The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Breq was once part of a huge ship’s AI, linking the ship to thousands of “Ancillaries”, captured peoples turned into soldiers controlled by the AI. After a betrayal from the highest levels destroyed the ship, Breq is just one fragment of her former self. 1000 years later, she plans on revenge before she comes across Seivarden, a former lieutenant on her ship suspended all this time.

I heard this mentioned often in comparison to other books so I decided to check it out. The narrative jumps between future Breq and her quest for justice, dealing with a drug-addicted depressed Seivarden; and the past where the events of an annexed planet lead to her destruction.

It covers a decent amount of Breq and the world-building as a whole for one book, with cultural shifts over time, the diversity within a splintered AI and the expansionism of the state. The main culture’s language is also ungendered, so for the books’s POV and any characters from that culture use she/her for everyone with Breq occasionally getting mixed up in misgendering a species in their native tongue - being confused by all the different social cues each culture uses to determine it. That adds an interesting cultural spanner into the narrative as you learn about the characters. 

This was my first Erin Zak book. I got it as an ARC back in 2019 and am just now reading it. I'm working on reviewing ARCs that I completely forgot I had or never got the desire to read after requesting them. I'm awful at ARCs but I love them so much. I might have a problem...

So, this book. The premise, I liked. The execution was painful for me. I honestly skimmed most of the last 100 pages (that's 100 ebook pages and my ereader said there were 571 pages which is not accurate but has to do with my font size and all that jazz) because there was so much repetition in information stated that I knew I wouldn't miss a thing. I would go from paragraph to paragraph and skim for something new. Then page by page. It wasn't a joyous reading experience.

But in addition to all of the same things being stated over and over and over again - sometimes by all three POVs - there was all of the telling and so very little showing. The majority of the book is exposition which made the repetition worse. The characters weren't fleshed out at all and even had the same basic speech patterns and word usage. Granted Jackie and Beth used "whatever" and "like" and Susan didn't nearly as much but everyone, regardless of where they lived or their background used "eh?" at the end of sentences or calls people hot messes. That's just one small example. All three POV characters were also constantly using self-talk that involved calling themselves stupid, ugly, ridiculous, and other awful things. Although once in a while they each would have some internal monologue that included being pretty, hot, good at something, etc.

Let me look at my notes right quick...

OH! This book is a few years old now and I don't remember what the blurb said but I'm going to discuss the husband/father in this story. He's portrayed throughout as crazy and violent and stalkerish and just awful in so many ways. And then everything with him is resolved in a page or two. It was a huge part of the story and then blah.

The whole concept of the birth mom and adoptive mom of a child meeting and the three of them developing a relationship was very interesting to me. Unfortunately, very little of anything dealing with the actual adoption issue was ever discussed. There were no demands (or even gentle requests) to know why she gave the baby up. Beth was just like, "Cool, you're my birth mom. No problems here!" It was just unbelievable.

There are other things that I have noted but the above covers enough. I will likely try another of Zak's books but I don't think I'll stick it out if the same show/tell and repetition of info happens. Overall, I was really disappointed but because it could have been such a great story. Still going to give it 3 stars because, even though I started to quit several times, the idea of the story and what might end up happening wouldn't let me completely drop it.

Thanks to Bold Strokes and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. Sorry it took so long. I imagine there'll be some even older ones in my TBR that will end up here too.

What a nice read. I wasn't sure I was going to like it after the first few chapters but the characters really grew on me. I do love a coming home story and this one will absolutely be a re-read for me. The author does the narration and does a great job.

My friend kept telling me to read this book. I think it's because she saw a similarity between Reese and me where being around people and loving silence are a big thing. I'm not gonna lie, I saw a lot of myself in Reese which made it even funnier.

Definitely a good, solid romance with humor and some angst. And while I tend to avoid books narrated by Abby Craden (not because she's not a good narrator but because, holy shit, she seems to be the only narrator for wlw books anymore and I'm just so burned out on her) but she absolutely rocked the shit out of this one. Especially Judith. I would love to see a TV series based on Judith. The Judes. Need more Judes.

Okay, if you like a good rom-com, you'll probably enjoy Must Love Silence.

After getting recommendations from two friends on this book, I figured I'd give it a shot. And I can't say I'm disappointed at all. Once I got past the cover and the first person POV, it was fairly smooth sailing.

Honestly, this could have been a 5-star book if it hadn't been for some things that a good editor would have suggested be fixed. So many repeated descriptions like "the corner of her mouth" did something, and using hair color instead of a known name or pronoun "the blonde walked away" or "the brunette flipped the eggs" or whatever. And so much eye color mentions. Stuff like that.

Besides the things I mentioned above, the language was mostly beautiful. And I laughed and got a little teary. It was a really good read and I could see myself rereading it at some point.

I love Bake Off so I definitely wanted to read this one. That said, I thought I was getting a rom-com centered on a f/f romance. This is definitely not that. All love interests for this lovely bisexual, single mom are men. That in itself doesn't bother me at all. One of the men is lovely and I fell in love with him a little myself. I just wish I hadn't going into it thinking something else was waiting for me.

The humor is great, the characters are fun, but it seemed overly long to me with the initial relationship going on much longer than maybe it should have. But the fun of the bake off bits made it worth it for me.

Better than some, not as good as others in the series. I was much more involved in the Faz and Del story line than the Tracy one. Yes, I'll be reading the next one soon.

I nearly quit after the first 15 minutes because I thought it was just going to be a mom pushing her daughter to find a husband. No, I didn't read the blurb...

Anyway, I ended up really enjoying the story. The delivery is different and it took me a bit to get into but glad I stuck it out.

Fun, quick listen.

Some interesting stories but the it was made remarkable by Alexandra Billings' story.

I loved this short glimpse into the author's experiences with her mother's passing. I do a more complete review on C-Spot Reviews but suffice it to say that I was caught up in it from the first few sentences and never even contemplated stopping until the final word.

I definitely recommend it and I immediately bought a copy for a friend once I was done reading it.