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I like how focused this book is. It never wanders away from the mysteries and conundrums presented at the beginning.

This has a super intriguing premise. Several actually. The world is a mystery, and I’m excited to get to some answers.

Great book so far, and I only just got to the whale. The prose is painted with anger and sadness and deep regret. There’s so much to every word. After having just read a much shallower book, this one feels like plunging into the ocean, dark and endless.

I’m already in love. Is this set in Monterey? Crazy—I had no idea! I can imagine the setting so clearly.

“How much do you love him?”

How MUCH? Like 45 percent? What is this question?

I’m pushing to get through this book to get to Whalefall before the movie, but this line cracked me up.

Benny is beyond passive. Does he make a single decision in this whole novel? He seems to just move in whatever direction he’s pushed, yet he has an arrogance like he stands for something. He’s as bad as Bear from Obsession, whining about wanting a merman while doing nothing to deserve loyalty or love.

Look. I’m not a prude. I loved The Shape of Water. I downloaded a book about a man falling in love with a merman. I knew what I was getting into.

The sex in this book is both hilarious and humiliating.

I pushed through largely because of the narrators reading the audiobook. They are very entertaining. Unfortunately, the book remains tonally inconsistent. People fall in love with each other like dolls in a child’s hand—nonsensical orders of “now kiss” overlaying each interaction.

The beginning of this book was great. Fast paced and entertaining. It came with big characters and a fun mystery. But as soon as the merman becomes a character, it falls into tired romantasy tropes. Every interaction becomes contrived. The characters get muddled. I’m on the verge of DNF.

“Because her brothers had hurt her so badly. It hurt. It hurt. It HURT. The only balm was hurting them back.”

Good god, unless there is a seriously unreliable narrator, these brothers are awful people.

There’s a twist that is so schlocky horror it’s tough not to love it.

“She touches her chest.” This lady walks around the world like she’s pledging allegiance to the flag at all times, given how often this phrase is used.

The premise is promising enough to power through. I think the author might be trying to write in the style of the main character, which is interesting. The character is so very impressed by her own talent. She sneers at other authors—her peers—because they are hacks. But the actual prose is dramatic, repetitive, and overly wordy. Are we to believe this character isn’t as talented as she thinks?

I think the protagonist is schizophrenic. It’s such a choice to say that she’s been hallucinating her entire life. I guess that would make it hard to know whether they’re actually being haunted.

I stuck with it and now I don’t know whether it’s intentionally hammy because it’s about a mediocre writer? It’s got a Sam Rami quality to it. That is charming but is possibly not intentional.

The premise is interesting, but the dialogue…it’s that kind of modern “clever” that never reads as a real conversation. The author’s desire to move the plot or describe a character shows through the transparent quips. As a result, nothing feels grounded enough to carry the plot. I’ll push on for now.

These poor siblings.

“I said goodbye to everything while running, and that is not a proper goodbye.”

I don’t know how to say this without spoilers. My favorite movie is The Thing. The Haar feels like that movie.

Incredible. It feels like a nightmare, abstract but rooted in reality.

“The less you think about it, the longer you live.”

The majority of this book is profoundly unsentimental. It doesn’t tug the heartstrings. It doesn’t linger on the horrors. It tells the facts of what happened. But every once in a while, it hits you hard, demonstrated by this quote from control room engineer Alexander Yuvchenko. He should have died. He didn’t. Why ask questions?

Loving it so far! The descriptions are so vivid. I see each character clearly in my mind. I don’t want anything bad to happen to them, and I dread what’s coming.

I’m so close to finished. I’m going to drag myself over the finish line, but I don’t think I’ll ever like this book. It has been exhausting.

Just as I got close to quitting, the book got better. These are still the most fragile, whiniest people. Only the evil ones appear sturdy.

If it weren’t for the petty nanny spilling all the family secrets, this would be a pretty short book.

This book makes me feel less crazy. A political insider looking around and bluntly saying, “This is nuts—what is happening?” It doesn’t help, but it bolsters the idea that I’m not merely losing my mind.

I’ve never read a book more clearly written by a cocaine user. He’s all over the place.

Fast paced and manic, the book jumps right into the action. Loving it so far.