THE SECOND CUMMING OF CHRIST was the first thing I saw in my DMs this morning while I was checking my Instagram. This is what happens when you become notorious on the internet for one specific thing. People want you to do the thing, over and over and over. My thing is reading weird erotica and then telling everyone else about it. Because suffering is like a can of Pringles: it's meant to be shared.
Anyway, after receiving this DM, I took to Amazon to download the book from KU and as soon as I got off work, I read this book about Jesus getting off... with one of his flock. Gloria, who has been praying to feel Christ inside her. And what is it to have a little death for someone's sins after you've already done The Big One? No offense to all my Jesus girlies out there. You might think I'm going to hell for reading this but I'm not actually religious, and you can't hell-ban what's already damned.
Speaking of damned, WHY wasn't this book... funny? I found myself thinking of Fanny Tucker or, hell, even the guy (or girl?) who wrote EL NINO CUMZ!!! I mean, at least they put effort into their books to make them ridiculous and kind of funny. How can you write a horny Jesus fanfiction and not make a joke about him rising?? Or a joke about being nailed?? (I'm sorry, I'm sorry!!! Don't be mad at me, I didn't write this book.)
I mean, you were going to piss people off by writing this either way. Why not make it fucking hilarious? What's the point of writing trolly erotica if it isn't ~a moment~? I went into this expecting for it to be bad, but not for it to be boring.
P.S. There's a typo where Gloria refers to him as her Lord and Savoir. At least I think it was a typo. It might also be a clever joke, in which case, I add a half point star to my rating.
Like a lot of people in the aughts, I did not like Paris Hilton. She was loud and tacky and didn't play by the "rules." What these rules were, exactly, I wasn't quite sure, but I knew that she didn't fit them. In the early 2000s, a lot of magazines had "hot or not" columns, and Paris Hilton was always in the "not." Oh, how the tabloids loved to demean her for her visible whale tails and various wardrobe malfunctions. And taking our cue in this pre-internet era, the rest of us followed suit like sheep.
My thoughts on Hilton changed when I read a biography about her family (and learned, from the contemporaneous portion at the end, that she was not estranged from or disinherited by her great-grandfather, who was actually quite impressed by her business acumen). I also read interviews with her about her television cameos and the roles she played for the paparazzi and was jarred by how self-aware and effacing she was about the partygirl persona she cultivated by the cameras. I started to think Paris Hilton might actually be OK. Then I watched the TV show Cooking with Paris, where she tries out various recipes and then hosts dinner parties with various celebrity friends, and found myself... charmed.
2004-era Nenia would NEVER.
When CONFESSIONS OF AN HEIRESS went on sale, I knew I had to buy it. Even though this is a book I would have sneered at when it came out, adult me is a sophisticated and classy lady who is a connoisseur of good taste in bad taste. I'm actually shocked it has such low ratings, to be honest. I have to think that people picked this book up and took it at face-value, when the whole book is basically a parody of an instruction guide where she half-laughs at herself and half-laughs at you, the reader. It's almost a ridiculous parody of a self-help book because of how unachievable her lifestyle is (and she knows it), but peppered in is some genuinely good advice, like not treating people being broke as a deal-breaker for relationships or remembering to carry small bills while traveling to tip.
The best portions of this book are the photographs. This is a veritable lookbook of early 2000s fashion, for better or for worse. Bucket hats. Asymmetric skirts. Low, low, low-rise jeans. Micro miniskirts. She even has a gallery in the back where she discusses some of her worst fashion faux-pas. She also. WRITES. A JOURNAL. PRETENDING. TO BE. HER DOG. I also really enjoyed the chapter about her sister and the one at the end about her family and dating life. No, she doesn't really dish anything too personal, but she told you up front that she wouldn't. More fool you for not believing her.
I guess I am a Paris Hilton fan now. What can I say? I like people who are ridiculous but still real, and I don't think she's ever actually done anything super bad (apart from acting like a fool on camera). Her insights into her role on the Simple Life were interesting and actually made me want to watch the show. Her love of cooking is hinted at here and makes Cooking with Paris seem like a passion project. She also hints at wanting to create an affordable fashion line, which she did-- several times. I think she actually has a collection of Juicy Couture-esque tracksuits that are just a little cheaper than Juicy. I also own some of her home cookware which is also super affordable and surprisingly high quality. Maybe she was loud and tacky and didn't play by the rules. But it's 2020, and people are starting to realize that when it comes to how to win at being a woman, rules were basically made to be broken, anyway.
So in my pre-review of this book, where I lamented about not being able to find a copy anywhere because of all the HYPE (seriously, I could not find a copy of this anywhere and the library had, like, a five-hundred year wait-- thank GOD for my sister sending me a copy as payment for watching her kitten), I said that the people giving this author shit about her choice of title were dickheads. Some people got mad at me about that, but I stand by what I said. Even more so after reading this memoir. I am seriously side-eyeing the people defending the mother, actually, because based on the accounts in this memoir, she was verbally, emotionally, physically, and sexually abusive. Not only that, but she coached her daughter into an eating disorder at age eleven and then managed her to ensure that she continued to starve herself. That's not to mention the stage-parenting, the freak-outs (especially while driving), and the fact that she wiped Jennette when she went to the bathroom well into, like, her preteens (imagine not even trusting your eleven-year-old daughter to wipe her own ass) and showered her into her late teens (sometimes with her older brother and also while giving her breast and vaginal exams, ostensibly to search for cancer, I guess).
What the FUCK.
Here's a hard truth. Some people are shitty people. Some of those shitty people are shitty parents. Being a parent does not give you a free-pass from all wrongs. Especially if you're just doing the whole parenting thing for a little human-sized accessory that you can live all of your failed dreams through. By the end of this book, I was kind of glad Jennette's mother died, too. After living under that kind of suffocating parenting, with gaslighting and serious emotional trauma, not to mention abuse, I would be fucking done. I don't blame Jennette for her feelings. And I love my mother. I'm lucky enough to have a pretty good relationship with her. And a few years ago, my mother got breast cancer, just like the author's mom, and I was so devastated that I felt like I was working in a total fog. I stepped back from social media and it was all I could do to focus on my day job because I was so upset. But I know that other people's experiences aren't like that, and we don't get to dictate how other people mourn (or choose not to). My mother ended up okay, but I would have been really sad if the worst happened, and that's because she was a good mom and she still works hard at being a good person. People who don't try to be good people are owed nothing. Why enshrine the dead if they leave behind a legacy of trash? The title is shocking but only because we tend to airbrush the pasts of the departed.
