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One Second After by William R. Forstchen

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Started: 2/12/21
Gave up: 2/14/21

Ugh. Retired military, super-capable, gentlemanly know-it-all has to save his town after an EMP takes out all modern amenities. I have read this book before. I have read better versions of this book. This one feels like a non-writer decided to fictionalize his What To Do In Case Of An EMP report, hoping it would get his point across better. It’s all tell, no show, and Mr. Only I Am Making The Right Decisions is going to be proven right. AND it’s the beginning of a series, so he’s probably going to end up saving the world. I’m sitting this one out.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

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Started: 12/26/20
Finished: 12/27/20

I can’t remember where I heard about this book, but it starts out HARD.  A twenty-something black woman babysits for a white family, and one night, the mother calls her unexpectedly to take the toddler out for a little bit so they can deal with an emergency at home.  The babysitter tells her she’s not dressed like she normally is (she was out with friends), and the mother says that’s fine, so she takes the toddler down the street to a local expensive grocery store to just kill time.  A shopper calls security on her, implying that she kidnapped the little girl, and it’s a REALLY tense scene.  It turns out fine, and the rest of the book talks about the aftermath, but in a very anticlimactic way.  Well, until the climax.  Anyway, it’s about how all these characters see each other and how they react and think about themselves, and it’s pretty funny and enjoyable, which I did NOT expect after that scary beginning.

When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole

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Started: 12/5/20
Finished: 12/9/20

I found this thriller on a recommendation, but I can’t remember from where.  I think it was described as similar to the movie Get Out, which I haven’t seen yet – not big on horror, but I’d like to see that one if I can psych myself up for it.  Anyway, I’m lukewarm on it mostly because the thriller part doesn’t really get going until the last quarter of the book.  It’s an uncomfortable read, in a good way – it’s about the evils of gentrification as some truly racist white people get away with small, medium, and large awful things as they move in.  And if it hadn’t been billed as a thriller, I would probably feel better about it as a story.  The first part was really good (and uncomfortable).

But the male lead being a white guy feels like a sop, like the author was cautioned  that “not all white people are bad”, and while on one hand I appreciate that, on the other hand I think it undermines the point.

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

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Started: 4/6/19
Finished: 4/7/19

The writing in this book was painful, but also felt painfully real and accurate for a coming of age/coming out story told from the perspective of a teenager.  I have diaries from around then (a little younger, but still), and MAN are they painful to read now in exactly the same way.  I got over the wincing discomfort and enjoyed this one.

The Last Thing She Told Me by Linda Green

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Started: 3/21/19
Finished: 3/22/19

I’m not sure who recommended this book, but whoever it was, I don’t trust them anymore.  It’s not bad – the writing is better than the last one I read – but it’s disturbing and it really hammers you over the head with the “men are horrible and it’s women who bear the brunt and feel shame their entire lives” message.  I’m not arguing the point, but goodness some awful things happen, and I wasn’t really prepared for that when I started reading.

Baking Bad by Kim M. Watt

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Started: 2/22/19
Finished: 3/1/19

A cozy mystery set in present-day England with dragons.  It’s cute, it’s lightly humorous, it set up a lot of background stuff so I’m hoping for a full series (there’s one sequel, Christmas-related), and even though the whodunit part wasn’t that hard to figure out, I still very much enjoyed it.

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

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Started: 12/17/18
Finished: 12/19/18

A couple meet, fall in love, and flee their Middle Eastern city via a magic door.  The writing keeps you at a remove from the characters and the story, so you know how the characters are feeling, but you don’t feel how they’re feeling, but it’s well-done.  There have been several sentences I’ve read out loud to John because I liked the phrasing so much.

Digging In by Loretta Nyhan

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Started: 9/11/18
Finished: 9/12/18

I don’t remember where I heard about this one, but it was a nice read about a woman trying to recover from her husband’s tragic death a year before.  She has a teenage son and a job in advertising, and it was funny and sweet and light, despite the tragic background.  (I do occasionally read and enjoy non-SFF books.)

Butterfly in Amber by Camilla Monk

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Started: 9/1/18
Finished: 9/3/18

The fourth in the Spotless series.  I nearly put this one down (lack of caring what happens to these characters), but it’s the last one (I think), and it was easy enough for me to keep going in the middle of the night when I was soaking my feet in the tub.

After On by Rob Reid

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Started: 5/29/18
Gave up: 5/29/18

The writing drove me crazy and I gave up within a couple of hours.  At 7% in, the narrator had mentioned a dozen times how dude’s wife’s research is critical to his business and his health, but she barely rates her own name (always X’s wife). That and the exclamation points are too much. I quit.

The Passage by Justin Cronin

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Started: 5/6/18
Finished: 5/13/18

I feel like I’ve read this book before.  The story is too familiar.  It’s The Stand, it’s World War Z with vampires.  It’s about a government experiment that unleashes the apocalypse and then, decades later, how what society is left is dealing with it (and eventually, hopefully, defeating it).  This is the first in a trilogy (something I didn’t know when I started it).  I will admit here that I read the summaries on Wikipedia and Goodreads to see what happens in the other two books rather than read them myself.