Bailey
Pleasantly surprised by this one! It felt like a really thoughtful and compassionate twist on a theme that's commonly used in a really ableist and oversimplified way. And regardless of the twist, the book stands as a compelling thriller.
I knew I was taking a risk because even though I love a good secret library book, it's so common for magic and witchcraft to be used to artificially deepen an otherwise dull plot these days. That's what it felt like happened here - the whole failing marriage aspect and then hidden history aspect didn't complement each other well enough to play off each other/together, and neither was well-developed enough to carry itself on its own.
Super creepy, brilliant atmosphere-building, great spooky story. I got annoyed with some of the heavy-handedness of some of the clues things are amiss and the very ending. Otherwise a great quick Halloween read!
Sweet and earnest. But kind of like Bedazzled but without Elizabeth Hurley to balance out some of the it's a wonderful life-ness.
There's definitely a huge need for enslaved people's stories of what their lives were like, and fictionalized accounts seem like a great way to memorialize the stories and get people interested. I'm glad this book is out there for this purpose! And it seems really well-researched.
But I wasn't taken in by this book. One reason I think is that the available synopses and reviews highlight the magical realism that wasn't a significant part of the book at all, so I was expecting fantasy but the book is definitely historical fiction with a few references to certain magic practice. This is a pretty big shift to make in expectations while already reading a book. It also read like ya to me, I think because the story felt redundant within itself and the big reveals / twists felt predictable. And it didn't dive deep enough into the inner lives of the main characters for me, which I think would have made it engaging and feel less ya-like. I'd have loved to see either the magic figure more into the story or the three women's experiences given more nuance and depth.
Overall, super important story to be told, just think it could be described more accurately to avoid creating discordant expectations!
Creative and eerie, great atmosphere and characters. A little too short to be developed enough to be super compelling. Great for a quick, ominous read.
Still super into the story, this one just felt like it missed a few rounds of editing. Could have been quite a bit tighter/less redundant.
Ughhh pure prosecutor propaganda unfettered by needlessly complex notions like survivor-centered justice or limitations of carceral systems or literally even the idea that defense attorneys might consider having morals (almost verbatim, “hOw caN tHeY sleEp at niGhT???”).
Extra shitty in that it masquerades as pro-survivor but never contemplates the actual needs of the survivor in the story (her parents decide what she will do in the trial) and never considers that survivors may not be served by the limited version of “justice” for which the book advocates.
Major bummer, wish I hadn't read it because I didn't need to know books like this are still being written.
Great thriller, made me want a ski vacation but that seems like the wrong reaction? Ware is great at setting the scene and setting up mysteries. Some parts were a little redundant or overdone, but totally worth a read.
I avoided this book for so long because I assumed with “detransition” in the premise it would be terf-y, really glad about how wrong I was! Reminded me a lot of The Argonauts but I liked it better because it felt more relatable and accessible but just as (if not more) brilliant. There was some really beautiful writing, a super nuanced look at so many normally 2d queer plot points, and a refreshing perspective. I kept realizing how infrequently I read books with transfeminine pov characters. Also just an enjoyable read overall.
Great book! I was expecting more to the fantasy element and was a little let down by it not being so prominent. But that's prob my fault for misinterpreting “magical realism.” Interesting, relatable, and flawed characters, family drama, motherhood and parenting insights, made shimmery by the sea people.
I loved the stories but major issue (spoiler and cw for racial slurs), he used an anti-Black racial slur that I don't think it's appropriate for a white author to use. The context was that a character of the race the slur insults spoke it, and the overall intention King presents is one of anti-racism, but I think this was a mistake and would suggest it get edited out of the next edition. I don't know how I'd feel if I were Black and had to come across this slur, even in a context where it was meant to be non-malicious.
I really loved this series, and I'm glad I read it. It was a unique fantasy story, easy escapism, and I'm really glad it exists in the same world as her other series so I don't have to leave it entirely. I especially loved that the character development, personalities, and behaviors were extremely thoughtful and nuanced, which I think is lacking in a lot of fantasy. It was super refreshingly trying-and-doing-a-solid-job-to-be feminist. The lower rating for the third book is my frustration with the extreme heteroness of it, and the fact that it did so much so great and fell short in just a few areas. (Spoilers) In trying to tie things up in the end, there was just so much forced pairing and happily ever afterness and it felt like too many characters were forced into “ending up” with a partner. I was disappointed because otherwise, the series portrayed capitalist structures like monogamous economic marriage as problematic, but this aspect was glorified. Who knows, maybe the publisher wanted it that way.
