Category: Fiction

State of Wonder

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Ann Patchett
Genres: Fiction
Pub. Date: May 2011

It took me ~4 months to read this book, so it’s going to be challenging to write a full review about it because a lot of it is not fresh in my mind anymore, but I have to try because I have very strong feelings about it.

This was only my second Ann Patchett book, but I loved The Dutch House when I read it a few years ago, so I was keen to read more of her work. State of Wonder seems to be one of her more popular books and after reading Lily King’s book, Euphoria, earlier this year (which is often compared to State of Wonder), I decided it was time to pick this one up. Maybe this was a bad idea because I couldn’t help but compare it to Euphoria (which I loved), but even without that book as a reference, I doubt I would ever have liked State of Wonder.

If you’re not familiar, State of Wonder is set in the Amazon – I’m not sure what year, but given that this was published in 2011, I’d guess in the early Aughts sometime. Our main character, Marina Singh, is a research doctor with a pharmaceutical company. One of the company’s biggest projects is a new fertility wonder drug that’s being developed by Dr. Swenson in the Amazon. After the disappearance of Marina’s other colleague, Anders, she is convinced to travel to Brazil to track down Dr. Swenson and report back to the company on the progress of the drug.

Given the project’s remoteness and Dr. Swenson’s total lack of interest in transparency to her employers, she proves difficult to find. When Marina does finally locate her, she is swallowed into an entirely new world and is shocked by her discoveries. The ideas presented in the plot are definitely compelling and we are soon enmeshed in a web of moral dilemmas for which there are no simple solutions. I can see why this would shake up the genre of literary fiction because it is quite an intelligent book and it provides a lot of fodder for the reader to reflect on. My main issue was that the storytelling itself was so incredibly tedious and boring.

It’s a modest 350 page book, but Marina spends more than a third of the book just tracking down Dr. Swenson, and it isn’t until around page 250 before the narrative picks up at all. To be honest, I’m shocked that I didn’t DNF it, which I think is a testament to the idea of the book because the story itself is compelling and I genuinely wanted to know what would happen, it just took soooo long to get there. I’d give Patchett 4 stars for creativity and themes, but 1 star for execution because it was terribly painful to get through it.

That said, the longer I sit and reflect on this book, the madder I get about it, but not for the reason you might expect. The story finally picks up in the last 100 pages to the point that I was suddenly engrossed as it goes completely off the rails. After 4 months of tedious pre-ample, I felt like I was on drugs as the narrative gets more and more unhinged and the morals more and more dubious. All of which culminates in an explosive ending followed by a quick exit from the scene, from which I was left with a huge book hangover.

I hated the ending. It is shocking and upsetting and infuriating all at once. I did not see it coming and I was devastated by it. I understand why Patchett chooses to end the book this way, without this explosive ending I would have been left questioning what was the point of the entire story. The ending is set up to shock you and it drives home a very crucial theme about Westerners and our sense of compassion and responsibility. When is it our duty to intervene and when should we take a step back and not insert ourselves into cultures which we know nothing about? This theme is initially explored through Dr. Swenson’s feelings on the locals and is reiterated when Marina finally makes her departure from the jungle in the final pages.

But the reason why I get madder the longer I reflect on it is that despite genuinely hating most of this book, I can’t stop thinking about the damn thing!  Honestly, the plot is good, it just gets lost in such heavy handed writing. I spent so long getting to know everything about Marina, all her character strengths and flaws, to deciding that I liked her, only to have Patchett eviscerate her character in the last 10 pages. It’s really brilliant because we’re presented with these two contrasting characters: Marina and Dr. Swenson, who have very different feelings on the ethics of their work. Yet fundamentally, they’re not that different and the entire book is really a master class in the development of their characters. I almost want to read it again now that I know the ending, I just can’t stand to suffer through it a second time. Although I think I might finally have to pick up Heart of Darkness, which has been on my TBR for over a decade.

