Creatures

Author: Crissy Van Meter
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

On the eve of Evangeline’s wedding, a dead whale is trapped in the harbor of Winter Island, the groom may be lost at sea, and Evie’s mostly absent mother has shown up out of the blue. From there, in this mesmerizing, provocative debut, Evie remembers and reckons with her complicated upbringing in this lush, wild land off the coast of Southern California.

Evie grew up with her well-meaning but negligent father, surviving on the money he made dealing the island’s world-famous strain of marijuana, Winter Wonderland. Although he raised her with a deep respect for the elements, the sea, and the creatures living within it, he also left her to parent herself. With wit, love, and bracing ashes of anger, Creatures probes the complexities of love and abandonment, guilt and forgiveness, betrayal and grief—and the ways in which our ability to love can be threatened if we are not brave enough to conquer the past.

Lyrical, darkly funny, and ultimately cathartic, Creatures exerts a pull as strong as the tides.

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TL;DR Review

Creatures is a beautiful, immersive little book, with prose that begs to be underlined and a main character who aches off the page.

For you if: You love character-driven novels with gorgeous writing.

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Full Review

“So your father will spend years telling you that when he’s gone, he’ll always be right there with you — except how can you know what that means? He’s been letting you run around a beach without any sunscreen, with no hat; he’s lost your shoes. How can you know what it’s like to lose the people you love when you are still trying to figure out how to love them?”

Creatures was hand-picked for me by the lovely booksellers who fulfill Page 1 Book subscriptions, and they nailed it (as always). This book is short, beautiful, and immersive, stuffed with passages that beg to be underlined. I dog-eared no less than eight passages (in a book under 250 pages) for potential “sums up why I loved it” inclusion in this review.

It starts in the days before Evie’s wedding. The fishing vessel on which her fiancé, Liam, works hasn’t come back yet, and her unpredictable, not-so-mothering mother shows up unexpectedly. The book is anchored there: Thursday through Sunday of that week. But throughout the book, Evie’s narration jumps both backward and forward in time, from growing up with an imperfect, alcoholic father, to the perpetual fear that Liam will leave like everyone else, to her father’s death. She paints for us the details of a life spent learning how to trust, love, and grow.

If you prefer plot-driven books, this one isn’t for you. The way it jumps around in time and switches from past tense to present — and even the whale-fact interludes — are all in service of character and a meditation on what it means to love and be loved. And it’s so, so well done.

There are a ton of layers here, so much said and unsaid. Crissy Van Meter’s ability to say a lot with very little is incredible, especially in this debut novel. I expect I’ll be rereading this one sooner rather than later.

“Once, my mother talked about atmospheric pressure. Said there was pressure all over, even in the deepest, darkest trench. My mother didn't like this pressure, said it felt like she might explode. She closed the windows and used wooden dowels to lock them shut. I said something like, There's so much pressure that your heart can explode.

When she went away, I learned this pressure, the weight inside my chest. There was the pressure of missing things, the leaving of things, the invisible weight that felt so thick, even when everything was still moving. She taught me the constant foreboding of implosion.”

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Trigger Warnings

• Alcoholism

• Drug use/selling

• Parental abandonment

Chosen Ones

Author: Veronica Roth
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

A decade ago near Chicago, five teenagers defeated the otherworldly enemy known as the Dark One, whose reign of terror brought widespread destruction and death. The seemingly un-extraordinary teens — Sloane, Matt, Ines, Albie, and Esther — had been brought together by a clandestine government agency because one of them was fated to be the “Chosen One,” prophesized to save the world. With the goal achieved, humankind celebrated the victors and began to mourn their lost loved ones.

Ten years later, though the champions remain celebrities, the world has moved forward and a whole, younger generation doesn’t seem to recall the days of endless fear. But Sloane remembers. It’s impossible for her to forget when the paparazzi haunt her every step just as the Dark One still haunts her dreams. Unlike everyone else, she hasn’t moved on; she’s adrift—no direction, no goals, no purpose. On the eve of the Ten Year Celebration of Peace, a new trauma hits the Chosen: the death of one of their own. And when they gather for the funeral at the enshrined site of their triumph, they discover to their horror that the Dark One’s reign never really ended.

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TL;DR Review

Chosen Ones was an exciting, fun, genre-bending read with a great premise. Not perfect but worth reading for sure!

For you if: You like stories about heroes who save the world.

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Full Review

Chosen Ones was released several months ago. I heard a little bit of buzz about it, but not as much as I’d expected given that Veronica Roth wrote Divergent. Still, I had a copy (thank you HMH via Netgalley) and I was in the mood for an adventure — and I was curious! — so I picked it up. It’s not perfect, but I definitely enjoyed it and I’m really glad I read it!

This book is an adult fantasy/sci-fi genre-masher about a group of young adults who previously saved the world from a force of evil known as the Dark One. The story starts ten years later, when the rest of the world has moved on but our fivesome is still grappling with the effects of being “chosen ones” — including, for our protagonist, severe PTSD. I don’t want to spoil the story’s inciting incident or exactly how fantasy meets sci-fi, because I thought it was quite well done, but suffice to say that their work is far from over.

I thought the magic system in this book was really interesting, if perhaps a bit complex. I also thought it started a little slowly, but it definitely picked up as it went along. It was one of those stories where it gives you just enough to piece together a fair amount of the mystery as you read while still leaving room for twists and surprises, especially at the end. And I was totally rooting for the main character, even though she’s a total grump.

Also, I think this is supposed to be slated as a duology, but I did think this book felt nicely self-contained and could have been a standalone too.

This is a good, solid read if you’re looking for something fun!

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Trigger Warnings

• Suicide

• Kidnapping

• PTSD (severe)

• Racist microaggressions

The Lives of Saints

Author: Leigh Bardugo
Publisher: Imprint / Macmillan Audio
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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.

I highly recommend the audiobook version! Get it from Libro.fm here.

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Cover Description

Dive into the epic world of international bestselling author Leigh Bardugo with this beautifully illustrated replica of The Lives of Saints, the Istorii Sankt’ya, featuring tales of saints drawn from the beloved novels and beyond. Out of the pages of the Shadow and Bone trilogy, from the hands of Alina Starkov to yours, the Istorii Sankt’ya is a magical keepsake from the Grishaverse.

These tales include miracles and martyrdoms from familiar saints like Sankta Lizabeta of the Roses and Sankt Ilya in Chains, to the strange and obscure stories of Sankta Ursula, Sankta Maradi, and the Starless Saint.

