Simi > Recent Status Updates

Just couldn't get into it. On the heels of The Running Man it had a "same but different quality" and that might be partially why. I'll try again another time.

Oh we're really speeding up suddenly. All that meandering, and suddenly we have action at the 13hour26minute mark. Even if the pacing was intentional, 87% is way too long for building up to the climax!

I'm a little cross-eyed by the names (which probably would have been easier to follow in print format), but otherwise, largely keeping up. It's dense with world building for a single book. I'll probably manage to finish the book in time for the club tomorrow after all.

Oh man! I've already restarted this book twice ... this one's really going to take attention!

It was a bizarre choice to go for a male narrator when most of the POVs were female.

This book feels like a funhouse mirror view of my life/the life of friends and family who've gone through this immigrant experience. Sometimes an exact reflection, sometimes slightly warped from my own experience, and sometimes like it's written for a white-audience.

This and The Serviceberry are high on my nonfic rec list. I'm connecting with different things in this second readthrough and really appreciate that.

Very easily a do-not-rec read.

😡I now understand the phrase "navel gazing". This book is so gratuitous!

I'm hate reading my way through the rest of this because it's been talked about so much and I want to see if there's any redemption and because it's the only book available that I've (kind of) wanted to read from the Pride challenge list. Had one of the ones I really wanted to read been available I would've DNFed this some time back.

What in the ever loving actual f!? The more she shares, the worse this gets and it's an effing memoir!

The side quests into figuring out familial issues is so abrupt, clumsy, and distracting from whatever this story is trying to do.

The MC is fairly insufferable.

How is half of this story still left!?

We've reached the stupid confront a murder suspect without an actual plan phase of the book. Time to increase the playback speed to just get through this book.

The execution of this book would make sense if this was a translated work or English was a late in life second/third language, but sadly neither is true. Sigh!

Oh cool...casual unethical to illegal behavior by our MC. Cool cool cool

The analogies are so forced & the constant reference to the fictional mystery series a bit hacked/tedious.

Becks is cartoonishly stiff, 2D, and standoffish. Komla too.

The writing feels ... clumsy.

A little slow to develop. I might have stopped by now if it weren't for a book club.

Pushing through but it's tough going. Kind of makes me think of All Star Chain Gang. But worse.

My first Stephen King and it's just adding to the proof pile that, past YA, most men write in this same weirdly detached, I'm too good for something (can't put my finger on it yet) way. I'm not enjoying it, but I want to finish the book because it's "THE Stephen King" (insert eye roll)

Ah! Good! The plot does thicken. Very red-herring heavy book.

Mildly chilling, fairly predictable so far

Uh is that the mystery solved already?

I don't think there would ever have been a "right time" for me and this book. I can see its value to others, but it's not particularly profound for me.

Maya is ... she needs as strong smack upside the head & a healthy dose of reality. Yikes!

Eeps! I'm guilty of being a maximizer, but I'm working on shifting this mindset to be more okay with "good enough" or being a "satisficer".

The overzealous use of "yaar" is jarring and annoying.

I'm sure there's a valid reason, genuine trauma that will be uncovered later in the book & explain Smita's behavior, but without that context she's coming across as rude, judgemental, condescending, and unsympathetic. Makes for good reading, but I do miss a book where I just like my protagonist.