books i read in jan-apr 2024
Apr. 18th, 2024 11:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhodochrositeliteracy kinda fell off for me again ngl, I'm trying to get back into reading but work and college have me deep in the trenches ):
I did read dungeon meshi (2/10 To Me Personally I think it's objectively a beautiful thoughtful funny and well-crafted story that I wouldn't hesitate to rec to people who don't have pathetic guy haterism like I do but it has basically zero appeal to me in terms of characters/thematic conceits/dynamix and I came out of it really only caring about a tinhet so blasphemous I literally could not find anyone else posting about it no matter what I termsearched) and reread dorohedoro (10/10 still one of my all time manga and the jokes/terror story everrr even though my delicate constitution struggles to withstand the extreme gore) by reading dunmesh until I got bored and then switching to dorohedoro until I got too landmined and then switching back to dunmesh and so on. they're actually pretty similar in terms of their focus on food and death but dorohedoro has the cool slayers and crazy dynamix I need to live š
top of my tbr list: sofia samatar's new novella, sound the gong (strike the zither sequel) when it comes out at the end of the month, alecto the ninth if it comes out this year(/ever), and i will ofc be tuning in to hateread rfk's new book. kinda considering rereading asoiaf since it's been more than a decade since i first read and i do have the books in my house but I also don't really have capacity to read anything more taxing than a romcom sooooo.
this post contains spoilers for: foul heart huntsman ā chloe gong, the truly devious trilogy ā maureen johnson, i hope this doesn't find you ā ann liang.
foul heart huntsman ā chloe gong
I enjoyed this so much more than foul lady fortune!!! doesn't mean this book was good but i will take my victories where I can get them, the romantic heartflutteringness quotient was 500% up from flf and I think overall the writing felt much more mature, even tho all the jaemins were severely less jaemin than they were in flf. the omniscient narrator sections and the pinyin overuse both felt less egregious and annoying than they did in flf but maybe I was just expecting them this time lol.
phoebe was the runaway star of the show and I internally cheered and clapped every time her pov chapters came along, she's so cute and charming and likeable and randomly has idol constructed persona identity angst so I was actually so right when I said she was out-jaemining every other jaemin in these books. unfortunately her romance with silas disappointed me although I really should know better than to expect a cgong romance to deliver on its premise's promises. the whole buildup felt kind of lukewarm and there was barely any payoff at the grand reveal that phoebe was priest. the whole phoebe->silas->priest storyline would really have benefitted from some judicious application of the doctrine of jokes/terrorā¦ being in a love triangle with yourself is literally one of the funniest tropes ever hello. I think the balance was skewed too far towards terror and yet didn't lean hard enough into terror anyway so it was just likeā¦ nothing. and I didn't understand what phoebe even liked about silas, he was the most Guy Who Is Also There character in a cast that is pretty full of Guys Who Are Also There (jieminā¦). he's obviously not meant to be the charismatic type like phoebe (and orion) but he didn't even have oliver's overly serious Grim Responsible Eldest Son charm so what exactly did he have going for him. like girl do you want to elaborate on what you see in him other than being your love interest. I sat up at the plot reveal that silas had seemingly betrayed them to lady hong but then it got walked back so that systematically eliminated the last vestiges of hope that he might have something interesting going on.
oliver/celia remained my favourite couple and the part that I thought was most solid overall; celia's chapters were another highlight alongside phoebe as one thing about me is that I will always love a responsible repressed girl who is devoted to her ideals and it made me very happy that oliver would sacrifice anything, even his own utility to their shared cause, even their shared cause itself, to save celia. which is the bare minimum I expect from any love interest! I enjoyed that this was something that caused CELIA a lot of grief because she didn't want to be the person who put oliver in a situation where he had to choose between her and their convictions, so she was holding back. usually I like Would Sacrifice The World To Save One Person x Would Sacrifice One Person To Save The World type ships so it was super fun to think about the inherent tension and built-in regencyesque repression of idealist4idealist. I do like the extra layer of like, I don't want to test your love for me against your love for the world because I'm scared your love for me would win and I know exactly how horrifying and antithetical to your entire being it would be to cause you to betray our ideals.
I think I liked orion/Rosalind more in fhh than flf but I couldn't even tell you whyā¦ I did enjoy rosalind's desperation to rescue and unbrainwash orion with the power of love and handwavey medical technology. not sure how I felt about orion's amnesia because I am super picky about amnesia plots. it wasn't anything outright landminey and memoryless orion was pretty cute in a huge dumb puppy way but I think it was resolved a little bit too easily bc he was so chill and trusting about it which I know is due to Power Of Love but I generally want more anguish and terror in amnesia storylines and would have loved to see more of orion and Rosalind as enemies / orion trying to kill Rosalind while lucid. mumurrue did it better. subjectively I hate when superpowered people lose their superpowers to become normal people so I wasn't a fan of their ending but i do think it makes sense for their characters so that's fine I guess.
