Status Updates From Haven

The cover made me get this book. The physical copy is beautiful. But the story is not and I'm very disappointed. I can't get past the family complaining about their misery. 130 pages of just bs. It doesn't focus on the mystery of the disowned aunt and the manor. It keeps the focus on the miserable family members with the occasional story from Augusta.

woulda ate in high school

Certified Jackass moment.

Holy shit these are cartoonishly bad parents. It's honestly kind of funny.

Now this plot point makes absolutely no sense. JJ took unflattering pictures of Jessie on JJ's own phone. If he used Jessie's phone to upload JJ's unflattering pictures onto Jessie's accounts, then she could just delete the posts... Loss of points for believability.

That was gratuitous and unnecessary.

If James dies during the AIDS epidemic, I'm taking back my enjoyment of this novel.

I bet this author is pretty young. Imagine, carrying a card to get into a gay club in the 70s. But still. This novel is cute.

This book is struggling with consistency in themes, but the love story is told earnestly and I'll take it.

We're struggling with the implausibility of the daughter, Jessie, and social media. It's said she has her own feed and she looks at her follower count. But then she laments about being beautiful and having no one to see it? Dude, that's when you post selfies. I dunno, this is missing the mark for me.

She's going a little heavy-handed on making Jeff an asshole. I wonder if it's to later redeem him, or to kill him off?