#3. Accidental romance-book edition
Featuring: my least favorite book of the year and a fuckboy anecdote from my deep dark past
Recently, at a (Zoom) holiday party with my co-workers, the topic of Christmas/holiday movies came up. Inevitably, someone brought up the movie Love Actually.
“How do we feel about the Love Actually?” they asked. I didn’t immediately say anything, but I did immediately (involuntarily) make a face (I have no poker face. Zero. It is both a blessing and a curse) which was caught by ONE of my ESTEEMED COLLEAGUES, who exclaimed sarcastically, “Oh, Amy doesn’t like that movie. Big surprise!”
Now, readers, this comment kind of annoyed me. I know they didn’t mean anything by it. I know that this person knows me mostly by my sarcastic, curmudgeonly exterior shell and therefore leapt to the conclusion that of course I would hate a ~romantic~ movie. I can understand why they would think that, but also—they’re incorrect! To be clear: I made the face I made not because I am opposed to romantic movies in general, but because of my feelings on that specific movie. I will not even get into all of my arguments about how Love Actually is not really that romantic, actually, and in fact can be interpreted as deeply problematic at times. Let’s just focus on the assumption here that I am “not” “into” “romance” or things that might otherwise be interpreted as cute, warm, and fuzzy.
Look, I know I come off as a sort of snarky, eye-rolling, dark humored little punk. Basically everyone I have met in recent years have told me that they were “intimidated” by me at first, because I “seem kind of mean”—which is a sentiment I don’t understand (because I know that I am nothing more than a sniveling pile of anxiety and self-doubt), but it has come up over and over. I guess it’s some combination of my sense of humor, the social anxiety that keeps me quiet in group situations (which I think people read as “disinterested”), and the…bangs? Idk!
The truth, however, is that I have somehow fooled everyone! At my core I am a mushy, sentimental little freak. I love cute things. I cry over TV commercials on a regular basis. I am thrilled by feeling warm and fuzzy inside. Indeed, even despite my vocal dislike/distrust of men/relationships/dating/etc, I am deep down a sucker for cute romantic garbage. This is probably why, in my single days, I kept trying—over and over, despite the many times I got myself hurt and swore off the whole concept of romantic love, until finding myself in a long-term relationship (wherein I insist upon cuteness at all times) (sorry Matt). Surprise!
That being said, as far as my reading preferences go, I guess I don’t necessarily seek out romance as a genre, but as a byproduct of my emotional state and my secret inner crybaby, a good amount of books I read deal with romance sort of incidentally. I realized, as I was thinking about the stuff I’ve read recently, that I’ve accidentally read a whole bunch of books that had romance as a central theme, so I’ve compiled a few of those here.
What I’ve been reading
One Day in December, by Josie Silver
I apologize in advance for how long this is. I hated this book a lot and wrote a very long rant about it which you can/should probably skip.
Normally I don’t write reviews of books that I *don’t* like, but for this one, I’ll make an exception, because not only would I not recommend this book to anyone, but I would specifically advise that people not read this book.
I read “One Day in December” because it was the December pick for my book club. I knew going in that I wasn’t going to particularly like it because even a cursory glance at the book description had me rolling my eyes. Still, one of the things I enjoy about being in book clubs is that it does get me to read stuff outside of my usual reading wheelhouse, and sometimes I end up really enjoying a book that I would otherwise not have picked up. So, I tried to go in with an open mind—which lasted about 3 pages before I was ready to toss the whole book right out the window.
The premise of this story is this: Laurie, a 21-22 yr old gal (at the start of the book) is on a bus ride home from work when she looks out the window and sees a handsome dude (Jack) sitting at the bus stop. They lock eyes, ~it’s love at first sight~ (barf)--but then the bus pulls away from the stop, before Jack/Laurie can act on their “feelings” ie: actually talk to each other.
So Laurie goes home and tells her best friend/roommate Sarah about this man, who she considers herself “in love” with (remember that she literally just saw him out the window of a bus, so this feels like a stretch but ok girl go off), and the two of them spend the next year on the lookout for him in bars/cafes etc. That’s right, for a whole dang year, Laurie is totally hung up on this absolute stranger, to the extent that she refuses to date anyone else because they are not as good, in her mind, as the false image she has built in her mind of Jack (based on literally 0 information because, again, she saw him for 10 seconds one singular time. I cannot emphasize enough how insane this plot made me). In the meantime, Sarah gets a boyfriend of her own, who she dates for a few weeks before introducing him to Laurie. When she does introduce them, it turns out the boyfriend is—gasp—Jack, the dude from the bus stop.
