Project Hail Mary
Project Hail Mary is a fast-paced, fun read. The prose isn’t particularly special, but it’s very exciting, and the math/science/plausible sci-fi premise really makes it stand out.
Author: Anthony Weir
Publisher: Ballantine
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and 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
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish.
Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, he realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Alone on this tiny ship that's been cobbled together by every government and space agency on the planet and hurled into the depths of space, it's up to him to conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.
And thanks to an unexpected ally, he just might have a chance.
Part scientific mystery, part dazzling interstellar journey, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.
TL;DR Review
Project Hail Mary is a fast-paced, fun read. The prose isn’t particularly special, but it’s very exciting, and the math/science/plausible sci-fi premise really makes it stand out.
For you if: You like dad joke humor (and you don’t hate math or science).
Full Review
Project Hail Mary was my first read by Andy Weir (I know, I know, I need to read The Martian), and my final nudge to pick it up was its nomination for the Hugo.
The story is about an academic-scientist-turned-junior-high-teacher named Ryland Grace. It starts with him waking up aboard a spaceship, alone, with a medical robot/computer tending to him, and no memory of where he is, who he is, or how he got there. Throughout the book, his memory comes back to him in flashes and we piece together not only what’s going on but also how he ended up on the ship himself. One thing he remembers early on, though, is that Earth is facing a mass extinction event.
In a nutshell, I had a lot of fun reading this book. The prose is nothing super special, but Weir really knows how to keep you hooked and reading. But now I understand the real reason people love him, which is that his premise/science/math is just so…plausible. He really knows his stuff, and there are very few moments when you feel like you have to suspend disbelief. It feels like any of these things could happen, given what we know about science today. So of course it is a bit heavy on math and science, although I thought it was done in an exciting and approachable way — that said, if you really hate math, this might not be for you.
Also, be warned: The slightly-bro-ish dad joke humor is strong here. There were a few moments where I was like “BOOO lolol,” as well as a few that felt just a toe over the line. The first few chapters also felt like they were trying a bit too hard (five uses of the term “butt tube” in four pages?), but it did eventually settle down into its zone.
Last thing I’ll say: I have read a lot of buzzy books before, but I’ve never had so many people in my DMs telling me how much they loved a book, invested in knowing how I felt about it. That alone makes me feel like it’s a strong Hugo contender (since the winner is decided by vote).
Content and Trigger Warnings
Suicide (as in, a suicide mission to save humanity) and discussion of desired method
Medical content
Death and grief
A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2)
Like the book that comes before it, A Closed and Common Orbit is heartwarming and fun and beautifully written with the universe’s absolute best characters.
Author: Becky Chambers
Publisher: Harper Voyager
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: Content and 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
Embark on an exciting, adventurous, and dangerous journey through the galaxy with the motley crew of the spaceship Wayfarer in this fun and heart-warming space opera—the sequel to the acclaimed The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.
Lovelace was once merely a ship’s artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in a new body, following a total system shut-down and reboot, she has no memory of what came before. As Lovelace learns to negotiate the universe and discover who she is, she makes friends with Pepper, an excitable engineer, who’s determined to help her learn and grow.
Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that no matter how vast space is, two people can fill it together.
TL;DR Review
Like the book that comes before it, A Closed and Common Orbit is heartwarming and fun and beautifully written with the universe’s absolute best characters.
For you if: You like soft sci-fi about found family and self-acceptance that feels like a hug when you read it.
Full Review
A Closed and Common Orbit is the sequel to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. When I learned that it was set in the same universe but not about the same crew of characters, I was sad. And tbh, I would definitely still read a sequel about those characters specifically. But this was also so lovely that I ended up anything but disappointed! I shoulda known Becky Chambers would deliver.
The main character of this book is an advanced AI program who’s been decoupled from the ship she was created to run and placed inside a body kit. That’s illegal, though, so she goes to live with a side character from TLWTASAP, work as her assistant, and attempt to blend in. The story is about her struggle to adjust to a body that isn’t *her*, explain that dysphoria to those who love her, and forge authentic friendships of her own. At the same time, we get more and more backstory on the woman she lives with, until the two plots come together into an exciting ending.
So, that sounds very sci-fi, and obviously that’s the genre, but again, Chambers’ books aren’t about the AI or the science or space battles; they’re about characters and found family and self-acceptance. I was blown away by how much this said about real people’s experiences with body dysmorphia and society’s xenophobia through the metaphor of an AI living in a human body.
Another heartwarming, cozy, beautiful read from an author who will never disappoint me.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Death, grief
PTSD/panic attacks
Child slavery (not racial)
Animal death (self-defense and hunting)
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is a charming, heartwarming, beautifully inclusive character-driven sci-fi that deserves every ounce of hype it’s gotten since it was published in 2016.
Author: Becky Chambers
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and 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
Follow a motley crew on an exciting journey through space—and one adventurous young explorer who discovers the meaning of family in the far reaches of the universe—in this light-hearted debut space opera from a rising sci-fi star.
Rosemary Harper doesn’t expect much when she joins the crew of the aging Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and most importantly, some distance from her past. An introspective young woman who learned early to keep to herself, she’s never met anyone remotely like the ship’s diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks who keep the ship running, and Ashby, their noble captain.
Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy—exactly what Rosemary wants. It’s also about to get extremely dangerous when the crew is offered the job of a lifetime. Tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet is definitely lucrative and will keep them comfortable for years. But risking her life wasn’t part of the plan. In the far reaches of deep space, the tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling adventures that force them to depend on each other. To survive, Rosemary’s got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs—an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the universe.
TL;DR Review
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is a charming, heartwarming, beautifully inclusive character-driven sci-fi that deserves every ounce of hype it’s gotten since it was published in 2016.
For you if: You like books about found family and friendship with a little pew-pew on the side.
Full Review
I knew going in that I was very late to the TLWTASAG party, but holy guacamole, I’m so glad to be here now. Becky Chambers and her (should-be) patented cozy sci-fi genre does it again — or, rather, did it here first, as this was her debut novel. It’s a charming, heartwarming, beautifully inclusive character-driven sci-fi that deserves every ounce of hype it’s gotten since it was published in 2016. (Also, fun fact for my litfic readers: This was longlisted for the Women’s Prize!)
The story is about a girl named Rosemary who joins a crew of space tunnelers on their ship, the Wayfarer, to escape … something we come to learn more about over the course of the book. They end up taking a large job a long way away (hence the title), and what we get is a story about friendship and queerness and found family and gender and inclusion and cultural acceptance and body acceptance — all with the added layer of different peoples from different planets with different kinds of bodies.
