Tag: Reward

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 1/25/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: Here it comes again; a fantastic voyage to Palo Alto to answer this essential question: where’s my phone? It’s been undone!

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 1/25/26

“Where’s My Phone?” – Mitski

It’s finally come to that time of year when I start accumulating albums that I’m looking forward to. Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, which is set to release on February 27, is topping the list at the moment for sure! Mitski is back for her first album in two and a half years, and as usual, she’s set to put a pulse on the neuroses of the world; Nothing’s About to Happen to Me seems to be a concept album about a recluse who never leaves her cluttered house. With the aesthetics of cats and old wallpaper, this album has such a clear image—and an intriguing one. Mitski channels some of her heavier guitar work on “Where’s My Phone?”; it’s an exciting sonic callback, like she’s been dusting off the old Bury Me at Makeout Creek sounds (!!!). Adopting a falsely cheery tone, Mitski sings of this character desperately repressing every possible source of negativity, yearning to be “clear glass with nothing going on.” The sentiment of “I keep thinking surely somebody will save me/At every turn I learn that no one will” is pure Mitski all the way down, but it’s refreshing to see Mitski going headfirst into a new character; her introspection, fictional or nonfictional, is where her art shines. Plus, that music video, in which Mitski’s multigenerational home gets assailed by dozens of strangers, is nothing short of bonkers. Definitely somebody’s vivid anxiety dream, for sure.

For some reason, my mind got stuck on the classic censored beep sound on the “I would fuck the hole all night long” line. Sure, we are in the age of musicians proactively self-censoring, but of all musicians, Mitski seems like the last one to do that, especially with how she’s clawed to keep her individuality—and sanity—intact in the music industry. She’s not a Taylor Swift type, and she hasn’t shied away from profanity before. There’s no clean version of the song, and the music video has it too—and yet the official lyrics don’t censor it. So what’s the deal? Was it some sort of artistic touch for the album’s central character’s supposed shame and guilt? I still haven’t come to a conclusion myself, but I swear that it’s intentional. Whatever the case, “Where’s My Phone” buzzes with neurosis, crunching at the edges, an ember of anxiety.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

I’m Thinking of Ending Things – Iain Reid – “I keep thinking surely somebody will save me/At every turn I learn that no one will/I just want my mind to be a clear glass/Clear glass with nothing instead…”

“Fantastic Voyage” – David Bowie

As calm of a song “Fantastic Voyage” is, it’s a certainly eerie start to Lodger. I finally got around to listening to the album in its entirety not long ago, while mourning 10 years since Bowie’s passing in 2016. Listening to Lodger not long after Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy put me in an irreparable chokehold makes me realize the sheer impact of Eno on Bowie—his weirdness was all there, but after decades of being mainstream, it was Eno who resurrected the less palatable parts of weirdness. I’m sure it was less unexpected at the conclusion of the Berlin Trilogy, but expecting another “Starman” and getting…I dunno, “African Night Flight” must’ve been some unparalleled whiplash. And he’d keep the act going throughout his entire career. In a way, Lodger is a microcosm of what his career would later be. There’s no shortage of tricks up his sleeve, from the strange, often eerie left turns to the sneakier tricks; for one, “Fantastic Voyage” and “Boys Keep Swinging” have an almost identical chord progression, but their atmospheres are so radically different that I didn’t even notice. It’s a trickster kind of album, obstinate in its mission to not be boxed in.

After falling back to Earth, the Berlin Trilogy got much more worldly, and Lodger was its peak. The entire album reeks with the recollection that the world is rife with the unknown, be it in places unseen or the machinations of politics. “Fantastic Voyage” is the thesis of that song; it reads like a scrawled diary before the apocalypse, and it very well could have been, what with the threat of nuclear annihilation and the Cold War on Bowie’s mind. He pits the casual dehumanization of entire peoples against the plea for the dignity of all individuals. He looks skyward, pondering the missiles that could rain down on the population and end everything in an instant. But in the midst of all this turmoil, decades after 1979, the final verse rings truer than ever: “They wipe out an entire race and I’ve got to write it down/But I’m still getting educated/But I’ve got to write it down/And it won’t be forgotten.”

