youreawizardjerry's reviews
114 reviews

i enjoyed the direction taken with the green string story, and the couple that followed were okay! this is a mix of flavors i'm normally all about however...i didnt find myself captivated in the slightest for some reason so I have to follow my gut that's telling me to put this down. if you felt similarly but still want to give machado another opportunity, her memoir is powerful! or even just her essay on jennifers body is a good time.

it took me nearly a year to read this omg! something about the time jump and restarting the journey was exceptionally hard for me to get into again, BUT i'm in now. i really love seeing the guts and puck duo come back, i loved those fucky little locusts too. the art is obvi still peak. 10/5

theyre just like me fr

love u drew <3 so grateful to see an Indigenous women on top of the world and unapologetic as hell. my hero!

It’s rare to find a writer that can capture and break down complex emotion as imaginatively as CRG can. Cristina Rivera Garza's grief is palpable through her unique language on every page. Her writing is transcendent, leaving us with descriptions of life that all can feel but few could voice. Suffice to say… I am a big fan.
I loved that this book became a collection of communal grief, was never one of entertainment (although I was engrossed from start to finish). This is not "true crime" as a genre, this is reality. It came across as reading about someone closer than similar stories tend to feel, if that makes sense. The book brought me to take pauses wherein I had these repeating realizations that Liliana is gone and that is a constant for the Garzas and all who knew her. That this will continue to be their lives after we all close the book. Then I’d sob into the pages. As Cristina writes, the only difference between us and victims of femicide, is people we have & have not come across. 
I do wish there was a final connection between the introduction and ends of the story though, because we do not see the narrator's journey that is set up in the beginning culminate to anything within the book. I understand that the idea of what justice means shifted as Cristina sat with her sister's memory, but I wish she had expressed that conclusion in the text to bring it all together. Overall, this is a beautiful contemplation on remembering someone whose been taken from you, and an incredible feat of the heart. It was an honor to witness this intimacy and I’m certain it will stay with me forever. 

john green sr

Wow 5/5 incredible control throughout the entire collection, every single poem made me feel

This was SICK. Textbook and colloquial definition aha🤙 anyways
The almost stream-of-consiousness style of storytelling was difficult to get used to initially, but I gave it another chapter as a last shot at making it work and am glad that I did. In structure alone, Hurricane Season intimately captures the experience of sharing horror stories with friends. Additionally, the atmosphere and dialogue, down to the smallest quips, are crafted with a profound honesty. I've never read anything formally like this before but being Mexican it felt refreshingly familiar (not the subject matter [tho part of it] but the treatment of it) The larger thematics of the book are universal, but it hit strikingly close to home for me in a way I didn’t anticipate. I'm grateful for the opportunity to explore those emotions.

I read a review beforehand that noted this book had some of the most vile descriptions OP had ever read, and I... agree (I read brando's chapter while on the train and had to laugh at the absurdity of the pages contrasted with the morning peace of the commute LOL) But it is infinitely darker than traditional guts and gore of cuentos in this genre and I strongly advise checking the CWs to know exactly what you are signing up for when you open this up expecting just another haunted small town story. There is great sadness and evil in these pages above anything else, depicted in the rawest unrelenting fashion. It is absolutely NOT for a lot of people. 5/5 for the complexity captured and the prose, truly a great feat, especially when considering how easily it could’ve turned into profanity drivel in different hands. In an interview Fernanda said that she’d need therapy after writing this and I have a lot of respect for the authenticity that she reached for even though it strained her to that point. I will definitely read this again, but not for a very long time.

In all La Matosas of the world, there is so much violence where there need not be. If only a handful of things were different. It isn't fair but one day it can be because thankfully, witches never die. 

Really good. Such powerful parallels... didn't expect them at all. Hit me like a truck. 

Rooted in cliches and caricatures of rural people that make it a both predictable and very flat story. The spirit of what makes horror about rural America truly frightening is not at all found in the one-dimensionality of Brother. Underwhelming, not interested in continuing.