This beautiful collection includes stunning full-color illustrations of each story.

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TL;DR Review

The Lives of Saints is an indulgent, fairytale-esque companion to Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse that is especially excellent as an audiobook.

For you if: You love the Grishaverse books, including Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows.

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Full Review

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Macmillan audio for granting me a review copy of this title’s audiobook!

I’ve read and loved all the books in Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse, but I’m not usually big on companion/periphery titles like this one. But HELLO, Ben Barnes is one of the audiobook’s narrators? SIGN ME UP.

And friends, this was everything I wanted it to be. It contains a few dozen super-short origin tales of different Saints in the Grishaverse. The whole audiobook is less than 3 hours long. Every tale was like a delicious snack. They ring with that fairytale feeling.

Every word was infused with Leigh’s recognizable voice, and both Ben Barnes and Lauren Fortgang brought them to life perfectly. (It was so good that I didn’t even speed up the playback speed at all — and I usually listen at 1.75-2x.)

Friends — definitely do this one as an audiobook. I think, after enjoying this so much, I might try to reread the Grishaverse books before I read Rule of Wolves, which is scheduled to publish this March!

Dear Emmie Blue

Author: Lia Louis
Publisher: Atria Books
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

When 16-year-old Emmie releases a balloon with her biggest secret hidden inside, she doesn't expect anyone to find it. When, a few weeks later, Lucas Moreau does just that, the two teens develop an instant rapport, going from trading emails to a deep and enduring friendship. Fourteen years later, Lucas asks Emmie to be his "best woman" at his upcoming wedding. Emmie accepts the honor, but must face the fact that her long-simmering romantic feelings for Lucas can never be revealed.

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TL;DR Review

Dear Emmie Blue is a delightful, well-paced little hug of a novel with characters that will capture your heart.

For you if: You like a contemporary romance — or you don’t usually read that genre but enjoy the occasional really *good* one.

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Full Review

First, big thanks to Atria Books for sending a review copy of this book my way!

I don’t read very many books in the genre that Dear Emmie Blue falls into — a sort of contemporary commercial romantic fiction. But something about it caught my eye, so I accepted the review copy and added it to my list. There it sat for several months — which now feels almost meant to be, because this book came to me at the perfect time. I had been feeling overwhelmed and anxious for a couple of weeks, and this book was like a hug.

It’s obviously about a young woman named Emmie Blue. When Emmie was a teenager, alone in the world and incredibly hurting, she released a note on a balloon, and a boy named Lucas found it on a beach across the ocean. For most of her life, he was her only constant. The book starts on the eve of her and Lucas’ shared 30th birthday. She thinks he’s finally going to ask her to be his girlfriend, but instead, he tells her he’s marrying his ex and asks her to be in the wedding. Heartbroken, she nevertheless agrees.

I never really enjoy books in this genre unless they do something with the story, as I’ve come to phrase it in my mind. Does the book say something worth saying? Does it look something hard in the face? Is it brave? The answer to these questions for Emmie Blue is definitely yes.

And I think that what’s so impressive about this book — that it feels light and warm and like a hug while dealing with some heavy, human topics; in this case, statutory sexual assault and parental neglect. Throw some classism in there, too, while you’re at it. There are a lot of things going on beneath the surface, and yet it never feels like too much. It just feels like really real, really lovable characters who struggle with real things and have real faults, all entwined in a charming story.

I recommend this one as a lighthearted read, even if it’s genre isn’t normally your thing!

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Trigger Warnings

• Statutory sexual assault

• Victim-blaming/accusations of lying about sexual assault

• Parental neglect

The Existence of Amy

Author: Lana Grace Riva
Publisher: Self-published via Amazon
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Normally, I don’t encourage people to buy books from Amazon, but because this book is self-published by an independent author, it’s the only way to buy it. Support indie authors however you can. <3

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.

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Cover Description

Amy has a normal life. That is, if you were to go by a definition of 'no immediate obvious indicators of peculiarity', and you didn't know her very well. She has good friends, a good job, a nice enough home. This normality, however, is precariously plastered on top of a different life. A life that is Amy's real life. The only one her brain will let her lead.

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TL;DR Review

The Existence of Amy is an empathetic, inside look into the way severe mental health disorders can affect a person’s life. It taught me a lot.

For you if: You want to learn more about what it’s like to suffer from OCD and depression.

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Full Review

A few months ago, the author, Lana Grace Riva, reached out to me via email to see if I’d be interested in receiving a copy of The Existence of Amy for review. It is independently published through Amazon. Thank you, Lana, for sending it my way. I’m glad you did.

The Existence of Amy is told in the first person, from the perspective of a woman suffering from severe, constant OCD and episodes of depression. Every day is a struggle — to get out of bed, to face public transportation, to interact with others at work, to keep from disappointing her friends when she’s too overwhelmed to keep her promises to them. Then t opportunity to travel to Australia for work, combined with the steady support of one good friend, helps her push herself outside her comfort zone a bit, which sets the rest of the story into motion.

It took me a bit of time to fall into step with the writing, but I eventually came to understand it as part of Amy’s characterization. She’s nervous, she over-analyzes, over-explains, under-explains. She’s struggling. Once I got used to it, the book read quickly but impactfully. So hang in there with it.

This book covers a lot of ground, including how best to support someone struggling with severe mental health disorders — how to be an ally. But the most impactful thing, for me, was actually the character of Sally. I saw a lot of myself in Sally — she’s the mom of the group, she makes plans for and takes care of others because she truly cares about them, and it hurts her when those plans and attempts to help fall through. She doesn’t understand, and she’s frustrated, but it’s from a place of love and hurt. Still, her reactions aren’t helpful for Amy. It made me think about some of my own loved ones, and the moments I’ve certainly been the Sally in their lives. And it made me want to be more patient, more understanding in the future.

For that alone, the afternoon spent reading this book was worth it.

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Trigger Warnings

• OCD and triggers

• Panic attacks

• Severe depression

Crosshairs

Author: Catherine Hernandez
Publisher: Atria Books
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

The author of the acclaimed novel Scarborough weaves an unforgettable and timely dystopian account of a near-future when a queer Black performer and his allies join forces against an oppressive regime that is rounding up those deemed “Other” in concentration camps.

