Michelle
I listened to the audiobook version, and the narrator did a great job! If you do the audiobook, I recommend downloading a Kindle sample of the book because there are tons of characters to keep track of but the book has a list of them all in the beginning. I consulted it a lot! I really liked this. I was worried because of Owen King not getting great reviews on his novel, [b:Double Feature 15802120 Double Feature Owen King https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1468706055s/15802120.jpg 21525516]. But the Kings made a good team, and rewrote one another to blur the lines of who wrote what. I also like when Stephen writes with his other son, Joe Hill! Wonder what would happen if all three of them worked on a book. Anyhow, while this is the story of all the women falling asleep, there are a lot of strong female characters, and they are never silenced in the narrative. The story begins when “Aurora” is across the globe from the Appalachian town where the story is set, a few women never fall asleep, and we also visit where the women “go” while asleep. Sleeping Beauties explores women who've come from lives of abuse, and who've turn to violence, drugs, and/or crime as a result. The sheriff is a woman, as is the prison warden, the prison being one of the main locations. We also spend time with the warden's daughter, an up and coming reporter. And then there's Eve Black who is at the center of everything.I think the Kings channel women very well, and very progressively for the most part. I think there were a few too many mentions that seemed to refer to women as the ones who do laundry and iron, and it would have been nice since we had a number of good guy men to have met one that had some domestic skills. Also, I feel that at moments the book put womanhood in general too much on a pedestal, which constrains women in another (well-intentioned) way. I'm happy to have Eve Black be the most goddessesque character, than you very much. We get to explore the world (Our Place) where the women go, and I will not describe it too much in order to avoid spoilers. What I found interesting is the portrayal of the women as mostly missing the men, but how for some of the profoundly abused this was the first freedom, the first sense of safety, the first opportunity to build their own lives, they'd ever been allowed. In an extremely poignant plot twist, we discover that the actions of the men in the real world – main world? – could still reach the women in Our Place if their sleeping bodies are tampered with or destroyed. Perhaps in the strongest social commentary of the novel, the sleeping women are only dangerous if the cocoon they're in are tampered with, and then they become feral until the threat is destroyed. So you have these women who are very literally doing nothing to no one, and a portion of men decide they must be destroyed because they'll fight back if you, you know, try and rape them. Ugh. The last third before it really got to the ending lagged a bit for me. As mentioned, the book never stopped representing the women, but at one point there's a battle between a couple different factions of men, and I really struggled to care beyond how the results would change the outcome for the women. I understood that this outcome was based on the men proving they could “do better” – be less warlike, more intellectual, and cede control to the mysterious Eve. But I still would have preferred to hang out a little more in the portion of the book with the sleeping chicks. One of the recurring characters is a fox. I loved the fox. I also had to smile because the first time I encountered the word “vulpine” was in [b:Rose Madder 10619 Rose Madder Stephen King https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1375870513s/10619.jpg 833191], a Stephen King novel, which also featured (less fortunate) foxes. The fox in Sleeping Beauties, like the human men, is asked to consider another way of living.
Everyone cheers again, and soon we???re dancing, our bodies moving, one big mass of girls having fun. As I watch Lucy spin and knock her dark curls around, and as I listen to Claudia laugh and sing along (badly), it occurs to me that this is what it means to be a feminist. Not a humanist or an equalist or whatever. But a feminist. It???s not a bad word. After today it might be my favorite word. Because really all it is is girls supporting each other and wanting to be treated like human beings in a world that???s always finding ways to tell them they???re not.
Love, love, love! Cannot recommend enough. Viv goes from “nice girl” to Riot Grrrl, makes new friends, learns about intersectional feminism, and falls in love.
I love that this really was about girls embracing feminism, and that the book deals with where racism and sexism intersect. And rape culture. Viv meets a good kid named Seth, but also must deal with and accept that he will always struggle a little to understand what it's like to be a girl in this society. He's willing to try, though.
I want to give this book to every young woman I know!
I???m never going on vacation. I???m never seeing my friends. I???m never getting my bed back. My brutal, crazy, exasperating year with Trump is going to end???by not ending at all. Trump will be president. The most powerful person in the world. And I will be locked in a press pen for the rest of my life. Does anyone really believe he???ll respect term limits? I have a vision of myself at sixty, Trump at a hundred, in some midwestern convention hall. The children of his 2016 supporters are spitting on me, and he is calling my name: ???She???s back there, Little Katy! She???s back there.???