I was just pretty underwhelmed in general with every romantic arcā¦ they were all immediately cut off at their climax with zero denouement except for timeskip summary in the epilogue which was incredibly frustrating like come on I was just starting to get invested!!! overall I could see the seeds of a great story in there but I ultimately didn't care enough to want to imagine the better version myself. 3/10.
fave line: Let anything land in her grasp, and she turned to the fire without thinking
truly, devious (trilogy) ā maureen johnson
i was legit about to pick up acotar out of sheer boredom and desire to feel something when i saw a tiktok from some random guy reccing this series. now op mentioned that the love interest had the vibe that he wanted to skin the protag alive which I think was meant derogatorily but is in fact the very green flag that caused me to pick up the book because you know I love it when ya love interests are The Killer. I also love murder mysteries I've always been a crime procedural enjoyer so even if the characters/dynamix flopped i still have the plot, unlike most other types of story where I simply do not give a fuck about the plot. luckily both points were hit! I am super easy to satisfy when it comes to murder mysteries so idk if it's an objectively good one but I enjoyed the experience and the mystery and the various clues and suspects and red herrings.
these books are basically american dangan ronpa in which our super high school level detective protag stevie attends special nerd academy and attempts to solve historical murders connected to the school while the people around her start dying in mysterious freak accidents which as you may have guessed are not really accidents. there's a dual storyline cutting between stevie's investigations in the present day and the actual events that occurred around the murders in the past which I think worked nicely to heighten the tension while advancing the plot but not necessarily revealing the objective facts until The One Truth Come Out, as my buddy conan once said or something. to that end the inherently unreliable nature of limited 3rd person pov was well employed. I will be so honest i was actually extremely stressed reading the first two books maybe bc I was reading them at like 1am and also note that I get scared just from reading Wikipedia plot synopses of horror movies but it does speak to the brisk pacing and solid tension-building and sense of looming danger. also stevie has anxiety and the descriptions of her panic attacks were really vivid and the parts where she was imagining how terrified ellie must have been when she was slowly dying in the blocked-off secret tunnel actually did freak me out. that being said the jokes were also pretty funny, not all of them landed imo but the dialogue did generally read like real teens (supernerd ver, I went to summer maths camp in high school so I know from personal experience exactly what this sounds like) talking to each other and I laughed at several points.
i wasn't particularly into any of the characters but they all served their purpose in the story well and their interactions were pretty sweet, especially stevie's self-aware introvert4introvert friendship with nate (shsl writer who doesn't write), which was probably the most compelling dynamic outside of the main romance. I wish that janelle (shsl stem girlie) had a more interesting relationship with stevie but they didn't quite hit the extreme closeness threshold for Girls The World since janelle almost instantly started dating vi (don't even remember what they do tbh), nor did they have tension or friction for me to latch onto, but it was nice that stevie had a girl friend who was so firmly in her corner. I do think stevie/germaine (shsl news blogger) could have been somethingā¦ the narrative parallels of being eagle-eyed observers and investigators but for different endsā¦ much to think about when stevie's narration shades into criticism of germaine reporting/snitching on the events occurring in the name of cloutchasing journalism because it's interfering with stevie's ability to detective, even though germaine is literally just being who she is and doing what she does, like stevie is. at one part david points out that stevie has self-serving motives alongside noble ones in trying to solve the case/sā¦ just like germaineā¦ kind of giving kdj-anna if they were high school girls. and then germaine like incidentally ruins stevie's life in the process of reporting on a story but later she saves stevie's life by happening to be in the right place at the right time so it evens out. I feel like in the process of typing this out I really sold myself on stevie/germaine even though I didn't really care for germaine in the actual books but what am I gonna do, say no to narrative parallel rivals?
anyway everyone is so over-the-top in personality that they read almost like caricatures but I honestly thought this was fine since 1) I'd expect nothing less from american dangan ronpa 2) the school literally selects for exceptionalism and freakishness so it makes sense that the students would be exceptional freaks 3) for some characters the performance is exaggerated on purpose (in particular shsl art kid ellie, shsl youtube skit actor hayes, shsl actual actress maris, shsl gamedev davidā¦ more on him later) 4) it's FUN. I love freaks. idgaf about realism. stevie is fine as a main pov, I do generally like intrepid girl detective types and I like that she's appropriately gripful and competent at her claimed skillset but still has the gap moe of normal human teen girl responses to fucked up situations despite her slayful detective stats but also isn't offputtingly insecure. I'm quite picky about protags but I found stevie nicely balanced.
