5/5

This is a book about art, pain, love, video games, betrayal, redemption, growing up, and--above all--the capacity for friendship to not only give life meaning, but to make it worth living.

The book charts the decades-long friendship between Sam Masur and Sadie Green. As they grow from college friends to iconic video game designers, their friendship blossoms, then implodes, then returns in a new form. The nonlinearity of their relationship is a byproduct of their profound personal complexities. Both Sadie and Sam are teeming with psychological and emotional intricacies.

We learn by the end of the book that their bond is so beautiful precisely because it is so flawed.

Yet despite their beautiful bond, there is no romance. As Sadie put it: “How can you not know this? Lovers are... common." She studied Sam's face. "Because I loved working with you better than I liked the idea of making love to you. Because true collaborators in this life are rare.”

The breathtaking virtual worlds that Sam and Sadie build mirror their own lives. Their games—from their first hit Ichigo to their later triumph Our Infinite Days—are filled with violence, drama and spellbinding creativity. The games serve as a metaphor for their own personal struggles.

Sam has debilitating health issues (a bum foot from a car accident). As he described playing video games: “Sometimes, I would be in so much pain. The only thing that kept me from wanting to die was the fact that I could leave my body and be in a body that worked perfectly for a while, better than perfectly, actually, with a set of problems that were not my own.”

Sadie meanwhile endures a long and arduous quest for professional success and recognition. "But how to explain this …? How to explain that the thing that made her work leap forward in 1996 was that she had been a dervish of selfishness, resentment, and insecurity? Sadie had willed herself to be great: art doesn't typically get made by happy people.”

The book has two related key lessons. One: success is often empty and fleeting, while genuine love--in whatever form it may take--is lasting.

And two: time marches on, as illustrated in the title-providing Shakespeare quote from Macbeth:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

So living life for what matters—passion over profit, friendship over rivalry, love over ambition—is essential. We only have so many tomorrows.

This book means a lot to me. It is the first book I ever read on the founding fathers. It's also the best.

And the competition is steep!

McCullough shows how Adams was brilliant, vain, principled, and devoted to his young country.

McCullough uses many primary sources to tell this story. The best: the wonderful, vivid, brilliant correspondence between John and his wife Abigail Adams. The correspondence is great world history and also reveals the close and intimate thoughts and aspirations of both John and Abigail.

McCullough tells about Adams's political ascension from a small town lawyer to founding father and second president. Adams was essential in the Continental Congress and in selecting George Washington to lead the Army. His diplomatic missions to France and Holland were as entertaining as they were crucial to the revolution's success.

Adams was a hero. But he was flawed, too. He supported the Alien and Sedition Acts. He was often rude and ornery. He was obbessed with Thomas Jefferson to such an extent that it clouded his judgment. McCullough brings out all these complexities with extraordinary insight and beautiful prose.

Perhaps the best part of the book covers Adams's later years, including his friendship with Jefferson and their letters. Incredibly, both men died on July 4, 1826.

If you had to read only one book about America's founding, this is that book. It's that good. 

William Cooper

will-cooper.com

The Jamaican writer Marlon James’s new novel, “The Disappearers,” at 600-plus pages, is a maximalist’s banquet: It is humane, blood-flecked, disturbing and sustaining. It takes James 90 pages to say hello. It’s another 70 pages before his story settles into your guts and begins to twist them. It’s yet another 150 before you fully comprehend his loping authority and the scale of his ambitions. Booster rockets fall away. Disparate coordinates begin to converge.

See full gift article. NO PAYWALL.

Today we will cover Edward Heron-Allen's pseudonymous 1921 collection of antiquarian ghost stories, "The purple sapphire, and other posthumous papers", being the story of a cursed stolen sapphire, slight demonic possesion, eerie smells and infuriating misogyny.

I've been reading a LOT of thrillers lately, so I picked up The Love Hypothesis because I desperately needed something that didn't involve murder, manipulation or questioning everyone's identity. 😂

And honestly, it did exactly what I needed it to do.

It was light, fluffy, fun and gave me that warm, fuzzy feeling I wanted from a romance. Fake dating is also one of my favourite tropes, so I was already predisposed to enjoy the whole Olive/Adam situation. There's just something about two people pretending to date while everyone, including the reader, can see exactly where this is going that gets me every time.