Truly what makes this book (and all Chambers’ books, tbh), is her big, lovable characters, who are just such good people who do such a good job of being good to one another. I don’t know anyone else who writes so inclusively so naturally, with just enough fun pew-pew on the side.
Perfect for today’s fans of Hitchhiker’s Guide or A Psalm for the Wild-Built or Light from Uncommon Stars, this one is simply the perfect big-hearted escape.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Armed hostage situation
Death and grief
Xenophobia
Terminal illness
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2)
Good news for those who loved Psalm: this sequel does not disappoint. Sibling Dex and Mosscap are back to hug us as they puzzle through questions of purpose, belonging, and self-compassion.
Author: Becky Chambers
Publisher: Tordotcom
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: Content and 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
After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home.
They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.
Becky Chambers's new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?
TL;DR Review
Good news for those who loved Psalm: this sequel does not disappoint. Sibling Dex and Mosscap are back to hug us as they puzzle through questions of purpose, belonging, and self-compassion.
For you if: You read A Psalm for the Wild-Built (which you really, really should do)
Full Review
“You don’t have to have a reason to be tired. You don’t have to earn rest or comfort. You’re allowed to just be.”
I’m not alone in thinking that Becky Chambers’ first Monk & Robot novella, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, is one of the best things I’ve read. And so I, like everyone else, couldn’t wait to get my hands on this sequel. Good news: It’s just what we hoped for.
If you’re unfamiliar, the Monk & Robot novellas are about a (non-binary) tea monk named Sibling Dex and a sentient robot named Mosscap. (Centuries ago in this world, robots “woke up” and decided they’d rather go live in nature in peace. Dex and Mosscap are the first humans/robots to talk since then.) This novella picks up a few weeks after the first one ends; Dex and Mosscap are beginning their tour of the country as Mosscap seeks the answer to his assigned question: What do humans need?
Someone at a book launch event I attended called Chambers’ work “cozy sci-fi,” and it’s perfect. These books are a hug. They may make you tear up, but only because you feel seen. Rather than battles, we have philosophy. Rather than conflict, we have questions and disagreements resolved through compassion and conversation. Rather than the world ending, we have characters who are tired and doing their best in all the same ways as us.
I think Psalm is still my favorite of the two, but I definitely need to reread Prayer again before I can make that call for sure (they are beautiful rereads). This one feels a bit less self-contained; more like the beginning of a new journey vs the “there and back again’ feeling of the first. But I did love this. It asks questions about purpose and need. It’s about selfhood, and how we are both of and more than our bodies. And it’s about the fallacy of “earning” joy and rest, and how it’s hard to extend the same compassion to ourselves as we do to others. I also really loved learning about the system of “money” in this world; it cracked open another piece of my heart.
Sibling Dex, Mosscap, Becky Chambers: I will follow you on any adventure. Where will we go next? Please can we do this again soon?
Content and Trigger Warnings
Alcohol use (minor)
The Last White Man
The Last White Man is another stunner from Mohsin Hamid and his heartbreaking commas. It’s a quick read with lots of layers that kept me thinking long after I’d closed it.
Author: Mohsin Hamid
Publisher: Riverhead
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and 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
From the New York Times bestselling author of Exit West, a story of love, loss, and rediscovery in a time of unsettling change.
One morning, Anders wakes to find that his skin has turned dark, his reflection a stranger to him. At first he tells only Oona, an old friend, newly a lover. Soon, reports of similar occurrences surface across the land. Some see in the transformations the long-dreaded overturning of an established order, to be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders's father and Oona's mother, a sense of profound loss wars with profound love. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading: a chance to see one another, face to face, anew.
Hamid's The Last White Man invites us to envision a future — our future — that dares to reimagine who we think we are, and how we might yet be together.
TL;DR Review
The Last White Man is another stunner from Mohsin Hamid and his heartbreaking commas. It’s a quick read with lots of layers that kept me thinking long after I’d closed it.
For you if: You like novels that use magical realism as a metaphor.
Full Review
First, thank you to Riverhead for the advanced copy of this book. Exit West is an all-time favorite, and The Last White Man was one of my most anticipated reads of the year. I’m happy to report that it is excellent, with lots of layers that kept me thinking long after I’d closed it.
This is a quick read (under 200 pages), but so resonant. The story is about a gym instructor named Anders who, in a reimagined-Kafka moment, wakes up one day to find out that his skin has gone from white to brown. He’s not alone; more and more people’s skin changes until there’s (briefly) only one white man left. We also see a lot of Oona, a white yoga instructor who’s casually sleeping with Anders. Both of their parents factor heavily into the story as well, in ways I’ll let you discover for yourself.
The book is, of course, an exploration of whiteness from within, as Hamid has said in previous interviews. But in the letter printed at the front of my advanced reader’s copy, he also talks about how he’d been “white enough” (PhD, etc) to enjoy a certain level of privilege in the US — until 9/11, at which point only his skin mattered. I found that holding both of these approaches to the story in my mind as I read (what would happen if white people lost their whiteness, vs the metaphor of a non-white person grappling with a lost illusion of inclusion) made the reading experience even richer, with even more reflection.
Some of the other things I’m still contemplating about this book include the identity of the last white man and how his time as such ended, and the exploration of different kinds of deaths and how they impact loved ones.
And, of course, I fell hard (again) for Hamid’s signature long, beautiful sentences — aside from the opening line, I’m not sure there’s a single paragraph that isn’t just one single sentence. This won’t be for everyone, but I love their momentum, how they pull you along and crest into a wave that breaks on the paragraph’s last few words, again and again and again for a whole book.
Oh, there’s so much more I could say if all of you had already read it. I think we’ll be seeing this on the Booker Prize longlist next week.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Racism
White supremacy
Gun violence
Terminal illness (cancer)
Death of a parent
Death by overdose (off screen)
Suicidal thoughts (minor)
A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables, #2)
A Mirror Mended is a great sequel to A Spindle Splintered. I loved the growth for our friend Zinnia Gray. These novellas are just so fun and badass and heartwarming!