and the romance ^___^ :') :D smiled giggled kicked my feet I love killer x nancy drew almost as much as I love killer x final girl. david is genuinely the most jaemin love interest out of every jaemin love interest I've ever encountered because he not only has the classic killer archetype characteristics (handsome, unsettling, charming, rich, daddy issues, lying liar who lies, constructed stage persona, male manipulator, unblinking snake stare, notable watch wearer) but he also has modern era jaemin's unrepentant weirdness as the primary component of the smokescreen covering up his true motives / identity and the manifestation of his control issues. and even distinctive eyebrows too!
it's honestly really funny that it's hate at first sight for stevie bc david is subconsciously reminding her of his secret dad who is an evil senator stevie hates, and her standoffishness towards him is what initially attracts him to her like a hawk zeroing in on its prey <3 which David acts on by being annoying as hell and hotcolding tf out of stevie. sure their first overtly romantic interaction came on pretty suddenly but to be fair stevie was extremely scared and stressed and had just seen her classmate's dead body, so she's operating on child soldier wartime expedited relationship progression logic yk, plus she does try to resist it afterwards (1800 I love tsunderesā¦). I'll agree that the romance subplot definitely could have burned slower / been developed more finely though this is a murder mystery first and a romance second so it's not necessarily the story's priority (but maybe it should be).
the internal battle between stevie's logical brain which understands david to be a prime murder suspect and her inexplicable crush on him is soooo delicious. there's a really good part where david essentially forces stevie to choose between him or what he can do for her and she's so pissed off about him pushing this ultimatum on her in the middle of the case that she picks what he can do for her, which ofc feeds directly into his problems with persona and identity. it works out in the end but it highlights a big ideological conflict between them which is that stevie will pursue truth and justice and the solution of the case above all else and no matter how horrified she is over the lives she inadvertently ruins in the process she simply cannot not push through, but david will prioritise the things(/people) he cares about. you know how I feel about loyalist 1 x idealist 0.
as far as desirability of names goes david is not even that bad when I think about some recent offenders so I'll give him a pass. for a while when david and stevie were on the rocks due to mutual feelings of betrayal I was genuinely concerned that the late entry potential secondary love interest was going to be endgame for stevie because he was a nice and normal guy who treated her well but thank god she got together with the killer in the end ššš we love a happily ever after!
overall a solidly fun and engaging read and i had a good time. 7/10, I know that might seem a bit low for how positive this review has been but i need to be obsessed with a character for that high distinction grade and nobody was really giving like that, also ultimately I prefer character-focused stories over plot-focused stories.
fave lines
I'll be honest the only lines I highlighted were parts that made me go like *pointing* JAEMIN? so here's a selection of Lines That Reminded Me Of Jaemin (these are all from book 1 because I was so intent on getting to the end of the mystery that I forgot to note down anything from books 2 and 3):
He would not stop looking at her. And not just looking. It was a penetrating, unwavering look.
-
His eyebrows were thick and very expressive. They rose when he was playful, arched when he was being a jerk, and now were flat. He was watchful.
-
āI know one thing that is full of shit,ā she said. āAnd itās you.ā
He shrugged as if to say, Fair enough.
āWhat the hell is wrong with you?ā she asked.
āLots of things,ā he said.
āYouāre a liar,ā she said.
-
Could she have kissed a killer? What did a killer kiss like? Could a killer be as warm as David had been? Was that what made him so attractive to her? Was that the thing she had recognized in him from the very first moment she saw him, when something about his face reminded her so strongly of something she knew, something she wanted to fight?
i hope this doesn't find you ā ann liang
in this book op bravely asks the question What if To all the boys I loved before was actually To all the boys I hated before and instead of accidentally sending love letters the heroine accidentally sends hate letters ? just a little glimpse into my twisted reality. the premise is that the protag Sadie drafts vent emails as an outlet for all the negative emotions she doesn't let herself express in order to preserve her friendly model student image, many of which are addressed to her beloathed co-captain and arch nemesis Julius, and one day mysteriously all the vent emails are sent out and now everyone knows how she really feels and it completely blows up her reputation and she and Julius are forced to work together to repair the damage to the school's reputation that happened in the crossfire and surprise bitch that past decade of mutual haterism has actually been sublimated mutual pining all along.
