A young millennial's life is disrupted when she receives a mewing package in the mail. An acquaintance of her mom needs her kitten watched (and they sent it in a box???) and they decided she was up to the task. To her horror, though, the neighbor ends up dying, leaving her with the cat. She ends up naming it "Rascal" because she's always calling him "you rascal" do to his constant shenanigans.
Anyone who is a cat owner will really enjoy this book. It captures the douchiness of cats while also showing why they make such good pets for introverts. I own a little black cat and spent an hour reading while she slept on my lap. Cats don't make you walk them, and they aren't always affectionate when you want them to be, but that aloofness is precisely what makes their companionship so valuable, and they're very fun to cuddle with if you have hobbies that require keeping still for long periods of time.
That said, RASCAL also captures why cats can be so annoying. The sharp claws. The way they tend to stick their butthole into your face without warning. The way they get bored of the expensive toys you buy them while chewing on your clothes, beauty supplies, and houseplants (basically anything that isn't bolted down and isn't one of their toys). Oh, yes, and the stinky wees and the way they somehow manage to track litter all over the floor--
And don't even get me started on the "presents." My cat recently led me to a "death hoard," where she had amassed a small pile of murdered birds, rodents, and lizards for my purview. (Or should I say, purr-view?) I read somewhere recently that cats do that because they think of us as big dumb cats and it's their way of trying to teach us how to hunt.
I really enjoyed this graphic novel a lot. The way the artist draws the cat contorted into a wide variety of poses was really funny, and I liked the heroine who is his owner. She had a great sense of humor and their relationship was really fun. The only thing I didn't really like about this book was limited to its being an ARC-- I really hate it when people put giant watermarks on the pages of ARCs. I'm not going to steal your book, okay? I'm here to review it-- for FREE-- and that's that. Don't make it harder than it needs to be by stamping a big, ugly distraction smack-dab in the center of each page.
Apart from that, RASCAL was purrfectly adorable. Anyone who loves cats should read this!
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
Munchausen's by proxy is a mental disorder where an individual induces physical symptoms in another individual (often by poisoning) so that they can take care of them and receive adulation and praise from others for their generosity and nursing skills. Munchausen's is when the individual does it to themselves (which is different from malingering in that a malingerer tends to only feign illness and is doing so to escape having to do something else, or for legal purposes, like to milk a lawsuit) We learned a lot about these disorders in my Abnormal Psychology courses-- one example that stayed with me was a mother who smeared feces on her baby's eyes to induce chronic eye infections. It's pretty chilling and I've never really been able to wrap my head around the people who do this stuff to themselves or others.
Rose Gold's mother did exactly this to her for years, poisoning her with ipecac syrup to induce symptoms that she called a "chromosomal disorder." Now Rose Gold is all grown up, but her teeth are rotten, she still has some lingering physical and mental trauma, and she's really, really upset at her mom. As one would be. You can't help but feel pity for Rose Gold, who has never had a normal childhood. Her mother abused her her whole life and called it "care" and her father is out of the picture. She's been abused, bullied, and mocked by other children, and her only friend, Alex, is a classic "mean girl."
Patty, on the other hand, is also pretty messed up. She definitely seems to have some kind of personality disorder; her utter self-absorption and inability to acknowledge wrong-doing is extremely pathological. Under that brassy confidence, however, is a women who is needy for praise and adulation, who has been abused herself as a child and only wants to be a "good mother." Reading her POV is like having your hands slathered in oil and being unable to rinse them off. She sticks to you and makes you feel disgusting, and even when you try to cast her out, her presence lingers.
Both of these women are truly despicable people. Their POVs alternate, and Rose Gold's skip around through time while Patty's are always in the present. Seeing their dysfunction and their toxic dynamic is like watching a train wreck happen in real time. You know that no matter how it ends, it isn't going to be good-- it's only a matter of how many people they take down with them. Major props to the author for researching Munchausen's. In her afterword, she mentions that she read a lot of articles and books about the disorder, and the extra effort shows. I've even read some of the books she mentioned.
Quite often, in the X meets Y comparisons in blurbs, I find myself rolling my eyes. Here, though, I do actually feel that the Gillian Flynn comparison is on point. ROSE GOLD is a bit more predictable than Gillian Flynn's books, but it's got a great twist and the characterization of these two obviously demented women was really well done. I despised them both and found them fascinating.
Also, if you're interested in another (fictional) story about Munchausen's, I'd recommend watching Glass House: The Good Mother. It's a pretty terrible movie but it was my first introduction to Munchausen's by proxy and I found the cheesy, over-acted drama of it fascinating to watch.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
After this book sitting in "currently reading purgatory" for the better part of a month, I think it's time to throw in the towel and DNF. So boring. :After this book sitting in "currently reading purgatory" for the better part of a month, I think it's time to throw in the towel and DNF. So boring. :/
I think there's a rule somewhere that says that if an author writes a book about ballet, you are legally required to read it. How else to explain my apparent compulsion in picking up books about ballet, even though I've never really had an interest in it before in my life? Something about the discipline required, the athleticism, and the intense emotions just appeals to me on a very base level.
