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This is turning out to be a chore. It did not have to be this long.

The plot is all stumbling drunk along, character motivations all seemingly randomly drawn. WTF is it with, they are in the run, huge vendetta superpoweful queen, and let us have a found family with cozy pub part now?

Hello Frank, I missed you. It is been 5 days or so, maybe i did not need a palate cleaner anyway.

Halfway through the book and I am hoping for a genre failure and Morgan to ride off into the sunset alone, away from all those awful gaslighting women. And Pip to get a job and some dignity.

Writing is great, the emotional connection or emotional catalyst of the romance is just not, and it is actively repelling me..

Well, it is not Tana French (I needed a palate cleanser) but I also love the very different writing style. And setting, and quirky side characters

But I am not sure I am really loving the romance part. They will end together because it is a romance, but Pip is annoying and Morgan wanting a break is way too relatable...

Nearly over, and it seems next book is about Frank. Frank who is very very much due for many many other things. I want.

So after part 1 with really unlikely 15 year olds, they grow up and become less unlikely but we get a part 2 with an even more unlikely (speshial...) 6 year old...

It is kind of my problem with this book, this fuzzy inconsistency about the characters and what makes them tick and how they relate to each other (and yeah, mental age) from chapter to chapter. Not quitting, but a bit disconnected...

This is reminding me, a LOT, of the Flora Segunda books by Ysabeau S Wilce. Wilce is actually named in the (7 page) afterword acknowledgments but so are about 300 people (100 of which are famous enough I recognized their names... Ok, numbers made up).

But nobody seems to compare it. Oh well, we will see. But come on dour butler, the parents and so on...

This is surprise Dark Academia and it is really very good very good at that mood. Surprisingly seasonal (even if nominally it is set in April, but April in Ireland...). Different, more unlikely than Into the Woods, but the setup being less realistic is oh so juicy...

It is not a REAL binge, if it is only two books in a row, no matter how long the books are, right?

Could not resist. Fascinating so far, though unfortunately I do not like the narrator Heather O' Neil. I know nothing about Irish accents but the accents are not sound consistent to me at all...

I decided to just skim reread it to catch the connections but I found myself reading every word. Her writing REALLY is lovely.

And OK, I do think publication order is the advisable one (do not do as I do, do as I say). And the bits which annoyed me are annoying me just as much or more, but the good are as good or even more...

It is detailed and slow and systematic, but still gripping enough to make me want to read/listen to it instead of my paper book, and my self imposed rules do not let me do that. That is a very good sign...

Mystery novels seem to be working really as audiobooks for me. I am catching up on a few names, which are oh so famous and I never actually tried.

Very very long book, which is usually not a plus for me, but might be for audiobooks. Hoping this lasts longers than my last AB!

Pageturner is a cheesy book marketing turner.

But drat it, it is also real. This is a very sticky story and wanting to know what next is challenging my resolution of saving audiobooks to "virtuous" stuff like exercise and cleaning, or unavoidable driving or waits...

I can see some formulas, but do not care, plot, plot, I want to figure things out...

It is like the last bang of the20th century. Where does it stop feeling "dated" and is just historical record? Because it is, and it is fascinating how much stuff changed, I am enjoying that part.

The very gruff narrator of this old recording is also very good and a very good match for these male PoVs.

The most unlikely children's dialogue since, at least, Aristotle and Dante. The wild swerves of insight and fake naivete, the platitudes...

(I was told it was a fast read! It is a chore. But I was promised a twist, maybe that will redeem it? Zombies, maybe a mass attack of zombies will save this. I am not usually pro zombie but might work for me...)

Callum is the most sickeningly nauseating boy in fiction since Cecil, Little Lord Flaunteroy. I hope that is the twist that is so coy-ly advertised.

It is possible I have no heart, yeah, but not sure if this will work for me.

Supposedly set in 2014 and the experienced cop does not even seem aware of the concept of catfishing... Oh come on. Google reverse image search is a great hack also. Feels also dated on other things like some social attitudes.

But despite all that (and me really not liking the narration) the structure and the pace and mystery is fascinating.

My first Harlan Coben. Picked the audiobook, and it seems a good story to hear. But the narrator female voices are not good - I am working on my skills to abstract from that....

the style, while being fantastical, is also a wildly easily style to just not read, not pick up. This is anti-immediate reward, kind of.

Severian and women continues to be difficult to read....

New audiobook pick. Probably not a good pick for audiobook, I am not crazy for the narrator. The spanish (argentinean?) accent for the dad sounds wrong to me. I might enjoy it more when the dad has less lines...

More spiders than your average Adrian Tchaikovsky book! (though not as many as his top-spider-count books).

But still unfortunately meh...

It is a Frances Hardinge book, so it is in many things very good. Very very good.

BUT ... main plot is a bit of a zigzag..

I am trying to figure out when this is set. Failed communication is Willis' great theme (right?) but if this is set now, why do these people not text? Or use whatsapp?

There is a lady in the airport who tracks a flight on her phone, but our FMC seems like she is in the 90s or something, queueing for car rental (just try to do it on your phone while queueing), phoning people and giving up when catching voice mail!

Audiobook and it's GLORIOUS as an audiobook. The accents! The dialogue! Narrator Bahni Turpin is absolutely fantastic.

The dialogue had me giggling in public at the gym, while out of breath, so presumably, well maybe I should pick something else, but never mind the embarassment.

Well, I finished it (free at last!). Review to follow, eventually though it might just be "stupider than expected".

More small details to drive me crazy, like students matter of factedly expecting showers to wash with in 1830s Oxford. Also death of "small family of eight" <spoiler> that they do not care much about but later agonize over other individual deaths of random people</spoiler>.

I am in chapter 27, in book 5.

I knew this was would be unsubtle and heavyhanded and so on. But I did not expect it to be so, well, STUPID. And it is, on many small details and plot arc.

I stopped believing events and characters a while ago, and I am just force finishing it (tonight) to start something else and properly be able to talk of it with friends who are also reading it.

Now, I want a fox. I really really want to go spying on stuff with talking foxes (particularly ones who want to get code named Gaspode). Good job, Mr Aaronovitch, hope you are proud of yourself.

More Pratchett nods, making me happy.

Not crazy about the supernatural plot though, but the teens and foxes, and depth of Abigail's feelings about her family, ah yes, yes.

I am on hiatus from the RoL series, but I did mean to read this one.

Picking it on audiobook was a mistake. Not Kobna H-S (ok, yes, reading a whole novella as a teen girl would have been unreasonable) but sadly I do not like the narrator. Her accents are really good but when reading non dialogue, there is a "reading" quality to it. I think I would have liked it better written.

I am bad at picking audiobooks...

This is slow going. Plot is, like a friend pointed, full of up and downs but kind of going nowhere (but still WTF).

I might be mean, but a few of the characters are reminding me of The People's Front of Judea, from Life of Brian, but I think the author is playing it very straight, it is not satirical or much aware even, Ah, the 19th century Oxford student talking of the narco-military state...)

Just starting chapter 17. It's slower than I expected, or should. I am in a frantic border collie mode, where I try to herd concepts (wait, what is a word? what is a language?) and reconcile historical details (how many weeks to Malacca? So boys and girls can be together in their bedrooms?) and it is not a good mindset for this book. I can not help it though...