I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED rejects this premise. In this memoir, Jennette McCurdy lays out her upbringing in painfully explicit detail, starting from her mother's hoarding and growing up in poverty in a house that sounded like it should have been condemned, to the way her mother forced her into acting and she ended up being the golden goose that kept her family afloat after years of living hand to mouth. She talks about the way her mother emotionally manipulated her, and her guilt. She talks about how she started to get body dysmorphia because she felt like the only way she could continue to be successful was to look like a child forever, and when she expressed this fear to her mom, her mom taught her how to starve herself, starting an eating disorder that would basically rule her emotional breaks and her relationship with food for over a decade. She talks about her hatred of acting, what it was like working under the man she calls "The Creator" at Nickelodeon (we know who), her friendship with Miranda, and her jealousy and resentment of Ariana. And then she writes about her utterly conflicting feelings when her mother began to die of another bout of cancer, still manipulating her emotions.
This book stressed me out so much. I think it would be very triggering for people with eating disorders and people with abusive parents, as it is SO descriptive when it comes to these passages. It's also a brand new look into celebrity, because most celebrity memoirs are written by people who are still in the business, but this is kind of a fuck-you memoir written by someone who doesn't care if their bridges are burned, so she really unhauls all the dirt in a way that someone who probably wanted to keep working in this field wouldn't. It's really well-written but the writing can, at times, feel a bit amateurish. McCurdy has a lot of raw talent but the people hyping her up as brilliant are exaggerating a little.
ALSO, who the fuck is calling this book a "hilarious" memoir? Are these the same people who were talking about how "funny" CRYING IN H MART was? Is this where we open up the floor to a conversation about how women's emotional pain and fraught relationships are often mined for comedic value? Why do people find it so amusing when women hate their mothers? My review is already getting longer than I intended it to, but this is definitely a trend I've noticed lately where I'll pick up a memoir that's supposed to be funny and instead it's just an emotionally wrenching book about a woman dealing with her trauma. Ha-ha, I guess. Fuck that.
Do read this book, if you are in a healthy mental space, but gird yourself against the hype. It is not Jesus's Second Coming. It is just a very brave story about a woman trying to come clean with herself and the past.
There are some people on Goodreads who will try to make you feel like a lesser human being for rating books you didn't finish, but our time on this green earth is finite, and why should you spent it slogging through something you didn't enjoy just to be "worthy" of sharing your opinion? Here's the thing. I'm not a hater. I tore through CARAVAL in a day and delighted in how it felt like The Forbidden Game fanfiction. Was it melodramatic and over the top? Yes. Did the random Spanish names for this fantasy world make any sense? Absolutely not. Did I cackle at Maldito Castle? Oh, you bet I did. But I liked the book anyway because it told a fun story and felt like something I would have wanted to read or watch when I was fourteen.
The sequel, LEGENDARY, was not nearly as good but I still sort of enjoyed it, if only because it had echoes of what made CARAVAL so fun. But it also felt like a largely unnecessary sequel and did some ret-conning of the characters that raised my reader hackles and made me go, "WHY?" One of my pet-peeves is when an author tries to take an unlikable character and force the reader to like them by coming up with all of these mental gymnastics to excuse their problematic behavior over the previous books. And that's not being a writer, that's being an enabler: you should let your characters speak for themselves instead of trying to apologize for them.
I was a little loath to read FINALE because LEGENDARY ended on such a sour note. I wonder if the author initially intended to stop at one book and expanded the world because of demand, because the thing about the Fates felt like it came out of nowhere, and things get even weirder here. I also really liked the author's writing style in the first book but in here, it seems like it becomes a parody of itself. Like, at one point, she's talking about the smell of "candied citrine." CITRINE is a rock. Did you mean citron? And what is "tropical ice"? That sounds like a sports drink or a shower gel, but certainly not anything that exists in nature. But it's hard to tell because all of her characters seem to have a major case of synesthesia. They "taste" falsehoods and "smell" heartbreak (yes, these are real examples), and Scarlett has a dress that magically becomes more revealing when it gets excited in the presence of boys.
I stuck it out for 200+ pages but I'm not enjoying myself at all, so I think I'll call it quits here.
Fannie Tucker is basically the female Chuck Tingle, so she has become a regular feature in my What the Actual F*** Wednesday challenges because of how over-the-top her books are. Most of them are available for free on Kindle Unlimited, but I actually had to shell out three whole bucks for this, which I could have spent on coffee, or a bus fare to the pharmacy to pick up some brain bleach. The fact that I spent so much on a mere thirteen pages hurts me.
I can't say the title of this book if I want to cross-post this review to Amazon, but let's just say that it's about exactly what you think it is and the Amazon blurb even says "Yes. Really," in big bold letters, which I found hilarious. I also find it hilarious that this book is set in Miami because if something like this were to happen, of course it would happen in Miami. We've all heard the popular meme about Googling "Florida Man" and seeing what kind of crazy stuff pops up.
Naomi, our heroine, is a beauty with wide, flaring nostrils and a secret dream. When a man pulls up in a souped up car, with more muscles than the Liver King, flexing and strutting his way past the velvet rope by means of a gratuitous tip, Naomi's friend leans over and is like "Wow, he must be overcompensating for something," and Naomi's heart flutters because she realizes he must be the man of her dreams.
At the club, she finds out that Overcompensation has never gone home with a woman before and she gets up in his lap and tells him that she knows why, but then she tells him what she's looking for in a man, and the two of them race to his love nest, where she sees that he has a massive house, a massive TV, and also a powerboat, for some reason. She tells him she doesn't want to play with his big toys, and I was massively disappointed that she didn't follow that up with "I want to play with your Micro Machine." Because they do exactly that, in case you were wondering. He becomes her Neti Pot of love, and it's actually sort of sweet in a messed up way, I guess, if you're into that sort of thing.