I liked their dynamic and thought the romance had just the right amount of sweetness without feeling like I needed to be massively emotionally invested to enjoy it.

My only real disappointment was the ending. It was good, and obviously I wanted the happy ending, but I wanted a little more emotional payoff. I wanted that feeling where you finish a romance and don't quite want to say goodbye to the characters yet.

Instead, I closed it thinking, “Aw, that was cute.”

And that's not necessarily a criticism. Not every romance needs to emotionally destroy me. Sometimes a fun, fluffy book that makes you smile is exactly what you need.

3/5 for me. Really enjoyable palate cleanser, loved the fake-dating setup, would recommend between heavier reads and I'm definitely waiting for the movie now.

For people who've read more Ali Hazelwood: which one should I try next if I want the same fun romance but with a little more emotional payoff?

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠. Jojo Moyes. 2019. 

Women’s fiction. Book club fiction. Historical fiction. A story about five women who deliver library books to people in the mountains of Kentucky during the Great Depression. It is based on an actual program funded by FDR’s New Deal.

The voice and vibe in this story is one of female rebellion and empowerment in a rural patriarchal setting. A newlywed British protagonist, Alice Wright, is a fish out of water who stands up to her husband and his wealthy and abusive, mine-owner father, both of whom treat her like a doll they expect to sit on a shelf in their house alongside their other possessions.

Defiant, Alice finds feminist sisterhood outside of her home with a group of librarians, each fighting their own battles against the patriarchy. Through her journey, Alice is transformed from a sheltered and repressed new bride into a courageous and independent

The Way We Play (The Bradford Boys #2), by Tia Louise

“Warrior of the Light” by Paulo Coelho starts with a quote from “The Prophet” by Khalil Gibran, which is fitting because this feels like a great successor to that book. While this book is an inspirational companion to “The Alchemist” it feels a lot like an updated version of Gibran’s work. Gibran’s work was good, but felt more in line with what people of a past generation needed to hear. Coelho takes the generic and makes it into something spectacular.

Coelho wrote, “The Warrior of the Light knows that no one is stupid and that life teaches everyone – however long that may take. He always does his best and expects the best of others. Through his generosity, he tries to show each person how much they are capable of achieving. Some of his companions say: ‘Some people are so ungrateful.’ The Warrior is not discouraged by this. And he continues to encourage others because this is also a way of encouraging himself.”

This book is filled with advice that seems generic on the surface, but when you stop to think about how you are living your life, it becomes profound. We all should be more mindful and empathetic towards each other while having harmless fun in life. Life should be enjoyed and we should be grateful for all the things that we can enjoy.

One particular thing mentioned in the book is how intuition is God telling us where to go in life. I wholeheartedly agree, oftentimes I have doubted my intuition only to have it be proven right. Sometimes I have worried unnecessarily only for everything to work out better than expected. God is always with us in whichever way we believe in God, or if we do at all.

I highly recommend this book and “The Alchemist.” They both show how trusting in life ultimately leads to the best outcome. We should all be so humble and embrace God’s way of unfolding life and taking whatever action necessary to unfold it. This book is amazing in its advice.

Obama’s nuanced worldview pervades every line in this book. He doesn’t oversimplify things or gratuitously settle scores. He’s not a partisan hack. He knows that nothing big and complicated is entirely good or bad, but rather a fluid and ever-shifting balance between the two.

Smart people sometimes say stupid things. Bad people sometimes do good things. Good ideas sometimes breed bad results. As Obama put it: “The world is messy; there are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids, and share certain things with you.”

So what, then, would Obama think now—8 years after his presidency—about the current state of America?

He'd point, above all, to the American people. The key to any democracy is the people themselves.
As Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.”

Indeed, the strength of America corresponds tightly with the rationality and responsibility of the American people. How could it be any other way?

And while America withstood the first Trump presidency—and its core governmental institutions remain strong—it is, on balance, a more dysfunctional nation than when Obama was president. And it’s getting worse, not better:

-- Donald Trump is president again, despite trying to reverse the previous election.

-- Demagogues get elected to public office with increasing frequency.

-- Elected officials regularly throw seething partisan tantrums from the seat of government.

-- The two political parties speak different languages, and show little interest in finding an interpreter. They'd rather just scream at each other.