So how do I rate this book? I was very settled on two stars when I finished it, but I think I will have to increase it to 3 stars at the end of the day. It’s a smart book, but it leaves me unsure of how to approach Ann Patchett’s books in the future. I don’t think I can read another book with a narrative as thick as this one, but I can’t deny the appeal of the depth of thought and character psyche that goes into each of her stories. I may have to return to audiobook form if I read anything else by her. The Dutch House really worked for me as an audiobook, but I can see how it would maybe read similarly to this in physical form. Either way, I think I will give her older novels (like Bel Canto) a pass, and maybe try some of her newer stuff (commonwealth maybe?) to see how she has developed her storytelling craft.

This was a good story told very poorly. I think if the first third had been tightened up a lot, this would have been a much better book. Either way, it haunts me.

The Winners

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Fredrik Backman
Genres: Fiction
Pub. Date: Oct. 2022
Series: Beartown #3

This is the book I’ve been waiting for since 2018. I didn’t really like Us Against You that much on my first read through because I found it very depressing, but I did concede that it works as the second book in a 3-part series. When I re-read Us Against You a few weeks ago, I did like it a lot more knowing there was more to the story. 

The Winners is a beast of a book at almost 700 pages. It brought exactly what I was expecting in terms of the quality of writing and depth of characters. We get to revisit a lot of characters: Benji, Amat, Bobo, Ana, Zackell, and the entirety of the Andersson family, while also getting introduced to some new characters. Primarily, a family from Hed, a young boy named Matteo, and a new star hockey player: Big City. I was sad to lose all of the hockey players from the first book – I never liked Lyt, but I can’t deny he brought a lot of conflict to the story.

I love how Backman continues to examine Maya’s story and its lasting impact on her family. In some ways the family has recovered and in other ways it’s still very broken. Kira and Peter keep breaking and mending my heart in every book and I liked the exploration of your sense of self discovery within a relationship. Sometimes we need to prioritize ourselves, sometimes we need to compromise for the good of our partner, and sometimes we need to both be our own person. When we compromise too much we risk losing what drew us to one another in the first place. At least that’s my cryptic take while trying not to give anything away.

Likewise, I loved where Backman took Amat in this story. It reiterated a lot of David’s fears from the first book about letting young stars rise too quickly. Amat had nowhere to belong. He outgrew the Hollow, while never really fitting in with the rich kids. He was propped up by the club as a mascot when he was a winner, but he was only useful to them when he was winning. I thought his rebellion was sad, but natural when you feel you’ve been used by your community and you know that no one would look twice at you if you didn’t win. The idea that you owe people something because you couldn’t have got there without their charity, but that they were only charitable because you had something that they desired or could benefit from. My only complaint was that I wanted to see Amat play more hockey! For a book about hockey, a very limited amount of hockey actually takes place.

I’ve always loved Bobo’s transformation and I feel like he really came into his own in this book. I love when authors take questionable characters and re-invent them to show our capacity for change. Bobo goes from bully, to friend, to coach, to lover. Overall, I’m not sure the inclusion of Hannah and Jonny’s storyline really added that much to the narrative, but it did give us the opportunity to see things from another perspective and I love how Bobo becomes the voice of reason between the two towns. That someone who starts off as a bully can become the voice of reason and a vehicle for good.

Finally, let’s talk about Benji. Is there anyone whose favourite character isn’t Benji? This quiet, broken boy with his strong moral compass and penchant for violence to dull his own pain breaks my heart in every scene. Backman really lays it on strong with the foreshadowing of Benji’s story and even though you know you’re on a train barreling toward a broken track, you can’t help but think that maybe you can pull the brakes and save yourself the heartache. But I thank Backman for the friendship he creates between Benji, Maya, and Big City. And for Benji’s big heart. He’s one of those people that you wish could see himself through the eyes of characters like Alicia, rather than through his own distorted lens. The scene where they all play a fun game of hockey before the rink closes is probably my favourite scene in the entire book.

But let’s talk a bit about the plot. Beartown has a very strong sense of plot. There’s a catalyst and you know where the plot is going, even if you don’t quite know how we’ll get there. I found that to be a bit lacking in both sequels. With Us Against You and The Winners, I felt that Backman had developed such meaningfully real characters that they literally walked off the page and he couldn’t ignore the pull to continue writing about them. There are major events in both novels, but they felt more tangential to the characters. In some ways the plot in the Winners felt a bit too random for me. The writing has gravitas, but the way things unfolded felt chaotic.

