amyvl93's reviews
902 reviews

This One Sky Day by Leone Ross

adventurous challenging reflective slow-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

2.5

 This is a tricky one - as it's really a case of this book not being for me, rather than it being a bad book (I think). This One Sky Day is set on the fictional Caribbean island of Popisho, where everyone has something magic about them, from extra strength, to mind-reading, to healing, to lie detecting. As the title suggests, this is a novel that takes place on one day across numerous characters working through their own lives.

I cannot quite wrap my head around the creativity that Ross has in creating Popisho as its own mini world, with a political history, systems of religion, geography and all of the magical powers mentioned. The novel is also written in a slight dialect which completely immerses you in the world that Ross has created. Despite the deeply creative setting, her characters are all grappling with usual issues - grief, love, infidelity, sexuality - and there are times where the writing on this is beautiful, and there is some fantastic food writing here.

However. The pacing of this lost me a bit, it's quite meandering and it's quite easy to get lost in the individual character stories. Whilst the creativity on display in great, I also found it hard to keep track of all the magical changes. The central 'event' in this novel also lost me pretty hard unfortunately. 

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

emotional informative reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

I really liked The Island of Missing Trees, a novel about Cyprus and the lasting impacts of the civil war, and the partition of the island between Greece and Turkey.

The novel follows Ada in contemporary London, who has recently lost her mother (who was Turkish Cypriot) and is now living just with her father (a Greek Cypriot), who appears more interested in looking after his plants, in particular a fig tree, than anything else; and also explores the history of the family and by extension Cyprus from the 1970s to the almost present.

Large portions of this novel are narrated by a fig tree, which I was initially very unsure of, but came to really love - Shafak really considers the role of nature and how that is changed and not changed by human activity and cruelty. The device also enables some moments of connection that wouldn't otherwise happen - there's a particularly affecting few pages about a parrot which had me almost in tears when I read this next to the pool on holiday.

The characters that are drawn here are also incredibly well drawn - Kostas and Dafne shift from their idealistic teenage selves to adults deeply impacted by what they experience and missed from their time during and after the war, and Ada felt like a very real teenager, dealing with both grief and wanting to better understand the lives her parents led. I also fell in love with the tavern owners and adored all the descriptions of food here.

What is particularly affecting though, especially given the world we're living in now, is the writing of the random, unnecessary acts of violence meted out during the war, and the work done afterwards to enable people to grieve and mourn those they lost. I'm so happy this was longlisted for the Women's Prize which meant I picked it up earlier than planned, and I'm excited to see it has made the shortlist too.

 

The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

challenging emotional funny slow-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? Yes

3.75

 I was really intrigued by The Book of Form & Emptiness when it was longlisted for the Women's Prize. The novel follows Benny, whose Dad dies in a slightly ridiculous accident when he is 12, and during his grief he begins to hear inanimate objects speaking; as his mother Annabelle hides her feelings by beginning to hoard objects, starting with things she needs for work and expanding to snowglobes, craft supplies and much more.

I really liked the narrative voice within this novel - with an actual book narrating Benny and Annabelle's stories at times, and Ozeki really focused on the magic of storytelling and libraries as places of relative safety. I also felt really moved by Annabelle's story, the way her buying of things slides from something relatively benign and familiar into much more of a worry was excellent. Benny was also a really well drawn character - he felt like a realistic teenage boy grappling with extraordinary events.

I started by totally loving this novel, but will say my love waned as the book progressed as there is simply so much happening here - as Benny's voices progress we also have commentary on mental health treatment, as well as philosophy and some meta use of Borges, how we treat those outside of the norm of society (and I'm not sure I was sold on how sympathetically we were supposed to see some of those characters), how the overwhelm of information can impact on us, and a satire on Marie Kondo. I found Ozeki's writing generally engaging, but as the plot threads increased I will admit that my interest in picking up the novel waned. However, I'm very excited to revisit Ozeki's back catalogue now I've got a taste for her writing. 

Careless by Kirsty Capes

emotional inspiring 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? Yes

3.5

 Part of my attempt to read the Women's Prize longlist, I already had Careless, so figured it would be a good place to start. The novel follows Bess, a teenager who lives in foster care in the 1990s, who finds out that she is pregnant in the opening pages. The novel then follows her relationship with Boy, who got her pregnant, and her turmoil over what to do about being pregnant.

Capes is a care-experienced young person, so there is also lots of reflection in here on the challenging experiences that children within the care system can have, both from foster families and from the professionals who work with them. I do think the comparison with Bess' friends family was a little heavy-handed, particularly the neat way in which her storyline was tied up didn't quite chime with the character motivations elsewhere.

