2024 book #26. 2023. Charlies dismal life is upturned when his grandfather leaves Charlie his business. There's a catch, of course, his grand was in the supervillian business, locked in mortal combat with other supervillians which Charlie must figure out. Fun but light reading. ( )

Absolutely out of my comfort zone but I could not pass up this book with a dust cover of a cat in a mans business suit.
Somewhat Sci-fi, somewhat fantasy and somewhat amusing.
Cats communicate to humans by typing, Dolphins form a union and Whales collaborate with a secret society of billionaire villains. It's all rather bazaar but actually a fun read taking place in the Caribbean and Lake Como.
A book you don't need to think about too deeply but just sit back and enjoy the ride. ( )

Great beach read. ( )

Recommended: eh
For a very business-heavy modern day villain, for some quirky ideas especially around animals, for unexpected moments that startle you into a disbelieving "did that just happen??" kind of laugh

Thoughts:
I've seen some of John Scalzi's other books, and while I admired the unusual angle they usually seemed to take, I also felt like they wouldn't really be for me. I gave this one a shot anyway because it sounded like it might align more with my interests and be the strange angle that I could actually get behind. For the most part that was true, although most of What I took away from this was that modern-day villains do a lot of budgeting and financial stuff. It wasn't super thrilling.

The strength of this is definitely the way it's written: the word play; the funny details; the insightful looks at things that we accept as normal but really are s range if you're not accustomed to them. The downside for me was the plot itself, which felt surprisingly small and without much direction. For most of this book I just kept thinking, where is this going? And I couldn't really envision anything, which made it pretty tough to feel invested. 

It's a good thing that I did this as a buddy read with Nicole, because otherwise I probably would have just DNF'd it at 61%. It's not that it was bad, but that it wasn't compelling enough for me to come back to it. Mostly, I was just bored. Having the chance to do some back and forth with her and focus on the interesting details and small joys in the writing style helped get me through the end of this when I wasn't really invested in any of the characters or events going on.

I think this ended the only way it could have, and for that I am grateful. At the very least, I didn't come through this and then feel disappointed at the end. XD

Another entertaining satire from John Scalzi. I enjoyed his take on villains and conspiracies as well as his clever takes on our fascination with villains and supervillains. ( )