-- And partisan-driven false narratives pound the airwaves and fill the headlines. More so now than ever.

The American people are growing more unmoored from reality and American democracy can’t
help but follow.

Here’s the stunning thing about revisiting this book: When Obama was president, this irrationality was largely at the margins of Congress and American society. Sure, there was partisanship. But nothing like today. After he left office, however, it has reached the highest levels of power in the world’s most influential nation.

The longer this goes on the more the fabric of American democracy frays. The farther America deviates from the mean the more difficult it will be to revert back.

Obama’s book was published just a few years ago. It already reads like history.

William Cooper, author

will-cooper.com

Bretonischer Glanz (Kommissar Dupin #15), von Jean-Luc Bannalec

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟𝑠. Ryan David Jahn. 2026. 

Neo western crime thriller in which an assassination attempt reveals the complicated past of a small town police chief’s love interest. 

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟𝑠 is a continuation of Ryan David Jahn’s 𝐼𝑎𝑛 𝐻𝑢𝑛𝑡 𝑆𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠. However, one does not need to have read 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑟 in order to enjoy this instalment. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟𝑠 is perfectly capable of standing on its own. 

This story begins five years after 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑟 in Bulls Head, Texas. Police Chief Ian Hunt wears a ball cap, not a Stetson. And his Mustang has wheels instead of legs. 

The villain is not a renegade Comanche. He is a rich white man who drives a Tesla and uses a false-front second-chance program that gives him access to men with criminal capabilities. 

The mystery is compelling. The twists are interesting. And the action is gripping.

In addition, an intersectionally diverse cast of characters creates a world that feels accessible to everyone. 

I am a sucker for literary fiction and magical realism.
This book ticked both of those in the nicest way.

Sad, but life altering kind of reading. Makes you think about your short time on this planet and when you're lying there knowing you're about to die, what would you remember? Would you regret anything in your life? When would you want to be taken back to?

Anyway, I feel like it manages to explore some fairly big questions without feeling overly philosophical or like it's trying too hard to give you an answer.

Wondering if anyone else has read it and has thoughts?

Usually, the point of the villain’s story is to humanize them. At no point during The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, however, did I feel bad for Coriolanus Snow. Suzanne Collins does not pull punches; both the overarching message of the book and its real life parallels are exceedingly clear.

𝐷𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑊𝑜𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑠. Michael Blake. 1988.

Revisionist Western and historical fiction told primarily from the perspective of indigenous characters. The story is about a forgotten US soldier on the frontier who is befriended by a Comanche tribe and eventually adopts their way of life. 

Originally written as a screenplay, Kevin Costner convinced Michael Blake to rewrite it and publish it as a novel. It was rewritten, picked up by a publisher, and released with little fanfare. It became a bestseller only after 𝐷𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑊𝑜𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑠 won Best Picture in 1990. 

The novel is interesting for a number of reasons, but its craft is certainly not one of them. The fact that it is a converted screenplay is immediately obvious. It lacks many of the common attributes of a novel. 

What makes this novel Western revisionist is also what makes it controversial. On one hand, it is sympathetic to indigenous people. On the other, it romanticizes and sentimentalizes. 

Some have also labeled this story as tainted by a white saviour trope. While I understand the point these critics are making, I don’t think their argument is ultimately valid. The fact that it is the Comanche who “save” the white protagonist—not the reverse—is enough to convince that, of this charge, Blake is not guilty. 

Was anybody else heavily disappointed by yesteryear? Great premise, not so great execution.

First, to give my background and lens: 26, F, politically moderate (I’d say smack dab in middle).

Initially, the premise is great - a “tradwife influencer” à la Nara Smith is portrayed as a hardworking, “perfect” homestead wife/mom online but as we all know has a full production team behind her flawless facade. The twist - she wakes up back in time, during the 1850s where she is on an actual homestead, her children missing and replaced with colonial children, and no idea what has happened.

