We Could Be Rats

Have you ever read a book so good it made you angry? Picture me, finishing Emily R. Austin’s latest offering, We Could Be Rats. It’s 11 at night and I’m wide awake. Everyone else in the house is asleep and I am flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling in the dark, just... full of anger. I get up, I pace the house. I load the dishwasher, muttering to myself. I wander outside to look up at the stars, shake my head, pace some more. I’ve had book hangovers before, but never this, never book rage. 

Now, I need you to understand, I wasn’t angry at the book. Or the author. The book was wonderful. The author? Incredibly talented. The story was fantastic, heartbreaking as it was. Nope, my rage was triggered by the fact that this book is so insanely beautiful and spoke to me so strongly and I just have this awful feeling that it’s going to fly totally under the radar, not getting the attention and praise it deserves, and that would be a tragedy.  

And, yeah, this book also made me angry because it forced me to really confront the fact that I will never, ever be as good a writer as Austin is. There’s something magical in the words of We Could Be Rats. Something I can’t put my finger on that just makes it so haunting and meaningful and it’s humbling to realize I’ll never be able to match that with my own words. Never be able to create anything on that level, no matter how hard I might try. 

Anyway, enough of my whining and self-pity. Wah, wah, wah, I’ll never be a writer, I’ll just sit here forever endlessly going on about the books more talented people have written. It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine, I swear.  

We Could Be Rats is one of the more unique books I’ve read. It’s partly epistolary, which isn’t in and of itself that unique, even if it isn’t super common these days, but instead of the letters that make up the first 60-ish% of the book being addressed to another character, they are written to you, the reader, whoever you may be – the writer of the letters doesn’t even seem to be quite sure who you are. Also, they’re all drafts of one letter. A (trigger warning) suicide letter. There’s this kind of a complex sense of pride and dread that comes over you as you read this book and work through this series of explanations for why Sigrid, the writer of these endless drafts, has decided to take her own life. Each letter is better than the last; Sigrid is finding her voice, figuring out how to say what she needs to say before she goes, but even as you read her words you realize that once she gets it perfect, she’ll stop. She’ll make her attempt. She might succeed.  

And then everything changes. 

I can’t say a whole lot more without giving major spoilers, but this book is so, so good. It’s dark and tragic and, sure, it’s probably going to make you cry (it certainly made me cry), but it’s also beautiful and weirdly hopeful. I rarely highlight passages in books, but I highlighted so much in this book. I found Sigrid’s struggle to be so relatable even though we had almost nothing in common on the surface. That’s where the power of Emily R. Austin’s writing, which is so good it triggered that jealous angry-baby tantrum in my head, comes in. She makes Sigrid and her sister Margit so relatable and so real that you fall a little bit in love with them and wish the story could go on forever. Even now, months after I finished this book, I find myself wishing I could somehow check in on these fictional characters. Just to, you know, see how they’re doing. If they need to talk.  

Austin was already an author to follow for me after last year’s Interesting Facts About Space, but We Could Be Rats elevates her to a whole new level, in my opinion. If you’re ready for the book hangover to end all book hangovers, give this one a shot. And afterward, you can come back here and yell with me about it. 

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with a complimentary advance review copy

Book People

Sorry for the late post! Only a few weeks into this resolution to post regularly and already I’m falling down on the job. I promise I have a good excuse though. My oldest is in the hospital with appendicitis and I spent all of yesterday afternoon when I would have been putting the finishing touches on my review waiting on results from various tests and getting his surgery scheduled. As a result, this review isn’t quite as polished or in-depth as I’d prefer it to be, but I’m afraid I don’t have the bandwidth at the moment to do better!  

Although she’s written a ton of books, Jackie Ashenden isn’t an author I was familiar with prior to requesting an advance copy of Book People. The cover is what initially drew me in for this one. Look at it: 

 

It’s adorable, right? I’m a book person, so of course I want to read a book about book people. The premise is simple enough: rival bookstore owners and all the shenanigans that entails. The book is full of tropes – small-town romance, enemies-to-lovers, grumpy/sunshine, and forced proximity but somehow doesn’t feel stale or overdone.  

In Book People we meet Kate who has recently lost her mother and left her ass of a boyfriend. She’s moved to the small town of Wychtree to take over a piece of property she inherited and turn it into the bookshop of her dreams. The only problem? The unfriendly (but hot) Sebastian located directly across the street who runs his own bookshop and who isn’t happy about having competition.  

Book People is a fun, light read that you might find to be a good distraction from the general shittiness of the world right now.  

Not Like Other Girls

 I read a lot of really good books in 2024. For all that I'm one of those people who will read just about anything and who finds most stories enjoyable, I tend to be a fairly critical rater. I hate the inflationary system we've all been trained to participate in, where anything less than five stars means something is crap. My most common book rating is three stars. To me, three stars means "this book was entertaining and I liked it." It's not going to set the world on fire. It didn't blow my mind. But it was good. I enjoyed reading it and thought it was a nice way to spend my time. I don't regret the time I spent reading it even if maybe I won't remember the details of it in a few months. 

Four stars is a great book. This is one I'm going to remember. I may have even highlighted a passage or two. Maybe I added a quote from it to my list on Goodreads. If it's part of a series, I'm going to finish that series. Four stars means this is an author I'm going to watch for future releases from and will also search out any previous works as well.

A five star book is one that blew my freaking mind. Five star books make me cry without making me feel the manipulation. They make me laugh out loud. They're books I want to start re-reading immediately after finishing. Five star books are ones I re-read endlessly and never weed out of my personal collection. They're the ones I recommend until my friends and family are so sick of hearing about them that they start avoiding book-talk with me. Five star books are books that stay with me and give me that dreaded-yet-wonderful book hangover. 