I did have to suspend my disbelief a bit to buy that someone as smart as sadie would be keeping these drafts in her SCHOOL EMAIL on her SCHOOL LAPTOP and apparently with the recipients filled in too like you are just asking for disaster to happen girl what you should be doing is drafting in a new email, screenshotting, posting the screenshots on a locked 0 follower twitter account AND THEN PERMANENTLY DELETING THE DRAFTS. basic opsec! next you'll be telling me you don't even use incognito mode so your browser history can't be later snooped on by parents / nosy friends / enemies smh. I did this and I didn't even have opps in high school whereas sadie clearly has opps everywhere praying on her downfall she should really have a higher level of healthy paranoia.
aliang has become my go-to queen of enjoyable tropey academic rivals to lovers romances with neurotic overachiever grindmaxxed working class girls under immense internalised pressure to perform perfectly and handsome rich self-assured asshole boys who drawl and slouch everywhere and seem to effortlessly achieve everything the girls work so hard for. which is ofc a dynamic I generally enjoy but aliang paywalls it behind some event that causes cataclysmically severe secondhand embarrassment. but no pain no gain I suppose and aliang is really good at capturing how anything can genuinely feel like the end of the world when you are a teenager especially if your entire identity is built on being a perfect and well-disciplined student and any sign of disappointment from authority figures could literally kill you. this is actually expressly discussed at one point in the book, which I likedā¦ like the whole idea that as an adult looking back you know it's not the end of the world and maybe even objectively in the moment you understand that it's not the end of the world but in the moment it IS your world so of course it feels incomprehensibly monumental.
Sadie and Julius definitely out-competitive all the other aliang couples since Sadie literally has a running mental point system tallying up their respective wins and Julius emails her to gloat about his victories over her And They Were Co School Captains so you know there's that forced proximity and outwards display of a professionally united front going on as well. i think Sadie is probably the most gripless heroine I've read from aliang so far too, which is impressive considering that eliza was already one of the most gripless heroines I've ever read in general, but eliza's griplessness came from her anxiety while sadie's griplessness is in the name of being a people pleaser and maintaining a good image. and like I get it but girl you need to stand up. in classic aliang love interest fashion julius has already liked her all along but is honestly much meaner to her than his fellow love interests because he's stuck developmentally at the pigtail pulling on the playground age lol sadie hits back (or hits first) just as hard so it's fine we love to see it and he does the nobody is allowed to fuck with you except me thing which we love to see even more. and sadie got to pull an Insulting Julius Who Is My Worthy Rival Is Insulting Me And How Dare You Insult Me too it's equality!! I did smile and cheer and kick my feet at the rivalmance but I started getting scared at how familiar some parts were getting which is the everpresent risk with aliang booksā¦ there's truly nothing I hate more than being made to reflect on my own life.
the plot is basically sadie and julius "reluctantly" working together and running through an entire gauntlet of classic romcom misunderstanding scenarios including the tried and true Game Of Truth Or Dare Leads To Kiss That Gets A Bit Too Intense until they finally manage to actually properly confess (in the rain! in the dark!) without getting diverted by arguing or insulting each other, while acknowledging that what love looks like for their dynamic is going to include competitive banter and oneupmanship. and sadie learns the valuable lesson of Not Everything Is Your Responsibility To Fix (side note I like that aliang heroines always have some personal internal trial to confront and overcome aside from the romantic storyline that is like lightly flavoured with second-gen chinese immigrant trauma without getting too didacticā¦ most of the time. eliza did veer a bit into ott territory ngl).
I knew right away that girl best friend Abigail was the one who sent the emails and I kind of think sadie forgave her too fast but at the same time i don't love reading about serious friendship fights soā¦ maybe it was for the best? I did not like that sadie's brother got away with his weaponised incompetence, the whole subplot about how he sat on his ass not doing any form of housework because he would fuck it up every time he tried pissed me off soooo bad and then it was not resolved at all, which is unfortunately realistic when it comes to chinese sons vs domestic responsibilities but does not fit the wish fulfilment feelgood fantasy aspect of what I want to read in a romance.
you know I have to address the fact that the love interest is named Julius which is definitely far from the top of the desirable names list but it is very culturally accurate because chinese people love to give their kids English names that are either the most basic everyone and their dog names or names that were last in fashion several centuries ago and it's funny that Julius and his brother who has the normal ass name james represent both sides of the spectrum. so I'll allow this one on the grounds of verisimilitude as well.
overall a nostalgic and pretty heartfluttering read as aliang romances generally are but also a somewhat humiliating one as aliang romances also generally are. 7/10 my discomfort was outweighing my enjoyment at a few too many points but in general I had a good time. I think I liked this slightly more than ttir but iycsts stays my #1.