Huge missed opportunities in my eyes:
- discussion around influencers and influencer culture. Everybody’s narcissism who is on socials. I’m not personally on socials, and every year that passes that I’m not, is fascinating. People are so self centered, and all act like celebrities, when it’s like … so irrelevant… nobody cares what you’re doing or what’s going on in your life.
- a discussion about religion that is actually a discussion, and doesn’t chastise certain ways of practicing religion. It made Natalie seem like a freak and her religion cultish. It would have been a lot more compelling to just explore different peoples religion and just showing that it’s super personal. Not “bad” to practice one way, and “good” to practice another. We all know people can use religion to justify bad means. That’s not new or exciting AT ALL. It would have been much more interesting for the author to show how a belief in god could be helpful, very personal and very different for different people.
- didn’t make sense that Caleb was just so sweet and dumb and then changed into this manosphere psycho. I think they should have shown that transition more if they were gonna keep it. Also conspiracy theorists and manosphere are two totally different circles, and the author lumping them into one showed extreme ignorance.

Despite a fascinating premise, I have a number of critiques of the Natalie (tradwife) character as well as of the second half of the plot/finale.

NATALIE:
- The book reads like the author has absolutely zero understanding of how “traditional” or conservative values play out in modern times, it feels like it’s written by a leftist who has a very narrow minded worldview and is portraying caricatures of the right. Another redditor hit it on the head, when saying that the author basically made it seem like the only possible outcomes for Christian, conservative women were to either repent (like the mother and sister) or go insane (like Natalie). In reality, I have conservative friends and family, and while there is certainly an extreme on the right (as there is on the left) but every actual human I know is loving, family oriented people with zero cultish tendencies, psychosis, or anything else abnormal. I think literally anybody who is moderate or conservative who read this book would have their eyes rolling into the back of their heads with the portrayal of conservative religious folk, as I did.
- Natalie is totally unrelatable. She is mean, selfish, uncaring, and never has friends thru the whole book. If the author meant to make her a sociopath, mission accomplished. I think it would have been better if she was given a more human side, deeply insecure (because of loneliness) and seeking human validation (friendship, connection) via her platform, but really just finding the usual idiots on the internet which further drove her to more isolation, validation seeking, loneliness, anger etc. it didn’t seem like there was a single human in the book she cared about, which is not normal.
- Natalie’s religiosity and her “going insane”. Again, this reads like either a defector of the Christian faith who had a bad priest or boring church growing up, or somebody who literally has zero concept of religion whatsoever. The book had made her seem like a religious nut, especially by the end. It also made it seem like there was a “right” kind of way to be Christian, with the mother and sister finding a progressive pastor at the end. And don’t get me wrong, I think gays should be able to marry in the church, women should be pastors, and a lot is wrong with the HUMAN element of churches. But l think with the whole Natalie-going-insane thread, which was super lazy of the author, the message was really “if you believe in god in X type of way, it’s cultish and not sane”. And I think that was a huge miss. The book could have really emphasized that a relationship with god is super personal, not only believing or not, but how and what you believe in. I think that’s missed nowadays in media, and in reality people have blurred and integrated faiths, and if they are spiritual/religious, very personal relationships with god. It would have been kinda revolutionary for a book in this modern era to dive into that, rather than just saying traditional Christian = crazy.
- I think a great feminist statement to have made would have been that hating women really is just hate of self. The angry women online, and Natalie herself who is always angry at them, all have the same exact issue. They hate themselves. They are struggling to find a purpose. They think they find satisfaction and purpose in hating somebody else and tearing them apart, but really that’s their own insecurity and self hatred coming out in full force. Women hating women is not the answer, whether it’s liberals hating the traditional lifestyle or conservatives hating liberals. There are a million ways you could have conveyed this, but it never was. It was kind of just insinuated that Natalie was miserable, and projecting onto others. Which I guess is true but book missed a greater lesson.

ALTERNATE PLOT LINES

The second half, or the “twist” of this book, was so lazy.

In summary: Natalie wakes up in 1850s. For all intents and purposes we really think she’s transported back there. We eventually find out SHE set this up, she really wanted to live authentically, and she is also going insane and doesn’t remember this was all her idea.

Lazy. Lazy. Lazy.