SPARROW is a book about a high school ballerina named Sparrow. She has close friends and is passionate about ballet. When she ends up going out with the hot jock on campus, Tristan, it seems like her whole life is perfectly rounded out. But Tristan is not a nice boy; and when he attacks her one day, she must spend the rest of the book not just having to recover, emotionally and physically, but also face the dark, half-buried memories from childhood that his abuse has inadvertently uncovered.
I didn't realize this when I picked up the book, but SPARROW is a dual-POV story. Half is told from Sparrow's POV and the other half is told from the POV of the Nice Guy who she's friendzoned, Lucas. I kind of wish the whole book had been narrated from Sparrow's POV, because it kind of ends up feeling like one of those cautionary tales Nice Guys feed girls to gaslight women into dating them, e.g. "He's no good for you, I'm the only one who can treat you right, hope he beats you to teach you a lesson, etc." Lucas isn't like that at all, but I'm not sure having that dichotomy in the narrative was a good move.
I liked Sparrow's POV, but wasn't as big a fan of Lucas. This is a story of healing and confronting abuse, and while the author did that part of the book really well, I didn't really feel like Lucas's POV had any place in Sparrow's journey of healing. The writing is beautiful and it does portray an abusive relationship pretty realistically-- to the point where it's hard to read at times-- but something about it felt a little too dramatic and contrived, and it kind of ended up feeling like a Lifetime movie.
SPARROW is not a bad book but I would not put it on the same level with Laurie Halse Anderson's SPEAK, as the blurb writers did. That only raises somewhat unrealistic expectations.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
I've been working my way through the Stillhouse Lake series since around Thanksgiving. It is such an addictive series, and during multiple times throughout the story arc, I found myself literally unable to put the book down, desperate to know what happens next. These would make an excellent miniseries, I think. They have everything that makes up the formula for a successful book: tight-plotting, sympathetic characters, messed up villains, serial killers, cults, crime rings, and much, much more.
Gwen, the heroine, has certainly come a long way. In the first book, STILLHOUSE LAKE, she's very much the broken woman, trying to come to terms with her life after finding out that her husband-- the man she married and loved and had kids with-- was a gleefully sadistic serial killer. Not only that, but there are a number of people who refuse to believe her innocence, and will do anything they can do see her dead or jailed, at any cost.
In KILLMAN CREEK, things reach a fever pitch. Her husband is determined to get his revenge and Gwen and her children are thrown in the crossfire as the moves she makes to root out her husband end up uncovering the sick and very twisted schemes of powerful men with a taste for the cruel and taboo. In this book, everything Gwen built up in the last book is utterly dismantled, and she comes out of it at great cost.
It is, unquestionably, the best book of the four.
WOLFHUNTER RIVER definitely felt like a down-grade after KILLMAN. It glosses over a lot of the more unpleasant parts of KILLMAN, such as Gwen being betrayed by her two ungrateful children. Now, they're all one big happy family again-- except for the fact that an Anti-Gwen League is creating a documentary to show what a bad human being she is. Oh, and that freaks are coming out of the woodwork to call up Gwen about their own problems, including a mysterious woman from a place called Wolfhunter who says she's in serious danger but can't explain how or why.
Now, in BITTER FALLS, Gwen has moved up from phone calls to become a private detective. Her first lead is to follow up on a young man who disappears. What she unearths suggests the presence some truly depraved individuals using religion as the cross for their depravities-- and if you think that this won't drag Wolfhunter River and their sick shenanigans back into the mix, you would be wrong.
I really struggled with BITTER FALLS. I actually struggled with it the way a lot of my friends struggled with WOLFHUNTER (which I personally enjoyed). It feels like an unnecessary sequel, especially since the plot of this story is so similar to the previous book. All the stakes are gone, the Anti-Gwen League is just hinted at but provides no real threat. The only danger that really happens in this book happens because of stupidity, and because Gwen's two dumb children can't seem to stay in the good books for-- well-- more than one book at a time. I swear, the two of them owe Gwen so much groveling at this point. Also, I take issue with making Vee a tag-along main character, as seems to be the case from this book. She's TERRIBLE and I hate her. This whole book reads like fanfiction.
I'm not sure if I'll continue with the books after this, to be honest. Even though I managed to push myself through to the end to see what happened next, I kept comparing this book unfavorably to the three previous books in the series. Honestly, it would work really well as a duology, and if you have to read further, book three gives you all the closure you would need for Gwen and her post-Melvin life. I'm not sure how many more books this series could carry if it continues to pace like this.
