You’re Very Online
Or not
Hi friends,
First off, Happy Birthday Mom.
Hope you had a great weekend. I went to New York for friends’ wedding (congrats to the happy couple!).
While I was there, I visited four book stores (including two with my pal
): The Center for Fiction, Greenlight Books, Books are Magic, owned by author , and the Ripped Bodice, the East Coast outpost of the original romance bookstore.A wedding, Meg Ryan fall in New York and four bookstores? What a weekend.
This week, I’ve rounded up three books that all touch on our relationship with the internet. Whether you’re Very Online or Very Outside, I think you’ll find something to like in at least one of them.
And, now, what to read if …
You Have a Love/Hate Relationship with Goodreads
One-Star Romance by Laura Hankin*
I never got into tracking my reading on Goodreads, which author Lauren Oyler calls “the anachronistically designed website for logging, rating (out of five) and reviewing books.” I keep a running list of books I’ve read in Google Docs and, from what I can glean from headlines, this decision has allowed me to avoid a lot of drama. (Bluntly, I have a hard enough time keeping up with the Book Drama on the platforms I’m already on.) If you have a complex relationship with Goodreads, grab a copy of Laura Hankin’s One-Star Romance.
On the eve of her best friend’s wedding, Natalie thinks things are finally going her way. She’s finally published a novel and she’ll soon be seeing Rob, the groom’s best friend/best man, who she had a strong connection with at the engagement party, again. Riding the adrenaline, Natalie checks her book’s reviews and discovers Rob gave it a single star.
The review, Natalie’s reaction to it and Rob’s reason for giving it, lurk below the surface of all their interactions over the next decade as their friends’ life events — christenings, housewarmings and more — continuously bring them together. Each time they meet, they’re forced to consider if they’re each other’s harshest critics or perfect matches.
There’s so much to love about this book. It includes a wedding scene that made me laugh out loud. The side characters are delightful — I would throw down for Rob’s best friend, Angus, the futon king of New Jersey — and Rob and Natalie are such real, flawed characters. But I think my favorite aspect is the changing relationship between Natalie and her best friend Gabby, who try to figure out how to maintain a friendship as they grow into adults. You’ll want your tissues for this one.
Bonus read: Laura wrote an essay about the real-life experience that inspired this novel.
You Hate Follow an Influencer
The Most Famous Girl in the World by Iman Hariri-Kia
The Most Famous Girl in the World, Iman Hariri-Kia’s campy sophomore novel, asks the question: What if the notorious con artist Anna Delvey was also a serial killer?
Two years before the book opens, Rose Aslani wrote an expose on Poppy Hastings, exposing her as a socialite grifter. Even after her article went mega-viral and led to Poppy’s imprisonment, Rose was convinced she’d only uncovered a fraction of the scammer’s crimes. When Poppy gets released from prison early, Rose falls off the deep-end and spends hours obsessively following the other woman’s social media posts. Rose’s investigation grows more serious after she meets an FBI agent on the same quest — and they realize the sources for her story keep dying in mysterious circumstances.
The Most Famous Girl in the World is absolutely bonkers. There’s no other word for it. Hariri-Kia clearly had so much fun writing it and — once I suspended my disbelief — I enjoyed being along for the ride. As Alicia Thompson, author of With Love, From Cold World, said, “There's such a relatable bite to Iman Hariri-Kia's voice, a surprising vulnerability in her guarded characters, and a clever construction to this game of cat-and-mouse that will leave you guessing. I was completely immersed in the world of this book!"
You’ve Been Experimenting with ChatGPT
We Solve Murders by Richard Osman
François Loubet, the villain of Richard Osman’s winsome new mystery We Solve Murders, uses ChatGPT to disguise his writing style when communicating with his henchmen. As François explains in the book’s opening pages, the AI tool “flattens you out, irons your creases, washes you away, quirk by quirk, until you disappear.”
Fortunately for us, Osman’s voice, quirks and all, shines through We Solve Murders. The book, first in a new series, follows Amy Wheeler, a private security guard for the uberwealthy. While protecting ultra-bestselling author Rosie D'Antonio on a private island off the coast of South Carolina, Amy realizes someone is out to kill her. It seems her past protecting some questionable people has caught up to her. She calls the one person she knows can help, her father-in-law Steve, a retired police officer. Steve, begrudgingly, leaves his quiet life in an English village behind for a globe-trotting adventure with Amy and Rosie.
When I interviewed Osman last year, he explained he was starting a new series because he needed to give the four seniors starring in The Thursday Murder Club a break. Given the events of The Last Devil to Die, I agreed but was also hesitant he’d be able to capture lightening in a bottle twice. I was wrong. We Solve Murders delivers the same charm, warmth and solid mystery as his other series. I’m now looking forward to future installments of both series.
*Disclosure: Laura is a friend (and has actually written an edition of this newsletter) but I would be pushing One-Star Romance on everyone even if I didn’t know her.
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Elizabeth!! Such a delightful surprise to see ONE-STAR ROMANCE here. Thank you!
All of these recas sound reaaly good! Where am i ever going ot find the time to read them all???? :)