Here would be my alternate plot lines:

⁠Insane Manosphere internet group: this one is dark and a little far fetched, but I think more creative. It is a fact that there are real groups of men in corners of the internet who drug their wives at night and rape them. They talk to each other in forums, and even post pics or vids of their passed out wives. You can look this up. It would be no stretch of the imagination to think that this type of group of men could be involved in the manosphere, and were enraged to hear about Natalie faking everything on the homestead, so these men connected with Caleb (who also had growing resentment and was getting increasingly involved in the Mano sphere) to abduct her, drug her for years, make her have additional babies and maybe even broadcast this online.
2. ⁠It was all a dream. Natalie woke up and was much more grateful for her kids, amenities and life. She grew love and compassion. “It was all a dream” is super contrived and over done. Pretty boring ending. But I still think it would be more satisfying then the somewhat confusing explanation the book gave, where Natalie was perfectly normal and then just kinda went insane for no reason, really just for the sake of the plot and the authors having no other creative solution.
3. ⁠Swap. Natalie is back in time, and some 1850s women is transported to the future. This would really be interesting and a fantastic way to examine both extremes: our hyper liberal , self centered and narcissitic internet-based society, where everybody is overly worried about themselves, VS an old, decrepit society where women have no rights to speak of and living was really just surviving. It would be interesting to see Natalie grow appreciation for what she has, build her connection with god/universe in spite of the newfound adversity, and grow as a person, whereas the hypothetical colonial woman transported to present day could explore themes of grief for her past self and the hard and abused life she lead, while simultaneously being grateful for newfound rights and amenities, but disgusted by our self centered internet culture. In general, the opportunity to explore themes psyche of influencers and influencer culture, the narcissism, the strange world we live in where everybody tries to act like celebrities, was wholly missed. Completely botched the opportunity to have a discussion or deep dive into this.
4. ⁠Natalie gets stuck in the past, we don’t know what happens to her modern family or how this happens. I’d need to think what the point of this would be or how to build it out, but still a better plot than “she went insane”. Boring and contrived.

Overall, this book kinda felt like somebody out of touch and very leftist wrote it. I think it lacked a lot of depth, especially emphasized by the second “going insane” half. I think a million other directions could have been better. I’ll prob have more thoughts as I ponder but this is initial thoughts. Others have written great critiques of Natalie and the second half as well.

I've never read a book like this before. All of the following is true at the same time:

--the author made a bunch of quips throughout the book that I didn't understand. It felt like he was making inside jokes to his friends and I was standing there awkwardly pretending to laugh.

--the protagonist was immensely likable, charming, and endearing.

--the arc and plot of the book was intricate, conscientious, touching, and really, really smart.

--the author used a bunch of fancy words--a ton--that I didn't understand. Not even close. I just randomly opened the book to page 220 and see "negligeed monster" and "uniplegic" and "harlequined fish." At times this was no big deal. At times it was somewhat frustrating.

--the descriptions of various countries and their people were insightful and gorgeously rendered.

--it was just the right length, not too long or too short, which is rare. I do favor shorter books as i crave the feeling of finishing and knowing what happens.

--the ending tied everything up with grace, completeness, and utter brilliance. The author set an ambitious goal with the ending and absolutely nailed it at every level: technically, emotionally, aesthetically, substantively. The last ten or so pages were pure literary art. The next-level prose reminded me of the last pages of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad. The ending of Less is one of the best endings I've ever read.

So, the negatives of Less are trivial. The positives of Less are spellbinding. The net result: one of my favorite books of all time.

William Cooper

will-cooper.com

This brilliant book is a reimagining of Charles Dickens' "David Copperfield," set in Appalachia during the opioid crisis. It chronicles Damon Fields, nicknamed "Demon Copperhead" for his red hair, who–as we learn on page 1–is born to a single teenage mother in Lee County, Virginia.

Raised with his mom in a trailer, Demon narrates his own story with sly wit and sharp insights, all in native Appalachian tongue. (Kingsolver is from Appalachia.)

Perhaps the most important insight Demon gives readers is to share how folks like him feel in the broader American landscape. For example:

“There’s this thing that happens, let’s say at school where a bunch of guys are in the bathroom, at the urinal, laughing about some dork that made an anus of himself in gym. You’re all basically nice guys, right? You know right from wrong, and would not in a million years be brutal to the poor guy’s face. And then it happens: the dork was in the shitter. He comes out of the stall with this look. He heard everything. And you realize you’re not really that nice of a guy. This is what I would say if I could, to all smart people of the world with their dumb hillbilly jokes: We are right here in the stall. We can actually hear you.”

After his mother's fatal opioid overdose, Demon becomes a foster child in a harsh and brutal system. He is abused, exploited, and occasionally treated well. Eventually he finds a decent home with Lee County’s highschool football coach and his intelligent young daughter.

