Status Updates From Exile

"I don't want to be useful.'
"Sure, you do," he said, but he was staring out the windshield at something I couldn't see. The future, maybe."

I love the how deeply Lisa Bradley can take us into characters. Her portrait of Serena at the bar--brilliant. And the slowly unfolding memory of Forrest--crushing.

And the sex in this is hot, hot, HOT, just so real, so intense, AND Heidi is still a smart, sensitive person. THE THINGS CAN GO TOGETHER. Brains and sex drive. Sensitivity and sex drive. Beautiful.

Lisa Bradley is **so good** at this. Heidi and Tank--these characters are beautiful. SO much more than they could be in lesser hands. Everything is so much more:

"You hear your mom crying?" he asked.
I nodded.
"Why aren't you crying?" he said.
I shrugged again. "No one ever cried for me."
He held my gaze a moment--a long one--before nodding. "No one ever cried for me, either."

God, this book is so well balanced and good!

This book is AMAZING. It’s a post-apocalypse story except when it’s Mad Max except when it’s a romance except when it’s a dark comedy. The fuck!

This book is going FAST.

Somehow so much has happened, and yet nothing has happened... but I also kind of really love it? I don’t know this book is wild

The who what! Aaaaa (I did not see that coming)

(Content notice: Chewing on myself!)
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This is SO TENSE oh my G-d I had to get some throat candy to put in my mouth bc I was just chewing on my fingers!!

Blurb draft: "I could not write a blurb for this book bc I chewed apart my fingers"
(Not my actual blurb. BUT....)

They are having a literal SIEGE in suburbia. With like, MacGyvered crossbows and stuff. =:O (And to say more would be a spoiler.....)

Sorry got the ticker wrong! This is a ms I am reading for blurbing, so it doesn't have page numbers.

There is some SERIOUS unreliable narrator stuff going on in this book. Whoa!!!