Very disappointing.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
THE WILL AND THE WILDS took me a while to read because it's a slow and odd book that, despite its length, builds up to its climax slowly. I ended up liking it because it reminded me a lot of the fairytale stories I read as a kid by authors with triple-barreled names like as Diana Wynne Jones and Margaret Peterson Haddix and Gail Carson Levine and Vivian Vande Velde, but I already know that some readers probably aren't going to like it precisely because it is so slow and non-confrontational. Epic, fast-paced fantasy this is not.
Enna lives on the edge of the wildwood, which is, itself, only a stone's throw away from the monster world, a place called the Deep, which seems to be a sort of Unseelie faerie land where creatures that are part demon and part fae, called Mystings, come and go at their leisure. Sightings of them are rare-- in part because many of them are deadly-- but Enna's grandmother kept a journal of them and Enna uses that info to survive.
She lives with her father, a man who fought the mystings and lived, escaping with a rare and odd jewel that she wears around her wrist because it warns her when mystings are near. But his escape cost him his sanity, and now he appears to be suffering from dementia, living halfway in the past every day of his life. It's an odd life, and Enna is regarded with suspicion by the villagers for being a witch. All that changes when mysting visitations become more frequent, and she is forced to enlist the help of a being named Maekellus.
Her deal with him goes awry and the pact they made becomes a curse, binding the two of them together. If they can't break the curse, the two of them will perish, and kissing him to ease the curse will steal her soul. It seems like the two of them might be doomed, especially when she starts to fall for the magical man with the unicorn horn and the cloven feet who seems like he might be the devil himself. But will he end up proving to be her greatest ally-- or her destruction? Only time will tell, and time itself is running out. (Seriously, why haven't I been hired on as a blurb writer, yet?)
As I said before, I loved the dark fairytale elements of this book and any time you throw in a dangerous man who could be the heroine's destruction, I melt like butter. It's even better that he's a redhead, because apparently I have a thing for those. I also really liked the idea of the Deep-- really, the author spent way too much time in that creepy world, I wanted more-- and the mystings. I could have learned way more about them and their world and their creepy powers, which actually brings me to my biggest complaint: the ending was so anticlimactic. I understand why the author did it and I do think there is strength in grace, but the book seemed to be building to something epic and I kept holding my breath, wondering how something so big was going to go down in such a small amount of pages... and yeah, it turns out it wasn't going to. Not saying any more on the subject, but boo.
Also, at the end of the book is a piece of what looks like handwritten sheet music called "Enna's Wildwood." Obviously, I whipped out my flute (heh) and played it to see what it would sound like. It sounded a lot like creepy video game music that you'd hear in an enchanted forest in one of the Mana or Zelda games. I was kind of into it. So that was fun. If you can read sheet music, give it a try!
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
I became obsessed with James Veitch a while ago while I was on a TED Talk binge and came across the grabbily titled, This is what happens when you reply to spam email. I enjoyed it so much that I ended up Googling him to see if there was any more where that come from and landed on the Scamalot series he did with Mashable. You can imagine my delight, then, when I managed to finagle a copy of his book, DOT CON, which further chronicles his adventures in tormenting scammers by wasting their time.
I think part of why I like James Veitch so much is that he's not malicious or mean. He doesn't insult the scammers he corresponds with or yell at them. He actually reminds me a lot of another "troll" I like, Ken M., whose sense of humor is self-described as "bringing a banana to a gun fight" (per his interview with Vox). In his correspondence with these scammers, James deflects their requests (or demands) for personal data with zany good humor, playing the blithe idiot while never outright saying no, and it's absolutely hilarious when they try to pander to him (some of them go to great lengths to win his credit card info!).
If you're a Veitch fan already most of the content in this book probably isn't going to be new to you. I recognized most of the emails from his Scamalot series and only saw a couple new ones. I didn't mind seeing them again though-- especially the Giant Gummy Lizard one, which is one of the funniest things I've ever seen on the internet. However, if you're new to James Veitch's shenanigans, you should definitely read this book as it's honestly pretty pure and frankly hilarious. In his TED Talk, he said that he doesn't feel bad about messing with these guys (or gals) because every minute they spend with him is a minute they don't spend preying on the vulnerable, and I think that's true.
And if you don't want to read the book, well-- we'll always have Tuscany!
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
This is so cute. I first got into Gudetama after watching Vox's YouTube video, How a melancholy egg yolk conquered Japan. Here in the U.S., we only really have one kind of cute: the kind that conjures up images of big-eyed, childish innocence, but Japan's different kinds of cute are more textured, with dark or even sad nuances that our kind doesn't have.
Gudetama is a cranky, cantankerous egg yolk that just wants to be lazy. Sometimes he's melancholy, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes fatalistic, sometimes nihilistic, but no matter which way you look at him, that thicc ol' yolk is pretty darn adorbs.
