readthesparrow's reviews
276 reviews

Gentle Writing Advice: How to Be a Writer Without Destroying Yourself by Chuck Wendig

Did not finish book. Stopped at 25%.

I DNF’d this book 60 pages in because of the humor. It is very quirky, silly, lol so random, which is great if you like that kind of humor. I find it obnoxious.

I hate this word, but my reaction is best described as cringing.

I looked at the remaining page count and realized how miserable it would be to read 140 more pages. I decided to take Wendig’s advice on prioritizing self-care and DNF immediately.

Fadeout by Joseph Hansen

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

It's clear why this is a landmark of the mystery/detective noir genre. I don't usually buy into introductions which tout the author as one of the genre greats (or as a Great American Author) but in this case it was absolutely true.

Prose is blunt, hard-edged. Harsh in places, deeply emotional in others.

It is from 1970, and it shows. Terminology is dated. This is not a negative for me--it's authentic, and history, especially queer history, shouldn't always be made palatable for modern audiences.

I am looking forward to reading the next book ASAP.

Content Warnings

They Ain't Proper by M.B. Guel

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adventurous lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

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

4.0

I'm not normally much of a romance novel person but this book absolutely had me kicking my feet and giggling like a fool. As a non-binary lesbian whose type is non-binary lesbian cowboys, I was head over heels for Lou.

It was so nice to get to read a book with a nonbinary lesbian main character, especially since part of the plot deals with how Lou is percieved and treated by others. How they navigate their gender (especially in regards to manners and specifically how they navigate relationships with women) was so relateable and really made me feel seen.

The romance was fun. Lou and Clementine do very much deny their feelings for one another for far longer than strictly necessary (particularly Lou), which is a trope I typically really hate. Honestly, though, here it was fun. Like, I kind of get it why people who like that trope like it now.

The only thing I didn't like was the phonetically written southern accents. It was often distracting and sometimes difficult to understand. As a southerner, I also find it annoying when a heavy southern accent is written phonetically but other accents (for example, whatever accent Clementine had, which I presume was general American?) are not. (It's my opinion that, for the most part, phonetically transcribed dialects in dialogue should be left in the past with Mark Twain, but I won't get into that now.) Accent and dialect can be conveyed in other ways, such as word choice and use of regional phrases.

Regardless of that minor annoyance, I adored it! This might be the beginning of a lesbian romance era for me.

Content Warnings

You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

SUMMARY

Charity plays the Final Girl at a full-contact horror experience, where guests pay for a night of faux-slasher experience. When her co-workers disappear, Charity assumes they're just unreliable and calls her girlfriend, Bezi, and friend, Paige, up to help with the final performance. When someone turns up half-dead, it will take all of her Final Girl experience to survive.

REVIEW

After a run of slasher-inspired novels that flopped at the box office, You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight was a breath of fresh, bloody air. It was a fun, fast-paced read; the pacing is snappy, the action scenes feel weighty, the final twists were well-executed, and there are no holds barred on gore. This is a slasher. Characters get stabbed left and right without mercy.

That, however, leads me into what kept You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight from a full five stars. The characters don’t have the depth of character and complexity necessary for five stars. That’s not to say the characters are flat or bad; they’re likable and are distinct, personality-wise. However, it’s also quite easy to summarize the side characters in one or two traits, meaning that when they inevitably bite it (that’s not a spoiler, it’s a slasher!) it was not all that upsetting. Likability is one thing; being invested is another thing entirely.

QUEER REP

Before finishing the review, I have some thoughts on queer rep in You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight as reflecting a larger issue in queer rep.

Charity, our main character, has a girlfriend, Bezi. Charity identifies as gay, and explicitly states that she is not interested in men. However, the way this is introduced is that Charity is “a vegetarian;” “she don’t like meat… strictly strawberries” (Chapter 2). “Me and Porter are both part of the alphabet mafia,” Charity notes, “so we get it, but Javier is clueless” (Chapter 2).

It’s a small thing, but something like this–identifying attraction by sex, not gender–is gender essentialist, and something the queer community, particularly the trans and nonbinary communities, have been pushing against for ages. It’s disappointing to see this idea persisting in diverse queer books, especially in YA.

It’s also disappointing to see the word lesbian avoided. While there are plenty of women who pursue relationships with other women and identify as gay, the trend in publishing of avoiding the word lesbian (especially in YA) in contemporary fiction is frustrating and disappointing. Lesbian is a beautiful word; I wish that characters could be identified on page as such, instead of avoiding the word as though it's dirty or wrong.

Neither of these issues are unique to You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight, of course, and the book still has good rep regarding characters of color and gay characters. However, if you’re looking for fully inclusive queer or sapphic rep, you may be disappointed.

