A review by slamdradee1978
Welcome to Night Vale by Jeffrey Cranor, Joseph Fink

4.0

This book is great, but boy can it be a slog. One of the few I think that would have benefitted from an audio book. Much like Lemony Snicket in ASOUE, Fink and Cranor take their sweet *ss time saying something with 100 words, where about 10 would do; and they do that for the whole d*mn book. Once again, like Snicket, it's done usually in a comedic way and it works! But I still felt a sort of hollowness where I would usually be hearing Cecil speaking to me, which brings me to my other point: this book doesn't really have Cecil or Carlos in it at all. It's about a couple of side characters and swaps between POVs with them. The plot was kind of weak in my opinion, as I wasn't really interested in the mystery but rather the characters and how they solve it. All of the main characters are interesting and likable, and despite one of the m/c being a single mom of a shape-shifting teenager and myself not ever being a mother myself or even wanting to be one, I felt really connected to both her and her son because the way they struggle to communicate and find common ground. The sort of disconnect they go through is very relatable. The comedic moments and characters were enough to save this for me.