The rest of the book places out over the course of 10 years and details the (highly unnecessary) drama that unfolds because Jack and Laurie are shitty people who are bad at communicating their feelings to each other or anyone else. The chapters alternate perspectives between Laurie and Jack, which gives us insight into how deeply terrible both of these characters are.
As you can see, I have...thoughts.
First of all, the two main characters are SO unlikable. When one reads romance stories, aren’t you supposed to be rooting for someone? Like, aren’t I supposed to want people to be happy and together in the end? I kind of just wanted these characters to be single and go to therapy, they’re so bad.
The “romance” itself? Terrible, problematic, poorly written, and just...ick! The whole love story is rooted in lies, deceit, manipulation, and cheating—both physical and emotional. I personally don’t find any of those things cute or fun or sexy or worth rooting for!
I feel like the author’s intention was that we’re supposed to have a sympathetic view of Laurie, but I simply...don’t. From the very beginning, Laurie is immature and a little irritating. She becomes obsessive about Jack after glimpsing him out of a bus window for a mere moment. Obsessed to the point that she is incapable of dating anyone else FOR A FULL YEAR because no one else she meets measures up to the illusion she has in her head about bus-stop-guy. She is always looking out for him whenever she goes anywhere in public, and is desperate to find him at all costs.
Now, I know I’m supposed to read this love-at-first-sight thing as romantic or whatever, but this strikes me more as “pathological” than anything else. (Maybe this is why people think I hate romance lol?) Like, sure, we all have seen attractive strangers that we think about from time to time. I live in New York, I see literal models every time my toad-self has to hippity hop to the grocery store. However, I’ve never put my entire life on hold in the off chance that one of these strangers might perhaps be my soul mate.
Another big thing that made me absolutely crazy about this plot was that for all the desperation Laurie felt about finding bus-stop-guy, she never once simply...went back to the bus stop and hung around. Chances are, dude will take the bus again, right? Sure, this would also have been a totally nutso step for her to take (stalking the bus stop until homeboy turns up again), but like, if she’s so sure that this is her soul mate, heading back to the one and only place she ever saw him seems like the most logical way to find him, and YET the thought, as far as we know from the author, never crosses Laurie’s mind. I guess this would not have made for a very compelling story, but I feel like not even mentioning this in the book was sort of an oversight.
Ok, ok. I’m belaboring the point and I know it. The tldr is that I found the entire foundation of this story deeply irritating, but there’s also plenty else to dislike.
For instance: Laurie is a terrible friend to Sarah (the roommate/best friend who Laurie confided in about bus-stop-guy). So, Sarah introduces Laurie to her new boyfriend, Laurie instantly recognizes him as bus-stop-guy. At this point, why didn’t she simply...tell Sarah in the first place that Jack was the guy from the bus stop? Sarah had only been dating this man at that point for a few weeks. Sure, it would have been weird, it might have caused some awkwardness, but if they are best friends, I have to imagine that this is a conversation they could navigate. And an awkward conversation, in my mind, would have been better than lying by omission for the duration of the entire Jack/Sarah relationship (which lasted YEARS!!!)
And Jack? HA! The more the book described Jack, the less it made sense that Laurie was so obsessed with him to begin with. In the best light, this man could be considered totally mediocre. At his worst: he’s an awful, manipulative, boring fuckboy. The chapters written from his perspective were honestly so repulsive, especially in the first 25% of the book. To start, this man dated Sarah for YEARS despite never really loving her—he talked a lot about how hot Sarah is but not really about much else. More than that, he spent a weird amount of time fantasizing about her best friend (Laurie). Still, he finds Sarah beautiful, while he can’t quite figure out his attraction to the less-hot Laurie (asjdkasjdka). While we get Laurie’s perspective about pining (stupidly) about Jack, when we read Jack’s perspective, he’s all “Lauries boobs look nice in that tank top” and “I keep having sex dreams about my girlfriends best friend but she’s not that hot so I can’t understand why!” Again and again I found myself wondering if the author wanted us to hate Jack because his character was not written at all in a sympathetic or redeeming way. He just sucked? He was exactly the ‘problematic bad boy’ archetype that I cannot stand because I wish that romance stories would stop pushing the narrative that women just need to “save” dudes, ie: act like pro-bono therapists until their boyfriends morph into decent human beings. No thanks!!