The above was my first laugh-out-loud moment, imagining her reaction to the possibility that her brutal time on the campaign trail would never end, and that she would forever be called out by a man with no qualms about endangering or seeking to bully her. It was a laugh based on great sympathy.
Katy Tur is a very engaging writer, with a ton of heart, and no lack of guts. This book is something only a small group of people could write, and Katy was there from the beginning covering a campaign and a candidate like no other.
The crowd in New Hampshire is frothing as Pence talks about Clinton. He???s got a microphone, but in the middle of his speech another message cuts in, a maniac with a buzz saw of a voice, screaming out from the crowd. He???s close enough to the press pen for me to hear but far enough from Pence that the God-fearing running mate keeps on talking as if nothing were happening. I don???t know if Pence even hears this other man. Probably not. But I do, and I will never unhear him: not the man???s message, and not the thousands of other voices that summarized 2016 by not shouting him down.
???Assassinate that bitch,??? the man said.
And the crowd said nothing.
???Assassinate that bitch.???
And the crowd cheered on.
This wasn't a home run for me. I didn't mind reading the story, but I wasn't deeply engaged in the story either. I found it implausible that the main character, Gabe, would have a radio show with a cult following based on the music played and his DJ patter. There'd be no particular reason his show would stand out, and yet the reader is to believe that a group would form motivated enough to perform task Gabe asks of them.
I would have loved to believe this aspect, but it would have needed to be based on less generic song choices and Gabe being more engaging.
???Welcome, welcome, to Beautiful Music for Ugly Children right here on community radio, 90.3, KZUK. I???m Gabe, your host, and tonight is a tribute show???to radio. You heard me right???radio, in all its craziness. Where would I be without radio? Nowhere. To start us off, let???s hear one of the masters himself, Elvis Costello, along with the Attractions, with ???Radio, Radio.???
He gives me one more pat. ???It???s not so unusual to be a triangle these days. Look at Chaz Bono. He was even on Dancing with the Stars.??? John shakes his head. ???Hope he doesn???t do to his face what his mother???s done to hers.???
In spite of the shakes, I laugh. ???Cher is gross.???
I grab a copy of The Marvelous Sonny and Cher. ???This, on the other hand, could be used as a Frisbee, a dinner plate, or a dog poop scoop.???
At 3%
Your features are delicate, Lynet, like a bird???s. You shouldn???t be climbing trees, Lynet, not when your hands and feet are so soft and delicate. Emilia had died, he said, because her body had been too delicate for childbirth. Being delicate had killed her mother, and yet he was so eager to bestow the quality on her.
Everything Lynet knew about her mother, she had learned from Nicholas. She was fragile, he said. She spoke in whispers and murmurs. She was sweet and gentle. Like you, like you, he said, but Lynet had never felt fragile, though she looked it. If her father had never truly recognized his daughter, then had he remembered his wife wrong as well? What if everything he???d ever told her about her mother was only how he???d seen her, not how she truly was?
There would be no other chances, no other roles but the ones that had been set for them from the beginning???the bitter, aging queen and the sweet young princess poised to take everything from her.
Mina gave her a sad smile. ???You???ll see too, one day. Once you grow older, someone else will be waiting to take your place, someone younger and prettier than you. I knew that day was approaching for me. I knew even when you were still a child. So why am I so surprised to learn that I???m being thrown aside? Why am I always so surprised????
This is a story really and truly written for children. I think adults are used to children's stories also being made with a layer to please them. Nope, the story – while interesting – is not fleshed out or written to operate on a deeper level.
I enjoyed reading it with an eye to the way the story has become part of our cultural heritage, but inherently a compelling read? Not really. :)
But it is a very quick read.
What was a strong marriage? What was a good marriage? She knew terrible people who had wonderful marriages, glued together somehow in their terribleness. And she knew fine, fine people who???d stood before God and all their friends to profess their undying love to each other only to toss that love on a slag heap a few years later. In the end, no matter how good they were???or thought they were???usually all that remained of the love they???d so publicly professed was vitriol, regret, and a kind of awed dismay at how dark the roads they???d ventured down became by the end.
