mozaikmage

It was a very slow month at work so I got a very normal amount of reading done! Structured in order of when I read them, because I have a narrative arc in the middle there.

( The Books! )

Check back in with me next month when I read... probably less, because our busy season is starting up again and also I have less hours in March for some reason and I mostly read at work lol.

I'm on a sapphic romantasy kick in search of comps for my WIP. The Honey Witch came onto my radar because I went to a panel the author was on at NYC last year and she seemed fine on the panel. Surely her book was at least readable, right?

I finished this book and told my friends "I don't think I like reading anymore."

The Honey Witch broke me.

I've read bad books before. I'm kind of a hater, honestly. But I've never read a book that fails so comprehensively on every possible level after being put out by a big 5 imprint with at least two editors and a literary agent having worked on it.

From basic grammar errors (you don't go on walks "throughout" an island, you walk "around" it) to logical inconsistencies (the entire premise of the stupid curse) to whole sections that read more like outlines of chapters than actual chapters, to structural problems (why do we open with Marigold's family stuff instead of her with her grandma already? Why do we fast forward past her relationship with her grandma developing to her grief? Why did we establish that tattoos were illegal and that Lottie has them in the SAME conversation??), this book felt like reading a teenager's first nanowrimo attempt. I've read Wattpad novels with stronger fundamentals than this (admittedly not many but still.)

I returned the book immediately after finishing because it felt like having it in my home was a cognitohazard but here's some examples from the free preview on Google Books:

"Now close your eyes and drink this. When you open them again, tell me what you see."

She takes the honey potion that will allow her to access her full power.

How does she know the honey potion will do this? Why didn't Grandma just say that? Why is it in narration like this?

Then there's this part of a conversation where Marigold's dad lets her go with Grandma:

"Because I know your grandmother very well, and your siblings, and most of all, I know you. And I know what you've always wanted. That's why I never stopped you before, and I'm not stopping you now."

"But mother--"

"I know her, too. She is only trying to protect you, so much so that she cannot see how it is harming you. Perhaps it is the artist in me, but I've always thought it so romantic to have beauty and creation as your purpose. And that is the life ahead of you, Marigold. I have every confidence in you. Your mother will see that soon, too."

This conversation happens way too fast, and it's severely lacking in body language or other descriptions for Marigold's dad. The last paragraph especially should be broken up into smaller pieces. Yeah, you don't technically need dialogue tags for a conversation between two people when you know who's talking, but the rhythm here is just shot!

I have a big problem when I write my own stuff of not expanding enough about things that matter, which is why all of my attempts at novels come out too short on the first pass. It's kind of infuriating to see a properly book-length book have the same kind of structural issues I run into at half that length. Like surely someone could've told you to expand this at the draft stage right.

Other people have talked about the tattoo thing, the inconsistent curse, the bee death and revival, the grumpy sunshine romance that's only grumpy sunshine aesthetically and actually grumpy/grumpier in practice, but what bothered me the most was the... Bad sentences, that led to bad everything else.

The author mentioned she wanted to write about the grief she felt over losing her grandmother, which surprised me because I'm very close to my own grandparents and am highly sensitive to fictional media where grandparents are harmed in any way (the opening to the Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors always made me cry as a kid because I love my grandma too much to be mean to her like that lmao). The bonding with the grandma part, grandma dying, and grief processing in the Honey Witch were all so glanced over in favor of the romance that should not be happening in the first place due to the whole curse situation that it barely even registered to me.

Naomi Kanakia said no matter how old you are or how well read you are, your first attempt at serious writing will always read like a 12 year old is doing it. I felt this very strongly here. It was that bad on a basic sentence level. I wish the author had like, practiced her craft more before she started querying this book. She mentions revisions and beta readers and multiple drafts on her blog, but I can't even imagine how much worse that first draft could've even been if this was what it looked like after significant editing. I wish someone fucking stopped it from making it to press in this state.

If this was self published or a kindle exclusive niche thing I'd be like whatever, but this was put out by fucking Orbit! Respected SFF imprint of Hachette! In the US and the UK! Every single person who was supposed to make this book better failed at their goddamn job, and it made me lose faith in the publishing industry as a whole.

Here are once again my books of the previous month in reverse chronological order because that’s how Storygraph sorts them!

I read 15 books and no VIZ manga volumes because I got COVID and had no motivation to do anything at all for a good chunk of the month there.
If You Could See the Sun by Ann Liang- god she's so funny. Funniest YA writer working today. Really well-drawn portrait of a very specific environment, really clever gimmick and way of using it. All of the characters felt believable and varying degrees of likeable, and I really felt for Alice's struggles. I can't believe this was her first book. And she was still in college when she wrote it! What am I doing with my life. Also I just realized the title is a pun lol.

