Yes, another 5-star read for me from John Marrs. Damn, was this one ever absorbing. It was one of those books that had me thinking about it while I waYes, another 5-star read for me from John Marrs. Damn, was this one ever absorbing. It was one of those books that had me thinking about it while I was out doing other things, glancing at the time to see when I'd be free again to read more.
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The gist: Imagine a world in which you could do a simple cheek swab, a la 23 and Me or Ancestry DNA, and within a few months you might get a letter in the mail telling you that your ultimate love match was out there somewhere, waiting for you. In THE ONE, we're introduced to several people who have done just that: single women who'd given up on love, couples already paired up by their own doing but feeling uncertain that they're each other's real match for life, even really horrible people who should never be in a relationship with another human being. Needless to say, absolutely none of the characters in THE ONE have their personal love story turn out the way they -- or we -- would expect, to varying degrees of disaster.
Just as I did in my review of Marrs's THE PASSENGERS, I feel compelled to mention that, if you're planning to read his newer novel THE MINDERS, you're gonna want to read this one and THE PASSENGERS first. They're not a series, but there's so much stuff in THE MINDERS that either spoils the earlier two books or is better appreciated when you have the world-building of those. I think the best order would be THE ONE, THE PASSENGERS, and then THE MINDERS, if you're so inclined.
I know there's a Netflix show based on this book, one I haven't watched (yet), but I gather just from a quick glance at the IMDb cast/character list that the show runners changed a lot. It's probably safe to say that if you did watch the series you could still enjoy read the source material. This book has immediately gone right up my list of "books I'm going to tell all of my friends to read," because it was addictive as hell, and I loved every second of it....more
Picked this up almost the moment I set down volume 1. A quick read with just as much sweetness as the first. Maybe now I can let myself try the TV serPicked this up almost the moment I set down volume 1. A quick read with just as much sweetness as the first. Maybe now I can let myself try the TV series...?...more
Review to come - I wish I'd come away from this feeling like I knew him better than when I went in!Review to come - I wish I'd come away from this feeling like I knew him better than when I went in!...more
Original review: ** ARC received! (Expected publication date: October 3/23)**
Here's what I can tell you about Jessica Knoll's uHAPPY PUBLICATION DAY!!
Original review: ** ARC received! (Expected publication date: October 3/23)**
Here's what I can tell you about Jessica Knoll's upcoming book: You're almost certainly going to want to read it. It's going to be talked about. A lot.
From the opening scene, BRIGHT YOUNG WOMEN grabs its readers by the throat and refuses to let go. Based heavily on a very famous serial killer case in the 1970s, the story drops us almost immediately into Pamela's life, a survivor of an absolutely brutal sorority house murder, and we are made to live through that terrible night with her. I don't remember the last time I felt my heart rate go up so quickly while reading a book. This one will test you. It does not shy away from some terrible details, and Knoll is very gifted at making us imagine how it would have felt to be Pamela and her sorority sisters in those moments. I had a lump in my throat more than once throughout the experience.
Interspersed with Pamela's POVs (which are present day and back in 1978, the time of the murders) are chapters from Ruth, another woman whose fate is tied to the killer we only ever see referred to as The Defendant. This was done intentionally, just as the naming of this book was: it's meant to take the fame away from the man who slaughtered so many women and instead shine it on those whose lives were ended by him. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of American crime will know exactly who this man is meant to be; we don't need to mention his name ever again. BRIGHT YOUNG WOMEN isn't his story. It's theirs.
This flirted with 5 stars on more than a few occasions; I went with 4-4.5 instead only because there are some pacing issues here and there in the middle, with things feeling a touch overlong in sections. There are also quite a bit of moving parts, which sometimes felt like it drew away from the emotional gut punch the rest of the story was delivering. But it never fell below 4 stars, not for a moment, and I'm excited for it to come out and be available to everyone. (Because I want to discuss it, obviously. And I highlighted so many good quotes and passages that I can't share until the embargo is lifted!)
It will take a strong stomach for a lot of readers, I think, but BRIGHT YOUNG WOMEN is worth it. I really appreciate that it's written as a middle finger to the judge who called the real life Defendant a "bright young man," and I love the palpable rage that comes through in Knoll's writing of it. Put this on your TBR.
(Many, many thanks to Edelweiss, Simon & Schuster, Marysue Rucci and Jessica Knoll for the chance to read and review this book honestly and objectively.)...more
Talk about a tale of two books. This is such a strange example of the first half being one thing (suspenseful/creepy) and the second being another (noTalk about a tale of two books. This is such a strange example of the first half being one thing (suspenseful/creepy) and the second being another (not really either of those things, more frustrating than anything else).
[image] Hendrix waited up for me and chewed that stick into oblivion while I finished this.
