The Girl From Everywhere, Heidi Heilig

I really enjoyed this. It's a beautiful story, I liked how time travel was dealt with, I liked the setting -- Hawaii just before it became part of the United States -- and I liked the crew of the ship. My one complaint is that it felt like it was more the protagonist's father's story than her own. Everything hinges on decisions he makes, and how she'll react to it, rather than a decision that she's going to make. (In fact, at the end, she makes a decision to leave, since he can't seem to decide anything, then he changes his mind, so so does he. It still comes down to him.)

Grade: B
#23 in 2017

The Adrien English mysteries #1-6, Josh Lanyon

Fatal Shadows, A Dangerous Thing, The Hell You Say, Death of a Pirate King, The Dark Tide, and So This Is Christmas

I liked this a lot. It's got kind of an old-school flavor to it, with the (eventual) romantic interest being a guy who hates himself for being gay and maybe hates Adrien for it, too, and nearly every side character turning out to have a problem with Adrien being gay. But that's not unrealistic for ten years ago, so it didn't bother me. I love this kind of genre -- amateur sleuth gets involved with murders and the cops -- and my favorite thing is "genre I love, and it's gay." I actually liked this book a lot, but with a couple of caveats. The whole "Native Americans trying to scare away settlers with ghost stories -- could they be real???" subplot feels very worn out and mildly racist (I believe it was done with the best of intentions but I winced a couple of times). Also, it's rough reading a romantic interest who hates being gay and hates gay men, even if he's actually secretly pretty kind to Adrien. Not entirely unrealistic, just a little painful. Jake is a total dick in this book, and the plot is confusing. Adrien, honey, go find someone who actually likes you. I like his adopted extended family, though. Just lots and lots of characters all thrown into this story. (This is probably my fault for reading three books in two days, though.) FINALLY, Jake is forced to admit he really likes Adrien, and do something about it. Adrien believes for a hot second in this book that Jake will murder him to keep it secret that he's gay. I didn't, but it was still a very cathartic moment when Jake is finally like, "No, this is who I am, and I do actually have a line I won't cross to keep my life intact." Jake's self-hating homophobia in the series reads like it should be set in the early 80s, and Adrien's inability to shake Jake off and date someone else (he does date someone else, but he doesn't REALLY like him) is a little weird until Jake starts to get more emotionally mature in this book. But it is a very satisfying arc. Big finish! Jake and Adrien have to decide if they're going to get it together or not. Jake is finally on board with being out and dating another man. Will Adrien be able to get over everything that's happened and make this romance work???? (...I mean, spoiler, yes, he will.) And finally, the "meet the family" Christmas story, where Adrien and Jake get a very cute happily ever after. This series is so great, and the ending is so satisfying. #17-#22 in 2017 Grades: Eh, mostly Bs but the ending is so good it goes to an A

Wives, Fiancees, and Side-Chicks of Hotlanta, Sheree Whitfield

You're only reading this if you watch Real Housewives of Atlanta, which is fine. (Me, too.) But you don't even get any good gossip -- yeah, we know Nene used to be a "dancer." The writing is actively terrible, there are lots and lots of typos which no one seems to have noticed, there's no continuity between scenes, and people scream at each other for no good reason. Our heroine, Sasha, is beautiful, smart, classy, and determined -- but of course also totally ratchet and ready to "go there" if she has to, including shouting "Who gonna check me, boo???" at one point, and starting a clothing line called She By Sasha. If you've watched the show, those are not very subtle shout outs Sheree is giving herself -- she is the most beautiful, most classy, and most amazing, but also the most hood when she needs to be, apparently. Sheree is borderline bananas on the show, and this book has just reassured me that she is borderline bananas in real life, too.

Anyway, the epilogue is absolutely bonkers. I think it was an attempt at a Gone Girl twist, but it is nuts and makes no sense. I was thinking that Bob, Sheree's real-life ex, should be super flattered by the book, but after the epilogue I get why she warned him about it. After this season, I understand why she wrote him as a monster. He is definitely a horror show who doesn't understand why it's not funny to joke about that time he choked her, and she deserves any kind of revenge she can get, including literary. However, the reveal of his evil intentions here is bonkers. The whole book is bonkers. Read it if you want to read long insane passages to your friends, I guess. 

Grade: D
#16 in 2017

Fair Game (All's Fair #1), Josh Lanyon

I enjoyed this a lot. Kind of my dream book -- a genre I really like (bitter ex-FBI guy struggles to adjust to civilian life and also catch a serial killer) but gay. Which made it even better. Grade: B #15 in 2017

The Lawrence Browne Affair, Cat Sebastian

I loved this! I loved everything about it. I loved Lawrence's bluster and I loved Georgie's struggle to be a better person, and I loved that it was found family, and I had ALL THE FEELINGS while I read it. I'm recommending it to everyone I know, and I can't wait to reread it. This is my favorite new romance that I've read in a long time. Grade: A #14 in 2017

Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History, Glen Berger

There is a lot of good juicy gossip and interesting stories here. But the writing is frenetic, for lack of a better word. Lots of shouting, lots of italics, eight ellipses in just the short first chapter... It's overwhelming. It reads like Glen Berger wrote this book while on a Red Bull bender, desperate to tell you everything that happened. Nearly every chapter ends with a foreboding "We thought it was going well... Little did we know!!!!" that would be better used sparingly. But while that can all be sort of irritating, it's compulsively readable.

I spend all day telling students to think about bias in documents; intended audience, purpose, and point of view. This book goes out of its way to be grovelingly apologetic about how badly everything was screwed up in Spider-Man. Everything that goes wrong is because of Julie Taymor, because no one could listen, because the author was craven! was an idiot! was too stupid to see!!! It all gets to be a lot after a while. I would have liked him to stand behind the thing he spent years and years writing, instead of constantly trying to paint himself as an apologetic idiot, and Julie Taymor as a genius-monster. It's just so much editorializing that it left me wondering... but what would Julie say about all this?

Grade: B
#13 in 2017