eemilycolleen's reviews
532 reviews

when harry met sally is, to me, perfect. you cannot improve upon it. it’s somehow sharp & warm & real & charming all at once, and i can’t imagine anyone being able to spin that precise magic ever again. AND YET. maybe it’s the nora ephron student in me, maybe it’s the reylo — maybe it’s just the romantic! but I Loved This. i laughed out loud in shock, in delight, in horror; in the middle of sex scenes and dramatic climaxes and, yes, every single movie reference. fight me if you like, but at the end of the day, after you whittle down all the arguing & inside jokes & annoying neuroses & sexual tension, when harry met sally is about friendship — it’s about being so obsessed with your best friend that you commit your life to them. and you know what????? that’s romance. “this goes wrong one hundred percent of the time. until it doesn’t.” AND TRULY, SOMETIMES IT DOESN’T!!!!

details that made me laugh out loud:
- honestly, just, all of the iconic ari-as-queer-girl-harry-burns moments. “there’s someone staring at you in personal growth” as ari holding a dildo in a sex shop and peering quizzically over at josh. ari ruining his date by pretending to be his wife and then stealing his girl. ari leading when they danced at the new year’s eve ball. truly cackled at every one of her missteps. harry burns was MEANT to be a queer girl!
- “just two more stops. they’ll be getting off soon.”
- “it’s impossible to catch feelings on a bowflex.”
- “there’s an awkward silence hanging over the room. or perhaps that’s a fancy japanese diffuser.”
- “why, do you think about me?” / “no. never. not even once.” / “you’re so fucking weird.”
- josh using the flame emoji! absurd!
- “this isn’t the right time. i’m depressed.” / “i’m depressed too!”
- “DICTATE IT. VOICE TO TEXT.” 

we can see everything from here. i would say that there has never been such a beautiful day, but i say that all the time.

aw man yeah this was simply A Book For Me. it’s memory and daughterhood and mythmaking and it’s the way you tell and retell the stories that make you who you are, even when the stories change, even when you change. it’s the people who keep mattering, even when they hurt you, even when you don’t think of them for years, even when they’re gone. “the moral of the story is you don’t remember what happened: what you remember becomes what happened.” i read our town when i was a child, too. i remember. 

 i love women and i love soccer :) extremely fun on audio. a romance that intimately understands the importance of having your hair played with!!!!! 

 extremely very depressing. felt kind of fundamentally empty which is probably the point but oof 

feels a little bit like this whole book was contrived off the sentence “daria fitzgerald had slid into her DMs” and frankly — it works! beat for beat, this is an EXTREMELY confident romance novel. you can always tell when the author has a real love for the source material, and this just shines with love.

pride & prejudice adaptations hinge on their elizabeths, and i loved this one. liz is sharp, fun, smart, selfish, judgmental, a bit of a slacker, more than a bit of a mess: spot on. also it must be said, liz looking at daria in a nice suit early on and thinking not “oh no she’s hot” but “oh no i want that outfit” is THEE elizabeth/darcy shit. (also of course a Vital moment of queer identificatory desire! that’s what it’s all about ladiesss!) to me the most essential elizabeth bennet vibe is a sort of unearned breezy confidence even through disaster, and the elizabeth/darcy vibe is, like, looking at each other, seeing something familiar, and scowling through that recognition. PLENTY of scowling here! i love my awful kids!

i found the through-line of liz’s complicated gender expression and the way she finds herself changing her behavior depending on the gender expression of the people she’s trying to impress, OOF, VERY relatable. and the way they find common ground in these intricacies of gender?? beautiful!! in general it’s all just a really thoughtful exploration of (white) queerness. 

other p&p notes:
- obsessed that this book’s pemberley section takes place at a gay running club. of course.
- TWO hand kisses. TWO!
- i’m not sure the lydia problem is perfectly adapted; that’s always the hardest part for modern p&p stories, it rarely scans precisely right. in general the bennet family is fun though!
- loved the last scene in a MEADOW. i am so simple!
- “you are a piece of fucking work.” yeah. that’s my shit! 

my heart swelled with grief and joy and love, so much love, for this ghost of mine.

thought this was so fun; the hook is extremely silly, frankly, but also delightful. like 13 going on 30 if mark ruffalo were a chef! i do think this wants to be more Whimsical than it is, and the characters didn’t feel as fleshed out as i generally like. but still a nice time. the lemons!!!! 

there was something unbearable in the things, in the people, in the buildings, in the streets that, only if you reinvented it all, as in a game, became acceptable. the essential, however, was to know how to play, and she and i, only she and i, knew how to do it.

ah, girlhood!! i thought this was wildly depressing and beautiful and kind of boring too, in the way life is all those things. the second person narration in the scene where lenu helps lila bathe before her wedding and thinks the only way to get past this pain would be to have her boyfriend fuck her at the exact same time as lila will be fucking her new husband ??? sent me reeling. devastating 

 very YA, very fun. the fact is i’m not very complicated as a person and all i really need in this world is tiny prissy academic princesses and enormous livid murderer fighters, and it’s best when they’re both girls. these girls weren’t harrowhark and gideon but i still enjoyed them :) many beats in this were derivative and frankly i didn’t mind!! (“you are not the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. you are the girl who survived it” reads like a tumblr post but i love it anyway) 

she brings her mouth to my ear. "every night is like this," she whispers.
-
it made no difference. there's no escaping it. some part of me will always be finding her here. some part of her will always be here, waiting to be found.

WHEW ok!!!! i thought this was very successfully depressing & searing & awful, though not as shining-shimmering unique as Sadie, which might’ve been a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me (read the audio on a walk during a midsummer thunderstorm & finished by evening candlelight. you just can’t beat Sadie by thunderstorm & candlelight). 

regardless this did work on me -- especially georgia, who i found deeply realistic, unfortunately :) thought the pacing was a little quick near the end, but c'est la vie. rooting for my girlies here and everywhere! 

stupid fun, great on audio, perfect for mindlessly playing sudoku :) rly rly enjoyed the cult classic werewolf con backdrop — i know it’s teen wolf vibes but it mostly made me wanna rewatch the fuck outta buffy, no offense to stiles