FINAL THOUGHTS

You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight is a fun YA slasher with a quick pace and a twisty ending you won’t predict. It’s perfect for a weekend read, especially if it’s dark outside.

For folks looking for a good YA slasher or a sapphic horror, I’d suggest checking this one out.

Thank you to Bloomsbury for providing a digital ARC via Netgalley. If you are interested in You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight, it releases 20 June 2023. If possible, support indie bookshops by purchasing the novel from your local brick and mortar or from Bookshop.org!

Content Warnings

Burn the Negative by Josh Winning

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slow-paced

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

1.5

If this book wasn’t an ARC, I would have DNF’d it. But I pushed through, and honestly, I don’t think preserving my review score on Netgalley was worth it.

As the book entered the end, I was so excited to be done with it, give the book a 2.5 rating on Storygraph, slap out a review, and move onto greener pastures.

Then I read the final chapter, and that 2.5 plummeted to a 1.5.

The final chapter undoes all of the character development scraped out in the second half of the book.

Laura and her sister Amy end up in almost the exact same place they were in the beginning of the book (Laura private, unable to share her trauma, and not speaking up for herself; Amy selfish, unthinking, self-serving, and obsessed with advancing her own career without caring how it will hurt her sister).

What the book focuses on–the abuse of children in Hollywood–is important. However, the book’s approach and execution of it is unfocused, and ends without addressing the root causes of that trauma (both in Laura’s specific case and the wider causes of capitalism and historical lack of protection for child workers). The conclusion of the story undoes not only all of the character growth but also leaves a huge plot element,

Laura’s childhood trauma from her mother,

completely unresolved.

Speaking of unfocused, the plot was unfocused, too, with a much bigger page count than it needed. New elements and characters get introduced in and out, without ultimately meaning anything after they (predictably) get slashed. Burn the Negative was so much longer than it needed to be; if some of the filler was cut, this book would be so much shorter (and so much better for it).

Speaking of filler, Laura is constantly questioning herself (What should she do? Is this real? Who can she trust?) to the point where it becomes grating, in part because her questions are so obvious that putting them on the page feels patronizing. The surrounding text already shows how Laura is feeling. We don’t need to be spoonfed it.

The book also has a cute gimmick of putting scraps of news articles, internet posts, and movie paraphernalia in front of each chapter. This gimmick is interesting, but doesn’t work. The best example is the very first, a screenshot of a fake meme about The Guesthouse.

Not to sound like an internet weirdo, but this meme is so painfully un-meme-able that it was painful to read. It's not funny, witty, clever, or using a recognizable meme format. It doesn’t feel like a real meme, which in turn makes the world of the book itself begin on an untrustworthy foot.

To top it all off, the prose was boring. Yawn-inducingly so.

And, look, I don’t need purple prose or sentences so complex they should come with their own instruction manual to enjoy reading. But I do need the words on the page to be interesting. If other elements like thematics and character aren’t interesting, the prose needs to pick up the slack.

A book needs more than a decently interesting premise. Unfortunatey, that's all Burn the Negative has.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The general reception for Burn the Negative seems to be pretty high. I could not imagine why, but maybe it’s just my personal taste. Maybe you’ll like it more, but honestly, I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone. Don’t bother.

Thank you to Putnam for providing a digital ARC via Netgalley. If you are interested in Burn the Negative, it releases July 11.

If possible, support indie bookshops by purchasing the novel from your local brick and mortar or from Bookshop.org!

Bored Gay Werewolf by Tony Santorella

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dark emotional funny fast-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? No

4.5

SUMMARY

Brian lives in a disaster apartment, sleeps on a floor mattress, and spends most of his wages on getting drunk. He’s also a werewolf. He has no idea how to handle any of this.

When his lycanthropy catches the attention of Tyler, a rich entrepreneur looking to create a werewolf wellness program, Brian is skeptical. As a gay man working double shifts as a waiter, Tyler’s weird masculine self-help startup bullshit is off-putting. But his weird schlock actually kind of helps: not only can Brian better handle his monthly transformations, but he’s also drinking less and working out more.

His co-workers and only friends Nik and Darby are worried about him, but Brian doesn’t buy it until he discovers exactly what Tyler actually wants, and soon he’s in a hell of a lot deeper water than he’d ever meant to swim in.

REVIEW

Be warned: there may be minor spoilers!

Writing

The prose is snappy and sharp, written with a dry, sarcastic wit. I normally don’t go for sarcastic narrative voices—I usually find them obnoxious and painfully unfunny—but Santorella’s prose gets its sarcasm on point. The jabs are often self-depricating yet relatable or are aimed at straight culture, toxic masculinity, and/or shitty customers, meaning they hit a deserving target.

