When I Lived in Modern Times
When I Lived in Modern Times is historical fiction, about the early days of the state of Israel. It didn’t sweep me away, but it does some things very well.
Author: Linda Grant
Publisher: Dutton (originally, for the US edition, 2001)
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
In the spring of 1946, Evelyn Sert stands on the deck of a ship bound for Palestine. For the twenty-year-old from London, it is a time of adventure and change when all things seem possible.
Swept up in the spirited, chaotic churning of her new, strange country, she joins a kibbutz, then moves on to the teeming metropolis of Tel Aviv, to find her own home and a group of friends as eccentric and disparate as the city itself. She falls in love with a man who is not what he seems when she becomes an unwitting spy for a nation fighting to be born. When I Lived in Modern Times is “an unsentimental coming-of-age story of both a country and a young immigrant . . . that provides an unforgettable glimpse of a time and place rarely observed” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
TL;DR Review
When I Lived in Modern Times is historical fiction, about the early days of the State of Israel. It didn’t sweep me away, but it does some things very well.
For you if: You are interested in reading about this period of history from a Jewish perspective.
Full Review
“It was April 1946. The Mediterranean was packed with traffic. Victory hung like a veil in the air, disguising where we might be headed next. Fifty years later it’s so easy, with hindsight, to understand what was happening but you were part of it then. History was no theme park. It was what you lived. You were affected, whether you liked it or not.”
“‘Listen,’ she said, after we had got to know each other better. ‘You and I are of a type. We are the kind who break the walls with our bare hands.’”
When I Lived in Modern Times won the Women’s Prize in 2000, and I’m reading all the past winners this year for their #ReadingWomen challenge.
This book takes place in the late 1940s, right after WWII ended, during the birth of the State of Israel, just before and as the British pulled out of what’s now Palestine. The main character is a Jewish girl from London named Evelyn who decides to travel to Palestine to witness and help with the birth of their new nation. After a brief time living with a kibbutz (like a commune), she moves to Tel Aviv. There she sort of accidentally gets swept up into the affairs of the Irgun, a paramilitary organization that used terrorist strategies at the time.
So, this one is tricky for me to review because I knew (and still know) very little about this period of history or the politics of it. I’m not Jewish or British or personally connected to the history that it describes. I think if I were, I might have liked this book a lot.
In many ways it’s a love letter to the Tel Aviv of the time, and Linda Grant does an absolutely incredible job of bringing the physical setting to life for you. She also really captures the feeling in the air of newness, rebirth, possibility, and the importance and desire of having a home and a greater national identity. Each character has a specific role to help bring that history and the varying political ideologies to life, and Evelyn is a questioning sponge who helps us soak it all up.
That said, I just don’t think I was this book’s best reader. I didn’t necessarily dislike it, but it just didn’t grab me, and it was hard to make myself focus and get lost in the story; I sort of had to pull myself through it. I think it’s because it so heavily leans into this history that I don’t know a lot about, with a great deal of description and not much dialogue. Plus, it felt sort of “and then and then and then” until about halfway through the book, when the plot line about her involvement with the Irgun started.
There’s no doubt that Linda Grant’s writing is excellent and that this book has many merits, and I think if you’re interested in this period of history, it might be much better for you than it was for me.
Trigger Warnings
Antisemitism and Islamophobia
Pregnancy
Rape (spoken of by a secondary character)
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
The Girl from Widow Hills
The Girl from Widow Hills is in many ways your standard unreliable-woman-narrator thriller. But it had a good twist and was a lot of fun to read.
Author: Megan Miranda
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
A suspense novel about a young woman plagued by night terrors after a childhood trauma who wakes one evening to find a corpse at her feet.
Everyone knows the story of “the girl from Widow Hills.”
Arden Maynor was just a child when she was swept away while sleepwalking during a terrifying rainstorm and went missing for days. Strangers and friends, neighbors and rescue workers, set up search parties and held vigils, praying for her safe return. Against all odds, she was found, alive, clinging to a storm drain. The girl from Widow Hills was a living miracle. Arden’s mother wrote a book. Fame followed. Fans and fan letters, creeps, and stalkers. And every year, the anniversary. It all became too much. As soon as she was old enough, Arden changed her name and disappeared from the public eye.
Now a young woman living hundreds of miles away, Arden goes by Olivia. She’s managed to stay off the radar for the last few years. But with the twentieth anniversary of her rescue approaching, the media will inevitably renew its interest in Arden. Where is she now? Soon Olivia feels like she’s being watched and begins sleepwalking again, like she did long ago, even waking outside her home. Until late one night she jolts awake in her yard. At her feet is the corpse of a man she knows—from her previous life, as Arden Maynor.
And now, the girl from Widow Hills is about to become the center of the story, once again.
TL;DR Review
The Girl from Widow Hills is in many ways your standard unreliable-woman-narrator thriller. But it had a good twist and was a lot of fun to read. It also has an actual reason for having the word “girl” in the title.
For you if: You like thrillers or are looking for something fast-paced and fun.
Full Review
Thank you to Simon & Schuster for sending me an early review copy of this book! It comes out June 23rd.
I don’t read very many thrillers because they almost always feel like candy: lots of entertainment value, but no real substance. I’d also almost always rather have my heart broken than racing. But I know a lot of thriller-lovers love Megan Miranda, and I’d heard the twist was a good one, so I decided to mix things up and read it.
Verdict: This book is thriller candy indeed; that white-woman-with-memory-lapses subgenre that is starting to feel like the WHOLE genre. But candy is also delicious and fun, and this book was certainly that.
It’s about a woman who now goes by Olivia, but she was born Arden Maynor. When she was a toddler, there was a terrible rainstorm and flood, and her mother ran yelling into the street that Arden, who had a history of sleepwalking, was gone. Soon the whole country was watch the news with baited breath as the town of Widow Hills banded together to search the pipes. After three days, she was found dangling by one arm from a storm drain and rescued — and today only her memory of that rescue remains. After that, she was known by many as “the girl from Widow Hills” (hence the title and why I can almost forgive it for using “girl”).
But the media attention, along with the demanding sense of entitlement displayed by many of those who had donated or helped, destroyed her and her mother’s lives. So when she went to college she changed her name and kept her original identity a secret from everyone. Now, she works in medical administration in a small-town hospital. But then she starts sleepwalking again, and one night wakes to find a dead body next to her.
At the end of the day, there’s one important question about a thriller: Did you see the ending coming or not? Dear reader, I did not. I did wonder if certain things might be plausible, and some of those things ended up happening and feeding the twist. But I definitely didn’t guess how they would come together, and I was truly still guessing until up until the moment of reveal.
This book was definitely a page-turner, exciting and suspenseful, and a fun way to spend a Saturday (especially during quarantine). If you’re a fan of thrillers or just looking for a change of pace, this seems like it would be a good one.
Trigger Warnings
Drug abuse / overdose
Child abuse
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
Even the Dogs
Written in gutting prose with experimental form and raw emotion, this book is a haunting but incredibly human look at severe drug and alcohol abuse.
Author: Jon McGregor
Publisher: Catapult
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
On a cold, quiet day between Christmas and the New Year, a man's body is found in an abandoned apartment. His friends look on, but they're dead, too, their bodies found in squats and sheds and alleyways across the city. Victims of heroin, they're ghosts in the shadows, a chorus keeping vigil as the hours pass, paying their own particular homage as their friend's body is taken away, examined, investigated, and cremated.
All their stories are laid out piece by broken piece through a series of fractured narratives. We meet Robert, the deceased, the only alcoholic in a sprawling group of junkies; Danny, just back from uncomfortable holidays with family, who discovers the body; Laura, Robert's daughter, who stumbles into the drug addict's life when she moves in with her father after years apart; Heather, who has her own home for the first time since she was a teenager; Mike, the Falklands War vet; and all the others. Theirs are stories of lives fallen through the cracks, hopes flaring and dying, love overwhelmed by more immediate needs. These invisible people live in a parallel reality to most of us, out of reach of food and shelter. And in their sudden deaths, it becomes clear, they are treated with more respect than they ever were in their short lives.
