You know, I was worried that my being a total fanboy of Connie Willis would have unduly influenced any kind of review I might make for any new novel, but I never should have worried. At all. This is a Great SF Romantic Comedy, with all the best features of To Say Nothing of the Dog, at least with the comedy of errors, the speed and flurry, and the comedy, even if we're not in the realm of time-travel any more. This one is all about communication, and if you really think that you've got it all fi...

The blurb of this book was a bit wishy-washy, but it's Connie Willis, so I expected some kind of interesting comment on current communication and the ridiculousness of the EED. Instead I got a story exploring the pros and cons of telepathy, something I figured out myself as a small child, with added creepy romance. I'm pretty disappointed.The book opens with a lot of promise. Briddey (how does one pronounce that?) is some kind of executive (Maybe. We never really find out what she does) at one o...

2ish stars.This is ridiculous. Well obviously because it's farce, but if you ask me, it's more of an irritating, eye-roll ridiculous than a humorous one. In this book, Willis has the subtlety of a hand grenade and the nuance of a stick figure. It's a fast-paced romantic sci-fi comedy about telepathic gingers except it's hard to tell when the comedy is intended and the romance is creepy. (view spoiler)[C.B. emotionally manipulates Briddey by playing knight-in-shining-armor, constantly lying to he...

Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:In Crosstalk, Connie Willis’ near-future science fiction novel, the main character Briddey works for Commspan, a smartphone company that is anxious to compete with Apple. For the last six weeks Briddey has been in a whirlwind romance with Trent, a hot young executive at Commspan, who swept Briddey off her feet with his suave charm and his Porsche. Now Trent has invited Briddey, as a prelude to getting engaged, to get a popular “minor” neurological brain

Briddey Flannigan knows she's lucky to have a boyfriend like Trent Worth. He sends her flowers, takes her to the hottest restaurants, and texts her first thing every morning. Far from being allergic to commitment, Trent has already said the big ILY, and now he's proposing they have an EED to become even closer. It all has the rumor mill at their workplace churning with barely concealed envy. Who wouldn't want their boyfriend or girlfriend to suggest something so romantic? And after only six week...

Reading this book is like experiencing a prolonged anxiety attack. But wait! That's not a bad thing! It's like having a funny, clever and romantic anxiety attack!Connie Willis' books tend to either feature a comedy of manners set against a dark and dire background... or a comedy of manners in a somewhat less catastrophic situation. This is one in the less-dire and more light-hearted category. But Willis' humor always has her own distinct flavor; it's unmistakable - and I love it. Here, she riffs...

I have a bunch of jumbled thoughts about this book, and mulling didn't help, so I'll just list the jumble bits and be done with it:-I found Briddey's family simply hideous. No concept of privacy, no respect for boundaries, constantly talking over one another and refusing to listen to one another. Hideous. -Liked Maeve, though I thought she was waaaaaaaaay too precocious and super brilliant for a nine-year old.-I often wanted to smack Briddey -- she was a total doormat with her family, couldn't p...

I found the opening chapter of Crosstalk totally suffocating. Here was this telecomm middle manager, Briddey Flannigan being inundated first by her colleagues wanting to know details of her dinner out with the boss and then by her family who constantly phone and email about trivial personal problems, even turning up at work or waiting for her in her apartment to the point where it was over the top farce. Somehow this seemingly intelligent grown up woman (who admittedly does seem a bit empty head...

If you decide to read this book, you will need to pour yourself a giant glass of something alcoholic or take a Xanax first or you might just find yourself having major anxiety while reading it. The very best word I can use to describe this book is HECTIC. I can't think of any other time where I would have used that as my one-word description either. But, sheesh! It was like being thrown into a room full of squirrels and being told to corral them into a box while at the same time holding a baby a...

I’m a big fan of Connie Willis’s work, but I wasn't crazy about this one. Sure it’s well written, but the plot is nonsense. It’s a romantic comedy, but it’s not particularly romantic or funny. Also, while I don’t mind telepathy in my fantasy fiction, if a book is going to offer a pseudo-scientific explanation for it, then that explanation needs to be better than the one offered here.It is amusing that Willis finally allows her characters to have cell phones (not to mention telepathy) and yet the...

