Amanda
Not bad at all, but pretty basic if you're a regular reader of the AAM blog (like I am). The scripts/suggested wording for potentially awkward conversations are good ideas, though. This is probably more of a reference book than something you really need to sit down and read cover-to-cover - it would probably be a good gift for someone graduating from college or otherwise about to start their first office job!
This book is incredible - I cried my way through the last 25 or so pages, full of those happy-cathartic-relief tears that come when something is so good and satisfying and right. This deals with some heavy topics, but never in an exploitative or preachy way, and it certainly doesn't dwell on them for bleakness' sake. The characters felt authentic and realistic and their actions all made sense in the context of their backstories, which is refreshing - nothing felt like it was done just because the story needed for it to happen. This is basically a perfect book and I can't wait to read it again.
Two quick spoiler notes: 1) Oh my god, ADAM IS THE WORST and I wished for more bad stuff to happen to him, and 2) spoiler-slash-CW: this book is an absolute gut punch if child abuse, adoption, foster care, or loss of a child (to adoption) are difficult topics for you. Again, nothing's done exploitatively, but those are major topics in the book, so be advised. I cried through Grace's chapters several times, because I have a six-month-old and anything to do with kids makes me cry these days. Not a criticism of the book at all, and I think everything was handled very well, but definitely something to be aware of.
Fascinating - I wish McNamara had been able to finish the book, I wish she'd been able to see the DNA results finally yield a match, and I wish she'd been able to write many more books after this. Her style is engaging and vivid without ever being exploitative, a tough needle to thread when writing true crime. She seems like she would've been fun to hang out with and her personality really shines through in the book.
The world created in THE BELLES is fascinating, and once I really started reading this, I couldn't put it down. I wanted more about how the society and the world worked - does absolutely everyone have to see a Belle to stay beautiful? What do commoners/non-wealthy people look like (or how can they afford to visit a Belle regularly)? Is the whole society matriarchal or just the royal line of succession? Do other countries in the world also have Belles? None of those questions really take away from the plot, but the world is so intriguing, I could read more about any of those. The plot is kind of your standard YA dystopia with a Chosen One and dark secrets and an honestly kind of unnecessary love triangle - at least, kind of? I absolutely could not stand Auguste throughout the book, and the twist seemed completely out of nowhere to me, though I wonder if there were clues I missed because I was reading so quickly. This is very much the first book in a series, so a lot of things are unresolved at the end - I'm excited to see how everything turns out!
(Edited to add: also, this cover is incredible and I love it.)
(Note: tagged LGBT because the heroine is bi, but this is M/F romance.) This is one of my favorite contemporaries, maybe ever? Loved the heroine and her family - all the sisters were distinctive and I loved the scenes with them. Can we get a series about the twins, please? I didn't connect as much with the hero, which may be partly by design, as he's a strong silent type, but the story and all the characters around him were so vivid it didn't feel out of place, especially since a major part of the romance is his reaching out and connecting with loved ones again. I wouldn't read this until I'd read [b:Hate to Want You 29422692 Hate to Want You (Forbidden Hearts, #1) Alisha Rai https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1479754001s/29422692.jpg 49683433], though, since this has some continuing backstory and plot threads that started in that book (which is also great, so no hardship there). The only minor criticism is the introduction/reintroduction of the couple for the next book is a little awkward, just at the end. Overall, though, this was SO GOOD and Alisha Rai is one of my favorites for sure.
So good - lol @ people calling Penny ‘unlikable' in the reviews, because I found her so realistic and sympathetic, if not always charitable in her internal monologue (but seriously, if that's your standard for a likable female character, you're not gonna like many characters). Especially when a major part of the story is Penny learning to be more open to people and less closed off from new things ... how do you show that growth without having her be closed off in the beginning? Like.