Intense, exhilarating, and shot through with hope and fury, Even the Dogs is an intimate exploration of life at the edges of society—a deeply humane book littered with love, loss, despair, and a half glimpse of redemption—now reissued with a new introduction by Yiyun Li.
TL;DR Review
Written in gutting prose with experimental form and raw emotion, this book is a haunting but incredibly human look at severe drug and alcohol abuse.
For you if: You like to read incredibly written, sad novels (like I do).
Full Review
“The two of them smoking together then, and later, once she’d left, the two of them smoking apart, in rooms a hundred miles away, their fingers yellowing and the memory of each other flaring to life each time they lit up, no matter what they did to avoid it, the drinking and whatever else. The way memories like that end up a part of you, and then pop out again with some movement or some bang on the bone.”
The lovely folks at Catapult reached out to me last month to see if I’d like to read an early copy of this book because they thought it would be perfect for me, and described it thus: “Jon McGregor’s Even the Dogs suspends you in an ocean — if an ocean were a chorus of spirits who carry your grief in a wave. With the exquisite prose that you loved in Reservoir 13 and The Reservoir Tapes, this short novel explores how our stories are connected by something as incidental as a shared emotional experience. Ultimately as hopeful as it is fierce, Even the Dogs is a daring and humane exploration of homelessness and addiction that bears witness to the forgotten and overlooked.”
Obviously I instantly said yes! And they were right: It was perfect for me, because I’m a sucker for beautifully told novels that rip my heart out. Written in gutting prose with experimental form and raw emotion, this book is a haunting but incredibly human look at severe drug and alcohol abuse.
The book is narrated in the second-person plural (“we”) by a chorus of dead former drug users. They follow the progression of another friend’s body as it’s discovered in his home, taken to the morgue, autopsied, and investigated. Throughout, they zoom in and out of the present, also looking at the recent lives of several other friends who knew the dead man, as well as the dead man’s past.
What’s really unique about this book is McGregor’s daring to trust the reader as he switches narrators, jumps to different moments of time (often mid-sentence), leaves sentences hanging in the middle, and otherwise really just behaves like an untethered chorus of spirits lost in time and space. I read the opening chapter twice, to solidify my bearings and get used to the style, but after that, I incredibly never felt lost; he brought me with him with every jump.
This is a group of people who are not looked at often in real life; in fact, most people actively look away. This was even more true ten years ago, and literature was (and is) no different. This book does big work of making us look, and making us look closely. It brings these people to life even in death.
Trigger Warnings
Drug abuse and alcoholism
Suicidal thoughts and attempt
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
All Adults Here
All Adults Here manages to be light and heartwarming while real and emotional at the same time. I really liked it.
Author: Emma Straub
Publisher: Riverhead
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she’d been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence?
Astrid’s youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is intentionally pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies really count? It might be that only Astrid’s thirteen-year-old granddaughter and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to the people you love the most.
In All Adults Here, Emma Straub’s unique alchemy of wisdom, humor, and insight come together in a deeply satisfying story about adult siblings, aging parents, high school boyfriends, middle school mean girls, the lifelong effects of birth order, and all the other things that follow us into adulthood, whether we like them to or not.
TL;DR Review
All Adults Here manages to be fun and heartwarming while real and emotional at the same time. I really liked it.
For you if: You are looking for something that carries weight without feeling too heavy.
Full Review
I’ve been looking forward to reading Emma Straub’s All Adults Here since its cover was revealed months ago. Straub has four other popular books, and she and her husband own Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore that’s core to the NYC (and, more specifically, Brooklyn) community.
I read the book over two days one weekend. It starts out fun and immediately endearing, with a chapter that features one of the main characters, Astrid. She is the matriarch of a family from a small town a few hours north of NYC, and her voice comes across strong and quirky. That morning, she witnesses a woman she’s known her whole life get hit and killed by a bus. This sets off a chain reaction in which she really starts to examine the life she’s lived and get more intentional about the one she’s currently living.
We also meet many other members of her family, including her granddaughter Cecilia, who comes to live with her to switch junior high schools; her daughter Porter, who owns a specialty goat cheese farm and has decided to have a baby via artificial insemination; her other two sons; and even more orbital characters who become loved ones to us, the reader, as well as to these characters.
We never lose the fun and the voice-iness of the book, but little by little, Straub peels back layers on these characters’ lives that reveal them to be complex, flawed, deeply beautiful people with rich pasts and legitimate motivations.
Also, you may not immediately know it from the book’s synopsis, but this story features some beautiful queer characters and storylines, which seemed to me to be done so, so well.
This book is about the mistakes we make, both as children and as parents, and that even the best of intentions can’t prevent them altogether. All we can do is try our best, learn from the mistakes, and work together to heal from them. It’s about what we would see if we could actually spend a day in another person’s shoes. It’s about the importance of empathy and communication and family and understanding.
Trigger Warnings
Pregnancy
Abortion
Transphobia and trans misogyny
Homophobia and heterosexism
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is one of my new favorite books of all time. It’s an incredible story that’s so well written and will leave you as a puddle on the floor (in the best way).
Author: V.E. Schwab
Publisher: Tor Books
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.
But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
TL;DR Review
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is one of my new favorite books of all time. It’s an incredible story that’s so well written and will leave you as a puddle on the floor (in the best way).
For you if: You are a human. Particularly, though, if you like or want to start reading magical realism or fantasy.
Full Review
A ZILLION thanks to Tor Books for granting my NetGalley request to read an early electronic copy of this book for review. I cannot wait to own a physical copy and will absolutely be buying the first print hardcover. If there’s a collector’s edition, I WILL buy it.
So first let me tell you about this story’s incredible premise. It’s about a girl named Addie who was born in the late 1600s. She desperately doesn’t want to get married and settle into the life everyone in her small French village leads — she wants to be free to see the world and really live. So on the eve of her wedding, she makes a deal with a god of darkness, who makes it so. But there’s a catch, a curse: Nobody remembers her. As soon as they leave a room, they forget everything about her. We flash through her long life and to the present day, 300 years later, when everything — finally, impossibly — changes.
I’m not sure that I can even do this book justice; even just a third of the way through, I already knew I had to own it. Finishing it, it instantly became a new all-time favorite. When it comes out in October, I’m going to read it again.
This book just feels like the book Schwab has been meant to write for her entire life. Her heart bleeds out of every word, placed with incredible care and precision. The commas slayed me. It’s all so moving, and I felt like I was in a constant state of deep exhale, the emotion on my chest was so great. There are moments of joy, sadness, passion, grief, and everything in between.
And the story — the plot is perfect, in my opinion. Everything that happens is just as it truly must be. It pulls you through the story and keeps you turning pages, but I also found myself intentionally slowing down to savor every little bit. I read it over two weeks and never ever wanted it to end.
I think you should consider reading this even if you don’t usually read fantasy books. I might even call this one magical realism. I think it’s the perfect blend of literary language, magic, and historical fiction. And it’s all just so beautiful and resonant.
Give your future self a gift and preorder this book from your favorite independent bookstore or Bookshop.org … right now!
