omnomicons's reviews
123 reviews

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

3.75

i really love grady hendrix's horror novels! i felt that this one tackled a much more serious subject matter but i do think it explored the topic of hush-hush teen pregnancies quite well. how horrifying that these homes existed... the introduction of the supernatural forces was done quite well and the novel stays firmly grounded in fantasy, never pretending to do otherwise. he's a funny writer! i look forward to reading more.

Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan

3.25

i mean, this sure is a kevin kwan novel. it's funny and ridiculous and totally out of touch in a self aware way. the footnotes are always hilarious. also this novel conspicuously included south asian characters which i just KNOW is a correction from the backlash he got for forgetting them in crazy rich asians

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

4.5

insanely beautiful. and LONG. read this on kindle so couldn't judge the heft of the book but then saw it in the library and it was close to 800 pages. honestly, verghese uses this length deftly and the novel never seems to drag on. ammachi's life is treated with so much sensitivity and respect and i appreciate that this is not sadness porn for "oppressed indian woman character". the universality, yet specificity of the situations the characters deal with are so vividly rendered; i couldn't put this down. i did feel like the plot twist at the end didn't add too much to the novel but i also felt like it didn't take anything significant away.

The Girls by Emma Cline

3.0

sort of an insane premise, but i did think it sort of helped me understand the situational factors that lead people to be part of stuff like the manson family??? felt sort of insane reading this though and its soooo deeply white girl that it felt foreign at times. they were really doing drugs like there was no tomorrow though. no one told them bout neurotoxicity

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

3.75

sort of a novel dimension through which to examine contemporary race relations (novel to me at least). did feel like it dragged on a bit at times but excellent on the whole

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

4.5

i totally understand why this won the Pulitzer Prize. what i liked most about this is that it features all the different facets of life in this region at this time; it doesn't lean too far in to all the horrors (and there are so many horrors to talk about). whitehead devotes equal time to celebrating joy and community. man, this was so well-written and gripping and deserves all the praise it got. looking forward to reading nickel boys!

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

3.75

I actually first read this book in high school. Bizarrely, though I think I hold mother-daughter relationships more tenderly now than then, this book failed to hit the emotional tones it did on my first read-through. Nevertheless, it’s a very good book. It dives into the complexity of the relationship between an immigrant mother and her native daughter delicately and I can see why it inspired so many Chinese-American writers. 

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

4.0

Really funny, in the same dry, witty way as The Idiot by Batuman. I loved the colorful cast of characters that surround Greta and I thought it was interesting to see her trauma slowly unravel and see the ways in which it affects her decision making in the present day. 

The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

3.0

A fun little read to be sure and I enjoyed seeing the different personalities of the husbands. However, it was clear that there was supposed to be some kind of lesson in this novel and I never grasped quite what it was. 

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

2.0

I really liked the concept and I had a lot of fun reading the different accents and vocabularies etc, and I always sort of enjoy reading workplace satires. I did feel this book was a little sloppy. the romance feels cheesy, like fanfiction, and grahams traits don’t feel at all realistic. I didn’t really buy him and the MC falling in love and I would have preferred he fell in love with Arthur. the side characters are horribly developed; they appear and disappear intermittently not as a function of their characterization but in a way that feels like Bradley forgot about them and then remembered and shoehorned them in. I also felt the pacing of the plot was off; the romance constitutes the bulk of the middle when I really felt like it should have been a subplot. the ending is rushed and confusing. the world building is unclear. a lot of this novel feels like the author smushed many things together when each thing was deserving of its own book