Tag: 2018 publication

I Might Regret This

2 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Abbi Jacobson
Genres: Non-fiction, Memoir, Humour
Pub date: Oct. 2018 (read Nov. 2018)

Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

First of all, I LOVE Broad City and it was definitely the primary motivation in me reading this book. I’m a bit late to the game and I only discovered Broad City last year, but I actually love everything about it. So when I saw Abbi was publishing a book, I had to have it.

I Might Regret This is a collection of essays and drawings circling around a road trip Abbi took last year across the US. She shares some thoughts about her trip, some general thoughts about her life and recent break-up, and some stories about her experience working in comedy. It was a fun book and I really enjoyed some of the essays, but unfortunately others felt a little bit like, what’s the point?

The full title of the book is “I Might Regret This: Drawings,Essays, Vulnerabilities. and Other Stuff”. I want to highlight the vulnerabilities, because I think that was the strongest part of the book. I think one of the reasons people like to read celebrity memoirs is to learn something new about that person and what makes them human. Famous people can sometimes seem really unrelatable, so showing us some of their vulnerabilities makes them seem a little more human.

I really like Abbi’s stories about making it in comedy, the challenges of being a woman in comedy, and how scary and debilitating it can be to achieve success and when to acknowledge it’s time to try something new. I liked reading about her experiences and the challenges she has faced. I liked reading about her break-up, fears, anxieties, and vulnerabilities. I think Abbi and Ilana are both already very relatable and reading about her experiences re-iterates the point that she’s really not that different from anyone else. Plus, it’s cool seeing someone make it on their own.

I think that Abbi and Ilana are pioneers in their own way. Their characters are real and gritty in a way that we don’t often see on television. They’re not afraid to be real – they don’t have their lives figured out, they make mistakes, they don’t have good jobs, and they smoke a lot of pot. They care about the world and social issues, yet it’s so much easier for them to navigate the world by virtue of being white and they get away with a lot of bullshit. But I love that their friendship is central to Broad City and everything else is secondary. They don’t really fight with each other and they always put another first in every situation. It’s so lovely to see a female relationship like that portrayed on TV. I know they care about social issues like equality for women, people of colour, and every spectrum of LGBTQIA. I would have loved to hear Abbi’s opinions on social issues or stories about her relationship with Ilana, but instead this memoir tells some kind of trivial stories about her road trip that are kind of funny, but mostly lacking in any kind of real talk.

It hurts me to say that because I think Abbi has created something really unique and important with Broad City, and I enjoyed her stories about her experience, but some of the content in this book seemed a little trivial and I was just expecting more. It probably doesn’t help that I immediately followed up Abbi’s book with Phoebe Robinson’s new book, Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay, which is both smart and funny and doesn’t shy away from pulling the punches on social issues such as institutionalized racism and how white women need to show up for women of colour and make their feminism more intersectional. Robinson’s writing has been totally blowing me away and in retrospect, makes this book seem a little trifling.

That said, this is Abbi’s first book (and not Robinson’s) and it is a little unfair to compare the two. I think Abbi was going for something very different in this book, but as much as I wanted to love it, it fell a little flat. I still think it’s a 3-star read, it just didn’t blow me away. But I’m still stoked for season 5 of Broad City!

All Your Perfects

2 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Colleen Hoover
Genres: Romance, Fiction
Pub date: Jul. 2018 (read Oct. 2018)

Colleen Hoover is pretty hit or miss for me and it confuses me how sometimes she gets it so right, and other times so wrong. I loved It Ends With Us and thought it did a great job in helping people empathize with women who are victims of domestic violence and why it is sometimes hard for them to leave abusive relationships. In contrast, I hated Without Merit and thought it had some extremely problematic elements, so much so that I kind of decided Hoover might not be for me.