I loved the inclusion of Ruth’s story and the comparison between her and Maya and how these things often go, but I felt Matteo to be a bit too radical. I liked the juxtaposition of his character when it came to the funerals and how he and Leo and Ruth and Maya were living the same but different lives. But the ending felt like it was there to break my heart for the sake of it rather than for purpose. The inclusion of characters like Mumble are a brilliant way to draw parallels to the reality of how these kind of events unfold and how the silence surrounding them can tear us apart. Rarely do they culminate in the kind of violence we see at the end of The Winners, which is why I found it less relatable and impactful. I’m being purposefully vague to avoid spoilers, but basically I want meaningful social commentary that is still believable. 

While I still really liked the book, my main criticism is that it was just too long. It’s a great story, but it takes so long for the plot to get moving and there weren’t even close to 700 pages worth of notable events. The entire book takes place over the span of 2 weeks and it felt like it dragged in the first half. It’s a character driven book, I get it, but it could easily have been 150 pages shorter in my opinion. 

Anyways, it’s still a strong 4 stars from me. Even with flaws, any book and author that can make me feel so attached to fictional characters is talented. Like I said, I honestly feel like these characters walk right off the page into reality. They are so well developed that you can predict how they are going to act and react. I’m honestly sad to say goodbye to this world, though I won’t miss the heartache!

Black Cake

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Charmaine Wilkerson
Genres: Fiction
Pub. Date: Feb. 2022 (read Sep. 2022 on Audible)

I have been sitting on this book all year! I’ve heard so many good things about it and have been meaning to pick it up for months, so I finally got the audiobook version and flew through it in a few days. 

Black Cake tells the story of two siblings and the life of their mother, who has just passed away. The siblings have been estranged for several years, but their mother, Eleanor, leaves a recording for them to listen to together telling the real story of her life – all the things she never told them about herself. 

It has a bit of a slow start, focusing on the 2 siblings, Byron and Benny, but once they start listening to Eleanor’s recording, I was hooked. Eleanor grew up in one of the Caribbean Islands (exact location not named), which has left its mark on her entire family, despite her children never having been there. 

It’s a long book, and as with most long books, I do think it could have been shorter, but the author does cover a lot of ground. We are introduced to a lot of characters over the course of the novel and while it was sometimes overwhelming, every character was well placed and had a role to play. It’s a smartly written book, it could have been tightened up a bit, but it’s the kind of narrative where there are no thoughts out of place. The author is intentional about both the plot and the characters and I like a book that is plotted that way. That said, while everything has its place, the author does tackle a lot and I think she could have done more justice to her ideas had she focused more on a few central themes (primarily as they relate to Eleanor). 

While I liked it a lot (it’s an engaging story), where I think it fails is in adequately developing Byron and Benny’s stories. Eleanor’s story is incredibly well developed, but for such a long book, I still didn’t really feel like I knew Benny or Byron or understood their relationship with one another. Their stories are briefly developed and we examine Benny’s struggles with being queer and Byron’s struggles with unconscious bias and racism in his workplace, but I felt their stories were topical and not given enough depth to be really meaningful.

Maybe it’s just that they paled next to Eleanor, but I felt that this story could have been historical fiction solely about Eleanor and it would have been just as good, if not better. There were complex relationships between all of the characters, but I do think the narrative is partially strained by the fact that we never get to meet Eleanor alive. Everything is recounted, which creates a level of separation between the events, how the main characters feel about them, and how the reader perceives them.

Despite how this review is making it seem, these are just minor criticisms of how it could have been improved, I did still really enjoy the book. It’s a great story and I loved the centering of it around the black cake. Culture and food do play a big role in who we are or become and I loved how the black cake grounds the story. I would definitely recommend and I’m interested to see what else Charmaine Wilkerson writes!

