Book #176 of 2022: The Boy in the Red Dress by Kristin Lambert I appreciate the representation in this title — bisexual heroine, trying to clear the name of her gay runaway best friend who performs in drag at the speakeasy run by her lesbian aunt and has now been accused of killing someone from …
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Book #175 of 2022: A Restless Truth by Freya Marske (The Last Binding #2) 3.5 stars, rounded up. I don’t like this queer adult fantasy sequel nearly as much as its predecessor, but it’s an engaging story that mostly earns the reader’s forbearance over the switch in protagonists. Whereas the first volume in this series …
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Book #174 of 2022: The Measure by Nikki Erlick The high-concept premise here is certainly intriguing: everyone in the world wakes up to find a box containing a string whose length correlates to their exact lifespan. The shorter your string, the sooner you’ll die, and like any story about attempting to cheat death, some of …
TV #55 of 2022: Happy Endings, season 3 Overall, I’d have to call this last season of Happy Endings a step down from the preceding one. The comedy is way more hyperactive, sometimes to the extent of substituting volume and repetition for wit, and many episodes build to a big slapstick moment like the program …
Book #173 of 2022: The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy by Ann Rule I sometimes have difficulty rating pieces of nonfiction, but my general principle is to weigh a work against the best possible version of itself, by asking what the author is trying to accomplish and how …
Book #172 of 2022: The Law of Innocence by Michael Connelly (Mickey Haller #6) One thing I appreciate about author Michael Connelly’s ongoing Harry Bosch franchise (1992 – present) is that it has always played fairly with the passage of time. With the exception of a few short stories that revisit prior points in the …
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TV #54 of 2022: Bob’s Burgers, season 10 A full decade into its span, and I am running out of things to say about Bob’s Burgers. This is the first season I’ve seen in a while that’s actually been new to me — I originally stopped watching after the previous one finished airing in 2019, …
Book #171 of 2022: Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson (Wax and Wayne #2 / Mistborn #5) [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] As I mentioned in my review of that previous title, this era of the Mistborn series grew out of a writing exercise that author Brandon Sanderson liked enough to expand …
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TV #53 of 2022: The Good Fight, season 6 A relatively strong end to a perpetually-messy series that nevertheless captured a lot of the tension of life in a time of rising American fascism. Did Andre Braugher need to get brought in as the firm’s latest named partner? No, not particularly. Was the season weakened …
Book #170 of 2022: Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison This title is too straightforward for too long, telling the story of a woman getting bit by a werewolf with little to distinguish it from any other iteration of that plot. It’s all competent, but somewhat unremarkable, and as I read along, I kept impatiently …
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