The Neurospicy Bean

  While this book isn’t doing anything particularly new or unique, I thought that what it is doing, it does well. In particular, it’s an effective, if not particularly subtle, critique of the true crime genre obsession. It’s set at a true crime podcast’s competition to find the remains of a serial killer (this doesn’t seem like it can possibly be legal for a recent case, but whatever), and over the course of the novel we watch the competitors slowly unravel. Whether it’s a desire for power or romanticizing the killer, the distance between the competitors and the subject of their obsession slowly narrows, and although there’s a supernatural element at play, the reader is left to wonder how much of that unraveling is because of the supernatural and how much is simply the consequence of a culture that idolizes murderers. Balancing this out somewhat, though, is Caroline, who uses true crime as a processing mechanism for her very real trauma. This book does a nice job of walking the lin...

 

  This was actually more enjoyable than I expected it to be. I was anticipating one of those meandering, plotless books that middle aged white women seem to love, and it certainly wasn’t that. Instead, it was a perfectly pleasing mystery with plenty of clues and even a bit of action. Seemingly unrelated details were smoothly woven together in a satisfying way, and there were nice little relationships that got nods throughout. I did have a few gripes, mainly to do with the various perspectives the author was trying to weave together. The main thing is just that there was no reason to have so many different POVs. At the beginning, I think we heard from almost every single major character, and a couple of characters that seemed like they’d be major but then got shunted off to the side a third of the way in.  One example of this was I believe KJ (yeah, he was presented as a main character in the first several chapters and then became so sidelined that I hardly even remember his na...