The last of the first-round matchups
(which means that after this, my write-ups get a lot shorter since I’ll have already said my piece on each of the books).
On the one hand, we have Margo’s Got Money Troubles, one of those easy to describe books: A college student who has become pregnant after having an affair with her English professor turns to OnlyFans to make ends meet, while her father, a former professional wrestler moves in to her apartment and supports her in her efforts. I’ve found myself reading some of these contemporary online dilemma–inspired books of late and generally found them lacking, but this book does a much better job at this than most of the others (and seems to be either researched thoroughly or convincingly faked). The world-building is well-done, the crises that arise are both earned and managed well. My one complaint about the book: Thorpe for some reason decided that she wanted to do a meta-fictional thing and mix first and third-person narration in the book, a rhetorical device I found so grating that I went to my own novel in process and ripped out a similar thing because I realized that my own was just as annoying and awful and had to go.
For Someone Like Us, I found myself adrift in large parts of the novel. I think that there were some games played with chronology and counterfactuals, but maybe not? As flawed and sometimes annoying as Margo’s Got Money Troubles was, at least I never got lost in the story. My pick to advance, therefore is Margo’s Got Money Troubles.
My judgment on the judgment
Michael David Lukas came to a similar judgment on the books as I did, although he didn’t admit to getting lost in Mengestu’s novel, just not relating to the characters in that book like he did to Thorpe’s characters, but at least it means my brackets are mostly intact.
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