The Bear and the Nightingale

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Rating: ⭐⭐.5
Author: Katherine Arden
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Historical Fantasy
Read: Nov. 2017

 

Well this was disappointing.

I have mixed feelings about how to rate it because the writing really was quite good and Arden created a very good sense of atmosphere in the novel. But the story just dragged on and on!

I found it hard to get into the plot and honestly for the first third of the novel I didn’t even really know what the plot was. The Bear and the Nightingale is set in this medieval version of Russia and focuses on the life of a young girl, Vasya, growing up in cold, northern, Rus. The story begins with her mother dying in childbirth and her nurse plying her with stories and fairytales about the spirits of the village.

The villagers believe in a number of different spirits – which I initially found very confusing because Arden never really explains them – and they leave gifts and sacrifices to the spirits in exchange for the protection of their village. Vasya is special because she can actually see the spirits – no one else can, they just trust in their existence.

The story finally gets going when the priest Konstantin shows up in the village and sees it as his task to convert the entire village to Christianity and save them from the demons. Vasya attends church out of duty, but continues to keep the old ways and Konstantin becomes determined to “save” her.

I did find the conflict between Konstantin and Vasya (Christianity and the old ways) interesting and very reminiscent of how colonizers and missionaries were determined to convert colonies to their ways and beliefs. But overall the story just felt too disjointed for me. Arden provided way too much background on Vasya’s childhood and I found the whole bear and winter-demon thing really confusing. Maybe I just didn’t get it, but I need some more context about where the bear came from and why the hell he cares about Vasya. It just all felt very contrived and too easily resolved at the end.

Overall I just thought it was weird and I never really got into it. A+ for the cover art, but I may take a pass on the rest of this series.

Herding Cats

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Sarah Andersen
Genres: Graphic Novel, Comics
Read: Dec. 2017 (Pub date Mar. 27, 2018)

 

Thank you to NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

That’s right!! I finally got a free ARC from NetGalley (plus I have 2 more in the queue)!! So I’m super stoked to review Herding Cats. If you’re on the internet chances are you’ve seen some of Sarah Andersen’s work. She creates really short, but funny and meaningful, comic strips that show up everywhere as memes. She has two short collections, Adulthood is a Myth, and Big Mushy Happy Lump. I’ve read both of them and my main criticism would be that they’re just too short! I understand why they’re this length, Sarah mostly creates one page comics and with every page covering a different topic, they’re not going to be that long. And then there’s the whole thing where she actually has to draw all the artwork.

I always enjoy these. My favourite is still her first collection because I think it really showcases some of her best work and most popular comics. She’s tried a new type of storytelling in the last two books though where she has added some text followed by comics to tell and bit more of a story and address larger issues. Sadly I’m not really into this format as much, I like her stories, I’d just be more interested to see them told solely through comics, but I think Sarah might struggle a little bit with longer story telling through comics and I prefer her shorter comics. I think her shorter comics provide a really good social commentary on a huge variety of issues and how we interact in the world in the internet age.

So I didn’t love this book as much as the first, but there was still a few really great comics in here. She had two comics in this one that were directly about feminism and I really enjoyed them  both, so I’d love to see more comics on social issues as I think this is a really good medium to share ideas and highlight how ridiculous some social norms really are. I will still continue to read whatever Sarah puts out, because they’re such a quick read and they always give me a laugh.

Far From the Tree

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Robin Benway
Genres: Young Adult
Read: Oct. 2017

 

I loved this!!

I don’t give very many books 5 stars. I’ve usually read most of the book before I realize it’s one of those really special books that deserves the extra star, but every now and then you find a book that you know you are going to love right off the bat. That’s what Far From the Tree was like for me.

I thought this book had the strongest start. It tells the story of 3 teenagers that had all been put up for adoption by their birth mom. Joaquin, the eldest, actually lived with his mother for a short period of time, but ended up in the foster care system for his entire life. He’s been in and out of over a dozen homes and has a very low self-worth, believing himself undeserving of any good thing.

