having impure thoughts about how they adapted that one nanami scene from the manga to the anime lol

also!!! itadori's and choso's fight!!!! goes!! so!! hard!!!

Butter by Asako Yuzuki

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challenging dark inspiring reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Butter is a contemporary novel that comments on misogyny, food and diet culture within Japanese society. It is served with a side of crime sub-genre, a female serial killer and strong narrative voice and character development. If you want more thriller elements, then this isn't the novel for you.

I went into this with the complete wrong expectations. I saw crime and food and thought A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G Summers, when this is nothing like it. Instead, Butter is narrated by Rika, a female journalist, in a male dominated company, sought on covering the case of Manako Kaiji in the months leading up to her retrial. Take your time with this: it is jam packed of details that do matter and will resurface in later chapters. This is a novel that needs to be savoured, not wolfed down. Enjoy the description, the characters and social commentary as these are the star flavours.

This is my first time reading anything by Asako Yuzuki and she let me tell you: she knows how to command words. Her craft is amazing: nothing is out of place. Polly Barton's translation shines through too (not that I have read the original Japanese or can understand Japanese to do so in the first place).

My issues with this novel stems from my expectations. I thought this would be considerably faster paced, something akin to Criminal Minds. It is not. The inciting incidents mainly happen within Rika: they can be emotive, subtle but definitely why I continued reading. Sometimes we don't even notice the effects of Kaiji's manipulation until it is explicitly pointed out by other characters. However, once I realised how Yuzuki blended her narrative style with the inspiration from the true story, I changed my perception and slowed by reading pace to match Rika's journey discovering the truth between Kaiji's story.

Butter is an extremely well written, delicious narrative. Warning: do not read this on an empty stomach!

Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman

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adventurous dark tense slow-paced

2.0

read boy parts by eliza clark and/or i'm a fan by sheena patel instead. you're welcome in advance :)

anyways, I hope the person who picks this up from the charity shop I donated it to likes it a lot better than I did.

Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

3.5

Roadside Picnic, but for the girlies.

I picked up this on a whim. I was buying myself a small stack for my 22nd birthday and found the blurb to be quite promising. So I thought - why the hell not? COVID-19 is a distant memory and so that familiar haunting anxiety of the pandemic had long been washed away. Four years down the line, I now felt safe reading dystopian again and that is exactly what Pink Slime is. Safe.

Nothing really happens because the apocalyptic eco-horror world ending event has already happened and is continuing to happen. We follow an unnamed narrator navigating trauma, grief, motherhood to a child she didn't want. She reflects on her relationships and everything that has led her to this point. I was strangely invested and needed to know if the narrator managed to get out, despite staying when others fled inland to escape the ecological crisis.

Pink Slime is a reflective glance into motherhood and home when those ties are deteriorating just as fast as the surrounding city.

Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0

many thoughts. rtc.

Content Warnings