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Sometimes, you think you have a book’s number and know exactly how the story is going to go. Then you realize you were completely wrong, in the best possible way. That’s how I felt reading Elaine Castillo’s new novel.
Moderation by Elaine Castillo
I first picked up Elaine Castillo’s essay collection How to Read, which challenged me to think of reading in new ways. Then I listened to her essay “Good Girl,” an exclusive for Everand, and discovered that Castillo is as obsessed with the politics around dog ownership as I am. So, of course, I had to pick up Moderation.
Moderation begins with a description of our protagonist’s training to be a moderator for a major social media company. When she starts work as a moderator, she chooses a fake name, Girlie, and spends her days looking at the absolutely worst things the internet has to offer. Girlie never imagined she’d spend her life in an office staring at the worst of humanity, but after the financial crisis, her family is struggling to make it. Now, she and her mom live in a house in Las Vegas with extended family, where everyone’s paycheck is needed.
When her employer’s parent company acquires a new virtual reality technology, Girlie is recruited to work for them. Girlie’s life changes the moment her new supervisor, William Cheung, walks into her life. William is handsome and just the right combination of charming and mysterious. And could there be a spark between them?
Perhaps I’ve read far too many speculative tech-focused books that have hopeless, the-world-is-doomed sort of endings, but I didn’t expect Moderation’s storyline to make room for much joy. That’s on me, because Moderation is full of the beautiful, small moments in life that make everything worth it. There’s Girlie’s very large Filipino family that teases her endlessly. There’s also William’s senior German Shepherd who steals the show. These are the realities of life worth treasuring. In the bleak realities of the fast-moving tech world, Castillo presents a new kind of romance, a kind of love that gives us hope in our darkest moments.
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You can find me over on my substack Winchester Ave, over on Instagram @kdwinchester, or on my podcast Read Appalachia. As always, feel free to drop me a line at kendra.d.winchester@gmail.com. For even MORE bookish content, you can find my articles over on Book Riot.