CN (w/ spoilers sort of) is that the series is about trauma and there is lots of talk of rape, especially in the third book. Rape scenes were told from the perspective of the people who were raped, and weren't used in a way that felt like an exploitative story arc or “just for character development.” I'm still not sure what I thought of it overall, but I'm pretty sure I'm landing at: she did a great job centering the experiences of trauma and intergenerational trauma and how they affect people, and presented everything thoughtfully and carefully.
Overall I'd recommend it!
Brilliant! I'm not a big ya reader but Freshwater was one of the best books I've ever read and really core shaking so I want to read everything Emezi writes. This book was wonderful - abolitionist A Wrinkle in Time. Great perspectives on trauma and healing I think most adults could benefit from reading. Badass and thoughtful trans heroine who stands up for what she believes and also listens to and trusts others. Beautiful and visceral imagery. Centers inner experience in a really unique way. Can't wait to recommend to all my friends who work with teens!
Spoilers
I liked this book, solid as the first one, but was super disappointed by the big reveal of the blood's original source. Felt uncreative and anticlimactic to me, and took away the mystery and intrigue the book was riding on.
Ottessa Moshfegh x Chuck Palahniuk x Meg Cabot? Creative and visceral. A little redundant but shortcut-pithy at the same time. Author did a great job at establishing nightmarishness/reality confusion.
Spoilers: Had a hard time at the beginning because I generally don't like when a POV character is reductively judgmental in a way that's elitist and antifeminist, until I can tell for sure the author isn't using the POV as a vector to trash the target people. Unclear how much that was a goal here, but the trait seems like it was mostly meant to be a character development anchor and paint a vivid picture. I love/hate theory so I enjoyed the jabs at it within the story shaped by it. Unfamiliar with literary world drama, sure I missed some stuff because of this.
Super compelling and fresh, creative voice. Was hooked the whole time and really enjoyed the characterizations
I had really high expectations from the reviews but found the book to be good/fine. The writing was really beautiful/primal/visceral in a lot of places and the story had a lot of promise from the beginning, but it went in a direction I found sort of trite and unimaginative, and I was pretty bored by about 1/3 of the way in. If I had expected the book to be a fable I would have been more impressed, it's a very compact and beautiful retelling of an old biblical tale. I just wouldn't call it fantasy or weird fiction or anything that implies originality in the plot, which is what it was sold to me as.
This book was so dreamy and beautiful and had really lovely magical realism, it reminded me of Susan Sontag dreaminess and Sourdough by Robin Sloan rompy mystery and Angela Carter and also like a Wes Anderson movie somehow? Felt the most British of any of hers so far and I got a lot of Douglas Adams vibes. It's really cool to have both the gorgeous, surreal, amorphous magical language and storytelling with the dry British humor and to have these things blend so well.
I got the sense that she's letting herself be a little freer with the whims her sentences take, sometimes to understand something I'd have to kind of step back from it and try to see it without focusing on it, kind of like those trippy picture puzzles from the 90s where you unfocus your eyes and see an image in the chaos. It's really exciting to figure it out in Oyeyemi's writing because so much can come across at once this way.
Book was nuanced and thought-provoking but a little drawn-out. Also, let's not:
(Spoilers)
1. Pretend the criminal punishment system provides a just and healthy avenue people can use to take accountability for their actions
2. (CN sexual assault) Tell the story of a sexual assault from the POV of the assaulter
This book was extremely not my thing, but I sunken cost fallacied myself into finishing it. I guess it was fine but I don't care about assassins and the description I read talked about a like trio of weird female assassins that just didn't really happen at all. There were some entertaining Murakami-esque quirks (cat names, weird prodigious/precocious women), but a lot of the book was monologue philosophizing about the meaning of life and death, and not in any sort of groundbreaking or ingenious way.