ANYWAY. My only issue with this book is that it was sometimes hard to tell who was who in the text conversations (especially early in the conversation). I was able to figure it out with a little closer reading, but that's a minor formatting issue, really. I love Penny and Sam and I love Jude and I even love Mallory and Celeste. The only character that started flat and stayed that way for me was Lorraine, and I would've liked to see a bit more there, but that's not at all a dealbreaker when everything else about this book is so good. The author has lived in Austin and it really shows, which was super-refreshing as a Texas native. I just flat-out adored this book and I can't recommend it highly enough.
3.5 stars, rounding up. The main plotline here suffers a little bit from “last book in the series” syndrome and the need to tie up every loose end or answer every question from the earlier two books. When it focused on the two main characters, though, I really loved this - in particular the whole "stranded in a remote cabin with no one else" trope, which I was impressed Rai managed to squeeze in here. Also, the sexy Monopoly. All in all, this was a little overstuffed but still really enjoyable. I'm probably going to add Rai's backlist to my TBR shelf and get to it in approximately 2027.
Eh, it was fine? Romain and I just might not click, which is fine. I didn't hate this at all, but it took forever for me to actually finish it. I just kept forgetting about it until there were like four days left on the checkout, renewing it, and then forgetting again. I liked both the main characters, but wish Augusta had a little bit more spark - which seems like an odd thing to say about a character who takes on a false identity in a new town, but here we are. I actually enjoyed the supporting characters a lot in this, both Augusta's friend and Joss's cousin, who was ridiculous and funny without being completely unbelievable. All in all, this was a perfectly fine Regency, but not much more than that. (And if you were to take a drink every time you read “my dear fake widow” or “dockyard,” you would get drunk very quickly.)
This book went places I didn't expect, but I loved. From the blurb, it sounds like it's going to be about Julia investigating/tracking down Olga's secrets, and while that is definitely a part of the story here, it's also so much more than that. It's about family, secrets, coming of age, depression and family trauma, immigration and being a first-generation child, and loving people who you have a hard time connecting with. That's a lot, but it never felt heavy-handed, preachy, or exploitative. Julia is a difficult and sometimes frustrating narrator, but I found myself cheering for her and wanting the best for her. This book goes to some dark places but does so in the service of a compelling and hopeful story, and it's never just bleak for bleakness's sake. Definitely worth your time.
Hits that sweet spot in the middle of gossipy and scholarly - not so analytical/dry that it wasn't fun to read, but not so trashy that you feel ashamed for reading it (or not really ashamed, but embarrassed, whatever). Kaufman clearly loves the show and knows it inside out, while still clearly seeing its Problematic nature. Her sources are great - a lot of former contestants went on the record, and she managed to get a copy of the (27-page!!) contract everyone has to sign to be on the show, among other things. I didn't really think the book needed the “Why I Watch” mini-essays by celebrities who are fans, though; if I'm reading this book, I'm probably enough of a fan that I don't need to know why Diablo Cody or Allison Williams watch in order to justify it to myself. They weren't badly written and they didn't take up too much of the book, I just didn't think they were all that relevant. If you watch The Bachelor or are interested in the sociology of reality TV (or both), I definitely recommend this.
I read this really quickly (once I actually started it), but somehow I didn't feel like I ever really got into it. It's not bad at all, but I felt at a remove from all the characters - I'm guessing at least part of this was intentional, considering how the chapters are titled “The Daughter,” “The Mender” and so on. The most interesting parts of the novel to me were Ro and Mattie's stories. I thought I knew where they were going, but I was wrong and I really like how everything turned out there. Susan and Gin's stories didn't feel like they connected with the others in the same way, and Susan's in particular feels like it could be in any work of fiction written in the past sixty or so years. That's not necessarily bad, and it was definitely well-written, but it didn't seem to take advantage of the setting in the same way as the others. As far as the setting, I wish the author had taken it further - I know all these restrictions are based in reality, but the world didn't seem as fully realized as something like The Handmaid's Tale, even. (Like, did they get rid of the Supreme Court? Most of the new laws would be blatantly unconstitutional.) Overall, this was interesting and definitely a change of pace from my usual fiction reading, but I don't think it's something I'll be compelled to return to.