Author: Alix E. Harrow
Publisher: Tordotcom
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: Content and 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
***Description is spoiler for A Spindle Splintered***
Zinnia Gray, professional fairy-tale fixer and lapsed Sleeping Beauty, is over rescuing snoring princesses. Once you’ve rescued a dozen damsels and burned fifty spindles, once you’ve gotten drunk with twenty good fairies and made out with one too many members of the royal family, you start to wish some of these girls would just get a grip and try solving their own narrative issues.
Just when Zinnia’s beginning to think she can't handle one more princess, she glances into a mirror and sees another face looking back at her: the shockingly gorgeous face of evil, asking for her help. Because there’s more than one person trapped in a story they didn’t choose. Snow White's Evil Queen has found out how her story ends, and she's desperate for a better ending. She wants Zinnia to help her before it’s too late for everyone. Will Zinnia accept the Queen's poisonous request and save them both from the hot-iron shoes that wait for them, or will she try another path?
TL;DR Review
A Mirror Mended is a great sequel to A Spindle Splintered. I loved the growth for our friend Zinnia Gray. These novellas are just so fun and badass and heartwarming!
For you if: You like fairy tales and sapphic fantasy.
Full Review
Good news: If you loved A Spindle Splintered, you’re going to love A Mirror Mended, too. This novella duology is about a girl named Zinnia Gray, a young woman living with a terminal illness. In A Spindle Splintered, she finds herself suddenly transported into the Sleeping Beauty story, with the woman in question in need of saving. No spoilers, but in this second book, we’re back with Zinnia as she fairy-tale-hops — but is she being noble, or running from something? And what if this time, she’s wrong about who needs saving?
This duology is just so fun and badass and heartwarming (and sapphic!). And at novella length, they’re the perfect quick, light reads when you need something to escape the world. I loved the way Alix Harrow turned fairy tales on their heads, loved the sharp, hilarious banter between characters, loved Zinnia and her growth arc in this second book. You really just can’t go wrong picking these up — they’re more than worth the couple of hours it will take to breeze through them!
Content and Trigger Warnings
Terminal illness
Confinement
Violence
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is definitely going to be one of my favorite books of 2022. Alternating between heartwarming and heartbreaking, it’s a beautiful book about friendship and the messiness (and hope) of life.
Author: Gabrielle Zevin
Publisher: Knopf
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and 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 this exhilarating novel by the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.
Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.
TL;DR Review
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is definitely going to be one of my favorite books of 2022. Alternating between heartwarming and heartbreaking, it’s a beautiful book about friendship and the messiness (and hope) of life.
For you if: You like books that follow characters and their relationships across decades.
Full Review
When John Green (who may not write in my usual genres, but is an incredible person) says an upcoming novel is “one of the best books [he’s] ever read,” you read it. I did not know this was a rule in my life before I heard about Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, but I’m glad I followed it nonetheless; it’s absolutely going to be one of my favorites of the year and a book I recommend to everyone.
You will hear this about T&T&T many times: that while the plot involves video games, it’s not really about video games. (Although if you do like video games, you’ll probably love this even more than I did.) It’s one of those novels that follows a handful of characters (two friends, Sam and Sadie, childhood best friends who go into business making video games together) and their relationship across decades (30 years, in this case). It’s about friendship and love and loss and hope and coming of age and the way life hurts but also gives us so much.
This book is alternatively heartwarming and heartbreaking, with two main (and several secondary) characters who are both deeply lovable and also very flawed and frustrating. You know how sometimes characters are so good that they stay in the back of your mind 24/7, even after you’ve put a book down or finished it? Sam, Sadie, and Sam’s college roommate Marx did that to me. I laughed and cried (def cried) and cheered for them and wanted to shake them and by the end, found that I loved them very much.
I won’t tell you how the book gets its title, because I think it arrives at exactly the right moment and makes everything this book is about just click. But take my word for it: it’s a perfect title. And you’ll be glad you read this book.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Gun violence (explicit)
Death and grief
Homophobia
Drug use and alcohol
Toxic/borderline abusive relationship
Medical amputation
Abortion (minor)
Suicide (minor)
A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2)
A Desolation Called Peace was a great sequel to A Memory Called Empire. Bigger scope, better pacing, same great characters being pushed even further toward growth — what’s not to love?
Author: Arkady Martine
Publisher: Tor
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: Content and 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
An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is running out of options.
In a desperate attempt at diplomacy with the mysterious invaders, the fleet captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass—still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire—face the impossible task of trying to communicate with a hostile entity.
Whether they succeed or fail could change the fate of Teixcalaan forever.
TL;DR Review
A Desolation Called Peace was a great sequel to A Memory Called Empire. Bigger scope, better pacing, same great characters being pushed even further toward growth — what’s not to love?
For you if: You like hard sci-fi novels (and already ready Memory!)
Full Review
A Desolation Called Peace is the sequel to A Memory Called Empire, which together make up the Teixcalaan duology. Memory won the Hugo Award and was nominated for a bunch of others, and Desolation already won the Locus Award and is nominated for this year’s Hugo.
The duology itself is about a woman named Mahit from the space station Lsel, who travels to the capital Teixcalaan as ambassador. Those from stations and planets outside the empire are called “barbarians” by the Teixcalaanli, whose society revolves around things like advanced poetry. But those from Lsel have a secret technology called Imago machines, which basically implants the recorded consciousness and knowledge of another person into their minds. Mahit is given a very old Imago machine from the previous ambassador, who recently disappears, and is thrust into a mystery and revolution in Teixcalaan with just her liaison, named Three Seagrass, for help. This book picks up a few months after that one left off, sending Mahit and Three Seagrass to the reaches of the empire, where the war with mysterious aliens rages — or does it?
There is so much to love in this duology. It’s sapphic, which we always love to see. It’s got lots to say about home and loyalty and even more about colonization and the stickiness of prejudice, even in the face of love. It’s got really really good characters (who grow even more, in better ways, this time), and the scope of the world are exquisitely, intricately built. Nobody can make political relations as exciting as Arkady Martine! I do also think the second book was a bit better paced in the middle than the first one was (mostly because less worldbuilding).
TL;DR, if you like hard sci-fi, don’t sleep on these books!
Content and Trigger Warnings
Xenophilia
Violence
Death
The Long Answer
The Long Answer is an emotional, sad, beautiful novel of stories within a story about pregnancy, motherhood, and grief. It begs not to be rushed but flows like water.
Author: Anna Hogeland
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: Content and 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 woman considers pregnancy, motherhood, and the nature of female relationships in this profound and provocative novel.