Weirdly enough, this isn't even the most weird of her books.
FEMINASTY was an incredible book that I bought purely on impulse. While I adore books on feminism, it was the comparison to Lindy West that sold me. Those are some mighty big shoes to fill, since West is an essayist goddess, but Erin Gibson understood the assignment. In this collection of essays, she tackles subjects such as Mike Pence, high heels, Planned Parenthood, teaching abstinence in lieu of sex ed, period politics, and so much more.
I loved this book. It made me laugh out loud multiple times even though the subjects inside were so grim. She's just so darn funny and I agreed with (almost) everything she had to say (CHUNKY NECKLACES ARE AWESOME, GIBSON, I'M SORRY). I would definitely recommend this book to fans of Lindy West, though, as tonally and politically, the two of them are very similar. The unapologetic feminism and ribald commentary were complete wins for me and now I'm thinking I probably have to check out Throwing Shade.
Once someone sent me a message saying that they went out of their way to five star all the books I don't like and one star all the books I love. Regardless, the author is in luck because it sounds like she has another five star forthcoming then, because I'm giving this book a one.
I found VLADIMIR in a Little Free Library. I'd been thinking about buying it for a while so finding it for free felt like kismet. It had been getting mixed reviews from some of my friends and the idea of a morally grey unlikable heroine who is bitched out about her old age and an apologist for her rapist husband seemed... interesting. If you've been following for a while, you know I have a soft spot for literary fiction that doesn't quite find its niche. I always feel really bad for books with low average ratings. Sometimes it's because they were marketed badly or didn't find their target audience.
I went into this book expecting something like Alissa Nutting's TAMPA. And I sort of got that. But also not. Because at least TAMPA was kind of an exploration of female sex predators and how the same sexism that traps women in a loop of infrastructural sexism also allows such predators to get away scot-free since seeing women as weaker means not seeing women as capable of real harm. But I'm not sure that was the point of VLADIMIR, because the heroine doesn't really do anything. The heroine is what happens when pick mes grow up. She literally opens the book talking about how old men loved her when she was young, and how she basked in their attention because it validated her so much as a sexual an intellectual being. When I washed the taste of vomit from the back of my mouth, I was like, "Okay, interesting. Where is she going with this?"
The narrator/heroine and her husband are both academics. Her husband has gotten in big trouble for sleeping with his students and is in the middle of an investigation. The heroine stands by her man, resentfully but loyally, even as her wandering eye falls on the newest faculty member at the college, Vladimir, who is twenty years her junior. She talks about how gross she is now that she's an old lady (almost sixty), and we watch her convince some well-meaning students who come into her office hours that standing by her husband is a "feminist" choice because feminism is about choice, all the while she's seething with rage, hating on them for being young and pretty and dressing in revealing clothes.
And I thought, "Okay, interesting. WHERE is she going with THIS?"
And then she drugs Vladimir and, like, ties him up in a beach house?
WHAT????
Officially, I stopped reading at page sixty-two but I skipped to the end because I wanted to see how this ended and where the author was going with things. I read about fifty pages of the ending and skimmed the middle, just so I could get a holistic view of the book. Now that I've read it, I'm annoyed. Because I'm not sure that there was a point to this book at all. Maybe not having a point was the point, but that feels like cheating, because while life may be open-ended, books themselves are complete.
Just like how this book was complete. Complete bullshit.
Whoa. This was absolutely fantastic. In case you didn't know, Patrisse Khan-Cullors is one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement (a movement I totally support, BTW). When this book went on sale recently, I snapped it up without a thought. I wanted to know more about this woman who started a movement to call out the broken systems and infrastructural injustices that deny Black people the "unalienable" right to life, but also impose oppression and segregation through societal structures rife with racial biases, with disproportionate arrests that carry hidden lifelong sentences, keeping people of color down by preventing them from getting jobs or subsidized housing and then condemning them further when they have no choice but to resort to crime. It's sickening and it should be called out, and the voices of those doing so ought to be amplified.
But this book is so much more than a manifesto. It's also a memoir in which Khan-Cullors talks about what it was like growing up poor, and how her educational system gradually began to fail her as she got older and less adorable. More "dangerous." She writes about her relationships and her love for her brother, who suffered from schizoaffective disorder and manic episodes and instead of getting the care he should have received during one of these episodes, was tased and shot with rubber bullets and delivered to his court hearing strapped up like Hannibal Lecter. This insight into her life allows us not to just get to know her as a person, but also understand the anger and despair that led her, and others, to found the Black Lives Matter movement in the first place.
This book is hard to read but so, so worth it. Even though it has trigger warnings for basically everything across the board, I felt like Khan-Cullors only gives details when relevant and necessary. She is a powerful and compelling story-teller and her words carry real emotional weight. I honestly don't understand how anyone can read these words and not empathize and not understand that the United States has a major injustice problem that needs to be addressed here and now.
I read this after MEGHAN: A HOLLYWOOD PRINCESS. I actually recommend you do that, too, because AHP is a biography of Markle before her life with Harry, and this book basically takes over where the other book left off. They are both also written from the same sympathetic perspective, and the details sync up nicely.
I bought this book because of all the negative reviews for it on Goodreads or Amazon from people who seemed to be anti-Meghan. Honestly, the hate this woman gets astounds me-- especially compared to the other royals. If you think it's due to anything but racism and classism, I suggest you check out this BuzzFeed article by Ellie Hall comparing the coverage that Meghan gets compared to Kate from the same media outlets. If you ask me, I'd say that Markle is guilty of nothing but "princessing while Black."
Having read FINDING FREEDOM, I will say that it reads like a puff piece, but it's an engaging one, and a harmless one, IMO. If you hate Markle, it probably won't change your mind, but if you're neutral or positive, it's a pretty fascinating read. I liked reading about Markle's interactions with her famous friends (including the daughter of PM Mulroney, Serena Williams, and Eddie Redmayne), her passion for cruelty-free and local goods (one that I share), and her not-so-fairytale romance with the prince. I kept annoying my family with facts I thought were interesting.
I respected Markle before reading this and I still do, now. I can't imagine the pressure of being in the public eye the way she does and I'm glad that she and Harry were able to do what they needed to do for the sake of their respective mental healths (and those of their children).