Trigger Warnings
Suicidal thoughts
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
Dominicana
Dominicana is an emotional, coming-of-age immigration story. I liked it a lot, especially after learning that it was based on the author’s mother’s life
Author: Angie Cruz
Publisher: Flatiron Books
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Fifteen-year-old Ana Cancion never dreamed of moving to America, the way the girls she grew up with in the Dominican countryside did. But when Juan Ruiz proposes and promises to take her to New York City, she has to say yes. It doesn’t matter that he is twice her age, that there is no love between them. Their marriage is an opportunity for her entire close-knit family to eventually immigrate. So on New Year’s Day, 1965, Ana leaves behind everything she knows and becomes Ana Ruiz, a wife confined to a cold six-floor walk-up in Washington Heights. Lonely and miserable, Ana hatches a reckless plan to escape. But at the bus terminal, she is stopped by Cesar, Juan’s free-spirited younger brother, who convinces her to stay.
As the Dominican Republic slides into political turmoil, Juan returns to protect his family’s assets, leaving Cesar to take care of Ana. Suddenly, Ana is free to take English lessons at a local church, lie on the beach at Coney Island, see a movie at Radio City Music Hall, go dancing with Cesar, and imagine the possibility of a different kind of life in America. When Juan returns, Ana must decide once again between her heart and her duty to her family.
In bright, musical prose that reflects the energy of New York City, Angie Cruz's Dominicana is a vital portrait of the immigrant experience and the timeless coming-of-age story of a young woman finding her voice in the world.
TL;DR Review
Dominicana is an emotional, coming-of-age immigration story. I liked it a lot, especially after learning that it was based on the author’s mother’s life.
For you if: You are looking to read more books by Latinx authors and about Latinx experiences (as we all should).
Full Review
“César picks it up and pulls out a chicken by its neck.
Welcome to America, he says.
He hands it to me. I look into its glassed-over eyes. . . . I've held plenty of chickens before, plucked, chopped, and cooked them too. But here, I want to save the chicken from its fate.”
I’ve been meaning to read Dominicana practically since it was published and so well-received, especially by Latinx / Own Voices reviewers. Its place on the 2020 Women’s Prize longlist (and now shortlist, in fact) solidified its place on my TBR.
This is a book that takes place in the 1960s, about a young woman named Ana who grew up in the Dominican Republic. When she was 15, she married a 30-something-year-old man in what was essentially a business agreement (marriage in exchange for land) between his family and hers. She moves with him to New York City, where, as you might expect, life is not nearly as glamorous as people back home believe. Far from it. Hungry for a life worth living and eager to build something for herself, Ana does her best to make the right choices for herself, for her family, and for her future — even though those things may not always be compatible.
I liked this book, although I sort of felt like I was waiting for something the whole time. I think maybe I expected the plot’s shape to be a bit steeper, the ending to be a bit more exciting, or maybe even just declarative. But I still enjoyed reading it and really loved Ana especially. And after reading the acknowledgments and learning that this book was based on the lived experiences of the author’s mother, I appreciate the story and plot much more.
Angie Cruz does a really great job of bringing us into Ana’s heart, and you never stop rooting for her, even when she makes choices that might lead her into trouble later. In fact, you might even root harder for her in those moments. Her growth over the course of the story is tangible and inspiring. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is looking to read more authentic Latinx stories by Latinx authors.
Trigger Warnings
Marital rape
Domestic abuse
Pregnancy and childbirth
Racism
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
A Crime in the Neighborhood
A Crime in the Neighborhood is a strongly narrated and echoing novel that seems to be about a local murder, on the surface, but is really about parental abandonment.
Author: Suzanne Berne
Publisher: Algonquin Books
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Crime in the Neighborhood centers on a headline event — the molestation and murder of a twelve-year-old boy in a Washington, D.C., suburb. At the time of the murder, 1973, Marsha was nine years old and as an adult she still remembers that summer as a time when murder and her own family's upheaval were intertwined. Everyone, it seemed to Marsha at the time, was committing crimes. Her father deserted his family to take up with her mother's younger sister. Her teenage brother and sister were smoking and shoplifting, and her mother was "flirting" with Mr. Green, the new next-door neighbor. Even the president of the United States seemed to be a crook. But it is Marsha's own suspicions about who committed this crime that has the town up in arms and reveals what happens when fear runs wild.
TL;DR Review
A Crime in the Neighborhood is a strongly narrated and echoing novel that seems to be about a local murder, on the surface, but is really about parental abandonment.
For you if: You love a good slow burn childhood character study.
Full Review
“‘He’s a real romantic,’ said my mother. ‘Romantics are usually bastards, in case you haven’t noticed.’”
I read A Crime in the Neighborhood because it was the fourth winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and I’m following along their #ReadingWomen challenge this year. I enjoyed it overall and have a strong appreciation for what Suzanne Berne was trying to do (and did, successfully).
The novel starts out quite exciting, and it will hook you write away as the body of Boyce Ellison, who had been molested and murdered, is found. After a few pages, the narrator reveals herself to be a woman named Marsha, now an adult, who was living in that suburban DC neighborhood as a young child at the time. Around the same time that Boyce was murdered, Marsha’s father had an affair with her mother’s youngest sister and ultimately ended up running away with her. All while the Watergate scandal is unfolding.
Marsha, inspired by now “noticing everything” is the key to solving Sherlock Holmes mysteries, starts keeping a notebook with all her observations about her neighbors, especially the suspiciously single and socially awkward Mr. Green who lives next door.
The book is definitely a slow burn, but it does have an undercurrent of suspense — who killed Boyce? Everyone in the neighborhood is on edge and suspicious, fueling a sharp hostility toward anyone who doesn’t fit the nuclear family white-picket-fence mentality. And yet this book isn’t really about Boyce at all. It’s actually about Marsha and the way her father’s abandonment and her mother’s forced single parenthood, all while the government and her community fall down around her, ripped away her innocence.
The choice to have Marsha narrate this book as an adult was really effective. She’s incredibly attuned to her own mistakes and mentality, but the distance and wisdom she’s gained since allows her to reflect on the motivations and experiences that her parents must have lived as well.
After the exciting start, this book didn’t GRAB me throughout. The slow burn felt slow. And if you are looking for a thriller or exciting murder mystery, this isn’t going to be it. But it really is an impressive work of character and narration, I think, and can teach us a lot about good writing.
Trigger Warnings
Child rape
Child murder / loss of a child
Parental abandonment
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)
A Wizard of Earthsea is a classic fantasy novel for a reason. It’s exciting, has great world-building, and teaches a great overarching lesson.
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Publisher: Bantam Books (1968)
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Note: Content warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Originally published in 1968, Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea marks the first of the six now beloved Earthsea titles. Ged was the greatest sorcerer in Earthsea, but in his youth he was the reckless Sparrowhawk. In his hunger for power and knowledge, he tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tumultuous tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.
TL;DR Review
A Wizard of Earthsea is a classic fantasy novel for a reason. It’s exciting, has great world-building, and teaches a great overarching lesson.
For you if: You are a fantasy fan, and especially if you’re looking for fantasy books by women and / or about people of color.
Full Review
“You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do.”
I’ve been meaning to start reading Ursula Le Guin’s books for a long time. How could I call myself a feminist AND one who loves fantasy novels? But worry not, dear friends; I have corrected the situation. And to no one’s surprise, I loved A Wizard of Earthsea.
The book is about a boy named Ged, but he goes by Sparrowhawk because in this world, true names are the source of power. The story starts when he’s just a boy and follows him through adolescence and early adulthood. The thing is, he’s super powerful. But while he’s at school he uses that power too flippantly and accidentally brings a great evil into the world. From then on, it’s his responsibility to fix it.
I loved the writing style in this book, but be prepared for it: It’s written in a true storytelling style, and it almost feels like someone from a fantasy novel (think Aragorn) telling a tale. Once you relax into that, it reads pretty quickly and will keep you hooked.
There’s a writer’s note in the back of the most recent editions of this book by Le Guin where she talks about what she wanted to accomplish when she write it back in the late 1960s. Her editor asked her to write a book for young adults, and at first she was intimidated. But once she warmed up to the idea, she set out to tell a very different story from the ones that were typical at the time (think The Lord of the Rings). This book is not about armies and strong men; it’s about the power that lives in each of us, and the risks that it poses. And it features a non-white character.