I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator did a fantastic job of bringing Brian and the rest of the cast to life. I usually shy away from reading audiobooks for the first experience with a story, since I sometimes struggle to pay attention, follow the plot, or figure out which character was which. However, not only was the prose and plot consistently engaging enough to keep my attention, but the narrator (Anthony Nyro) did such a fantastic job at bringing character’s voices to life that I was never confused as to who was speaking.

Characters

Look. Is Brian an awful person? Absolutely. He’s a trashfire who

hooks up with married men and doesn’t get all that upset when he accidentally murders someone during his monthly wolf-outs.

Is he relatable? Oh, yeah. He may be a trashfire, but he’s a gay trashfire who works in the service industry and helps his friend Nik study during their shifts and defends his nonbinary femme coworker Darby from asshole customers.

His character is engaging, and the character development over time—especially as he is coming out of his brush with the manosphere—is an excellent exploration of the intersections between manhood, queerness, and community, both the good and the bad.

The side characters, too, are so well-written. Nik and Darby, Brian’s friends, are supportive and understanding. They’re not doormats, though: they both tell him off when he’s being a douche, and hold him accountable. Their reactions to Brian’s shift in personality is realistic.

So too is the representation both characters provide. Nik is a Filipina nursing student, while Darby is a non-binary performance artist. As a non-binary person who is always looking for well-written non-binary characters, I adored Darby, especially since they reminded me a bit of a friend of mine.

The only characters that are stereotyped are done so with intention. Tyler, for example, and the kinds of people he is friends with all fulfill a particular stereotype of rich, white, cishet people who have no clue what it’s like to live in the real world. Even so, they feel realistic.

For example,

one cishet women, Sarah, latches onto Brian’s identity as a gay man, expecting him to act as her gay best friend then badgering him about whether he is a top or a bottom in a stereotypically, painfully straight woman manner that any gay will recognize. Brian’s angry outburst in response is satisfying, but also painful. Because he did not play along, Sarah is perceived as the victim by the rest of the group, and Brian’s self-help ‘friends’ do not stand up for him at all.

As a gay person who has experienced that same frustration regarding straight perception of gay culture and identity, this scene—and several others—were deeply relatable.

Thematics

In an age where self-help for men is inundated by personalities like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson, a novel like Bored Gay Werewolf, which explores how and why men are sucked into these schemes and what it does to their personality, self-image, and perception of manhood and the world, is vital.

It is especially vital due to the phenomenon of members of the queer community—particularly white members—joining alt-right or conservative movements. Bored Gay Werewolf bluntly exhibits that these movements will only ever use queer people. Joining that movement will offer no respect, protection, or understanding.

Bored Gay Werewolf not only explores how men are sucked in but also how they can get out, placing emphasis on a supportive, diverse community, openness, and emotional regulation. Genuine self improvement is possible, and that it’s not found in a self-help grift but in the people who already love and care for you.

FINAL THOUGHTS

While there were some aspects I wish had been explored more in-depth (such as Brian's relationship with his parents), I nevertheless count Bored Gay Werewolf as one of the best queer books I've read. I was already recommending this book to friends before I finished it. As someone who fits one of the three titular words (I’ll let you make an educated guess which one), I thought the jabs at straight culture, Silicon Valley types, and toxic masculinity were so spot on and absolutely satisfying.

If you want a book that is unabashedly, authentically, messily queer, Bored Gay Werewolf is for you.

Thank you to W.F. Howes Ltd for providing a digital audiobook ARC via Netgalley. If you are interested in Bored Gay Werewolf, it is available now! Find more information from the publishers. If possible, I suggest supporting an indie bookshop with your purchase.

Content Warnings

Maeve Fly by CJ Leede

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.0

After finishing Maeve Fly, I loved it so much I wanted to reread it immediately.

Luckily, the audiobook ARC was available--huzzah!--and so I requested it immediately.

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy the audiobook anywhere near as much.

Maeve's voice and character work well on the page. Not so much on audio.

This narrator brings a smug, somewhat conceited tone to Maeve's voice that made me roll my eyes. It makes it difficult to take her seriously. When originally reading, I imagined Maeve's voice as somewhat similar to Bateman's; somewhat flat, but with a quiet articulation. Little emotion besides anger. The narrator's take on Maeve does not quite capture the character's misanthropy and detachment from humanity.

Admittedly, capturing Maeve's voice off would be difficult for anyone, but regardless. The direction does not work for me.

