best surprise ever 🤭

"we're totally not desperate, don't put in the paper that we're desperate"

ahhhh so close so close

I have the total opposite problem. 😂 Yibo seems so easy to read to me while XZ seems a little opaque. For good reasons! but still he's a little difficult for me to read.

I think you can understand many parts of a person but not everything about them!<3

yeah I think if you just didn't title your section breaks or chapters like that it would be fine. it's not a new technique! but I think these books just tend to do it very badly with weak voicing

It's such an awkward technique, it breaks up the narrative flow, and it frequently underscores that your character voices aren't unique enough to tell apart.

I get that maybe your editor's making you do it because they think this is the trend now, but sorry, i just really hate it.

jesus. they just keep finding ways to make things so much more hideous and awful for so many more people. just relentless assholery and cruelty and refutation of belief in fundamental values like LEARNING and SCIENCE and PEOPLE WORKING TOGETHER TO ACHIEVE THINGS. god these fucking nazis. SORRY. UGH.

will this be a 32 or a 16 bracket or something else?

👀

😽

post above brought to you by the umpteenth thriller i'm reading now that's trying to artificially manipulate suspense by jumping around in the timeline and withholding past information from the reader for no organic reason. sigh.

i also want to add about this book, entirely, ENTIRELY, because i hate non-linear timelines and find them so incredibly cheap especially in contemporary thrillers, that it was a rare case of imo successful use of timeline-jumping. the non-linear shifts progressed the narrative rather than delay it.

this is relatable but you might be kinder to yourself by waking up your mazda and asking it to move because oscar wilde would not want you to teach with a crushed ribcage

The author is a clinical psychologist and you can absolutely tell. It's so refreshing to read a book that treats the now-cliche "woman's trauma makes her an unreliable narrator" trope of modern-era thrillers with an actual understanding of how brains process trauma instead of just shallow plot twist

the narrative voice is so well done (as is the other main character voice) and the pov character's avoidance as a form of coping just escalates and escalates in this way that feels SO claustrophobic but also so fucking relatable, and it's so skillfully done, i'm just so impressed but also so shook

wait if the bad news is just that it's being run by Jack i can handwave that in the face of 1) Vine and 2) gen AI being banned on principle, more of this please, yes thank you

that is almost enough to erase the stupidity of Jack killing Vine to begin with

a kidol: