skudiklier's reviews
613 reviews

This is such a cute collection of comics! I've been following them online for years so I was excited they collected some into a book. These are really sweet and heartfelt and funny. 

Thank you to Andrews McMeel Publishing and Netgalley for the chance to read and review this ARC. 

I really liked this! At first I found some of it hard to follow, just in terms of what was "really" happening vs what wasn't, but overall I don't think that diminished the quality or anything like that. I'm glad I listened to the audiobook as I feel like that works really well for this sort of screenplay format. This book was engaging, heartfelt, and funny, and I'd definitely recommend it.

I'm so glad I got to read this! Shelby's writing is so beautiful and hopeful and this book has so many words of wisdom. I also was lucky enough to get a copy Shelby wrote a bunch of notes in, and I *loved* getting to read her annotations with comments on the poems and the process of writing this book. 

This collection is the best of Sam's work! The poems are beautiful and heartfelt and have such gorgeous imagery, and then the art and visuals are so stunning and complement the words so well. 

Aaaa I loved this!! It took me a bit to get into it but I think that was more about my state of mind going in than the poems themselves. By the end I was screaming at every poem, and I took so many notes down of quotes and my favorite poems. 

This is one of those brilliant collections that has overarching themes and callbacks to previous poems, but never comes close to feeling repetitive at all. I want my poetry to be like this. 

I've already read and reviewed ABFE in general on the hardcover edition, but this was my first time listening to the audiobook. I think it was excellent, and love all the small things they did to make it a great performance. They were never distracting, and only added to the story. 

My full review is copied below in case anyone wants it:

I am reeling from this book. It's wild and big and weird and fascinating and I'm probably going to think about it for a long long time. It's somehow both very different from the first book, and also about the same core issues--just like, more fleshed out. What you get when you take those thoughts further. I will never not be in awe of Hank and these books.

Edit: After I wrote this review, I talked about the book with a friend and realized I had some problems with its resolution. So for the last two years I've been very sure that while I liked this book and series a lot, I liked the first book better. But I just finished my first reread of the book, and have some thoughts. I think it's just that there's one specific thing I find dissatisfying about the resolution, and aside from that I think this book is amazing. ABFE has a lot of things I find really useful and interesting, and I'm glad I reread it so I could appreciate it more. I like that these concepts are more fleshed out in this book than in the first one, and I think Hank really got where he was trying to go. 

Aghh, wow. Becky Chambers is without a doubt one of my favorite authors, and every book I read of hers just confirms it more. This book was soft, and lovely, and thoughtful, and when I finished it I just let out a huge sigh. It made me feel emotionally raw in the best way. I really hope she writes more in this series. I could spend so much time with these characters and not get tired of them. 

Okay, so, I only read this because my sister forced me to. It was more entertaining than I expected, as in like, I was interested and wanted to keep reading and stuff. It was really bad but in a funny way, and also not quite as bad as I thought it would be. I still don't think I want to read the other ones but I'm more open to the idea than I was before I read this one.