In a terrifyingly familiar near-future, with massive floods that lead to rampant homelessness and devastation, a government-sanctioned regime called the Boots seizes the opportunity to force communities of colour, the disabled and the LGBTQ2S into labour camps in the city of Toronto.

In the shadows, a new hero emerges. After his livelihood and the love of his life are taken away, Kay joins the resistance alongside Bahadur, a transmasculine refugee, and Firuzeh, a headstrong social worker. Guiding them in the use of weapons and close-quarters combat is Beck, a rogue army officer who helps them plan an uprising at a major internationally televised event.

With her signature prose, described by Booklist as “raw yet beautiful, disturbing yet hopeful,” Catherine Hernandez creates a vision of the future that is all the more terrifying because it is very possible. A cautionary tale filled with fierce and vibrant characters, Crosshairs explores the universal desire to thrive, to love and to be loved as your true self.

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TL;DR Review

Crosshairs isn’t perfect, but it’s worth reading. Catherine Hernandez shows a terrifyingly realistic dystopia — and a solution begging to come to life.

For you if: You strive to be an ally to those who face discrimination and violence.

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Full Review

First, thank you to Atria for granting me an early review copy of this book on NetGalley. It will be published December 8.

This is a hard book to review, mostly because it represents experiences, hardships, and desires that my identity shields me from — I’m not an Own Voices reviewer for this one. So I urge you to seek out Own Voices reviews as you decide whether you want to read this one.

Crosshairs tells the story of a near-dystopian future that feels too realistic. Catastrophic weather events caused by climate change have pushed people with privilege to turn their back on “Others” — essentially anyone who isn’t white, cis, straight, able-bodied, or passing for all those things — and the Canadian government has begun a genocide of Others disguised economic recovery. The main character, a queer Black drag queen, is on the run when he’s swept up into the heart of the revolution, which is Other-led and ally-assisted.

What I really liked: I thought the premise of this book was excellent and compelling and important, and I was drawn into the story and these characters. Obviously Hernandez has shown us a future that is really not outside the realm of possibility at all. She’s written from the perspective of one character whose experiences in a dystopia like this would matter most. And, perhaps most importantly for me, she’s created the sort of ideal structure of a revolution — led by the Others, and assisted by those with privilege who fight their unconscious biases every day to center and amplify Others’ voices.

The thing that has me torn on this book is the writing. I didn’t necessarily feel like the plot followed a shape that built up toward the end like you might expect from a story like this, so I found myself 75% of the way through and more than capable of setting it down and doing something else. Only the last chapter really felt like a climactic moment. The writing also felt very heavy handed, sometimes bordering on cheesy. But ultimately, that may have actually been the point. Hernandez is sort of begging allies to get the picture here.

So while I don’t think this book was perfect, I do think that it is very much worth reading, especially for those of us who strive to be allies to those who face discrimination and violence.

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Trigger Warnings

• Racism, homophobia, and transphobia: language, aggression, violence, suppression

• Child abuse/conversion therapy

• Suicide

• Dating violence

Shuggie Bain

Author: Douglas Stuart
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good — her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion's share of each week's benefits — all the family has to live on — on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs. Agnes's older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is “no right,” a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her — even her beloved Shuggie.

A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction. Recalling the work of Edouard Louis, Alan Hollinghurst, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist who has a powerful and important story to tell.

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TL;DR Review

Shuggie Bain is a gutting but beautiful and impressive novel about poverty, addiction, love, and hope.

For you if: You tend to enjoy slower-paced, emotional literary fiction.

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Full Review

“She was no use at maths homework, and some days you could starve rather than get a hot meal from her, but Shuggie looked at her now and understood this was where she excelled. Everyday with the make-up on and her hair done, she climbed out of her grave and held her head high. When she had disgraced herself with drink, she got up the next day, put on her best coat, and faced the world. When her belly was empty and her weans were hungry, she did her hair and let the world think otherwise.”

The existence of the book Shuggie Bain is a bit like a fairytale. Written by a regular guy in between long days in corporate America, inspired by his childhood in poverty, kept close to his chest until he landed his dream agent, rejected by more than 30 publishers…and then it wins the Booker Prize. The BOOKER PRIZE. Can you even??

And, friends, it earned that win. Shuggie Bain is beautifully, heartbreakingly written, with big, round, devastating and hopeful characters who will earn your love a hundred times. It pulled me out of an episode of anxiety-driven restlessness and rooted me to my seat, engrossed.

The book focuses on two main characters: Shuggie, of course, who for most of the book is a child; and his mother, Agnes, who loves hard and holds her head up proudly but gets crushed by poverty, lack of opportunity, and severe alcoholism.

At its core, this book is about the love and hope between mother and child, devotion, struggle, and resilience. It’s not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination, and it’s paced pretty slowly, but it’s a beautiful novel that I really enjoyed.

One other thing I’ll share is that the dialogue in this book is written to reflect the Glasgow/Scottish dialect. I found this a little tricky to read on the page, and I also found it tricky to follow in an audiobook. But when I listened to the audio alongside reading the printed book, it all clicked perfectly and really, really enhanced the reading experience for me. I definitely recommend.

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Trigger Warnings

• Severe alcoholism

• Sexual assault and rape

• Domestic abuse

• Pedophilia

• Suicidal attempts

• Drug use

• Homophobia and homophobic slurs

Nights When Nothing Happened

Author: Simon Han
Publisher: Riverhead
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

A little girl's nighttime odysseys trigger a chain of events that menaces the fragile stability of her family.

From the outside, the Chengs seem like so-called model immigrants. Once Patty landed a tech job near Dallas, she and Liang grew secure enough to have a second child, and to send for their first from his grandparents back in China. Isn't this what they sacrificed so much for? But then little Annabel begins to sleepwalk at night, putting into motion a string of misunderstandings that not only threaten to set their community against them but force to the surface the secrets that have made them fear one another. How can a man make peace with the terrors of his past? How can a child regain trust in unconditional love? How can a family stop burying its history and forge a way through it, to a more honest intimacy?

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TL;DR Review

Nights When Nothing Happened is a slow burn novel pulled taught, great for fans of short stories and striking prose.

For you if: You’re drawn to gorgeous prose and craft over plot.

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Full Review

First, big thanks to Riverhead for granting me an early review of this book on NetGalley.