Full disclosure: I actually went to see KNOCK AT THE CABIN, the M. Night Shyamalan movie adaptation of this book, a week or so before reading the source material. I almost never do things in that order. This time around, I don't know exactly how it affected my opinion, but I can definitely say this: I thought the movie's ending was so. much. better. than the novel's. In most ways the film is a surprisingly faithful adaptation. The choices made to close it out, though... The book made me actively angry and full of WTFery, whereas the movie left me feeling, at worst, bemused and kind of dark. I'd take the latter any day.
It's a brutal, atmospheric thriller either way, and I know quite a few people who absolutely loved it, so I'd recommend it if the description catches your interest. I've been kind of torn on my relationship to Tremblay in the past, which makes me a less than ideal reviewer. But whether you read CABIN or not...see the movie....more
I don't know what took me so long to read this, but I'm really glad I did. It's a story you might think is unnecessary to read, either because you've I don't know what took me so long to read this, but I'm really glad I did. It's a story you might think is unnecessary to read, either because you've heard it all before (tragic in itself though that may be) or because it's marketed as YA. All I can say is that Angie Thomas has imbued it with enough power to override those possible hurdles.
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I ended up watching the movie version a day after finishing the book, which was interesting, because it's mostly faithful but features a couple of jarring and, in my opinion, unnecessary if not outright egregious changes to the source material. I'd have loved the movie had I not read the book; as it stands I have to say the book did some things better.
My only criticism is, as always, pacing. The story kicks into high gear pretty quickly, then seems to stretch out too long through the middle third before barreling ahead in the final act. Maybe that was by design, but I'd have felt more immersed in the middle section had a few things been tightened up a bit. Other than that, though? This is a book I'd like to see getting assigned in school. There's a lot to talk about.
(Bahni Turpin narrates the audiobook brilliantly, by the way.)...more
**spoiler alert** It’s virtually impossible for me to review this without spoilers, so I’m not even going to try. There will be spoilers herein for bo**spoiler alert** It’s virtually impossible for me to review this without spoilers, so I’m not even going to try. There will be spoilers herein for both the novel and the 2022 movie version with Mila Kunis, so proceed with caution.
I know we’re supposed to give a rating based solely on the material between the covers, and I (almost) always manage to do that. This one is tough, though. Jessica Knoll’s book came out something like 7 years ago, and at the time of its release the author hadn’t gone public with the fact that a lot of the worst stuff in this story is autobiographical. Once I learned that it became really tough to judge how well it worked as a novel versus how it made me feel to know I was all but reading a teenage girl’s diary pages at some very key moments. With that caveat in place, then, and possibly an explanation for why I ended up settling on three stars rather than two, I’ll go on.
The novel is about TifAni FaNelli – and yes, it’s spelled exactly like that, which…ugh – whose life looks basically perfect at 28 but who is hiding a pretty huge slice of her history. It takes an overlong time in the book to get to what that is, and in the meantime we’re forced to spend chapter upon chapter with this incredibly unpleasant and judgmental character. It’s impossible to like her, truly. She’s awful. And while the book does elucidate some of the reasons why she is the way she is, it didn’t redeem her fully for me by the end. It was more like she ended up being a shitty person to whom shitty things had happened.
Now: what happened? Well, here’s the thing. There are two huge plots twisting through this book, and I totally get why one was necessary in service to the other, but…it ultimately made both feel like they got short shrift. One biggie: TifAni was gang raped by three boys (Dean, Payton and Liam) at her private school. They’re boys who have gotten away with horrible things before, and there are students – some of whom are friends of TifAni – who desperately want to exact revenge on them. TifAni being very much a social climber, though, even at 14, she carries on in her pursuit of the popular kids’ friendship, even having been victimized so badly by three of them.
The second biggie: TifAni – who is a successful writer with New York Times Magazine and is getting married to a rich Wall Street bro and now just goes by Ani (ahhhh-neee, nothing so pedestrian as “Annie”) – has been approached by a documentary filmmaker that is digging up every nugget he can about the school shooting that killed several of Ani’s classmates. Ani doesn’t realize right away that another participant in the documentary is Dean, the only survivor of her three rapists, and he’s now wheelchair bound…and he’s been telling everyone that Ani was in on the shooting. (The shooters, by the way, were two of her nerdy outsider friends who wanted that revenge; we eventually get a scene where one of these boys actually offers Ani the gun and tells her to shoot Dean’s dick off as penance for raping her.) How can she let this go public when she’s finally climbed all the way to the top of the social ladder?
You can imagine how messy this gets. As is common nowadays, the book is told in alternating timelines: TifAni then, age 14, and Ani now, only weeks away from her dream wedding. It’s strange how the book feels like it takes so long to really get into the meat of the plot, but somehow by the end feels like it was almost…too short to address two enormous issues like that?