I had no intentions of reading this one, but of course it came up in the goodreads choice awards under romance and I got curious and checked out what some other readers had to say. Once I discovered what the book was about, I totally changed my mind and decided to give it a chance because it addresses a topic that I haven’t seen discussed in many novels. I’m going to discuss that topic because it’s not really a spoiler, it comes up early in the book, but I know some people like to go into Hoover’s book totally blind, so if that is you, stop reading my review here. Just know that this book did surprise me in a good way. The rest of you, let’s get into it.

This book is about infertility and it is what drew me into it since I’m not a big lover of romance novels. Infertility is something a lot of people struggle with and it really is an invisible grief. Society doesn’t talk about infertility, miscarriage, or people who just plain don’t want children. For some reason, a lot of people seem to think that a women’s reproductive decisions are a fair topic in any conversation, and it’s not uncommon to ask women if and when they want to have children. Lots of people aren’t bothered by it, but I think we need to quit asking this question outside of close personal relationships because it can be extremely uncomfortable, even painful, to some people.

I know women who aren’t planning to have kids at all and find this question uncomfortable because they don’t like telling strangers and acquaintances they don’t want kids because it’s not really the acceptable answer in our society and is generally followed up with some flippant comment about how they’ll regret not having kids or change their mind. I know fewer women who have struggled with infertility, but this is likely a by-product of me still being in my 20’s and the fact that unless it happened to a really good friend, most people don’t talk about struggles with infertility. Even the stats are unclear, a quick search on miscarriage rates in Canada reveals that somewhere between 15 and 25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, and 12 to 16% of Canadian couples have infertility. So I was inspired to pick this up and see how Hoover would address some of these uncomfortable topics.

Overall I thought she did a pretty good job. All Your Perfects basically tells the story of a couple, Quinn and Graham, and how they meet, fall in love, and then start to fall apart in the wake of Quinn’s infertility and desire for them to be parents. It’s an extremely emotional read and I would definitely give a trigger warning for those who have experienced infertility. I do want to applaud Hoover for this book because she addresses a wide range of symptoms of infertility, such as how Quinn struggles to answer questions about when she’ll have children and how she had to leave social media because she couldn’t take all the posts about other people’s children because they just continuously reminded her of what she considered her failure as a woman. But Hoover also address how heartbreaking and damaging infertility can be to a marriage when you discover all the hopes and dreams you had for yourselves might be out of reach. The story broke my heart, but I had a huge amount of empathy for Quinn and understood how this one thing could become so monumental in her relationship and how difficult it could be to come back from that.

Like I said, the story focuses not just on Graham and Quinn’s infertility, but also on how they meet and fall in love. It’s told in an alternating time line, switching back and forth between the first time they met and their current struggle to become parents and the effect it has on their marriage. I thought this was a great way to break up the story because even though I was more interested in the infertility story, it was so sad that I think it would have been emotionally overwhelming to only tell that story. It was nice to get a break every chapter to go back to the excitement of when Quinn and Graham are falling in love and discover what it is they love about each other.

This is still ultimately a romance novel, but I like that it’s a romance novel with substance. It’s not all sunshine and roses in a marriage and Hoover’s not afraid to get into the nitty gritty of it. The only thing I have to say though it that as sweet as Graham was, I still had some problems with his character, or more specifically, how Hoover writes his character. Graham was definitely a sweet guy like 90% of the time, but he had some problematic behaviours that I’m almost certain Hoover doesn’t recognize as problematic. What I mostly had a problem with is that Graham actually had some questionably abusive behaviours that were sometimes passed off as romantic. The most concerning to me was how he would punch and hit things when he was upset. Just because he’s never physically violent against people, when you hit things it still conveys a message of the violent feelings you have for a person, even if you don’t take them out directly on that person. I don’t find violent expressions of rage attractive ever and I’m not going to be impressed just because you never actually hit people. Plus Graham comes on really strong in the beginning of the novel and I thought it was just too much and he needed to respect Quinn’s space and her relationships. That was my main beef with the book, because we’re obviously meant to like Graham, but he was never going to totally win me over because of some of these behaviours.

