Tag: 2017 publication

History is All You Left Me

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Adam Silvera
Genres: Young Adult
Read: Aug. 2017 on audiobook

 

History is All You Left Me has been getting a ton of great reviews, but I had a hard time getting into it.

This was my second audiobook, and while I definitely enjoyed it more than my first audiobook, Beneath a Scarlet Sky, I still didn’t love it. However, my dislike for Beneath a Scarlet Sky had to do with the writing, while I fear my dislike of History is All You Left Me may have been because of the narrator. I really didn’t like the narrator for this audiobook. He was whiny and annoying to listen to and I felt like he didn’t get the tone of the book right. I almost want to read a hard copy to see how I interpret the tone, but I know I’ll never be able to sit through it again.

It’s definitely a sad book. Griffin is dealing with the loss of his best friend and first boyfriend Theo. He broke up with Theo prior to his death, but anticipated they would one day get back together and was still in love with him. In his grief, he turns to Theo’s new boyfriend Jackson for comfort, but forsakes his other friends who are also grieving for Theo.

I think this was a good book about love, loss, grief, and moving on. But it also had a side story about Griffin’s struggle with OCD that I couldn’t really get into. I’ve never had OCD, so I have no idea how well it was portrayed, but I felt Griffin’s struggle with OCD could have been a story on it’s own and I’m not sure it worked for me in this book. But maybe it’s inclusion meant a lot to readers with OCD, so I don’t want to dismiss it.

In the end I’m giving it 3 stars because I do think it was a decent book, but the narrator kind of ruined it for me, so I would definitely recommend reading over listening for this one.

Note: I moved this review over from my goodreads account. I have read several more audiobooks since I read this book and I’m finding that I don’t really like listening to fiction, so that may be a factor in my dislike of this book. I’ve switched to mostly listening to non-fiction and have found it a lot more enjoyable.

Strange the Dreamer

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ 
Author: Laini Taylor
Genres: Fantasy
Read: Apr. 2017

I so wanted to love this book. I only recently discovered Laini Taylor and loved her Daughter of Smoke & Bone series. Taylor has a beautiful writing style and Strange the Dreamer was definitely very well written, but the story didn’t draw me in the same way.

The plot sounded bizarre from the synopsis and was just as bizarre in reality. There are two stories being told in parallel and they both focus on the mythical city of Weep. 200 years ago Weep was cut off from the rest of the world and it’s name was collectively forgotten by the rest of humanity (they call it Weep for its lack of name). No one knows what happened or what powerful force could make everyone forget the city’s name.

Miles away, junior librarian Lazlo Strange is obsessed with the city of Weep and can’t believe it when the godslayer and his warriors show up and recruit Lazlo to join them in search of the lost city. In parallel to Lazlo’s story, we learn about a family of blue-skinned gods who secretly live above the city of Weep and discover how they came to be there and what role they had to play in the lost city.

I loved Daughter of Smoke & Bone from the first page, but I found Strange the Dreamer slow moving and I didn’t find the characters very captivating or care what happened to most of them. I did enjoy the plot between Lazlo and Nero and I’m interested to see what happens with them, but I had zero interest in the gods/monsters and I did not enjoy the romance part of this book.

It seems like most people are loving this story though, so it might just be a personal preference. I definitely can’t find any fault with Taylor’s writing and her prose was just as wonderful as always! Unfortunately for me though, the purple prose wasn’t enough to make up for how boring I found the story.

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter

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AKA: One Day This Will Matter
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Scaachi Koul
Genres: Non-fiction, Essays, Memoir
Read: Dec. 2017 on audiobook

 

I listened to this as an audiobook and I loved it! It is narrated by the author and I really enjoyed both her writing and narration.

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter is a series of essays written by Scaachi Koul, daughter of Indian immigrants who grew up in Calgary. She later moved to Toronto for university and I believe she currently works for Buzzfeed.

I didn’t really know what this was about before I picked it up. I selected it very quickly when I was looking for something to listen to on a run because I had seen some buzz about it and I like non-fiction audiobooks that are narrated by the author. I was thrilled to discover it was written by a Canadian and about her experiences growing up in Canada and the challenges of being the daughter of immigrants.

Scaachi is really funny and she is also very insightful. I can’t believe she is the same age as me, which made this book all the more impressive. Canadians like to be critical of America (especially in the Trump era) and we like to think we’re better and more progressive, but there is definitely still what Scaachi calls “casual racism” happening here. I wouldn’t say this book was necessarily “eye-opening” for me, but it was definitely a perspective I don’t hear very often and I really appreciated Scaachi’s observations.

She talks about what it’s like to grow up female and Indian. How she is envied for her lush, thick indian hair, but at the same time shamed for having hair everywhere else on her body. What it’s like to travel back to India and discover that while you don’t quite fit in Canada, you don’t fit here either and the life your parents so fondly remember doesn’t really exist anymore. How challenging it is to have to hide all your romantic relationships growing up and what it’s like bringing a white boy 10 years your senior home to your parents.

Her parents have had a large influence on her life and it was interesting to learn more about Indian culture – the stereotypes, inequities, and familial importance. I like to think I’ve learned a little bit about Indian culture since moving to Vancouver, but I was really interested in Scaachi’s thoughts on Indian weddings, arranged marriages, and the rites and passages of her culture. She has a contentious relationship with her father that I couldn’t relate to – I found her father very unyielding and sometimes even childish in his reactions – but she still made me like him and helped me to understand a little bit more about Indian families.

