Book Title: Annihilation (Southern Reach #1)

Author: Jeff VanderMeer

Genre: Science Fiction, Horror, Weird Fiction

Rating: 4/5

Annihilation is the first book in a trilogy, which follows a character known only as "the biologist" as she traverses through Area X. Every expedition into Area X has resulted in failure, and she joins the twelfth expedition. While in Area X, she slowly starts to piece together the mystery around it while everything falls apart in front of her.

This book is solid. The main character - the biologist - has an intriguing personality which is fun to follow. Learning more about her is exciting due to how much she attempts to restrain herself. However, the fact that she fails to mention important details of her personal life also carries over into failing to mention important details of the narrative, creating an interesting dynamic where she is very selective about what information is presented at certain times. The mystery around Area X is built up in a great way as well, and new information is given in a manner that is easy to swallow while also naturally increasing the complexitiy of the situation without leaving a reader behind. The reason why this book is four stars instead of five is because we never hit that "wow" factor, but otherwise, it's a fairly inoffensive read in terms of quality.

Book Title: Direwood

Author: Catherine Yu

Genre: Horror, Romance

Rating: 3.5/5

This book follows Aja as she pursues a monster into the woods known as Padriac. After her town started to grow infested with strange grub and multiple people start going missing, Aja decides to investigate head-on and find her sister at any cost.

As of writing, we are not very familiar with vampire fiction, so it's hard to compare against others. What we do know, however, was that the romance tended to switch between engaging and disliked. Padriac is a hard character to like as a primary love interest, particularly because he's so selfish. However, we can't deny that people are probably into that, so it's likely not an inherent flaw - especially considering the audience that tends to take up these kinds of books. It felt sloppy, but the action and plotline could be incredibly tense, which grabbed our attention like nothing else. It's a book we don't dislike reading and the flaws don't jump out to an absurd degree, so if you're interested in a gothic horror with vampires and don't care about mastery being apparent in the text, Direwood is a good pick.

Book Title: Lord of the Fly Fest

Author: Goldy Moldavsky

Genre: YA, Mystery Thriller, Contemporary

Rating: 1/5

Rafi is a small podcaster dedicated to discovering the truth behind a strange incident in a particular celebrity's life. His name is River, and his appearance at the Fly Fest is a perfect opportunity for her to interview him and figure out the mystery plaguing him. At the same time, however, she has found herself stranded at the Fly Fest with a bunch of celebrities, big and small, who are totally lost in fending for themselves on the island.

We can't really envision someone enjoying this book unless you enjoy low-brow hyper-online humor. The book seems to be attempting some sort of criticism against social media influencers and the rich who engage with the internet in excess, characterizing them as incompetent and sheltered. However, it fails in the fact that the characters are such stereotypes taken to the most absurd level that they stop being characters and instead exist to frustrate the reader. The degree of everyone's incompetency is unrealistic and, ironically, exceptionally detached from reality. Their incompetency in a stranded island scenario makes the entire book a horrible mess to get through because the characters can and will choose the worst possible things to do when presented with choices. Even when the reasonable, less tech-addicted Rafi tries to reason with them, it is near impossible to put a single sensical thought into their heads. And so the conflict is painfully artificial, because it only occurs as a result of decision making that makes no sense. And none of the characters are likeable. Combined with the INCREDIBLY cringe-inducing attempts at humor that basically amounts to 'wouldn't it be gross if beauty influencers got so upset that they didn't have makeup on a deserted island that they smeared pig shit on their face.' That is one of the most important plot points. Spend your time reading basically anything else.