That said, I just have to say that Colleen Hoover is the MASTER of first chapters. This is my third CoHo book and as much as I disliked Without Merit, all three chapters have had dynamite beginnings. You wouldn’t think that romance books would be capable of totally hauling you into a plot in the first chapter, but Hoover has first chapters on lock.

So overall, still not the biggest fan of how Colleen writes romance, but really into how she’s not afraid to tackle important women’s issues in her books. I do like a good romance novel every now and then and I like that this is more than just a romance book and that it has a plot that I’m sure will mean a lot to many women who share this pain, but have never seen it written to paper.

Kingdom of Ash

2 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Genres: Fantasy
Pub date: Oct. 23, 2018 (read Oct. 2018)
Series: Throne of Glass Book #7

This is going to be a beast of a review for a 1,000 page beast of book. Kingdom of Ash has totally taken over my life this past week and I have so many thoughts on the conclusion to this epic series.

As usual, I’m a little torn on how to rate this. Did I enjoy reading it? Absolutely. Was it intense? Undoubtedly. Am I satisfied with the ending? Mostly. Did it still have problematic elements? Sadly, yes.

This series has had a lot of ups and downs over the years. Upon re-reading the series, I’ve come to the conclusion that Crown of Midnight and Empire of Storms were my favourite books in the series, and Tower of Dawn was my least favourite. KoA kept me on the edge of my seat for the full 1,000 pages, but it could definitely have been shorter and I don’t think it will top my list for favourite book in the series.

Disclaimer, I won’t be able to keep this review spoiler free, so if you haven’t read the book yet, I would hold off on reading this review.

First off, the beginning of this book is really dark. I mean, I was expecting it to be dark based on how Empire of Storms ended, but I was not anticipating just how far into the depths this would go. We know at the end of EoS that Aelin is trapped by Maeve and likely to be tortured, but it was so much darker and worse than I expected. In fact, my spirits were so low in the first 300 pages of this book that I almost had to put it aside for a while and I was unsure whether Maas would be able to redeem the story after bringing it to such a low point. However, though I could have done without some of the descriptions and inference of how Aelin was tortured (I really hate any depictions of torture), I appreciate that Maas didn’t shy away from the impact it had on Aelin. Aelin is a mess after escaping from Maeve and she doesn’t bounce back. Every day is a struggle and she tries to put on a brave face for the people around her, but we know she has been broken. She is so tired of the war and the sacrifices demanded of her and she repeatedly says she just wants it to be over. Her feelings rang so true for me and I was really glad Maas wrote Aelin this way and didn’t shy away from the impact it would have on her. As a side note, I also loved the inclusion of Rowan asking Aelin for consent before touching or kissing her again after she escapes Maeve. So overall, I thought Rowan and Aelin were really well done in this book. There were still a lot of sex scenes (overall, not just Aelin and Rowan), but they were definitely more low key and background to the plot.

My second favourite part of the story was by far Dorian. I thought Dorian kicked some ass in this book. He was really more of a tag along character in EoS. He was recovering from his ordeal with the valg prince and didn’t contribute a lot to the story. But Dorian is a king in his own right and I wanted to see him play a larger role in the story. Maas definitely delivered in KoA. He takes control of his own power, makes his own decisions based on the needs of his kingdom over his personal (or anyone else’s) wishes. He is not afraid and takes on the enormous burden of finding the third wyrdkey. My favourite moment in his story arc was when he tricks Maeve. I figured he had some other plan up his sleeve, but I ultimately expected him to be overcome by Maeve and I loved when he destroyed Morath all on his own. The only thing I wasn’t into was Dorian and Manon’s relationship. There’s not really any chemistry between them and I found it hard to believe someone as badass as Manon would be into someone like Dorian. I didn’t like when he basically made her ask him to stay, but I did like that they both understood that she would ultimately never be happy with Dorian, and that while she liked him, her Queendom meant way more to her. She wanted to win back and live in the Wastes and Dorian wanted to rebuild his kingdom.

