Tag: character-driven

How To Become a Villain

a neon darkness pic

A Neon Darkness by Lauren Shippen
dark, emotional, mysterious, tense, slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It’s complicated
Loveable characters? It’s complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Robert is so beautifully fucked up, and I love it.

Somehow I didn’t really believe he would go that dark and quite in that way, even though it’s right there in the tagline. This story is delightfully sickening because Robert is so twisted up and so hurt inside, and he can’t stop hurting other people, and he’s unwilling to learn how to stop hurting other people. I’ll be a little spoilery here but I don’t know how to talk about this book without that, so here we gooooo

Robert has this underlying hurt that has haunted him for years, and it affects literally everything in his life. He has conceived of himself as a victim and the story he tells himself, the narrative he’s constructed so that he move past this hurt and live with it, relies on him being a victim. So even when he starts seriously morally shady stuff, he re-writes his actions in his head to fit the narrative that he’s already a victim and needs to be on the lookout for anyone who might hurt or abandon him.

Without being overly spoilery, I love the progression of Robert’s actions and how far he takes things, and if I read this book again, I’d bet my life that all the warnings signs are there.

I love the ending, as well. It felt so inevitable and so right, and I love love love the final line of the book.

(Sidebar, this really makes me want to listen to the Bright Sessions)

Read more of this review on my StoryGraph.

Ghost Stories Told by Candlelight

never have i ever picture for real

Never Have I Ever by Isabel Yap
dark, inspiring, mysterious, reflective, slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It’s complicated
4.25 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

(I chose not to rate several stories due to my tragic lack of critical reading notes while I read the first half of the book.) 
 

Good Girls — (chose not to rate) 
The way the braided narrative switches between the second and third person threw me off at first, but once I understood our two POVs, I felt equally invested in both. Love the way the monster plays out here. The resonance of the good girls refrain hits hard even when I didn’t entirely understand its use. Those final lines are TO DIE FOR, and it feels like they’re something powerful in here about bridging loneliness. 

 
A Cup of Salt Tears — (chose not to rate) 
I love the articulation of the hollowness, and I gotta stan this monsterf*cking 
 

Milagroso — 4/5 stars 
Fascinating worldbuilding, so much to chew on here. 
 

A Spell for Foolish Hearts — (chose not to rate) 
Deeply sweet and quietly magical. Patrick is a little anxious, and I am very anxious, so my intense worry for Patrick’s happiness was distracting. Luckily, this is the kind of short story (novellete!) that becomes more enjoyable with every read. 

 
Have you Heard the One about Anamaria Marquez? — (chose not to rate) 
I love this so much. I love the different versions of the ghost story of Anamaria Marquez, I love the group of friends at the center of the story. 

 
Syringe — 3/5 stars 
Short and bittersweet. Not personally one of my favorites because I think it raised interesting ideas but didn’t ultimately explore them very deeply, and I’m the kinda girl who likes to chew on interesting concepts for a while as I read a piece. 

 
River, Asphalt, Mother, Child — 3/5 stars 
This story was not my favorite because it felt slightly removed from the human characters, but was nonetheless very moving. 

 
Hurricane Heels — 5/5 stars 
This whole story is a delight. This is a great magical girl story, and the creatures they fight are so cool! 

 
Only Unclench your Hand — 4.5/5 stars 
The relationships are moving, and the monstrous turn feels justified. There is something quietly horrifying here, an instinct to back away, but it also feels like justice… this seems to be a theme in the collection. 


How to Swallow the Moon — 5/5 stars 
GREAT IMAGERY, and the moon-eaters described filled with an incredible sense of wonder 

 
All the Best of Dark and Bright — 4/5/5 stars 
Lovely and grounded in its main character Macho, and I would love to discuss this with people because I’m not sure what to make of those final pages. 

 
Misty  —  (chose not to rate) 
I don’t entirely understand the way the braided narrative comes together at the end, but it is fascinating and I love it so much. There are such meaningful links between both halves of the story. 