I read 14 five star books last year. Each of them was special and wonderful and each of them will stick with me for a long time. There were two books though, that just absolutely floored me. One was so good it actually made me angry and you'll be hearing about that one in a couple of weeks. It's not out yet (I was lucky enough to score an advance copy), so I won't talk about it just yet, other than to say that Emily R. Austin is a genius and if you haven't read her yet, now is your chance to read through her back catalog before her newest book, We Could Be Rats, comes out. 

The other 2024 book that stopped me in my tracks was Not Like Other Girls by Meredith Adamo. I first heard about it on BookTok - a book influencer was raving about the advance copy she'd gotten and I was intrigued. The description sounded fun, so I got on the list to listen to the audiobook through my local library and waited anxiously for it to arrive. I was expecting a fun little mystery - a girl goes missing, her former best friend investigates - the description gave off strong Veronica Mars vibes and I was into it. What I didn't realize until I started listening though is that Not Like Other Girls is actually so much more than what I was expecting. The mystery is maybe the least interesting, least important part of the book in a way.

Not Like Other Girls is a coming-of-age story in disguise. Jo-hyphen-Lunn, the main character, is lost and flailing her way through her senior year of high school. She's not like the other girls she knows and yet her story is likely to feel distressingly familiar to a lot of women. This was a book that literally had me in tears. Picture it: I've got a nice, easy workday ahead of me. All I need to focus on is some relatively mindless reporting to run and compile, meaning its a great day to pop in earbuds and listen to my fun, light, mystery novel I've been looking forward to. Cut to a few hours later and yep, there's me, shutting my office door so I can quietly cry in peace while Adamo rips my heart out and forces me to have a confrontation with my own fucked up girlhood.

True confession time - I've reached out to exactly two authors over the course of my reading life. The first was Zoje Stage. I did an eco-critical analysis of her fantastic book Wonderland as my final capstone project for my English degree and she was kind enough to consent to an email interview to give my paper a bit of star power. The second? Meredith Adamo to thank her for writing Not Like Other Girls (and trauma-dump a tiny bit). That's not me. I do not fangirl. I admire from afar. This book though? I had to reach out, connect.

I was a Jo-Lynn. A lot of us were, I think. We were the girls who were too awkward, who never quite felt like we fit in. Some of us were too loud, some too quiet. Some were too "slutty," whatever the hell that really means, some too prudish. We were the girls who got told we were "so mature for our age" and that, yeah, we weren't like other girls. We were special. We'd always felt different anyway because of that outcast awkwardness that we didn't know everyone was experiencing to some extent in high school, so when we were told that we were different, special, we ate it up with a spoon and asked for more. We were the girls who were prey. Adamo gives all of us a voice in Jo-Lynn with this absolutely stunning debut novel that I cannot recommend enough. I loved it so much that the day after I finished the audiobook, I ran out and bought it in hardcover so I can re-read it whenever I want.

Check out Not Like Other Girls.  It's good, I promise. 

And... I'm Back (Again)

 I hate New Year's resolutions. The whole system seems set up for failure - all that pressure to suddenly become the best version of yourself via a series of new rules or promises - it's all just too much for me. Always has been. My resolution for each year for around the last decade or so has essentially been to make no resolutions and, I have to say, it's made me a less stressed person in general, especially this time of year. 

All that said... this year, I'm dipping my toe back into the promise-making waters and resolving to re-start this blog. While in the past the abrupt changes in lifestyle that resolutions tend to bring have been proven to be beyond me - going from being a happy little couch potato to promising myself I'll work out every other day, come hell or high water; cutting out whole chunks of my regular diet to meet some kind of ultimately unhealthy caloric goal in pursuit of my 18-year-old self's body; swearing that this is the year that my introverted ass is going to accept every invitation and put myself out there more - I think that my resolution this year is going to be a little easier to achieve. 

So, here it is: I'm going to keep up with the little changes I've made over the past year. That's it. That's the resolution. I resolve to stick with the habits I've been carefully and steadily building. Habits like "do skincare," "read daily," "write daily." I'm already doing this stuff ever day, all I'm planning to change is what I do with it when it's done. Well, the reading and writing, that is. The skincare isn't something I can exactly share, right? I'm no dermatologist. I'm just a 44-year-old who wishes she'd started using retinol a decade ago. Hardly an expert and, believe me, I've got the frown lines to prove it.

The writing though... after a long break, I've gotten back into the habit of journaling and one of the things I write a lot about is what I'm reading. How it makes me feel, what a story reminds me of, why I connect with a character, all of that. So, it's not going to be much of a stretch to tidy up those bits and pieces a little and post them here. This is a resolution I think I can stick to. In the past when I've written one of these, "hey, y'all, I'm posting again and I'm going to keep posting, I swear!" entries, I wasn't already actively sitting down and putting (digital) pen to (digital) paper on the regular like I am these days, so it was a lot easier to fall right back out of the habit of posting.

So, here I go. Let's see if I can keep it up and stick to some kind of weekly schedule. I've been reading a ton and I've had a lot of thoughts which I plan to share with anyone who's interested. A sneak peek at what to look for over the next few weeks and months is here, in my TBR pile, which I've started fresh for the new year:

                             

and here, in my currently reading pile:

I've also been reading quite a few ARCs lately, so look for those to show up on publications days. First up for those will be Book People by Jackie Ashenden

and We Could Be Rats by Emily R. Austin.

 

Both come out on January 28 and both were good but one was among my favorite reads recently and I can't wait to tell you all about them a little closer to publication day. 

For now, I'll just say Happy New Year and thank you for reading. I can't wait to talk more soon.