She’s the queen, y’all. Read it.
Content Warnings
Animal death
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Larry's Party
I really just enjoyed reading Larry’s Party. It was cleverly written with a lovable main character and seems like it was very relevant for its time.
Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: Penguin Books
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Note: Content warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Larry Weller, born in 1950, is an ordinary guy made extraordinary by his creator's perception, irony and tenderness. Carol Shields gives us, as it were, a CAT scan of his life, in episodes between 1977 and 1997 that flash back and forward seamlessly. As Larry journeys toward the millennium, adapting to society's changing expectations of men, Shields' elegant prose makes the trivial into the momentous. Among all the paradoxes and accidents of his existence, Larry moves through the spontaneity of the seventies, the blind enchantment of the eighties and the lean, mean nineties, completing at last his quiet, stubborn search of self. Larry's odyssey mirrors the male condition at the end of our century with targeted wit, unerring poignancy and faultless wisdom.
TL;DR Review
I really just enjoyed reading Larry’s Party. It was cleverly written with a lovable main character and seems like it was very relevant for its time.
For you if: You are looking for something that reads easily but leaves an impact.
Full Review
“Departures and arrivals: he didn’t know it then, but these two forces would form the twin bolts of his existence — as would the brief moments of clarity that rose up in between, offering stillness. A suspension of breath. His life held in his own hands.”
Published in 1997, Larry’s Party won the Pulitzer Prize, was shortlisted for several others, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and — the thing that led me to it — won the Women’s Prize. I’m making my way through all the previous Women’s Prize winners as part of their #ReadingWomen challenge right now.
I really, really just enjoyed myself reading Larry’s Party. It’s delicious and comforting, but also resonant and beautifully written. Each of the 15 chapters takes us further through Larry’s life, beginning in 1977 when he was 27 up through 1997 (which was the present at the time this book was written) when he was nearly 50. We move alongside him through youth, marriage, fatherhood, divorce, remarriage, mid-life crisis, career success, and more.
Each chapter also focuses around a theme; they’re titled things like “Larry’s Love,” “Larry’s Folks,” “Larry’s Work,” “Larry’s Words,” etc. The narrative style is playful, each chapter almost assumes that you don’t know details that you most certainly do; for example re-introducing you to the fact that Dorrie is Larry’s first wife, Ryan is his son, his first job was in a florist shop, etc. So each chapter sort of pretends that it stands on its own, all while they layer and layer and layer on themselves until you just love Larry so, so much, even as he is flawed.
And along the way, Carol Shields drops STUNNERS of paragraphs, words that will cut you to your core amidst a sea of easy-to-read, comfortable sentences. The result is something I found pretty unique; prose that you can read quickly that will also extract your heart from your chest and set it gently on the floor.
The whole point of this book is to examine what it means to be a man at the end of the 21st century. At first, this didn’t sound very compelling to me. (If this book had also been written by a man, I probably would never have picked it up, lol.) But today we forget how that really meant something big back then, that it was actually a fiercely feminist position to take. This was written as feminism was gaining even more momentum, gender roles were really starting to break down, and men were starting to see themselves (and be seen) as multi-dimensional, emotional creatures. Viewed through today’s lens, it may not feel especially progressive. But I think it was at the end of the 90s. Larry is tender, romantic, emotive, complex, and entirely lovable. And the women he loves are equally fierce and notable.
I will probably re-read this one. I loved it.
“‘Mon père’; the words struck Larry in the heart. The lighter-than-air mateyness, the straight-in-the-eye punch. This was more than he deserved, much more. With a stab of love he watched his son watching him — a grown man who stumbled, fell into error, got lost, made a fool of himself, but was willing, at least, to be rescued. Something good was bound to come of this.”
Content Warnings
Infertility
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
Imaginary Museums
Author: Nicolette Polek
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
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Cover Description
In this collection of compact fictions, Nicolette Polek transports us to a gently unsettling realm inhabited by disheveled landlords, a fugitive bride, a seamstress who forgets what people look like, and two rival falconers from neighboring towns. They find themselves in bathhouses, sports bars, grocery stores, and forests in search of exits, pink tennis balls, licorice, and independence. Yet all of her beautifully strange characters are possessed by a familiar and human longing for connection: to their homes, families, God, and themselves.
TL;DR Review
Imaginary Museums is perfect for this moment in history: relatively escapist, actually digestible, and well written. These stories were so good they made me feel like writing.
For you if: You like short stories that are very well written and only a tiny bit weird.
Full Review
Thank you to Soft Skull Press for gifting me a finished copy of this book for review!
“The flight attendant is plump and comfortable like a babysitter, or a sausage, and she tottles down the aisle to make an announcement. The turbulence on the small aircraft gives Biba a bellyache. She wants an Ambien and a kiss.
Over the speakers, the flight attendant whispers, ‘We are lost.’”
Wow. Imaginary Museums was such a great collection of stories, and I’m so glad I read it. Nicolette Polek’s writing is strong, bold, precise, and a little haunting — exactly what short stories need, in my opinion.
Each of the stories in this collection is quite short, ranging from only a few paragraphs to a few pages. To pack such a strong punch into so few words is always impressive, but Polek also manages to do it without making them so weird that you have no idea what just happened. Don’t get me wrong, they’re a little weird, but in a way that doesn’t lose you in the process.
This combination — a little weird, quick to read, easy to follow, super impactful — made Imaginary Museums a perfect choice to read during the distracted stress of “social distancing.” The whole book will take you only a few short hours.
Ultimately, Polek’s stories were so creative and well-written that they made me feel like writing. In fact, after I finished reading the collection, I signed up for my next online writing class. And if that’s not a testament, I don’t know what is.
I initially dog-eared six of the 27 stories to mark them as favorites. When I was flipping back through the book to write this review, though, I found myself thinking, oh yeah, that was a good one, over and over. Still, my favorite six were:
“The Rope Barrier,” in which a woman spends her life carrying around a literal rope barrier to shield herself from that which she perceives as dangerous
“The Dance,” in which a husband and wife are discussing (you might say dancing around) whether to go out for the evening
“The Nearby Place,” in which an old man is being wheeled toward something spectacular … or is he?
“Thursdays at the Waterhouse,” in which a man’s clothing keeps getting stolen while he’s at the spa
“Field Notes,” in which a woman goes on a hike and the trail signs seem to speak directly to her
“Love Language,” in which an airplane’s pilot does not recognize his surroundings
Do yourself a favor and read this one. I can’t wait to see what Polek does next.
Trigger Warnings
None
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
Chain of Gold (The Last Hours, #1)
Author: Cassandra Clare
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
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Cover Description
Chain of Gold is the first novel in a new trilogy that stars the Shadowhunters of Edwardian London.
Welcome to Edwardian London, a time of electric lights and long shadows, the celebration of artistic beauty and the wild pursuit of pleasure, with demons waiting in the dark. For years there has been peace in the Shadowhunter world. James and Lucie Herondale, children of the famous Will and Tessa, have grown up in an idyll with their loving friends and family, listening to stories of good defeating evil and love conquering all. But everything changes when the Blackthorn and Carstairs families come to London…and so does a remorseless and inescapable plague.
James Herondale longs for a great love, and thinks he has found it in the beautiful, mysterious Grace Blackthorn. Cordelia Carstairs is desperate to become a hero, save her family from ruin, and keep her secret love for James hidden. When disaster strikes the Shadowhunters, James, Cordelia and their friends are plunged into a wild adventure which will reveal dark and incredible powers, and the true cruel price of being a hero…and falling in love.
TL;DR Review
Chain of Gold is exactly the kind of book fans of Cassandra Clare have come to love and expect from her, with old and new characters to love hard.