In this graphic novel, Gudetama helps the lovelorn who are frustrated with their dating app. In each chapter, there's a new character suffering from a real or imaginary problem, and Gudetama "helps" them with mixed success at the urging of a rather terrifying, human-sized egg yolk ballerina sidekick.
I wouldn't go into this expecting anything cerebral, but I loved the art work and there were even some good messages in here buried under all that silly laziness. If you're into cute graphic-novels with great ark, GUDETAMA: LOVE FOR THE LAZY is a good buy.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
I am actually a huge fan of retro Gothic novels from the 60s and 70s, so when I found out about MEXICAN GOTHIC, a Latinx take on the popular Gothic novel subgenre, I was pee-in-my-pants excited. Just look at that cover! OMG. Stunning.
Sadly, the cover is the best thing about this book. It was SO BORING. Noemi is a socialite whose father doesn't approve of her superficial ways. She goes to see her cousin in the countryside after receiving a mysterious and paranoid-sounding letter about poison and danger-- it sounds like she might fear her husband and his family! Right away, things are... well, not creepy, but definitely not like home. One of the older relatives is a fan of eugenics, the house is creaky and old, and Noemi has strange nightmares every night. Oh, and her cousin has tuberculosis and might be going mad... or maybe not.
This had the perfect recipe for a good book but the writing plodded and it was just so uninteresting to me. Wooden, I think, is the term I'm looking for. I had the same problem with THE SEVEN AND A HALF DEATHS OF EVELYN HARDCASTLE, a book that purported to be an engaging mystery but ended up being wooden and kind of lame.
Giving this two stars since I feel I could probably find it OK if I forced myself through it, but as tedious as this is, why bother? I have other things to read during this period of self-quarantine that aren't going to make me fall asleep.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
This isn't the type of book I would normally obtain for myself, but I'm a huge fan of Gaby Dunn and have been ever since her BuzzFeed days, so in a show of support, I downloaded the book from Netgalley and read it without adding it as "currently reading" on Goodreads just in case it wasn't the type of book that I wanted to move forward with.
As others have mentioned, BAD WITH MONEY is equal parts memoir and financial self-help guide. Some people seemed put out by the memoir parts, and I can see how if you were looking for something solidly informational, that could be annoying. Personally, I thought her struggles with loans, over-spending parents, and lack of college resources made her relatable and gave her cred. It was like, "Look, I've struggled and seriously regret some of the mistakes I made that have made my current situation so difficult. Let me tell you how I fucked up so you don't."
I honestly would recommend this to older teens who are just about to start college (or are already in college). My mom told me a lot of this stuff already, but there were still things I didn't know (text messages count as wills in some states?!). Dunn gives some pretty great advice on a wide array of topics ranging from "is your unpaid internship a scam?" to "intro to tax forms 101" to the hidden costs of weddings and babies to "millennials are destroying everything: a baby-boomer story"-type clickbait bullshit opinion pieces.
People love to talk about how millennials are the over-privileged, lazy generation - one that they usually envision as a white, blonde, upper middle-class stereotype decked out in Anthropologie and sucking down on a customized Starbucks drink while using ten unfathomable apps expertly on the Pixel 3. The sad reality is that a lot of millennials can't afford health insurance, spend most of their paychecks on rent, are overqualified for the jobs they perform, weighed down by student loans, and find themselves without property, much less a well-balanced checkbook. They live in a tanked economy that was spoiled by the generation that came before them, and that generation continues to do its damnedest to continue to make their lives hell by mocking them for eating avocado toast.
The fact of the matter is, being a millennial is hard. There's no easy entre into adult life, and as much as we're sneered at for not knowing how to "adult," a lot of this stuff isn't taught in schools, and if you aren't lucky enough to have a parent or guardian figure who's willing to walk you through this kind of stuff, you might be SOL the next time you apply for a credit card or file your W2.
I enjoyed BAD WITH MONEY. The balance of memoir and instruction guide doesn't always quite work, but she says what she has to say with candor and a ready willingness to help.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
It's impossible to discuss this book without addressing the controversy surrounding it. Basically, publication was delayed and digital ARCs were pulled after some preliminary readers alleged that there were passages in this book that were, according to the articles I read summarizing the issue, "anti-black." After a small but vocal minority of people decried this book-- either overtly or subtextually-- as being racist or problematic, the author took it upon herself to remove the book from circulation and make the necessary edits before resubmitting the book.
I have a few thoughts on this:
A lot of people who were talking about this book being racist hadn't actually read the ARC and were just quoting the statements of the people who had. My friend Alice has an original copy that she was comparing against the finished copy at the time of my reading this, and the final changes aren't even that different from the original and don't even seem to be describing traits that are obviously black, in my opinion. Yes, people of color are oppressed in this world, but it seemed to me that the descriptions in the book were more typical of what you might expect to see of someone who was Middle Eastern or maybe Mongolian, and not someone who was black, which would make sense since this is set in an alternate Russia. I'm honestly shocked people came at this book so hard when there are other books that are much more problematic that get a free pass-- not saying either is right, but why this book specifically? Especially when nobody I saw even seemed to be considering that the PoCs might be Asian and not black.
