Blazing Reader,

Ryan Healy (no, not the baseball player, but now that I've got your attention...) is a real bookworm — having reviewed 419 books on Goodreads. Well, maybe the baseball player reads a lot too. Batting cages have plenty of downtime. I don't know. But here I'm talking about a different Ryan Healy. In addition to being a voracious reader, he is also a wordsmith, writing copy for an email marketing company he co-founded in Colorado.

As it happens, the 419th book he reviewed was Much Ado About Corona. Rather appropriate, since Section 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code covers fraud, and my novel does an entertaining job exposing one of the biggest frauds in human history.

Here's a snippet (the most flattering part) from Ryan's Goodreads five-star review:

I ended up enjoying this book more than I expected...

The book starts to build momentum after all the characters are introduced. And while I was engaged in the story, I wasn't hooked until I was two-thirds finished. I blew through the last 200 pages because I had to find out what happens.

And while I did find out, to a degree, the novel ends on a cliffhanger with a lot of open loops that still need to be closed. I suppose that was intentional because 1) the novel is already 650 pages long, 2) Manley had to end the story somewhere, and 3) he's writing a sequel to be published sometime in the future.

I appreciated all the "Easter eggs" and references to literature throughout the novel. I also appreciated the numerous references to factual things that happened during 2020.

Example: I followed the Tiffany Dover story closely when it came out, so I double-checked the timing of it and verified that Manley got the date right. Sitting here in 2026, it's easy to misremember the exact timelines of when things happened: When the first doses of the vaccine became available, when Tiffany Dover fainted on live TV, etc. But Manley has taken pains to make the novel accurate and realistic.

If I had to nitpick, I'd say there are two things that stuck out to me...

Ahem. Yes, two things. Only two. (Not bad for a 150,000 word novel.)

Well, if you really want to know what bothered Ryan about Much Ado About Corona, you can read his full review on Goodreads (plus my response).

The fact that this was Ryan's 419th review, and he writes emails for a living, should in no way be confused with a 419 "Nigerian Prince" email scam. Ryan's review makes no promises of you receiving millions of dollars for reading Much Ado About Corona. Though, if enough of you leave reviews (even mean ones), maybe I could make a million dollars in book sales.

John C.A. Manley

P.S. So, if you haven't yet, please leave your own review of Much Ado About Corona on Goodreads.

P.P.S. I'm aiming for 419 reviews by the end of the year. If you leave a review, send me a link to it, along with your bank info, and I'll promptly deposit $42 million into your account as a sign of my appreciation.

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.