I don't read a lot of YA nonfiction for some reason (it also seems like there's not that much YA nonfiction, though I could just not be paying attention), but I really enjoyed this! I picked it up as part of library summer reading bingo - one of the squares is “read a book on the 2019 Topaz List,” which I'd never heard of, but is a list by the Texas Library Association of recommended nonfiction books (here's the 2019 list: https://txla.org/news/2019-texas-topaz-nonfiction-reading-list/). Americanized was a unanimous selection and I'd already put it on my Goodreads TBR, so I checked it out, and I'm so glad I did! Sara has such a fun, engaging voice as a writer, and I learned a lot about Iranian/Persian culture and life as a secretly undocumented person without ever feeling condescended to. The book kind of skips all over, and is more of a memoir in essays than a strict chronological one, which could get kind of confusing, but didn't get in the way of my enjoyment of it. Sara was a little bit older than me, though not by much, and I enjoyed the flashback to growing up in the late 90's. Basically, this book was a lot of fun and Sara seems like she'd be a great person to hang out with over a glass of wine and some Persian food.
Perfectly fine Regency romance - nothing particularly outstanding one way or another, but certainly a pleasant way to spend a few hours. Points for the virgin hero, the non-neurotypical hero (I know the book describes him as having anxiety, but he reads as also being on the spectrum to me), and the historical accuracy (I'm far from a historian but I learned about The Year Without a Summer). Deductions for the plot being one of those that could be resolved if everyone just talked to each other! I've already checked out the next one in this series and I'm looking forward to it.
(Probably 2.5, rounding down - shelved on fantasy because I don't have an alternate history category)
Well, this was a book. I've had it out from the library since December and just could not get into it (to be fair to the book, I also had a baby in that time period, so it's not entirely the book's fault). I picked it up because I loved the cover design and the title amused me, but I don't think the actual book lived up to that, sadly. The worldbuilding and alternative history of the British Empire was intriguing, and it kind of feels like the author was more interested in that than in the characters - all three of the main characters were pretty flat to me, and I couldn't really get into their heads. Part of that may have been the narration, which is this semi-Victorian tone that I actually liked, but put them all at a remove. I don't know - there was plot, but things all seemed wrapped up quickly and without a whole lot of angst or drama, which would be great in reality but doesn't make for great reading. Like, I don't know, if I were realizing I were a lesbian or intersex and all my plans for the future depended on marrying and having children, it seems like there would be a bit more drama, even if it's just internal conflict. Also, the quick little "oh, no one has periods, that's why Helena didn't know" bugged me, and I don't know why, exactly. Also, I just didn't really care about August at all. This book wasn't offensive or anything, I just wanted it to be more than it was, I think.
I finished this last night, and I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it. The writing is incredible, the storyline compelling, the framing device and illustrations clever, but I'm not quite sure what I was meant to take from the book. Women can be just as terrible as men given the opportunity?Power corrupts? The MRAs are right? I don't know how much that matters, but this is clearly a book that wants to Say Something - it's literary sci-fi in the mode of Margaret Atwood, who mentored the author. That influence clearly shows through, for good and bad (mostly good, I think) in the worldbuilding and the use of a framing device to provide context to the story. A glaring omission is the failure to engage with any other axes of oppression besides sex - while the leads are a variety of ethnicities and backgrounds, it doesn't really seem to inform how they react/act, and there are some asides that seem to nod at trans and/or NB people, but that's not dealt with at length except maybe with Jos and her boyfriend, but I wasn't sure what was happening there, whether it was a kink thing or something else. The story and the world will stick with me a long time, and the writing is excellent, full of allusions and odd touches of humor, alongside some of the most disturbing scenes I've read in a long time. (Serious content warning for sexual assault and violence throughout, by the way.) I wonder how I'll feel about this one in a year or two, but right now, it's one of the most intriguing books I've read recently.