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Right after I closed the book I grabbed my remote and put on the Netflix movie. I wanted to see if it managed to find a more even footing between the two plots. In some ways it does, and certainly the rape scene(s) are even more horrific and violent than they were in the book (on the page it’s written more in an “I was blackout drunk and only sort of aware that Liam was on top of me” sort of way, whereas on screen it’s very obviously vicious, with TifAni screaming and crying and trying to push them off again and again). But in others it’s…worse. The two shooters, Arthur and Ben, are as I mentioned two outsiders who are tired of being victimized by the popular assholes and choose to go the Columbine route to set things straight. In the book, though, Ben is entirely off the page – as far as I could tell Ani never even meets him, which makes it weird that he would see her cowering under a table on the day of the shooting and give her a knowing nod, as though he’s getting vengeance for her. Arthur, too, is unexpected, mainly because shortly before he and Ben shoot up the school he has a massive falling out with Ani, lessening the impact of why he would want to end his life (either by his own hand or via suicide by cop) to do right by her. (As an aside, he’s the one who offers Ani the gun, and she takes it…but only because she says she was going to kill Arthur with it. She does ultimately kill him with a cafeteria knife. But at least you can see why Dean thought they were in on it together, watching this exchange seconds before a bullet severs his spine.)
There’s so much I could still say, but I think all of this is just to indicate that the book was messy, even forcing in a subplot about TifAni’s teacher Mr. Larson, who takes care of her after the gang rape but is then fired when the school finds out he let her spend the night at his apartment since she didn’t feel like she could go anywhere else safely. Ani meets Mr. Larson again as an adult – he’s now a client of her fiance? – and they have this weird non-affair despite her impending wedding and his marriage. It’s a lot to jam in there amidst this other stuff. The movie, depending on how you look at it, either botches it (the teacher is all but written out after one chance encounter at a business dinner) or streamlines everything (by basically excising him as a character).
I guess, then, that it needs to be said that I ended up reading the open letter written in 2017 by Jessica Knoll about which parts of the book really happened to her, and it broke my heart. I could then see why she wrote things the way she did, and it muddied the waters for me in terms of how I felt about just the book as opposed to how I felt about what she lived through. This is not, in my opinion, a well-written or well-crafted novel. I think Knoll has talent, but she tried way too hard to do way too much here, and it ended up a big ol’ mess. (That’s without me even getting into how frustratingly WTF I found the ending!) And so: I would have rated this a 2, as in “it was okay,” because it had its fair share of moments where I was genuinely tense and properly horrified, but I can’t fully divorce it from the “write what you know” school of thinking, and now that I know what she knew…I have to give her just a little extra credit for being so goddamn brave about it....more
3.5-4 stars... RTC... All I'll say in the meantime is that listening to the audiobook is an absolute must. Liu has a fantastic voice, for starters, an3.5-4 stars... RTC... All I'll say in the meantime is that listening to the audiobook is an absolute must. Liu has a fantastic voice, for starters, and on top of that he's very expressive, chuckling at amusing anecdotes and getting choked up when remembering emotional moments. If you're going to read this, listen to the man tell his story....more
I’ve only ever seen Jennette McCurdy in little guest starring roles on shows like LAW & ORDER and WITHOUT A TRACE, so I went into this basically blindI’ve only ever seen Jennette McCurdy in little guest starring roles on shows like LAW & ORDER and WITHOUT A TRACE, so I went into this basically blind. I knew that the Nickelodeon environment and others of its ilk were bad for child performers. That’s really all I knew for background. I read this because it was buzzy. It exceeded my expectations.
Everything that could be said about this memoir has already been said, so all I can add is that listening to McCurdy read it for the audiobook is an experience I’d strongly recommend. I was surprised how many times she made me laugh, whether with her delivery or her observations. The rest of it is, of course, deeply affecting and sad. The abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother went much, much further than I expected; I think I went into this knowing it would be a story about a “stage mom” and the fallout (addiction and eating disorders) from that dynamic. I didn’t expect the rest. Make sure you read every content warning you can before you decide to read it, but if you’re able, do read it. ...more
All I can really say about this is that I enjoyed the Apple+ series much, much more than I did the book on which it's based. That's unusual for me, alAll I can really say about this is that I enjoyed the Apple+ series much, much more than I did the book on which it's based. That's unusual for me, although it's also kind of rare for me to still seek out the source material after I've watched a movie or series, but I loved the screen adaptation so much I thought I'd like to dig deeper.
The book does elaborate on some details into which the show didn't delve too deeply, but -- and maybe I'm just shallow -- Keene the person is so much less likable than his televised counterpart. And considering I wouldn't call TV Keene "likable" in his own right that's saying something. I found myself reading and getting annoyed with how smugly pleased Keene sounded with himself throughout, bragging about his exploits like he's learned little if anything since getting out of prison. Who would've thought Taron Egerton would make him seem less arrogant??
It's probably unfair of me to rate this when I'm so obviously unable to separate it from a truly fantastic TV series, but it's just my take. The bones of the story about how Keene got Hall to trust him is still worthwhile, so no matter which way you prefer to take it in -- TV or book -- I absolutely recommend that. If you asked me which route to take, though, I think you can suss out what I'd say. I mean, the use of this music choice in the final scene of episode 3 alone (no real spoilers there) is worth the price of the subscription....more
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