matt_vogel's reviews
509 reviews

emotional medium-paced

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

2.0

Misc thoughts on no order
Alex, the former late night host and main villain, is so comically villainous I expected him to twirl a mustache halfway through. He was so clearly and obviously horrible It impacted my ability to come around on the Chris the co-host.

Major characterization issues throughout

Emily, the main character, mentions several times how difficult she is to work with and prides herself on being aware of that fact while her changing into becoming easier to work with is stated in exposition, we never get a eureka moment or are shown why/how she is changing. She spends quite a lot of time Blaming her frustrations and failures on sexism, the patriarchy, or occasionally her weight and while those things very clearly did play into it her own self isolation and difficulties as a person she glosses over. Her co-writers repeatedly tell her she's not a fun person to write with and she nods and then continues to talk about sexism and feminism holding her back instead of looking inwards. Too many times issues and roadblocks were external to her and two little did she acknowledge the own ways that she hamstrung and kneecapped her own success.

These issues are all perfectly normal for a first-time writer. What I have a much harder time forgiving is the lack of actual comedy. For a book about SNL where 2/3 of the characters are comedians there were shockingly few laughs or even truly funny jokes / sketches. The comedy writing world felt more like set dressing than actual parts of who these people are. You could have changed the book's setting to, for example, TV news hosts and not much else would feel different. Compared to another book about an SNL equivalent, "Romantic Comedy" By Curtis Sittenfeld, this was the hardest thing to get over and what I most wanted to see reading a book about the comedy world.

All the premise and relationship were good but overall it felt like a skeleton of a book that needed quite a bit more meat and revisions to flesh it into what it could be.

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

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adventurous emotional inspiring fast-paced