Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto – This book stretches credulity. The titular Vera is stated to be sixty (meaning that if she’d been 60 in 2023, she’d’ve been born in 1963, but she’s also stated to be a Pig in the Chinese Zodiac, and 1963 wasn’t a Year of the Pig, the most recent Year of the Pig would have been 1959-60, so this story must take place in 2019-20 (also a Year of the Pig) for a 60 year old to be a Pig), but she acts more like someone in their 80s. Sixty, at least in modern America, is not really considered “old”, certainly not in the way Vera acts “old”. There’s no way a nosey old lady could also have a Gen Z son (they go out of their way to repeatedly call him a Gen Z kid. The most commonly given start date to Gen Z is 1997, so with the ’59 birthdate that would have made Vera 38 when she had Tilly, her first and only child – not impossible physiologically, but I can’t imagine someone as family-minded, and especially as filial piety-minded, as Vera to wait that long to have a kid (or, for that matter, to have only one kid)). Also, is Vera okay to do as a character? I mean, I guess Sutanto is Asian herself and if anyone could get away with it she could, but I thought the “Asian helicopter parent obsessed with filial piety and meddling in other peoples’ business who speaks in broken English” stock character was one of those Asian stereotypes that could get you canceled, up there with the Fu Manchu stock villain. I was a little surprised to see this kind of character in a book written in 2023. Also, Emma, Marshall and Julia’s daughter, is teetering dangerously close to Cecelia from The Housemaid for being the worst child character in a thriller I’ve ever read. At two and a half, she simultaneously is still breastfed but also knows what monetary inflation is. She also at one point says “Don’t tie my hair up, Mommy. I’m too pretty already,” which is framed as self-love, but that’s not self-love, that’s narcissism. If I were Marshall I’d have walked out on the family too. Every other character is pretty forgettable, and Riki, Sana, Julia, and Oliver seem to be awfully chummy with Vera despite her initially approaching all of them as potential murder suspects – you’d think that’d be getting off on the wrong foot. Also, I hate the pop culture references – they talk about things like Love is Blind and Buzzfeed and other things that are just going to make this book age like milk. NFTs are a plot point, and that already makes it feel dated to three to four years ago. Definitely won’t be reading the sequel or any others that come out down the line, and probably won’t be reading the author’s Aunties series either (they seem to have worse reviews).

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan – Do I not like cyberpunk? I really want to. It’s such a cool aesthetic and could theoretically be a jumping off point for really cool stories. But I feel like every time I actually read or watch anything cyberpunk it lets me down. Altered Carbon is a cool cyberpunk concept sidestepped for one of the most juvenile adult male leads I’ve ever read. I don’t subscribe to the idea that men can never write compelling women characters, but people who do subscribe to that idea can certainly use Altered Carbon as evidence. Every single possible cool thing the setting and premise have to offer is squashed by the obnoxious characters. For instance, Catholics are said to not participate in the resleeving process because of their beliefs about what happens to the soul after death. That’s interesting! Could give the world some depth and connection to the real world! But instead we get Ortega, the stock gruff police lady character, going on a rant about how Catholics are evil (if the same rant had been about Jews or Muslims, Morgan would have been canceled six ways from Sunday) that was absolutely author soapboxing. Let’s not even get into all the ways the premise is trampled over to get weird sex stuff. I’ve been told the cult classic TV show is way better. I’m not going to touch the rest of this series, and frankly I’m not that interested in the rest of Morgan’s work.

Artifact Space by Miles Cameron – This is another book I liked, but don’t really have much to say about. I don’t know why I seem to have way more to say about the books I disliked than the books I did like. It’s a solid space opera, competently crafted but not a revelation.

Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Strothers – Was it too much to ask for a simple comedic cozy MLM romance fantasy? It’s not like that’s an impossible ask. The jokes were corny at best and unfunny at worst. The romance lacked chemistry entirely. And the book seemed to not want to be a fantasy at all. And at the end it turned into a sci-fi story about killing God for some reason like it was a JRPG. Also, there was a part of the story where Cameron became a woman for contrived plot reasons and the whole thing felt like a very odd choice coming from a non-binary trans author. It reminded me of Shrek, and I mean that in a bad way – the way it lampoons tropes is very grade-school basic (“The dragon was actually a girl!” “Sir Cameron can avoid the prophecy by becoming a girl!”) I think Strothers maybe isn’t ready for the big leagues yet.

Outlaw Planet by M. R. Carey – So, they say “show don’t tell,” right? I’ve had my work rejected by agents because they thought my work was too much telling. Well, I want to gather them all up, wave a copy of Outlaw Planet in the air, and say “Then what the hell is this?” The first section of this book reads like the Wikipedia page for the main character. That on its own should be enough to put this book into the garbage pile. Although the anthro-animals concept was interesting, nothing was really done of it aside from a poorly done Indigenous peoples allegory (between this and Zootopia, what is it about stuff with anthro-animals that makes people want to do terrible racial allegories?)

