Welcome to Litsy!

I thought, I‘ll just start this today so I can have the rest of the week to get ready for winter camp Litsy this weekend. Boop, I finished it today. It was lovely. We meet 70something Sybil Van Antwerp and through her letters we learn about her gay brother in France, her contentious relationship with her neighborhood garden club, a burgeoning love triangle, unlikely friendships, regrets. How life can feel empty one day and full the next. Pick!

I read our first #WinterCampLitsy book in one sitting! This is why I love camp- because I would have never read this on my own but I absolutely LOVED it!!! Cannot wait to discuss Syb and her letters! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A soft pick for me? Still thinking about it. I‘m a sucker for the epistolary format and Evans does a a great job with it. I just….wanted a little more oomph in the story?

#Celebrate Day 13: This epistolary novel is definitely #CharacterDriven - either Sibylle grows on you or you find the entire premise unbelievable. I am of the former camp and came to the university with my eyes swollen after reading the entire book the night before. Cannot wait to discuss as part of #WinterCampLitsy. Paired with v60 coffee to find out what the hype is about - found it too fruity with notes of sour fruit, so yeah, pass.

“Sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn‘t mean that we won‘t win.”
I actually wasn‘t planning to read this book, so I am glad that Sharon McMahon chose it for her book club, & I am very much looking forward to meeting with Vice President Harris over Zoom!
If you felt like you never really got to understand who Harris is as a person or what her policy was or her ideas for the direction of our country, I would recommend you read this book.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This was a twofer—an #auldlangspine pick from @Amiable and the January book for #WinterCampLitsy and I loved it! The storytelling through letters was so clever and I really loved the characters. It was a book where as I was listening I was aware (and sad) that I could only read it for the first time once and it made me really savor and enjoy it. Looking forward to the discussion next week! Thanks again @monalyisha for the great match!

Welp, unpopular opinion. I did not love this. 🤷 Something about it felt contrived or like I was being manipulated to feel a certain way. Maybe that sounds weird and arguably that is true of any novel. There's always an author pulling the strings. I just don't want to feel it. Sybille never felt true to me. She felt like a creation & a few storylines (Martinelli, Dean of English) struck me as absurd.
I also might have a cold, black heart. 🖤

Another great and necessary read from Snyder.

#weekendreads Tagged title is for the overbooked zoom book club January meeting!

There was so much hype around this book that it was inevitable to be slightly disappointed. I enjoyed it, the epistolary format worked well to keep the story moving forward, but on the whole it just came across a bit too pat. The main emotional climax comes from the reader finally understanding why Sybil is the way she is, and her relationships with the other characters are basically repaired “offstage,” which felt a bit unsatisfying.