Welcome to Literary Criticism 34, the lower division course where if you can analyze it, you can probably fuck it.
WHY is nobody talking about the social commentary in BAGGED BY THE GROCERIES? It literally opens with a privileged woman named Ashley (Karen's slightly up-market cousin) refusing to give groceries to a homeless woman on the grounds that she could easily get food stamps (no, seriously), and then getting fucked by the same (literal) fruits-- and vegetables!-- of the capitalist system that has screwed this woman. It is sexual karma in an erotic short.
Usually, the women in these books are as two-dimensional as paper dolls, but Fannie Tucker actually gave Ashley a personality. She's a woman who shops at the Piggly Wiggly, who gets turned on by shooting a firearm and feels a blend of white guilt and white fear about living in her gentrified neighborhood. She's dreamed about being a housewife all her life and is quick to tell you how many poor families her taxes pay for annually (several), but will also add that she isn't so out of touch that she doesn't know what street music is.
Even more weirdly, the groceries in this book are apparently the living embodiment of A(zaka), a loa (Haitian god, basically) of agriculture. Because naturally the homeless lady knows voodoo and naturally the homeless lady feels that some cucumber dick is a fitting fate for some privileged twat ramming her in the Piggly Wiggly (had to look that up, we don't have them here-- seems like it's basically a Southern Trader Joe's). Ironically, getting rammed in the Piggly Wiggly is exactly what happens to the heroine in this book.
So I know what you're asking. Is Zaka HAWT? Well...
Between those whole-grain thighs hung a long, thick cucumber and a pair of smooth, ripe nectarines (37%).
Licking his lettuce lips with a tongue that might have been a thick slice of the ham she picked up from the deli earlier, Zaka bored into her with his black eyes (46%).
Her fingers traced the bag of flower [sic] as she reached around back, sliding down to feel the pebbled texture of two cantaloupes that formed his tight, hard buttocks. She pulled him forward, deeper still, until the bulge of his plums pressed against her crotch (55%),
No? Not unless you've gone to a Golden Corral salad bar and thought to yourself, I wanna fuck that hot, throbbing salad bar. And then-- maybe.
I AM VERY UPSET ABOUT THE INCONSISTENCY, THOUGH! First the author said that he has nectarine testicles, but then she changes her mind and calls them plums. Which are they, author? Golden nectarines or big purple plums? Also, the sack of flower [sic] that makes up his back-- earlier, you said his back was a loaf of bread. Did seeing her get him so hot that she-- ahem-- raised his dough? And if so, where did the yeast come from? Actually-- don't answer that. PLEASE.
Anyway, I'm sure we all know what's coming next.
Or, maybe I should say WHO'S coming.
"Come on, baby," she pleaded. "Gimme them groceries! Gimme them fucking groceries!" (60%)
But how does she know when he's finished? Well, remember that dripping yogurt carton in the beginning?
Now she knew where the yogurt had gone (61%).
That's right-- IT'S CHEKHOV'S YOGURT.
Anyway, being banged-- sorry, BAGGED-- by the Haitian grocery god and being seeded by his fertile love yogurt is apparently an irresistible aphrodisiac, because her lawyer husband comes home and seeing her lying in a bed filled with spilled flour (sorry, flower) and dripping, soured yogurt like a sundry seductress and can't resist. He bangs her, and BOOM. She's pregnant now. The baby is a probiotic smoothie. (Not really, but also-- MAYBE.)
After reading M.J. Edwards's erotica, I feel like nothing can shock me anymore. I mean, I've read dinorotica, COVIDrotica, and even poop man erotica (very disappointing), so groceries don't really feel THAT shocking. People play dirty with food all the time. Every ER tech I've befriended had at least one story about someone who got too creative with a cucumber. This just feels like the next level. I will say that Tucker's book at least reads like she put some thought into it. There are some metatextual levels to this and there's even some wry, tongue-in-cheek humor (oh where has the yogurt gone WINK).
I guess the moral of the story is, never insult a voodoo homeless lady unless you wanna get lucky.
Stella picked up her poo and rocked it in her arms. She tapped it, shook it, gave it the kiss of life (19).
Some of you may know M.J. Edwards from her coronavirus erotica that went viral. Enough people heard about it that even non-book YouTubers used it for talking points. Well, now she's moved on to poop.
Our heroine, Stella, is petite and perky-boobed and has the personality of a water faucet. She has two hobbies: cartography and being constipated. Her BFF is totally sympathetic and takes her out to a pizza place to order a pie called the "Vesuvius" which is an irradiated bioweapon filled with hot throbbing peppers and more juicy phallic symbolism. It does the trick, and when Stella comes home, she takes the shit of her life.
Who's also the love of her life.
Okay, so here's the thing. If you tell me how smooth and warm the poop is like ten dozen times, I'm going to think that she's going to fuck the poop. And when you describe your book as a "fiery fecal romance," I'm going to be expecting the heroine to fuck the poop. I'm not going to like it, but it's what I came here for.
Instead, Stella buys a pram for the poop and takes it out to the store and all sorts of other places, like it's a cute kitten in a bonnet and not a scatological midlife crisis. People just don't understand their love, but that's okay. They have each other-- until they don't. Sob, sob. It's like ME BEFORE YOU... with poop.
I am so disappointed by this book, okay. I was expecting I FUCKED THE POOP MAN and instead I got MR. HANKY'S VALENTINE'S SPECIAL. I didn't think it was popular to troll while trolling, but Edwards set this up like it was a porno, only to not deliver any payoff. It would be like the pizza man delivering the box to the negligee clad actress and then walking away and going to Quiznos. Who goes to Quiznos? AND ALSO, WHAT ABOUT THE PORN? It would be ingenious if I weren't so mad.
P.S. This was the best/worst line in the book:
they both were wearing nice tops that showed off their boobs, because both of them had nice boobs and when they stood next to each other it looked like this: OOOO (7).