fave lines
"What did I ever do to you to make youā¦ hate me so much? Itās been happening since the day we met each other. With dodgeball. With the spelling quiz in year six. With our history project. With everything. Why do you always single me out?ā
āBecause,ā he says quietly, a curious expression on his face. Iāve never seen him so serious. So sincere. āYouāre the only person worth paying attention to.ā
I did read dungeon meshi (2/10 To Me Personally I think it's objectively a beautiful thoughtful funny and well-crafted story that I wouldn't hesitate to rec to people who don't have pathetic guy haterism like I do but it has basically zero appeal to me in terms of characters/thematic conceits/dynamix and I came out of it really only caring about a tinhet so blasphemous I literally could not find anyone else posting about it no matter what I termsearched) and reread dorohedoro (10/10 still one of my all time manga and the jokes/terror story everrr even though my delicate constitution struggles to withstand the extreme gore) by reading dunmesh until I got bored and then switching to dorohedoro until I got too landmined and then switching back to dunmesh and so on. they're actually pretty similar in terms of their focus on food and death but dorohedoro has the cool slayers and crazy dynamix I need to live š
top of my tbr list: sofia samatar's new novella, sound the gong (strike the zither sequel) when it comes out at the end of the month, alecto the ninth if it comes out this year(/ever), and i will ofc be tuning in to hateread rfk's new book. kinda considering rereading asoiaf since it's been more than a decade since i first read and i do have the books in my house but I also don't really have capacity to read anything more taxing than a romcom sooooo.
this post contains spoilers for: foul heart huntsman ā chloe gong, the truly devious trilogy ā maureen johnson, i hope this doesn't find you ā ann liang.
foul heart huntsman ā chloe gong
I enjoyed this so much more than foul lady fortune!!! doesn't mean this book was good but i will take my victories where I can get them, the romantic heartflutteringness quotient was 500% up from flf and I think overall the writing felt much more mature, even tho all the jaemins were severely less jaemin than they were in flf. the omniscient narrator sections and the pinyin overuse both felt less egregious and annoying than they did in flf but maybe I was just expecting them this time lol.
phoebe was the runaway star of the show and I internally cheered and clapped every time her pov chapters came along, she's so cute and charming and likeable and randomly has idol constructed persona identity angst so I was actually so right when I said she was out-jaemining every other jaemin in these books. unfortunately her romance with silas disappointed me although I really should know better than to expect a cgong romance to deliver on its premise's promises. the whole buildup felt kind of lukewarm and there was barely any payoff at the grand reveal that phoebe was priest. the whole phoebe->silas->priest storyline would really have benefitted from some judicious application of the doctrine of jokes/terrorā¦ being in a love triangle with yourself is literally one of the funniest tropes ever hello. I think the balance was skewed too far towards terror and yet didn't lean hard enough into terror anyway so it was just likeā¦ nothing. and I didn't understand what phoebe even liked about silas, he was the most Guy Who Is Also There character in a cast that is pretty full of Guys Who Are Also There (jieminā¦). he's obviously not meant to be the charismatic type like phoebe (and orion) but he didn't even have oliver's overly serious Grim Responsible Eldest Son charm so what exactly did he have going for him. like girl do you want to elaborate on what you see in him other than being your love interest. I sat up at the plot reveal that silas had seemingly betrayed them to lady hong but then it got walked back so that systematically eliminated the last vestiges of hope that he might have something interesting going on.
oliver/celia remained my favourite couple and the part that I thought was most solid overall; celia's chapters were another highlight alongside phoebe as one thing about me is that I will always love a responsible repressed girl who is devoted to her ideals and it made me very happy that oliver would sacrifice anything, even his own utility to their shared cause, even their shared cause itself, to save celia. which is the bare minimum I expect from any love interest! I enjoyed that this was something that caused CELIA a lot of grief because she didn't want to be the person who put oliver in a situation where he had to choose between her and their convictions, so she was holding back. usually I like Would Sacrifice The World To Save One Person x Would Sacrifice One Person To Save The World type ships so it was super fun to think about the inherent tension and built-in regencyesque repression of idealist4idealist. I do like the extra layer of like, I don't want to test your love for me against your love for the world because I'm scared your love for me would win and I know exactly how horrifying and antithetical to your entire being it would be to cause you to betray our ideals.
I think I liked orion/Rosalind more in fhh than flf but I couldn't even tell you whyā¦ I did enjoy rosalind's desperation to rescue and unbrainwash orion with the power of love and handwavey medical technology. not sure how I felt about orion's amnesia because I am super picky about amnesia plots. it wasn't anything outright landminey and memoryless orion was pretty cute in a huge dumb puppy way but I think it was resolved a little bit too easily bc he was so chill and trusting about it which I know is due to Power Of Love but I generally want more anguish and terror in amnesia storylines and would have loved to see more of orion and Rosalind as enemies / orion trying to kill Rosalind while lucid. mumurrue did it better. subjectively I hate when superpowered people lose their superpowers to become normal people so I wasn't a fan of their ending but i do think it makes sense for their characters so that's fine I guess.