Oof. Certainly feels like a slap in the face, given that ICE has been snatching children off the streets and shoots unarmed civilians in Minneapolis, and I’m just holed up in my apartment trying to get my thesis done. Yet Bowie’s words feel like a guidebook. I’ve got to write it down—I interpret that both in the sense that we have to commit the crimes of these monsters to paper, lest the government conveniently paints them in a more pleasant light (as they already are), but also that in spite of everything, we have to keep on with our creativity. Sometimes, all we can do is write. Of course, that doesn’t make political action, however small, null and void, but sometimes it’s all you can do but journal everything around you to stay sane. All that matters, both for Bowie and for all of us, is to keep the pen moving—that keeps our minds sharp, it creates a record of the soul.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? – Temi Oh – “Remember it’s true/Dignity is valuable/But our lives are valuable too/We’re learning to live with somebody’s depression/And I don’t want to live with somebody’s depression/We’ll get by, I suppose…”

“Palo Alto” – Radiohead

In a move that’s probably stunned nobody, I’ve decided to become the insufferable neighbor and take up collecting vinyl; my parents were nice enough to gift me with a record player, as well as my two favorite albums: David Bowie’s Hunky Dory and Radiohead’s OK Computer. I can’t thank them enough. My neighbors, on the other hand, are probably rueing the day that they had to hear “Fitter Happier” through the walls without warning. Your honor, I plead “whoopsie daisies.”

OK Computer—specifically, the 2017 remaster with all of the b-sides, OKNOTOK—all but swallowed me whole in my freshman year of high school, and the version of me that got chewed up and spit out was irreparably, permanently changed. Whether it was for the best or the worst is up to interpretation, but either way, it’s given me a love of Radiohead that hasn’t waned to this day, more than seven years after I first listened to the album. However, at that age, I was still in the woeful process of immediately deleting whatever songs that didn’t hook me on the first few listens from my library. The destruction left in the wake was irreparable—and it also made me completely forget that this absolute gem existed. I can’t even put my finger on why it wasn’t a favorite at the time; the only reasonable explanation is that OK Computer is just so jam-packed full of songs that shattered my brain that brain-shattering became the standard. I was harsh back then.

Yet on my new record player, “Palo Alto” came out of left field. In the mindset of Thom Yorke, I can sort of see why this one got the axe back in the day—musically, it’s less adventurous than some of the other tracks. It’s very much of the same, more straightforward rock/Britpop crop of The Bends, despite the avalanche of fuzz and decorative beep-boops. Thematically, it’s on par with the anxiety of OK Computer, with the tiresome monotony of corporate life: “In a city of the future/It is difficult to concentrate/Meet the boss, meet the wife/Everybody’s happy, everyone is made for life.” Even if it’s not as compositionally inventive as some of the a-sides, even Radiohead’s more straightforward songs are a cut above the rest, and “Palo Alto” is proof. With the sudden, grinding assault of Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien’s guitars against Thom Yorke’s exasperated delivery of regurgitated small talk, it encapsulates the exhaustion of being trapped in an endless cycle of work buttressed only with surface-level interactions.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Embassytown – China Miéville – “In a city of the future/It is difficult to find a space/I’m too busy to see you/You’re too busy to wait…”

“Here It Comes Again” – Cate Le Bon

I regret to inform you that I’ve been listening to way more Cate Le Bon again, but I can’t help it that it faintly fits the vibe of my honors thesis. Michelangelo Dying, Pompeii, and Reward all got revisited last week, and you will be hearing about it. This is, once again, a threat.

Among the many impressive things about Cate Le Bon is the myriad ways that she makes her music sound innately aquatic. I talked about how watery all of Reward feels when I first listened to it back in July, with “Miami” and its sounds of aquarium gravel and bubbles. Unlike a lot of her songs, “Here It Comes Again” feels more like water rhythmically; with an almost waltz-like rhythm, it feels like the motion of a plastic toy boat being carried out to sea. The melody continually repeats and lives by eating itself, a gently cyclical waltz across a flooded ballroom covered in algae. That precise quality of the melody is what enhances the lyrics. It’s implied in the title (and the chorus), but “Here It Comes Again” drowns in monotony, its sonic eyelids growing heavier with each repetition: “Man alive/This solitude/Is wrinkles in the dirt.” Very few artists make solitude and dreariness into such musical feasts like Cate Le Bon does—if it’s loneliness, she’s spun it into something as appealing as a bowl of candies with brightly-colored wrappers.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Here Beside the Rising Tide – Emily Jane – “Man alive/This solitude/Is wrinkles in the dirt/I borrowed love from carnivals/Set it in a frame/Here it comes again…”

“Been Undone” – Peter Gabriel

HE’S BACK! PETER GABRIEL IS BACK TO SAVE 2026!

