Machi is tired of her parents' constant efforts to match her up with a successful man and half jokingly says she should marry someone they'd hate just to spite them. Her friend Hana surprises her when she suggests that the two of them get married. The news so shocks Machi's parents that they do indeed back off, at least temporarily. The special partnership certificate requires that they both live in Shibuya, so Hana moves in with Machi, which also helps them maintain the marriage charade.

Machi can't help but wonder if Hana is actually serious about all of this, though. Back in high school, Hana confessed her love for her, and Machi turned her down. They've continued to be friends, but what if Hana hopes their fake marriage will become a real one? As Machi starts to ponder her and Hana's relationship, she also takes a long, hard look at her life.

This was okay. I wanted something light and non-explicit, and that's what I got. I kind of wished it had a bit more substance to it, though. Machi seemed to just work, eat, and sleep, which fit her characterization, but I would have thought Hana would have had a more visible social life beyond the one meet-up with her ex.

Hana was the energetic and positive one, while Machi spent a large chunk of the volume looking tired and depressed. I was glad when Machi started evaluating her life and deliberately became a more active participant in it. I cheered her on when she became more assertive at work, and the part where she told her mother off for the first time was great. She was standing up for Hana, yes, but also for herself.

I had some issues with the romance aspect, mostly due to the fact that Hana and Machi's expectations for what their marriage would be like once it went from being fake to real didn't seem to match up (although the special partnership certificate was real, so honestly they were married for real from the start, but whatever). Machi seemed perfectly fine with the way things were - living together, spending time together, making meals for each other, and just generally supporting each other, no sex required. 

There's no problem with that, and I actually would have been on board with it, if it hadn't been so obvious that Hana expected their relationship to eventually include sex. She made it clear that she was willing to wait and take things slow, but it never seemed to enter her mind that it might never happen, or that it might happen but that Machi might not be as into it as she was. There were no moments when Machi realized she found Hana sexually attractive, and all physical affection, except for a few head pats and a hug, were initiated by Hana. But they did eventually kiss and Machi enjoyed it, so maybe I was concerned for no reason.

Overall, this was nice, but it could have used a second volume. Or a full volume devoted to this story and these characters. It's common for one-shots to include one or more additional stories, and this one was no exception. The last quarter or so was devoted to an unrelated short called "Anaerobic Love."

If you were flipping through the volume, you'd likely think it was a flashback to Machi and Hana's high school days, because the character designs are so similar, but the story actually stars Oshimi and Mutsumi. Mutsumi is the school's track star, while Oshimi used to be in track but hurt herself and now dedicates herself to studying. Mutsumi seems cold towards Oshimi, and yet she frequently has Oshimi give her massages after practice. Oshimi, for her part, eventually realizes that her interest in Mutsumi may actually be love.

I liked this story a good deal less than the main one, and the times when Oshimi deliberately hurt Mutsumi while massaging her made me uncomfortable. I'd really have preferred it if this story had been scrapped and the main one fleshed out a bit more.

Extras:

A color illustration, a 2-page author afterword in manga form, and four pages worth of extra scenes relating to the main story.

Rating Note:

I debated between 3 and 3.5 stars. It wasn't the most memorable thing ever, and I doubt I'll ever want to reread it, but I did really enjoy Machi's personal growth, so I went with 3.5.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

This book has been making the rounds with a certain group on social media. When the publisher sent me both books as review copies, I had to bite. 'Pretend I'm Dead' is an absolute riot. There's a lot to be sad and grossed-out about here, but I loved that I never knew what to expect from Mona and her observations just kept making me laugh. I loved Mona's voice and her response to the world.

Her backstory is left a trifle vague, shipped off across the country to a cousin in Massachusetts in her teens, possibly after abuse. Much about this character is her response to the world as she is now, but with telling clues popping up that lead us to her past. I liked her relationship with Mr. Disgusting, it made sense. The book is chaotic, but tells a coherent story about a woman's trajectory as she sort of figures things out in spite of herself.

Mona

Next: 'Vacuum in the Dark'

Carson loves Sweet Darlin', the candy company he inherited from his biological father. He and his father were never all that close, but Carson still wants Sweet Darlin' to succeed. In order for that to happen, he needs a loan ASAP. Gregory Shaw is willing to give him one...if Carson marries Kendra, Shaw's flighty sorority girl daughter. Meanwhile, if Kendra doesn't marry Carson, she won't get her trust fund.