Second, people are saying that the decision to edit was the author's choice-- and while that is true, I don't think that she would have pulled her book if she hadn't been at the epicenter of some pretty ugly allegations and hardcore negative feedback. It's the right of people to read and interpret the book as they choose as readers, but I also think it's foolish to suggest that this was an isolated event influenced solely by the author's agency and the controversy surrounding the book had no influence on her decision. Should she have pulled it? I personally don't think so. There's always going to be controversy and if I, as an author, pulled one of my books every time someone found something problematic in them, I'd have no active books available for purchase. That said, I've also pulled some of my books from publication because I felt like I couldn't really stand behind their quality as an author, so it's possible that the feedback did make Zhao second guess herself and want to do better.
Anyway, let's get into the book. BLOOD HEIR is, like many books coming out these days, set in a world where magic is suppressed or forbidden, with an autocratic kingdom rife with corruption. There's a hint of Avatar: The Last Airbender in here, in that different Affinites have different abilities and some of them are more feared or reviled than others. The heroine, Ana, is one of these: she's a blood Affinite and can possess people's bodies and rip them open from the inside out. She's hardcore.
BLOOD HEIR is also a dark retelling of the Anastasia fairytale (I'm calling it a fairytale because the story we know and love has been debunked-- they found bones that were a DNA match for the princess, thus putting an end to the parade of hopefuls). Ana's father was murdered, and Ana herself was framed for it. She's on a quest to unmask the real culprit, save her brother and her kingdom, and exonerate herself in the process. But it isn't that simple, as she finds out, when the man she visits in jail for information turns out to be a snake of a con artist who is more than happy to throw her under the bus. Enter Ramson, the morally grey hero who has a dubious past of his own.
BLOOD HEIR is so dark and has actual stakes. There's some truly chilling scenes in here, and they're all beautifully written. Until about 70% of the story, this moves at a break-neck pace. Then it hits a slow point, but recovers in the end, which opens the door to a sequel in which I'm sure Ana will have to come to terms not just with her powers but also some new and daunting responsibilities. BLOOD HEIR is actually a lot like how I had expected books like CHILDREN OF BLOOD AND BONE and THRONE OF GLASS to be, only I thought both of those sucked, whereas this one was awesome.
This is how you write about oppressed magic and have a morally grey but kick-ass main protagonist, who gets shit done and also has a bit of romance on the side, but doesn't let herself get distracted by it. Ana would certainly never look at a bag of candy left for her by a stranger and think, "OH BOY, YUMMERS!" without stopping to ask herself where it came from (*stares hard at Celaena*).
If you were put off by the controversy, don't be. This is pretty typical YA fantasy fare, maybe a little darker than most, but engaging and well-written, with a heroine who doesn't suck and has to make some pretty miserable choices over the arc of her character development. I liked it.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
THE NIGHT TIGER was an OK read. There were some things about this book that I really enjoyed, and other things I didn't. The book is set in 1930s Malaya (Malaysia), when it was still under British rule. There are two main characters: Ren, an 11-year-old houseboy to British doctor William Acton, and Ji Lin, a dressmaker moonlighting as a dance hall girl. Their stories end up interconnecting due to a severed finger in a vial that Ji Lin obtains from one of her clients. The finger belongs to Ren's old master, and he has only 49 days to get the finger back to his master's grave before his soul is lost forever. At the same time, the women that William Acton fraternizes with keep turning up missing, dead, or both, often looking as though they were mauled by a tiger, and Ji Lin keeps having strange dreams about a river and a train, with a boy who tells her about five people whose names resemble the five Confucian values, and a terrible curse...
So what did I like about this book? It has the creepy, murder plot of a BBC murder mystery. I like how the murders were steeped in Chinese mythology and magic realism, and the looming specters of the weretiger, as well as the finger in the vial, were both suitably creepy. I didn't guess who (or what) was responsible until the very end, so there was a very nice series of reveals to make me feel as if the journey had been worth it. That's important in a murder mystery novel, I think you'll agree. Ji Lin was a great character and I liked that she had a job that was looked down on as being morally loose, and that she didn't tolerate any shit-talking from people about her career. Ren took longer for me to like, and I'm not sure I bought his "cat whiskers" premonitions. That was really strange.