Once again culminating in an album coming out this December, o\i is being released in singles corresponding with each full moon of 2026. Three days into 2026, it gave me some hope—and a bittersweet full-circle moment for me. I spent the spring semester of my freshman year of college listening to i/o‘s singles, and I’ll be spending the spring semester of my senior year listening to its inverse. The songs comprise of both castoffs from the i/o sessions and from further back in his career; according to this video, the chord progression for “Been Undone” has been on the back burner for several decades. As the starting gun for the album, it’s an expression of some of what I love best about Gabriel: his boundless creativity and his grounded humility. “Been Undone” is all about learning moments—the ones that cause us pain or overwhelm us, but ultimately teach us something valuable: “By all the forms that you get from the Mandelbrot set/I’ve been undone/By the recursive slaves in the home of the brave/I’ve been undone.” I’m assuming the latter is in reference to the deeply broken U.S. prison system, but back to back with a mathematical concept that results in dizzying, fascinating patterns, it proves the song’s point: both great wonder and great pain can be the origin of learning. Musically, I thought it was going to be a more standard new-era Gabriel song, and it continues so for nearly 6 minutes; but at 5:59, he takes a left turn back into “The Tower That Ate People” territory, turning a pleasantly synthy tune into his personal brand of almost-industrial, proving that even at 74, he has no shortage of tricks up his sleeve.

Also, the bit where Gabriel was asked about the Bright/Dark-side mixes and if he allows the producers to play with the structure cracked me up—probably the clearest vocalization of “no <3” I’ve ever seen HAHA

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Life Hacks for a Little Alien – Alice Franklin – “Though I want to observe, it keeps touching a nerve/And I’ve been undone/By the past that you trace, by a moment of grace/I have been undone…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 7/27/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: Aquarium gravel music, driving-in-the-summer music, and music that I would’ve made a badly-animated Warriors AMV for in elementary school, if I had the capabilities.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/27/25

“Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” – Car Seat Headrest

Yeah, yeah. I will not shut up about the Car Seat Headrest show two weeks ago. This is a threat. Consider this me gripping the sides of your head and forcing you to look at this screen and listen to a painfully awkward gay man’s earth-shattering voice cracks. You WILL listen.

After talking about how he doesn’t play much of his old music anymore, namely that of Teens of Denial, Will Toledo said that this song was one of the more optimistic songs he’d written during that period, where he described himself as an “angry young man.” This is going to sound incredibly corny, but stay with me. I knew all the words to “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” for years, but it wasn’t until then that it really hit me. That’s when I knew them. Granted, I was 13 and focused more on the enigmatic wails of Will Toledo and the raw wave of emotion that swept me up in the undertow, but I never quite considered that, in the midst of an album steeped in substance abuse, self-hatred, and depression, that this is a much more optimistic outlook on it all. (Speaking of said substance abuse, I really think that listening to Teens of Denial so much when I was younger was unironically very good drug prevention for me. Sure, a good 50-75% of their songs up to 2016 are about drinking and drugs, but they’re all about just how deeply miserable Toledo was while drinking and doing drugs. They need to implement this album in schools instead of D.A.R.E.) I wouldn’t be surprised if “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” was the last song of the album written; it takes a more retrospective look at the cycle of self-hatred and bad decisions that color Teens of Denial as a whole, and it offers a knowing look, a hug, and a rallying cry: “It doesn’t have to be like this.” From the outside looking in, Toledo looks at the wreckage of everything he’s done up to this point, and professes this to his own anxieties:

“Here’s that voice in your head/Giving you shit again/But you know he loves you/And he doesn’t mean to cause you pain/Please listen to him/It’s not too late/Turn off the engine/Get out of the car/And start to walk.”

GOD. OW. That’s another way homer. I suppose it’s taken years for it to hit me like it was likely intended to, but that’s probably for the best. I think of recent times, when I was so wrapped up in my own anxiety that I didn’t even realize that I could make the choice to work with it, to create a life for myself that would result in me being a happier, healthier person. I’m still on that road. Every day, it’s a little more effort. But it’s all worth it, brick by brick. As Toledo says, “But if we learn how to live like this/Maybe we can learn how to start again/Like a child who’s never done wrong/Who hasn’t taken that first step.” The power is always in your hands, whether you realize it or not. You can’t make every negative thing in your life disappear into thin air, but you can make those choices, take control of the wheel and start to steer your life in a better direction. It takes a monumental, gradual effort, but IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS. It never does. Looking back to a year ago, I can’t be more proud of myself for taking that leap, of leaning into my support system to try little by little to end the cycle of anxiety that I was falling into. This song couldn’t have come back to me at a better time. You can always learn to start again.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Seep – Chana Porter – learning to break free of a state of societal complacency in disguise as betterment, and learning to live with grief, love, and every other complicated emotion.

