Tag: 2018 publication

The Poet X

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Elizabeth Acevedo
Genres: Poetry, Young Adult
Pub Date: Mar. 2018 (Read Apr. 2018)

“Burn it! Burn it.
This is where the poems are,” I say,
thumping a fist against my chest.
“Will you burn me? Will you burn me, too?”

Yes! I loved this!

Xiomara is the teenage daughter of Dominican Republican immigrants. Her mom is extremely religious and is adamant that Xiomara be confirmed in the catholic church. Xiomara has always been a little rough around the edges, getting in fights to protect her twin brother and against the lewd remarks men in her neighbourhood make about her body. She just wants to be a normal teenager and date boys like the other girls her age.

She feels repressed in her day to day life and turns to poetry to express herself, which she records in her private journal. She really enjoys writing her English assignments and when her English teacher, Ms. Galiano starts a slam poetry club, she is intrigued because it feels like the poetry is just bursting out of her. But the poetry club meets at the same time as her confirmation class, which Mami would never allow her to miss.

At the same time, Xiomara meets a boy, Aman. She just wants to spend time with him like any other teenager. But her mother is strictly opposed to dating and she is forced to hide her relationship with him. She questions everything in her life, from her mother’s strict rules to the religion that is being forced on her. It becomes increasingly difficult to hide what’s going on in her life and Xiomara becomes more and more at odds with her mother. Poetry becomes the only way she can expresses the conflict she feels building inside her.

I have read so many books lately about latinx teenagers and I have learned so much about latinx family culture (although most of the books were about Mexican culture). What has been hardest for me to understand is the relationship between these American-born daughters and their immigrant mothers. Every single book I’ve read has had the same conflict of strict latina mothers and their teenage daughters trying to break away from the confines of their mother’s perspective and rules. I grew up in a religious home as well, but I can’t imagine the frustration of mother and daughter not being able to relate to each other. My mom can have a pretty strong personality, but she was never anything but supportive and understanding of where I was coming from. I think the difference is that we both grew up in Canada and shared the same cultural perspective, whereas Xiomara and her mother grew up in very different circumstances and struggled to relate to one another.

I always talk about liking gritty books with gritty writing and this is another great example. I recently read I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter and The Authentics at the same time and loved the first and disliked the second because one book was so gritty and authentic while the other seemed to have this protective layer of film over the story, lacking any real emotional depth. I had the same experience with this book as I read it at the same time as I read Love, Hate & Other Filters, which I felt had that same disconnect between the emotional potential of the story and the actual depth the author achieved. I am here for the emotions and Acevedo was not afraid to go there in this book. It’s what makes one book great and another book sadly mediocre.

The poetry in this book was fantastic. I don’t read a lot of poetry, but I really love books like this that are not a collection of poems, but a whole story told in poetry. I’ve already picked Brown Girl Dreaming as one of my reading challenge books for April, which I understand is written in a similar fashion, so I’m excited to pick that one up later this month! Definitely recommend this book!

The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Kim Fu
Genres: Fiction
Read: Mar. 2018

Thank you to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a really interesting read. The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore just came out in February and it already has a bit of a lowish rating on goodreads, which is usually a deterrent for me, but I’m obsessed with camping and I was really intrigued by the premise, so I decided to go ahead with it anyways.

The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore tells the story of 5 girls around ages 10-12 who attend a sleep-away camp in Washington State. The girls are from all over the region, including British Columbia. The highlight of the camp is supposed to be an overnight kayaking trip to a remote island, but this kayak trip goes horribly awry and leaves the girls stranded on an island. The book tells the story of what happened to the girls, while simultaneously flashing forward in each of the girls lives to see how they later fared.

The structure of this story was really interesting. Throughout the main story of what happened at Camp Forevermore, we get a short story for each of the girls future lives. These stories don’t really reference what happened at camp and in my opinion could each be viewed as separate short stories, but generally examine how they might have been affected by what happened on that fateful kayaking trip.

Because of this, the novel read more like a collection of short stories to me, but I didn’t mind it because each sub-story felt fully formed and realized and the writing was really beautiful. It didn’t deliver on what I was expecting from this book, but it was still a really nice piece of writing, so I didn’t mind. I think Kim Fu got the atmosphere of the story just right and I think the cover perfectly reflects that atmosphere too.

