Hello, welcome back to another round of my Reading Roundup series! Every time I hit six books in a certain genre, I sit down to analyze and rank which books I liked the most and which I liked the least. I feel like it’s a good way to write mini-reviews but also to self-analyze what I gravitate towards in my reading.
Today, we’re going to be talking about general contemporary fiction. I say general contemporary fiction because of none these books are romance centered. I have put out a contemporary romance fiction round up so feel free to check it out here.
Today’s round up consists of:
I’m going to be ranking these from the least liked (6) to the most liked (1) because you know, suspense and all that.
I also want to throw in a little disclaimer here that if I mention that I don’t like any of the books that you love and adore, that’s okay because this is also subjective. There’s absolutely no objectivity here! I’m a huge mood reader and sometimes, I pick up a book and hate it but pick it up and another time and absolutely love it. So don’t be dissuaded to pick up a book that I’ve mentioned I didn’t like.
I have this book ranked as my least favorite because it started off so strong and kind of fell flat for me as I read further into the book. It had a ton of potential but I feel like it skimmed the surface of what could have been more. This book is going to be made into a movie which I’m honestly looking forward to because this book does read a bit like an action movie, just with a lot less tension and gravity which I think can be corrected and implemented on screen. The entire plot revolves around a cast of characters trying to locate a portrait of a “Woman on Fire”. Our cast of characters includes: an investigative journalist who’s trying to prove to her new boss that she can follow through on this top secret assignment that involves infiltrating a pretty shady art society, a recovering addict artist who has family ties with the missing painting, and the woman who stole the painting in the first place.
Feel free to check out my full review here.
I’m so sad that I didn’t like this book as much as everyone else. First of all, I want to say that I’ve listened to a ton of podcasts with Emma Straub during her press tour for this book’s release and I know why she wrote this book and how much this book means to her personally. Emma Straub wrote this book at the peak of the pandemic when her father was in the hospital. From what the author has said on her interviews, her father’s doing fine now.
From what I gathered and read in early reviews of this book, I thought that this book is going to explore a father daughter relationship. Which once again, after hearing her interviews, I thought that I was pretty much on the right track for understanding this book’s theme.
We got a lot more than just the father daughter relationship in this book. I honestly struggle with books about high schoolers and if you didn’t know, the main premise of this book is the main character goes back in time to when she was in high school and she gets this whole second life and view point with her father. But she also gets a second chance to redoing her life and making other choices so that her present self may not be as stuck in a rut as she currently is.
So I get why we got time with the main character as a high schooler who cares for things like ending up with the popular boy or her high school crush, throwing the best party, and other stuff like that but personally, I never care for reading about things like that. It’s also why I don’t watch the shows like “Never Have I Ever” or “The Summer I Turned Pretty”. I just don’t care. Again, I understand why she did it because I mean if you could change your life to be a little less sucky, why wouldn’t you? It’s just not my cup of tea.
I also thought it took a bit too long for the main character to start talking with her father and exploring her relationship with him once she travelled back in time. But once she did, I was hooked onto the story. It’s why even though I didn’t care for the first half, I loved the second half or so of this book. Emma’s writing was the strongest and I was crying for a ton of it. It was just beautifully done and you could feel the tension and desperation as the plot came to a close.
Feel free to check out my full review here.
We have another Emma Straub book on this list! Honestly, I’m surprised that I ranked this book above “This Time Tomorrow” but look at me growing as a reader and reviewer. The reason that this book ranked above “This Time Tomorrow” is because of the characters. This is a pretty short book, I think just under 300, but Emma Straub somehow packed a bundle of feelings into this book. The characters are honestly so well done and to this day, I’m still salty over this one character. He’s such an asshole and I think that if an author manages to make you hate a fictional man for as long as I’ve hated him, then it’s a good book lol. To be fair though, every single character in this book is deeply flawed. They’re all a bundle of mess.
As expected from this book, we follow what seems to be a rich, affluent family, hop on a plane and travel to a different country for a vacation before their youngest kid is heading off to college. We’ve got the son, the son’s girlfriend who no one likes, the daughter, the father who’s got some shady past that’s got everyone on edge and uncomfortable, a very pissed off mom/wife, the mom’s gay best friend and his partner who honestly wants his partner to pay attention to him and not his somewhat Karen like best friend.