Twelve weeks pregnant for the first time, Anna speaks to her sister on the other side of the country and learns she has just miscarried her second child. As this loss strains their bond and complications with Anna's own pregnancy emerge, her tenuous steps towards motherhood are shadowed and illuminated by the women she meets along the way, whose stories of the children they have had, or longed for, or lost, crowd in.
The Long Answer is a stunning novel of secrets kept, and secrets shared. Deeply empathetic and hugely absorbing, it unravels the intimate dynamics of female friendship, sisterhood, motherhood and grief, and the ways that women are bound together and pulled apart by their shared and contrasting experiences of pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, and infertility.
TL;DR Review
The Long Answer is an emotional, sad, beautiful novel of stories within a story about pregnancy, motherhood, and grief. It begs not to be rushed but flows like water.
For you if: You like to cry, and you don’t mind relatively plot-less books.
Full Review
Thank you, Riverhead, for thinking of me for this book and sending it my way — you were right, I loved it. The Long Answer is a sad, beautiful, deeply personal book of stories within a story.
Our narrator, who shares the author’s first name, is an MFA student expecting her first baby. The book begins when her sister calls to tell her that she’s had a very early miscarriage. That serves as a jumping off point for her to tell Anna about her best friend’s recently revealed past. In the next section, a young woman from Anna’s prenatal yoga class tells Anna her story. And so on — as Anna’s own difficult journey unfolds, she comes to nearly collect women’s stories about children they had, or didn’t have, or couldn’t have, or wished they’d had.
Somehow, this book manages to be absorbing but also unhurried; it flows like water but begs not to be rushed. Especially as you hit the halfway point, which rings like a gong and redirects the river more directly into your heart. I found myself completely absorbed in each woman’s story, forgetting, temporarily, that we were inside another novel. And after each one ended, my appreciation for this novel grew. The structure and stories here illuminate the deep, universal connections between women forged by pregnancy, motherhood, and grief. It’s about many parts of womanhood that people don’t talk about, yes, but also so much more than that. It’s also about sisterhood (literal sisterhood, like with her sister), which was another element I loved.
I am not a mother, nor have I attempted to become one, and yet this was still very emotional and deeply resonant. It will likely be a difficult read for many, but I imagine it could help release locked-up portions of a heart as well.
Thank you, Anna Hogeland, for giving us so much of your heart so generously.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Pregnancy
Miscarriage
Grief
Fetus with severe congenital abnormalities; choice of D&E
Abortion
Infertility
Body hatred, possible allusion to an eating disorder
The Sweetness of Water
Author: Nathan Harris
Publisher: Little, Brown
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Note: Content and 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 spirit of The Known World and The Underground Railroad, a profound debut about the unlikely bond between two freedmen who are brothers and the Georgia farmer whose alliance will alter their lives, and his, forever.
In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry—freed by the Emancipation Proclamation—seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys.
Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. The young men, recently returned from the war to the town of Old Ox, hold their trysts in the woods. But when their secret is discovered, the resulting chaos, including a murder, unleashes convulsive repercussions on the entire community. In the aftermath of so much turmoil, it is Isabelle who emerges as an unlikely leader, proffering a healing vision for the land and for the newly free citizens of Old Ox.
With candor and sympathy, debut novelist Nathan Harris creates an unforgettable cast of characters, depicting Georgia in the violent crucible of Reconstruction. Equal parts beauty and terror, as gripping as it is moving, The Sweetness of Water is an epic whose grandeur locates humanity and love amid the most harrowing circumstances.
TL;DR Review
I found The Sweetness of Water to be easy to sink into, a compelling story. I’m not sure I would have put it on the Booker longlist, myself, but I did like it. (PSA: It’s not a queer story, as the cover blurb suggests.)
For you if: You like historical fiction.
Full Review
I read The Sweetness of Water because it was longlisted for last year’s Booker Prize. It was one I was most eager to read, particularly because the cover blurb positioned it as a partially queer novel set during American reconstruction. Unfortunately, this is a significant mischaracterization. Fortunately, I was warned beforehand and was able to go into the reading experience without that errant expectation.
The story is about two brothers, recently freed from the institution of slavery, who find themselves in the woods of George and Isabel Walker, who are white. (Minor spoiler ahead.) When their son, against all odds, returns from the Civil War, it sets off a violent chain reaction that leaves our characters’ lives overturned, and exposes just how far their town still has to go.
I read this book in just a few sittings — I sank into it easily and found myself swept up in first the characters, then the story (as the first and second halves of the book seem to focus on those things one at a time, respectively). The prose, too, is beautifully written. I think it had some interesting things to say about masculinity and deciding to speak up for what you feel to be right even when you know it’s the self-destructive thing to do. That said, as many of my fellow book club members expressed, the reader is left uncertain what Harris’s thesis is — because if it’s the obvious one, we remained a bit unconvinced.
All in all, a solid read if you need something compelling, although I’m not sure I’d have put it on the Booker list myself.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Racism, racial slurs, and slavery
Violence, including gun violence and murder
Death and grief
Homophobia
The Merciless Ones (Deathless, #2)
The Merciless Ones was a pretty good sequel to a pretty good first book. It’s not the best-written series so far, but it has enough to keep me reading and wait for the third.
Author: Namina Forna
Publisher: Delacorte
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Note: Content and 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
***Description is spoiler for The Gilded Ones***
Fans of The Gilded Ones and Children of Blood and Bone will love the second book in an epic fantasy series about a girl who is the key to saving the empire--or its greatest threat.
It's been six months since Deka has freed the goddesses and discovered who she really is. There are now wars waging across the kingdom. Otereans now think jatu are traitors to the nation. Deka is called a monster.
But the real battle has only just begun and Deka must lead the charge. Deka is tasked with freeing the rest of the goddesses. Only as she begins to free them, she begins to see a strange symbol everywhere in places of worship and worn on armor. There's something unnatural about that symbol; just looking at it makes Deka lose her senses. Even worse, it seems to repel her powers. She can't command or communicate with the new deathshrieks. In fact, she can't even understand them when they speak.
Deka knows freeing the goddesses is just the beginning. She can tell whatever dark force out is powerful and there is something sinister out there threatening the kingdom connected to that symbol--something merciless--that her army will need to stop before humanity crumbles. But Deka's powers are only getting stronger...and her strongest weapon could be herself.
TL;DR Review
The Merciless Ones was a pretty good sequel to a pretty good first book. It’s not the best-written series so far, but it has enough to keep me reading and wait for the third.