Dennis Lehane is probably one of my favorite authors. If not, he is definitely Top 3. I like the way he turns a phrase, his ability to deliver a plot twist, his general world view, his love of the average man/woman.
It had happened before she was born, this wholesale discarding of American industry, this switch from a culture that made things of value to a culture that consumed things of dubious merit. She???d grown up in the absence, in other people???s memory of a dream so fragile it had probably been doomed from the moment of conception. If there had ever been a social contract between the country and its citizens, it was long gone now, save the Hobbesian agreement that had been in play since our ancestors had first stumbled from caves in search of food: Once I get mine, you???re on your own.
Not a bad book, but certainly a reminder or how times change. Nora Ephron's preferred word for lesbian is dyke, for instance, and she uses it a lot, as if the word is inherently funny. Gay men, referred to as homosexuals, are treated as inherently promiscuous. A black woman is called high yellow, and said to resemble a poppy seed cookie. A Latina therapist is referred to as food a lot – one being a refried taco.
I don't know. It seems to me that these slightly backward moments due to time marching on shouldn't be what I take away, and yet... I have no feelings toward this book beyond this either than mild amusement.
On a clear night in blacked-out countryside, in between bomber runs, when the tracer fire ceased and the searchlights went dark, the stars did not fill the sky so much as coat it like hoarfrost on a windowpane. You looked up and saw The Starry Night, he told me; you realized that Van Gogh was a realist painter.
I honestly don't know what to rate this or what the review should say. I was not the ideal reader for much of it, and considered portions of the story to be a chore, but other portions I loved, and I'm glad I read it.
The grandfather character – I label him this because it's deliberately unclear what's true of Chabon's real grandfather and what's not – threw a cat out a third story window as a kid. And then this gets mentioned 2 or 3 more times. Why? I don't know, but I'm not exactly the ideal reader for this detail. And since fiction readers are more empathetic, I'm not sure who that ideal reader is.
I enjoyed that the story, not being linear, ended up this pleasing whole, that it cataloged much of a life, and the ups and downs of a marriage when one of the people has mental health issues.
Wandfasted tilts heavily toward a romance novel, which I don't think The Black Witch did – there was romance and love interests, but it was more about prejudice and the resistance. Wandfasted is essentially the story of Elloren's (from The Black Witch) parents meeting and the rise of The Black Witch, who was Elloren's grandmother. At the time of this book, the Gardnerians were the underdog, and as we know from the novel, they eventually rose to power, and learned nothing from their oppression other than to punish others.
Anyhow, there was some really smutty hand holding. No, not kidding. You'll know it when you read it. As long as you go in knowing this is largely a romance novel, this isn't bad. It's interesting to speculate on what happens next with Elloren's parents since Elloren thinks they were on board with her grandmother, which is not what Wandfasted reveals.
There are worlds built on rainbows and worlds built on rain. There are worlds of pure mathematics, where every number chimes like crystal as it rolls into reality. There are worlds of light and worlds of darkness, worlds of rhyme and worlds of reason, and worlds where the only thing that matters is the goodness in a hero???s heart. The Moors are none of those things.
We are the children of our parents, even if who become is a result of rebelling against who they are, their choices and teachings shape us.
Jacqueline and Jillian are twin sisters who we are first to in [b:Every Heart a Doorway|25526296|Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children, #1)|Seanan McGuire|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1431438555s/25526296.jpg|45313140]. The premise of the series is that children sometimes, if things are aligned just right, find doorways to other worlds. Sometimes they find their ways home, and sometimes this is a blessing, and sometimes it's a curse because the stumbled upon place is where they truly feel they belong.
You don't have to read Every Heart a Doorway first, but if you read Down Among the Sticks and Stones, then Every Heart a Doorway will explain what happened next. Even though it was written first.
Anyhow, Jacqueline and Jillian are born to really bad parents who believe they are really good parents. Each one molds one of the daughters into what they want them to be, with no regard to who they are, and in doing so drive a wedge between the sisters.