My complaint would be that it was a bit short. I was really into the main story at Forevermore and I would have liked to see this part of the novel developed a little more. It had a bit of a Lord of the Flies vibe and explored how children act and develop when left alone in stressful situations without adult support and I would have liked to see these themes explored in a little more depth and a bit better tied in with the futures of each girl. I also thought it was a weird choice to tell Kayla’s story instead of Andee’s. Andee is one of the 5 girls on the island, why tell her sister’s story instead of hers? I didn’t really get why the author choose to do this and was one of the reasons I thought the flash forwards could also work as short stories, since some of them seemed to have very little to do with what actually happened at camp.

Overall though, I did really like this, which goes to show you can’t always trust the goodreads ratings. I thought the writing was strong and the story was beautifully told. It’s a bit of a slow-burn novel, but it worked in this context. Plus I love supporting Canadian authors!

Saga, Volume 8

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples
Genres: Comics, Graphic Novel, Sci-fi
Read: Feb. 2018

I love Saga so much. It doesn’t take very long to read one of these volumes, but they are so reliably fun and enjoyable.

Since I’m 8 volumes in and I haven’t written a review for Saga, I’ll give a brief summary. Saga is a graphic novel set in space that starts off with a bit of a Romeo and Juliet premise. Alana and Marko are from two feuding planets (well one’s a moon), Landfall and Wreath. Alana is from Landfall and has wings, while Marko is from Wreath and has horns. The two fall in love, become pregnant, and are basically chased across the galaxy by other planets and people that don’t want any evidence of their traitorous relationship.

I am just in love with Alana, Marko, and their daughter Hazel. I wasn’t totally into the idea of reading about two soldiers and their tag-a-long baby, but this is a truly fantastic series about love and family and throughout the series Vaughan tackles a lot of different socials issues. It is bit of a bizarre series and definitely NSFW (there’s a fair bit of sex and nudity throughout the series), but Fiona Staples artwork is gorgeous and I love how creative Vaughan is with his characters and storyline. His characters do some pretty bad things and make bad decisions, but he’s still able to make you love them. Each character has their own morality line about what is and isn’t acceptable and it’s interesting to watch them try and stay on the safe side of their line while still trying to protect the people that they care about.

Each volume consists of 6 issues and they’ve recently released 2 books containing 3 volumes a piece. But I’d recommend hitting up your local library for this series. 8 volumes can seem pretty daunting, but they are quick reads and I would highly recommend!

Then She Was Gone

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐.5
Author: Lisa Jewell
Genres: Mystery
Read: Feb. 2018 (Pub date: Apr. 24, 2018 in North America)

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

Lisa Jewell has been on my list of authors to try for a while now, so I was really excited to get an ARC of her new book, coming out this April. Then She Was Gone had me spellbound for pretty much an entire day. I think I read like 60% of this book in one sitting.

I actually quite like mystery/thrillers. I don’t read them all that much, but I do get really into them when I finally pick one up. The only thing is that I can get pretty disturbed by mystery novels and I definitely got disturbed by this one.

Then She Was Gone tells the story of Ellie Mack, who walked out the house one day when she was 15 years old and was never seen again. Her mother is obviously devastated by the loss of her daughter; her marriage falls apart, her relationship with her other 2 children suffers, and for 10 years, she struggles to find any kind of closure and is unable to move on. Until she meets Floyd Dunn and his daughter Poppy and finally begins to reawaken and believe she might be able to start to piece her life back together.

The format of this story is fascinating. It has 5 parts and a lot of different narrators. It is predominantly narrated by Laurel Mack, Ellie’s mother, but it does alternate to several other perspectives throughout the novel. Most notable for me was that it’s partially narrated by Ellie herself in the first part and we learn almost immediately who our main suspect for her disappearance is. I was so surprised that we learned this information so early in the story and I felt like the first part (~15%) was almost a book in itself.

From there, Laurel meets Floyd and is transported to an entirely new life. I found this part of the story a little boring, but Jewell still did a good job at keeping me intrigued because I still wanted to know what actually happened. This part mostly just felt a little in contrast with the first part of the novel, which has a super strong start. It only took 1 chapter for me to get totally into this story.

It is a little predictable what happens, but it’s so freaking weird that when I was guessing at what might have happened I was like, “surely not” and tried to dismiss my prediction. Parts of the novel are definitely very disturbing and Jewell does create subtle atmospheric changes to her writing as the novel progresses. I actually really liked the end of this book. While I predicted some parts, the end did surprise me and while parts of it are heartbreaking, I appreciated Jewell ending her story this way.