I was just pretty underwhelmed in general with every romantic arcā¦ they were all immediately cut off at their climax with zero denouement except for timeskip summary in the epilogue which was incredibly frustrating like come on I was just starting to get invested!!! overall I could see the seeds of a great story in there but I ultimately didn't care enough to want to imagine the better version myself. 3/10.
fave line: Let anything land in her grasp, and she turned to the fire without thinking
- the most interesting thing that was ever said about Rosalind tbh. I'm not sure that it's really that borne out by the text but 1800 I love repressed self saboteurs
truly, devious (trilogy) ā maureen johnson
i was legit about to pick up acotar out of sheer boredom and desire to feel something when i saw a tiktok from some random guy reccing this series. now op mentioned that the love interest had the vibe that he wanted to skin the protag alive which I think was meant derogatorily but is in fact the very green flag that caused me to pick up the book because you know I love it when ya love interests are The Killer. I also love murder mysteries I've always been a crime procedural enjoyer so even if the characters/dynamix flopped i still have the plot, unlike most other types of story where I simply do not give a fuck about the plot. luckily both points were hit! I am super easy to satisfy when it comes to murder mysteries so idk if it's an objectively good one but I enjoyed the experience and the mystery and the various clues and suspects and red herrings.
these books are basically american dangan ronpa in which our super high school level detective protag stevie attends special nerd academy and attempts to solve historical murders connected to the school while the people around her start dying in mysterious freak accidents which as you may have guessed are not really accidents. there's a dual storyline cutting between stevie's investigations in the present day and the actual events that occurred around the murders in the past which I think worked nicely to heighten the tension while advancing the plot but not necessarily revealing the objective facts until The One Truth Come Out, as my buddy conan once said or something. to that end the inherently unreliable nature of limited 3rd person pov was well employed. I will be so honest i was actually extremely stressed reading the first two books maybe bc I was reading them at like 1am and also note that I get scared just from reading Wikipedia plot synopses of horror movies but it does speak to the brisk pacing and solid tension-building and sense of looming danger. also stevie has anxiety and the descriptions of her panic attacks were really vivid and the parts where she was imagining how terrified ellie must have been when she was slowly dying in the blocked-off secret tunnel actually did freak me out. that being said the jokes were also pretty funny, not all of them landed imo but the dialogue did generally read like real teens (supernerd ver, I went to summer maths camp in high school so I know from personal experience exactly what this sounds like) talking to each other and I laughed at several points.
i wasn't particularly into any of the characters but they all served their purpose in the story well and their interactions were pretty sweet, especially stevie's self-aware introvert4introvert friendship with nate (shsl writer who doesn't write), which was probably the most compelling dynamic outside of the main romance. I wish that janelle (shsl stem girlie) had a more interesting relationship with stevie but they didn't quite hit the extreme closeness threshold for Girls The World since janelle almost instantly started dating vi (don't even remember what they do tbh), nor did they have tension or friction for me to latch onto, but it was nice that stevie had a girl friend who was so firmly in her corner. I do think stevie/germaine (shsl news blogger) could have been somethingā¦ the narrative parallels of being eagle-eyed observers and investigators but for different endsā¦ much to think about when stevie's narration shades into criticism of germaine reporting/snitching on the events occurring in the name of cloutchasing journalism because it's interfering with stevie's ability to detective, even though germaine is literally just being who she is and doing what she does, like stevie is. at one part david points out that stevie has self-serving motives alongside noble ones in trying to solve the case/sā¦ just like germaineā¦ kind of giving kdj-anna if they were high school girls. and then germaine like incidentally ruins stevie's life in the process of reporting on a story but later she saves stevie's life by happening to be in the right place at the right time so it evens out. I feel like in the process of typing this out I really sold myself on stevie/germaine even though I didn't really care for germaine in the actual books but what am I gonna do, say no to narrative parallel rivals?
anyway everyone is so over-the-top in personality that they read almost like caricatures but I honestly thought this was fine since 1) I'd expect nothing less from american dangan ronpa 2) the school literally selects for exceptionalism and freakishness so it makes sense that the students would be exceptional freaks 3) for some characters the performance is exaggerated on purpose (in particular shsl art kid ellie, shsl youtube skit actor hayes, shsl actual actress maris, shsl gamedev davidā¦ more on him later) 4) it's FUN. I love freaks. idgaf about realism. stevie is fine as a main pov, I do generally like intrepid girl detective types and I like that she's appropriately gripful and competent at her claimed skillset but still has the gap moe of normal human teen girl responses to fucked up situations despite her slayful detective stats but also isn't offputtingly insecure. I'm quite picky about protags but I found stevie nicely balanced.