They find a door/stairway to a place that includes an area called The Moors. If you're a fan of novels like Bram Stoker's [b:Dracula|17245|Dracula|Bram Stoker|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387151694s/17245.jpg|3165724], Mary Shelley's [b:Frankenstein|18490|Frankenstein|Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1381512375s/18490.jpg|4836639], Emily Bronte's [b:Wuthering Heights|6185|Wuthering Heights|Emily Bront??|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388212715s/6185.jpg|1565818], Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's [b:Carmilla|48037|Carmilla|J. Sheridan Le Fanu|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386923594s/48037.jpg|47015], and seen the old, really atmospheric movie adaptions of these works, you should have an idea about the mood and nature of The Moors. It's England, but it's also Carpathia. It's untamed wilderness as a metaphor for the human heart. It's young love. It's the death of youth. It's peasant fearing and being reliant on the mysterious brutal man in the castle, knowing who and what he is, but not daring to speak of it. It's the mad scientist playing God. It's sad ballads about tragic love stories. It's a bad moon on the rise. It's villagers with torches and pitchforks.
Jack and Jill, as they're eventually known, have a choice between 2 guardians/foster fathers. One is a very pale man known as The Master, with, ahem, a fondness for blood, the other is a doctor with an ability to resurrect the dead. Which they choose shapes who they become. (Again, parents shaping children.)
Someone with sharp enough eyes might see the instant where one wounded heart begins to rot while the other starts to heal. Time marches on.
I will sing for people who might not sing for me.I will sing for people who are not my family.I will sing honor songs for the unfamilar and new.I will visit a different church and pray in a different pew.I will silently sit and carefully listen to new storiesAbout other people???s tragedies and glories.I will not assume my pain and joy are better.I will not claim my people invented gravity or weather.And, oh, I know I will still feel my rage and rage and rageBut I won???t act like I???m the only person onstage.I am one more citizen marching against hatred.Alone, we are defenseless. Collected, we are sacred.We will march by the millions. We will tremble and grieve.We will praise and weep and laugh. We will believe.We will be courageous with our love. We will risk dangerAs we sing and sing and sing to welcome strangers.~Sherman Alexie This novel deals with (among other things I'm sure I've missed): slavery, sweatshops, the role of religion in bigotry or acceptance, racial purity as largely mythical. Sex trafficking. How even people who think their not bigoted sometimes find out underlying prejudices when the issues involve their own family. How people tend to believe stereotypes even while knowing people who don???t fit those stereotypes. Homosexuality and well-meaning, but harmful, encouragement to stay in the close. Cultural and race differences in romantic relationships. Misogyny and misandry. The Black Witch begins with a sheltered girl from a privileged family venturing out to university. She is capable of kindness, but her ignorance of the broader world allows her to believe lies – lies about other races, likes about other cultures, lies about other religions, lies of homosexuality, lies about wars her family was instrumental in bringing about. When she begins at school she is feared and hated, and she allows her initial run ins with other students to change her prejudices through ignorance to morph into anger, allowing herself to double down on what she has been taught. Her aunt is punishing her for not becoming engaged to a young man from a promising family, so she makes sure Elloren is housed with 2 Icarals – the most vilified group of all. And this is her aunt's big mistake. While she gets off to a rocky start with her roommates, and the people in the kitchen where she works treat her poorly out of understandable distrust – for one thing, she is identical in looks to her grandmother, a woman who had no problem with genocide – she begins to see over time that she has been mislead or not told about so much. My grandmother stands, larger than life, my identical features finely wrought by a master???s chisel, every fold of her billowing robes perfectly rendered, so lifelike it seems as if I could reach up and move the fabric. Her left arm is raised in a graceful arc above her head, her wand arm pointing straight down at an Icaral that lies prostrate at her feet, his face a contorted mask of agony.By the end of this book, this passage when remembered, packs a punch, and seem as the propaganda it is. Want to go to war? Proclaim the other side dangerous, and inferior, until any atrocity against them is seen as justified. Elloren isn't allowed to keep the luxury of seeing a portrayal of an Icaral “in agony” and not see her roommates, not remember what she has learned about her grandmother. ???Elloren,??? he says, his expression conflicted. ???Your grandmother wanted to kill everyone who wasn???t Gardnerian.??? ???Because they wanted to attack us,??? I say, my voice tight and strained. My parents fought with her. They died fighting for her. Fighting for all of my people. They were heroes. Professor Kristian tightens his lips as if holding back a counter-argument. After a short pause he speaks again. ???An Icaral rose up during your grandmother???s push east. He killed