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Are You Happy Now by Hanna Jameson
“That this was the trade-off. The price of happiness. In order to feel happy he had to feel everything.” A quietly crushing yet devastatingly tender work scintillating with insight and emotional intelligence. With acuity and empathy Hanna Jameson presents her readers with a captivating narrative chronicling four people’s attempts at happiness despite a looming health…
3rd pov, 4.5 STARS, Adult, adulthood, age gap, ALIENATION, ambivalent mood, America, anxiety, Are You Happy Now, atmospheric, bad love, beautiful prose, belonging, BISEXUAL/PANSEXUAL, British author, contemporary malaise, dancers, DEATH, DEPRESSION, desire, divorce/separations, ennui, female authors, first love, gay, Hanna Jameson, heartbreak/breakups, i don’t think happiness is for me, identity, illness, introspective, it’s about the *yearning*, jealousy, journalism, lgbtq+, LITERARY FICTION, loneliness, Longing, m/m, male friendships, melancholy, mental health, musicians, near future/alternate reality, NEW YORK, pandemic, psychological, published in 2023, queer, read in 2022, restrained prose, right person wrong time, ROMANCE, self-destructive, SEXUALITY, SPECULATIVE FICTION, strong sense of place, suicide, trauma, unrequited love, wedding drama, work culture -
Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor
Taylor has gone and done it again. My poor heart can’t take this. “[S]adness drenched them. Sadness at leaving. Sadness at going back to their lives. The sadness of knowing it would never again be this perfect, this easy.” This may not sound like a compliment but I believe that Brandon Taylor has a real…
4.25 stars, academia, Adult, ALIENATION, America, American, AMERICAN AUTHOR, anxiety, anxiety-inducing reads, bad love, bi side characters, Black & Black heritage authors, BOOK REVIEW, BOOK REVIEWS, Booklr, Brandon Taylor, campus, cold tone, collection of short stories, Contemporary, dancers, DEPRESSION, f/f side, favourite authors, Filthy Animals, gay, interconnected stories, lesbian side characters, lgbtq+, LGBTQ+ Author, LITERARY FICTION, loneliness, Longing, m/m, male authors, My reviews, published in 2021, queer, read in 2021, read in 2022, reading, restrained prose, SEXUALITY, short stories, suicide, the male malaise, toxic relationships, UNIVERSITY/COLLEGE