Ann McMan

I wasn't quite clear from the blurb exactly what I was getting into with this Early Reviewer book. Was "sightings of The Black Bird of Chernobyl" to be taken literally or metaphorically? Was it going to be a paranormal story or no? It was billed as a romantic comedy, but that could go either way.

And for a fleeting moment once I realized the answer was "no," I was minorly disappointed. After all, the apparition spotted by the workers of the Ukrainian nuclear plant would be new grist in the overly chewed mill of supernatural stories.

That disappointment didn’t even last a whole chapter. Somehow, the goth, misanthropic, cranky Wednesday-Addams-of-a-protagonist caught my interest and wouldn’t let go. For three months of Lilah Stohler’s life and somewhere around 275 pages of mine, I enjoyed following her madcap, LGBT, occasionally contemplative, always idiosyncratic lurch ahead with her life, surrounded by the colorful characters of Stohler’s Funeral Home.

As with any romantic comedy, we strongly suspect where everything will end up. But like any good romantic comedy, the journey was the point. And this one, humorous and erudite and quirky, was a fun one.

If you like romantic comedies, I’d say this one is worth it.… (more)

i really, really love the concept and theoretical framework of this. the essays by each of the writing retreat's participants being the bridge between the chapters is frankly kind of brilliant. but the execution of this mostly didn't work for me. it's not awful or anything, and there are parts that are amusing enough and not written badly. but generally, it's not well written and all of the humor feels sophomoric. there are way too many characters for this to work effectively. there is no reason to have so many of them (i thought maybe it correlated to the number of stars in the constellation pisces but that's not right) and there just isn't a good way to keep all the characters separate and individual, especially when the author has chosen to keep the essay writers secret. that jumbles the characters too much and makes this much less fun and insightful to read. i'm not sure she handled cross-dressing and intersexuality well, but i can't say for sure, so just hope she had a sensitivity reader for those issues. i definitely didn't like the stereotypical way she wrote a black woman speaking to a white woman (like calling her 'white woman' when addressing her). as to the character relationships, i know two weeks isolated-ish together can feel like a long time, and i know that these people mostly already knew each other, but i just didn't believe real people would behave this way, for the most part.… (more)