her and died doing it. The Icaral was a Keltic healer who gave his life to save Keltania, a society that still harbored lingering prejudice against his kind.??? He sets down his tea. ???So, here we are.???Over the course of the novel, many of her blinders are removed, some of t hem by proximity to diversity, some by soul searching, some by people bluntly telling her the hard truths she'd been able to deny or not think about. ???Your clothes, Elloren Gardner,??? he begins, ???were most likely made by Urisk women on the Fae Islands. Some of these workers may have been children, but all were most certainly paid barely enough to survive and are laboring in conditions akin to out-and-out-slavery. They have no freedom of movement, no means of leaving the Islands for a better life, as they are heavily guarded. They can get off the Islands via pirates who will smuggle them out for a steep price, often delivering them to a worse master who will forever hold deportment or time in prison over their heads. Or they can get off the island by becoming indentured servants to the Gardnerians, which is, again, little more than glorified slavery with the threat of deportment always hanging over them. So, Elloren Gardner, if you are asking me whether your dress is made not of the finest silk, but of the oppression and misery of countless others, the answer would be a firm yes.??? I swallow hard. He certainly doesn???t mince words. His blunt manner of speaking makes me uncomfortable, and I have to remind myself that I haven???t come here looking for more dancing around the truth. ???Thank you for being honest with me,??? I tell him, feeling ashamed, thinking of little Fern and her fear of returning to the Fae Islands. The hard edge of his expression softens a little. His brow knits together, his eyes full of questions. ???You???re welcome.???At the end of this installment of the story she stands next to a diverse group of people from different races, cultures, religions, and abilities in becoming part of the resistance as a dictator set on ethnic cleansing rises to power. A coalition. Ignoring the breathless pull I feel toward him, I look at him levelly. ???I want to help you free your dragon,??? I say, steel in my voice. ???There may come a time when flight is needed.??? Yvan???s eyes fly open with surprise, but he quickly gathers himself. ???Elloren, my dragon can???t be freed.??? ???Maybe not by you alone, but we have a large group...??? He coughs out a dismissive laugh. ???Of inexperienced, naive youths.??? ???Of people with a large variety of gifts and skills.???While most of the story is told from Elloren's POV, there are so many wonderful characters to meet. I ended up caring about pretty much everyone who wasn't a villain. I probably like a hand full of them more than Elloren. Diana is lupine, a wold shape shifter, who is loyal and fierce in that loyalty. She doesn't understand why her tendency to be nude is seen as immoral. Lupines mate for life, and to her immortality is “mating” with someone you don't care about. And she really doesn't understand the arranged marriages Gardnerians take for granted. ???But what if you don???t love the person? What if you don???t care for their scent???? Diana seems greatly upset by the prospect of such a thing. ???Do you still have to mate with them????Ariel, one of the Icarals, treats Elloren very poorly in the beginning, and vice versa. Eventually Elloren goes to someone to help get revenge on Ariel ... and that person goes way too far. Ariel for good reason chooses not to forgive, but we understand her history, her pain, and the danger she is in under the new regime, and I found myself cheering her on against our protagonist. ???I???ll be able to speak with the dragon,??? Ariel gloats at me, ???and I???ll be able to direct her as to which of your limbs she should tear off first. But you won???t know what I???m telling her. It will have to be a surprise.???But by then the reader could assume there was only about a 27% chance she would really do this.Honestly, there's a ton of stuff that happens, lots of subjects to explore, and I could go on typing for another 2 hours in order to really express everything. I found the story interesting, and moving, and very intelligent in dealing with the overt and subtle causes and expressions of bigotry.If you can only read one book about bigotry – and why in the hell would you only read one? – that book should be ... [b:The Hate U Give 32075671 The Hate U Give Angie Thomas https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1476284759s/32075671.jpg 49638190], by Angie Thomas, because that book is probably the best novel of 2017, and I'm hoping only grows in stature, it's OwnVoice, meaning a novel where the author and the main character or a key character share identification with an underrepresented or under-heard group, and it's about one of the most pertinent issues facing the United States, in particular, right now. This is the book you absolutely need to read if you have an interest in, or questions about, the BLM movement. Spend some time in the real world, with a terrific author, hearing from marginalized voices, about what real people are experiencing. But The Black Witch is a hell of a read too. Just, you know, The Hate U Give First, and again after. :) And if you can only do one – again, why? – The Hate U Give!!! Final thoughts? Some of the transitions in The Black Witch are awkward. I would love to see more of the other POVs in the next book. But I am looking forward to the next installment.
