Your Friend, The Mothman

It is August The First. No, no, don't look at your calendars, just trust me on this.

July was fun! I saw friends a lot! Pet a bunch of cats (and didn't even cry about it!) Ate a bunch of new foods, and was brave with the support of friends and went to a craft event in Providence. Went to the zoo and saw some bugs. What a month. All that definitely made up for the mediocre reading month. I picked up a bunch of books on impulse from the library, and only one of them was truly Good. Most were Okay, Glad I Read, and some were annoying and I didn't want to finish. Yet I persevered.

Nothing Tastes As Good by Luke Dumas ⭐⭐⭐ – First of all, I think this is a very brave book to publish when any criticism of weight loss drugs gets you called ableist. Second of all. What the fuck. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this. It has this undercurrent of sadness throughout the entire book. A lot of it struck home. I liked how it mentioned men with eating disorders get dismissed, that a fat man may struggle but so more would a fat woman. A fat woman of color. And those added struggles didn't negate that of the fat man. The added layer of being a fat gay man. How parents can try their best or their worst but you are still left to pick up the pieces of how their decisions fundamentally changed you forever. How skinny does not equal happy. The Hunger. There's a lot to unpack in this book. It's not exactly what I expected, but it is a giant fuck you to fatphobia and the diet industry.

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker ⭐⭐⭐ – Interesting and weird, maybe too much so. The whole time, it was hard to know what was really happening and what wasn't and I know that was On Purpose, but it was confusing at times. There was a reason behind it, only explained in the last three pages, which made things make sense, but while reading it was just confusing. I liked how the two timelines wove together, and the underlying narrative, but this was very different than what I expected (which is neither good nor bad).

Morsel by Carter Keane ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – I appreciated the THE DOG IS OKAY disclaimer at the front, as well as the IF YOU'RE LISTENING ON AUDIO, THIS IS A BUFFER SO YOU CAN SKIP WARNINGS IF YOU WANT. It had nothing to do with the book, but it did boost my enjoyment and put me in a good mood. It was funny, it was scary, it was emotional, there was a lot packed into these 200 pages. It reminded me of my favorite horror movie I've only seen once, The Ritual.

The Poet Empress by Shen Tao ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Okay! I see! I get it! The tragedy is tragic! I appreciate when faced with two options, Wei chose Secret Third Option that anyone could've seen if they just bothered to get their heads out of their asses and look. That you go in with that list of trigger warnings and you think you know what applies to who and what's going to happen and then you're wrong and you want to burn everyone down. I loved that it humanized Terren without excusing his actions. As a reader, you feel so so bad for him. He deserved so much better. And yet. There must be consequences. Because yes he deserved better, but so did Wei. So did her brother. Her neighbors. Her village. And she's going to make sure they survive. What a book.

These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs ⭐️⭐️ – Meh. Fine. Hard to get into. Kind of want to try it again because this audio narrator is familiar to me and is not my favorite, but also. I just wasn't very invested in any of it. I found The Twist kind of stupid, to be honest, but it would be interesting to go back with that knowledge. At the same time, I feel like we never had time to know either of the characters involved to really Get It. The timelines were hard to keep track of, and it didn't help that the tense kept change from present to past depending on the character highlighted in each chapter. The fights were cool at least.

The Girl With A Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean – DNF at around 100 pages. I didn't vibe with the writing style at all. These women are in their fifties, yet talk like they're in their teens. "Main character can't remember anything about her past" is such a baby writer plot, it's my own fault for not honing in on that in the synopsis. The second person POV I saw when skimming ahead was intriguing, but not enough to keep me going.

The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer ⭐⭐ – Fine, I Guess. Kind of boring. Mostly mid. Left too many unanswered threads for my liking. What was with the guy on the bus in the beginning? What was up with Lucy? What were the symbols all about? Who was phone?? I get it's horror, and sudden endings and no explanations are Tropes in the genre, but give me SOMETHING. Would make a cool video game, if it isn't already.

Null Entity by Seth Haddon ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – I didn't enjoy this as much as the first one, but it was still good! The idea that you spent so long making your body Your Body, and then someone else is piloting it. Oof. Big fan of the body autonomy commentary. Less a fan on the overall plot here, but was still a good time.

The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan ⭐⭐– This was so promising. Not just from the synopsis, but multiple beloved authors had blurbs on the cover. Even the first few chapters were fun (hence the two stars and not one). But as the story progressed, as we got through THREE DIFFERENT TIMELINES (four including the forward and afterward), it became a chore to get through it all. I know it's a historical fantasy, but having the deus ex machina be the beginnings of the French Revolution felt so! Anti climactic! You have these all powerful beings at your disposal, and he's saved by a mob? And we don't even get to see it because he ran off with his ex again? Come on. Sebastian is so incredibly stupid I hated following him in every timeline and Jacques is just downright annoying. On top of it all, There was one (1) interesting woman the entire book and she was brutally murdered. At least the monsters were cool.