We hear for chapters and chapters and chapters about how Jack is just constantly acting like a juvenile little jerk. His behavior toward Laurie even gets physically abusive at one point! Yet everyone just kind of accepts it. No one challenges him. The women in the story, in fact, never stop trying to help him, even when he’s been horrendous, insulting, crass, and intentionally hurtful toward them.
I just...don’t understand why Laurie liked Jack so much. The author didn’t give him any redeeming qualities. I also don’t really understand why Jack liked Laurie, or why either of them couldn’t just have been honest with Sarah about what was up between them instead of forming a weird love triangle and cheating and lying and blah blah blah. Again, forbidden secret cheating love isn’t romantic, it’s just dumb!!! From a plot/writing standpoint, I didn’t feel any chemistry between these characters, I honestly had no idea why I was supposed to believe that these characters were “soulmates” and I kept wanting to scream every single time I turned a page.
This book was so stupid. I felt like it was just perpetuating a lot of bad stereotypes, like that romantic love should be put above friendships, or like that juvenile “bad boy” types actually just need some girl to save them/will change for the right girl, or that it should be a woman’s responsibility to help a manchild be a good partner, or that infatuation/lust=love….
I don’t know guys. This book was just not good. I am mad that I read it and even more mad that I kept seeing it pop up on “Holiday Must Read” lists (which is another thing--this book is marketed as a holiday book but it has nothing to do with the holidays??). On the plus side, no one in my book club liked it either, so I at least got the catharsis of getting to scream about how bad it sucked with some other people.
And now, time for a wee anecdote….
This book reminded me a lot of my experience with a dude who I also met on public transportation, back in Boston some years ago. I kept thinking about it over and over again, especially because Jack and the man from my past shared many qualities (ie: they are both terrible people).
Once upon a time, a younger, more naïve version of me was innocently on my way to school on the train one morning….
For context, I was 21 and fresh out of my first ~serious~ relationship with my college boyfriend. College Boyfriend was truly, madly, deeply awful. It would take too long to go into much detail, but suffice to say he spent the entirety of our relationship lying to me (and to others about me), and cheating on me with basically anyone who crossed his path (including the person to whom he is now engaged. Good for them, I guess!). Needless to say, by the time that disaster was over, my state of mind not great, and I was ready to “move on”—which, for a vulnerable 21 year old version of myself, meant I thought I was ready to start dating again so I could forget about College Boyfriend.
I say all this to point out that when I was on the train that fateful morning and noticed an ~attractive stranger~ who seemed to also be noticing me, the actions that followed (ie, I decided to strike up a conversation???) was extremely unlike myself and can only be chalked up to the temporary insanity that comes with having your life fall apart.
So, picture it: there I was, bleary eyed on some autumnal morning, taking the green line from Allston into the city to go to class. I see this Attractive Boy, and I see that he’s sneaking glances at me too. Our eyes lock a few times. I am swooning, it all feels like a romantic meet-cute, and as we approach my stop, I decide to introduce myself. “If he rejects me I can just hop of the train and never see him again,” I told myself. Well reader, unfortunately he did not reject me. Unfortunately, we exchanged numbers and spent the next several days sending very cute text messages from morning to night.
We hung out a few times, and he was very sweet. This boy—lets call him Mike (because that’s his real name; I’m not in the business of protecting the identities of those who have wronged me)—said and did all the right things, for weeks! We hung out a bunch, I met his roommates, I hung out with his very cute pitbull, things were fine and fun and nice. And then, as quickly as our whirlwind romance had started, poof—he ghosted me.
Now, reader, this was the first time I had ever been ghosted. A monumental moment in any millennial’s life, amiright? It was a textbook case: things were going along just fine and the one day, apropos of nothing, this guy just stops responding to my text messages. He was there one minute and gone the next (much like my “mental health” and “self esteem” during this period of my life). I took this as one might expect, especially as I was still healing the wounds from the aforementioned Shitty College Boyfriend: poorly. Still, after a few texts went unanswered, I gave up and moved on.
But the story doesn’t end there.
