Lex

https://www.goodreads.com/alexandrahope91

Lex’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (576)
currently-reading‎ (3)
read‎ (335)
did-not-finish‎ (40)
tbr-owned‎ (299)

50-states‎ (50)
favorites‎ (45)
rereads‎ (45)
book-club-books‎ (38)
hopeful-2026-reads‎ (35)

most-fun-to-review‎ (26)
biggest-let-downs‎ (20)
really-great-contemporary-fiction‎ (17)
weirdest-books-i-ve-ever-read‎ (10)
witchy-garden-girls‎ (10)

next-up‎ (8)
are-these-books-the-same‎ (4)

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Lex is Currently Reading

Lex is currently reading

Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove, #1)

by Larry McMurtry

bookshelves: tbr-owned, hopeful-2026-reads, currently-reading, 50-states

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May 01, 2026 08:34AM

Lex is currently reading

Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls: Stories

by Alissa Nutting (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: tbr-owned, hopeful-2026-reads, currently-reading

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Mar 24, 2026 07:16PM

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Swamplandia!

by Karen Russell (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: favorites, most-fun-to-review, weirdest-books-i-ve-ever-read, hopeful-2026-reads, currently-reading, 50-states

Reading for the 2nd time

read in July 2018

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Lex said: " *Edit 9/3/18: 4 stars

I have been thinking a lot about this book. It has never left me. I have yet to read a book that has affected me as much as this one so far this year. A book like that doesn't deserve 3.5 stars does it? DOES IT?? I'm conflicted. *Edit 9/3/18: 4 stars

I have been thinking a lot about this book. It has never left me. I have yet to read a book that has affected me as much as this one so far this year. A book like that doesn't deserve 3.5 stars does it? DOES IT?? I'm conflicted. I hate the ending, but I've been trying to view it through different lenses to understand it better, and I think I've finally found one that makes everything clear, not much more palatable, but slightly.

This book reads like a nightmare. Most of the distorted reality featured in this book has a dream-like quality to it. This family was forced into a nightmare from which they can't wake up, no matter how hard they try to pinch or scare themselves awake with escalating horror. I view the ending of this novel like the end to a nightmare. The too-terrible-to-tolerate finale that jolts a person awake. Viewing the book in this way has me changing my rating. But I still think there is lost potential. And I am not alone with this view.*

3.5 stars

Reading this book feels like someone has used a rusty, jagged knife to cut the heart out of your chest, and is now wringing the bloody organ like a wet towel, over and over, until it it’s squeezed of every last drop of feeling.

This is a weird, haunting, but somehow humorous book about grief. (It's also about Florida, and alligators, and ghosts, and bad theme parks.) But mostly it's about a family suffocating, drowning in a swamp of grief. The dissolution of this family and the life they have known is too fast and too terrible and too real. Too real, and yet, slightly distorted, like a fun-house mirror.

Let’s start with the good.
Okay. So the writing in this book is like nothing else. The words. The WORDS this woman strings together to make the most stark, vivid, and moving pictures is astounding. Everything is spellbinding, a lucid dream. Karen Russell has a way of inundating you in words that feel. I was immersed in that swamp. I experienced every smell, every color, every scene. I don’t need to go to the Everglades, thanks to this book, I’ve been there.

The book opens with the death of a mother, but the characters refuse to directly deal with their loss, making the beginning of the story almost seem lighthearted in a confusing and foreboding way. Which is fine. I actually enjoyed this take on grief. However, the family continues to ignore their grief, letting it consume them from the within until it has engulfed in flames and then snuffed out possibility of brighter days.

At this point, the whimsical course the book began paddling out on ends abruptly, and then we take a nose dive into complete black nothingness. Again, I don’t have a problem with exploring dark themes... it’s just...

And now the bad.
The end of this book came fast. That is my main critique. For about 100 pages in the middle, the story dragged, but then all at once, a lot of plot happened. I was just so shocked and taken aback by how abruptly dark this book became, that I think it has colored my final opinion of this novel in a slightly negative light, especially because I don't think this particular dark theme was... well-handled. That's as descriptive as I can be without spoiling. It left me feeling small and shaky, and not fine.

This one may never get a reread. I just... I don't know that I want to put myself through this again. I loved parts of it, but on the whole, I'm afraid of it. I'm rating it 3.5 stars for the superb exposition and writing, alone. ...more "

progress:

(page 253 of 316)
"Color me INTRIGUED." — Jul 10, 2018 07:28AM

Feb 02, 2023 06:34PM · see review

Lex’s Notes & Highlights

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

1 note & 7 highlights

DOES SUCH a thing as “the fatal flaw,” that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at ...more