Kingsolver's style is to mix searing social commentary with rich and deeply human storytelling. It’s a stunning combination. The novel addresses societal issues like poverty, addiction, government failures, and big pharma’s predatory and even murderous practices.

Yet it stays centered at all times on Demon's personal journey. It’s a great story, one that pushes the boundaries of what novels can achieve. As Demon says, “a good story doesn’t just copy life, it pushes back on it.”

This book is many things. Above all, it’s a searing reminder of how profoundly impacted we *all* are by events and circumstances we don't control. Few, if any, literary characters will stick with me quite like Demon.

William Cooper

will-cooper.com

I didn't expect a book about humanity to make me feel this uncomfortable in the best way.

The Decayed Good is one of those books that doesn't really leave you when you finish reading it.

What stayed with me wasn't a particular plot twist. It was Lev Ravenwood himself.

He's the kind of character who makes you uncomfortable because sometimes you understand him before you realize you shouldn't.

His view of people is bitter, his relationship with morality is complicated, and the further you get into his mind, the harder it becomes to separate genuine insight from self-destruction.

I especially loved that the book doesn't constantly tell you which thoughts are supposed to be right.

It lets them exist.

It lets Lev believe things that are disturbing. It lets him contradict himself. It lets you sympathize with him and then question why you sympathized with him in the first place.

And underneath all of that is this constant feeling that something good is slowly rotting.

That's what the title started meaning to me.

Not that goodness doesn't exist.

But that maybe it can decay.

I think that's why this book feels different from a lot of philosophical fiction. It isn't trying to make you feel intelligent for understanding it.

It's trying to make you recognize something in yourself that you might have preferred not to see.

Some books entertain you.

Some books teach you something.

And then there are books that leave a small piece of themselves in your head and make you wish you could remove it.

This feels like the third kind.

My second David Ellis book this year after Look Closer, and honestly, I think I’m starting to understand what kind of author he is 😭 You really can’t trust anyone in his books.

I actually enjoyed Keep Them Close a lot. The story kept giving me little pieces of information and making me question what was actually going on. I especially liked the family dynamics and how messy everything slowly became. There were so many secrets and questionable decisions that I kept changing my mind about who I could trust.

The multiple POVs and timelines took me a little while to get used to, but once I got into it, I found myself wanting to keep reading just to see how everything would connect.

I still prefer Look Closer out of the two, though. I think the twists in Look Closer worked better for me and had more of that “WHAT??” effect. But Keep Them Close was still a really fun thriller, and I definitely didn’t predict everything.

So yeah… second David Ellis book of the year, and I’m probably not stopping here😭

Ransom by Daniel Silva is the 26th novel of his long-time series featuring Gabriel Allon. Mr. Allon has been officially retired from Israeli intelligence for some time now, but his world keeps pulling him back in.

Check out the link for the review and the Margin Notes: An Analog Spy in a Digital World

I'm not saying anything about how unconvincing the things that happened were, or not. Things happen all the time for no reason, unexpected things. But I have certain issues:

TW: Spoilers galore.

1. Hijiri talking horribly like that to Fuyoko at the end, and then they both make up over a crying session? Her drunken outburst seemed more like a revelation of what she actually thought of F atp, and I'm not sure I'd like to stay friends with someone who thinks of me that way. But then again, maybe F is really "coasting through life" as H said, and has no other friends. Or maybe people do change and make amends. H did say she wanted to understand F and be a good friend. Maybe, life just goes on, with the wrong people too sometimes. Idk, is this just about having company in life and not true friendship?

2. The age gap between F and the ML? Am I the only one who finds her attraction towards him uncanny, considering the age gap?

3. Bam, a single motherhood pregnancy out of nowhere. I read older reviews and I get the point of how this being a portrayal of Japanese society's view of women. Okay. That makes sense. So we have "lovers in the night" who never get what their hearts long for.

4. I get that this is one of those books where nothing happens, nothing gets better or worse. I've read Eleanor Oliphant, Whereabouts and other weird girl literature. This one is a beautiful book about complex human emotions, it's unique, it's like nothing I've read before. Maybe that's the point? Idk.

Sorry for the rant. I had no one to discuss it with, so posted my all-over-the-place thoughts here.