and the romance ^___^ :') :D smiled giggled kicked my feet I love killer x nancy drew almost as much as I love killer x final girl. david is genuinely the most jaemin love interest out of every jaemin love interest I've ever encountered because he not only has the classic killer archetype characteristics (handsome, unsettling, charming, rich, daddy issues, lying liar who lies, constructed stage persona, male manipulator, unblinking snake stare, notable watch wearer) but he also has modern era jaemin's unrepentant weirdness as the primary component of the smokescreen covering up his true motives / identity and the manifestation of his control issues. and even distinctive eyebrows too!
it's honestly really funny that it's hate at first sight for stevie bc david is subconsciously reminding her of his secret dad who is an evil senator stevie hates, and her standoffishness towards him is what initially attracts him to her like a hawk zeroing in on its prey <3 which David acts on by being annoying as hell and hotcolding tf out of stevie. sure their first overtly romantic interaction came on pretty suddenly but to be fair stevie was extremely scared and stressed and had just seen her classmate's dead body, so she's operating on child soldier wartime expedited relationship progression logic yk, plus she does try to resist it afterwards (1800 I love tsunderesā¦). I'll agree that the romance subplot definitely could have burned slower / been developed more finely though this is a murder mystery first and a romance second so it's not necessarily the story's priority (but maybe it should be).
the internal battle between stevie's logical brain which understands david to be a prime murder suspect and her inexplicable crush on him is soooo delicious. there's a really good part where david essentially forces stevie to choose between him or what he can do for her and she's so pissed off about him pushing this ultimatum on her in the middle of the case that she picks what he can do for her, which ofc feeds directly into his problems with persona and identity. it works out in the end but it highlights a big ideological conflict between them which is that stevie will pursue truth and justice and the solution of the case above all else and no matter how horrified she is over the lives she inadvertently ruins in the process she simply cannot not push through, but david will prioritise the things(/people) he cares about. you know how I feel about loyalist 1 x idealist 0.
as far as desirability of names goes david is not even that bad when I think about some recent offenders so I'll give him a pass. for a while when david and stevie were on the rocks due to mutual feelings of betrayal I was genuinely concerned that the late entry potential secondary love interest was going to be endgame for stevie because he was a nice and normal guy who treated her well but thank god she got together with the killer in the end ššš we love a happily ever after!
overall a solidly fun and engaging read and i had a good time. 7/10, I know that might seem a bit low for how positive this review has been but i need to be obsessed with a character for that high distinction grade and nobody was really giving like that, also ultimately I prefer character-focused stories over plot-focused stories.
fave lines
I'll be honest the only lines I highlighted were parts that made me go like *pointing* JAEMIN? so here's a selection of Lines That Reminded Me Of Jaemin (these are all from book 1 because I was so intent on getting to the end of the mystery that I forgot to note down anything from books 2 and 3):
He would not stop looking at her. And not just looking. It was a penetrating, unwavering look.
-
His eyebrows were thick and very expressive. They rose when he was playful, arched when he was being a jerk, and now were flat. He was watchful.
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āI know one thing that is full of shit,ā she said. āAnd itās you.ā
He shrugged as if to say, Fair enough.
āWhat the hell is wrong with you?ā she asked.
āLots of things,ā he said.
āYouāre a liar,ā she said.
-
Could she have kissed a killer? What did a killer kiss like? Could a killer be as warm as David had been? Was that what made him so attractive to her? Was that the thing she had recognized in him from the very first moment she saw him, when something about his face reminded her so strongly of something she knew, something she wanted to fight?
i hope this doesn't find you ā ann liang
in this book op bravely asks the question What if To all the boys I loved before was actually To all the boys I hated before and instead of accidentally sending love letters the heroine accidentally sends hate letters ? just a little glimpse into my twisted reality. the premise is that the protag Sadie drafts vent emails as an outlet for all the negative emotions she doesn't let herself express in order to preserve her friendly model student image, many of which are addressed to her beloathed co-captain and arch nemesis Julius, and one day mysteriously all the vent emails are sent out and now everyone knows how she really feels and it completely blows up her reputation and she and Julius are forced to work together to repair the damage to the school's reputation that happened in the crossfire and surprise bitch that past decade of mutual haterism has actually been sublimated mutual pining all along.