Finally, I was pretty into Elide in this book. In my review of Empire of Storms, I talked about how important of a character Elide is because she’s essentially the only one without any physical strengths, but she gets by just fine on her wits. I was thrilled to see her play spy in Doranelle at the beginning of the book and to see her repeatedly save her friends throughout the story. She plays a huge role in winning the war and I was shocked at how important her and Yrene were to the conclusion of the story. I just expected Maas to give the glory to one of the other characters, and I actually thought it was great that she wrote Yrene and Elide as two of the heroes of the story. The only thing I didn’t like was how mean Elide was to Lorcan at the beginning. I thought it was justified at the end of EoS, and I could see her just ignoring him through this book, but she was actively mean to him, which I didn’t like.

That said, I did really like Lorcan in this book and I LOVED Fenrys. Fenrys was kind of irrelevant in EoS, but his story in this book is devastating, yet beautiful. He and Aelin suffered so much and I really liked the relationship Maas developed between them. How two people who had suffered so much, could understand each other so well and be a comfort to one another while they both tried to heal themselves. Plus I thought their storyline was clever and I loved their secret code. As for Lorcan, he’s a character who has developed so much since the start of EoS, when he was basically just a mindless killing machine, to finally finding some humanity and reason for living. He ended up being a very sensitive character and proves that even after 500 years, people are still capable of change.

While we’re talking about the cadre, I will say that I’ve never really cared for Gavriel. He was arguably the nicest of the cadre at the beginning, but he kind of just felt irrelevant. I didn’t care at all about him being Aedion’s dad and thought it was totally unnecessary filler. Plus I thought his reunion with Aedion was actually the worst thing ever. I was not impressed that Maas brought them together for like a minute, only to tear them apart again. I feel like she was trying to make this into a great sacrifice, but like, I never really cared about Gavriel and I think she only wrote this scene to get out of having to harm any of her other more important characters. It just felt kind of cheap.

Which is really one of the biggest complaints I have about this book. If you’re still reading this review and haven’t read the book, I’m about the get into major spoilers now. My complaint is that it felt unrealistic that nobody from Aelin’s court died at the end. I was gearing myself up for Dorian potentially sacrificing himself, which would have broke my heart, but been meaningful. I never really believed that Maas would see through the “queen who was promised” scenario because I just didn’t think she would separate her star crossed lovers, Aelin and Rowan. But really, no one died (I’ll get to the Thirteen). Aedion and Lysandra were fighting that tedious battle in Terrasen for the entirety of the novel, I found it very improbable that one of them wouldn’t die.

Aedion and Lysandra’s story was easily my least favourite sub-plot in this book. It was boring and so repetitive. Plus, the timeline made no sense. They fought essentially the same battle for the entire time that it took Aelin to escape, travel to Erilea over the span of weeks, take back Anielle, and then travel to Terrasen (again, over multiple weeks). I felt like it was supposed to create this huge sense of urgency, which it did, but it just wasn’t believable. Plus it was really boring! Also, side note, are we seriously supposed to believe this entire SERIES took place in just over a year? Girl please. There is no way Aelin escaped Endovier; dated Dorian and Chaol; saw her friend murdered; spent MONTHS in Wendlyn; met, fought, fell in love with, and MARRIED Rowan; came to terms with her heritage as queen; killed the king and brought down the glass castle; amassed Arobynn’s fortune and multiple armies; was captured for MONTHS and escaped; all in the span of ONE YEAR. Just no, not possible. She cannot possibly still be only 19 years old.