I think stories like Scaachi’s are important because they provide perspective and enable you to walk in someone else’s shoes to an extent. It helps when they’re really well written, which this was. Scaachi had a perfect blend of just enough humour to make it fun, but enough perspective to also make her stories meaningful.

It’s a quick read, even as an audiobook, and I would definitely recommend!

Bonfire

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Krysten Ritter
Genres: Mystery, Thriller
Read: Nov. 2017

 

You guys, this was my 100th book of 2017!!! Feeling so accomplished!!

I LOVE Krysten Ritter. I’m obsessed with her role as Jessica Jones and think the show/Krysten is just the most badass superhero ever! And her instagram account makes me love her even more. She likes to knit and read mystery novels and hang out with her dog Mikey. So I was pretty excited when I saw she was writing a novel (a legit novel too, not just another celebrity autobiography)!

Bonfire didn’t like blow me out of the water or anything, but I thought it was a pretty solid debut. The writing was pretty average, but I thought the story was interesting. Bonfire is about lawyer Abby Williams who left her hometown of Barrens at 18 after some pretty strange events took place and has been running from it ever since.

She returns to Barrens as an environmental lawyer to investigate claims that Optimal, a chemical plant that provides most of the jobs in the community, has been poisoning the water supply and that people have been starting to get sick. She hated Barrens as a teenager and is plagued by memories of her friend Kaycee, who made up a story in their senior year about being sick to exploit Optimal and then disappeared. But now that other people are starting to get sick, Abby wonders if maybe Kaycee was actually telling the truth and can’t ditch the feeling that there’s something she’s missing.

I really liked the whole environmental law angle of the book and that this wasn’t just a who-dunnit murder mystery. The plot was a bit messy in some places though. Even after finishing the book, parts of the story were unclear to me and I found the ending pretty abrupt. I pictured Abby as Jessica Jones several times and I think Ritter was trying to write a gritty kind of lawyer-gone-detective character that I couldn’t quite get into. There were a few subplots that I didn’t really see the point of and some loose ends in the plot that I didn’t like.

Overall I did like this and I’m totally impressed with Ritter for writing it. There’s nothing particularly special about it, but I would definitely read another book if she ever decides to write one!

Midnight Without a Moon

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Linda Williams Jackson
Genres: Middle Grade, Historical Fiction
Read: Oct. 2017

 

I wanted to love this, but Midnight Without a Moon fell a bit flat for me. This is definitely a good debut novel for Linda Williams Jackson, I just think she needs to hone her writing skills.

Midnight Without a Moon is a middle grade book set in Mississippi in 1955. It’s a coming of age story featuring 13-year old Rose Lee Carter who is struggling to find her place in the world and justify the atrocities that are happening around her. Black people have been granted the right to vote and want to register, but of course, white people are having none of it and tensions in Rose’s town start to escalate. Rose desperately wants to go to college and make something of herself, but she believes the only way to do that is to get out of Mississippi. When young Emmett Till is brutally murdered and the NAACP shows up to advocate for justice, Rose begins to realize that maybe she’s needed right where she is.

I thought the premise of the book was great – good setting, good subject matter – but I felt it was poorly executed. I found parts of the novel dragged and had a hard time getting into it. The pacing of the plot was really off for me. I thought the main plot of this story was about Emmett Till and the sparking of the civil rights movement in Mississippi, but Jackson kept veering off into side stories. I thought the verdict of the trail would be the climax of the story, but it was very anti-climactic and Jackson kind of glazed over it in a way that made me feel it was no longer integral to the plot. It left me feeling unsure what Jackson’s goal was in retelling this historical event.

Don’t get me wrong, I love side stories and sub-plots between characters and I did love a lot of the side plots in this novel, but they all felt poorly executed and chunky, and they didn’t flow naturally. The ending didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the novel at all and I was super confused when Jackson spent the last 10% of the book talking about religion. I found it interesting to learn about and I think it could still have been included in the novel, it was just in totally the wrong place and it made all of Rose’s epiphanies and reflections seem really forced. I just found the whole “stars shine brighter in the darkness” and “midnight without a moon” references very cheesy and cliche. I know it’s a middle grade novel, but again, it’s not that these points shouldn’t have been in the story, they just flowed very poorly.

I think the strongest part of this novel was the characters. I liked Rose; her drive and ambition. I thought the side story with Queen was interesting, as well as Rose’s relationship with Hallelujah. I was fascinated with Ma Pearl, but I need more information about her background!! I thought she was a great antagonist and all her fears about getting kicked off the Robinson’s land were totally valid, but boy she was harsh. She had really no redeeming qualities and I thought that was unfair. I want to know more about her history and how she has become so jaded. I feel like she was too one-dimensional and I’d like to see other sides of her character. Actually, I feel the same way about Queen. I need more perspective for both of these characters.

Ultimately this is a book about growing up and being introduced to the inequities of life. I do think Rose was a wonderful female role model for middle graders as she has this deep desire to be educated. At first her desire to go to college is just about getting out of Mississippi and gaining wealth and it is heartbreaking when she is pulled out of school, but I like that her desires gradually changed and became more about a better life for black people, not just herself (not that its not okay to want a better life just for yourself).

In conclusion, I don’t regret reading this, I think Jackson has a lot of potential and it’s great to see these kinds of stories and themes being explored in middle grade novels (especially when they’re actually written by people of colour, instead of the whole white saviour narrative). Reviewing 3 star books is always a challenge because it’s tough to convey that I liked the book, but at the same time thought it could have been better. This book is getting a sequel, so I’m hopeful to see some of these issues and character development addressed in the next book!