The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus – I want to start a class action lawsuit against Kraus and her publisher for false advertising. What I thought I was getting was a story about a woman in a dying marriage getting obsessed with a true crime mystery the the point of madness. Instead, this was the second book in a row to have the entire first section just be the character’s backstory (if I, a debut author, can’t get away with that, neither should you). The second part of the book hamfistedly tries to tie in grander world events of the first Trump administration through the COVID lockdowns into the events of the main character’s life. It’s like the author thinks namedropping sociopolitical events makes things deep for the main character. Here – let me take a shot at writing for this book – “On January 13th, 2018, an alert was issued to phones and televisions all across Hawaii, warning of an incoming ballistic missile, causing widespread chaos, despite the warning being a false alarm. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Catt burned a cake for her husband in the oven, causing the smoke alarm to go off. The smoke alarm was a lot like the false missile alert, warning people of danger that wasn’t there.” The story that gives this book its title, the faux true crime narrative, doesn’t come in until the last quarter of the book, and it tries to start a conversation about the struggles of low income rural areas in the US but it was clearly written by a wealthy urbanite. It reminded me a smidge of Demon Copperhead, which has also been criticized for being poverty porn, but at least that book was genuinely trying to make an effort to tell a good story. Bookstores and libraries need to stop shelving this one with the mysteries.

The Amalfi Curse by Sarah Penner – I bit the bullet and got Sarah Penner’s third book from the library. Is it going to be a disaster like The Lost Apothecary, or is it going to be surprisingly good like The London Seance Society? The answer is somewhere in the middle, but leaning towards the good side. Yeah, I’m surprised how much of a fluke Apothecary was. Amalfi is another split timeline book, but Haven, our modern anchor character, and Mari, our past anchor character, are much more tolerable than their Apothecary counterparts. I also liked the change of scenery from two books set in London to one set on the Italian coast. This one didn’t blow my mind, and it doesn’t have the shock factor that Seance had when it was actually good, but I liked this one.

Far From the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson – Another pretty solid space opera I don’t have much to say about. It reminded me a little of Light From Uncommon Stars for some reason, but less messy.

A Song to Drown Rivers by Ann Liang – This one was interesting! I’m not terribly familiar with Chinese legends, so the story of Xishi was new to me, but Liang’s version of the story was an interesting read. I believe this is fairly faithful to some versions of the story, but Liang is a talented writer and she breathes life into her legendary characters.

We Who Will Die by Stacia Stark – While I don’t think this is specifically We Who Will Die‘s fault, I really can’t wait for the romantasy bubble to burst. They’re all starting to blend together. Like I said earlier, this isn’t that unique for its Roman Empire-esque aesthetics, and I really don’t have any reason to recommend this book. I didn’t hate it as much as, say, Dire Bound, but there’s nothing that makes me like this book either. All these romantasies are all the same.

Murder in the Dressing Room by Holly Stars – I was expecting this to be a little more campy and fun, almost like a drag take on a murder mystery, but what I got instead was more grounded in reality. Not a bad thing, but after Sir Cameron earlier this month I was really hoping for something fun and gay. This was a pretty standard murder mystery, but set in the drag scene. It gets a recommendation from me, albeit not the most eager recommendation.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout – I’ll say one thing, it didn’t overstay its welcome. If this book was twice as long I don’t think I’d have finished it. It’s very… basic. It feels simple. And it almost felt like a short story collection about both Lucy’s life and those of her friends and neighbors that her mom tells her. I’ve heard good things about Lucy By the Sea, but it’s longer so I’m not certain I’ll read it.

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel – Again, ESJM is a talented writer. It’s just a little too poetic for my taste. Again, should have read this book before Sea of Tranquility (which I really don’t think stands on its own). She’s got another book out this year, don’t think I’ll be reading it.

Hostage by Clare Mackintosh – I read this book because it’s somewhat similar to a book I’ve written, and I can safely say my book is sufficiently different. Mostly because my book is good. No character in Hostage is anything but insufferable. Mina and Adam are both awful people and it made me not care about their daughter. Even the other passengers who stepped up to the mic to narrate a chapter about their backstories were all annoying stock characters. It’s another book that tries to tackle too many social issues and fails at all of them.

Waking Gods and Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel – Don’t get me wrong, these books aren’t bad, but I kinda feel like Sleeping Giants would have been better as a standalone. I didn’t like most of the new additions in these two books (particularly Eva, who was super obnoxious). The plot also got pretty convoluted by Only Human.

Jitterbug by Gareth L. Powell – This was another relative highlight of the month that I don’t have a ton to say about. Powell was quite good at differentiating his first person narrators.

Once More With Feeling by Elissa Sussman – What For the Love of the Bard was to Shakespeare, this book is to musical theater. To the point they feel like carbon copies. Maybe I just don’t have it in me to read two messy second chance romances about the performing arts in the span of a month.

The Blood Gift by N. E. Davenport – See what I said about We Who Will Die and what I said last month about the first book. I’m glad this is just a duology because I wouldn’t read a third book if there was one.

The Phoenix King by Aparna Verma – It’s a solid outing, but not a super memorable one. The best of the three POV characters is Leo, which makes the last third of the book pretty disappointing. Probably won’t be picking up the second or forthcoming third books, but it’s not a vindictive “no”.

My Roommate is a Vampire by Jenna Levine – Best part of the book is the title. This is a rare book where I have very different opinions on the romantic leads. MMC Frederick, the titular vampire roommate was appropriately quirky and a fun fish out of water in the modern world (although he did stretch credulity with his cluelessness at times). FMC Cassie, meanwhile, is all the worst things that come to mind when you hear the word “modern artist”, her art is all pieces of junk about society and she hates everyone who isn’t Frederick or her totally-played-straight gay best friend Sam (I thought that trope was dead?) She can’t make a living as an artist and I’d say yeah, that’s because your art sucks. She’s such a millenial I can’t imagine her falling for someone as old fashioned as Frederick. I feel like she’d realistically think he was some sort of conservative and hate his guts. I wasn’t rooting for their love at all. Levine’s got more quirky vampire romances and I won’t be reading them.