Nights When Nothing Happened is the kind of novel that makes me want to write, because oh, how I’d love to write like this … and yet also give up on writing forever, because I will probably never write like this. This is the kind of literary fiction I love, the kind that makes you want to highlight every sentence, and yet taking any of them out of context of their respective paragraphs and pages and chapters would destroy the magic, because it’s all so well crafted.

The book is about an immigrant family from China, the Chengs. We get POV chapters from all four of them: Jack, the 11-year-old son; Patty, the mother struggling with work-life balance; Annabel, the 5-year-old daughter; and Liang, the father struggling under the weight of life. They are making it by day after day in Plano, Texas, until one night, shards of the life they’ve built rain down around them.

This book will not be for everyone. The pacing is slow, examining and lingering. It’s about language and craft and metaphor more than it’s about plot. You know that feeling you get when you read a really good short story? That’s how I felt reading this, although it’s a whole novel (albeit a relatively short one, at 260 pages). It also sort of casts out the idea of the traditional early “inciting incident,” luring us into a dream-like state before snapping taught, exploding with a wallop to the stomach, about halfway through. Just like the sleepy, strained, pressure-cooker of suburban parenthood it describes.

I recommend this one to readers who gravitate toward the more literary, the character studies, the prose that breaks your heart with its precision.

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Trigger Warnings

• Alcoholism (minor)

Lightbringer (Empirium, #3)

Author: Claire Legrand
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

***Description is spoiler for Furyborn and Kingsbane***

Queen Rielle, pushed away from everything she loves, turns to Corien and his promises of glory. Meanwhile, whispers from the empirium slowly drive her mad, urging her to open the Gate. Separated from Audric and Ludivine, she embraces the role of Blood Queen and her place by Corien’s side, determined to become the monster the world believes her to be.

In the future, Eliana arrives in the Empire’s capital as a broken shell of herself. Betrayed and abandoned, she fights to keep her power at bay — and away from Corien, who will stop at nothing to travel back in time to Rielle, even if that means destroying her daughter.

But when the mysterious Prophet reveals themselves at last, everything changes, giving Rielle and Eliana a second chance for salvation — or the destruction their world has been dreading.

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TL;DR Review

Lightbringer isn’t perfect, but it is the sweeping, exciting, heart-wrenching conclusion to the Empirium Trilogy we’ve been waiting for!

For you if: You read and loved Furyborn and Kingsbane.

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Full Review

“Love is the one constant force that no violence or despair can diminish. We must hold onto the light of this truth, even when the world grows dark. Especially then.”

I’ve been waiting for Lightbringer since the moment I finished Kingsbane, which ended on a huge cliffhanger! And finally, a few weeks ago, it landed in my hands — all 600 pages of it. And now, friends, I’ve experienced the exciting ending we’ve been waiting for.

I’m not going to recap the plot because I don’t want to spoil the first two books, but here’s the 1,000-foot view of the series: We have two main characters, 1,000 years apart: Rielle, who has more magic than anyone else, and Eliana, who fights her way through the world that was created when Rielle fell.

Lightbringer itself was great. I do think that it could have been shorter, and the pacing in the first half frustrated me a little. But the ending was worth it. So good!!! My heart!! I don’t want to spoil anything, but if you liked the first two books, I think you’ll be happy with this conclusion.

If you like to read adult fantasy series about characters who love big, fight hard, and bleed for a better world, then this is the one for you. READ IT.

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Trigger Warnings

• Violence

• Relationship abuse

• Suicidal thoughts

White Ivy

Author: Susie Yang
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

A dazzling debut novel about a young woman’s dark obsession with her privileged classmate and the lengths she’ll go to win his love

Ivy Lin is a thief and a liar — but you’d never know it by looking at her. Raised outside of Boston, she is taught how to pilfer items from yard sales and second-hand shops by her immigrant grandmother. Thieving allows Ivy to accumulate the trappings of a suburban teen — and, most importantly, to attract the attention of Gideon Speyer, the golden boy of a wealthy political family. But when Ivy’s mother discovers her trespasses, punishment is swift and Ivy is sent to China, where her dream instantly evaporates.

Years later, Ivy has grown into a poised yet restless young woman, haunted by her conflicting feelings about her upbringing and her family. Back in Boston, when she bumps into Sylvia Speyer, Gideon’s sister, a reconnection with Gideon seems not only inevitable — it feels like fate.

Slowly, Ivy sinks her claws into Gideon and the entire Speyer clan by attending fancy dinners and weekend getaways to the Cape. But just as Ivy is about to have everything she’s ever wanted, a ghost from her past resurfaces, threatening the nearly perfect life she’s worked so hard to build.

Filled with surprising twists and offering sharp insights into the immigrant experience, White Ivy is both a love triangle and a coming-of-age story, as well as a glimpse into the dark side of a woman who yearns for success at any cost.

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TL;DR Review

White Ivy is a sharp, almost dark, and surprising book about a woman who will go to any lengths to get what she wants. Dramatic yet honest, it also has an ending that will drop your jaw.

For you if: You like contemporary novels that bring the drama and aren’t afraid to point out uncomfortable truths.

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Full Review

Big thanks to Simon & Schuster for sending me an advanced review copy of White Ivy, which will be published November 3.

White Ivy is an impressive debut, and I enjoyed it even though it isn’t the type of book I typically read. I don’t tend to gravitate toward dramatic contemporary novels featuring unlikeable characters who make terrible choices lol. But here, Susie Yang takes that kind of story and stares at you from the pages while she’s telling it, never looking away even when you break eye contact. She finds the squirmiest moments of social norms and expectations and says them bluntly, which is somehow both refreshing and even more squirmy. It was fascinating.

The story is about a girl named Ivy, the daughter of Chinese immigrants who just desperately wants to break away from them. After a somewhat rebellious childhood, she’s reconnected with her rich grade-school crush years later, and they start dating. It’s everything she’s ever wanted. Or is it? Can she have life both ways? Ivy will do, say, and become whatever it takes to get what she wants, even if she doesn’t always know what that is. The book is about class and desire and family and social norms, and the simultaneous adherence to and rebellion against all those things.

I won’t say that I didn’t waver a few times in the middle, wondering if this book was for me, given how sort of terrible Ivy and some of the secondary characters are. But I’m really glad I pushed through to the end, because THAT ENDING. There was one part I definitely couldn’t have seen coming that dropped my jaw, swiftly followed by something that I can’t BELIEVE I didn’t see coming.