For you if: You like West African-inspired fantasy.
Full Review
The Merciless Ones is the sequel to The Gilded Ones, and the second of what will be three books in the series. Like TGO, I liked this fine — well enough that I’m curious about what will happen in book three and do plan to read it, but I wouldn’t say it’s a favorite.
The trilogy, for context, is about a girl named Deka who lives in a world where girls are tested at puberty for gold “demon blood.” Those who have it are usually killed (over and over again, as they’re near mortal) or else taken to the capital to train as warriors on the promise that years of servitude will grant them “clean blood.” That’s the basis for the first book. Book two picks up a few months after that one ends, and it explores Deka coming into her own as a leader (or perhaps more) and realizing that she hasn’t been asking the right questions after all — with, as it goes in fantasy novels, huge potential world-ending stakes.
This trilogy is imaginative and has lots of great ingredients, and like I said, I do want to know how it will end. It’s also trying to do good things around trauma and mental health, which I appreciate. I just think the writing is a bit clunky and at times surface-level, although perhaps what I’m picking up on is it skewing on the younger side of YA (but then again, there are middle-grade books that don’t feel like that, so).
I think if you really like YA fantasy, especially West African-inspired fantasy, you should totally pick this up. It's a good quick, palette-cleansing read. But if you’re trying to be more choosy with your fantasy, I don’t think you’d be missing anything mindblowing by skipping it.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Panic attacks
Death and violence
Death of a parent
Sexual violence (alluded to in the past)
Transphobia/homophobia
Trust
Trust is a creatively executed novel about perceived power and who gets to tell history. It stuck with me for days after I finished, and I was extremely impressed.
Author: Hernan Diaz
Publisher: Riverhead
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Note: Content and 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
From an award-winning chronicler of our nation's history and its legends comes his much-anticipated novel about wealth and talent, trust and intimacy, truth and perception.
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the brilliant daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth. But the secrets around their affluence and grandeur incites gossip. Rumors about Benjamin's financial maneuvers and Helen's reclusiveness start to spread--all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. At what cost have they acquired their immense fortune?
This is the mystery at the center of a successful 1938 novel entitled Bonds, which all of New York seems to have read. But it isn't the only version.
Hernan Diaz's Trust brilliantly puts the story of these characters into conversation with other accounts--and in tension with the life and perspective of a young woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that becomes more exhilarating and profound with each new layer and revelation. Provocative and propulsive, Trust engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the reality-warping gravitational pull of money and how power often manipulates facts. An elegant, multifaceted epic that recovers the voices buried under the myths that justify our foundational inequality, Trust is a literary triumph with a beating heart and urgent stakes.
TL;DR Review
Trust is a creatively executed novel about perceived power and who gets to tell history. It stuck with me for days after I finished, and I was extremely impressed.
For you if: You like a literary puzzle, and books with unique structures.
Full Review
I was curious about Trust because people are talking about it as a possible Booker Prize contender. I’m SO glad I picked it up. It took me some time to process its impressiveness, but ultimately I loved it. (That’s a little intimidating to say because Booker-esque readers tend to have polarizing opinions that they aren’t afraid to yell about, but Roxane Gay called it “sublime, and richly layered,” so I feel like I’m in good company.)
The format of the book is most notable: Told in four “books” (a novel, an incomplete autobiography, a memoir, and a journal), it introduces us, in multiple ways and from multiple angles, to a couple who became (even more) extraordinarily wealthy during the Great Depression. It’s hard to say more without spoiling the reading experience, but suffice to say that this is a book about power and its tenuousness, and history, and what wealth masks, and what “great” men convince themselves of, and who tells the story.
It’s a very readable book, but with subtle layers that keep you engaged and worm their way into your brain for days after you’ve finished. It comes together so gracefully that it’s almost easy to dismiss as simple. But on the other hand, after I finished it, I immediately opened my Notes app and paced around my apartment while jotting down impressions and thoughts — so, there’s that! Diaz has a lot of respect for the reader and gives them space to reflect on all the layers beneath (or that ripple out from?) the main “reveal.” This would make an absolutely incredible book club book; I can’t wait to talk about it with more people.
Last thing I’ll say: You’re going to hear a lot of comparisons to Trust Exercise by Susan Choi, which I feel like people either loved or hated. The comparison here is because of the format; the voice(s) and themes are completely different. So if you weren’t a fan of Trust Exercise, don’t let that sway you away from reading Trust.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Misogyny
Mental illness
Cancer
The Island of Missing Trees
The Island of Missing Trees is a beautifully written, mournful little love story. While I don’t think it was perfect, I liked it very much and would recommend it.
Author: Elif Shafak
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and 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
Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he's searching for lost love.
Years later a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited--- her only connection to her family's troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world.
A moving, beautifully written, and delicately constructed story of love, division, transcendence, history, and eco-consciousness, The Island of Missing Trees is Elif Shafak's best work yet.
TL;DR Review
The Island of Missing Trees is a beautifully written, mournful little love story. While I don’t think it was perfect, I liked it very much and would recommend it.
For you if: You like an unconventional (read: kind of magical) narrator.
Full Review
The Island of Missing Trees was my last read from the 2022 Women’s Prize shortlist, and my second by Elif Shafak. While I don’t think it was perfect, I liked it very much and would definitely recommend it.
The story takes place on two timelines. In the late 2010s, a teenage girl named Ada and her father (Kostas) are still grieving the death of Ada’s mother (Defne), and her Defne’s sister comes to visit them in London. Throughout, we also flash back to trace Kostas and Defne’s relationship over time. They lived in Cyprus during a period of civil war, he being Greek and Christian and she being Turkish and Muslim, and had to hide their relationship. The story is narrated by a fig tree that grew in the tavern where they would meet, and which Kostas brought with them to London.
This is a quietly sad love story; but it’s also about generational memory/trauma, and family, and freedom, and home; and also about the beauty and wonder of the natural world around us, trees and animals alike. It took me a little bit to fully settle into the story, but once I did, I really, really enjoyed it. I was most drawn to the chapters set in flashback. It’s also written in very short chapters, which always helps propel a story through time.
I had mixed feelings about our tree narrator. On the one hand, she could tip a little bit cheesy, and I found some of her interludes about the natural world extemporaneous — think, like, Bewilderment (or maybe The Overstory would be a better comparison, but I haven’t read that one yet so can’t say for sure). That said, it’s her voice that gives this novel the storytelling vibe that I came to ultimately love.
