abookishtype's reviews
2493 reviews

Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families by Judith Giesberg

emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

Judith Giesburg’s book, Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families, is more than what the subtitle promises. Each chapter of this book centers on what the author and the Last Seen Project know about formerly enslaved people and their descendants who used newspaper advertisements but also discusses the lives of Black people before, during, and after the American Civil War. It is one of the best books I’ve read about the Reconstruction period because of its breadth and because of the author’s compassion for the people we may only know because of these advertisements. As of today, there are 4,719 ads in the Last Seen collection online. Their goal is 5,000. I will always wonder how many of these ads resulted in a reunion...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. 

The Quiet Librarian by Allen Eskens

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

5.0

Hana Babić has been laying low for a very long time when the past reaches out to snatch away one of her only friends. No one in her rural Minnesota town knows that the librarian who always wears long sleeves once had a different name, once lived in the middle of a war zone, and once hunted down the men who brutalized and killed her family. The Quiet Librarian, by Allen Eskens, is anything but quiet...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Rape

Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis

adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Floating Hotel, by Grace Curtis, was a happy find for me, given my fondness for books set in hotels and multi-layered narratives with lots of voices. The Grand Abeona Hotel is kind of a first for me, however, given that the hotel itself actually travels between planets like a very, very large cruise ship. Manager Carl is practiced at keeping customers and staff happy. The hotel is on autopilot. Things should be smooth sailing but there are signs that not all is well at the Grand Abeona...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. 

A Fool's Kabbalah by Steve Stern

challenging dark informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Gershom Scholem has arrived in Offenbach am Main to take on an impossible quest. This professor of Jewish mysticism wants to bring back as many of the books that formerly belonged to Jewish people murdered by the Nazis to Israel, where they can be kept safe for use by scholars. In the years after the war, the Offenbach Archival Depot held millions of books stolen by the Nazis while people tried to figure out what should be done with them. It wasn’t always possible to find the original owners or their descendants. Some books were repatriated to their countries of origin; others were sent to the US Library of Congress and other libraries around the world. A Fool’s Kabbalah, by Steve Stern, follows Gershom as he combs through the mountains of books in Offenbach am Main and travels around Germany, Czechia, and Poland to recover yet more Jewish books for his university in Israel. A Fool’s Kabbalah also contains the story of Menke Klepfisch, a man who cannot resist a joke or a prank even when his quest for a laugh gets people killed...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. 

The Watermark by Sam Mills

challenging emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Escaping into a book is usually a metaphorical act. We can return to reality simply by closing the book, safely returning from our fictional journeys in even the most dire of scenarios. When Jaime and Rachel disappear into a book, however, not only can they not return to reality, there’s a real chance that they might not survive the experience. Sam Mills’s The Watermark is a wild ride through historical fiction, science fiction, and literary fiction; it’s a battle of wills between characters and author for control of the narrative...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. 

The Fourth Consort by Edward Ashton

adventurous funny mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

On earth, Dalton Greaves was slowly drinking himself to death to cope with grief and depression. One would think that this would make him a poor candidate to be an emissary for the galaxy-spanning Unity organization. The giant sentient snails that run Unity, however, hire Dalton because they like his military career and the fact that his recently deceased father was his only relative. In Edward Ashton’s new novel, The Fourth Consort, we get to watch what happens when Dalton puts aside his grief for the promise of a boatload of money if he survives his years of service...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. 

Punished by Ann-Helén Laestadius

challenging dark emotional informative sad slow-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

4.0

None of the five Sámi in Ann-Helén Laestadius’s heartbreaking novel, Punished, want to go to the nomad school in Kiruna. Else-Maj, Marge, Anne-Risten, Jon-Ante, and Nilsa have heard stories about how awful it is there. They’re not allowed to speak their language; they must speak Swedish, even if they don’t know it. They can only go home during breaks. Worst of all is Rita Olsson, the housemother, who loathes the Sámi. In chapters set in the early 1950s and the early to mid-1980s, Laestadius shows us how the abuse these children suffer under Olsson’s “care” and its longterm effects. Rachel Willson-Broyles beautifully translated this moving, harrowing novel...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Violence, and Colonisation

The Crimson Road by A.G. Slatter

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Violet Zennor’s father trained her to be a weapon her entire life, ranting about terrible monsters all the while. Now that Hedrek Zennor is dead, Violet looks forward to a life without hearing about Leech Lords or waiting to be attacked at any moment. A.G. Slatter’s The Crimson Road is another entry in her Sourdough Universe series, featuring a prickly, conflicted, and absolutely lethal protagonist who only takes up her father’s fight when she realizes just how much is at stake. Readers who’ve picked up other books in this loose series will be delighted at the extended cameos of characters from All the Murmuring Bones, The Path of Thorns, and The Briar Book of the Dead...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. 

From These Roots: My Fight with Harvard to Reclaim My Legacy by Tamara Lanier

challenging dark emotional informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

Tamara Lanier’s mother, Mattye, was the family history keeper. She knew the names and stories of relatives going back to one of their oldest known ancestors, an enslaved man known to the family as Papa Renty. After her mother’s death, Lanier tackled the enormous task of searching the historical record for her family and finally writing it all down. In From These Roots, Lanier tells us what happens when a genealogist acquaintance finds a remarkable and troubling collection of daguerreotypes at Harvard’s Peabody Museum that may contain the only known images of Lanier’s ancestors, including Papa Renty...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. 

How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty by Bonny Reichert

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

Bonny Reichert’s father, Solomon (né Szlama Rajchbart), survived the Holocaust before emigrating to Canada in the late 1940s. In How to Share an Egg, Reichert recounts her years-long struggle to understand his relentless desire for everyone to be happy no matter what else is going on—and the ways that his trauma has affected her own life...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.