Grace and Maya were luckier and we’re adopted by loving families at birth. Maya is the youngest and just a few months after she was adopted, her mom became pregnant with a miracle baby, Lauren. Lauren looks just like her parents and Maya struggles to fit in when she looks so different from the rest of her family. Grace is the middle child and is heartbroken after becoming pregnant at 16 and deciding to give her own baby, who she refers to as Peach, up for adoption.

The novel opens with Grace giving birth and then alternates each chapter from the point of view of each of the siblings. In the beginning, none of the siblings know each other. After giving up her baby, Grace is inspired to search for her own birth mother and discovers the existence of her 2 siblings and reaches out to them. Grace’s first chapter was so incredibly well written and heartbreaking that I immediately knew I was going to love this book. Funny enough, I read Robin Benway’s debut novel, Audrey, Wait! when I was actually a teenager and it was one of my favourite books at the time, but I stopped reading Benway after her second novel, which I found very disappointing. So it was a pleasant surprise to see this book nominated for the National Book Award (which it won) and I decided to re-visit her work.

Honestly, 2 of the first 3 chapters could have been standalone short stories and they still would have been fantastic. Grace and Joaquin were the most moving stories, but Maya still had a really interesting story arc as well. The emotions are just so well written in this book. Even though I’ve never been in the foster system or given up a baby at 16, their pain and heartbreak was so tangible and relatable. Benway tackled a lot of issues in this book and I felt every second of the story was important and meaningful.

To conclude, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of writing in this story and would highly recommend Far From the Tree to anyone and everyone!

The Female of the Species

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Mindy McGinnis
Genres: Young Adult, Fiction
Read: Dec. 2017

 

This was so DARK.

I cannot figure out my feelings about this book. I pretty much read it in 2 sittings, so it’s a pretty quick read, but it packs a punch.

The Female of the Species is told from 3 points of view: Peekay, the preachers kid who has just broken up with her boyfriend; Jack, the popular guy trying to get a full ride to college; and Alex, whose sister Anna was raped and murdered several years prior. Alex is a loner and mostly people don’t think about her, but what they don’t know is the dark feelings Alex struggles to hide inside her.

From the synopsis you think this is going to be a revenge novel, but it’s mostly focused on relationships. I knew it was going to be dark, but I was surprised by how sweet some parts of the novel were. Peekay and Alex work together at an animal shelter and start an unlikely friendship in their senior year. Peekay is still reeling over her boyfriend breaking up with her to hook up with the most popular girl in school, Branley, and Branley is secretly hooking up with all-star Jack. Until Jack meets Alex and can’t shake her from his mind.

There’s a lot of cheating and hook-ups in this book and Branley plays the role of the villain trying to steal everyone’s man, but I liked how honestly McGinnis tried to portray her. Yes Peekay hates Branley for stealing her boyfriend, but the author still wrote a really interesting relationship between them, which gave Branley a lot more depth. She also highlights the culture of slut shaming and I liked when Alex defended Branley’s right to have lots of sex and enjoy it, without being cast in the role of slut.

Ultimately this book is about rape culture. After Anna’s death, Alex struggles with all the casual rape jokes and with anyone even touching her or her friends without consent. When creepy guys threaten her friends, she lashes out at them and hurts them in the same way they intended to hurt women, but the hurts she causes are perceived as so much worse than the potential hurts an assault would cause the victim. There’s a minor scene in gym class where she watches her classmates and teacher ignore one of the guys pretending to simulate sex with his basketball and comments that if she were to act the same way as a girl, people would lose their damn minds.

I liked Alex but she still scared the life out of me. I liked that she erased graffiti against other girls in the washroom, that she always looked out for Peekay, and that she was totally comfortable in her sexual experience (“it’s okay if we wait to have sex”, “I know” lol). I don’t really know what to comment about Alex’s violence. Obviously you can’t just go around killing people no matter how bad they hurt you, but portraying her character this way was an effective way to get your reader thinking about rape culture and all the ways it impacts and hurts people.