One of the main things I didn’t like about A Court of Wings and Ruin was that it was all about war and strategy and tactics. Maas lost a lot of the character development that made ACoMaF so great by making ACoTaR a more plot driven novel versus character driven (like ACoMaF was). I think she did a better job here, it was definitely still a character driven novel, but after a while battles just get boring and don’t necessarily drive your plot forward. Aedion and Lysandra’s plotline really needed more substance to it, it was just not enough to carry throughout the entire book. Plus, I really hate Aedion. Like a lot – especially at the beginning of this book. He is actually so mean to Lysandra. I said I didn’t like how Elide was mean to Lorcan, but I felt she was at least a little justified, whereas all Lysandra ever does is try to do what her Queen has asked of her and Aedion treats her like shit for it. I’ve never liked Aedion because he is so arrogant and borderline abusive, but he went to full abusive in this book and after he threw Lysandra out in the snow, I finally parted ways with him forever. In my eyes, he lost any chance of redemption and I really hoped Maas wouldn’t pair him and Lysandra together at the end. He was too mean to her and actually abusive. Super pissed about their storyline. In my opinion, Aedion would have been the perfect character to kill off. Someone needed to die, he’s still beloved, but like, we don’t need him.

Have I got through all the characters yet? There’s so freaking many! I don’t have much more to say about Chaol and Yrene or Nesryn. Honestly, did Tower of Dawn really even matter that much? When I read it I was like, oh this is actually really important to the storyline, but Aelin figured out Maeve was valg on her own anyways, so the only thing Tower of Dawn really added to this book was a huge army and a healer. We really didn’t need a 700 page book for that and I just thought all the characters from Tower of Dawn felt really two dimensional in this book. Everyone from EoS had this real depth to their characters, but Nesryn, Sartaq, Borte, and Falkan all felt like fillers. Yrene ended up being important, but for someone who was one of the core characters of the original series, I felt Chaol didn’t add that much to this story. I was glad to see him using his chair, cane, and horse, without complaining about it, and that he let Yrene live her life and wasn’t overprotective of her. I also loved seeing him and Dorian reunited, but overall Chaol just felt a little secondary.

And finally, Manon. I cried real tears for Asterin and the Thirteen! I loved how they died in that I thought it was a really powerful scene, but again, I kind of think Maas set them up to be the sacrifice over other characters. I loved watching them interact with the Crochans and how the Thirteen have always inspired Manon to be a better person. I was disappointed that Manon’s storyline seemed to focus more on Dorian than the Thirteen though. I don’t resent Maas for their sacrifice, because I did think it was really beautiful and well done, but I wish it had maybe been a little later in the plot? I don’t see how Manon could have ever come back from that. It really would have destroyed her. But I did love the scenes with the Bluebloods and that it was Petrah who took down Iskra.

I read an observation recently about how Manon should have been gay in this series and now I can’t stop thinking about it now. Maas has gotten push back about her books for not being diverse and being super straight. She tried to address this in ACoWaR by having Mor come out as gay, and the more I think it about it, it would have been so easy for Manon to have been gay. The witches totally don’t care about men at all, there are no male witches (well some in the Crochans I guess), and Manon is all about the sisterhood. Like, Manon and Asterin would have made the best couple ever. They definitely had more chemistry than Manon and Dorian.

Anyways, it brings me to another complaint about Maas’ books in general. I don’t get what the weird obsession is with mates and how the mating bond is like the strongest thing in existence. There’s definitely some abusive mates out there who probably trap each other in crappy relationships. In ACoMaF, Rhys even talks about how his parents were mates but weren’t actually that great together and that mates don’t always love each other, so it just seems like a really crappy system for finding your life partner. And I don’t get why is Maas so obsessed with pairing off every single one of her characters. Are there any single characters in this series? Because I can’t think of any? Fenrys and Gavriel are the only ones that come to mind, but not even Gavriel really because he’s supposedly still in love with Aedion’s mother who died. It just gets a little tedious and repetitive when every single main character turns out to be mates with another main character. Even Aedion and Lysandra? Like I knew they were going to end up together, but I didn’t think Maas was going to push the mate thing on them too. (and even the wvyerns have mates, lol, although kind of cute because Abraxos is adorable)

So I obviously have complaints about this book/series. I thought the whole Aelin escaping death thing was too convenient. It kind of cheapened the whole “queen who was promised” storyline and the fact that the Gods didn’t even take Erawan with them? What the hell?! Why did we just waste 3 books searching for wrydkeys, who even cares if it doesn’t get rid of Erawan?