I saw this book on Instagram and was instantly intrigued because while the cover screamed "MONSTEROTICA!" the blurb seemed way more sophisticated. It was kind of giving me LAST HOUR OF GANN and RADIANCE vibes, two books I loved. The premise is also great, too. Think Harvest Moon: In Space. Susan is from a human colony on a planet called Meterion but only first and second daughters get married and land. Third daughters like her get to become indentured servants-- if they're lucky.
Because of this, Susan agrees to a marriage match between the Prime Mating Agency, which basically pairs biocompatible humans with aliens on other planets in economically beneficial arranged marriages.
Susan ends up going to a planet that begins with an X-- I can't remember what it's called. Xenia? Xerces? Something like that. Anyway, it's populated by aliens called Altdurians that are hunter-gatherers who live off the land. It's incredibly fertile land and people would like to use it for farming and part of Susan's goal in going there is to convince the aliens about its potential.
Susan's husband, Olix, is a total bae. He's the clan leader and an incredibly well respected hunter. He's also so respectful that he basically puts all human men to shame. Sign me up for the next flight out to Lizardmandia. After an awkward wedding ceremony and an awkward wedding night, they find that each other's company is incredibly agreeable. The only problem is the farming. Altdurians associate it with their colonizers, who forced them to dig in the dirt and poisoned the land with harsh chemicals. So farming as seen as base, distasteful, and harmful at best-- oh no.
I'm just going to go ahead and list out some of the things that I really liked/found humorous about this book.
My thoughts for LYCANTHROPY AND OTHER CHRONIC ILLNESSES are kind of all over the place. There were things about it that I really loved and things about it that I didn't like as much. But one thing it did that I think is really fascinating is that it compares lycanthropy to chronic pain illnesses, choosing to focus on what impacts constant shape-shifting might take on the body, the muscle pain and bruising that could ensue, the gastrointestinal distress from inhuman diets (e.g. raw and possibly rancid meat), and what havoc it might wreak with hormone levels. I thought that was a unique take, one that I can't recall seeing being done before.
Priya, the heroine, is a Christian Tamil girl who has just been stricken with the "bad" kind of Lyme disease that causes lifelong health problems. Originally a pre-med student at Stanford, she's been forced to take a leave of absence due to health issues where she has returned to live with family in New Jersey to try and manage her joint pain and lethargy. To help cope, she talks with her online friend, Brigid, and a Discord server group for other people with chronic health issues/pain called "Oof, My Bones."
When Brigid goes missing one day, Priya automatically assumes the worst and drives down to check up on her friend, who has been seeming increasingly aloof and depressed. She's shocked to find a big, wolf-like beast in her friend's home and even more shocked when, once she returns with Animal Control, she finds her friend, naked, in the bathroom where she thought she left the wolf. Is her friend... the wolf?! (I mean, obviously, but let's play along here.)
I can't speak to the accuracy of the Tamil rep or the chronic pain rep, but most of what I read seemed to make sense. Which actually ties into one of the issues I had with the book which might actually be fine-- inconsistent tone. This book wavers between light-hearted good feelings and soft friendships and really, really dark. Some of the characters get frustrated, fed-up, and depressed. There were several moments in here that almost made me cry. And since chronic pain doesn't go away or lasts for a long time, I guess it makes sense that those highs and lows would be reflected here? It just felt weird to me, as a reader, because it felt like the book was wildly oscillating between extremes but once I finished, I decided that this could just be a reflection of the characters trying to make the best out of a bad situation, like someone else might be trying to do with gallows humor and the like. Just be forewarned that there are major mental health triggers in this book, as well as detailed descriptions of physical ailments.
A lot of the book is written in chat-speak and it felt natural but could also be tedious to read. The last act of the story really drags and becomes almost heist-like in terms of plot, which was fine, but I felt went on too long, and it felt as if it were written in such a way that the author was figuring out how the book was going to end as she went along and took us all along on that stumbling journey. The end result of that was that it felt like this book was about eighty pages longer than it should have been. I did like the ending, though, which seemed to be about accepting the bodies we're given and making the best of what we've got, which I think is a really positive message. I've read other books about physical ailments which took on a decidedly ableist perspective, and the "it's okay not to be okay" message of this one where the focus of the book was on a supernatural/adventure element instead of on the ailments of the characters themselves as the central conflict was actually really refreshing.
I will note two things: 1) the wolf on the cover is NOT Priya, but her best friend, Brigid, in werewolf form, and 2) there was some concern from South Asian reviewers that the rep in this book wasn't completely accurate since it isn't #ownvoices, so if you have similar concerns, I'd check out some of those reviews for specific details.
Also, if you read this and find yourself thinking "You know, I'd really like to read more paranormal books with Indian rep that actually feature Indian shape-shifters," check out THE DEVOURERS by Indra Das.
Overall, this was a very unusual and interesting journey with some emotional ups and downs and I look forward to seeing what else this author comes up with.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
Hooray, I actually remember who inspired me to read this vintage bodice-ripper. Thanks to Naksed for her glorious review of WOMAN OF IRON because without it, I'm not sure this book would have come to my attention, even though Sheila Holland is apparently one of the pennames of THE Charlotte Lamb, of Harlequin fame. IKR. Her Harlequins are often pretty spicy for Harlequins, but the bodice-rippers she wrote for other publishers apparently like to get down and dirty.
WOMAN OF IRON is such an intense read. Any book that starts out with the hero whipping the heroine is automatically suspect (I see you, THIS OTHER EDEN). It's kind of a cross between THIS OTHER EDEN, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, and LEMONADE, although it's not really as "romantic" as any of those books, as most of this love-hate relationship is spent with the dial resting firmly on "hate" and the hero and heroine don't even sleep together until twenty pages from the end (although the hero sleeps with plenty of other women, and the heroine has, like, two other dudes who want to get with her).
The plot is a little to complex to summarize, but basically the heroine is the illegitimate child of an ironworks owner and is raised by her uncle when he dies. The uncle's wife HATES her and everything she represents because when the dad died, uncle stepped in to be the mistress of wifey, and real wifey resents that on a deeply personal level, so she just spends a ton of time whipping the heroine. (Don't worry, she later dies of small pox lmao.) Then the hero whips the heroine because she won't call him sir and apparently defiance is his love language because the fact that she won't give in just makes him smile like a fool, even as he plans to break her. What a psycho.
