Darryl Liu > Recent Status Updates

Ok granted I've only read one other cozy-fiction book, but so far both have had this saccharine chipper undertone that feels to me like the reading equivalent of Splenda. Also things just sort of happen on the logic of "this would be nice".

Wait actually I kind of love the afterword from the author

Whoa that ended 50 pages earlier than I thought

3rd person present tense POV is weird, this feels like you're reading the star wars intro crawl before the movie except it's the self-narrative of a white hipster woman

Niche interest to murder pipeline is relatable. I felt this way during my tumblr years.

"They threatened to fan the dying ember of the past into a full hemorrhoidal flame again"

Hemorrhoidal?????? I'm taking this as permission to describe everything as hemorrhoidal from now on

I forgot how freaking long this is 🫡

this protag is so endearing, they just want to be pretty and will risk their life for the 10 dollars someone owes them from a bet

My internal image of this robot shifts between alphonse elric from full metal alchemist and a refrigerator

This is a utopia because the monk is allowed to be horny

"Good god, get a grip girl" - Latrice Royale

Yassss let queer people be awful

This reads like one of those tiktoks where the plot of a horror movie is narrated by an AI voice

lmao nevermind, book good, that ending takes nerve

So far enjoying this one less than the author's other two books. Was pretty excited at first with the multi-POV just to see what the author might do with it, but I feel like it's actually following a similar formula as her other mystery/romance, but just... not as good? The mystery in this one feels more contrived to me and the romance tensionless, maybe because we're seeing more of the pieces.

I'm only 30ish pages in and already a reveal that made me gasp embarassingly loud, man I freaking love this author

A third romanceable man has entered the chat

I think this premise would have been better executed as a novella — the narrative doesn't really hide what's coming but meanders getting there, so each reveal doesn't land with excitement but more a sort of impatient relief we can finally move on to the next development. Found the narrative a bit underbaked at times, especially the main relationship, despite how explicit and heavy-handed some of the messaging was

This woman is throwing steaks at her husband, eating the wallpaper, and chewing on chair legs, and she's so valid for it

I would suspect the protag will eat her husband, except with the lesbian vampires, cannibalism feels too sapphic for that bad man. Maybe dogs will eat him instead

This time suzanne collins made haymitch a literal giant rat

Completely unrelated to the book, I've been busting my ass to read 4 books a month to reach my 36 book reading goal by end of December, and it took me until May to realize I'm shit at math

Messy messy miscommunicators