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...

  Hmmm so many complicated thoughts on this one. I genuinely love the premise – anything with prehistoric creatures is an automatic draw for me. In fact, all of the bits of this that were original were pretty compelling. But man, as soon as it got into the traditional thriller elements, there were some problems. Most importantly, Cash was an incredibly one-dimensional cliche of a strong woman. She had no personality beyond being offended by men doing things for her. She kept dropping hints about some kind of incident in her past, but then it never actually got revealed? And then the sheriff was nearly as bad. Take a generic cop, put a cowboy hat on him, and that’s about the impression I got. All the characters were pretty much along these lines; every interpersonal dynamic was predictable. Also, content warning for animal death. Without spoiling anything, there was a scene I found deeply upsetting as far as that goes. But the fundamental concept was great, and there was clearly a t...