Maas had the perfect setup to save both Aelin and Dorian, I don’t know why she didn’t use it? It made sense that Aelin would want to take the burden upon herself, and her asking Dorian to share the burden would be a great lesson in relying on your friends. You don’t have to do everything yourself, take everything on yourself – arguably one of Aelin’s biggest flaws. The idea that the two of them could each give half of their power was such a brilliant plot element in my opinion and would have been a really nice and sentimental moment about friendship. But no, Aelin had to take it all on herself and then have Maas make up some stupid way for her to escape it all. Did anyone else pick up on that Rhysand cameo by the way? I thought that was the freaking weirdest thing ever. I also missed the part in the plot where the keys were about sending the gods away… I thought it was just about sealing the gate Erawan was using and sending him back. I didn’t realize we were going to banish the gods as well. Ballsy move Maas, but it just didn’t really seem to fit the rest of the story.

However, I did like that Aelin actually lost her powers (though this still could have been accomplished with each her and Dorian each giving half their power). But I didn’t like that she had to lose her humanity. Also just felt very cheap. But I liked that she ultimately learns to rely on her friends by letting Elide, Yrene, and Dorian take care of Erawan, and that she took on Maeve without her powers. It said more about the character of the cast that they weren’t afraid to take on these two demons, even with reduced powers. So I actually did really like the conclusion of the book, with the exception of the random wolf tribe faes coming in at the end. They are literally never mentioned anywhere in the book, so it felt really anti-climatic and cheap. Plus, I need someone to explain to me how Aelin opened up all the portals, because that felt like a huge plot hole to me.

Mostly the battle scenes just felt really repetitive. I was nervous that this would happen after how ACoWaR ended. There were a lot of battles going on in this book, and they were constantly saved by a new ally showing up in the nick of time, only to have Erawan again send more forces that again warranted the arrival of yet another ally to save them. But the wolf tribe was by far the weirdest, because it didn’t even seem like it was really necessary. The Khagan’s forces seemed to mostly have everything under control, and if you’re just going to have all the armies collapse when Erawan dies, than you didn’t really need an extra army anyways.

I think that’s most of what I wanted to say. I do have one last comment about how Maas seems to have lifted a few plot points and phrases out of the Lord of the Rings movies/books. I picked up a few of them myself and was kind of like, “I think that’s from LoTR”, but didn’t think that much of it, but then I read this review about it and realized just how many times some things seems to be lifted from LoTR, so I think it’s worth mentioning.

I have ended up voicing a lot of complaints here, so despite how it might seem, I did actually really enjoy this book. I don’t think I’ll be in a hurry to re-read it and there were definitely problematic elements, but there was also a lot that I really liked about it. Like I said, I actually really liked the conclusion and I will be sad to part ways with this series. It’s definitely been a journey and it’s great to see epic fantasy series like this coming from female authors. Writers are definitely held to a higher standard these days, but it’s not an excuse to not have diversity in your books. Sarah started writing this series like 15 years ago, so it may be interesting to see what she comes up with after finally parting ways with something she’s been working on for half her life. This series was incredibly impressive in scope and I think I’ll always have fond feelings for it. But now I am feeling thoroughly wiped out and I need to go read anything that is not fantasy while I decompress.

Much love!

The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

2 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐.5
Author: Mackenzi Lee
Genres: Young Adult, Historical Fantasy, LBGTQIA+
Pub date: Oct. 2nd. 2018 (read Oct. 2018)
Series: Montague Siblings #2

I’m a little bit on the fence for how to rate The Lady’s Guide. On one hand, it was wonderful, but I just didn’t love it quite as much as The Gentleman’s Guide. There were parts of this that I loved, but I also thought the plot progression was a little awkward and slow moving at times.

Felicity was my favourite character from The Gentleman’s Guide and I thought this book had a really strong start with her getting proposed to, but deciding to pursue medicine instead, despite being routinely ignored by medical schools since it’s the 1700’s and she’s a woman. Mackenzi Lee is great at writing historical fiction that induces that perfect level of righteous rage and indication at the injustices the characters face because while their dilemma’s are historical, the issues they face are not. Felicity is discriminated against because of her sex and dreams of more than just a life as a wife, something I’m sure many women can still relate to. But Felicity is unwilling to give up on her dreams and pursues a medical career through whatever means necessary.