“Stay” – Shakespears Sister

There’s a brief window in every decade where the signature sounds haven’t yet been cemented. It’s a limbo that allows for the final bastions of the last decade’s sound to grab ahold. This song comes to mind, because this is quite possibly the most ’80s song of the ’90s.

My mom knew exactly what she was doing when she played this for me. I feel like I was around 8 or 9 when she first played it for me. I wished I remembered more of the specifics, because I definitely had some kind of elaborate Warrior Cats AMV planned in my head set to this, but I remember just being so enraptured. It was one of those songs that instantly marked its place in my memory: I was in the backseat of the car, at a gas station, and the sky was overcast, and I’d just had a revelation. My mom and I are definitely interlinked at critical points in my music history, and the more I think about it, “Stay” was absolutely one of them. Like…how did I not know that the album was called Hormonally Yours? I mean, what else is there to say other than fuck yea, that’s an album title??

“Stay” is pure drama, and as over-the-top and gloriously camp as it is, in the right amount, that’s my absolute catnip. Funny that I should mention catnip, because despite the ubiquitous lyrics, it was meant to be part of a concept album, all based around [checks notes] this ’50s sci-fi movie called Cat-Women of the Moon. (Hence this song.) “Stay” was intended to be about the love story between one of said Cat-Women and one of the human male crew members of the ship to the moon, with Marcella Detroit being the Cat-Woman in love and Siobhan Fahey taking the part of, one of the other Cat-Women who shuns their romance. Despite Shakespear’s Sister not being able to execute the concept album as they wanted to, “Stay” retains the high drama and yearning present in the original idea. Over-the-top as it is, I can’t help but be enraptured by it, the same way that I was when I was a little kid. The dueling voices of Detroit and Fahey craft a story of operatic proportions, cranking the yearning up to 11.

Even though the Cat-Women of the Moon never saw the light of day, what did survive is glorious—namely the music video for “Stay.” Instead, we’ve got a vague sci-fi setting, where Detroit is doting over a comatose man, and Fahey is Death tempting the man to come to the other side, complete with a star crown and some absolute Harley Quinn crazy eyes. It’s so camp. God, I love it.

Jenny Joyce could never.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Death’s Country – R.M. Romero – I’m aligning more with the music video interpretation here, but what’s more high drama than going into the underworld to save your girlfriend from the brink of death?

“Re-Hash” – Gorillaz

Nothing like a great pop song about how much pop music sucks.

Gorillaz, at least in the early days, was a study in artificiality. The project famously came about because Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett had been watching a lot of reality TV and hearing the much more manufactured aspect of pop music at the time (“It’s the sweet sensation over the dub/A one-off situation that don’t wanna stop”), and wondered if they could take it to the extreme: an entirely artificial band. In a way, “Re-Hash” was them slyly taking a shot at what Albarn viewed to be the state of pop music at the time, before blowing it out of the water and making the most artful indie-pop music possible. That first album is almost a no-skip album, and there’s no shortage of tracks that I constantly revisit. I hadn’t listened to “Re-Hash” in quite some time, and I’d forgotten just how incredible of an opener it is. Admittedly, my association with their self-titled album will always be of summer, since I’m pretty sure I first listened to it in July or August back in high school, but everything about “Re-Hash” is soaked in sunshine, with a combination of acoustic guitars mixed with drum machines that begs for a rolled down window. That Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-aaaaah repetition towards the last third of the song is just infectious—without a doubt, a very recent holdover the more playful side of Blur’s discography. What a propulsive start to such an iconic album.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Hammajang Luck – Makana Yamamoto – I’m going more off of vibes and atmosphere than lyrics, but this would fit right in with the more lighthearted sides of Yamamoto’s sci-fi world.

