Reviews and Comments

Wil & Katie are high school friends who haven't talked for 13-ish years because Katie got discovered by Hollywood the summer right after high school. They finally reconnect and sparks immediately fly. But can they overcome a) the residual pain from a decade-long disconnect and b) the publicity of a relationship where one of them is a Hollywood A-lister and one is not?

On the one hand, I really enjoyed a story where literally everyone is super intelligent & uses their words. This is not a story where the conflict is based on people doing something stupid and/or miscommunication that they are afraid to say what they mean to other people. The stakes are real though. Wil is finally looking to move on from a mental space triggered by her father's death; she is considering law school that she put off when her dad was dying. Katie is looking to start a production company after a decade of acting accolades, and getting derailed by a relationship with someone outside Hollywood.

However, I can't give this my top rating for a couple of reasons. Wil & Katie and the story around them are too perfect. Everyone including the background characters has perfect motives. Everyone (except Katie's ex) is perfectly accepting of everyone else. And the manner of the ending feels like everyone's wish fulfillment on what happens to shitty exes. At least what I would want to happen to my famous ex who does shitty things. And secondly, at times the pacing is really slow because the protagonists talk through everything first. At times I wanted to yell at the characters, GET ON WITH THE BANGING YOU'VE TALKED ABOUT IT ENOUGH.

4 stars still. Very enjoyable.

I previously quoted a passage in the book where Angel Dare wonders how she became a sniveling problem. It appeared at the time that Faust had a redemption arc in mind, but the high point of the book is the first chapter where she's about to culminate her revenge by murdering Vukasin (big baddy from previous two books). Someone else gets to him just before she does, and in the melee she shoots and kills a cop.

For the rest of the book, Angel is on the run from the cops, the cop ex-husband of the dead cop in particular. The story hands her off from protector to protector, each of whom gets written out of the story with no real continuity from each to the next. Not just discontinuity between characters, but between each story segment too. Sometimes we aren't even told how they get from segment to segment. In the penultimate scene she and an accomplice are chased into the forest or scrub by a cop that appears out of nowhere, and then suddenly we're in the final locale a few states away.

Heel turns out of the blue. Bad guys with little or no character development. Angel on an uncontrollable river raft of a story. Everything about this is lacking. Just read the first two books and pretend the third doesn't exist.

On the SF side, this is a story of people who know that Earth has only months left (an asteroid is on a collision course with the planet). What do you do? Go bucket list? Throw yourself in front of a bus? Carry on as if little has changed? The societal changes are perhaps less unique in SF, but this is still excellently done. It's not a complete collapse, but a lot of changes (rationing, corporate collapse) matter. There's cults and cabals and ... it's all great!

On the crime novel side, the apparent suicide that kicks off the novel is the kind of simple case that cops actually deal with, not the complicated serial killings of a Jo Nesbø novel or many people have motives Knives Out movie. The bad guys are not mustache-twirlers. The newly promoted detective actually investigates, somewhat amateurishly due to his lack of experience, but still investigation. It ticks all the boxes of what I like in a crime story.

I'm old and tired these days. It takes a very engaging book for me to stay up past my bedtime. With 20% left, I decided I had to finish last night. I couldn't put it off until after work today.