I loved Johanna in this book. I love that she had a great love of the natural world as well as a love for make-up, dresses, and all things fancy. Felicity boxed herself in, thinking that her ambition made her different from all other women, looking down on Johanna for still embracing femininity. But Johanna and Sim both proved that what you look like doesn’t define you and that having ambition outside of your traditional gender roles doesn’t make you better than any other woman. They both helped Felicity to grow and understand that just because your progression doesn’t look the way you want it to (going to medical school), doesn’t mean that you can’t adapt your ambition and your path. Sometimes we just won’t get what our heart desires, but it doesn’t mean we have to be cut out entirely from those dreams, we just need to adapt them.

Sadly I just didn’t find this book quite as funny as The Gentleman’s Guide though. I loved that the plot of this book also featured a lot of travel around Europe, but something about it just didn’t flow as well. Some parts were really fun and interesting, while other parts dragged. The ending is very ambiguous, with two parties debating the best course of action. Both positions had merits, but I felt that Johanna and Felicity’s motivation wasn’t really clear and that the story lacked resolution. With the exception of the petticoats, I just felt the story wasn’t really that clever. It was interesting, but I wasn’t really impressed with how the story played out and I wanted more. Like I said, I liked all the awesome female characters in this book, particularly Johanna, but I felt Sim was a little underdeveloped.

So overall, I think I will rate this 3.5 stars. The author definitely did some fun and interesting stuff with the plot and characters. I love that diversity is a priority for her and I liked that Felicity was asexual, something not often represented in literature. But I didn’t find this book as funny and it was one of the key things I wanted from this book.

Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree

2 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
Genres: Young Adult, Historical Fiction
Pub date: Sep. 4, 2018 (read Oct. 2018)

The most overwhelming feeling I have upon finishing this book is that I’m just so glad it exists. Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree is about Boko Haram and the many girls and children they have abducted to their cause since 2009. You may recall in 2014 when Boko Haram kidnapped 276 female students from their dormitory in Chibok, Nigeria. Because of the large number of girls that were kidnapped, the crisis finally garnered international attention and forced the Nigerian Government to take real action in rescuing the stolen girls.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a one off event. Boko Harem has been pillaging and killing in the North of Nigeria since 2009 and while many of the Chibok girls have escaped, been released, or been rescued since then, many have not. Boko Haram is a radical Islamic group that believe in Sharia law and absolute Islamic government. They kill men and kidnap girls, women, and children, forcing them to convert to islam and act as slaves in their outposts hidden deep in the Sambisa Forest. The boys are radicalized and the girls either act as slaves or are married off to Boko Haram fighters called the Rijale.

Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree is a short book told from the point of view of a kidnapped young girl. She is not one of the Chibok girls, but she was stolen from her village along with several of her friends. She dreams of winning a scholarship to attend university and become educated, but instead she is forced to convert to Islam, change her name, and marry one of the Rijale and attend to his home. Her dreams sustain her through the ordeal and remind her of who she is and that Boko Harem does not adequately represent Islam. But it kills her to watch her best friend lose her grip on reality, fall for her new husband, and begins touting the benefits of Boko Harem and Sharia Law.

There’s nothing I would change about this book. I thought it struck a wonderful balance between introducing us to Nigerian village life and the hopes and dreams of these young girls to the devastating contrast of life under Boko Haram. It’s easy for Westerners to become desensitized to these stories, and I loved that Nwaubani spent the first half of the book developing characters before focusing on the girls kidnapping. It’s an upsetting read, to be sure, but an important one to remind us of the atrocities that Boko Harem has committed, and that are still ongoing.

Thanks to HarperCollins Canada and HCC Frenzy for providing me with a free review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree is currently available in stores.