I liked Laurel’s transformation throughout the course of the novel. I was frustrated with her at times and I have to admit, I did find some of her actions a little unbelievable and not to be in line with her character.  Laurel lost her daughter and couldn’t move on for 10 years, so I found it really hard to suspend disbelief that she wouldn’t be incredibly suspicious of some of the weird coincidences of this book and that she didn’t always trust her instincts. Like I said though, this book had me totally spellbound and I would like to read some more of Jewell’s work!

The Cruel Prince

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Holly Black
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
Read: Jan. 2018

First off, I definitely liked this. It was an intriguing story with some pretty interesting characters. But I didn’t love it quite as much as I was hoping. This may be a good example of a book where the hype gave me unrealistic expectations. The Cruel Prince only came out the first week of January, but I’ve been seeing so much buzz about it everywhere and pretty much everyone seems to have totally loved it. Like I said, I did actually quite enjoy this book and I will definitely be reading the next one, but it’s one of those 3 stars reads that I liked not loved.

This was my first Holly Black book. I know she’s written a ton of stuff and that she’s quite popular, which surprised me because I didn’t love her writing style. Her writing is very simple and I honestly had to go back to goodreads to check what genres this was listed under because, with the exception of the opening scene (which is gruesome), I felt like I was reading a middle grade novel for the first half of this book. Between Jude’s bullying at school, her boy woes, and the simple writing, I didn’t feel like I was reading a YA fantasy novel.

Anyways, to give you a quick summary, The Cruel Prince is set in the world of the high fae, which is closely linked with the mortal world. The first chapter is stellar and starts off with a brutal double murder and the faerie general, Madoc, dragging Jude and her two sisters back to Faerie to be their surrogate father. Jude and her sister Taryn are both humans and suffer a lot at the hands of the fae. Humans are often enchanted and used as servants by the fae and it’s only Madoc’s status as the general that protects them. They are bullied at school, but Faerie is really all they’ve ever known and they are both desperate to fit in.

Jude wants to prove herself by besting the fae and becoming a knight to the royal family. But she is at odds with the young prince Cardan, who’s in her class at school and it unbelievably cruel. When rumours fly that the high king is going to be abdicating his position to one of his 6 children, Jude gets caught up in the drama and the secret scheming for the crown.

Okay, what did I like about this book? I liked Jude as the narrator. She had spunk and she was quite stubborn, but also ballsy. I also liked Cardan – the book is called ‘the cruel prince’ so you know there’s going to be more to Cardan than meets the eye and I was really intrigued as to what his deal is. I also thought Madoc was a fascinating character, even though I HATED him. I liked Vivi too, so I guess the strongest part of this novel for me was the characters, which is a pretty good because in my opinion, characterization is key.

Things I didn’t like – apparently there’s a few of them. Firstly, I did not like the pacing, which I thought was all over the place. The novel starts off strong with the double murder and then gets ridiculously boring for the first third. Things get super intense again two thirds in with the coronation scene, but then they inexplicably slow down during the last third when the novel should be at its climax! I like a good planner, but I didn’t really like having to read about all the planning in lieu of just reading about the action.

I also thought this book was king of predictable. There was a side mystery going on throughout the course of the book, but I didn’t find it particularly compelling and I found it kind of hard to follow, so I was never really that intrigued in trying to solve the mystery because I never felt like I even really knew what the point was. There were definitely some surprising scenes in the book, but overall I could kind of guess where things were going and I was never really surprised by betrayals because I never trusted any of the characters to begin with.

I can’t decide if I liked the relationship between Jude and Taryn or not. They were really all each other had in the world and I found it hard to believe they would be so at odds with one another.

I’ll give Black props though, this book had a lot of characters and I never had any trouble following along with them all (with the exception of the side mystery element). I love when minor characters matter and I love when they have depth, and Holly Black had both in this novel. The Cruel Prince has the perfect kind of cliffhanger. Black has closed off all her loose ends, but she’s still left a wide up open space for the story to move into. I am genuinely excited to see what’s going to happen with Jude and Cardan in the next book and I really like the dynamic between the two of them. The most disappointing part is that I’m going to have to wait a whole year for the next installment!