Jordan Jackson

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Grimspace by Ann Aguirre My rating: 5 of 5 stars Grimspace was a book that I'd been hoping for for awhile before I finally came across it at my local library. It's a sci-fi novel with a significant romance subplot that improves and supports the story, and doesn't get too bogged down in sci-fi lore-speak that distracts from the characters and emotion. The characters are familiar and refreshing all at once, so I could feel like I knew everyone without feeling like I'd seen them a million times before. It also avoids some beats I'm particularly averse to, such as the "I am in perilous danger at feel very threatened by Love Interest Male, but cannot help but notice that he is hot and I am distracted." Instead, the protagonist has a reasonably tense and un-erotic first meeting, and later reflects (maybe in the second book?) that both she and her love interest are not particularly attractive. But you know what, that's dope. I was almost hesitant to start the next book, because I'd been left with such a positive impression of the first one, and liked how things turned out, that I almost didn't want to alter or change the experience I'd already had. Went out and bought the next book anyway. I'm stoked to see where it goes. View all my reviews

Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi My rating: 5 of 5 stars Technically, this is a realistic fiction novel, but it is set in a fantasy world where boys text you back and are sorry when they don't. I first checked out this book because I'd seen some review that expressed that nothing really happened in the book, which I took optimistically to indicate that there just wasn't any sex in the book, and I was becoming weary of """adult""" books where people are mostly thinking with their penis/similarly influence-able parts. Also, the cover is gorgeous. I looked up everyone involved in the cover-creation process. This book was so nice to come home to. From the first chapter, I was engaged in the two leads' observations about the world, which were reliably funny and, if not relateable, then understandable. I could have sat in their scatterbrained musings about life for hours, and then I literally did that. Even the author acknowledgements at the end were funny and engaging. Pretty much every feeling Penny had through the whole book, I have felt intimately and intensely throughout my life. I was filled with vindication and phew-I'm-not-crazy -type feelings when Penny was rendered heartbroken over a completely undefined relationship she maybe had no right to get emotional over. The book made me feel like my bafflement at being dropped by a boy who technically owed me nothing was completely justified. The changes in Sam and Penny's dynamic rocked both of their worlds, despite often happening quietly, which was so nice because that's how it is a lot of the time. And this is set in a fantasy world where all of that confusion and misunderstanding can still work out sometimes and feelings can be mutual. (I sound lovelorn and bitter, but I'm not, mostly.) It was stunning how much I related to Penny: the writer ambitions, the sci-fi fascination, the comic books, tattoos being the most erotic thing she's ever seen, and the mostly black wardrobe, the contentious but rewarding maternal relationship. Sam did not share this direct line to my brain, but was described in such a way that I felt like I Got Him in the same way I got Penny, despite Penny and I having 95% of things in common and Sam and I having maybe 12 total. Also, Penny went to college where I went to college, so it was fabulously fun to see a town I knew so well described like a idyllic storybook town. I adored this book. It felt like whoever wrote it lived everything in it, and I was delighted to live it with them. 5/5 View all my reviews

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