I would love to get into the litany of misdeeds that happen in this book but I want to at least try to cross-post this book to Amazon. I will say that it has a lot of triggers, and there is violent assault and rape, and also small pox, and unpleasant deaths, and also murders. Midsomer would never. Part of me is in awe at what Charlotte Lamb was capable of under this imprint, and part of me is like, "Okay, but maybe also at least try to make some romance?" I wish there had been just a little more obsession of the passionate kind and some more scenes between the H and h beyond the one dub-con scene they had. The ending was SO abrupt also and didn't really provide any closure.
Brilliant characterization and a true bodice-ripper but not really a romance.
The sequel went on sale today and since I've had this sitting on my Kindle for years, I thought it might be a good opportunity to (1) find a new favorite series to binge or (2) delete a book from my filled-to-bursting Kindle. Obviously, (1) is always the ideal scenario, but if I do find myself facing (2), I don't want to splurge on a sequel I don't want.
Sadly, this book was (2). I went into this book with pretty low expectations because it seems to be a love it or hate it kind of book, and I noticed a lot of the people rating it highly were people who like books by authors like Jennifer Armentrout or C.L. Wilson or S.J. Maas, authors I've tried to like but just can't get into because I think their books are too silly.
The world-building in this is kind of ridiculous. It's a fantasy world but the heroine talks in a really modern way (think ball-busting paranormal P.I.) and even though it's in a fantasy realm, the author has for some reason decided to take GREEK MYTHOLOGY and incorporate it into her world, Greek names and all. Also, non-magical people are called "Hoi Polloi." Wat.
POISONED WATER is about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Most of you are probably familiar with it because for a while, it was splashed all over the news. To save money, residents were switched from Detroit-routed pipes fed by Lake Huron to a direct line piped in from the Flint River. Soon, residents were getting disgusting-looking water in various colors of brown, and started suffering conditions ranging from skin rashes to Legionnaire's disease. It turns out that not only was there microbial contamination from the water (gross), the chemicals that were being added to treat the water (at the ridiculously underfunded facility-- $8 million budget to upkeep something that should have cost a conservative $60 million) were being added without chemicals to prevent corrosion, which was resulting in all the metals from the pipes filtering into the water, including lead.
What makes it worse was that the officials responsible for the change from Huron to the Flint River were, in the words of the book "aggressively dismissive" to residents voicing their concerns over whether the water was fit for themselves and their families to drink. One woman was accused of dying the brown water in her bottle herself at what I believe was a council meeting. A dossier of scientific data collected by a leading expert in water safety was brought in to officials who even refused to touch or accept it. To save the town money, they switched to water that already had indications of being unfit to drink, and in an ironic twist of fate, anything that was saved was lost in the legal fees from the investigation of the mismanagement.
According to the back of the book, this is middle grade nonfiction. I don't really think this is middle grade-appropriate, just because the writing level is very science- and data-heavy, and it uses language that I, a thirty-something millennial with a Bachelor's degree, needed to think about. I certainly wouldn't discourage a kid from reading this who wanted to learn more about Flint and social justice, but I also think that it would be a struggle for a lot of kids. That said, I think it's definitely worth the read-- for kids and adults-- because it really delves into Flint's sad history as a racially segregated town (and race was probably a factor in why Flint was ignored; institutional racism is a huge problem, and even if it isn't the root cause of a given issue, it can help foster the symptoms and keep them lingering), its brief boom in the peak of the automotive industry, and then its collapse and penultimate ruin when GM went under (before being bailed out).
It's a depressing and hard book to read, but in a sad, twisted way, it's also inspiring. Seeing how the community banded together and refused to listen to the officials who were very clearly in the wrong was an incredible feat. Especially when they managed to get scientists and experts on the phone who, in turn, helped the people of Flint gather the incontrovertible evidence of the harm that they needed to force the switch back to Lake Huron water. It was grassroots community activism, and it's a shame that it came at such a terrible cost. FWIW, the book does end on a hopeful note, though.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
Even though I had some reservations about THE POPPY WAR, I did ultimately end up enjoying it, even if I couldn't quite put my finger on who the target audience was or what it was trying to achieve. I did wonder where the author was going to go from there, since having a book end with your main character committing a grave atrocity is definitely a choice... one that's hard to bounce back from.
As soon as I began THE DRAGON REPUBLIC, my hopes for the book began to sink. As I said in my review of TPW, I really enjoyed Part I and admired the author's ability to show a character who was hard-working but unlikable. Parts II and III were where her characterization began to fragment and it was like she unlearned everything that had made her interesting. That's even more magnified here, where Rin spends the bulk of her narrative shrieking, yelling, insulting people, threatening people, mooning over the man who used to abuse her, and gulping down opium like a stoner with a Slurpee.
I was also really disgusted with how Rin treated everyone around her. Her "friends" were never really her friends and I don't understand why she's being shipped with Nezha now when he was so cruel to her in TPW, or why she's so shocked that Kitay is angry at her after what she did in the first book. They're portrayed as this motley crew of buddies who have each other's backs... but they never did, and it feels like an even bigger ret-con than what S.J. Maas pulled with Rhysand and Feyre. I also really didn't like the racism and misogyny in this book. The racism is intentional, as I think it's meant to show how Westerners were viewed by the Chinese, and how the British used their racist, taxonomical-inspired discrimination to legitimize colonization and oppression, but what Kuang does here just barely scrapes at the surface and, as in the previous book, makes everyone out to be awful in a way that just seems to be done for shock. I also hated how all the women in this book, including Rin, are portrayed. So many reviewers portray Rin as a strong protagonist, but anyone who relies that heavily on threats, emotional manipulation, and drugs, is weak, in my opinion. And that could have been interesting to explore, but it felt like Rin was always getting a free pass for what she was criticizing others for doing (genocide, racism, emotional manipulation, war crimes, etc.), and she was really only strong because all other women in this book were portrayed as spineless victims, noble victims, manipulators, or objects.