If you read for enjoyment/plot alone and don’t like to read about unlikeable characters, then I’m not sure this one is for you. But if you seek out books that do really interesting things from a character and storytelling perspective, and you’re willing to hang in there to experience it and see it pay off, then I recommend it.

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Trigger Warnings

• Sexual harassment

• Depression

• Suicidal thoughts (brief)

• Fat phobia

The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)

Author: Andrea Stewart
Publisher: Orbit
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

In an empire controlled by bone shard magic, Lin, the former heir to the emperor will fight to reclaim her magic and her place on the throne.

The emperor's reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire's many islands.

Lin is the emperor's daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognize her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.

Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright — and save her people.

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TL;DR Review

The Bone Shard Daughter is the start of what promises to be a fantastic adventure. The characters are lovable and the magic system is fascinating. I can’t wait for book 2!

For you if: You like fantasy books that have a big cast of characters and a sprawling world.

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Full Review

The first two things I heard about The Bone Shard Daughter were these: it’s a debut epic fantasy written by a Chinese-American woman, and it has an established f/f couple. Then I read the synopsis and I knew I had to have it. I bought it later that week. Friends: I was not disappointed.

As an epic fantasy, this book features a wide cast of characters. The main two are Lin, daughter of the emperor who must secretly learn bone shard magic to save her people (and solve a mystery about her own background), and Jovis, a smuggler who befriends the most LOVABLE of fantasy pets (an otter-cat-dragon thing who is magic and can talk, named Mephi) and has made it his life mission to find the love of his life, who disappeared several years earlier. Are you in love with this story yet?

There’s also the daughter of the governor on one of the empire’s islands and her long-term girlfriend, who is involved with the rebellion, and a woman trapped on a remote island whose memories start to return.

The book isn’t perfect and the prose occasionally reveals that this is the author’s debut, and because there are so many characters and settings, it starts off a little slowly. But by the end of the book, everything spins together and promises absolute FIRE in the next two books to come.

One of the most impressive things, to me, is that this book manages to be exciting and impactful and fun while also reading sort of wholesomely? The only trigger warning I identified was blood (of the sword-fighting variety). Like, I LOVE all these characters fiercely and I am rooting for them so hard. It’s fun and warm and still big and impressive. And I’m here for it. I can’t wait for book two!

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Trigger Warnings

• Blood (sword-fighting-type violence)

The Shadow King

Author: Maaza Mengiste
Publisher: W.W. Norton
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

Set during Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, The Shadow King takes us back to the first real conflict of World War II, casting light on the women soldiers who were left out of the historical record. At its heart is orphaned maid Hirut, who finds herself tumbling into a new world of thefts and violations, of betrayals and overwhelming rage. What follows is a heartrending and unputdownable exploration of what it means to be a woman at war.

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TL;DR Review

The Shadow King is a difficult read that has gorgeous sentences. It refuses to look away from the violent truths of a period of history that’s little known by the rest of the world.

For you if: You are ready to read about the realities of Italy invading Africa in the 1930s, and all that involves.

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Full Review

“My own rupture, he would add if he could be understood, has been a slow progressive fall to the bottom. It has been an endless descent that began with these words: Take a picture, soldato.”

The Shadow King has received a lot of great reviews from the literary community, and it’s currently shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize.

I can see why. The writing, especially on the sentence level, is breathtaking. There were sentences that made me set the book down just so I could revel in them for a few moments. And the subject matter is heavy with weight and importance, telling a truth about the world in an unflinching way. It was a bit too heavy for me — at the moment, at least — so I think I appreciated it more than I enjoyed it. But that’s a me thing, not a book thing, so do with it what you will.

The book is about the invasion by Italy and Mussolini into Ethiopia in the 1930s. We spend time with a small troupe of Ethiopian soldiers, with focus on a maid named Hirut, and the man and woman she’s in service to. We also get some time in the Italian camp, with both the ruthless leader and a more sensitive but somewhat easily influenced photographer. The photographer’s also Jewish, and the antisemitic violence that threatens his parents back home is reaching across the world toward him as well.

I will tell you up front that there is quite a bit of severe sexual violence in this book. That’s not super surprising given the book’s setting and subject matter. It is definitely used in a way that feels important to the story and plot, and not just as a device for setting, so that helps a bit, but it’s still a LOT to stomach.

I thought the way this story harkened back to the Iliad was well done and fascinating. Some references are more overt and some more subtle, but it bends and twists around that mythology in a way that I thought was thought-provoking and resonant.

I also liked the ending; the plot felt circular and purposeful without being simplistic or overdone.

So I guess the verdict is this: If you are ready for a really tough but important read, and if you do well with books that feel more literary and less plot-driven, I say pick it up.

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Trigger Warnings

• Rape

• Child marriage/rape

• War violence

• Death of a child

Home Fire

Author: Kamila Shamsie
Publisher: Riverhead
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

The suspenseful and heartbreaking story of an immigrant family driven to pit love against loyalty, with devastating consequences

Isma is free. After years of watching out for her younger siblings in the wake of their mother's death, she's accepted an invitation from a mentor in America that allows her to resume a dream long deferred. But she can't stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London, or their brother, Parvaiz, who's disappeared in pursuit of his own dream, to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew. When he resurfaces half a globe away, Isma's worst fears are confirmed.

Then Eamonn enters the sisters' lives. Son of a powerful political figure, he has his own birthright to live up to — or defy. Is he to be a chance at love? The means of Parvaiz's salvation? Suddenly, two families' fates are inextricably, devastatingly entwined, in this searing novel that asks: What sacrifices will we make in the name of love?

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TL;DR Review

Home Fire is a quick but hard-hitting read about xenophobia. It’s a raw, emotional, expertly crafted novel that asks readers to examine their own morality.

For you if: You’re looking for a faster-paced work of literary fiction.

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Full Review

“Grief was the deal God struck with the angel of death, who wanted an unpassable river to separate the living from the dead; grief the bridge that would allow the dead to flit among the living, their footsteps overheard, their laughter around the corner, their posture recognizable in the bodies of strangers you would follow down the street, willing them to never turn around.”

I read Home Fire as part of the #ReadingWomen challenge, because it won the women’s Prize in 2018. It was also longlisted for the Booker Prize. So I knew it was going to be great when I started it, and I wasn’t disappointed.

