Reviews with content warning for Addiction - Sabrina & Corina: Stories

Sabrina & Corina is a collection of short stories on a range of topics including death, sickness, grief, loss, oppression and also culture, history, love, family, strength in the face of adversity, perseverance, and coming of age.

More specifically, the topics that I found most moved by were the talk of ‘westward expansion’, the destruction of native peoples and cultures, whitewashing and gentrification, western medicine vs herbal medicine, and the mistreatment and objectification of women.

Of the eleven stories, my favorites were:
Remedies
Tomi
Any Further West
All Her Names
Ghost Sickness (this one shook me most)

Biggest takeaway quotes/thoughts for me:
- “afraid of letting any amount of death work its way into me”
- “that was the first time that I missed someone while sitting right next to them”
- “Sabrina was to forever face ceilings and casket tops padded in pink satin”
- white people (“Generations of tragedy free living”) steam rolling over native culture, destroying their lands and throwing up concrete gentrification jungles that only erode years later in our failing society. (The us’ history and mistreatment of peoples never fails to devastate me, nor should it - we should constantly be reminding ourselves and educating ourselves, not try to brush anything under the rug like we tend to in the us)
- “people, we learned, weren’t permanent and neither were their sicknesses”
- “maidens strapped to railroad tracks and cowboy heroes shot dead” (“heroes”)
- “money comes with chains”
- “you make me feel full, I’m heavy with you”

Content Warnings

asainspace's review

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emotional funny mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Clever, beautiful, interesting short stories/character sketches. I was really invested in every character even though the stories were short. A quick read. Will definitely be reading more by this author!

Content Warnings

euphoricallydreaming's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

It's really good! I found some of the stories depressing, so I hesitate to say that I liked it for the actual stories, but it was really well written and the stories were incredibly important

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mengzhenreads's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

My favorite stories from this collection were Sugar Babies, Julian Plaza, Sabrina & Corina, and Tomi.

Overall, a good collection of stories that were generally thought-provoking and interesting. I didn't enjoy all the stories equally but it was still a good read.

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sofipitch's review

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

Most short story collections at least have a few stories that aren't that good, but here every single story was beautiful, no flops. They also seemed to flow together very well, the themes all similar yet the stories distinct. This was incredible and I will be checking out more books by Fajardo-Anstine

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gabbygarcia's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I want Ghost Sickness to be an entire novel

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garynoplastie's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced

4.0

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spinesinaline's review

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challenging reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Took a while for me to get into this one but the stories only got better and the last (Ghost Sickness) was definitely my favourite.

A lot of the stories were about abuses against women, from extreme physical abuse to systemic discrimination. As I’ve talked about before, this is one of my least favourite topics in books so it turned me off at first, especially as I hadn’t heard this about the stories from all the hype I’d seen for this collection. Still, the author’s strength in writing shines through so they were still enjoyable to read.

One point to mention, there were several uncomfortable uses of outdated terminology relating to Indigenous peoples. I assume part of this is due to the time period the author has set these stories in but I don’t think it was necessary.

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