Also, to clarify: I understand that psychedelic drugs are a key implement in the religious ceremonies of many religions, and unlike some, my issue was not with their presence in the narrative, but the way that they were used. Rin has developed a chemical dependence, as a result of her guilt and trauma (PTSD), and, again, that could have been interesting, but it wasn't really explored fully and was basically portrayed as a free pass for all of her abusive or manipulative behavior, and I really didn't like that/feel comfortable with that, especially not in a character who is supposed to be so kick-butt and ~awesome~.
At this point, the book kind of feels like a gussied-up YA title with flat, two-dimensional characters that uses its violence to shock and titillate. I could understand the violence in book one being used to show the atrocities of war and how shocking that can be to those who glamorize it, as well as to call attention to the massacre of Nanjing, but I'm really not sure what this book was supposed to accomplish apart from making me despise a character I only found barely-tolerable.
Whew. I buddy-read this with my friends Maraya and Sage and I'm honestly glad it was a team effort, because I'm not sure I would have gotten through the book on my own. The last time I tried to read this, I ended up quitting at 14% because I was so bored. THE POPPY WAR is a pretty widely-read book that a lot of people have read and have opinions about and I guess I'm just one of the masses in that regard, because I have a lot of things to say about this book and it's going to be really difficult because a lot of those thoughts are conflicting.
***WARNING: some spoilers to follow***
First, I'd like to say that I've noticed that some members of this fandom likes to attack people who didn't like this book. I muted "TPW" and "The Poppy War" as keywords on Twitter because I kept seeing people making fun of the one-star reviewers and saying that anybody who didn't like this book was too stupid to understand/enjoy it, and that is such toxic behavior to me. There are a lot of reasons why people won't like this book and honestly, some of them are valid. If you are sensitive to violent content of any kind, this is going to be an incredibly unpleasant read. Bad things happen in this book and the main character is very unlikable. Part I is very different in tone from Parts II and II. Parts II and II move much slower, and more unpleasantly, than Part I. I understand that sometimes people hold authors of color to different standards than white authors, and might say racist things in their reviews, but simply being put off by negative content or critiquing the writing or the pacing or the story in and of itself is hardly problematic and doesn't, in my opinion, warrant shaming and bullying. I read positive and negative reviews of this book, sans spoilers, and unlike 99% of other books, where I fall firmly on one side or the other, I can actually see where both sides are coming from and why this book is so polarizing. The things that make one side love it will make another side hate it. One person's idea of daring is another person's idea of triggering.
Second, I'm writing this review as someone who is somewhat familiar with both Sino-Japanese Wars, the Nanjing/Nanking massacre, and The Opium Wars (of which, I believe, the Poppy War is a play). I've read Iris Chang's book on the subject, which scarred me for life (although it ended up preparing me for chapter 21 soooo... mixed blessings). However, even though this is heavily inspired by Chinese history, I wouldn't say that it's a direct allegory like ANIMAL FARM. It's more like GAME OF THRONES, in that it borrows in bits and pieces, and there are some direct parallels, but most of that borrowing is used to further the fantasy elements and give a "grimdark" feel to a book while also making people feel smarter for reading it for noticing the borrowed elements (no hate-- it worked for me). I say this because some people are saying that this book is history or historical and I would argue that while that may be a matter of some debate, I don't really think this book is history. It has demons and gods and magic in it. It isn't history. It just borrows from it and takes artistic license with it.
THE POPPY WAR stars Rin, an antiheroine who is willing to sacrifice literally anything to be the best and win the war against the stand-in for the Japanese in this world, the Mugen. When she starts the book, I think she's a young teen because she hasn't had her period yet (so maybe 13?). To avoid getting married, she crams for the national exam, the Keju, spending two years working her butt off to pass. She ends up scoring the highest in the province and goes to Sinegard, an elite military school. This portion was honestly my favorite, as it reminded me of other "dark school" type stories, like VITA NOSTRA or SCHOLOMANCE (the R. Lee Smith one), which also feature morally gray heroines with sociopathic tendencies who are slowly corrupted by power. I think this is also why so many people categorize this book as YA. It does have a dark YA vibe to it, the way some of Victoria Schwab's allegedly adult books do, and it can be hard to pinpoint who the audience for this book actually is. I liked Rin's unusual education and how she came into conflict with her peers and masters as the underdog, and probably would have given this portion of the book four or five stars.
Parts II and III have a major tonal shift as Nikara, Rin's country, engages in war with the Mugense for real. Rin finally has to put everything she's learned into action while also trying to control the magic she's only just realized she's had (she, like a very rare few, has the power to call gods down from their sacred realm and let them temporarily possess her). In part I, her mentor was the delightfully eccentric Jiang. Here, she's attached to Altan, and unpredictable student of immense power who was the only survivor of a genocidal attack by the Mugense. Altan is a drug addict and abusive, and thinks nothing of yelling, throwing things, or hitting people, including Rin. Rin is in love with him and idolizes him in a way that feels uncomfortable, despite the abuse. Especially since so many reviewers laud Rin as a strong heroine when she seems comfortable acting as a pawn at the hands of others and apologizing for the people who use her ill. Again, I think that this will be a major trigger for some people.
The absolute worst part of this book, in terms of violent content, is the infamous chapter 21. This chapter feels like a Wikipedia dump of the Nanjing massacre, so if you aren't sure if you will be able to handle the content, read the Wikipedia article on the massacre. If it is too much for you, do not read this book or skip chapter 21. It is brutal, but not as upsetting as I was expecting since, again, I've read Iris Chang's book on the actual events that inspired this book (which had photographs). This is a reason I think that this book shouldn't be categorized as YA. Most U.S. schools don't teach the Nanjing massacre, and so students reading this likely won't have the context that puts this chapter into perspective. It's incredibly violent and horrific, and while I won't begrudge anyone who felt legitimately triggered by this chapter, I think having that historical context does put this book into perspective. That said, there are other moments of violence that don't really have anything to do with the war, such as Rin giving herself a chemical hysterectomy (in a scene that was uncomfortably similar to Yennefer's similar decision in The Witcher, but way less graphic) or graphic dueling scenes in the school or Rin getting grabbed or hit by the boy she loves. This book is very violent, period.