Started this in August 2017 and somehow didn't get back to it till January 2018 - I'm not sure whether I would have liked it more if I'd managed to read it over a shorter time frame, but it was pretty easy to pick up again. The story kind of lost focus for me after the road trip ended and the last 15% or so of the book kind of meandered around with no real resolutions to most of the character arcs. The non-translated Chinese, which a lot of reviews have commented on, was a little difficult, but usually not essential to understanding (or when it was, it was pretty easy to figure out the gist from context). The strongest parts of the book to me were the characters of the children and their relationships with each other, particularly Grace. I could've read the entire book from her POV and possibly enjoyed it even more.
(3.5 stars, rounding up.) Super cute YA romcom - if you liked the [b:To All the Boys I've Loved Before 15749186 To All the Boys I've Loved Before (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #1) Jenny Han https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1372086100s/15749186.jpg 21442106] series, you'll probably like this book! Probably a quick read if you don't have a newborn at home, but my attention is a little divided these days. This would be an adorable movie, with a diverse cast. I particularly love the relationship between Desi and her dad, and this made me want to watch K-dramas.
(3.5, rounding up.) Loved the diversity of the characters and the characterization of Suzette and her journey - she felt like a fully realized person and I was entirely in her head. (Caveat: I'm neither bi nor bipolar, so I can't really speak to the accuracy of the representation, but more diversity in fiction is always a good thing.) The other characters were a little more vaguely sketched, which may have been intentional since it's such a tight POV with Suzette, but I would've liked a little more insight into Lionel and Rafaela, in particular. The plot here was a lot of buildup and then a pretty rushed conclusion, so I wish either the pacing had been different or the book were a little bit longer to give the story some time to breathe.
(Editing this review in June 2020: whoops, I am bi, denial is a hell of a thing.)
This was a slow starter for me (like most contemporaries seem to be, for some reason), but once it got going, I was all in. Loved the MC and the side characters, who all felt realistic and well-drawn, even if they didn't get a lot of time - particular favorites are Sadia and Aunt Maile. Effortlessly diverse with a truly compelling plot. Loved the representation of mental illness/depression. I'm stopping by the library today to get the next book in this series, and I'm probably gonna try to read Rai's back catalog after that. I'm not a huge contemporary reader but this is a standout. And, um, not for nothing, but this book had some of the best sex scenes I've read - especially the first one, goddamn.
This somehow felt like the middle book of a series but apparently it's the first? (All the talk about how Blackwood and Alice were married and there was some weird tension felt like it was supposed to be a callback to an earlier book but maybe it'll be a subsequent one, but anyway.) Maybe this is 3.5, rounding up - there were a lot more references to the male lead's dick than I usually care for. (I realize these are romance novels at all that, but meh.) I liked the road trip in the beginning leading into the friendship/banter and the wonderful trope of the leads locked together in an out-of-the-way guesthouse in a thunderstorm, which I unironically love for some reason. I hadn't read any Loretta Chase before this, but my library has quite a few of hers on ebook, so I'll have to check them out.
I loved the first book in this series, but this one was even better! I loved the slow burn of the first half in particular, but the entire book was incredible. I'm embarrassed that I didn't know about the Southern resistance to the Confederacy (besides a little about the Underground Railroad), but I did take US History in a former Confederate state, so maybe it's not so surprising. I was pretty blindsided by the twist as well, but it made total sense looking back. I do wish there'd been a little bit more exploration of Marlie's relationship with her white family, especially Sarah, but part of that is probably just how I didn't want this book to end! I really need to go back and read everything else Alyssa Cole has written - maybe a project for 2018.
Fascinating and quick read about the life of a campaign reporter - interesting enough on its own, but even more so when the campaign being covered is the Trump campaign and the author was the first one on the trail and came in for a lot of harassment and threats, both from the candidate and from his supporters. This isn't a book about the politics or policy of the 2016 election, but more about being there while what everyone had thought was ludicrous and unthinkable actually happens. I wish it'd gone a little more in-depth, but this was still really interesting and a perspective I haven't seen before.
