It’s the strangest thing, but February always feels about two days shorter than other months. Wonder why that is. Anyway, I managed to fit a good amount of reading into this short month and definitely have some recommendations!

DAISY JONES & THE SIX BY TAYLOR JENKINS REID

3/5 STARS

The tale of the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer.

I'm torn. There's a lot to admire about this book, and yet, I didn't like it.

I'll start with the positives: It's different. An entire novel written in interview form is something I don't see much (maybe ever?). An oral history of rock and roll is a neat concept. I loved the last 30 or so pages with their last show on stage and the resulting conversation between Daisy and Camilla in the hotel room. Those last 30 pages were 5 stars for me; the author really nailed the emotional weight of the denouement.

Negatives: The interview form didn't work for me. Maybe it could have for another subject, but a fictional band and fictional songs are just not the right match for this form. You have characters describing an entire album with pretty intricate detail of the songs, the sound, etc and the reader just has to accept it. It's such a boring, one-sided experience to be told EVERYTHING and shown nothing. It's not like in a real music magazine or album review where the writer describes the music a certain way and then you can go listen to the song for yourself and think, "wow, they're absolutely right, it's exactly like what they said!" With this book, there's none of that confirmation.

I found the interview form just frustrating because I couldn't let go of the fact that it's all fictional. The reason I read celebrity interviews are because I already know something about these people and want to know more. Can't say the same about this novel.

And then the story and characters were your typical rock 'n' roll band. People were mostly one dimensional, and the story of the band felt like one I'd heard before. For the whole first 3/4 of the book, it just wasn't that exciting. Even the way Daisy joins the band is so mundane: a studio producer or exec decides she would go great with them, so she just walks in one day. It wasn't this magical spark moment.

SWEETBITTER BY STEPHANIE DANLER

3/5 STARS

A young woman's coming-of-age, set against the glitzy, grimy backdrop of New York's most elite restaurants.

I struggled with the first half of this book. The beginning was intriguing enough, clearly setting up the small-town girl moving to the big city trope. But then... nothing much happened. I couldn't really tell where the story was going. Tess didn't seem to have any motivation other than pining after Jake. But why did she move to New York? What was she running from? What was her biggest desire? I may have missed it, but I honestly don't know.

But I did think by the end, the book had some interesting commentary on class and the struggle of upward mobility. Simone was a memorable character, even if a little unrealistic. I did find myself admiring the book by the end, but it just felt tougher than needed to get into it.

MURDER IN OLD BOMBAY BY NEV MARCH

4/5 STARS

A Sherlock Holmes-like mystery set in British India against a backdrop of racial and political tension.

I found this entertaining and complex! Though it borrows a lot from Sherlock Holmes, it still adds a richness of Indian culture and colonial tension that I found original. I did have a bit of trouble getting into it in the beginning because many characters are introduced at once and the details of the mystery are all laid out, but ultimately the mystery plotline pivots to something more personal to the main character, and that I found riveting. Would recommend this one!

WATCH ME DISAPPEAR BY JANELLE BROWN

4/5 STARS

Olive’s mother, Billie, went missing a year ago on a backpacking trip through Desolation Wilderness. Now, Olive’s beginning to see visions of her and is determined to discover what truly happened.

I zipped through this one! Being a Bay Area resident and having lived in Berkeley for a few years, I definitely connected with the setting and felt it was vividly constructed. The story definitely kept me guessing all the way through, and I thought the ending was fitting, if just a tiny bit of a letdown; this is because I was getting major Gone Girl vibes for the first half of the book, and it ultimately is just not the same book by the end, so my bad for setting up false expectations in my head.

PATHER PANCHALI BY Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay

4/5 STARS

Pather Panchali deals with the life of the Roy family, both in their ancestral village Nishchindipur in rural Bengal and later when they move to Varanasi in search of a better life, as well as the anguish and loss they face during their travels.

I liked this novel for the extremely vividly rendered world of rural Bengal and the daily life of one Brahmin family. I learned much about their caste and their social interactions, but I most loved the descriptions of the scenery. The plot is pretty slow and meandering; this book is more like a "slice of life" rather than a riveting tale. For that, it was a slow read for me, but otherwise, I appreciated the writing.

TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM BY YAA GYASI

3.5/5 STARS

Gifty is a Ghanian immigrant and neuroscience student studying addiction in rats, inspired by her own brother’s heroin overdose. When her mother visits, she’s forced to examine her own family history and relationship between science and religion.

Short review: I liked this book. It asks questions I'm interested in, like the tension between religion and science, race, and why some people are addicts and some not. It takes on big topics and presents them in a way that's easy to sink into. However, that same ease is why I didn't really connect with the book much. It all sounded like points I'd heard before, and it didn't really have me thinking about these topics in a new light. Maybe that's because the book is quite short, and so it just felt like we barely scratched the surface. It asks a lot of questions but doesn't seem to arrive at an answer.

There was no specificity to any of the writing; all the passages about Gifty ruminating on religion and science were abstract and not grounded in her present moment, and for that reason, I not only couldn't connect with Gifty or see her as a real person I would know, but I also often found myself wondering "what's actually happening?"

And that leads me to my main fault with this book: the lack of plot. Nothing much happens. A lot of stuff happens before the present narrative begins, but the book itself is just Gifty looking back on it all and thinking about it. If "show not tell" is the biggest rule in writing, why are we getting so many bestsellers like this?

THE TALENTED MISS FARWELL BY EMILY GRAY TEDROW

2/5 STARS

A small town’s treasurer lives a double life as an art collector in New York City. Little does her town know she’s bilking money from their funds to pay for her art habit. But as the deals get bigger and bigger, her debt to the town spirals out of control.

I did not finish at about 75%. It was boring, and comparing itself to The Talented Mr. Ripley is just setting up to fail. There's zero intrigue (unless you like reading about accounting), Reba/Becky is not terribly charismatic or fascinating (no Tom Ripley, that's for sure), and it just is not as dark or twisted as I was hoping (and lead to believe by that title/marketing). I came to Goodreads to see if any of the reviews mentioned a crazy twist that was worth the read, but... nope. so I'm reclaiming my time.