This has had some sniffy reviews, and I think this is in part as Careless does feel written with a slightly younger audience in mind - it reminded me a lot of novels I read growing up, and I wonder if targeting it at adults means that a lot of readers who would love this may not pick it up. Bess as a character whilst not always making the best choices, is someone I definitely grew to care deeply for as the novel progressed - and whilst the novel didn't necessarily have a happily ever after ending, it did feel very hopeful. 

Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging by Afua Hirsch

challenging informative slow-paced

3.0

 Brit(ish) is part memoir, part history, part manifesto by Afua Hirsch, which was everywhere when it was first published a few years ago. I'm a little late to the party - but I'm still glad I read it. I found that some of the history that Hirsch recounts be similar to what I've read in other books, but there were things in here that took me by surprise (the media outcry over a black man being cast as Othello in the late 1990s for instance!) and I found Hirsch's personal narrative to be interesting, particularly in her looking for a community and home both within the UK and Africa, and reckoning with the impact of her reflective affluence on her experiences in comparison to those of her partners. I did feel that the narrative structure bounced around a bit which meant there was a bit of repetition and the strands of arguments were not always easy to follow - I would have also found a bit more reflection on her experience of her Jewish heritage interesting, it gets a relatively small mention, perhaps in keeping with Hirsch's argument that she is more visibly black and therefore that is her identity according to others, but that would have been interesting nonetheless. 

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

dark mysterious fast-paced

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

2.0

 

I picked this up after my friend was desperate to talk to someone about it and it whilst it was a pacey read it was one that I found just okay. It follows a psychotherapist, Theo, who is obsessed with a murder of a famous photographer apparently by his artist wife, Alicia, who has not spoken a word since it took place - he is convinced that he is the only person who can treat her and so gets a job at the treatment facility that she lives in - and we then get a split narrative between Theo and Alicia's diary which charts events up to the murder. The writing was pacey, but in general I found that not all the twists really worked for me, and I was left at the end with a pretty big why that I couldn't really resolve.

 

If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha

challenging dark 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

If I Had Your Face is I think one of the only books I've read set in contemporary Korea, and Frances Cha's novel really lifts the lid on the challenges of life as a woman in the country. Following the intertwining lives of different women - she explores beauty standards, popular culture, sexuality, poverty and marriage and how this impacts on the lives of women living in a still deeply patriarchal society. I think there were potentially one or two too many perspectives to really make an impact, but this novel was suitably disconcerting and I'm interested to read more of her writing in the future.

 

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates

challenging informative medium-paced

4.0

 I really liked this collection of essays from Coates on the experience of living as a black man in Obama's America, into the 2016 election and Trump's successful presidential campaign - they have all been published elsewhere before I believe, but with the exception of the reparations essay they were all new to me. There's a bit of repetition in theme and references at times, but in general the writing in this is challenging, impactful and engaging. 

Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid

emotional reflective slow-paced

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

2.0

 I loved Evelyn Hugo, liked Daisy Jones and enjoyed Malibu Rising so was keen to go back to Jenkins Reid's backlist - starting with this, her debut novel.

Forever Interrupted is the story of Elsie who has a whirlwind romance with Ben with them meeting and marrying within six months. However, weeks after their wedding he is killed in a traffic accident throwing Elsie into grief and the path of her mother-in-law who doesn't even know she exists.

The opening pages of this a gut-wrenchingly painful, you can really feel Elsie and Susan's (Ben's mother) respective grief, and how that messy emotion drives some of their initial behaviour; which definitely isn't always likeable. However, I found a lot of the flashbacks to Elsie and Ben's relationship deeply cringey, with Ben just being plain annoying at times, rather than being sucked into their romance. Elsie also moves beyond grief-struck to just plain horrible to her one friend and others who care abut her as the book progresses, making her quite difficult to spend time with. There's also a heavy dose of 'not like the other girls' (e.g. her best friend who is HOT and ALL MEN WANT unlike her Elsie who is NOT SKINNY and INTO BOOKS [but not ones about vampires]) in here which is a little disappointing.

Maybe one to check out if you're a Jenkins Reid completist.

 

Midnight Chicken by Ella Risbridger

emotional informative inspiring medium-paced

4.0

This is mostly a cookbook so feels a bit weird to review, but Midnight Chicken is also a memoir of using food to connect with yourself again. Risbridger writes about the magic of cooking really well, and I really liked her back-to-basics approach to what you really 'need' in the kitchen. Some of her writing felt a tad twee at times (it felt like I was reading about someone's childhood in the 1950s rather than at the same time as mine) - but mostly it hits perfectly, and I cried reading the afterword.