A few weeks later, Mike texts me out of the blue with some story about how he “broke his phone” and hadn’t been able to replace it until just then (ie weeks later), and he was sorry for disappearing like that. Now, reader, the Amy of today would obviously and absolutely know that this was a steaming pile of bullshit, but keep in mind that at this point, apart from the Shitty College Boyfriend, I didn’t have all that much experience dealing with dating or Boys Who Are Trash. Amy of the past was young, inexperienced, and had not yet been totally jaded—so please don’t judge me too harshly when I say that I decided to believe him.
We started hanging out again, but this time he expressed that even though he liked me a lot, he wasn’t really looking for a relationship right now, so he’d rather he keep things between us “casual for now.” This was fine with me at the time because, again, my 2 year long Terrible Relationship had just ended and I knew I shouldn’t be trying to lock down a new boyfriend right away. So, we carried on seeing each other sometimes, and it was fine. It was good! I specifically remember feeling like it was so cool and mature and responsible that he ~communicated~ what he wanted in this way, rather than stringing me along or whatever.
Well. WELL.
During this time of my life I was very into Tumblr. One day, I am scrolling along, clicking on different blogs, when I come across a post from a girl who I recognized from ~around~, ie I knew she was in Boston and went to similar shows etc as me and had friends/acquaintances in common with me, but I had never met her myself. Anyway, I recognized her, and I also recognized the dog in a recent post she had made on her Tumblr. It was a picture of Mike’s very cute pitbull that I had hung out with numerous times at this point. The caption of the photo was something to the effect of, “my boyfriend’s dog is so cute!” and I….
Boyfriend??
Initially I was like, “maybe it is just another dog that looks like his dog” but, at this point I am sure you can see where this is going. After some further investigation, I found that this person was indeed Mike’s long-term girlfriend. Yes, they had been dating the entire time I had been seeing him. I obviously had no idea because Mike did not really use social media and at this point in my life I was innocent and trusting enough to not launch a full-scale FBI level investigation on every person who came into my life (I have since learned my lesson).
I freaked out at Mike and ended things, though this man did have the audacity to attempt to rekindle things several times over the years. Those are different stories probably but I will say that each time he reached out to me, I DID launch an investigation and each time discovered that he was in some sort of a relationship, including one time where he reached out via Facebook, where a few clicks led me to find that he was indeed dating someone once again, and that his girlfriend had announced she was pregnant with his spawn literally that very day (the same day he reached out to me).
As you can see, this man was very, very bad and none of this would have been a problem if I simply did not allow myself to become romantically entangled with a man from public transportation. It’s a bad idea!! Don’t talk to strangers! Meet-cutes aren’t real!!
The moral of this story? The point of this review? Let people commute in peace and meet your significant others on Tinder, where you can reverse image search them and discover all of their life details before wasting your time—its 2020, for crying out loud.
ANYWAY, moving on to the next romance book (which does not involve public transport meet-cutes but does involve an elevator which….sigh).
A World Between, by Emily Hashimoto
Coincidentally, I read A World Between right before “One Day in November,” and in retrospect, the juxtaposition was amusing to me. I say this because, in terms of plot broad strokes, there are a lot of similarities between these two books, but my experience of reading them was WILDY different (ie: I didn’t want to fling this one into the sun).
In A World Between college students Eleanor Suzuki and Leena Shah meet in an elevator.
(Not a bus, but another quick, public, ‘love-at-first-sight’ scenario). Eleanor is immediately smitten with Leena, but Leena gets off the elevator before Eleanor gets her number. Shortly after, though, Eleanor runs into Leena again, pursues her feelings, and the two women begin a romantic relationship. A main point of contention is (and continues to be) that Leena is still in the closet and does not feel ready to be very public with her relationship with Eleanor. As you might imagine, this proves to be problematic to the point of ending the relationship, breaking both of their hearts.
Years later, Eleanor and Leena meet again on the streets of San Francisco. Although years have passed and things have changed in both their lives, the women find themselves once again irresistibly pulled together.
This story also alternates perspcectives (between Eleanor and Leena), and also takes place over the course of many years (10-15 I think?). We follow this relationship from college days through to when the two women are in their 30s.