Additionally, a minor complaint. The parts in the book where Maeve sings lyrics to real songs were never actually sung or even spoken to the right tempo, which was so distracting and awkward it made me flinch.

There are some parts the narrator did well. I liked the voices she did for the side characters, particularly Tallulah and Gideon. Her acting for Kate's rant at the party was emotional and perfectly captured how I envisioned the dialogue. The narrator is certainly talented, but she just doesn't fit into Maeve's skin, at least not in the way I had heard her.

This audiobook is, unfortunately, one I would specifically suggest people avoid in the interest of them actually enjoying the book.

To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose

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adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring slow-paced

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

5.0

I was a Dragon Kid.

I read the first Eragon book to tatters, and obsessively read the third around four times a year. Dragonology was my favorite -ology book. It was Lady Trent’s Memoirs, a series about dragon naturalism, that broke me out of my four year reading slump.

I haven’t read a good dragon book in a while, but I’ve been itching for one. To Shape a Dragon’s Breath is exactly what I needed to scratch that itch.

WORLDBUILDING

The story is set in an alternate history version of America based upon not Christian English beliefs but Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, and Old English religion and culture. I loved how Blackgoose reinterpreted and structured these inspirations; for example, the political system is a cross between the real world early American democracy and the Anglo-Saxon aristocratic system with a king, thanes, and halls.

The magic system, too, is so well-done. It’s more of a magical alternate science system, which I would describe as a cross between chemistry and alchemy. Though the vocabulary is different (for example, iron is called isen and elements are called skiltas), the foundational concepts are the same, making it easy to follow as we learn about it beside Anequs.

I adore dragon fantasy stories that reinterpret our own history and natural science through its own lens. That’s no easy feat to accomplish, much less do it well. With To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, Blackgoose has created not only a fantastic science fantasy but also one of the best dragon fantasy books I have ever read.

FOLKLORE IN TO SHAPE A DRAGON’S BREATH

I could write an essay on the way Blackgoose implements folklore into her storytelling. However, this is a book review, and as such I shall restrain myself to a few paragraphs.

Folklore—more specifically, the telling of stories—is a major theme in To Shape a Dragon’s Breath. More than one chapter is a story within a story, framed by Anequs asking another character to tell her a story or telling a story herself. It’s obvious to me that Blackgoose is passionate about folklore, reinterpreting lore from real-world cultures with care.

Even the presentation of the novel itself has links to folklore. The chapter titles, when considered together, read as a bare-bones bedtime story version of the narrative. It’s so clever, and I absolutely cannot wait to see how Blackgoose continues the theme of folklore in the rest of the series.

PLOT

I sometimes struggle to enjoy some fantasy titles, as they tend to incorporate tropes and narrative beats I find tiring (for example, the love triangle and poorly handled fantasy racism).

However, Blackgoose not only avoids these tropes but actively challenges them. In example,

although Anequs is interested in two characters, she plans to pursue both of them, avoiding a tiresome love triangle that so often drags books down for me.

She also handles racism and bigotry on several levels. For example, by reflecting problematic tropes and narratives present in real-world literature through in-world books Anequs encounters, and exploring how those racist narratives effect Anequs’ life and relationships.

And now we come to the only caveat I have to say about To Shape a Dragon’s Breath.

The plot is largely concerned with worldbuilding, society, and culture. If you’re expecting a high-octane adventure fantasy, you will be disappointed. There are no sky battles or magic duels or special ancient weapons.

I’ve seen some other reviewers complain that nothing happens in this book. I disagree.

Things do happen, it’s just that those things concern cultural, scientific, and political worldbuilding, the navigation of social settings, and the development of character relationships.

At its core, To Shape a Dragon’s Breath about exploring a world through the eyes of an Indigenous teenager living in a colonial world and moving through a restrictive social structure she refuses to assimilate into.

The plot, therefore, is about what she learns and who she learns it with. For someone expecting dragon battles or a fantasy boarding school mystery, it may feel as though nothing is happening, but something is happening: an exploration of the crossroads of race, gender, religion, class, and culture in this fictional setting throug nuanced, well-written dialogue between diverse, well-written characters.

It is a slow paced book, but like a good hike, the pleasure is in the journey and who you’re walking with.

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath provides a breathtaking trail and excellent company.

FINAL THOUGHTS

After finishing To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, I already missed the characters and the world. This is the first installment in a series, and I cannot wait to see what else Blackgoose has in store for us.

If you love dragons, science fantasy, or well-written diverse characters, I cannot recommend To Shape a Dragon’s Breath enough.

Thank you to Del Ray for providing a digital ARC via Netgalley. If you are interested in To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, it is available now.

Content Warnings