BATB score: 6/10 👩‍⚕️ 🩸 Freida McFadden, girlfriend, this book wasn’t it Best to: a re-edit of her book Suicide Med 2014 with 20% plot optimizations and cutdowns; Dead Med 2024 was still 450+ pages long and was sorta kinda almost but not a hit Best for: if you haven’t read anything Frieda McFadden, check out The Housemaid, The Boyfriend, or Never Lie first and foremost Best as: oiii so many characters and intertwined stories, readers must try to keep up BATB lingering thoug

BATB score: 3/10 📝 *reader discretion advised* BATB doesn’t think BATB has enough patience for Japanese authors - may we never meet again Best to: seriously 20+ pages just for the stationary shop owner to greet the first arriving customer hello 🫠 Best as: introduction to a stationary store: the pen, the different pens, the paper, the different paper, the ink, the seal 🖋️🔖💌 Best for: heartfelt short stories they say, heart burn slowest burn short but long stories I say

BATB score: 5/10 😴 I am too young to be part of Oprah’s Book Club; took me a year to finish this slow burn book 🫠 Best as: was curious to know what kind of book makes it into Oprah’s Book Club 2023 Best to: ahh… long novels, slow narrations, a lot of character build up, sisterhood, family dynamics, inter-generations relationships, death of family members Best for: 50+ years old, early retired, slow and mellow lifestyle, read on the backyard patio, hard cover, hot tea, autum

BATB Score: 8.5/10 🤯 BATB wanted to know what kind of masterpiece writing does it take to win 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature (also congratulations Han Kang well-deserved 👏 ) Best to: eloquence in narration - word choice, sentence structure, convey character emotions, graphic narration, oddest plot, open-ended confusing ending Best as: imagine being award with the utmost prize of 2024 for something you wrote in 2007, which was only translated in 2015, to someone like me just

BATB score: 7/10 👠 okay but not wow Best for: McFans - Freida McFadden’s fan club to might as well read everything that she has ever written (all 27 books and counting) because why not 🤷‍♀️ Best as: a blueprint on plotting against your coworker; I never liked my coworkers anyways - office bullying is a real deal Beat to: okay, I hate some of my coworkers and do wish them the very worst Best quote: “never give other people the satisfaction of seeing you cry.”

BATB score: 9/10 ❤️ page-turner, unable to put down, impossible to predict what’s next, full of surprises and suspense, a plot twist with every chapter, bravo read Best to: ahh, so this kind of book gets selected by Netflix; a novel written by John Marrs, adapted into a Netflix Series in 2021; IMDb 6.6/10 British science fiction television series Best as: how far does one go to find the one? and when you are told he/she is the one for you (scientifically proven) would we forc

BATB score: 6/10 🫠 Best as: a very long suspense, thriller, murder, crime scene investigation novel; with all those pages and words yet character love wasn’t established #bummer Best to: great interesting and rewarding ending just took a long time to get there; like how there’s a direct route but you took the scenic route which wasn’t that scenic anyways Best for: retired avid readers with a lot of time on your hands and enjoys the reading journey not necessarily the end; ho

BATB score: 7/10 🔥📚👨‍🚒 true classic piece of art, an oldie from 1953 Best to: dystopia novel - if books are illegal and if conformity without question is the norm; where firemen burn books and everyone has ADHD and is dumb Best as: a political book - censorship, no freedom for imagination, government brutal crackdowns, witch-hunt of intellectual outliers, mass tabloid groupthink Best for: 72 years later, BATB 2025 has just came across this book?! BATB lingering thought: h

BATB score: 6/10 🥴 *reader discretion advised* side back story, after watching “Poor Things” the movie featuring Emma Stone IMDb 8.3, BATB wants to understand what kind of novel [1992] gets selected for film-adaption [2023] Best as: oh shit, the original novel by Alasdair Gray vs the academy award film by Yorgos Lanthimos is two different individually unique masterpiece 👀 Best to: the novel structure is split based on the characters point of view, written in a memoir first-

BATB score: 8/10 😎 *feel good vibes* Best as: a novella about soulmates finding each other after generations of rebirths Best to: a casual read, best read under the palm trees 🌴 on a beach 🏖️ with an aperol spritz 🍹 Best for: anyone on holiday on italian amalfi beaches Best quote: “It’s life that is impermanent, not love.”

BATB score: 6/10 🙃 Best to: a pastime read to accompany your slow life upon retirement BATB lingering thought: maybe we leave the long novels for later Best as: oldest / original daughter dilemma, mother’s disappointment in daughter, sisters passive aggressive rivalry, so who takes care of mother when she’s on her deathbed? Best for: only if you are an oldest daughter in an asian family Best quotes: “There was considerable freedom to be had in knowing and accepting that I wa

BATB score: 8/10 Best as: a short bedtime story but thriller Freida McFadden signature epilogue twist Best to: 60-minutes quick casual fun read to give you a small sense of accomplishment - yay, I finished a book today Best for: Frieda McFadden’s loyal fanclub Best quotes: “And I feel lighter - happier - all of a sudden.” “Sometimes it’s better to let go than to drag it out.”

BATB score: 7/10 🐴 Best as: a series of random short stories about everything and anything Best for: written with the same satire as BoJack Horseman blunt witty humor Best to: a good story / bad story roulette; hit-or-miss rate 7:3 Best quotes: “There are two kinds of people, he thought: the people you don’t want to touch because you’re afraid you’re going to break them and the people you don’t want to touch because you’re afraid they’ll break you.” “What happened to our soc

BATB score: 7/10 🧐 Best as: 100 most influential novel by BBC News 2019 - might as well ✅ Best to: a novel about bisexuality and internalized homophobia, sensitive masculinity and social alienation back in 1956 where everything is controversial 🧐 wowza Best for: literature as an art form ; art appreciation Best quotes: “People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also t

BATB score: 6/10 🔪 🩸 Best for: McFans - Freida McFadden loyal fans Best to: a classic Freida McFadden twist and turn suspenseful fiction Best as: reading for fun Best quote: “Is it such an awful thing to want retribution against people who have wronged you?”

BATB score: 3/10 ☠️ reader discretion advised sexually explicit content; every detail, kinks, and all 🫠 Best as: Kindle #1 best seller and #1 most read under Erotica category - got me curious, never read never know Best to: holy moly 💀 erotica indeed, porno in book form; interesting, are all our erotica fantasy similar and so predictable? BATB confession: couldn’t finish the book, didn’t feel invested in the characters nor the storyline; too girly berry, chick-flick but

BATB score: 3/10 🤷‍♀️ Best to: either you love it or you hate it; wasn’t able to feel the characters and thus wasn’t able to be invested nor admire the story Best as: longing of two souls to the point of cannabalism Best for: maybe this book is better in original Korean language? Best quotes: “Faith is the key to grasping absurdity.” “Are those who fire the guns and take the bullets ever those who start the war?” “To be freed from this suffering - and if that’s not doable, t