The Happy Ever After Playlist

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Abby Jimenez
Genres: Fiction, Romance
Pub. Date: Apr. 2020 (read Sep. 2022)

I picked up this book while on holiday from a thrift store in a backwater town in BC because I had only brought 1 book with me and had finished it too soon. It had limited selection, but this book featured a dog and sounded cute, so it could have been a lot worse!

It actually started off really promising. Our protagonist, Sloan, rescues a runaway dog and then takes care of him when she can’t get a hold of his owner, Jason, for 2 weeks. Jason is a semi-famous musician who was out in the Australian wilderness backpacking and didn’t know that his dogsitter had lost his dog until he returned to civilization. Sloan agrees to watch the dog until he returns to America and they start having cute exchanges via text and phone. Sloan is getting over the death of her fiancé 2 years previously and this is the first time she’s been attracted to a man since. 

Their phone calls and text banter were really cute and I loved that the book centered around a dog. It had a good amount of depth and I was enjoying it. Unfortunately, I thought the author blew through the initial attraction way too quickly and the couple immediately starts dating. Sloan faces some initial challenges with the relationship as she tries to move on with her previous relationship, but I thought Sloan and Jason’s relationship got too intense too fast and the pacing didn’t work. I felt like I was at the climax of the novel at just the halfway mark, which made me question what the author was going to focus on for the second half without any romantic tension.

This is where she lost me. The novel takes a turn and focuses more on the struggles of being in a relationship with a rock star who’s always on the road. I felt like the “Sloan-as-a-widow” and the “couple-on-tour” plots were 2 very different storylines that just didn’t mesh with one another. Sloan was on a healing journey and then all of a sudden she’s chasing Jason all over the country? I felt they should be two different books with two different sets of characters.

There were other aspects I didn’t like – Jason is a bit of a womanizer – he’s very confident in himself, which should be a turn-on, but he read more as cocky to me and I wasn’t really into it. Both parties fell too hard, too quickly, and it removed some of the believability for me.

The other aspect I didn’t like was Lola’s character as the crazy-ex girlfriend. It’s bad enough when men call women crazy and portray them as such, but it’s so much worse when women do it to each other. So I was initially very turned off by this side plot, but I ended up being impressed with how the author handled in the end. Lola turns out to be pretty misunderstood and I appreciated when the characters were able to reconcile with each other and understand how Lola had been manipulated and abused by her record label. 

So overall it was a bit of an odd novel. I liked parts of it and disliked other parts, but I think it is a fairly standard 3 star read at the end of the day and considering I picked it up in a thrift store, it exceeded my expectations. I wouldn’t recommend, but also, don’t regret reading. 

Love on the Brain

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Rating: ⭐⭐.5
Author: Ali Hazelwood
Genres: Fiction, Romance
Pub. Date: Aug. 2022 (read Sep. 2022)

Oh dear, I haven’t written a book review since June… I usually don’t read a lot in the summer, although I did read more than I anticipated this year, so it’s time to get caught up!

Love on the Brain was one of my most anticipated new releases for 2022. The Love Hypothesis was wildly popular last year and I really loved it – in retrospect I can recognize that it has some flaws, but it opened me up to the whole world of romance reading, so I have to give it some credit. Love on the Brain is the second of Ali Hazelwood’s STEM novels, though she did write 3 novellas in between that I haven’t read. 

Love on the Brain features Bee and Levi, a brainy neuroscientist and engineer who end up working on an astronaut helmet together for NASA. They’re both leaders in their fields, but the catch is they used to be in grad school together, and Levi had a very clear dislike of Bee, so she’s not sure how they are going to work together.

From there it follows the trajectory you would expect of any romance novel. Bee has a very strong character voice and I won’t lie that I devoured this book in 3 days while on holiday. I love the setting of Hazelwood’s books and that they focus on women in STEM and the various injustices they face. Unfortunately, Love on the Brain just didn’t have the same charm as The Love Hypothesis and even though it’s very readable, I couldn’t overlook its shortcomings. 