If you’re curious about this one, especially the tree narrator telling us a mournful love story, definitely give this one a shot.
Content and Trigger Warnings
War/violence/death
Grief
Death of a parent (suicide suspected)
Animal death
Death of one’s child
Homophobia
Abortion
The Year of Magical Thinking
The Year of Magical Thinking is the best parts of Joan Didion — shart, unapologetic, perfect sentences — but, by nature of the topic (grief), more personal and less detached. That was a winning recipe for me.
Author: Joan Didion
Publisher: Knopf (original publisher in 2005), Vintage (currently circulated paperback edition)
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Note: Content and 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
From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage—and a life, in good times and bad—that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.
Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year's Eve—the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.
This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."
TL;DR Review
The Year of Magical Thinking is the best parts of Joan Didion — shart, unapologetic, perfect sentences — but, by nature of the topic (grief), more personal and less detached. That was a winning recipe for me.
For you if: You like Joan Didion, memoirs, emotional books, or all of the above.
Full Review
“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity.”
So begins the fourth and final book I read as part of a formal reading group with the Center for Fiction, led by Lynn Steger Strong (who, by the way, was an incredible instructor). I’m so glad we read it last; my experience was so much deeper having read her early work and knowing a bit about her ethos and her style.
This book is a memoir that covers the one-year stretch of time following the sudden death of Joan’s husband, John. He had a heart attack one evening at home and died almost instantly. This happened while their only daughter, Quintana, was fighting for her life in the hospital in full septic shock (which turned out to only be the beginning). Didion’s “magical thinking” refers, mainly, to the illogic of her grieving mind as she lived through a period of time that many of us would dare not even imagine.
It’s hard to say whether this was my favorite book from the class because I understood her style better and could compare it to the other things I read, or if it was because it’s just such a deeply personal work — which, before this book, we never really got from her at all. Probably the combination of the two. Didion’s skill, on both micro (sentence) and macro (whole book) levels, is fully developed here. The result is a moving, profound, deeply powerful depiction of grief. Having read her earlier work, we can see how much the experience changed her (and not) even as she writes about how much it changed her (and not).
I definitely recommend this one, but I’d say to get the full appreciation, it’s worth picking up at least one of her early essay collections before you do.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Death of a spouse
Serious illness of one’s child
Grief
Medical content
The Bread the Devil Knead
The Bread the Devil Knead is a well-written but very heavy novel about cycles of generational trauma and childhood and domestic abuse. I appreciated it and respect it, but I can’t quite say I enjoyed it.
Author: Lisa Allen-Agostini
Publisher: Myriad Editions
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Note: Content and 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
Alethea Lopez is about to turn 40. Fashionable, feisty and fiercely independent, she manages a boutique in Port of Spain, but behind closed doors she’s covering up bruises from her abusive partner and seeking solace in an affair with her boss. When she witnesses a woman murdered by a jealous lover, the reality of her own future comes a little too close to home.
Bringing us her truth in an arresting, unsparing Trinidadian voice, Alethea unravels memories repressed since childhood and begins to understand the person she has become.
Her next step is to decide the woman she wants to be.
This is an engrossing and atmospheric novel with a strong feminist message at the heart of its page-turning plot. It explores an abusive love-affair with searing honesty, and skilfully tackles the issue of gender violence and racism against the lush and heady backdrop of the national festival, and the music that feeds it. It’s impossible not to root for Alethea – she is an unforgettable heroine, trapped in ways she is only just beginning to understand but shining with strength, resolve and, ultimately, self-determination.
TL;DR Review
The Bread the Devil Knead is a well-written but very heavy novel about cycles of generational trauma and childhood and domestic abuse. I appreciated it and respect it, but I can’t quite say I enjoyed it.
For you if: You’re interested in reading books set in Trinidad, and/or about the traps of abuse.
Full Review
I picked up The Bread the Devil Knead because it was shortlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize. While I’m glad that I read it, and I definitely appreciate and respect it, the brutality of the subject matter makes me not quite able to say that I enjoyed it. (TW: domestic abuse ahead)
Set in Port of Spain, Trinidad, the story is about a woman named Alethea. Having run away from an abusive household before bouncing from one bad boyfriend situation to another, she now manages a clothing shop while hiding the bruises her current boyfriend leaves her with. Two things happen to set the story in motion: one, she reconnects with her cousin (who she essentially raised as a baby brother), and two, a woman is shot and killed by a jealous boyfriend outside her shop. We also get flashbacks to her childhood, and new family secrets play into her consideration of whether she is in danger herself, whether she does or doesn’t want a change, and how much to let her friends into her life.
One thing I think this book did very well was to fully capture both Alethea and Port of Spain. I was really glad for the opportunity to read a novel written not only in Trinidad, but largely in a Trinidadian dialect. Alethea is a complex character, and the inside of her mind as we witness the impact of domestic abuse and generational trauma was very well done.
There were two main things that I didn’t quite love, though: First, there is a flashback scene toward the end of the book that, in my opinion, didn’t add anything but brutality. We as readers already knew that the events of the flashback had happened, and I didn’t feel like I needed to actually see it to understand its implication. Second, I’m not sure how I feel about the ending. I don’t want to spoil it, but I guess I’ll just say that it didn’t feel like it worked as hard as I’d hoped it might.
There are definitely aspects of this novel worthy of being read; just know going in that it’s a tough one.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Domestic violence/abuse (graphic, explicit, repeated)
Marital rape
Pedophilia/childhood rape
Gun violence
Incest
The Book of Form and Emptiness
The Book of Form and Emptiness has what I love in literary fiction: a lot of heart and a touch of (possible) magic. I thought this was imaginative and moving and achingly human.
Author: Ruth Ozeki
Publisher: Viking
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Note: Content and 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 brilliantly inventive new novel about loss, growing up, and our relationship with things, by the Booker Prize-finalist author of A Tale for the Time Being
After the tragic death of his beloved musician father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house—a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.
At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world, where "things happen." He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many.
And he meets his very own Book—a talking thing—who narrates Benny's life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.
With its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot, and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz, to climate change, to our attachment to material possessions, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki—bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking.
TL;DR Review
The Book of Form and Emptiness has what I love in literary fiction: a lot of heart and a touch of (possible) magic. I thought this was imaginative and moving and achingly human.
For you if: You like emotional but also playful litfic that isn’t too cerebral.