There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere inbetween.Conor shook his head. ???That???s a terrible story. And a cheat.??? It is a true story, the monster said. Many things that are true feel like a cheat. Kingdoms get the princes they deserve, farmers??? daughters die for no reason, and sometimes witches merit saving. Quite often, actually. You???d be surprised.
One of my greatest challenges in life is to stop being surprised when unfair things happen. I expect for good people to have good things happen to them, and for bad people to fail, but – in the words of John Green – the world is not a wish-granting factory.
This makes me very sympathetic to Conor, who doesn't want to believe there is a chance his very ill mother won't recover. He is a child, and his mother is a good woman, and in a fair world he would have her in his life for many decades to come. He tells the monster early on that he's seen scarier things, worse monsters, and to a little boy facing the loss of a parent, this is undoubtedly true. The monster, however, has lessons to share, and a confession to hear.I can't imagine reading this book, having lost loved ones, and not being moved by this child dealing with gigantic fears and extreme feelings of isolation.
Moving read about fear, loss, and dealing with undeserved pain.
Kindred is a very thought-provoking read. Dana is a modern black woman (well, a woman of the 1970s) in a marriage with a white man. She finds herself sent to the 1800s South on multiple occasions – sometimes with her husband – and the common theme is the same boy (and, eventually, man) is in danger and needs saving.
She quickly determines the person she is saving is her great, great grandfather. She is surprised, because she doesn't know the Rufus in the family Bible is white.
Being a black woman in the antebellum South, she is treated like a slave, and for all intents and purposes, becomes a slave, with all the danger and abuse inherent to the institution. Her husband when he is with her tries to protect her, of course, but cannot experience what she is experiencing. She is automatically treated as lesser because of skin color, he is automatically treated as better, and even to the extent he wants to help her he is up against systemic racism.
Dana believes that if she can survive long enough, and help Rufus survive long enough to sire her next ancestor, that she will no longer be needed – that her freedom will be obtained by returning to modern times. She has to explore that she will allow, what she will do, what she will encourage others to do, and how she will change as a result of her captivity.
Her relationship with Rufus is complex, at least on her side. He is her kin(dred), but he is also someone who benefits from slavery, who thinks of black people as inferior, and who becomes a slave owner. She meets him as a little boy, and likes him while seeing he's troubled, and can't help but wonder if her influence will change him for the better. Will knowing her – an educated black woman who saves his life again and again – improve the lives of the black people he owns by making him question his beliefs? Will it even persuade him to free his slaves? Or will the system win out, corrupting Rufus beyond redemption? And at what point does the bad in a person outweigh the good?
I believe the reader will not find Dana a perfect person, and I don't believe she was meant to be. She was thrust into a world where she had to make difficult decisions, and decisions only become difficult when they're based on complex situations and when no answer is completely without drawbacks. I imagine most people will struggle with what she asks of another character. She asks her great great grandmother to willingly submit to repeated rapes. She feels that submitting is better than fighting, and inevitably losing the fight. There's certainly a pragmatism at work since these rapes are what will lead to her ancestor being born, and this is a battle this woman is unlikely to win. Dana might not be wrong, but it just doesn't feel like her decision to make, even knowing what she does. How a woman handles a situation like that, even if she wants to fight it to the death, is her decision. But... Impossible situation. But the interesting result of this is the reader sees Dana, while talking quite frankly to Rufus, and caring about the slaves, over time and without realizing it slipping into choosing her own path of least resistance. I've read the author did want people to think about how history has judged the enslaved men and women who took a path of pleasing the enslavers in order to improve their lives to the extent they could.
Since I finished this a day or two ago, Kindred has been in my thoughts quite a bit. I found myself saddened that I would never meet Octavia Butler outside of her books. I feel I lost something in not discovering her earlier.
This was a pretty funny and enjoyable read. I laughed out loud a handful of times. But everyone sort of had the same language quirks – they just happened to be funny quirks. I wouldn't mind visiting this town and people. Key word: visiting.
I found Mr. Klune's wacky characters to be similar to Christopher Moore – enjoyable, but also noticeably artificial.
I liked the inclusion of an asexual person in the romance, but I think it would have been more interesting to see this character and his love interest, the main character, work through it. Instead, Gus seemed to have a low sex drive, which sweeps away an adjustment and a natural source of tension.
I'm not sure if I'll read more from this author, because, um, I judge books by their covers, and find his book covers really unappealing. Which is my loss, I understand. The right premise might draw me in though.
I think my rating is a tad high. The concept here is good, although it was easy to figure out Eloise's big secret, but the execution felt bland, and some elements that needed more attention didn't get the needed care.
Theo, Eloise's father, has actively worked to deny gay people their rights, not knowing his daughter is gay. This is something that fascinates me -- how bigots seem to never take into account the poison they're pouring into the ears of their children. I mean, I know we're supposed to see Theo is a good guy, and I appreciate the nuance, but then let's explore his working through his reconciling and working through his issues with his daughter's identityI would have also, in a more frivolous sense, liked India adapting more to extreme wealth instead of rapidly taking it for granted. Think of all the books!!!! Oh, and clothes too I suppose. And opportunities.
Anyhow, while I enjoyed the story, I felt very little when I would expect to go through a lot of emotions.
Final Girls is not a bad book, it just didn't engross me the way it needed to for me to consider it a success. I figured out or suspected what was supposed to be the biggest twist really early on. Well, a couple of the twists. The main character was one of those people who, for much of the book, couldn't do the smart thing to save her ass. The ending ultimately carried some satisfaction.
Eliza is the least interesting part of this book for a while – when you're a depressed introvert with social anxiety, that'll happen. What do artists owe their fans? When does the act of creation take you away from the rest of your life? Can people get off George RR Martin's behind?
Maybe it's the teen girl in me hidden in the well-into-adulthood woman, but I like when Eliza's brothers school her parents about just how colossally they messed up.
If you do not feel anger on behalf of these women about 187 times, I don't know what to tell you. If after reading this you are not clear on why any argument about businesses regulated themselves is a load of manure, I don't know what to tell you.
These were young women, many in there teams, who dreamed of happy lives, only to have those lives destroyed through casual disregard. And when they seek justice, after spending all their savings, and the savings of their families, their former employers use every dirty trick, including lying, to deny them that justice.
Compelling read that will make you angry and break your heart.
I ugly cried. What felt like a never-ending stream of tears, and just when I thought I was done, I cried some more. Woke up with a sinus headache from all the crying.
Seriously, a beautiful, touching read about books, family, first love, friendship, humanity, empathy, promises, and the nature of evil – the power of words to grow seeds of good or evil.
After a bumpy start, at some point, I really got into these books. I accept October for who she is ... a bad detective with a big heart, and an inability to see the sexy cat man wants her.
Late Eclipses started Toby down a new path in terms of learning about her identity, and she has some new roads open to her, and I want to see what happens.
Early on, we see Lydia's room through her mother's eyes, and it's easy to think there are clues to Lydia's identity in what her mother observes. But, in a sense, everything in Lydia's room is an illusion filtered through the eyes of someone who fundamentally doesn't know her child. Only when the mother – Marilyn – looks closer does she really begin to see that the room is more Potemkin Village than anything else, signified by a row of empty diaries.
No one expresses their deepest fears and disappointments:
“If I'm not perfect, my parents might go away.”
“I've always felt different from everyone else, and so I can only love the things about my children that differ from me.”
“My life got sidetracked when I ended up following my mother's blueprint for my life, and so I must press my daughter to achieve her dreams, which are strangely the same as the ones I had for myself.”
“Why is the spotlight always on Lydia?”
The youngest child spends the whole novel observing and being able to do so because no one really interacts with her. She longs to reach out, to touch, to hug, but her family keeps moving out of her reach, either oblivious to her needs or irritated by them. She is hopefully destined to put her observational skills and empathy to good use.
It's under these conditions of lack of emotional honesty that tragedy happens.
The ending has a surprising amount of hope in it, which I'm not sure I buy, but because I've spent time with these people would hope is possible.