Book Review: The It Girl by Ruth Ware

 

I don't remember what led me to put this on my library hold list, but other than not being speculative, it has strong similarities to my current work-in-progress (aka the moon novel). Dual timelines, with one character known to die from the beginning. Grief in the 'after' timeline. But it is basically a murder mystery, which I don't usually read.

Overall, I liked it. I stayed in bed an hour this morning reading the ending because there were some major twists. I was really happy that I hadn't identified the killer, and even happier with the final twist.

Book Review: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I heard the author interviewed by Ezra Klein regarding his third book which features an octopus protagonist (or multiple). Sort of a big coincidence considering I just read Remarkably Bright Creatures.  And this is Sci-Fi... sounded intriguing.

The beginning was very promising, with multiple major position changes happening in the first chapter. Oh, and I liked the decimal chapter headings. The non-human protagonists continued to be interesting, which was the main reason I kept reading to the end.

But I just couldn't care about the human characters. The protagonist is not supposed to be a hero but he just seemed boring. There are diversions as the humans fight each other that don't seem to get us anywhere other than demonstrating how horrible humans are. Oh, and to take up time and give the characters something to do. And despite the intriguing concept of interacting with non-human intelligence, the connection happens too fast and without enough detail. 

I would guess the writing of future books will get better but I'm not putting the sequels high on my list.