Unlike the other book, I found A World Between really heartfelt and compelling, and way more nuanced. Obviously queer sexuality and “coming out” play a big role in this book, but so too does racial identity--I actually really appreciated the authors attention to the intersection of sexual and racial identity here. Eleanor is a biracial (Jewish/Japanese) woman who comes out relatively early in life to a generally supportive family. Leena is a South Asian woman who is afraid of coming out to her family because of the cultural expectation that she will marry a man, and she fears that her rather strict, traditional family will not understand or accept her.
I felt like both characters were really well developed. I appreciated that we had a sense of who each of these characters were and what was important to them, above and beyond what the characters meant to each other. We saw their individual paths and trajectories, their passions, the things that made them who they are and which shaped their individual personalities. Both of the characters are complex and layered and I both loved and disliked certain things about each of them--but ultimately I was rooting for them and wanting for them to be happy, either with or without each other. I really cared about and felt connected to each of them, and I thought the author did a really great job of making me, the reader, feel for them.
I really loved the relationship between Eleanor and Leena, but I think the thing that I loved the most about this story was the arc of each character. We really see each of these women develop and grow over the course of the story. There are moments that are painful/gut-wrenching, there are moments that are cute and funny and heartwarming--it’s all just so human and real and I loved this aspect of the book.
So, yeah--this was an example of a love-at-first-sight, alternating perspective, story told over many years romance novel done correctly. See, it’s not that I dislike romance--it’s that I dislike BAD romance.
This was a 4 out of 5 star read for me :)
Plain Band Heroines, by Emily M. Danforth
I’d heard a TON of buzz about this book for weeks and I was so excited to finally get my hands on a copy from the library.
There were a lot of really cool things about this book but I think ultimately, it fell a little flat for me, which I hate to admit! I’m sad about it because so many people have loved this book and I wanted to be one of them, but sigh.
First, let me say what I liked about this:
It is VERY gay. Like, all of the characters are queer. There’s lots of lesbian romance and crushes, and I liked that.
I liked that it mostly took place in a spooky haunted New England boarding school (hauntings + familiar settings are two of my fave book qualities).
I liked that this is a story within a story within a story, and I liked that it took place both in the past and present. There are so many layers and even though the book was really long (600+ pages) I never really felt like it was dragging or boring. It was the ending that I didn’t like, which I won’t spoil, but…
Ok. Plot-wise, here’s what we were working with:
Brookhants School for Girls is a boarding school in New England, which is at the center of this story. The story starts off in 1902, with two students (Flo and Clara) who are “obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir.” Inspired by Mary, the girls establish a private club and call it The Plain Bad Heroine Society. Unfortunately, Flo and Clara meet a grisly and untimely end, in the woods surrounding Brookhants. In a short span of time, 3 more people die in mysterious and gruesome ways while on the Brookhants property, ultimately resulting in the closing of the school.
Flash forward to present day: a writer named Merrit has written a best-selling book about the queer, feminist history of Brookhants and the haunted/cursed lore of the property. Merrit’s book is adapted into a horror film staring Harper Harper (the current “It Girl”) as Flo and Audrey (a struggling actress) as Clara. These three ‘heroines’ go to Brookhants to film the movie, and while they are there ~strange and spooky~ things start to happen, causing them to think about the history of Brookhants and whether or not they believe in the alleged curse/haunting.
There’s...a lot going on in this book. It’s a story within a story within a story, and at times it is a little hard to keep track of all of the moving parts/characters. However, I thought it was super interesting and I always wanted to keep going to figure out what was going to happen. There were parts of this story that I really loved and I was honestly super into the book until probably 75% of the way through, at which point I felt like things sort of...fell apart for me, a little.
The 1902 storyline attempts to explain the “curse” of Brookhants, but I feel like when we finally get to the origin of the curse, it is thrown at us a bit out of left field. I didn’t really feel like it made very much sense or was connected much to the rest of the story, if that makes sense. It felt really rushed and anticlimactic, and I didn’t feel like it actually explain anything.
The present-day storyline is similarly anticlimactic, in my opinion, and I don’t really feel like the present day story ever circles back to meet the past story. I kept waiting for it to overlap in some way but it never did. I sort of got to the end of the book and felt like I had missed something, or like I wasn’t “getting it,” if that makes sense.
