Scan barcode
booksbyblaine's reviews
582 reviews
The New Me by Halle Butler
3.0
The New Me follows 30-year-old Millie through her mundane life consisting of an unfulfilling temp job, boring TV shows, an empty apartment, and a friend she doesn’t really like. It’s dark and it’s bitter while still managing to poke some fun at American capitalism and consumerism. I thought that this would be just another book about a girl with a messy life she’s trying to piece together, but this was quirky and different and I laughed out loud. (This book also doesn’t focus on the main character’s romantic relationships/her attractiveness to men and it was a breath of fresh air!) Read this if you enjoyed Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation.
This Lovely City by Louise Hare
4.0
This Lovely City follows a group of Windrush immigrants who recently arrived in London from Jamaica due to labor shortages in the UK following the Second World War. The main character, Lawrie Matthews, is a postman by day and a jazz musician by night who you can’t help but root for from beginning to end. While this book is accurately described as a murder mystery, it also grapples with what it looks like to love, hope, and trust in a place where you feel like you don’t belong. I absolutely adored this book and felt like Louise Hare did a phenomenal job at depicting 1950’s post-war Britain (i.e. bombed homes, rationed food, and overt racism), especially for a debut novel. Add this to your TBR!
Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky
2.0
Very Nice is full of very not nice people, containing no characters worth rooting for (besides the dog). The story is essentially non-existent, just an exploration of each character’s selfishness. While this was likely the author’s intent, I didn’t necessarily find this bird’s eye view of terrible people with money to be all that interesting and found the ending straight-up absurd. The only redeeming quality of this book for me was the network of characters, all only having one or two degrees of separation, making it easy to follow with mostly unforced connections.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
5.0
I learned, I laughed, I cried, I celebrated. Girl, Woman, Other is the unique story of 12 Black British women. It’s multigenerational, multicultural, and essentially void of punctuation propelled only by line breaks. Each chapter focuses on each woman’s life, reading a bit like separate short stories while also perfectly intertwining the characters. This is one of the best takes on womanhood and female existence I’ve ever read. I’m looking forward to reading more of Bernardine Evaristo’s work.