Full Review
“Every person is trapped in their own particular bubble of delusion, and it’s every person’s task in life to break free. Books can help. We can make the past into the present, take you back in time and help you remember. We can show you things, shift your realities and widen your world, but the work of waking up is up to you.”
As of this writing, The Book of Form and Emptiness is currently shortlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction. I’ve heard such great things about Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being, but it’s still on my TBR, so this was my first book of hers. I can totally see why people love her writing. This book is filled with so much heart.
The story is about a preteen boy named Benny and his mom, Annabelle. It starts just after Benny’s father’s sudden and tragic death. Seeking joy, hope for future plans, and control, Annabelle tends toward hoarding. Meanwhile, Benny begins to hear inanimate objects speaking to him, including “his book,” which also narrates the book we are literally reading. As each of them attempt to navigate their grief and mental health struggles, we readers cheer for them, cry for them, and come to love them deeply.
I liked this book a lot, although I did find the pace a bit slow and Annabelle a bit frustrating, which kept me from 100% loving it. Still, the premise and construction is so imaginative and playful, and the story itself is deeply heartfelt and emotional. I also lovedddd the secondary characters and the voice of the book.
All in all, a solid Women’s Prize nominee that I’m sure will resonate with so many!
Content and Trigger Warnings
Mental illness
Death of a parent/spouse, grief
Self harm
Addiction/relapse (secondary character)
Sexual assault (alluded to)
So Happy For You
So Happy For You is an absolutely wild ride of a book. It’s an off-the-rails, near-future, almost-dystopic story that uses absurdity to intelligently comment on the state and culture of the world today.
Author: Celia Laskey
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
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: Content and 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 wedding weekend spirals out of control in this bold, electrifying, hilarious novel about the complexities of female friendship
Robin and Ellie have been best friends since childhood. When Robin came out, Ellie was there for her. When Ellie's father died, Robin had her back. But when Ellie asks Robin to be her maid of honor, she is reluctant. A queer academic, Robin is dubious of the elaborate wedding rituals now sweeping the nation, which go far beyond champagne toasts and a bouquet toss. But loyalty wins out, and Robin accepts.
Yet, as the wedding weekend approaches, a series of ominous occurrences lead Robin to second-guess her decision. It seems that everyone in the bridal party is out to get her. Perhaps even Ellie herself.
Manically entertaining, viciously funny and eerily campy, So Happy for You is the ultimate send-up to our collective obsession with the wedding industry complex and a riveting, unexpectedly poignant depiction of friendship in all its messy glory.
TL;DR Review
So Happy For You is an absolutely wild ride of a book. It’s an off-the-rails, near-future, almost-dystopic story that uses absurdity to intelligently comment on the state and culture of the world today.
For you if: You can stick around for ~drama~ that has an underlying point.
Full Review
“If you want to know the story of how my best friend and I ended up trying to kill each other, I should probably start with the night she asked me to be her maid of honor.”
Thank you, Celia Laskey and Hanover Square Press, for making sure that I had an advanced copy of this book! I loved Laskey’s debut, Under the Rainbow, so I couldn’t wait to read So Happy For You.
Intensely inhalable, I read this book in a matter of hours. It’s about a queer woman named Robin living in a borderline-dystopic near future where (thanks to politically motivated cultural propaganda) American culture has swung wildly back to caring about marriage; dating apps score “marriageability” and those approaching 35 begin to panic. Women practice desperate, absurd “wedding charms” to ensure their marriage will succeed. Robin’s childhood best friend, Ellie, is one of these women, and she asks Robin to be her maid of honor. That sets off the plot, and let me tell you, we go OFF THE RAILS.
Basically, what you need to know about this story is that it’s over the top — on purpose. The absurdity is dramatic, but Laskey is so smart and uses it to say a lot about the state and culture of the world today. So you’re like, “WHAT,” but also like, “ah, yup.” There’s also a really thoughtful, well-done character arc for Robin; she holds so much so tightly, and has a lot of (often justified) anger. It was deeply relatable and extremely relevant. I loved seeing her start to better understand herself and what does and doesn’t serve her, in a way that didn’t feel like a concession.
Anyway, if you need something fast-paced and wild and fun but also smart, pick this one up!
Content and Trigger Warnings
Animal death
Confinement
Sorrow and Bliss
Sorrow and Bliss is a tough book to review. Some of the plot felt unoriginal. But even so, net positive overall from me, with especially strong character work.
Author: Meg Mason
Publisher: Harper
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Note: Content and 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
Martha Friel just turned forty. She used to work at Vogue and was going to write a novel. Now, she creates internet content for no one. She used to live in Paris. Now, she lives in a gated community in Oxford that she hates and can't bear to leave. But she must now that her loving husband Patrick has just left.
Because there's something wrong with Martha. There has been since a little bomb went off in her brain, at seventeen, leaving her changed in a way no doctor or drug could fix then and no one, even now, can explain--why can say she is so often sad, cruel to everyone she loves, why she finds it harder to be alive than other people.
With Patrick gone, the only place Martha has left to go is her childhood home, to live with her chaotic parents, to survive without Ingrid, the sister who made their growing-up bearable, who said she would never give up on Martha, and who finally has.
It feels like the end but maybe, by going back, Martha will get to start again. Maybe there is a different story to be written, if Martha can work out where to begin.
TL;DR Review
Sorrow and Bliss is a tough book to review. Some of the plot felt unoriginal. But even so, net positive overall from me, with especially strong character work.
For you if: You like character-driven, MFA-style contemporary novels.
Full Review
I read Sorrow and Bliss because it was shortlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize. This one feels a little hard to review because parts of it were hit or miss for me, but overall, I liked it.
The story is narrated by a woman named Martha who has struggled with mental illness her whole life. We first meet her just after her husband left. She flashes back to the start of her mental illness, takes us through college and her 30s, first marriage and eventual second marriage, diagnosis after diagnosis and medication after medication. Then we learn what happened most recently and to damage her marriage, come back to where we started the story, and continue forward in time just a bit.
One thing I can absolutely put in the “good” category for this book is that it kept me reading. I needed to know how it would end. Also, Martha is an excellently written character, and her arc is executed insightfully and skillfully. Impressive writing stuff there. The not-so-good was that many of the plot points felt cliche, like things we’ve seen before. As my friend Bernie put it, “it was a well-written book of unoriginal ideas” (or, I’d say, mostly unoriginal; her experiences with mental illness did feel moving and important).
