Jackie > Recent Status Updates

Hoping this is as good as the one they did for the first Improbable Meet Cute collection, The Exception to the Rule. I need something to pull me out of a serious reading slump. 🤞

"Is Gutter a first or last name?"
"It's a verb."
. . .

"Don't look at me," Gutter said to McCarthy. "This is your shit. I'm just here to scare people."
[Gutter knows the difference between Pawwarmesan and Pecorino Romano]
"You don't even like cheese," McCarthy said to [Gutter].
"I watch YouTube cooking videos to relax," Gutter said.
"You are fascinating," Bostwick said to him.
😂

Pour one out for the reference to Stephen Colbert having a show. 😢

Also, the timeline of days and who knows what when is starting to feel a little screwy. Maybe because there's obviously been multiple press conferences, but the characters just keep saying things like "the astronauts' press conference", but it seems pretty obvious technical information isn't the point of this story, so [blows raspberry].

The banter between Clyde, Alton, and Dave is cracking me up.

Is it really going to be as simple as Ithicana has been giving Maridrina food, and Maridrina's sovereigns have been withholding it from their own citizens for a century to foment and justify war?

And there's the red telephone. ☎️ Finally

*grumbles in English major/proofreader* The 16 or 1700s is not the middle of the 20th century.

He watches me a moment, and I want to ask. I want to know. What do you see?
But it's not fun if he just tells me.

That last sentence, I think, exemplifies the issues I have with the story so far as and Ada as a narrator. I like cat and mouse, but the characters do have to talk at some point. Especially if you want us to buy a romance between them. I don't care if you want to claim it's a slow burn.

I know no one can live forever. I don't want to live forever. But I hate the "only death gives life meaning" argument. Almost as much as I HATE the "you cannot know joy without pain" argument.

You saw Bono following you last night. The note is on the back of the upir article (I was right, thank you) HE gave you, and you think Crest is the bad guy?

I didn't trust him either, Kate, but even I can put 2 and 2 together to get 4.

Yes, I've only read 130 pgs in 2.5 weeks. It's very slow so far; Schwab seems a little too enamored with her own prose, but I'm not ready to give up on her yet.

The question keeping me reading is - did Lottie turn Alice, or did Sabine sneak in after she left? (I'm guessing the latter, for the record.)

Listening to the Graphic Audio via Hoopla... I've sampled similar audios for a few other book series and found them to be trying too hard, but I like this one so far. Quite the cast of characters. I don't trust Crest. Curran and Kate will be interesting to watch develop. I immediately like Saiman.

Why do I have a feeling the upir is going to come into play at some point?

Your male friend helping you set up for a dick pic? Fine.

Your female cousin giving you advice? Fine, maybe even funny if it's done right.

Your cousin giving you said advice on speaker phone from the only bar in your small town and everyone wishing you good luck? SO CRINGE!

Seriously, how could anyone think "lol, cute" writing that?!

Gabby was a little gossipy and could be a tiny bit shallow. Jessica was moody and tended to be negative.
I loved them, but I saw them for what they were.

Why is this making me wonder if my friends say these kinds of things about me? 🫣

The instant regret of asking a doctor about what it would be like to live in the past, the Princess Bride callback...

Yeah, okay. This phone convo has me grinning.

This author-and especially this series- is so beloved, let's see if I like her any more when things have more time to develop and b r e a t h e.

So this book has a stalking subplot, and yet we're still referencing the lotion scene from Silence of the Lambs in the first 5 pages? Wow. Okay. 😐

Imagine being sad that you're not on the chopping block. Oh, poor me, I can't die. Fucking weird.

[Snorts again]

Are we recruiting her?

[Snorts]

June's the type that has to say no in order to say yes... She has to see the negatives first before she can see any of the positives. She has to tell you all the ways that something is going to go wrong and be terrible, and she says them like they're an absolute certainty, but that's a good sign. That means she's really considering it. She has to know exactly why she's scared before she can be brave.

It's really starting to bug me that the timeline between this and the last book is not clear- particularly with regard to how old everyone is. Because I'm pretty sure Cross and Scales should be near 30, but damn if they don't sound 20.

PS: I called it, thank you. Though I didn't guess Scales' connection to the emperor.

Was Mr. Scales the child who killed Nick Senior? 👀🤔

So as I sit with my Kindle open to this book on my lap, Ken Jennings and the writers of Jeopardy! inform me that Gene Rodenberry considers 40 Eridani A to be the planet Vulcan, according to Star Trek lore.

So Rocky and Spock are related. Cool. 🖖

Both times Rocky has referred to something by a number, I've figured out he meant the atomic number well before our main character did.

And to think I wondered if I would be smart enough for this book...

Shoutout to the Hohmann Transfer window.

Well, damn. What do you mean thinking the cube root of 8 is 2 instead of 2 X e^2-i-pi makes you not very smart?

Am I gonna be smart enough for this book?

She spells the dog's shedding hair away because she knows it annoys him.

These two might yet work some magic on me.

Having Mika see Jamie come out of a lawyer's office and immediately assume he committed a crime is screaming "I'm a Quirky heroine!" a little too loudly for me. (Especially because it seems at odds with her characterization up to this point.) 🙄

Excuse me while I highlight the entirety of Ch52. (It's only 6 paragraphs long.)

Top Gun does not suck, Shiloh. Anthony Edwards has some great lines. Also young Val Kilmer.