So what didn't I like about this book? Good Lord, it was long, and took forever to get to the damn point. The first 100 pages or so were a breeze, and I thought I wouldn't be able to put the book down. Then the book started to drag a lot without revealing a whole lot of new information. While I did like Ji Lin's eventual love interest, that whole subplot was also dragged out for what seemed like emotional tension, and kind of felt like another excuse to pad the already bloated plot. I also felt like the ending was simultaneously too neat while failing to wrap up a few loose ends. I know on the surface that sounds like it doesn't make sense, but THE NIGHT TIGER focuses more on the kismet between the main characters, and yet ignores the rather glaring problem of the other severed fingers in the hospital, as Chelsea pointed out in her review. Do those souls just never get saved? Lame.
THE NIGHT TIGER is an interesting book, and I like the author's style of writing. I bought her other book, THE GHOST BRIDE, relatively recently and I'm hoping it'll be better than this one. I didn't hate THE NIGHT TIGER, but it has all the good ideas/less than optimal execution dichotomies and pacing issues of a debut novel, and since this isn't a debut novel, that isn't good. Still, it's great to see #OwnVoices historical fiction that explores time periods and situations that aren't getting as much representation as, say, Tudor England or British/American-fought WWII, so kudos for that.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
Reading this after THE GIRL KING turned out to be a really weird experience because they are both very similar stories. Dare I say that "Asian-inspired" fantasy novels in kingdoms where magic is forbidden seems to be the new trend? But, like, seriously, both are about royal siblings who must struggle to learn to manage their kingdoms in times of severe political upheaval. These kingdoms are also utterly opposed to magic - in THE GIRL KING, magic comes in the form of shape-shifters called the "Kith," and in DESCENDANT OF THE CRANE, it comes in the form of mages called "sooths." Both kingdoms are on the brink of civil war/foreign war, and about to implode from all the factions of unrest stirring up drama within the community.
Hesina is forced to take up the royal mantle when her father dies under mysterious circumstances. Her mother, who dislikes her for unknown reasons, abdicates very reluctantly, leaving Hesina to manage the kingdom and lead the trial to find her father's murderer, all without her help.
Luckily, Hesina has several siblings to help her out. Caiyan and Lillian are twins, and her half-siblings; Sanjing is her full brother; and Rou is the son of her father's favored mistress. Despite knowing that it is high treason, she seeks out a sooth to help set her on her path, who tells her the path she should take to find her father's murderer. It points her towards a criminal imprisoned in the dungeons, a foreign man named Akira, who is brilliant, powerful, and mysterious.
I liked DESCENDANT OF THE CRANE a lot more than I liked THE GIRL KING, for several reasons. The world-building was more cohesive and there were many direct parallels to actual elements of Chinese culture (the writing/characters, the religion, historical allegories (I was thinking of the Cultural Revolution specifically, as the rebellion of the eleven and the persecution of the sooths reminded me of that), culture, and clothing). It did not feel quite as nebulous as THE GIRL KING did. The actual magic was a little vague; I'd like to learn more about sooths in the next book. Still, we did see some examples of sooth-saying and what I did see was compelling (blue fire, though).
This book's biggest weakness was its pacing. There were some elements that moved quickly, that I couldn't page through fast enough. This has one of the best "trial" scenes I've seen in a book, like Joan He was the John Grisham of YA fantasy authors. Then there are other parts that move very slowly and/or feel almost repetitive. It was frustrating for me because I initially thought that this was going to be a four-star read, but then it got too tedious and my enjoyment of it lessened over time.
The book's biggest strength are its twists. Several of the grand reveals in this book were excellently done. I found myself looking forward to seeing how the other mysteries in this book would be resolved and finding myself pleasantly surprised each time.
Hesina is a flawed but compelling character and it is interesting to see how the choices she makes in the book end up changing her. She is a very different person by the end of the story than she was in the beginning. I am curious about the names, and why some are Chinese but Hesina's is, I believe, an alternate spelling of a Muslim name, and Lillian is a very Western name. I'm also confused by the ending, which was very strange to me. The author had already proven she was very good at twists, but that one, for some reason, felt especially extra. Maybe it will make more sense in the sequel.
Hopefully this review helps you decide whether you want to read this book without giving too much away. I am totally in love with the cover and was surprised by how much I enjoyed DESCENDANT OF THE CRANE. Hoping the author continues the story on even stronger footing in the sequel.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
Ultimately, feminism is about empowering women and providing them with the agency to not just make their choices, but to make those choices in an environment where their opportunities for success and for failure in all domains are equal to those of other genders. People have a lot of ideas about what is and isn't feminist and often, things like the Cathy comics and books like BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY are placed firmly in the "isn't" category.
Here's the thing: while it's important to fight for what we don't have, and provide opportunities for women and normalize traditionally non-feminine careers, lifestyles, and choices for women (or those who choose to identify as women at any given time), there are a lot of women who like "girly" things. And even as we fight for change, the grim reality is that a lot of us often feel trapped or bound by the constraints of our gender norms. So yes, even though we shouldn't stress about fitting into a size 12, or obsess over the jerks who don't call us after three days, we do.