Let’s start with what I liked. I did mostly like Bee as the main character. She’s funny and she has a strong personality. She’s not afraid to go for it and she does call people out on their shit instead of just suffering in silence. She was a victim in her previous relationship, but she didn’t let that define her. She did have a tendency to go off on tangents though and I did feel she was a little manic pixie dream girl in that she’s “not like other girls”. Otherwise, I liked her relationships with her sister and her assistant – I can’t remember her name, but omg, the assistant was hilarious! She was pretty much the highlight of the book for me.

Unfortunately I didn’t like a whole lot else after that. My biggest gripe is that Hazelwood does absolutely nothing new with this book. I think that Olive and Bee are quite different characters, but Levi and Adam are carbon copies of one another and it’s still impossible to ignore that this is just Adam Driver fan fiction. I’m over the whole brooding, tall man trope and the romance genre’s obsession with large men and tiny women. It’s like Hazelwood tried to shake up the characters by having Adam be mean to everyone and only nice to Olive, whereas Levi was supposedly nice to everyone and only mean to Bee, but they still read like the same person to me and it just made me not like Levi. At least I understood Olive’s attraction to Adam (he was nice), but Levi was a jerk to Bee. Personally, I would never have forgiven his dress code comment. Levi read like a mess, like he can’t act like a normal human being around the woman he likes?

Speaking of understanding the attraction – I’d love to know what either of these characters saw in one another? Seriously though? Levi has been supposedly in love with Bee since he met her and has been harbouring the same pathetic crush for 6 years? That ain’t romantic! Get a life man! The whole “it was always you” trope drives me nuts because people have way more depth than that. Who wants a lover that’s obsessed with them? Isn’t it way more romantic to fall in love with someone with other interests and a nuanced personality? Hazelwood tells us these two characters love each other, but I didn’t understand why. There’s no context as to why Levi likes Bee or vice versa. Sure, I could get Bee’s sexual fantasies about Levi, but what does he ever do that makes her look deeper? We are never shown what makes these two love each other.

Which brings me to my next gripe – the miscommunication trope. I don’t like the miscommunication trope on a good day, but this book was the miscommunication trope on steroids. God, the level of misunderstanding between the two characters was unbearable. Can we please just all stop being idiots? Why do these super smart scientists have the emotional intelligence of a potato? They were so juvenille, I couldn’t handle it.

Finally, let’s talk about the ending, because that really went off the rails. Suddenly we go from a romance novel to an action mystery? Which gets resolved in the span of a chapter? Have you lost your place in the world Hazelwood? The drama at the end felt so out of place and crammed into the final pages that my jaw was on the floor. It didn’t belong. I feel like Hazelwood wanted some kind of physical confrontation because all of her characters are based on Star Wars, which is action, but like, girl you’re gonna have to write a dark romance or a fantasy if you want to go there. The ending didn’t work here when the rest of the novel was extremely bubbly. Also, the fact that both characters are obsessed with Star Wars when the reader knows this book is basically Kylo Ren fanfic is too meta for me. 

Anyways, I should probably clue up this rant, but plotwise, I do want to say that what I found the most disappointing is that in addition to the characters having no depth, the plot had none either. I loved what TLH did with the sexual harassment and reporting storyline. I feel like Hazelwood had a lot of balls in the air about sexism in academia and the workplace, but I felt like they were all ideas and none of them were developed. The story didn’t have any real meaningful social commentary. Sure, she draws awareness to ideas like men stealing women’s ideas, not listening to them, or only acknowledging women’s legitimacy when it’s pointed out by another man, but as a woman in STEM, these are really basic concepts and she doesn’t do anything with them. The most focus was on admissions standards, which was great, but it still felt surface level. There was no real tension in the storyline and everything with Marie Curie being exposed was too easily resolved. I didn’t feel the anguish or despair. The situations just felt contrived. 

So yeah, I didn’t like it. Initially I rated it 3 stars because I still flew through it, it is an easy read, but after reflecting on all its flaws, I think I’m going to have to bump it down to a 2. I haven’t read her novellas, but I’ve seen other reviews saying it’s more of the same, so I think I’m probably going to have to give them a pass. I will probably still read her next book, but I hope she branches out a bit and does something new, because this was such a disappointment.