For you if: You are a fan of Cassandra Clare’s other work. Don’t start with this one if you haven’t read her before, lol.
Full Review
“We do not get to choose when in our lives we feel pain," said Matthew. "It comes when it comes, and we try to remember, even though we cannot imagine a day when it will release its hold on us, that all pain fades. All misery passes. Humanity is drawn to light, not darkness.”
Excluding short story collections and other sort of spin-off books focused on side plots, Chain of Gold is the 13th full-length installment in Cassandra Clare’s (gigantic) world of Shadowhunters. If you’re new to her and looking for a fantastic adventure, go back and start with City of Bones. It might feel daunting to jump in now, but if you are a fan of YA fantasy, it’s worth it. The final battle from the book published before this one, Queen of Air and Darkness, actually caused my Apple Watch to tell me that my heart rate was dangerously elevated, and was I okay? lol.
Anyway, Chain of Gold drops back in time chronologically, following the events of The Infernal Devices trilogy and featuring those characters’ children — James Herondale, Matthew Fairchild, and Cordelia Carstairs (wielding Cortana, which will eventually belong to Emma in The Dark Artifices trilogy), plus a few others with last names you’ll recognize.
Everything has been quiet (too quiet?) since Will and Tessa and Jem and the rest defeated the clockwork army, but now the attacks are resuming. But this isn’t just normal demon activity — these attackers are immune to daylight. As you may guess, there is much more nefarious scheming going on, featuring necromancy, curses, and revenge plots. Meanwhile, we readers begin the process of falling in love with new characters and watching them fall in love with one another … which is, to be frank, what we’re all reading these books for anyway.
If you’ve liked Cassandra Clare’s other books so far, you’ll like Chain of Gold too. It’s not the most exciting one of all, but it’s fast-paced and interesting and definitely an exposition for what promises to be allllll the amazingness in books two and three. And I really love how many queer characters she’s put in this setting of Edwardian London!
Trigger Warnings
None
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Fleishman Is in Trouble
Fleishman Is in Trouble is a digestible, easy-to-read novel that takes a hard look at privilege, relationships, and the expectations we put on ourselves and others. I enjoyed it!
Author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Publisher: Random House
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Recently separated Toby Fleishman is suddenly, somehow — and at age forty-one, short as ever — surrounded by women who want him: women who are self-actualized, women who are smart and interesting, women who don't mind his height, women who are eager to take him for a test drive with just the swipe of an app. Toby doesn't mind being used in this way; it's a welcome change from the thirteen years he spent as a married man, the thirteen years of emotional neglect and contempt he's just endured. Anthropologically speaking, it's like nothing he ever experienced before, particularly back in the 1990s, when he first began dating and became used to swimming in the murky waters of rejection.
But Toby's new life — liver specialist by day, kids every other weekend, rabid somewhat anonymous sex at night--is interrupted when his ex-wife suddenly disappears. Either on a vision quest or a nervous breakdown, Toby doesn't know — she won't answer his texts or calls.
Is Toby's ex just angry, like always? Is she punishing him, yet again, for not being the bread winner she was? As he desperately searches for her while juggling his job and parenting their two unraveling children, Toby is forced to reckon with the real reasons his marriage fell apart, and to ask if the story he has been telling himself all this time is true.
TL;DR Review
Fleishman Is in Trouble is a digestible, easy-to-read novel that takes a hard look at privilege, relationships, and the expectations we put on ourselves and others. I enjoyed it!
For you if: You’re looking for a contemporary, commercial fiction read that will make you think a little more about what it means to be human.
Full Review
“A wife isn’t like an ultra-girlfriend or a permanent girlfriend. She’s an entirely new thing. She’s something you made together, with you as an ingredient. She couldn’t be the wife without you.”
OK, so I'm late to the party on this one, but with it being longlisted for both the National Book Award and this year's Women's Prize, I was never not going to pick it up eventually!
It's about a man named Toby Fleishman who is in the midst of a divorce when his wife appears to ditch them all. Suddenly he has to navigate single fatherdom and confront the reality of the path that led him to where he is today. The whole story is told from the POV of one of Toby’s college friends (sort of — she does go really far into Toby’s POV that you forget she’s technically narrating sometimes). I thought that was a fun and interesting choice.
I liked this one; I enjoyed it. It's a story that makes you want to know how it's going to end, with really flawed, complex characters who exist in conjunction with one another in a very real way. That's a hard thing to pinpoint in fiction.
One thing it does VERY well is describe the absolute roller coaster of emotions that people can feel within the span of one day, one hour. The way Brodesser-Akner puts Toby through the ringer of his own emotions is super relatable. He’s just a flawed but well-meaning guy trying to find himself, and that’s hard work.
There was a little too much focus on Toby's lusty escapades and privileged people feeling like a $275K salary is low for me to LOVE it, but I can also see how these choices allowed the story itself to do the thing it was trying to do. In the end, it says some powerful thins. So I can see why so many people have liked this one!
Trigger Warnings
Pregnancy or childbirth
Medical abuse
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
Night Boat to Tangier
Night Boat to Tangier blew me away. It’s very literary, but the writing is nothing less than outstanding.
Author: Kevin Barry
Publisher: Doubleday
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Note: Content warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
In the dark waiting room of the ferry terminal in the sketchy Spanish port of Algeciras, two aging Irishmen — Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond, longtime partners in the lucrative and dangerous enterprise of smuggling drugs — sit at night, none too patiently. It is October 23, 2018, and they are expecting Maurice’s estranged daughter (or is she?), Dilly, to either arrive on a boat coming from Tangier or depart on one heading there. This nocturnal vigil will initiate an extraordinary journey back in time to excavate their shared history of violence, romance, mutual betrayals and serial exiles, rendered with the dark humor and the hardboiled Hibernian lyricism that have made Kevin Barry one of the most striking and admired fiction writers at work today.
TL;DR Review
Night Boat to Tangier blew me away. It’s very literary, but the writing is nothing less than outstanding.
For you if: You don’t mind putting in a little work for a big payoff.
Full Review
Longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize, Night Boat to Tangier is an absolute masterpiece of words. Here are just a few of the many passages I highlighted to show you how amazing this writing is:
“The rented cottage was at a height above Loch an Oileáin. The lake was pitch and eerie. There was a tiny lake island that sat there oddly, as though unsure of its purpose in the greater scheme. Above, the Maumturks were the most sober mountains. The Maumturks had slow, blank, unobliging faces. Maurice and Cynthia loved each other out there.”
“The days were cold as evil but the evenings spread magic from the sea inwards and stretched out and tapped the place until it was open to our dreaming.”
“The light outside was pinched and mean at half past three. The familiar voice of the commentator soothed the afternoon like a drug. The world pressed in tightly on all sides but in simultaneous motion it opened out — this was a kind of breathing — and Maurice Hearne was nineteen years old.”
“But he could see the first swallows of the year darting across the patch of sky outside, drawing out their fast, invisible threads, and these, he knew, were holding the world together.”
The book starts with two Irishmen, Maurice and Charlie, who are waiting in the Port of Algeciras in Spain because they’ve heard Charlie’s estranged daughter will be passing through on her way either to or from Tangier, Morocco. They have a playful, easy, familiar banter with mournful undertones that gave me Samuel Beckett vibes. Every other chapter switches back and forth between the present day in Algeciras and Maurice’s roiling and heartbreaking backstory as a drug smuggler.
When you read this book, you’ll have to work for it a little bit in the beginning. The writing style jumps in head-first, and it’s sort of tricky to find your footing and figure out exactly what’s going on. I was nervous, at first, that I was going to feel lost throughout the book. But worry not, my friends — trust Kevin Barry, for he will bring you through it. And it’s more than worth the work.