“Miami” – Cate Le Bon

Oh my god, CATE LE BON!! Reward is an excellent album as a whole—I’d say that it’s just about equal to Pompeii as far as consistency, creativity, and the uniqueness of the soundscape. Although she’d begun to transition into the more synth-dominated part of her sound here, Reward has a more naturalistic feel to it. Even if the album cover didn’t have her bent over, walking over the contours of a time-worn cliff against an overcast sky, it has this inherent aura to it that feels like having the wind toss your hair as you walk along a pebbly beach as a storm brewing in the distance. The comparison that jumped out immediately to me was Damon Albarn’s The Nearer the Fountain, the More Pure the Stream Flows, an album with similarly rocky shore imagery on the album cover and throughout the lyrics. I wouldn’t expect such a feeling to brew in me from an album dominated by artsy brass and woodwinds and synth in equal measure (lots of great clarinet and saxophone action here, similar to Albarn).

In my exploration into her music, I’ve found a constant in Cate Le Bon’s more recent work: she’s damn good at making an opening track (see also: “Dirt on the Bed”). “Miami” sounds like being in a goldfish bowl. The bright, percussive synths in the background bubble like an aquarium filter, while others sound like water sliding against glass. Some of the more recognizable percussion hushes like aquarium gravel crunching in the palm of your hand. It’s all so strangely aquatic, even with the steady blast of saxophones in the background. It honestly feels far more appealing than the actual Miami, but then again, my only experience of Miami was a grotty hotel, so maybe that’s my overall Florida bias. But I’d be hard-pressed to think of a song on Reward that’s better suited to open up Le Bon’s peacefully avant-garde soundscape than this one. It lulls you into a state of calm while enticing you forward with breadcrumbs of her signature, off-kilter charm. The lilt of her voice is as much an element of the ecosystem as the brass or the synths; if anything, it’s the goldfish in this metaphor, her voice like the smooth, effortless flap of fins underwater.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Letter to the Luminous Deep – Sylvie Cathrall – a gentle and tender dispatch from a submerged world.

“You’re Damaged” – Waxahatchee

For all intents and purposes, I really should be into Waxahatchee. Stylistically, she’s often grouped in the company of Snail Mail, Adrianne Lenker, and Soccer Mommy, which should be a massive red cape to my sad indie rock bull. (In fact, my reigning association with her is this one tweet that reads “I would personally be afraid of snail mail because she’s friends with waxahatchee and waxahatchee looks like she open carries”) But the main thing that keeps me from enjoying her most of the time is her voice. It’s fully just personal preference, and I’m sure she’s very talented, but Waxahatchee feels like proof that singing in cursive isn’t exclusive to pop music. Please!! Sing without over-enunciating everything!! My god!!

Thankfully, there are exceptions to the rule. “You’re Damaged” fits snugly into the indie rock that I usually love, with Katie Crutchfield’s sparse, bare vocals. Here, her voice soars, free of expectations, dipping deftly from hard to soft as she runs circles around memories of a broken relationship: “And no I can not see into the future/No I cannot breathe underwater/Bit your last word, I call out to you/This place is vile, and I’m vile too.” It mirrors the album cover of Cerulean Salt, where Crutchfield is blurry and submerged underwater, her face obscured by her own hair and the ripples of the water; rambling through the misty glass shards of memory, she struggles to break away from an unhealthy relationship when she’s just as unhealthy as the other part, wanting them when everything around her screams for her to do the opposite. It’s the kind of song that only a raw voice and an acoustic guitar can capture, and it does so hauntingly.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Desert Echoes – Abdi Nazemian – “And no I can not see into the future/No I cannot breathe underwater/Bit your last word, I Call out to you/This place is vile, and I’m vile too…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (7/8/25) – Something More

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’ve been looking around for books to read for Disability Pride Month, and in general, trying to find some books by Palestinian/Palestinian diaspora authors. Something More fit both of those, so I figured I would give it a go! Though it wasn’t a perfect novel, it had all of the qualities of a classic YA romance novel—angsty, romantic, and heartfelt writing.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Something More – Jackie Khalilieh

Jessie is determined to turn over a new leaf. On the precipice of starting high school, she wants to show the world that she isn’t the girl who she was in middle school—lonely, awkward, and more importantly, autistic. Keeping her diagnosis a secret, Jessie quickly makes new friends—and new crushes—at Holy Trinity High. But when her friendships begin to unravel and her relationships start to crumble, Jessie questions whether it’s worth it to keep her authentic truth a secret after all.

TW/CW: ableism (external & internalized), xenophobia, racism, substance abuse, bullying

Dude. Jessie and I would’ve been best friends in high school. I would’ve gladly welcomed another neurodivergent Radiohead girlie to go sneak off to the library with during my lunch period.