It’s crazy how this small book is centered around such a normal topic of a family vacation but unputdownable. It’s such a mundane thing. I feel like everyone who’s been privileged enough to travel knows exactly how it is when dealing with high stress situations and bubbles of tension rising and popping when it comes to the onslaught of tightly enclosed family time. If you don’t travel, think about the holidays when everyone comes together to eat, start some drama, and leave with tea for their friends at work. We all know how it can to be a lot really fast.
I think that Emma Straub’s writing and character work is outstanding and this book really makes a case for that.
goodreads summary
I read this book in January so I can’t speak enough detail about it but feel free to check out my review for it here.
The reason why I have this book so highly ranked is because I loved the character, Dava Shastri. She gave off such bad ass bitch vibes and I remembered really loving that and having started off my reading year with this as my first 2022 read. If you liked Evelyn Hugo then there’s a chance that you’re going to like this book. This book follows Dava Shastri, at her older age, inviting all of her family to her private island (because of course) and laying down the lay of the land for when she dies, which is the next day. Her family obviously don’t take to this very nicely. We follow two different time lines, one of the present where we also get to read from her large crew of children but also one of the past where we get to see her rise up to become the entrepreneur and philanthropist that she is. I’m also glad that I read this book because it honestly kickstarted my journey of reading more contemporary fiction this year.
Wow, wow, wow. This book is an all time new favorite and it was an honest surprise. First of all, if you’re planning to read this book, please check the trigger warnings because there’s a ton including but not limited to: sexual abuse, domestic abuse, mention of abortion, grief, loss, depression, gun violence/shootings, homophobia, racism, and so much more.
This was a hard book to read. From the trigger warnings that I’ve managed to remember and listed above, it’s pretty clear why. I’m working on a long review for this so I’m going to keep it brief here. This book is about two friends through out different stages of their lives designing games together. It’s not all cozy and cute all the time. I feel like when people hear that this book is about friendship, they go in expecting two platonic people being all nice and wholesome. There are wholesome parts to their relationship but not all the time because as their company grows, they grow as people. It’s such an honest description of how taxing and ever changing life is. How it can be both beautiful and brutal. I’m not a huge gamer but as a woman in tech, a huge reader, and a lover of writing, I really appreciated the aspect of art and story development in games. I loved reading about how the games these two have developed came to be. As a woman in tech, I also related to the female main character in this book. I don’t want to give too much away about this book because if you can manage the trigger warnings, I’d go in blind and just let the story take you where it will and introduce to characters you’ll love.
Apparently, I’ve got a thing for books that hurt me. The disclaimer for trigger warnings here match up to the scale of trigger warnings for “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”.
Trigger warnings include but are not limited to: use of drugs, addiction, homophobia, racism, loss/grief, mention of cancer, abuse, and more.
This book, along with “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”, are both 5 stars but the reason that this book is ranked 1 is because of its writing. I read a ton of books and beautiful writing is well, beautiful. I sounded like Harry Styles there for a second, sorry I had to lol. The writing in this book is at another level. It’s written by a poet and it reads like poetry. It’s hard to explain so let me try my hand at writing and throw a couple of metaphors at you. If “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” and “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” are drinks, then “Tomorrow x3” would be a fancy drink that took a solid ten minutes to make in a very expensive and heavy glass. “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” would be a very aged wine in a pretty bland, run of the mill, simple wine glass. I don’t drink much but when I think of aesthetic, somehow the first thing I go to is drinks lol.
What I’m trying to say is that “Tomorrow x3” is a huge book full of different timelines, themes, subplots, and characters. There was a lot of work put into it in both quantity and quality to pull of the work of art it is. “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” is a far shorter book but does the same if not more with far less words and with writing that’s succinct but powerful in a way only a poet can write.
I hope that makes sense.
I’ve talked about this book a ton so I won’t go much into my thoughts but if you want to read a full review on it, feel free to check it out here!
Have you read any of these books? If so, which one was your favorite? If you haven’t read any of these then what was your favorite contemporary fiction book that you rad this year?
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