Book #72 of 2020: Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore I really adore this high-concept book about a woman who travels to a different year of her life every birthday at midnight. (When she turns nineteen, she finds herself in her fifty-one-year-old body, and so on.) The inherent drama of interacting with loved ones …
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Book #71 of 2020: The Unspoken Name by A. K. Larkwood (The Serpent Gates #1) I love this science-fantasy setting and its radical diversity of race and sexuality with no bigotry in sight, but the actual plot here is dreadfully slow. And the protagonist who should be fascinating — a lesbian orc priestess who flees …
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Book #70 of 2020: The Magicians of Caprona by Diana Wynne Jones (Chrestomanci #4) Returning to a book from one’s childhood can sometimes be a letdown, but I’m pleased to report that this fourth Chrestomanci volume (in the author’s preferred reading order; actually the second to be published and roughly the fifth chronologically) is far …
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Book #69 of 2020: Girls with Razor Hearts by Suzanne Young (Girls with Sharp Sticks #2) I imagine it must be challenging to plot out a sequel to a book that ended by blowing up its status quo, but I’m pretty underwhelmed by the authorial choices here. Having broken free of their programming and committed …
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Book #68 of 2020: All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban The premise to this novel sounds like a delirious blend of The Breakfast Club and the Saw horror franchise: six high schoolers are invited to an exclusive scholarship dinner, only to find themselves locked in a room with a ticking bomb, a vial of …
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Book #67 of 2020: Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich The most effective parts of this novel are lifted straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale, and although there’s certainly room for multiple writers to tackle dystopian societies treating fertile women as chattel, we get too little information here about what that actually …
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Book #66 of 2020: Foul Is Fair by Hannah Capin (Foul Is Fair #1) I love the concept of a high school Macbeth, but the execution here — which plays out more like The Count of Monte Cristo meets Mean Girls, with a sixteen-year-old changing her appearance to seek revenge on the boys who drugged …
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Movie #4 of 2020: Frozen II (2019) This film has some interesting themes of responsible environmental stewardship and accountability for indigenous oppression (to the extent possible in a family-friendly production)… but boy could it have benefited from a few more drafts of its script. So many plot beats and character arcs make no sense at …
Book #65 of 2020: The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter (The Burning #1) Ignore the generic title (and the fact that the book barely contains any dragons at all) — this is an incredible series and authorial debut, originally self-published in 2017 before gaining critical buzz and being acquired by Orbit for wider release. …
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TV #7 of 2020: Better Call Saul, season 3 My original review from 2018: “At this point, I’m almost ready to declare Better Call Saul the superior program to its parent show Breaking Bad. (It helps that there doesn’t seem to be the same toxic fandom around it, with people mistaking a critique of harmful …
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