Wellness by Nathan Hill- Sad, but also funny. Some of the psychology stuff was interesting. The length of the bibliography was also interesting. It’s kind of refreshing to see a novel with so much research put into it. I think I liked it overall, but it’s hard to tell.

How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang- Sex scenes were pretty good, if het. Somehow very obvious the author is an experienced TV writer but a debut novelist. A little weird that the characters are from a similar part of the country to me, but not as weird as reading Suburban Dicks. I don’t know if the whole... dead sister thing is handled as well as I’d like it to be. I also kind of wanted it to be more about the TV show than their personal lives lol.

The Price of Salt, or Carol by Patricia Highsmith- Slower-paced than I expected it to be. Also less explicit than I thought it would be. And a lot more focused on both the roadtrip and Therese’s life ambitions. The happy ending was sweet though.

Flung Out of Space: The Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith by Grace Ellis and Hannah Templer (reread, because I’d started reading Carol and thought wait what was her life story again)- Ughhh still so good so beautiful and well-paced we have no choice but to stan (Ellis/Templer, not Highsmith) etc.

The Wake-Up Call by Beth O'Leary- Cute and funny! Both of the leads made sense to me, and their relationship developments also made sense. And the premise was really fun too. I liked this one.

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich- Read it because my girlfriend read it and asked me if it was accurate about working in a bookstore. Unfortunately the bookstore I worked at is a lot worse than most bookstores, so I couldn’t really say. Hard to read when in the middle of having COVID, which was when I had it checked out.

Funny Story by Emily Henry- If I had a nickel for every book I read in August with a male protagonist raised by a narcissistic mother, I’d have two nickels (the other being Wellness) which isn’t a lot but it is weird it happened twice. I did enjoy this one, but I’d put it in the middle of my Emily Henry tierlist (Book Lovers and Beach Read are my favorites, personally.)

Hilariously while I was reading it at work some patrons walked by carrying Funny Story tote bags and I mentioned this to them and they said they were a bunch of bookstagram friends meeting up together at my workplace. Wild.

A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid- I liked this more than I expected. The oppressive cold wetness was a very strong vibe for an atmosphere, and I liked the worldbuilding even though it felt kind of decorative. I had a hard time buying that everyone was just sooooooo obsessed with this one recently-dead author, though. I feel like it normally takes a little longer for someone to become a classic. The romance was okay.

Reboot by Justin Taylor- I’ve been thinking a lot about Extremely Online Books (as an extremely online person) and I think where Reboot and Exalted work and where My First Book (Honor Levy) and Fake Accounts (Lauren Oyler) don’t is the specificity of the way they are both online. By not trying to portray every single way someone can be Online, they portray an Onlineness that feels real. I did enjoy Reboot, though it is absolutely not a “voice of my generation” book on account of it is at the very least the voice of the generation before mine. I thought it would be more Bojack Horseman-like but then they referenced Bojack and I realized it was not that at all. Also, it has scenes, in which characters interact with each other and say words, and sentences of different lengths instead of all annoyingly short sentences (Levy) or all painfully long sentences (Oyler). Or maybe I’m just bitterly resentful of the fact that someone my age got a book out already and that’s why I’m so annoyed with Levy and her onlineness.

Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater- I can see the influence of JSMN on this, so it’s a good thing I read that one first. I thought it worked well, the romance felt believable and the more fairytale aspect worked for me. I wish the aunt who sucked got more retribution in the end though.

Women of Good Fortune by Sophie Wan- Generally pretty fun and interesting choice of setting, but I feel like Jane was a little too hard to like for too long. Also Lulu should’ve been a lesbian sorry.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke- Extremely elaborate lore, dryly funny, the footnotes and all the fairy stories and the fairy world stuff was all really imaginative and interesting but the commitment to that 1800s aesthetic made it dense and kind of difficult to read. I felt like it took me forever to finish reading it, even though I did enjoy it all the way through.

The Self-Made Widow by Fabian Nicieza- I can’t talk about this book in too much detail without doxxing myself. It gave me psychic damage. The plot worked for me, and the ending was satisfying. Otherwise. It sure is a book that takes place in locations that exist. Including. My fucking workplace!!!! How's that for a jumpscare!!!
Personal update: thinking real hard about Querying my Book and getting scared and going back in to revise it again. Signed up for the Daisuga big bang. Finished a comic and got it printed in time for Flamecon and Anime NYC, then got COVID and missed Anime NYC.

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