Carson knows that he and Kendra would make an unhappy couple, so, two weeks before the wedding, he lies and tells Shaw that he can't marry her because he's in love with someone else. Shaw decides to call Carson's bluff - he says he'll still give Carson the loan, if he still gets married in two weeks to this other woman he supposedly loves. Carson calls up Ella, an actress he'd met at a party six months ago - at the time, she was dating a friend of his, but she's single now. He asks her to be his pretend fiancee and leave him at the altar. She agrees because her acting jobs have been few and far between and she needs the money. Unfortunately, the two of them have instant chemistry, and their fake relationship turns real, fast.

At Book Bonanza 2019, attendees got a bag with two free books in it. One of them was a random book from the "Misadventures" series, which seems to be a sort of sampler series of unrelated short works by different authors. I think my mom might have gotten M.F. Wild and Mia Michelle's Misadventures of a Valedictorian.

At any rate, after a bad day at work, I needed something fluffy, and this seemed like it might fit the bill. I read the description on the back and the "pretend relationship" aspect was appealing. I didn't bother to look up the author or reviews on Goodreads. If I had, I might have saved this book for another time, because I wasn't expecting erotic romance in which the couple couldn't keep their hands off each other during dinner, the second time they'd ever seen each other, and were having sex within hours of laying out the "occasional public kissing, no sex" ground rules of their pretend relationship.

Readers were supposed to believe that Ella was an actress who was serious about her work and acting future, and that Carson was a dedicated new CEO who'd basically become a workaholic. When it came to what they actually did on-page, though, what I got was that they were both completely driven by their hormones. A  large chunk of the beginning of this book was the two of them having sex. The first person POV made most of the sex scenes more stilted and weird than sexy, and the food sex scene, in which Carson ruined a perfectly good bread pudding by dumping it onto Ella's breasts, was downright gross. Other people's mileage may vary, but that was a "no" for me.

After a couple days of screwing each other's brains out, Carson and Ella finally remembered that they'd actually gotten together for a reason that wasn't purely sex. I had to laugh when they learned that Kendra had fallen for an ROTC guy and were doubtful that she could know that she was really in love with someone after only knowing them for two days. Ella had enough self-awareness to realize that this applied to her and Carson as well, but supposedly "we're different" (102). Sure, uh huh.

The more I thought about the plot, the less it made sense. If Shaw had really wanted to call Carson's bluff, he could have told him "Fine, if you aren't marrying my daughter, then no loan for you." Carson either had to get that loan or watch Sweet Darlin' crumble - he had more to lose than Shaw did. Carson and Shaw would sometimes act like they needed each other, and sometimes like they didn't. And there were a couple developments that just came out of nowhere. On the one hand, Shaw was supposed to be this coldly manipulative businessman who was willing to use his own daughter in his machinations. On the other hand, he was also supposed to be a caring father who just wanted what was best for his daughter. And as for Kendra...

Everything came together too easily in the end, and I found it difficult to believe that Ella and Carson would last long. They'd spent most of their time together having sex, and staying together meant that Ella had to give up her acting career while Carson got everything he wanted (I'm sorry, but the attempt to make it look like he was sacrificing too was weak at best). Also, it bugged me that one of the first things Carson did when Ella arrived was try to dictate what Ella ate. On the advice of her agent, she'd been trying to lose weight, and while I agreed with Carson that she was probably fine as she was, they'd literally just met and  at that point he hadn't even known for sure that's why she was ordering a salad. Trying to bully her into ordering a steak just made him look like a jerk.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Skippyjon Jones is a Siamese cat who thinks he is a "Chi-wal-a

" School is for dogs, his mama tells him. It's where they go to get trained. But nothing can stop Skippy. Once inside his closet, he finds himself on the playground of his imagination, surrounded by dogs of all kinds.

Lexile:AD740L

I would do a vocabulary activity in which the students would write down all of the words that they did not know. We would discuss if they thought they were spanish or english words and the definitions. 

My oldest spawn finds the funniest stuff on the internet.