★★★★★ This book pre-dated and predicted the pandemic, manipulating the ruptures and revelations of a fictional plague event to comment on contemporary life and society. This book is set in my hometown of Vancouver and is deliciously local.

This book is kind of a nesting doll of allegories and allegorical literature. The main character is a novelist who starts off writing a romance between a typing teacher and student that sharply turns in the middle of her writing into a magical realist horror.

★★★★★ I don’t give out many 5 stars and books like this are the reason why - it’s so resoundingly good that I couldn’t bear to lump it in with lesser books. So beautifully composed, toggling between post-apocalyptic survivalism and an urban capitalist grind.

★★☆☆☆ This is like a John Green novel but with less of a thesis and more annoyingly obvious it’s an oblivious man writing how he thinks young women think/feel/act.

★★★☆☆ DARK COTTAGECORE FEATURING CURMUDGEONLY ASTROLOGY-WITCH IN THE REMOTE FRIGID POLISH COUNTRYSIDE AND STRANGE ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR AND TOWN DEATHS. Ok but seriously though this was wicked good. Beautifully written. A dark feminist, animal rights, anti-ageism manifesto.

★★★★★ Poet Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read.

★★★☆☆ I excepted something a little more atmospheric. As it turns out, this is just a quaint slice-of-life sort of thing where things just sort of quietly happen and there’s not a ton of plot or tension or set-up or pay-off.

★★★★★ So beautifully true to first gen Chinese immigrant experience. Many coincidental similarities to my life, but above all so wonderfully cerebrally chemically reflexive on what it is to be the child of Chinese immigrants, how it feels to navigate that relationship in adulthood and face the impossibility of their meteoric achievements.