Connie Willis seems to have two modes: dark, powerful novels, and lighter ones that verge on romantic comedy, though skirting serious subjects. Such as the duo Blackout and All Clear, which I enjoyed for the most part—but felt would have been immensely better at half the length. That is because I am not fond of stories in which everyone runs around madly trying to find one another, and just missing, while interrupted by impedimenta that just leads the protagonist further and further astray, so a...

I have read nearly every book Connie Willis has written and enjoyed each and every one of them. And I enjoyed this one too although it lost a star for a few things that irritated. Firstly the MC. I loved many of the characters, especially CB and Maeve, but Briddie came close to driving me crazy. She was either being a doormat for her nonsensical family or she was being deliberately obtuse about the obvious. Secondly Willis always has a tendency to go into great detail and she can take a whole ch...

I really liked the middle (roughly) one-third of this book. The rest was incredibly annoying. So I'm going to review this in third parts.First third: Briddey is just a girl who can't say no, can't set any boundaries (tip: don't give keys to people you can't trust not to break into your apartment), and can't finish a sentence. For the entire first third, that's all that's happening: people are telling her what to do, she's trying to get out of it without every saying "No" or "I don't want to," an...

I’ve been staring at this bloody shrimping screen for the past 162.5 hours (give or take 2356 minutes or 2), and still have no fishing idea what to say about this book. Looks like I just can’t beat the abominable A Connie Willis Book Never Shall You Be Able to Review in the Entirety of Your Entire Life and Beyond Curse (ACWBNSYBAtRitEoYELaBC™). Our Lord Shrimp knows I tried to find nefariously creative ways to thwart it, but nothing seems to work. Not even sacrificing puny human babies, if you c...

(Audiobook) I couldn't finish this one. I gave it over 6 hours (35%) to convince me it was worth continuing. Narrator Mia Barron was quite good so this is one of the few I abandoned purely because of how much I hated the characters and story.This was a comedic farce without the comedy. It was an Abbott & Costello "Who's on first" routine, with smartphones and no punchline(s). Briddie was supposedly an exec for a smartphone company but she was spectacularly stupid. She makes important decisions f...

That's a 'how-much I enjoyed it' rating, rather than an 'objectively it's just that good' one. Because, really - it's Bellwether updated, and with actual spec-fic stuff (vs the lightest suggestion there might be a hint of fantasy amidst all the satire), with an abundance of the mobile phones everyone always complains about Willis' characters not having, and a ton more family. I got off to a worried start, because one the first page there was Briddey (Bridey is the common nickname for Bridget/Bri...

This review can also be found on my blog, Dana and the Books.I need to be upfront: Connie Willis is my all-time favourite author and I love her. Her books are perfect.I waited an agonizing six (SIX!!) whole years to get my hands on this book and it was worth it. I would wait another six years to get this sort of amazingness again (well, I’m incredibly impatient person so while I would wait, I wouldn’t do it quietly).Crosstalk was one of her lighter and hilarious books. It wasn’t gutwrenching lik...

Remember when Apple launched their watch (the year before last?) and there was that creepy app where you could transmit your heartbeat to another wearer or just even tap out morse code for "I am following you with a knife"?Well, it freaked Connie out a little too. And her wonderful mind took this on and pushed this creepy technology to its limit. Trent and Briddey have had a whirlwind office romance over the last month, and Trent has popped the question. No, not engagement, but to get an EED. It...

This is a fun mix of science fiction and romance. The story is set in the present day, with some genuine cultural references, but the difference is that in Connie Willis' world there is a device that can be implanted in your body that allows you to feel your partner's emotions.It seems Connie was inspired by all of the health and activity trackers that are available these days, and wondered what would happen if those trackers could also sense emotions. But when our heroine, Briddey, gets the dev...

[9/10] I think you’ve lost your mind. Don’t you have enough information bombarding you, what with emails and texting and Twitter and Snapchat and Instagram? And now you’re going to have brain surgery so you can hear more? He just told that he loves you, but can you believe him? What more can he do to prove his feelings are true?I know ! How about the latest breakthrough in communication: a little operation that unclogs the pathways in the brain responsible for telepathy! Then you will sense dire...