mateoj's reviews
433 reviews

Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction by Grady Hendrix

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adventurous dark informative medium-paced

4.0

bring back the horror paperback industry NEOW

Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh

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emotional funny hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

It Devours! by Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

my god, WTNV just doesn't miss.
I really enjoyed getting to see more of the characters from the first novel and the podcast, and the newly introduced characters are just wonderful and lovable. my only criticism, which may be very subjective, is that as someone who did not grow up within a religion, sometimes the satirical nature of the religious elements felt... overdone? too on-the-nose? but I have no experience in that area and maybe it really is like that, I don't know. either way, what a great book.

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Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 39%.

"He threw a shrug, hands tossed up so quickly that his fin gers, if they had been birds, would have broken in the violence."

girl what

Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose by Leigh Cowart

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adventurous challenging informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

just delightful — vulnerable, honest, informative, and funny. a difficult balance to strike in journalistic nonfiction, but Hurts So Good does it very well.

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The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai

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mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I'm mad because I absolutely adored The Borrower and therefore had really high hopes for this book, but it's just so slow and unsatisfying. I couldn't really get behind any of the characters, which is fine (no one said a protagonist has to be a good person), but none of them managed to be bad people in a way that made me want to read about them or care what happened to them despite it. The superatural element was the only truly interesting thing about this book and it was essentially nonexistent, just a topic of conversation to give the characters a connnection. lots of egregious racism that seemed to seve no purpose whatsoever. I have no idea how i was meant to be feeling at the end of the book or what exactly it was trying to tell me.

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Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor

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challenging emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

honestly, I think I partially stuck with this one because I loved reading about early-90s gay culture and was kind of enthralled by it—the writing is not fantastic (not horrible, either) and the plot dragged on occasion, but the setting and "set dressing" more than made up for that to me. this could be, objectively speaking, much better than it is, but I'll take the parts I liked and leave the rest.

Content Warnings