The book’s split into five sections, each in a different character’s point of view. The first is Isma, eldest sister and family caretaker. The second is Eamonn, son of the xenophobic Minister of Defense for the UK, who formed a friendship with Isma but then collides with her sister, Aneeka. The third is Isma and Aneeka’s brother, Parvaiz, who was manipulated into the Jihadi army. The fourth is Aneeka, and the fifth is Eamonn’s father. The story these POVs weave is one of family, siblinghood, romance, loyalty, grief, acceptance, the choice between what’s right and what’s easy, and consequences of all of it.

This book surprised me in that it went a very different way from what I expected to happen, based on the beginning. It moves fast, barreling toward the explosive ending — that very last page, oof. It was powerful not just for its shock value, but for the way it changed the feeling of the whole book. Rather than making a statement, she raised more questions — not plot questions, but moral questions.

And needless to say, the writing here is stunning. There were pages and pages of a gorgeous passage describing grief, metaphor after metaphor, that took my breath away.

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Trigger Warnings

• Xenophobic, Islamophobic, and racist statements and beliefs

• Militant group manipulation and violence

Actress

Author: Anne Enright
Publisher: W.W. Norton
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

Katherine O’Dell is an Irish theater legend. As her daughter Norah retraces her mother’s celebrated career and bohemian life, she delves into long-kept secrets, both her mother’s and her own.

Katherine began her career on Ireland’s bus-and-truck circuit before making it to London’s West End, Broadway, and finally Hollywood. Every moment of her life is a star turn, with young Norah standing in the wings. But the mother-daughter romance cannot survive Katherine’s past or the world’s damage. With age, alcohol, and dimming stardom, her grip on reality grows fitful and, fueled by a proud and long-simmering rage, she commits a bizarre crime.

Her mother’s protector, Norah understands the destructive love that binds an actress to her audience, but also the strength that an actress takes from her art. Once the victim of a haunting crime herself, Norah eventually becomes a writer, wife, and mother, finding her way to her own hard-won joy. Actress is a book about the freedom we find in our work and in the love we make and keep.

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TL;DR Review

I found Actress to be beautiful on a sentence level, but it felt just okay to me overall. I didn’t dislike it, but I didn’t feel as connected to it as I’d hoped.

For you if: You like Hollywood dramas and literary fiction.

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Full Review

“Their eyes watch her from behind a mask of delight, and it is not about attraction, this look, it is more about disaster. There is a painful stretch to some of the smiles that is envy about to happen. Especially the women. There is no denying this — my mother made women, especially, difficult to themselves.”

I read Actress because it was longlisted for the 2020 Women’s Prize, and I try to read the whole longlist every year. I definitely didn’t dislike it or have any complaints about it, but for some reason it just didn’t hook me and I turned the last page feeling relatively agnostic.

It’s a strange feeling because the sentences in this book are gorgeous. Sentence by sentence, Anne Enright’s writing blew me away. But the arc overall felt unexciting; I kept waiting for the book to “start.” It’s narrated by the daughter of a Broadway and film star in Ireland as she tells her and her mother’s backstories. That’s kind of it. Of course there were hard things and insightful things and beautiful things and traumatic things in there, but somehow I never felt them merge together into something particularly compelling.

That said, if you love a Hollywood insider story, or learning about the private lives of famous people, maybe this book might be for you. It’s fiction, of course, but it still has those vibes and again, the prose is absolutely beautiful.

At the end of the day, if you loved this book, I’d love to chat with you about it, because you may be able to help me love it.

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Trigger Warnings

• Rape (no fighting or violence and yet still, a man pushing forward with sex despite her protestations)

• Mental illness

The Glorious Heresies

Author: Lisa McInerney
Publisher: Tim Duggan Books (original US edition)
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

One messy murder affects the lives of five misfits who exist on the fringes of Ireland's post-crash society. Ryan is a fifteen-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father Tony, whose obsession with his unhinged next-door neighbor threatens to ruin him and his family. Georgie is a prostitute whose willingness to feign a religious conversion has dangerous repercussions, while Maureen, the accidental murderer, has returned to Cork after forty years in exile to discover that Jimmy, the son she was forced to give up years before, has grown into the most fearsome gangster in the city. In seeking atonement for the murder and a multitude of other perceived sins, Maureen threatens to destroy everything her son has worked so hard for, while her actions risk bringing the intertwined lives of the Irish underworld into the spotlight . . .

Biting, moving and darkly funny, The Glorious Heresies explores salvation, shame and the legacy of Ireland's twentieth-century attitudes to sex and family.

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TL;DR Review

Brutal, raw, and incredibly told, The Glorious Heresies will grab your heart when you’re not looking and then crack it wide open. I can see why it won so many prizes.

For you if: You read literary fiction that examines what it means to be human in a way that’s hard to look away from.

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Full Review

“He left the boy outside its own front door. Farewell to it, and good luck to it. From here on in it would be squared shoulders and jaws, and strong arms and best feet forward. He left the boy a pile of mangled, skinny limbs and stepped through the door a newborn man, stinging a little in the sights of the sprite guiding his metamorphosis. Karine D’Arcy was her name.”

^^ So begins The Glorious Heresies, which I read as part of the #ReadingWomen challenge; it won the Women’s Prize in 2016. And with opening lines like that, it’s easy to see why.

The book introduces us to several characters who become randomly interconnected when an older woman hits an intruder in the head, killing him, and her mobster son makes it disappear for her. Our characters are the woman, her son, the dead man’s girlfriend (who is a prostitute), and her teenage her drug dealer, and his father, who is also the man whom the mobster hired to help dispose of the body. Keeping up? lol.

Anyway, what Lisa McInerney has done in this novel is extraordinary in that I didn’t realize how attached I was to the characters until my heart was breaking wide open for them. And once the gutting started, it didn’t stop. These characters are imperfect and struggling and they have a lot of trauma. They’re not particularly good people, but she shows the nuggets of good in their hearts that make you want them to all just live happily ever after, for goodness sake. Ryan — the son/drug dealer — got me the hardest. Literally my heart hurts just thinking about him.

This is very, very much a character-driven plot. It doesn’t race ahead, and yet it’s propulsive nonetheless. Expertly crafted and beautifully rendered, as they say. As one who wins the Women’s Prize does.