Part of what I've always enjoyed about BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY and the Cathy comics is that these stories normalize the struggles of what it's like to be a woman in society, trying - and often failing - to play by society's rules for women while also sort of thumbing their noses at them, in an, "Oh, I'm stressed, you're stressed, but it's okay" way. Even as a high school student, there was a lot to relate to in Cathy. I think a lot of women felt the same way, especially since the Cathy comics were being published at a time when there really weren't a lot of comic strips specifically aimed at young-to-middle-aged women struggling to make it.
The strips were in syndication for over thirty years, until the creator, Cathy Guisewite, retired about a decade ago. When I saw an ARC for her memoir was available, I grabbed at it, because I'm super nosy and I love seeing what my favorite creators or celebrities are up to when they're not in the limelight (I don't know what you'd call the off-screen time - orangelight? pineapplelight?). I want to see them in the pineapplelight. And this memoir seemed like the perfect pineapplelight.
FIFTY THINGS THAT AREN'T MY FAULT serves as a kind of "where is she now?" expose on the Cathy creator, post-retirement. Now in middle age, she is a full time mother to a college-age daughter who no longer needs her, and a full time caretaker to nonagenarian parents who do not want her help. While fretting over family, aging, and health, Guisewite also goes back to basics with essays on the frustrations of having an entire closet of jeans that don't fit, and the sheer ridiculousness of the weight put on women's appearances to the point that we have to do different makeup for all sorts of different events and have fifty different variations on a white shirt, whereas men can just show up, clean-faced.
People who pick up this memoir looking for comedy are going to be disappointed, however. The humor here is much darker and sadder than in the Cathy comics, and there's a bitterness here that has replaced the jaded hopefulness of the Cathy comics. It also dishes out some pretty hardcore Truth Sandwiches™ alongside some tall glasses of Suck It Up Buttercup Fizzy Cola
™, so beware.
P.S. There are fun doodles in the chapter headings and paragraph breaks.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about this book. THE GIRL KING is another book in a long line of "strong female" heroine-centered YA fantasy novels being marketed to young adults, and it doesn't do anything that's too different from what's already on the table, apart from being an Asian-inspired kingdom with a heroine who's a person of color. I get that people of color don't have the luxury of saying that they're fatigued by tropey fantasy novels, since they don't even have that degree of rep, but at the same point, it's frustrating to pick up a book that promises to be different and ends up just being more of the same.
That said, THE GIRL KING did a lot of interesting things that set it apart from other disappointments I read over the last year, like FLAME IN THE MIST and GIRLS OF PAPER AND FIRE. THE GIRL KING has two heroines, a pair of sisters. Lu is the fierce and tomboyish one who has her eye on the throne and thinks up a rather bold and daring coup to wrest it away from her douchey cousin, Set, who also happens to be her fiance. Min is the feminine and passive sister who historically has been cowardly and weak. The best part of this story, in my opinion, is how their characters change over the course of the story. Rather than being rewarded for her impulsive behaviors, as characters like Celaena are in the THRONE OF GLASS series, Lu's foolhardiness results in negative consequences, and she gradually learns to let go of her impulsivity and confront her biases. Min, on the other hand, starts to become more assertive and angry, and that gradual transformation was really satisfying to see.
As for the world-building, I think Emily hits it on the head in her review. It's Asian-inspired, yes, but not in a way that really seems like the culture was thoroughly integrated into the storyline. Contrast that with a book like Sherwood Smith's THE BANNER OF THE DAMNED, where the customs, religions, and social mores are thoroughly enmeshed into not just the world, but also the plot. I had my issues with that book, as well, but the world-building was lovely. I wish that were the case here. I also think THE GIRL KING scrapes at the surface when it comes to racism, which I ordinarily wouldn't really mind, except that it's a pretty big part of the plot. The slipskin/Kith part of the story, for example, deals with genocide, and yet I don't think this was explored or treated with the gravitas it deserved. It took me a while, for example, to realize that "slipskin" in the book was actually a slur, and even when the characters are called out for using that word there aren't really dialogues and back stories in place to explain why "slipskin" is bad, or the resentment and inequality that give it power.
Yu also includes another nation of people - I forget the name of their country, but they're white - derisively referred to as "pink people" at times. This is also derogatory, and characters are called out for using the word - but, again, the world and the history aren't developed to the point where it's clear why "pink people" is offensive (is pink an offensive color in this culture? does it represent something bad?) or what the relationship is between this other nation that would create that sort of tension.