Though I can’t speak to the accuracy of the representation, I loved how Something More explored Jessie’s identity! It’s something that I assume has a lot of personal importance to the author, and Khalilieh’s explored all of the facets of Jessie’s identity with such sensitivity and love. I’m not autistic, but I am neurodivergent (I have SPD), and I deeply resonated with a lot of her struggles with fitting in and adjusting to high school while being neurodivergent. I loved the arc of Jessie realizing that there’s no reason to hide her autism from her friends, and I also appreciated that a lot of her friends, despite their flaws, were respectful and accepting of her identity. The same goes with her Palestinian-Canadian identity—again, I can’t speak to the representation, but Something More had such a lovely exploration of Jessie’s experience growing up in an immigrant household and feeling like an outsider because of her Palestinian roots. It’s a deeply refreshing intersection of representation in YA literature that I adored!

I normally don’t advocate for things becoming Netflix movies, but I swear that Something More has the perfect recipe for becoming that kind of YA classic that gets a cute streaming movie. I can already see the Clueless-esque ’90s soundtrack from here, tailored towards Jessie’s special interest and the music integrated in the novel. From Jessie’s diary full of friend and boy-related (and getting her parents to get her a phone-related) goals to Jessie’s unique spark as a protagonist, it’s got the classic tropes down to a science, yet never makes them feel tired. She injects the right amounts of both the sass and the vulnerability that comes with a lovable YA rom-com protagonist. Khalilieh perfectly captures the awkwardness of entering high school and the rocky path to fitting in and finding your place. Jessie has so much great development, from realizing her self-worth in the face of her crush being dismissive of her, to realizing that she needs to stand up to her toxic “friends.” Jackie Khalilieh has clearly done her homework on YA, and with a little refinement, is well on her way to making a classic.

Despite what I loved about it, Something More suffered from a few key flaws. The most glaring of them was that…oh my god, there were so many wild, random subplots and side tangents that didn’t contribute much to the plot. Jessie’s grandma, who was almost never mentioned, randomly dies towards the end of the book, one of her friends gets involved with a creepy older man and gets dumped in a parking lot, and the rest of the friend group continuously gets tossed between several skeevy guys, seemingly with no resolution. Yeah, high school is weird, but by the end of the novel, the relationship/ex statuses between Jessie and her friend group looked like that one panel in Diary of a Wimpy Kid with the massive relationship diagram. And that’s just her friend group of FOUR PEOPLE. It was wild. Other than the gross Mel subplot, which…at the very least, I guess it gave some depth to Jessie and Levi’s relationship, none of them added to the plot, and nor did they have any ripple effects throughout the novel. I guess there was only so much time for Jessie to reflect on her grandmother dying, but if they were as close as we were blatantly told in a handful of sentences, why did it barely have an effect on Jessie? Wouldn’t she be…y’know, experiencing some form of grief? It all just felt rushed and took away page time that could’ve been used to develop the more central relationships in the novel.

Speaking of relationships…thankfully, as the cover might lead you to believe, there really isn’t much of a love triangle. (Cue a sigh of relief.) I guess you could technically make an argument for it, but honestly, up until the 80% mark, I fully thought that things between Jessie and Griffin were going to stay completely platonic. Yet even then, Levi would’ve been the worse choice…LEVI. What a piece of work! I know that Jessie had to learn, BUT GIRL! YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN HIM! Just because he’s vaguely nice and looks like Kurt Cobain doesn’t mean that he’s not a flaky, disrespectful asshole! I get that Jessie had to learn both her lesson and her self-worth when it comes to falling head-over-heels for guys, but I feel like the writing of their relationship needed some work. I feel like the time between them meeting and having their first kiss was way too fast, even if Jessie was infatuated; their dynamic over the rest of the novel felt repetitive, and it didn’t serve much to the novel save for building the case for Levi being insufferable. As for Griffin, I did like their relationship, but I honestly think it could’ve worked romantically or platonically—I did like them getting together at the end, but I also would’ve appreciated him being part of Jessie’s (abandoned) goal of getting a guy friend and having a healthy depiction of friendships of the opposite gender.

Overall, a diverse YA romance that nails all of the factors for a classic formula, but faltered in its overabundance of subplots and awkwardly-paced relationships. 3.5 stars!

Something More is a standalone and Jackie Khalilieh’s debut novel. Khalilieh is also the author of You Started It and the forthcoming Everything Comes Back to You, which is set for release in 2026.

Today’s song:

I love this song, it sounds like being in a goldfish bowl…

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourself!