Anna Tschetter
Boulley has written another great entry into the Firekeeper saga? I really loved this one - Lucy has really been through it and I'm glad she found Daunis and Jamie. This is really hard to put down and gives lots of good info about Native adoption issues without being didactic.
ALSO: I was super thrilled to find that this was set in Mt. Pleasant, MI and I found that Boulley got all of the details right. (Of course, I think she lived there for some time!) It was thrilled for me as a former Mid-Michigan resident who spent a lot of time at CMU and in Mt. Pleasant.
I really liked this! McLemore was so good at examining all that must come with being from an influencer family. They especially made me laugh all of the very plausible - or maybe just actually really - ridiculous products like face cream made of ground up opals and charities so that women re-entering the workface can get lash extensions! So good!
Contains spoilers
This was fascinating and sad. I was impressed with the people who committed so much of their time trying to find these missing hikers and even though I had a feeling that they wouldn't be found , it was still interesting to see the processes of searching.
I really appreciate that the author said that of course there is no way to know what the missing people were thinking and so she put, "I think" or "maybe" or "what if he thought XYZ" instead of the liberties that some true crime writers take with victims' thoughts. I REALLY hate that so I appreciated that she made it clear that was not her intention.
Finally, I think because she was a former park service police officer, she gave WAY too much credit to the cops in general, despite the fact that they didn't take these disappearances seriously and were bad at searching. They always got the benefit of the doubt!! You'd think she would see how utterly useless they were but I can see how her experience blinded her to that.
This is really hard to put down once you start! I really loved the three different characters and the ways that they each could be the girl - woman, really - who is in the casket at the funeral at the beginning. I couldn't guess which way it was going to go until the reveal.
As always, McGinnis writes teen girls and Midwestern small towns SO WELL! Jobie, Shelby, and Fallon were all fully-realized and fleshed out characters and all the choices they make - good and bad - all make sense for what those characters would do.
There's so little YA space horror that I'm so thrilled when I get to read some! I can think of like . . . two other titles off the top of my head - 172 Hours on the Moon and Pitch Dark - and this is a worthy addition to that list!
The blurb of "Titanic meets Aliens" is so accurate that I wished that the aliens were a little less Ridley Scott Alien. They're not xenomorphs but the chest bursting felt way too similar to the films. I wish Johnston went a slightly different direction but overall, still really really fun!
As a kid, I was a big fan of The Wizard of Earthsea series (the Tombs of Atuan being the best, of course) but hadn't really read too much of her adult work. I think I tried to start this or The Left Hand of Darkness in high school and couldn't quite grasp either. The Left Hand of Darkness destroyed me emotionally when I read it recently and I may never recover -Ai and Estraven! Ah! - and now, I'm not sure I will stop thinking about this book.
"We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words." - Le Guin, Speech in Acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
ALSO: Shevek and Takver are couple goals and I love their family.
WOW - this is absolutely spectacular!! I listened to this on audio and my immediate thought was, "He must also be a poet!" He is and it shows - his writing is just so beautiful.
This book also made me want to watch basketball which very few things do since I know very little about it. His passion for it is infectious!
I'd recommend this to anyone, especially anyone from the Midwest, anyone who has felt like an underdog, and anyone who likes - or is curious about - sports.
Oh and shout out to Renata for pestering me (lovingly) to read it!
I thought this was really funny with some of the illustration gags just working so well. BUT! It bums me out that the characters are SO focused on marriage/finding a man. In the afterword, the author says she was inspired by her friends feeling this way but that she felt it's more important for a woman to be independent. I hope the characters learn this lesson.
:|
This was really sad. Just a reminder that no amount of wealth can insulate women against intimate partner violence/murder.
I would have given this five stars because it was really well written and when I wasn't listening to it, I was thinking about listening to it but I really hate - HATE - when writers put thoughts/words into the mouths of murder victims. The book ends with Cohen imagining what Jennifer thought as Fotis murdered her and I don't know, it always makes me uncomfortable. We will never know and that sort of thing, while I understand the point, seems better suited to fiction rather than nonfiction.
I didn't read this when it came out in 2020 because I didn't think I could handle reading about the rise of a fascist country which makes it funny (?) that I read it this year.
Of course, Collins handled it perfectly and I really loved how she showed that even "good" people who object to terrible things can become complicit. She's the GOAT!