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Lisa See
Genres: Historical Fiction
Read: July 2017

 

Where do I start with The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane? There was so much going on in this book – the plot was so layered and there were so many interesting themes underlying the story, but somehow it all worked and was immensely compelling. (disclaimer: there may be a few spoilers in here, but I think most of what I talk about is covered in the synopsis, which is pretty detailed)

Goodreads has been selling this book to me hard all year with their advertising, but for some reason I wasn’t sure if I would enjoy it. I read Dragon Springs Road earlier this year, which I liked but didn’t love. It’s probably unfair to compare the two books, just because they happen in China, but I found the pacing slow in Dragon Springs Road and I expected The Tea Girl to have a similar pacing, but I found this one so much more compelling. I don’t know a whole lot about Chinese culture, so I appreciated both novels and learned a lot, but there was a lot more going on in See’s novel.

Starting with the narrator, I absolutely loved Li-yan. She had such ambition, despite the constant belittlement from her family and the refrain that she was unimportant because she was a girl. Li-yan was born into the Ahka culture, which like many cultures, values boys far beyond girls. The Akha are a very tight knit people and view the village more as a collective than group of individuals. They believe everything has a spirit and they have many customs to protect against bad spirits and encourage good spirits. They believe it is everyone’s job to bring more children into the community and everyone always hopes for the birth of healthy sons.

I appreciated See’s writing because in the beginning the Ahka seemed so backwards to me and some of their practices were extremely horrifying. But throughout the course of the novel See was able to make me really appreciate their way of life and they did progress to abandon some of their more troubling customs (namely the killing of “human rejects”).

But I loved Li-yan because despite being told she was worth nothing, she had such ambition to pursue a better life through education and a desire to be someone. She convinces the village and her father to allow her to pursue her education and becomes the first educated person in the village. She faces so many struggles, but she always persevered and made choices (some of which were very tough) on what she felt was best for herself. Some readers might condemn her for giving up her child, but I didn’t fault her. She really would have had no life if she had decided to keep Yan-yeh. In many cases she was forced into some of her decisions, but I especially loved her decision to leave San-pa. I fully expected her to stick things out no matter how toxic things became, but when she finally recognized what was going on, she made a decision for herself to leave, even though she risked being sold or killed if she was caught.

She made so many wrong choices and at times really disappointed me, but I could sympathize with her decisions and forgive her for them. I was sad when she got distracted from her studies and ignored the advice of her family about San-pa, but she was so young and blinded by love, which I think we’ve all been at the young age of 16. She punished herself for so long after her failed marriage though and I was glad to see her find the strength to love again. 

I thought her relationship with her mother was beautiful. In the beginning I didn’t like A-ma because she was so harsh with Li-Yan, but she really grew on me and it was wonderful to watch their relationship grow and to see the softness in A-ma after the birth of Yan-yeh. I really enjoyed all the mother/daughter relationships in this book and the relationships between all of the women.

I didn’t enjoy the format of Hayley’s story as much (I think I would have preferred 1st person POV), but I learned a lot from her experience as well. I’ve thought about the challenges immigrants face in moving to America/Canada, but I haven’t put much thought into what it must be like to have parents that don’t look like you and to have so many stereotypes forced upon you. You always expect that your parents would be people that you could relate to and take advice from, but when your lived experience is so different from theirs, it must be so difficult not to have that shared experience and reassurance from your parents.

It was also interesting to learn a little bit about the one-child policy. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for Chinese mothers and it’s upsetting to see girls so little valued in a culture. It was interesting to read about Li-yan’s experience giving up her daughter and I’d love to learn more from other perspectives of women who’ve had to make decisions to give up their daughters.

And of course there was the tea. I didn’t think I could find tea so fascinating! I had no idea there was so much history behind tea and I’d never heard of Pu’er tea, so it was interesting to learn about how tea production changed Yunnan province, world tea markets, and became such a phenomenon. What I really liked about this book is that it started in the 90’s. I couldn’t believe there were villages in China that were so remote and unconnected to the world within my lifetime. It was fascinating to see how they evolved and changed as the modern world came to them in search of tea. It gave me a whole new appreciation for tea!

There is so much going on in this novel, but it all worked and was immensely compelling. It was a beautiful novel about the struggles women face, the relationship between mothers and daughters, and the ways in which we change and adapt to the world around us. Would definitely recommend!