At first, I was more drawn into the chapters taking place in the Port of Alegeciras, but as the book went on, I began to look forward to Maurice’s backstory more and more. I’m fascinated by the character of his wife, and I wish we’d gotten more of her. Charlie, too. But the fact that we don’t becomes sort of important at the same time. I’d also loved to have learned more about Maurice’s father. Ugh basically all of these characters were just so interesting and good.
By far, my favorite chapter was the one that took place in the pub. It shifted gears to be told entirely from the POV of random people, like the bartender, as they watched a conflict between Maurice and Charlie unfold from afar. It was really different from the whole rest of the book, but the effect was incredible — suspenseful and poignant. Such good writing, people!!
I may return to this one for a re-read. I borrowed it from the library, but honestly I’ll probably buy the paperback when it comes out. You should read it, too.
Content Warnings
Infidelity
Violence
Mental illness
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
Godshot
Godshot has it all: beautiful writing, tons of emotions, a cult, and big round characters. I highly recommend.
Author: Chelsea Bieker
Publisher: Catapult
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Drought has settled on the town of Peaches, California. The area of the Central Valley where fourteen-year-old Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now it’s an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms. In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. He promises, through secret “assignments,” to bring the rain everybody is praying for.
Lacey has no reason to doubt the pastor. But then her life explodes in a single unimaginable act of abandonment: her mother, exiled from the community for her sins, leaves Lacey and runs off with a man she barely knows. Abandoned and distraught, Lacey May moves in with her widowed grandma, Cherry, who is more concerned with her taxidermy mice collection than her own granddaughter. As Lacey May endures the increasingly appalling acts of men who want to write all the rules, and begins to uncover the full extent of Pastor Vern’s shocking plan to bring fertility back to the land, she decides she must go on a quest to find her mother, no matter what it takes. With her only guidance coming from the romance novels she reads and the unlikely companionship of the women who knew her mother, she must find her own way through unthinkable circumstances.
Possessed of an unstoppable plot and a brilliantly soulful voice, Godshot is a book of grit and humor and heart, a debut novel about female friendship and resilience, mother-loss and motherhood, and seeking salvation in unexpected places. It introduces a writer who gives Flannery O’Connor’s Gothic parables a Californian twist and who emerges with a miracle that is all her own.
TL;DR Review
Godshot has it all: beautiful writing, tons of emotions, a cult, and big round characters. I highly recommend.
For you if: You want a cult story, but make it literary fiction.
Full Review
Big thanks to Catapult and NetGalley for providing me with a review copy of this book. It was originally supposed to be published on April 7, but the pub date got pushed up to March 31!
“People are one way, you think. You watch them every day and you think you know what they’re capable of. That’s how I felt about your mother. I felt I knew just what she would do in any situation. But that’s always wrong. You never really know what any one person will do, or has done.”
Godshot is Chelsea Bieker’s debut novel, and WHAT a debut. It’s about a 14-year-old girl named Lacey May who lives in Peaches, California — once a major producer of raisins, now a ghost town plagued by drought. Lacey and her mother left behind her mother’s string of no-good ex-boyfriends to join the local church, which is really a cult led by Pastor Vern. The members of the church saw him “bring rain” once before and now believe that he will save them all, if only they are obedient enough. But then Lacey’s mom takes off and Vern’s terrible plan for Lacey and the other young girls of the church (see trigger warnings below) comes to light, and Lacey can’t just blindly follow anymore.
The whole book is told from Lacey’s first person POV, and this is its great delight. Lacey’s voice is strong, and her growth unfolds before us in both action and words. Her powers of observation and reflection are astute. I felt like I was simultaneously crying for her and cheering for her the whole time. Bieker’s writing is just so powerful and resonant!
The story begins as a sort of slow burn, but as Lacey puts more and more of the pieces together it starts to swirl around, until it hits a fast-paced, page-turning conclusion. And here are some of the great things we get to explore along the way: womanhood, motherhood, patriarchy, power, abuse, love, friendship, coming of age, phone sex, witches, family, religion, hunger, pain, and beauty.
Ultimately, this is a book about the resilience of women and the force of their relationships — with one another and with themselves. It’s about the power of powerful men to direct women’s lives, and the power of powerful women pushing back. It’s about what you can live with and what you can’t. Who your born family is and who your chosen family is. How you grow into your own person out of the ashes of other people’s mistreatment.
Trigger Warnings
Rape of a minor
Pregnancy or childbirth
Domestic abuse
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
The Roxy Letters
The Roxy Letters was just what I needed right now, as coronavirus upends the world: a funny, joyful, lighthearted book about a character you can’t help but love.
Author: Mary Pauline Lowry
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
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Note: Content warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Meet Roxy. She’s a sometimes vegan, always broke artist with a heart the size of Texas and an ex living in her spare bedroom. Her life is messy, but with the help of a few good friends and by the grace of the goddess Venus she’ll discover that good sex, true love, and her life’s purpose are all closer than she realizes.
Bridget Jones penned a diary; Roxy writes letters. Specifically: she writes letters to her hapless, rent-avoidant ex-boyfriend — and current roommate — Everett. This charming and funny twenty-something is under-employed (and under-romanced), and she’s decidedly fed up with the indignities she endures as a deli maid at Whole Foods (the original), and the dismaying speed at which her beloved Austin is becoming corporatized. When a new Lululemon pops up at the intersection of Sixth and Lamar where the old Waterloo Video used to be, Roxy can stay silent no longer.
As her letters to Everett become less about overdue rent and more about the state of her life, Roxy realizes she’s ready to be the heroine of her own story. She decides to team up with her two best friends to save Austin—and rescue Roxy’s love life—in whatever way they can. But can this spunky, unforgettable millennial keep Austin weird, avoid arrest, and find romance — and even creative inspiration — in the process?
TL;DR Review
The Roxy Letters was just what I needed right now, as coronavirus upends the world: a funny, joyful, lighthearted book about a character you can’t help but love.
For you if: You like contemporary fiction and are looking for a smile!
Full Review
Okay so let me start by saying that contemporary fiction isn’t usually a go-to genre for me, and I’m typically far too much of a fix-it, action-oriented type A to read books about characters who are a hot mess. But as Roxy would say, oh my Goddess — this book was DELIGHTFUL.
The book is written entirely in the form of letters that Roxy addresses to her ex-boyfriend-turned-friend, Everett. He starts out as her new roommate, too, and the first few letters make their way to him. But soon she starts writing them to him but for herself, very much like a diary. We follow Roxy for about six months as she navigates the reality of her terrible job, lingering broken heart, search for artistic inspiration, several pursuits for romance, some burgeoning friendships, passion for her city, and a rekindling of her love of life.
And friends, Roxy is HILARIOUS. She is witty and uses her buoyant vocabulary and ceaseless energy to write the most entertaining letters — absolutely hats off to Mary Pauline Lowry for this incredible voice and characterization.
Roxy is absolutely a hot mess and a bit short-sighted, but she has a really big heart. Her adventures and antics in this book are just the right mix of farcical and serious, and by the end of the book, you’ll have fallen for her hard. You’ll be rooting for her, proud of her, rolling your eyes at her, and cheering her on. The ending is a little deus ex machina but totally uplifting and heartwarming.
This book was EXACTLY what I needed right now, with coronavirus spinning the world on its head. It was light, fun, and a delightful escape. The work that Lowry’s put into Roxy’s character just makes the whole thing — if it had been written in third person, I could have wanted to wring Roxy’s neck. But through the eyes of these letters, I adored her.
If you need something that will squeeze your heart and make you laugh, look no further!
Content Warnings
Explicit language, especially about sex
Mental illness
Addiction
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Fugitive Pieces
Fugitive Pieces is a gorgeously written story about the lingering trauma of the Holocaust. It’s a book you read not necessarily for its plot, but for its poetic style and the emotions it brings forth.