That said, I'm not really sure what this book intended to do with that historical parallel to Nanjing. In ANIMAL FARM, for example, the purpose was to show the slow slide into a dictatorship with the gradual relinquishing of one's personal freedoms, and how sometimes liberation can lead to an even greater prison. Here, the parallels seem more like GAME OF THRONES, in that they kind of feel like they're just there to shock. There is no real context for the war unless you are familiar with Chinese history, and it isn't really clear why the Mugenese hate the Nikara unless you interpret them literally as Japan in that specific time frame of history. There is no slow backslide into corruption on behalf of the Mugenese because, through Rin's eyes and those of their other victims, they were never human to begin with. So many of the descriptions of the Mugense describe them as inhuman or not human, and the only really humanizing moment is Rin's shock that they look so superficially similar to the Nikara. There's really nowhere for them to go because they are the de facto evil villains in this book.
Ironically, the slow corruption happens in Rin, who ends up becoming a perpetrator of genocide herself, which is ironic, since in an earlier portion of the book, she says, "War doesn't determine who is right, only who remains." She survives but at the cost of her soul, I would say, since by the end of the book she is a despicable person who doesn't see reason and makes decisions solely on rage (like Altan). She is literally unable to see how her own actions put her on the same level as the Mugense and their annihilation of Speer, which is interesting from a moral perspective, but kind of frustrating from a reader perspective. Especially since we watched her give her all to understand everything in Part I, only to throw everything away that she learned in Parts II and III. It almost felt like she was a different person from the first part, and part of that is because she grew up and was subjected to horrible trauma, but it was frustrating to see someone who I admired for tenacity (despite loathing her for her selfishness) become such a stupid person who made such stupid decisions. Why, Rin?? Why?
I didn't hate this book, despite thinking I might, but I didn't love it either. I can see why people do, because it is different, and it does take a lot of risks, and in some ways, it is very similar to some of the manga storylines I loved as a child. The scene with the chimei, for example (one of my favorite parts) was like something right out of Inuyasha: a pseudo-historical epic filled with violent magic and dark content, with characters you rooted for even though they were incredibly annoying. I think Inuyasha even had a face-stealing monster in one of the earlier books. So it was cool to read a book that had some interesting Chinese mythology thrown into a world filled with geopolitical intrigue. I just wish the second and third parts of the book had meshed better with the first, and that Rin didn't flip-flop (to borrow my friend's term) quite so much in terms of her character. She was all over the place, and I expected a brutal queen and not an idiot with a magical firearm she didn't know how to use but was all too willing to fire. Even if it is a revenge fantasy that does appeal to the dark satisfaction all of us would have at triumphing over our enemies at tenfold delivery, I don't really like the message in that.
Anyway, hopefully all that makes sense. I'm probably forgetting half the things I was going to talk about but I think I hit on all of the important key points, and I'm wicked proud of myself for figuring out the major "twist" in this book before I even got to the 15% mark. Props to the author, by the way, for taking the chosen one stereotype and at least subverting the trope a little bit by making the character work for it. That, and the brilliance of part I, is why this is getting 3 stars and not a 1 or a 2.
Ever since I read E.M. Hull's THE SHEIK, I realized that there was something about these sheikh romances as a sub-genre of romance that was really putting me off. Was it that it felt like the last-bastion of twentieth century Orientalism? Was it that all the made-up Middle Eastern countries felt like a lazy way to sidestep all that, as if drawing from a culture and then obscuring the source somehow excused poor research and outmoded stereotypes? Or was it something more?
Actually, it was kind of all of that. I've never read a sheikh romance I loved. Like Native American romances, sheikh romances fall into the trap of using the superficial trappings of real people's culture to titillate and awe while ignoring the deeper cultural heritage and history (especially the ones that make white people look bad).
I want to be clear that this is a flaw that applies to MOST sheikh romances and I am not just calling out this one specifically, even though this book contains many stereotypes that apply. As far as offensive tropes go, this one is relatively light on those (so, um, yay?). I'd hoped PRINCE HAFIZ'S ONLY VICE would be great, but the beginning of the book literally opens with Hafiz entering a marriage of convenience and telling Lacey, the heroine, she can be his mistress since she is the one he really loves. And she, the smug twit, basically tells him that she's an American she won't do that.
As if Americans don't have mistresses?? Girl, have you BEEN to a romance bookstore? His [BLANK] Mistress is like the title of 809,234,342 Harlequin Presents novels.
ANYWAY.
Hafiz is the prince of a fictional nation called "Rudaynah," which as far as I can tell, seems to be Saudi Arabia wearing a fake mustache. Anyway, Hafiz's dad tells him that he'll reinstate him as crown prince if he ditches his American girlfriend and marries the girl he picked out. Apparently Hafiz lost his inheritance ten years ago, for having yet ANOTHER American mistress. So obviously Lacey is not happy and is preparing for her epic, teary flounce back to the United States...
Only she's kidnapped.
Also, I would just like to point out that Hafiz's appearance is quite whitewashed, whereas the bad guys in this book have more stereotypically ethnic features. Disney's Aladdin has been accused of doing the same thing, and has been rightfully called out for it, but it made me sad to see it here.
Anyway, it turns out that the bad guys want to "ruin" Hafiz by broadcasting his indiscretions on TV. But don't worry-- everything ends up happily-ever-after. The bad guys are unmasked, Scooby Doo-style, we find out that Hafiz's brother really isn't so bad, and Hafiz ditches his country for her because love.
I'm giving this two stars and one of those stars is solely because the art is gorgeous. The story gets a one, and looking at the abysmal ratings for the novel version of this book, others seem to agree. Hafiz is a very weak hero. He tosses away his right to rule on a dime to be with a woman and if that's how he feels, maybe that's for the best. But honestly, I wasn't really digging him with the heroine, either. When he tells her about his first mistress, he says he was immature. Well..... he still is. Yikes.
And the heroine-- moving to another COUNTRY for a man who hasn't even told her "I love you," and then acting surprised when he doesn't want to marry her?? I feel bad for her but... are you surprised? Dudes who can't even muscle up the commitment to say the L-word aren't marriage material. Also, she was kind of a low-key racist. All that garbage about how Americans are too pure to enter into mistress relationships (L-O-L) and how he was "forcing his customs on her" in his OWN COUNTRY were... actually, never mind, that's the most realistic element of the book.
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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