 
A Canticle for Lost Girls — 5/5 stars 
I fucking love this! This is the kind of story that makes me screech and be so thankful I can read because I love the story so much. I love the focus on “girl world,” the isolation of this all-girls school. The building creepiness is done so well and it is genuinely horrifying. I love the way monstrousness creeps into the story, and there are both literal monsters and human monsters. Yap has talked about how slowly this story came together for her, but I’m so glad it did come together for her because this is wonderful. 

Read more of my reviews on my StoryGraph.

The Quietest of Screams

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
challenging, dark, emotional, mysterious, slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It’s complicated
Loveable characters? It’s complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Husband Stitch — 5/5 stars
What this world does to girls, how it hurts them while promising that it actually doesn’t hurt at all. How some women carry wounds that are visible and are triggered and jostled in their everyday lives. How some people deliberately reach for those wounds, not caring if it hurts the women. It matters that the husband isn’t a bad man, because this is something that is socialized into all men, regardless of good or bad.

Inventory — 4.5/5 stars
The story I wasn’t prepared for. Too real. The moment where the CDC doctor is saying the epidemic would end faster if people would stay apart and then she goes and has sex with the narrator because human beings aren’t meant to TBR kept apart — painful ans good.

Mothers — 4/5 stars
The romance in here is SWOONWORTHY.

The abuse and anger so perfectly rendered. So real. It crystallizes from salt granules into tall salt pillars. I don’t understand the ending but the love in here, between narrator and Bad, and narrator and her children, especially Mara, is so believable and intense.
Especially Heinous — 5/5 stars
There are so many layers to this I’ve barely begun to untangle it, but I adore it. It moves from an episode summary, or supposedly so, and then it becomes this fascinating digging into what it means to be haunted by horror, by death, by a job, and then it goes a step further and implicates every single viewer of Law and Order: SVU by letting the characters ask, “What kind of world is this, where we are so tired and haunted, and still we are not allowed to rest?”, only to be answered, “Because there is an audience who does not want you to rest. Because they want your pain and exhaustion and your hauntings. They are hungry for it.”
Probably my favorite story of the collection for how it is so beautiful and painful and raw while also raising questions about the media we consume (and why) as expertly as any pop culture essay would.
Real Women Have Bodies — 5/5 stars
Ugh, the pain in this. The poignancy. The tragedy of it all. The lost potential of it all.

Eight Bites — 3/5 stars
Deprivation. Didn’t quite land as hard with me, but the imagery in the last 30% is thought-provoking.

The Resident — 3.5/5 stars
I adore the way past and present collide in there, and the narrator’s voice. The narrator is very engaging, and every one of these residents is fascinating for how completely unable-to-function-around-other-people they are. The narrator finds them so grating I can’t help but feel the same.

Difficult at Parties — 3.5/stars
Painful. Fascinating. I appreciate how it’s a non-voyeuristic story, even as it’s writing around ideas of voyeurism and emotional interiority vs. exterior sexuality.

Read more of my reviews on my StoryGraph.

A Beautiful Ghost Story

Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour was published Sept. 15, 2020.

Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour
emotional, hopeful, mysterious, reflective, sad, medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It’s complicated
4.0 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The way the title turns from referencing a biological mother/familial relationship to referencing a chosen family 👌 Deeply love this movement and journey.

The relationship between Mila, Liz, and Billy was rendered so well. It doesn’t feel entirely platonic but neither does it feel entirely driven by desire — it feels driven by love, and that’s as simply as I can put it. As unnamable as it, this was probably my favorite aspect of the book. I love how the three of them lean into comfort and connection without ever entirely putting a boundary around their relationship.

My pop culture trope osmosis had me expecting the big secret to be about a sinister ghost and for this book to go in a dark, cult-y direction, and I was pleasantly surprised how the book used my own expectations and anxieties against me. It ended up being really cathartic.

This is entirely my preference as a reader, but I think that ending would’ve hit me harder if it had not switched between reality and fantasy so rapidly in the final few pages.

Read more of this review on my StoryGraph.