Author: Anne Michaels
Publisher: Bloomsbury / Vintage
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Cover Description
In 1940 a boy bursts from the mud of a war-torn Polish city, where he has buried himself to hide from the soldiers who murdered his family. His name is Jakob Beer. He is only seven years old. And although by all rights he should have shared the fate of the other Jews in his village, he has not only survived but been rescued by a Greek geologist, who does not recognize the boy as human until he begins to cry. With this electrifying image, Anne Michaels ushers us into her rapturously acclaimed novel of loss, memory, history, and redemption.
As Michaels follows Jakob across two continents, she lets us witness his transformation from a half-wild casualty of the Holocaust to an artist who extracts meaning from its abyss. Filled with mysterious symmetries and rendered in heart-stopping prose, Fugitive Pieces is a triumphant work, a book that should not so much be read as it should be surrendered to.
TL;DR Review
Fugitive Pieces is a gorgeously written story about the lingering trauma of the Holocaust. It’s a book you read not necessarily for its plot, but for its poetic style and the emotions it brings forth.
For you if: You like to read novels written by poets.
Full Review
“Standing together on the winter sidewalk, in the white darkness. I know even less than lamplight in a window, which knows how to pour itself into the street and arouse the longing of one who waits.”
“But sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat. If we look up at that moment, it’s not due to any ability of ours to piece the darkness, it’s the world’s brief bestowal. The catastrophe of grace.”
“Translation is a kind of transubstantiation; one poem becomes another. You can choose your philosophy of translation just as you choose how to live: the free adaptation that sacrifices detail to meaning. The poet moves from life to language, the translator moves from language to life; both, like the immigrant, try to identify the invisible, what’s between the lines, the mysterious implications.”
Can we all please take a moment to revel in these passages? Anne Michaels’ poetic prose is absolutely the highlight of Fugitive Pieces. Her writing floats you through the book — evenly, decisively, not unpleasantly — even as she asks us to consider the lifetime and generational trauma of the Holocaust.
This book was the 1997 winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, making it the second title in this year’s #ReadingWomen challenge. It follows the life of Jakob Beer, who buried himself in the mud to survive a Nazi attack on his village in Poland. He was rescued and raised by a kind man who took him first to Greece, then to Canada, and taught him to love language and life. The first two-thirds or so is narrated by Jakob, and the last third is narrated by a man who knew him tangentially, and whose parents had survived the Holocaust.
This is a book that you absolutely read for the writing, not necessarily for “plot.” If you, like me, fall in love with writing that sings and destroys, pick this book up.
Trigger Warnings
None
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City, #1)
House of Earth and Blood was just SO good. It features a well-plotted mystery, characters to die for, heartbreaking revelations, and a fantastic ending.
Author: Sarah J Maas
Publisher: Bloomsbury
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Bryce Quinlan had the perfect life—working hard all day and partying all night—until a demon murdered her closest friends, leaving her bereft, wounded, and alone. When the accused is behind bars but the crimes start up again, Bryce finds herself at the heart of the investigation. She’ll do whatever it takes to avenge their deaths.
Hunt Athalar is a notorious Fallen angel, now enslaved to the Archangels he once attempted to overthrow. His brutal skills and incredible strength have been set to one purpose—to assassinate his boss’s enemies, no questions asked. But with a demon wreaking havoc in the city, he’s offered an irresistible deal: help Bryce find the murderer, and his freedom will be within reach.
As Bryce and Hunt dig deep into Crescent City’s underbelly, they discover a dark power that threatens everything and everyone they hold dear, and they find, in each other, a blazing passion—one that could set them both free, if they’d only let it.
With unforgettable characters, sizzling romance, and page-turning suspense, this richly inventive new fantasy series by #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas delves into the heartache of loss, the price of freedom—and the power of love.
TL;DR Review
House of Earth and Blood was just SO good. It features a well-plotted mystery, characters to die for, heartbreaking revelations, and a fantastic ending.
For you if: You like fantasy novels, and especially if you are a woman who is attracted to men. Heh.
Full Review
“That's the point of it, Bryce. Of life. To live, to love, knowing that it might all vanish tomorrow. It makes everything that much more precious.”
OKAY WOW. We have waited a long time, my friends, for a new book from Sarah J Maas. And she has not disappointed us. I haven’t read the Throne of Glass series yet, but even so I would wager that House of Earth and Blood is her best book yet. Breaking out of the YA genre into adult has given her a freedom to do what she truly does best: raw, unruly characters; hard, emotional plots; and steeeeamy romance.
The main character is Bryce Quinlan, a 20-something half-Fae-half-human who loves her friends more than anything in this life. Her best friend and roommate, Danika, is head of the city’s best pack of shifter wolves and set to become the most powerful wolf potentially in the world. They work by day and party hard by night, and they’re mostly happy. But then travesty hits close to home. Two years later, the head of the city taps Bryce to help him solve the not-quite-closed mystery and assigns his assassin and slave, an angel named Hunt Athalar, to help and guard her. And I think you know where that’s going.
Caveat: This book is quite cis and straight. This one may not be for my queer friends, since so much of the book is dedicated to a romance between a smoking hot cis woman and a smoking hot cis man. I have also never been a fan of the way SJM uses “male” and “female” rather than “man” and “woman,” even if most of them are not human. I get why she does it, but it’s just outdated and unnecessary.
And yes, you could cut the sexual tension in this book with a knife. But it also has so much more going for it. The plot’s central mystery kept me guessing literally right up until the end — SJM dropped hints so masterfully along the way and made such carefully timed revelations that it felt just outside my grasp the whole time. That kind of storytelling is really impressive when it’s done well, and it was. I can’t believe how far we travel, plot-wise, from beginning to end of this story.
Um, also, hello, my HEART. There was a major plot twist in the second half that had me absolutely FREAKING OUT all alone in my apartment with nowhere to put my emotions. I also knew that this book had made people cry, and I so when I got to a part near the end that was so, so sad, I thought that was it. But, dear reader, that was not it. The ending walloped me again and again until I was a heaping ball of emotion that would probably have exploded if my husband had tried to interrupt my reading. (Luckily, he did not.)
There’s a lot of heavy world-building in the first few chapters that makes for a lot of info up front. I had bookmarked a few early passages describing key players and their roles, and I found myself flipping to them and to the map a lot in the first few chapters. But don’t worry — that eases back as you ease into this world, and what a rich world it is.
I absolutely cannot wait to revisit this world and these characters in the next book.
Trigger Warnings
Death / grief
Dating violence / domestic abuse
Suicidal thoughts
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
A Spell of Winter
A Spell of Winter is an eerie gothic novel set in the lead-up to WWI. It has a pretty good plot line but absolutely excellent prose.
Author: Helen Dunmore
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Unsettling love and stifled horror create and then destroy the claustrophobic world of this lush, literary gothic set in turn-of-the-century England. Catherine and Rob Allen, siblings two years apart, grow up in a world of shameful secrets. Their mother creates a public outcry, abandoning her family for a bohemian life on the Continent. Their father, whose mental state always has been slightly precarious, is committed to an asylum in the country. The children are sealed off with their grandfather in a crumbling country estate accompanied by their sturdy and well-loved servant, Kate, and the predatory tutor, Miss Gallagher. In true gothic fashion, terror, violence and eroticism collect beneath every dark surface. Against this strange and secretive backdrop, Cathy and Rob develop a closeness so fierce that it eventually threatens to smother them both. Kate makes the first crack in their hermetically sealed world, which World War I eventually bursts wide open. With Kate's departure for Canada and Rob's for the front, destitute times at home force Cathy into self-reliance. It's only after she's redeemed by hardship that she's given a second chance to be redeemed by love.
TL;DR Review
A Spell of Winter is an eerie gothic novel set in the lead-up to WWI. It has a pretty goodplot line and absolutely excellent prose.