One thing I did really like about this story was that it's grittier than most YA has been allowed to be. We live in a PC culture, and while I think it's incredibly important to refer to people on their own terms with the words that they choose and be mindful of people's sensitivities and triggers and basically just be a decent human with respect for your other fellow humans, I do think that this fear of offense is watering down YA, to the point where people feel uncomfortable tackling difficult issues or ugly topics for fear of causing offense. THE GIRL KING has violence, it has racism, it has genocide, and it has rape - and yes, looking at the reviews, people were offended by these things, for various reasons, which is their right. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it, and I felt that Yu made a solid effort to incorporate these concepts into her book in a meaningful way without being OTT.
THE GIRL KING isn't a bad book. It isn't a great book, but I also didn't feel resentful of the time I spent reading it. Part of the problem is the tedious beginning, the reliance on tired fantasy tropes, and the lack of solid world-building to make this kingdom feel like a real place with high stakes consequences. That said, it also did a lot of interesting and even daring things, and ultimately, that willingness to try and be different and take risks was what pushed me over the edge to liking this book.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
LOOKER has a somewhat misleading summary on Goodreads which I think accounts for some of the negative reviews. The summary makes you think it is going to be like Caroline Kepnes's YOU or Gillian Flynn's GONE GIRL, but this is not the case. In situations like these, I want to take the publishers aside and tell them, "Look, even if blurbs like these sell copies, they aren't going to get you good reviews, because if there's one thing that pretty much everyone universally hates, it's being lied to."
The unnamed protagonist's obsession with the actress who lives in her neighborhood is not what drives her to madness. She is woman who (I'm guessing) is in her mid-thirties. Her husband has just left her and is in the process of getting a divorce from her due in part to her infertility. She is an untenured professor teaching night classes on poetry at the local community college. Her identity as a woman, measured on the superficial standards of success set by society based on motherhood, sex appeal, and self-control, have been compromised. She feels panic, anxiety. She focuses on the woman who seems to have it all so, so easily: the actress.
I think if you read this as a traditional mystery novel, you're going to be disappointed. There aren't any last act splatter-fests, as in AMERICAN PSYCHO, no abrupt twists as in GONE GIRL. The worst thing that happens in this book is that the cat dies, and I'm sorry if that's a spoiler, but it's something I wished I'd known going in because animal deaths upset me, and maybe they upset you, too, so please consider yourself warned. LOOKER is instead a brutal character study into one woman's midlife crisis turned psychotic break. Initially, she sells her unreliable narration but pretty soon it begins to fray at the seems, as she herself begins to lose her tenuous grip on reality.
If anything, LOOKER feels like a condemnation on the unrelenting standards imposed upon women: we have to be attractive, we have to want and/or have children, we have to be poised and impeccable, we have to have careers and be successful at them (but not too successful). In short, we have to have it all. It's bitterly unfair that some women have to work 200% harder for things that come to men (specifically white men) with relative ease, and it's even more bitterly unfair that those things that come to women with difficulty are about 1000% harder for women of color. LOOKER reminds me of those books that I call "proto-feminist books," like MADAME BOVARY or THE AWAKENING or THE YELLOW WALLPAPER, where this sheer unfairness drives a woman to madness after she breaks social convention and finds the social ostracism and guilt too much to psychologically bear.
I don't think this is a happy book, or even a particularly satisfying one, but there is something honest about it that hits a little too close to home in the age of Instagram and FOMO and celebrity advice.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
I've never read a bad historical title from Lake Union Publishing. This imprint seems to publish mostly historical fiction, thrillers, and women's fiction - three genres of books that I used to avoid, but now love, and features two of my favorite historical fiction authors: Amy Harmon and Lindsay Jayne Ashford. Every time I see new books from this publisher on Netgalley, I immediately request all of them, and I'm constantly buying them on sale from Amazon. I had visions of a small publisher, probably where the CEO wears a sunhat and evening gloves and all hands meetings are had over high tea, but no - apparently it's an imprint of Amazon Publishing, how very disillusioning.
BITTERSWEET BROOKLYN attracted me with that exquisite cover, and held me with the premise. Thelma Lorber is a young Jewish woman when we first meet her, cleaning up the dead body from one of her mobster brother's "fixings." She wonders, as she cleans, how she got to this place. The narrative is only to happy to show us, transporting us to Thelma's childhood in an abusive home with a neglectful mother and cruel, domineering sister. Her brothers, the only people who care about her, are torn from her and sent to an orphanage while she suffers under the tyranny of her female relatives and, later, under the attentions of a predatory stepfather.
I thought it was interesting that the author gave this character her first name. I wouldn't be able to do that - it feels too personal, especially considering all the bad things that befall the main character in the book. Thelma's life is one big heartbreak, and even the good things that happen to her - like being taken in by a warm Italian family or meeting her true love in a dance hall - don't have happy endings. I think if you read this book expecting a thriller or a romance, you'll be unhappy, since it is neither. It's a character study in regret and disappointment, and Thelma's insights as she looks back on her life through the experience of adulthood at the end are probably the best part of the novel.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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