I did have to suspend my disbelief a bit to buy that someone as smart as sadie would be keeping these drafts in her SCHOOL EMAIL on her SCHOOL LAPTOP and apparently with the recipients filled in too like you are just asking for disaster to happen girl what you should be doing is drafting in a new email, screenshotting, posting the screenshots on a locked 0 follower twitter account AND THEN PERMANENTLY DELETING THE DRAFTS. basic opsec! next you'll be telling me you don't even use incognito mode so your browser history can't be later snooped on by parents / nosy friends / enemies smh. I did this and I didn't even have opps in high school whereas sadie clearly has opps everywhere praying on her downfall she should really have a higher level of healthy paranoia.
aliang has become my go-to queen of enjoyable tropey academic rivals to lovers romances with neurotic overachiever grindmaxxed working class girls under immense internalised pressure to perform perfectly and handsome rich self-assured asshole boys who drawl and slouch everywhere and seem to effortlessly achieve everything the girls work so hard for. which is ofc a dynamic I generally enjoy but aliang paywalls it behind some event that causes cataclysmically severe secondhand embarrassment. but no pain no gain I suppose and aliang is really good at capturing how anything can genuinely feel like the end of the world when you are a teenager especially if your entire identity is built on being a perfect and well-disciplined student and any sign of disappointment from authority figures could literally kill you. this is actually expressly discussed at one point in the book, which I likedā¦ like the whole idea that as an adult looking back you know it's not the end of the world and maybe even objectively in the moment you understand that it's not the end of the world but in the moment it IS your world so of course it feels incomprehensibly monumental.
Sadie and Julius definitely out-competitive all the other aliang couples since Sadie literally has a running mental point system tallying up their respective wins and Julius emails her to gloat about his victories over her And They Were Co School Captains so you know there's that forced proximity and outwards display of a professionally united front going on as well. i think Sadie is probably the most gripless heroine I've read from aliang so far too, which is impressive considering that eliza was already one of the most gripless heroines I've ever read in general, but eliza's griplessness came from her anxiety while sadie's griplessness is in the name of being a people pleaser and maintaining a good image. and like I get it but girl you need to stand up. in classic aliang love interest fashion julius has already liked her all along but is honestly much meaner to her than his fellow love interests because he's stuck developmentally at the pigtail pulling on the playground age lol sadie hits back (or hits first) just as hard so it's fine we love to see it and he does the nobody is allowed to fuck with you except me thing which we love to see even more. and sadie got to pull an Insulting Julius Who Is My Worthy Rival Is Insulting Me And How Dare You Insult Me too it's equality!! I did smile and cheer and kick my feet at the rivalmance but I started getting scared at how familiar some parts were getting which is the everpresent risk with aliang booksā¦ there's truly nothing I hate more than being made to reflect on my own life.
the plot is basically sadie and julius "reluctantly" working together and running through an entire gauntlet of classic romcom misunderstanding scenarios including the tried and true Game Of Truth Or Dare Leads To Kiss That Gets A Bit Too Intense until they finally manage to actually properly confess (in the rain! in the dark!) without getting diverted by arguing or insulting each other, while acknowledging that what love looks like for their dynamic is going to include competitive banter and oneupmanship. and sadie learns the valuable lesson of Not Everything Is Your Responsibility To Fix (side note I like that aliang heroines always have some personal internal trial to confront and overcome aside from the romantic storyline that is like lightly flavoured with second-gen chinese immigrant trauma without getting too didacticā¦ most of the time. eliza did veer a bit into ott territory ngl).
I knew right away that girl best friend Abigail was the one who sent the emails and I kind of think sadie forgave her too fast but at the same time i don't love reading about serious friendship fights soā¦ maybe it was for the best? I did not like that sadie's brother got away with his weaponised incompetence, the whole subplot about how he sat on his ass not doing any form of housework because he would fuck it up every time he tried pissed me off soooo bad and then it was not resolved at all, which is unfortunately realistic when it comes to chinese sons vs domestic responsibilities but does not fit the wish fulfilment feelgood fantasy aspect of what I want to read in a romance.
you know I have to address the fact that the love interest is named Julius which is definitely far from the top of the desirable names list but it is very culturally accurate because chinese people love to give their kids English names that are either the most basic everyone and their dog names or names that were last in fashion several centuries ago and it's funny that Julius and his brother who has the normal ass name james represent both sides of the spectrum. so I'll allow this one on the grounds of verisimilitude as well.
overall a nostalgic and pretty heartfluttering read as aliang romances generally are but also a somewhat humiliating one as aliang romances also generally are. 7/10 my discomfort was outweighing my enjoyment at a few too many points but in general I had a good time. I think I liked this slightly more than ttir but iycsts stays my #1.
fave lines
"What did I ever do to you to make youā¦ hate me so much? Itās been happening since the day we met each other. With dodgeball. With the spelling quiz in year six. With our history project. With everything. Why do you always single me out?ā
āBecause,ā he says quietly, a curious expression on his face. Iāve never seen him so serious. So sincere. āYouāre the only person worth paying attention to.ā
- whom among us hasn't come away from an unnecessarily intense class dodgeball match against a childhood nemesis even more alivefully haterised than before...