For you if: You like slightly unsettling, dark books and historical fiction.
Full Review
“You have to keep on with a house, day after day, I think. Heating, cleaning, opening and closing windows, making sounds to fill the silence, cooking and washing up, laundering and polishing. As soon as you stop, there may as well never have been any life at all. A house dies as quickly as a body.”
A Spell of Winter was the first-ever winner of (what’s now called) the Women’s Prize for Fiction — in 1996 — and so it’s first up on this year’s #ReadingWomen challenge. I read it in one day (call it a Sunday during social distancing), which made for quite the interesting experience.
This is a gothic novel, which basically means it’s got creepy, dark undertones. A Spell of Winter also has major Wuthering Heights vibes with a headstrong protagonist named Cathy living in a giant, dilapidated house. In this book, Cathy and her brother, Rob, grew up with only one another — their mother fled the life she felt was trapping her, and their father was sent to live in a sanatorium, where he eventually died. This leads them to become … far too close. Which then, as you can imagine, has a serious ripple effect through the rest of her life.
I’ve never read any of Helen Dunmore’s work before, but I can see why her books were so successful. Her prose is absolutely amazing — in so few words, she makes you see, hear, taste, smell every tiny detail. It’s hypnotic, actually. And it’s not dense. It flows like music.
As for the story, it definitely feels like a classic — in that you understand its weight and appreciate what it’s doing more than you love it. For me, the middle section of this book was actually pretty engrossing — Cathy is spiraling and spiraling and you’re right there spiraling with her. I just felt like the height of the action dropped off too soon, leaving the last section of the book a bit unexciting. That being said, I absolutely understand why it was structured that way — we followed Cathy into her own mental and emotional growth.
All in all, I liked this book and I think it’s a great novel, but I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. If you’re the kind of person who can appreciate classics and enjoy reading them because of it, I think you’ll like this one, too. But if those feel like a chore to read, this one might not be for you.
Trigger Warnings
Incest
Animal death
Abortion
Mental illness
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
Under the Rainbow
Under the Rainbow is about a task force of queer people who get sent to live in Kansas, in “the most homophobic town in America.” It’s part pain, part hope, and very, very good.
Author: Celia Laskey
Publisher: Riverhead
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Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop,* which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
When a group of social activists arrive in a small town, the lives and beliefs of residents and outsiders alike are upended, in this wry, embracing novel.
Big Burr, Kansas, is the kind of place where everyone seems to know everyone, and everyone shares the same values-or keeps their opinions to themselves. But when a national nonprofit labels Big Burr "the most homophobic town in the US" and sends in a task force of queer volunteers as an experiment-they'll live and work in the community for two years in an attempt to broaden hearts and minds-no one is truly prepared for what will ensue.
Furious at being uprooted from her life in Los Angeles and desperate to fit in at her new high school, Avery fears that it's only a matter of time before her "gay crusader" mom outs her. Still grieving the death of her son, Linda welcomes the arrivals, who know mercifully little about her past. And for Christine, the newcomers are not only a threat to the comforting rhythms of Big Burr life, but a call to action. As tensions roil the town, cratering relationships and forcing closely guarded secrets into the light, everyone must consider what it really means to belong. Told with warmth and wit, Under the Rainbow is a poignant, hopeful articulation of our complicated humanity that reminds us we are more alike than we'd like to admit.
TL;DR Review
Under the Rainbow is about a task force of queer people who get sent to live in Kansas, in “the most homophobic town in America.” It’s part pain, part hope, and very, very good.
For you if: You want to read more queer stories, particularly those that that break and patch up your heart.
Full Review
Big thanks to Riverhead for sending me a copy of this book! You knew I’d love it!
Under the Rainbow is a multi-POV story — only one character has more than one chapter — told from the perspective of people living in Big Burr, Kansas, dubbed “the most homophobic town in America.” An inclusion-focused nonprofit sends a task force of queer people to live there for two years. Some of the POV characters are from the task force, but many of them are also people from Big Burr itself, or members of the task force’s family. Each chapter jumps us forward in time so that the book covers the whole two years.
This book is a mix of devastation and hopeful optimism. The result is a whiplash of emotions that left me unsure if I was happy or sad, if the task force’s pain was worth it or not. But what this book did do was illuminate how tangled up prejudice can be — how nothing is black and white, hateful people are people, and empathy from all sides will be indispensable if we’re ever going to make progress.
Some of the chapters do feel a little bit quintessential, and at first glance the characters can feel like stereotypes of themselves. But I was really impressed with the way Laskey gave them more dimension by the end of their chapters so that even if their trope felt expected, they managed to feel real. It was like … tidy, but not quite.
This one also felt like a really accessible mix of contemporary fiction and literary fiction. The focus on character and emotion, but it’s not super cerebral. Laskey also had some really great prose snippets from a words and craft perspective that made me dog-ear the page. I think this will be a popular one across the spectrum!
Trigger Warnings
Transphobia and trans misogyny / homophobia and heterosexism
Sexual assault / rape
Animal cruelty /death
Suicidal thoughts
Pregnancy
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
Children of Virtue and Vengeance (Legacy of Orïsha, #2)
Children of Virtue and Vengeance is a great sequel. I was impressed by how Tomi Adeyemi built such a tangled, complex political conflict with no clear winners or losers — hate destroys everyone.
Author: Tomi Adeyemi
Publisher: Henry Holt
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Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop,* which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Content warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
***Description is spoiler for Children of Blood and Bone***
After battling the impossible, Zélie and Amari have finally succeeded in bringing magic back to the land of Orïsha. But the ritual was more powerful than they could’ve imagined, reigniting the powers of not only the maji, but of nobles with magic ancestry, too.
Now, Zélie struggles to unite the maji in an Orïsha where the enemy is just as powerful as they are. But when the monarchy and military unite to keep control of Orïsha, Zélie must fight to secure Amari's right to the throne and protect the new maji from the monarchy's wrath.
With civil war looming on the horizon, Zélie finds herself at a breaking point: she must discover a way to bring the kingdom together or watch as Orïsha tears itself apart.
TL;DR Review
Children of Virtue and Vengeance is a great sequel to Children of Blood and Bone. I was seriously impressed by how Tomi Adeyemi built such a tangled, complex political conflict with no clear winners or losers — hate destroys everyone.
For you if: You read and loved COBAB, of course!
Full Review
“You should know that there are weapons so great, they shouldn’t be used.”
The second book in a trilogy tends to be more of a bridge than an independent story. That’s true for Children of Virtue and Vengeance, but in this case, it didn’t really make the book feel like it dragged on as so many do. In fact, I was surprised at how short it is — only 400 pages. Tomi Adeyemi dives right back into Orïsha and the gigantic F-ing mess of a political conflict raging. It wasn’t as exciting as COBAB, but it did do the important work of setting up a really amazing book 3 and tug on my heart along the way.
Bringing back magic had major consequences. Now, not only do the magi have powers, so do the people who have oppressed them for so long. And so does Amari and Inan’s mother, the queen. People, that woman is THE WORST.
Zélie drove me a little nuts in this book — she wallows. She can’t see her nose in front of her face. For most of the book, she can’t pull herself out of victimhood to focus on what’s important, and she’s mean to Amari. Amari grips tighter and tighter onto her dream to do good for society — but from a place of naivety thanks to her age relative to how many years this conflict has raged — until good intentions turn bad. And Inan, oh poor Inan. He has no good options.
So what was really most impressive about this book was the way we got to see into both sides of the conflict and understand, with devastation, just how much hate instigates further conflict and solves nothing. Just how hopeless the chances of reconciliation seem when we close ourselves off. It was honestly heartbreaking.
And that ending. Tomi, please write quickly — we are waiting.
Content Warnings
Violence
Grief and death
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.