FTX Fraud, Abby Jimenez Feelings, and Two Library Thrillers Walk Into a Bar
I spend a lot of my free time reading, thinking about reading, prepping for a podcast, and occasionally doing my actual full-time job.
Most weeks I end up down some rabbit hole, whether that’s a thriller spiral, adaptation discourse, corporate fraud nonfiction, or whatever random thing I started googling at midnight because of one book.
So this is The Sunday Spiral.
Biggest Surprise
Going Infinite by Michael Lewis had been on my list for a long time. I knew the broad strokes of the FTX collapse, but reading the details somehow makes it worse.
Sam Bankman-Fried comes across as either a mastermind who thought he’d never get caught or someone completely disconnected from the consequences of his actions. Either way, millions of dollars disappeared while people were told everything was fine.
Apparently books about disastrous CEOs and fraudulent companies are one of my favorite nonfiction niches because this immediately reopened my obsession with Bad Blood by John Carreyrou. At this point Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes basically feel synonymous with corporate fraud.
Most “This Was Made For Me”
Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez confirmed that Abby Jimenez is one of my favorite romance authors.
I love that the Part of Your World series is connected without requiring you to read every book. You get glimpses of previous characters without feeling lost.
This one follows Emma and Justin, who both have more emotional baggage than either of them knows what to do with. They also believe everyone they date eventually finds their soulmate immediately after the breakup, so naturally they decide to date each other to break the curse.
These books always get me around the halfway mark. They start as funny, warm romances and then suddenly become emotionally brutal. Somehow I still trust Abby Jimenez enough to go along with it because I know she’ll land the ending.
This one absolutely did.
Most Divisive Opinion
Both The Library After Dark by Ande Pliego and The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke are mysteries. Both have isolated settings, hidden identities, and multiple deaths.
But The Library After Dark works because the library itself is a character. It has arsenic rooms, hidden passages, and obstacles that feel less like architecture and more like the building is working against you. The setting isn’t backdrop, it’s the entire point.
The Ending Writes Itself spends roughly half its pages on publishing industry commentary and what it means to be a midlist author. By the time the mystery surfaces, it feels like an afterthought. The satire is the point. The murders are just the delivery mechanism.
One book uses its setting to do everything. The other uses a mystery to get you to read what is essentially a publishing industry grievance.
Book I Can’t Stop Thinking About
In prep for a Chapter One Scene One recording, I reread Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt and then watched the Netflix adaptation on Friday.
Even without the octopus, this story works because it understands loneliness and community so well. It’s really about grief, connection, and the people who slowly pull you back into life.
And Sally Field somehow still manages to bring warmth and heart to absolutely everything she touches.
That’s the spiral this week If you also have a weirdly specific nonfiction niche you keep coming back to, I want to hear it.
See you next Sunday.