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Trigger Warnings

• Child abuse

• Hard drug and alcohol usage

• Alcoholism

• Abortion

• Rape

The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo, #5)

Author: Rick Riordan
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

At last, the breathtaking, action-packed finale of the #1 bestselling Trials of Apollo series is here! Will the Greek god Apollo, cast down to earth in the pathetic moral form of a teenager named Lester Papadopoulos, finally regain his place on Mount Olympus? Lester's demigod friends at Camp Jupiter just helped him survive attacks from bloodthirsty ghouls, an evil Roman king and his army of the undead, and the lethal emperors Caligula and Commodus. Now the former god and his demigod master Meg must follow a prophecy uncovered by Ella the harpy. Lester's final challenge will be at the Tower of Nero, back in New York. Will Meg have a last showdown with her father? Will this helpless form of Apollo have to face his arch nemesis, Python? Who will be on hand at Camp Half-Blood to assist? These questions and more will be answered in this book that all demigods are eagerly awaiting.

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TL;DR Review

The Tower of Nero was such a fun, resonant, beautiful conclusion to The Trials of Apollo and wrap on the Percy Jackson universe at large. I can’t believe it’s over! But my heart is happy.

For you if: You’re looking for a wholesome but deep and meaningful squeeze of the heart.

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Full Review

“I was tempted to promise we’d do this more often if we survived, but I’d learned that promises are precious. If you’re not absolutely sure you can keep them, you should never make them, much like chocolate chip cookies.”

Y’all. WHAT A RIDE. This is book 15 of 15 in the Percy Jackson universe, the conclusion of Rick Riordan’s third middle-grade quintet set in this world. And…I’m not crying, you’re crying! OK yeah no, I’m definitely crying.

The Trials of Apollo quintet is about (you guessed it), the god Apollo. At the start of the series, he was cursed/punished by Zeus and sent to live as a mortal teenager with acne named Lester Papadopoulos. He must earn back his immortality and over the course of the five books, works alongside demigod Meg McCaffrey to free the world’s oracles from the control of evil historical Roman emperors under the guise of an evil modern-day corporation called Triumvirate Holdings.

These books are just so good. I want every kid to read them and experience the inclusivity, sensitivity, representation, and giant-hearted life lessons they include. Uncle Rick’s cast of characters is intentional and beautiful. He addresses some really tough stuff in a way that feels real, but through humor and relatability. His balance of jokes and heart is perfect.

And the ending of this one was BEAUTIFUL and so good and so right and ugh I have no coherent words because books like these are what school libraries were built for and I just love them so much. Everyone should read them. They’ll warm your heart and give you hope and make you a blubbering pile of mush like me.

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Trigger Warnings

• Emotional abuse/gaslighting of a child by a parent

Kept Animals

Author: Kate Milliken
Publisher: Scribner
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

A bold, riveting debut novel of desire, betrayal, and loss, centering on three teenage girls, a horse ranch, and the tragic accident that changes everything.

Rory Ramos is a dutiful teenager with a love of photography who works as a ranch hand at the stable her stepfather manages in Topanga Canyon, California, a dry, dusty place reliant on horses and hierarchies. There she rides for the rich clientele, including twins June and Wade Fisk. June begins to take an interest in Rory — but she is more drawn to Vivian Price, the beautiful teenager with the movie-star father, who lives down the hill, and Rory can’t help noticing, swims in her pool nearly every night. Rory’s ambiguous roots and blue-collar upbringing keep her largely separate from the likes of the Prices and the Fisks — until her stepfather is involved in a tragic car accident. From that moment on, the lives of these teenagers become inextricably linked — are they friends or foes, lovers or rivals? — sparking a series of events that come to a head the night a wildfire tears through Topanga Canyon, and Rory’s life is changed forever.

Kept Animals is narrated by Rory’s daughter, Charlie, twenty years after that fateful 1993 fire. Rory is away on assignment as a war photographer, and Charlie knows the key to her own existence lies in the story of what happened during that unseasonably warm fall. And without her mother to tell her the truth, she must unravel it by herself.

Taut, propulsive, and gorgeously written, Kate Milliken’s debut is a searing exploration of girlhood, class, and fate.

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TL;DR Review

Kept Animals is an incredibly paced, scraping novel about growing up, fitting in, navigating class, and the reverberations of choices and trauma.

For you if: You love a heart-wrenching, character-driven novel.

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Full Review

“I made choices in the weeks, the days, even the hours before that fire began that were the equivalent of lighting a match in the underbrush — selfish and risky — and I didn’t stop there.”

Kept Animals is the kind of novel that never stops moving forward, squeezing your heart and scraping out your insides along the way. My copy was gifted to me by the author, and I’m very grateful; I loved it.

The story takes place in two timelines — the main one in California in the 1993, and the other in Wyoming in 2015. In 2015, we have one narrator: Rory’s daughter. In 1993, we have several: Rory herself, who is the novel’s main character and a teenager finding herself through horses, and photography, and a burgeoning queer identity; Gus, her stepdad, who works at the barn; Vivian, the daughter of a movie star, desperately lonely in her family’s giant house; and occasionally Sarah, Vivian’s mother, feeling terribly trapped.

An unconscionable tragedy at the novel’s start kicks off a race to the tragedy that we know (thanks to Rory’s daughter in 2015) is coming at the end. We spend the book falling in love with all of these big, round characters — these characters who hurt and ache and want so desperately just to be loved — and wondering, wondering, wondering how this foretold ending is going to come about. And then…it does. And everything hurts.

I was so impressed by this novel’s shape and pacing. I just kept thinking, this is the essence of what novels are. The writing is so, so good, it will leave you feeling hollowed out in the best kind of way, a shell of a human. I definitely recommend.

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Trigger Warnings

• Death of a child

• General homophobia and family non-acceptance of LGBTQ identity

• Acts of racism and racist language used toward Mexican people

• Hard drug and alcohol usage

• Rape

How to Be Both

Author: Ali Smith
Publisher: Penguin (original US edition)
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith’s novels are like nothing else. A true original, she is a one-of-a-kind literary sensation. Her novels consistently attract serious acclaim and discussion — and have won her a dedicated readership who are drawn again and again to the warmth, humanity and humor of her voice.
 
How to be both is a novel all about art’s versatility. Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it’s a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real — and all life’s givens get given a second chance.

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TL;DR Review

How to Be Both is a fascinating novel broken into two parts, which can be read in any order. I enjoyed it and I’m eager to read more Ali Smith.

For you if: You like experimental literary fiction.

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Full Review

Can we never get to go beyond ourselves? her mother says. Never get to be more than ourselves? Will I ever, as far as you’re concerned, be allowed to be anything other than your mother?
No, George says.
And why is that? her mother says.
Because you’re my mother, George says.
Ah, her mother says, I see.

