Read in 4 hours and 10 minutes.

I don’t feel like sugar and spice and all things nice, nor as magical as a fairy, so this ARC felt like a last-ditch impulse choice to kickstart my sense of whimsy again.

Yes, I read it in just over 4 hours- but it took me 3 days (which, in my world, is a crisis) so I wondered if this book was actually my Never-Ending Story.

The problem was me, not the book. Like one of the main characters, Finch, I couldn’t settle; couldn’t find joy.
As Miss Swift once wrote, “the trick to holding on was all that letting go,” and the author guaranteed that I, as well as the heroes of her story, unravelled delight like it was a fruit winder.

To enjoy this book, you have to leave the damp, overcast day behind and allow your mind to wander around a colourful land that Spike Milligan would be hankering after.

What’s the plot, you ask?
It’s simple: Fey run a The Truman Show-style series of towns filled with consenting humans, and feed off their drama.
(My grandma has the same devotion to Coronation Street so I can hardly call it unrealistic.)

The author explains: “For the entirety of its existence, the Seelie Court Network had been run by, well, Seelie. Also, run well by Seelie. As the correct creatures to undertake such a fiddly, complex task, far-end spectrum Seelie were perfect beings, namely perfectly symmetrical, perfectly unblemished, and perfectly toned. They smelled of nice scents like freshly laundered linen and toasted sugar. The air they breathed out was cleaner than what they took in. They positively glowed with heightened magic, like an electric blanket or radioactive glassware.

With Seelie in charge, SCN had always been orderly, efficient, and entertaining.

Most importantly, they knew how to delegate. They hired other creatures to do the drudge work of actually writing the projects, and left cleanup on the rare failures to a troupe of Unseelie in the Cleaning and Waste Management crew.
As a system, it had flaws—none of which Seelie would admit to, including the Executive-Vice-Vice-Vice-Vice-Vice President in Care of TROPE Town Allocation and Programming (EVVVVVPCTTAP for short; nomenclature was
a tricky, ego-driven business). The EVVVVVPCTTAP was a Seelie Queen descendant known as 13— (a word that sounded like
'the, if the speaker's tongue was stuck to the roof of their mouth), and as such was a model of Seelie greatness. She trusted her instincts. Was tough, but fair. Open to fancies, yet traditional in her choices. Drank as much as eighty-two cups of strong tea every sun cycle.”

It’s a delightful world where the Mad Hatter probably takes the White Rabbit for a weekend away- what’s the issue?

“Approximately two years ago, something had begun gumming up the works. Memos began arriving, fluttering like birdless wings into both of I3-'s assistants' offices. Each memo featured a similar complaint: T-Town stories were drying up. Humans were still living their wildly entertaining mundane lives, but for some reason, SMDs were running on fumes. The mythics hired to write new scripts were claiming they'd been 'blocked' somehow, and were writing sequels, prequels, spin-offs, and reboots in lieu of new original scripts. It was a bad, recursive look.
More time passed, and ratings revealed that shows were dropping eyeballs left and right. T-Towns had run out of prequel, sequel, spin-off, and reboot material and had resorted to reruns. Reruns were not capturing mythic attention. In fact, formerly obsessed audiences were starting to rediscover the joys of the great outdoors, or face-to-face conversations.”

Someone check Hollywood’s pulse because shots 👏have 👏been👏 fired.

So, Unseelie in the Cleaning and Waste Management crew mean what, exactly?

"Unseelie are opposite to Seelie. We're cruel and capricious, hideous creatures, often deformed and ready for destruction. We push Seelie out of the way."
"But it's Seelie who sent you here."
Finch grumbled. "We let them do the boring work of creating stuff and maintaining it. Then we swoop in for the fun bits as needed."

Enter Finch; our lovable rascal Unseelie with an identity crisis, who is adamant that he can turn his misfortune around by demolishing a disintegrating TROPE Town that the SCN had forgotten about.
This town happens to be Ground Zero for all of the mysterious events (which is where it reminds me of WandaVision, if that ended with the traditional Disney flourish).

Even a depressed slug could fall in love with our motley crew of misfits- and I’m much weaker than a depressed slug, despite everything else that we have in common.

The writing is infantilising, corny, and affirming- it delivers each line with a knowing wink, and a dare to object to the charm.
How could I fight it?
The fey get stoned on shortbread biscuits; the
Internet is offhandedly referred to as ArachneWeb; and there are puns multiplying faster than rabbits.

How is this not sweet?

“Wide bright eyes of every color of the rainbow (and a few outside of it) nestled among skin tones of equally great variety, all without a blemish or scar among them.”

