tatters.

Delivery was my first taste of the madness.

After pushing for a couple hours to no avail, the OBGYN on call informed me that my baby was “massive.” This news startled me. At the advice of my OBGYN (who wasn't on call and therefore not present), I hadn't done a third trimester ultrasound because my pregnancy was progressing normally without complications. Up until this moment everything indicated my baby was of average size. 

The doctor added that my baby’s shoulder was stuck on my pelvic bone (this is called “shoulder dystocia” if you want to look it up on TikTok and freak yourself out – no judgment here, it's one of my favorite pastimes). To get the baby out, I’d need either an episiotomy or a C-section, and my pushes in the next ten minutes would determine which. 

Suddenly, the room flooded with people in scrubs. In my memory, I blink and there they were, cluttering the previously empty room. I don't know what their jobs were and how they could help me. They just quietly watched me.

As I mustered all of my energy into each push, my doula, OB and nurse insisted over and over and over with unfailing enthusiasm: “You can do this!” 

Why are you saying that? I thought. What evidence do you have that I can do this? I didn't dare say this out loud.

Now I understand that this is the unhinged contradiction at the heart of motherhood: You are given an impossible task. You are told over and over that you can do it. When you express doubt or anxiety or despair, you risk being pathologized.

My plan was to enter the first weeks of motherhood on the lookout for anxiety and depression. I was determined to scan myself frequently for unrecognizable thoughts and behavior.

As soon as I was thrust into early motherhood, I found this understanding of postpartum anxiety and depression absurd. You know what was insane? The idea that anyone would not feel anxious or depressed in these circumstances. 

My vulva and butthole alternated between aching and burning. Even laughing sent a jolt of pain through my anus. When I told a lactation consultant that I found breastfeeding painful, she cocked her head and asked if I had especially sensitive nipples. I slept in mercilessly short bursts, awoken either by imaginary cries or real cries. My body seemed unable to refresh on this little sleep. To be awake meant brimming with sluggish confusion and dread.

I fantasized constantly about abandoning my life. How would I do it? I pictured jumping in my car and driving far, far away. But I wanted to bring my baby, whom I felt an opioid-level attachment to. I'd bring my baby with me, yes, but, somehow, when I was far, far away from my home, I wouldn't have to breastfeed or stay up all night, and I'd have an entirely new body. 

I can't even come up with a competent fucking fantasy, I seethed to myself.

I was absolutely certain I could not go on. I could not tolerate having milk sucked out of me every 2-3 hours – neither the physical discomfort nor the constricting schedule. I could not spend another hour rocking my baby with no guarantee of relief. I could not function on so little sleep. 

"I'm shocked more babies don't die," I told a friend when he called to check in.

"I mean, that does happen," he said with a nervous laugh.

"Not nearly as often as makes sense to me now," I replied.

Reading the book Matrescence by Lucy Jones was one of my sole comforts.

In it, she writes: "As a society, we just don't seem to be very interested in the actual flesh and bones of the maternal experience. Maternal subjectivity has, until very recently, been almost entirely absent from Western philosophy, literature and culture. I hadn't read about it in any of the core texts in my English literature degree."

I got a MFA in creative writing. None of our assigned short stories or novels addressed motherhood in depth. We were always talking about finding the universal in the specific. Mining life for magical moments that unexpectedly sparked empathy and revealed profound emotional truths. 

None of my life experience from before held a fucking candle to these raw months. I will never be done processing it. I could write about it forever. How has anyone kept silent about this?

I had a friend whose newborn was deemed underweight at one of her first pediatrician appointments. The pediatrician informed her that she'd need to "triple feed" her baby, which means breastfeed the infant every two hours, then bottle feed the baby formula and then pump to encourage her breasts to produce more milk. 

By my estimation, it would take two hours to do all of this – nurse, then give the baby a bottle and then pump – meaning this schedule effectively guaranteed no sleep. It demanded round-the-clock physical and mental labor.  

At the same appointment, my friend had to fill out the Edinburgh survey. I know because I had to at my baby's appointments too. We were asked to rank how much we identified with the following sentences:

I look forward with enjoyment to things. What should I look forward to? I alternated between changing my diaper and the baby's diaper. Nobody could give me a clear answer on when this would change.

I have been so unhappy that I've had trouble sleeping. I wasn't sleeping because my baby wouldn't sleep, and that made me unhappy. My sleep-deprived mind couldn't sort out the causal relationship here. Which came first? The chicken or the egg? The unhappiness or the lack of sleep?

I have blamed myself unnecessarily when things went wrong. This baby depended on me for food, sleep, hygiene, comfort. Was it irrational to have a pronounced sense of culpability? 

I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things. Sorry, what was funny about all of this? (I actually did find many moments hysterical, like watching my baby stare in amazement at an illustration of just a white circle on a black background, but I blame delirium.)