I read How to Be Both as part of the #ReadingWomen challenge to get through all the past years’ winners of the Women’s Prize. This book won in 2015, and I can see why. It’s sort of cerebral, but also moving and curious and sweeping and beautiful. I really enjoyed it.

The book is broken into two parts: camera and eyes, which you can read in any order. Copies of the book are randomly printed so that sometimes camera comes first, and sometimes eyes comes first. For me, camera was first. It’s set in the present day and features a teenager named George (Georgia) whose mother recently passed away. She’s grappling with grief and a spark of romance with her friend, H (Helena). Eyes, on the other hand, is narrated by the spirit of George’s mother’s favorite artist, who’s been yanked to the present and spends time observing George and connecting what’s happening to their own life in the 1460s.

The more you read this one, the more its title makes sense. There’s so much there about duality. History or present? Metaphor or literal? Interpretation or rules? Truth or imagination? Past or present?

This book felt really intriguing from a craft perspective, something just a little experimental with Ali Smith’s genius peeking through to say hello. I’m really glad I read it, and it’s definitely made me want to read more of her work.

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Trigger Warnings

• Death/grief

Magic Lessons (Practical Magic, #0)

Author: Alice Hoffman
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

In an unforgettable novel that traces a centuries-old curse to its source, beloved author Alice Hoffman unveils the story of Maria Owens, accused of witchcraft in Salem, and matriarch of a line of the amazing Owens women and men featured in Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic.

Where does the story of the Owens bloodline begin? With Maria Owens, in the 1600s, when she’s abandoned in a snowy field in rural England as a baby. Under the care of Hannah Owens, Maria learns about the “Unnamed Arts.” Hannah recognizes that Maria has a gift and she teaches the girl all she knows. It is here that she learns her first important lesson: Always love someone who will love you back.

When Maria is abandoned by the man who has declared his love for her, she follows him to Salem, Massachusetts. Here she invokes the curse that will haunt her family. And it’s here that she learns the rules of magic and the lesson that she will carry with her for the rest of her life. Love is the only thing that matters.

Magic Lessons is a celebration of life and love and a showcase of Alice Hoffman’s masterful storytelling.

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TL;DR Review

Magic Lessons is a dark, emotional, but not too heavy story perfect for October. I haven’t read Practical Magic, but it seems like a fantastic prequel.

For you if: You are looking for a literary witchy read.

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Full Review

“Always love someone who will love you back.”

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for providing me an advanced copy of this one via NetGalley. It was the perfect read to get into the mood for fall!

I’ve never read or seen Practical Magic (for which this is a prequel), but I was reassured that I didn’t need to in order to read Magic Lessons. That turned out to be true (I still loved it), but now I definitely want to read the rest of these books! I’ve heard that Magic Lessons is a bit darker than the others. I believe that, but I don’t think it’s too dark.

This novel tells the story of Maria Owens, matriarch of the Owens family and originator of a family curse, in the time of the Salem witch trials. She’s raised by another woman practiced in the Nameless Art, but is forced to flee as a young girl when fear and hate come knocking. Despite her resolve not to fall prey to love, infatuation strikes, and she careens herself into a long, often painful journey of a destiny.

Reading this book felt like sinking into a pile of fall leaves wrapped in a plaid blanket with candles lit and a mug of hot apple cider. It’s pricking candles with a pin and spells and herbal mixtures and grimoires and familiars, but without any cheesiness. It just feels like literary October. And it’s clear that Alice Hoffman has done a good amount of research, both into the history of the region and traditional witchiness.

But it’s also got a ton of depth and heart. There’s much here about motherhood and daughterhood and chosen family vs blood, friendship and abandonment and true love and faith and trust.

I think this book will hold a special place in my heart for a long time!

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Trigger Warnings

• Pregnancy and childbirth

• Animal death

• Kidnapping

Transcendent Kingdom

Author: Yaa Gyasi
Publisher: Knopf
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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.

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Cover Description

Yaa Gyasi's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national best seller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama.

Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.

But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanain immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief — a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut.

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TL;DR Review

Approachable but with significant depth, Transcendent Kingdom is contemporary literary fiction at its finest. I really, really enjoyed it, even though it was a tough read at times.

For you if: You are looking for something to make you think and feel, both.

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Full Review

“When I was very little, my mother took to calling me asaa, the miracle berry that, when eaten first, turns sour things sweet. Asaa in context is a miracle berry. Without context, it is nothing, does nothing. The sour fruit remains.”

Big thanks to Knopf and Libro.fm for the complimentary audiobook of this one! I listened to it in the car on a road trip, and it was perfect. I loved it.

Transcendent Kingdom is a novel about a woman named Gifty, from a Ghanian immigrant family wracked by abandonment, addiction, overdose, and struggles with mental health. Despite (or perhaps in spite) of all that, she’s pushed herself through a prestigious higher education, and now she’s a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at medical school, studying addiction in mice. Her mother, who has fallen into a severe bout of depression, is sleeping in Gifty’s bed and not eating much. The novel flashes between past and present as Gifty tells us her history and tries to find a way to help her mother.

Some might tell you that this is a novel about the irreconcilable nature of religion and science, as Gifty had an extremely religious childhood and now practices neuroscience, questioning all the time how all of the experiences of her life can be true and valid. But I don’t think that’s quite right. To me, this felt not so much like religion vs science as it felt like, how can you exist in a world with both when the rest of the world believes you need to choose? And it was so grounded in Gifty’s character and experiences that it was interesting and moving despite the fact that I’m not particularly interested in that question or either of those subjects on my own.

The most impressive thing about this novel, to me, was that it read like really good memoir. Gyasi’s storytelling through Gifty’s narration is incredible — her understanding and probing into Gifty’s childhood to peel back layer upon layer of trauma, habit, indoctrination, grief, and love. The insight that Gifty has into what shaped her into the woman she is today — that kind of work is something I’ve only ever seen in memoir.

Make no mistake: This book is not an easy read. It centers on parental abandonment and addiction, relapse, overdose, death, and grief. It will be difficult for those who have struggled with addiction and those who have had addiction impact their families. But if you’re able to read about those topics, then I highly recommend this one, because it will make you feel deeply.

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Trigger Warnings

• Drug abuse

• Overdose

• Parental abandonment

• Severe depression

• Racism and racial slurs