Bottom line, I’m glad I read it, but I wasn’t completely blown away. Still, if you tend to like character-driven, MFA-feeling contemporary fiction, I think you’ll find plenty to like in this one too.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Mental illness (severe/the premise)
Suicidal thoughts
Miscarriage
Alcoholism (secondary character)
Ordinary Monsters (The Talents Trilogy, #1)
Ordinary Monsters is an imaginative, exciting start to a new historical fantasy trilogy: think Miss Peregrine meets Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel.
Author: J.M. Miro
Publisher: Flatiron
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: Content and 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 stunning new work of historical fantasy, J. M. Miro's Ordinary Monsters introduces readers to the dark, labyrinthe world of The Talents
England, 1882. In Victorian London, two children with mysterious powers are hunted by a figure of darkness —a man made of smoke.
Sixteen-year-old Charlie Ovid, despite a lifetime of brutality, doesn't have a scar on him. His body heals itself, whether he wants it to or not. Marlowe, a foundling from a railway freight car, shines with a strange bluish light. He can melt or mend flesh. When two grizzled detectives are recruited to escort them north to safety, they are forced to confront the nature of difference, and belonging, and the shadowy edges of the monstrous.
What follows is a journey from the gaslit streets of London, to an eerie estate outside Edinburgh, where other children with gifts—the Talents—have been gathered. Here, the world of the dead and the world of the living threaten to collide. And as secrets within the Institute unfurl, Marlowe, Charlie and the rest of the Talents will discover the truth about their abilities, and the nature of the force that is stalking them: that the worst monsters sometimes come bearing the sweetest gifts.
With lush prose, mesmerizing world-building, and a gripping plot, Ordinary Monsters presents a catastophic vision of the Victorian world—and of the gifted, broken children who must save it.
TL;DR Review
Ordinary Monsters is an imaginative, exciting start to a new historical fantasy trilogy: think Miss Peregrine meets Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel.
For you if: You like low fantasy (stories that take place in our real, recognizable world).
Full Review
Thank you, Flatiron Books, for sending me a free advanced copy of this book! It comes out June 7 and I can’t WAIT for more people to read it. I really, really enjoyed it.
The book, the first in a trilogy, is like Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children meets Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Set in the 1880s, mostly in England and Scotland, it starts with a runaway domestic servant who finds a baby who glows. Then it moves to two investigators who travel the world looking for children with “talents” so they can bring them back to a safe haven (called the Cairndale Institute), and finally finds itself wedged between a murderous ex-talent who’s allied with an evil dark force and the old scientist who runs Cairndale. (Tbh, with 675 pages, of course, there’s a LOT of story here. But those wary of worldbuilding, fear it not! It’s easy to follow.)
I enjoyed the whole book (lovable characters, imaginative premise, great mystery, lots of layers!), but IMO, where this book really shows off is in the action scenes. J.M. Miro bounces between narrators with precision, perfectly pacing it so we’re at the edge of our seat but in no way frustrated. Really impressive stuff. And the ending felt like the perfect balance between cliffhanger and resolution; I have lots of questions, and there are plenty of threads hanging loose in what promises to be a vast overarching plot, but I also got enough closure from this particular book’s story that I walked away feeling pleased and accomplished.
Also, I had the chance to listen to some of the audiobook as well, and it was very well done! This would make a great choice if fantasy on audio is your jam.
Anyway, don’t let this one’s size intimidate you. If you like low, historical fantasy novels, I think you’ll also like this one a lot.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Violence and death
Racism (think: reconstruction era of US history)
Sexual abuse and rape (minor character, off stage)
Light Perpetual
While this book wasn’t for everyone, I found it to be moving and thought-provoking. Also, the audiobook is incredibly performed and I highly recommend it.
Author: Francis Spufford
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: Content and 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
From the critically acclaimed and award‑winning author of Golden Hill, a mesmerizing and boldly inventive novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London.
Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworths on Bexford High Street in southeast London receives a delivery of aluminum saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages—after all, everything’s been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among the shoppers were five young children.
Who were they? What futures did they lose? This brilliantly constructed novel lets an alternative reel of time run, imagining the life arcs of these five souls as they live through the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the bustling immensity of twentieth-century London. Their intimate everyday dramas, as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, grandparents; as the separated, the remarried, the bereaved. Through decades of social, sexual, and technological transformation, as bus conductors and landlords, as swindlers and teachers, patients and inmates. Days of personal triumphs, disasters; of second chances and redemption.
Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, Light Perpetual illuminates the shapes of experience, the extraordinariness of the ordinary, the mysteries of memory and expectation, and the preciousness of life.
TL;DR Review
While this book wasn’t for everyone, I found it to be moving and thought-provoking. Also, the audiobook is incredibly performed and I highly recommend it.
For you if: You like character-driven novels that take place over the span of a lifetime.
Full Review
I read Light Perpetual because it was longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, with my #BookerOfTheMonth book club. A lot of people who came to our discussion either didn’t care for it or felt neutral about it, but personally, I did quite like it.
The book starts with a sort of thought experiment: Take five young children killed by a bomb in London in 1944. What if they’d lived instead? What would their lives have looked like? We jump forward in time, dropping into their lives every 10–15 years from childhood to old age, getting a snapshot of what’s happening and has happened up to that point in time.
A lot of people at book club had a similar complaint (I don’t think this is really a spoiler, but if you hate knowing things going into a book, stop here): that the bomb, or the fact that none of them actually lives, doesn’t come into play again. The book doesn’t return to this fact at all — the no-bomb-alternative-timeline thing is truly just a thought experiment that launches these characters’ stories into motion. Readers had expected a kind of closure or meaning that never came, and it left them feeling like, what was the point? But personally, this didn’t bother me. I felt like the point was to show that all our lives have ups and downs, and they’re all different, but in that way, they’re also all the same; the alternating mundane and novel aspects of a human lifespan give us more in common than we think. Those who died, if they’d lived, would have found themselves on the same journey as the rest of us, with their own unique struggles and joys. Our lives are special, and also common, and it’s beautiful.
The last thing I’ll say about this one is that the audiobook was incredibly performed — more like a one-woman play performed than a novel narrated — and probably made the difference between me feeling neutral about this and loving it. I’ll be keeping an eye out for books Imogen Church reads in the future!
Content and Trigger Warnings
Naziism (racism, homophobia, misogyny, severe violence)
Bulimia
Mental illness (schizophrenia)
Abortion (minor)
Pedophilia/child abuse (mentioned, minor)