In Matrescence, Lucy Jones writes, "Why are we sending a high-risk group off the spend an unknown period of time at home alone, where they must look after vulnerable infants and recover from the trauma of giving birth, while burdened with loneliness, lack of sleep, and a shedload of impossible cultural expectations, including the imperative to enjoy every minute of it? Are these the actions of a responsible or functional society?"

When they tell you, “You can do this!”, what they actually mean is, “You have to do this." 

What they should say is, "You have no choice but to reconfigure yourself in such a way that you can do this.” 

I would have told myself, "You're right. You cannot do this. What's being asked of you is unfeasible. Your despair is normal. You have every right to question platitudes, doctors, reality itself. And also, little by little, your brain and body will transform and adapt. The process is unprecedentedly painful and gradual. It will render you unrecognizable. You will run yourself dry of your resilience. You will continue somehow. This is insanity."

It’s not insane that mothers think they can’t do it. What’s insane is that mothers do do it.

Hey hey Sickos, the Monday Update/Weekly Checkpoint is back after a brief hiatus due to day drinking all Memorial Day weekend. Tell me what you've been reading and plan to read and let's boogie!

READING

REVIEW

THE ROMAN EMNPIRE IN CRISIS, 248-260: WHEN THE GODS ABANDONED ROME by PAUL N. PEARSON (historical nonfiction)

Progress: Finished

This attempted to be a mix of academic and popular history and it pulled that off pretty well. I was concerned how interesting Pearson could make this as most historians just blitz through this run. The first half was super strong when working through Philip the Arab and Decius, and the rest wasn't too shabby either. Was not as bored as I thought I'd be and I become obsessed with that scamp Decius, so that's worth somethin'. Falls in the 3.5 - 3.75 range with a yes recommendation for Roman nuts.

PARABLE OF THE TALENTS [EARTHSEED #2] by OCTAVIA E. BUTLER (speculative fiction)

Progress: Finished

I was promised this was bleaker than Parable of the Sower and damn did it deliver on that. I did a full review of those two books on YouTube so I'll keep it brief. Loved it. 5 stars.

EMPIRES OF THE STEPPES: A HISTORY OF THE NOMADIC TRIBES WHO SHAPED CIVILIZATION by KENNETH W. HARL (historical nonfiction)

Progress: 117/410

For the early portions of this, I've been using The Horse, the Wheel, and Language as a supplementary reference because it goes into much greater detail on the archaeological evidence and the development of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) languages. Not that this one isn't packed with detail, it's just much more brisk and sweeping.

I've been irritated by the formatting (which is just massive paragraphs with no subheadings) and how Rick from Walking Dead voice HAAAARL will jump around the timelines within the same topic, but the information is excellent. I loved the section on the Scythians and Xiongnu and as I mentioned yesterday, will be doing some Scythian content regarding their conflicts with the Persians. So basically it's flawed in execution, but great with insight so far.

AUGUSTUS by JOHN WILLIAMS

Progress: 121/305

The only thing that could make this better is if it were a little sluttier, because the Romans, especially the men, were nothing if not enormous, messy sluts. By that I mean I'd love a bit more raunchiness and humanity in these communications between characters. That said, I understand why that's not a realistic ask. This is, after all, a novel assembled from letters, diary entries, and official decrees ("epistolary" is the fancy term), so there's only so much room for that sort of thing. A man can dream though.

Anyway I'm a meme of a man because the least predictable thing has happened; I'm loving it. I wouldn't jump into this without any previous knowledge of the period but if you fw ancient Rome you'll probably love it too.

PREVIEW

Once I finish these I'll likely go right to the Fiction/History Sickos Book Club picks, which will be a re-read of The Spear Cuts Through Water and And AND And the Band Played On.

EVERYTHING ELSE

I finished my Breaking Bad re-watch, and I'm gonna rank the seasons 5 > 4 > 2 > 3 > 1. There's a stretch in those last two seasons that's just f'n elite. I watched El Camino to cap it off and I've been using Better Call Saul as my background show while I rotate between games like Disco Elysium, Old World, and Tropico 6.

My build for Disco Elysium this time around is a communist, druggie, Disco superstar. Old World I'm only just learning as I'm hoping it takes away some of the pain of Civilization VII bombing. Tropico 6 is yet another run through the core missions and DLC as we await a Tropico 7 release date. If you've ever wanted to be a dictator of a small island (and whomst amongst us hasn't?), Tropico is your game.

It's officially Aggressive Cut Szn so if I'm miserable in the Discord just blame it on the 1500 calories a day during the week. K bai

Happy pride month, everyone! Last year I featured only queer authors on Rebel Ever After during June. This year... every author on the podcast so far has written a queer romance novel or several! Funny how that happens when your goal is to feature progressive voices in the genre who don't receive as much publishing support as their peers.

There is a flood of phenomenal queer romances coming to shelves in the next few months. Here are some upcoming books written by previous REA guests that you should support. Pre-orders make a huge difference, from helping an author reach best-seller lists to signaling to their publisher that it's worth investing more in marketing and promotion. If you can't pre-order at this time, consider adding the book on GoodReads, requesting that your local library stock the book, or simply sharing this post with a friend.