Oh, you think you won’t crack a smile at this?
“Keeping them out of movies was a natural extension of keeping them in the dark. Children under eighteen were omitted from T-Town projects except as background, or incidentally. Fae considered groups of more than four children to be a 'herd,' a collective noun offered by centaurs, as Neal explained. If children absolutely had to appear in a movie, they could only show up in groups of four or fewer.
Hence the well-known Showrunner phrase:
"Children may be in scenes, but not herds."

Don’t confuse the silly with lacking substance- this is a coming-of-age fantasy after all- so sadness peppers the chapters with sentences like this:
“She was losing an anchor in her life, her friend, by inches. Maybe it was time to cut the rope and let the whole thing sink to the bottom of the ocean.”

Eve's face hardened. "Never said I was perfect at anything." She gulped her drink. "Maybe I could've been a writer. If I tried. I just didn't feel like trying.
Not after..." She let that go like a balloon.
"Funny, that's what everyone thinks," said Winnie, starting to get angry. "You never hear anybody say, 'Oh, you're a doctor? I always thought I could be one' But for some reason, everybody thinks they've got a book in them. I don't call myself a wannabe welder just 'cause I think about welding."
"You think about welding?"

Aaannndd this:
“TWELVE YEARS PASSED. Twelve years in which suddenly everyone was connected on social media, including Winnie. It was the best way for her to keep in touch with her children, who'd moved to Colorado and California and who she only saw a few times a year. Every day or so she'd go onto their pages and 'like' or 'love' every single photo, sometimes leaving a comment or two. They spoke irregularly, and when she pushed for them to call her every once in a while, her daughter said once, "Fire, flood or blood, right?" That stung a bit. Winnie had insisted on being left alone while writing her books- which, of course, she was doing all the time-and had a sign made for her office door that read 'fire, flood or blood.' As in: don't bother me unless one of those things is happening.
She couldn't deny it- disappearing into her made-up worlds was more exciting than the mundane, everyday existence of laundry or driving the kids to karate class or making dinner. But once the kids and her husband were gone, she didn't need the sign anymore, and the days seemed quite large and empty indeed.”
Alexa, play Cats In The Cradle!

Thanks to this author, I learned of Sheldon Kopp and his Laundry List, containing the wisdom: ‘All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficent data.’

Did you forget about the jokes? Don’t do that!
“Camera-laden drone bees had been unleashed to capture Bee Roll, which could be used in movies. The trees were again sprouting with cameradryads, emerging from a long hibernation, and re-learning their focuses and apertures.
Two amateur fortune tellers, who in a gaffe of coordination had been set up side by side, were giving each other the evil eye.
"Someone should have seen that coming." Winnie nudged Neal as she polished off her second ice-cream cone.”

Fans of The Cerulean Sea and the Emily Wilde series must also adore this book- they simply must!

The story begins because magical beings needed someone to believe in them in order to gain strength.
Guess what? You’re magical and I believe in you too.

Thanks to NetGalley and Solaris Nova for the ARC- it’s my delight to write this honest review.

The TROPE town of Seaview Haven is breaking down and Finch, an SCN intern, has wrangled an assignment to figure out what's wrong with it - so that he can prove his Unseelieness by dismantling it forever. But Winnie Arrowmaker, Siggy, and Martin are doing their best to prove to him that the town can still be saved. Can it?

We Interrupt This Program is a wild romp into a fantastical world and - at the same time - an insightful look into what it takes to be creative. At times, it feels a little meta - Winnie Arrowmaker is a writer of mysteries, and the Muses are involved - but as the book blurb says, "Winnie and Finch are going to have to tell a Truly Great Tale. Because, as they realize, real power lies not in the stories we watch, but in the stories we tell ourselves."

In this day and age when the great Threads fight of the day is whether it's ok to use AI for covers and for writing, it's validating to read something that's so honest about the struggles of writing something. (I was going to say "something worth reading", but who's the arbiter of what's worth reading? Everything written by humans is worth being read by someone.) And how it feels when your best work still isn't good enough. Will it ever be good enough?

In that same vein, Finch is also struggling to be good enough any anything. He's so convinced that his one Hideous Deformity makes him an Unseelie, despite all other indications, that he's willing to destroy his life and his friendships to prove it. And yet, he's...not really good at being naturally destructive? Neither is he good at being, well, Seelie.

Behind the hilarity and light-heartedness is a thoughtful exploration of how our perceptions of ourselves - and what we think others think of us - affect our behaviour, whether for good or for bad. And how best friends spur us to be the best of ourselves - but can also bring out the worst. And maybe we're not always just one thing, but many, in all our humanness.

Note: I received a digital ARC of this book from Solaris Nova via NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.