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The cover review is right on: it's very "voice-y." It's also clever and fun and cute and just cozy as all get-out. And it's a clever premise and a snappy story and some really lovable characters (the titular Charlotte is a burnt-out gifted & talented young millennial, and her friend group are hilarious). Good story arc, too. And it's genuinely funny in several places.

Sure, at some points it feels like a debut novel. Which it is, that's allowed. Some of the dialogue and plot whips are a little tough to keep up with, though maybe as an elder millennial it's just going over my head?

But overall I had a great time with this. It felt like a book about the grown-up version of a kid detective I read when I was a kid and had just forgotten about.

It's so fun and unexpected to see character development in a comic book!

That one might've been a bit too real. But they're weaving a fantastic story over the course of these books.

I don't know why I ignored these for so long. These are awesome.

The modern GL stories just have so much more depth to them, even though they're built on the same mythology. I love it.

Ok. Hal Jordan has always been my favorite Green Lantern. But I've gotta say...Jessica Cruz is making a serious run at the title.

Now that's what I'm talking about. All the mythology of the classic GL, poured into a whole new story with actual character development beyond Hal pining for his boss. Jessica and Simon are awesome.

After four books in the Silver Age, seeing more complex storylines develop is really interesting. It's making me want to catch up.

The mythology continues to grow in this one, but it's still just as campy and corny as ever. Love it.

Alternating between droll, chaotically hilarious, and zany in a way I haven't seen outside a children's book for a while, this book had me either thinking or cackling (I'm not exaggerating) for the entire time I read it. This is one of my favorite genres of nonfiction (now I'm second guessing that classification...hmm), and about ⅔ of the chapters made me think "huh. I'd like to see a short story about that!" It also delights me to no end that Randall Munroe and Tracy V. Wilson are friends.

I've been a fan of xkcd for coming up on two decades now, of the concept of What-If for about one decade, and of his books since 2014. Munroe's first What If? book was an absolute joy to read and I've reread it several times since its release. Both books could easily be subtitled "destroying the universe in chunks of various size for fun and legit," which is undoubtedly a feature, not a bug.

This book, in the tradition of all good sequels, stays faithful to the premise while exploring new ground. I can't wait for What If? 3.

This collection contains the first GL solo adventure I remember reading, "The Shark that Hunted Human Prey!". It's at once impressive and also a little sad how repetitive some of these stories are; they even lampshade how often Kalmaku gets magically disguised as GL in one if these stories, for instance.

Still, we're starting to see the first glimpses of what makes Hal as a character distinct from Clark Kent or Barry Allen as characters. Not much, but I think if you look closely you can see it.