abbie_'s reviews
1754 reviews

Ghostroots by ‘Pemi Aguda

dark mysterious medium-paced

4.0

Read this one with my short story buddy reader Nadia, and we both really enjoyed it and found it to be a solid collection! 

I wanted a little more from some stories, such as The Dusk Market, Bird Woman and the Masquerades. But others were perfect little nuggets of short story excellence. The Hollow, where a house takes justice for its inhabitants into its own hands (walls?); Girlie, where a house girl gets more than she bargained for at the market; Contributions, where a money-lending circle has to get serious when one of its members refuses to pay up.

The writing was always engaging, the concept so creative and mysterious, just great vibes which is what I always want from a short story collection! 

Deviants by Santanu Bhattacharya

emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

I mostly really enjoyed this book, following the lives of three gay men in India from the 1970s up to now, maybe a little bit further in the future. Through the three men, we see the shifting attitudes towards queer men in India, from laws imposed by colonial rulers and leftover and ingrained, through to the initial repeal of Section 377, its reinstatement, renewed repeal, and today, when Vivaan is able to live *somewhat* freely and out, though there’s still plenty of stigma outside of his family. 

I found Vivaan’s sections jarring in tone. He’s 17 and living in current times, maybe a bit ahead, but his voice notes are read like they’re written by someone who’s maybe never heard a 17 year old talk before. This was especially annoying because content wise, I found Vivaan’s chapters to be the most compelling. So it was a struggle between style and content there. 

I preferred the storytelling style of Mambro’s sections (Vivaan’s uncle) and Sukumar’s, although some of his (Vivaan’s great uncle, we love a queer family), weren’t as compelling as Mambro’s (not his real name, Vivaan’s nickname for him). We’re with Mambro when the law deeming homosexuality illegal is repealed for the first time, when gay men feel safe enough to put their faces to their hook-up app profiles for the first time, when you can get an STD test without fear of being arrested. It’s beautifully written, and then the later section when the law is put back into place 4 years later is just as heart achingly written.

Overall it’s a solid book, moving, but just some stylistic choices that didn’t work for me. 

The Abandoners: Of Mothers and Monsters by Begoña Gómez Urzaiz

informative reflective fast-paced

3.75

I discovered this book via NPR’s best books of 2024 list, someone put them altogether in a TSG challenge and I decided it was a great idea to join a 364-book challenge that I’ll probably never complete. But it did at least lead me to this very interesting collection of essays by Spanish author Begoña Gómez Urzaiz which all explore mothers, real and fictional, who for one reason or another, leave their children. Leaving children is something fathers do all the time and it’s an accepted part of western society. They leave to work, or they just leave full stop, and mothers raise children. The only time it’s acceptable for a mother to leave her children is when abuse is involved, and even then there remains stigma. The women in this book mostly leave their children to pursue careers or dreams, and society makes its disapproval of this choice known. It offers interesting mini bios of figures from arts, and also some interesting perspectives that I was aware of but that I never really articulated. Such as how women, even those who don’t have children, often find themselves discussing them with other women at social or work functions, while men wouldn’t generally discuss kids.

Just one of those books that challenges the way you think, particularly around internalised prejudices we may still hold around mothers. 

Before We Hit the Ground by Selali Fiamanya

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC of Selali Fiamanya’s debut novel! I was really impressed by this debut, the differing POVs all kept my attention well, even if Elom does steal the show. It could have done with a bit more cohesion between the chosen time periods/perspectives, as some parts of the family’s lives felt more glossed over than others, but I appreciate that it’s a fairly wide ranging story which has successfully been contained into 350 pages. We know from the start that tragedy has struck the family, then we go all the way back to the parents, Kodzo and Abena’s, first meeting in Ghana. The pair move to Scotland where they face challenges of being one of the only Black families in their part of Glasgow. Over the years they build their family and careers, an interminable effort to carve out a life for themselves.

Of course I am a sucker for any story which deals with a character coming to terms with their sexuality. Some of Elom’s coming-of-age experiences were so bloody sad - who knew a booze-fuelled week in ‘Shagaluf’ could break my heart lol. Fiamanya did a great job of depicting all sorts of relationships in this book. He perfectly encapsulates the way some relationships in your 20s feel - like everyone else is forming more meaningful relationships and yours are all surface level.

Very moving, looking forward to see what this author comes out with next!

Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda

dark emotional sad fast-paced

3.5

All the reviews calling this book absolutely brutal aren’t exaggerating. I’ve read a few fiction books covering femicide in Mexico, and it’s never an easy topic to read about, but so important to keep talking about, so I’m glad this one made the International Booker longlist. However, I don’t see it making the shortlist, personally. The stories do pack a punch, and I liked the interconnectivity of them, but I think some of them lacked depth. The Smile and Sequins were my two ‘favourites’ in that, they were the ones that stomped on my heart the most. 

I have to agree with another reviewer on StoryGraph who mentioned that the English translations of the colloquial language came off as a bit ‘how do you do, fellow kids?’ I’m sure de la Cerda’s original Spanish flowed more naturally, but sometimes the informal English came off as stilted.

But it is overall a very engaging collection, raw and unafraid to pull back the curtain on the blood, violence and corruption that rule the lives of young girls and women in Mexico. 

Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza

dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

2.5

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC! 

This book is rather confusing, sometimes brilliant, sometimes dull, always quite interesting but never quite grabbing my attention fully… It’s playful if a book about murdered and castrated men can be said to be playful. After reading Reservoir Bitches earlier in the week, and given the frequency of violence against women depicted in Mexican fiction, it was an interesting twist to have men be the subject of the violence for once.

The main character has the same name as the author, a professor assisting a detective in a serial killer case, where men are targeted and mutilated. Mysterious lines of poetry by an Argentine poet are left at the scene of the crime. About 100 pages in, we get a weird, kinda boring little departure into an academic text about said poet. More meta departures follow, leaving the murder behind to venture into experimental, Inception-esque poetry and prose.

I’m not sure I fully grasped what was being put out there, and that’s on me. 

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.25

It’s been too long since I read a Sally Rooney novel, and I still haven’t read Beautiful World. It was glorious to be back wrapped up in her prose, lost in her characters’ heads. Intermezzo is an at times painfully intimate portrayal of brotherhood and grief, love and passion. At first I wasn’t sold on Peter’s (the older brother) perspective, as it was told in a more disjointed style than Ivan’s. But I soon warmed to him as well. His tendencies towards existential thinking and ending his own life were absolutely heartbreaking, so beautifully written they just hit me right in the chest. I love how Rooney is so vague with details pertaining to modern life that her stories feel timeless. Some things are never explicitly stated, but remain meaningful. All the relationships in this book are beautifully depicted, complex, messy, full of history and life. Bonus points for a gorgeously expressive whippet - I love a long dog. 

What I'd Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma

reflective sad fast-paced

2.5

Another audiobook which probably would have fared better in its rating had I found a print version instead. The narrative is super choppy and disconnected, moving back and forth in time and jumping around topics. All the short sections via audio meant it didn’t make a huge impression. I did like the concept, of a young woman grieving her twin and subsequently hyperfixating on some of history’s darkest moments like 9/11 and the holocaust. But would definitely have been more impactful as a print read. 

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

3.25

I keep unintentionally picking up books with very similar themes in quite close succession, and then the second one always ends up getting compared to the first and doesn’t quite match up. Natural Beauty’s contender was Rouge by Mona Awad which I read at the end of December. Both books deal with the wellness beauty trends, consumerism and western beauty standards which prey on young women of colour. The protagonist of Natural Beauty is Chinese-American, a former prodigy pianist now working at Holistik, a high end health & beauty store, to pay for her parents’ medical care. As she progresses further into the company, the darker side of Holistik is revealed.

Honestly I liked the book just fine, but it didn’t blow me away. Perhaps it would have worked better for me in print, but I also had issues with some of the supporting characters who just come and go, conveniently moving the plot along but not offering much else. The horror elements were really well written though - very creepy, icky, gross. 

White Hunger by Aki Ollikainen

dark sad medium-paced

2.0

Award for the most aptly titled book goes to… White Hunger, which is indeed mostly just descriptions of snow and how hungry people are. I suppose at a stretch it’s a bit more than that, but not much. It’s Finland, there’s famine, there’s a lot of barren wasteland covered in snow. It follows one desperate family as they travel towards St Petersburg where there’s supposedly food, braving the brutal terrain and begging for food wherever possible. But for the women there’s even more to be feared than just hunger and cold weather, as the men in this book seem to think access to a woman’s body is their right. There are some horrific rape scenes in these short pages, and I can’t say I thought they added a great deal. 

I do like a bleak book but I think this one was just on the wrong side of bleak for me.