Cheers queers, and happy reading!

Thank you to everyone who voted for our Q3 book club books! If you are not a member, and are interested in how my book club works, check out the pinned post where I explain it all! The winners and months are going to be:

July: Jade city by Fonda Lee

AugustL The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem

September: Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman

If you are a member here on Bindery and want to participate in the Discord server/Discord portion of the book club, but have not gotten into Discord, you can either check your emails from when you Joined as a Bindery member for the Discord invite, or click here to join the channel (there are a few application questions to ensure no bots are getting in!).

Also, for those interested, we will be having our in-person discussion on Sunday, June 7 at 8 PM EST. That runs through th video chat channel on Discord, and would love to have you all there to discuss this really interesting book! If you are seeing this and are not a member, you do need to be a member (free or paid tier) to join in our book club, so join on up!

Finally, remember you can buy books through the links here on Bindery, buy through my Bookshop.org affiliate store, or buy through Pango for used books and get $5 off your first order of $10 or more and it all helps me out! Looking forward to some great reads in the next quarter!

We are officially launching a brand-new monthly author spotlight series on the blog! Every month, we’ll be featuring a new author with an upcoming book.

We are kicking things off with features centered around July, so if you have a book releasing in July or anytime close to it we want to feature you!

We know how exhausting promo weeks can be, which is why our Q&As are 100% written. That means zero Zoom fatigue. Just fun, thoughtful, deep-dive questions sent straight to your inbox for you to answer whenever and in whatever pajamas you want! ☕️📚

How to get involved:

• Authors: Leave a comment below with your book info and release date if you'd like to be featured!

• Know an author? Share this post or tag them in the comments below.

• Readers: What upcoming titles are at the very top of your TBR? Let us know so we can invite those authors to the blog!

❗️If you have any questions, concerns, or need further details, please feel free to reach out to us directly at thepageladies6@gmail.com

#bookblog #authorinterview #bookreleases #booktbr #indieauthors

Happy Monday! For Must Read Monday this week, I'm featuring The Actual Star by Monica Byrne.

This is one of those books where I finished it and just kind of had to stare at the wall for awhile while I processed it.

The Actual Star is a massive undertaking, telling the stories of three sets of people in three timelines each a thousand years apart. We watch as their stories braid, repeat, differ, and merge. I saw elements of Ursula LeGuin, Octavia E. Butler, Simon Jimenez, and more from across decades of sci-fi and fantasy literature in this story (and know I do not invoke these greats lightly!)

Often with multi-timeline books, I find myself wishing to get back to a particular story, but here I felt deeply invested in each timeline, and was on the edge of my seat as the stories came together. It’s quite a feat to make a slow paced, 600+ page novel a page turner.

The worldbuilding is intricate but never bogged down in the details, and it weaves in a little sci-fi, a little fantasy, and a little mystery as you begin to piece together the overarching story.

Everyone has a first Tingle. This was mine! I tried Bury Our Gays and wasn't in the right mindspace so I dnf'd it, and had initially dnf'd this too! But I came back and I'm glad I did! So let's talk about it.

SUMMARY:

Four years ago, an unthinkable disaster occurred. In what was later known as the Low-Probability Event, eight million people were killed in a single day, each of them dying in improbable, bizarre ways: strangled by balloon ropes, torn apart by exploding manhole covers, attacked by a chimpanzee wielding a typewriter. A day of freak accidents that proved anything is possible, no matter the odds. Luck is real now, and it's not always good.

Vera, a former statistics and probability professor, lost everything that day, and she still struggles to make sense of the unbelievable catastrophe. To her, the LPE proved that the God of Order is dead and nothing matters anymore.

When Special Agent Layne shows up on Vera’s doorstep, she learns he's investigating a suspiciously—and statistically impossibly—lucky casino. He needs her help to prove the casino’s success is connected to the deaths of millions, and it's Vera's last chance to make sense of a world that doesn’t.

Because what's happening in Vegas isn't staying there, and she's the only thing that stands between the world and another deadly improbability.

WHAT WORKED (for me!):

• Characterization: I loved Vera's character. I also love her arc very much. I felt it was appropriate and well-structured!

• Pace: This is a borderline thing for me on this one because I do feel like the pace lagged a bit in the middle, but overall the pacing was good!

• Absurdity: LOVED IT. I need a movie version of this movie like stat.

WHAT DIDN'T (for me!):

• All the stats talk. I understand why, but dang. My focus drifted during those sections. I'm not a mathematician!

• The length. I think it could have been a bit shorter to help with the pacing issues I mentioned above.

BUY, BORROW, OR PASS?

I think this is one you can BUY. It's short at like 267 pages, the cover is gorgeous, and it's just enough of a whirlwind of a book to keep you entertained.

I'm eager to read his other two horror novels now, so I'm gonna be getting those as soon as I can. If you've read this one, what were your thoughts? If you haven't and you're looking for absurd horror (definitely different from humorous horror), then I recommend it!

Till next time!

-Ryn