This is a frustrating review to write because I wanted to love this book! I didn’t hate it--again, there is a lot to love about the book and the writing is really beautiful, it was just that I didn’t feel like the ending came together for me. I think ultimately it is worth the read, but I do feel a little annoyed that I spent so much time with a 600 page book only to feel like the author didn’t manage to give me a satisfying ending.
Red, White, and Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston
This was another super buzzy one that for some reason I almost skipped. I remember when I first heard about it I was just super not interested, but I cannot remember why. I think something about the cover turned me off a little (bubblegum pink and cartoony character drawings gave me a weird childish vibe). Again, romance books tend not to be my thing + YA can be sort of hit or miss with me, so I brushed this one off for a long time--until there were enough glowing reviews that my interest was piqued.
This was one of the last few books I read this year and wow, I wish I had read it sooner. It turned out to be SO good! I kind of surprised myself with how very much I enjoyed this one.
The plot is this: Alex Claremont-Diaz is the First Son of the USA (his MOM, Ellen Claremont, is the president). This book takes place very much in present day (leading up to the 2020 election, essentially). In this alternate timeline, President Claremont won the presidency after Obama in 2016, becoming the first female president. I gotta say, I very much appreciated this parallel timeline scenario where Trump lost and we got our first female president and there was not a pandemic and :) wow :)
But all of that is really not the point of the story. The story is about Alex, who has a longstanding rivalry with Prince Henry (of England). Alex and Henry have a bit of a confrontation at a royal wedding, resulting in the necessity for international relations mending. Alex and Henry are told that they have to stage a fake friendship and be photographed hanging for the tabloids as damage control. However, as they spend time together, Alex and Henry get over their rivalry and form an actual friendship, and quickly that friendship evolves into a romance. Needless to say, they have to keep their romance a secret--especially as Alex’s mom ramps up her reelection campaign.
The story that unfolds is just...SO cute? I feel like in a lot of ways I knew how the book was going to go, but I still found it really fun to read. There was lots of tension and twists, which kept the story interesting. It also touches on a lot of important issues, including bisexual representation (I personally super appreciated also that there is bisexual representation here as well! Like, a character identifies as bi and actually says that! They talk about it! ) and how many notable figures throughout history have been “straight-washed.”
My only (small) critique is that I didn’t really feel like this needed to be over 400 pages. I’m sorry! I’m getting really grumpy these days about “long” books, which for me is anything over 300 pages. I did really enjoy this one regardless of the length, so it’s not that big of a deal, but I did feel like some parts of it were a little drawn out.
Other than that, though, I have no complaints! I’m so happy I decided to read this. I got misty-eyed at the end, even! Is my cold black heart starting to thaw?
Oh! When I got to the end of this book all I could think about was, “I want this to be a movie so bad!!” and I am thrilled to report that after some googling, I discovered that it has already been optioned for film! I can’t wait for that, and I’m also very excited to see that the author has another book coming out this summer, which also sounds amazing. weee!
Other Fun Stuff
Ok ok, this was really long, so I guess I’ll go ahead and end book chat now. Before I sign off, here are a few fun things I found around the internet recently:
Nostalgia for Pre-Pandemic Reading Destinations
Personally, I prefer reading books in the comfort of my home, curled up on the couch or in bed with a cozy blanket and my cat by my side. However, after being stuck in the house doing basically nothing but reading inside, I do find myself missing reading on the train or in a coffee shop. Sigh…someday.
Your Old Radiator is a Pandemic-Fighting Weapon
Ever since the onset of winter, I’ve had to start sleeping with my bedroom window cracked so that I don’t die of heatstroke in my sleep. My current apartment is oldish, and has metal radiators in every room for heat, as old apartments in NYC tend to. This is the first apartment I’ve lived in with a radiator….ever, I think?…so while I have heard tales about radiators making apartments outrageously hot, I hadn’t yet experienced this first hand until now.
All that being said, the long story short is that apparently the reason radiators are LIKE THIS is because back during the flu pandemic of 1918, engineers thought (correctly) that keeping windows open would ward off airborne virus germs, so radiators were designed to be able to keep homes warm while windows were kept open. Fascinating, right?
A Humpback whale was spotted in NY Harbor, near the Statue of Liberty
I am terrified of sea creatures and this article made me irrationally uncomfortable.
The Most Scathing Book Reviews of 2020
With time perhaps I, too, will be able to deliver reviews this snarky. Fingers crossed.
More soon!
-Amy