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caughtbetweenpages's reviews
692 reviews
Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Though this book is relatively short--I don't think it breaks 200 pages--it packs one hell of a punch. I used to think that I struggled with novellas and that I didn't like them very much because I always felt that something was missing, whether it come from the plot or the world building or the characters, always something somewhere would give, but perhaps I just hadn't been reading the right novellas up till now, because this had all of those factors in spades.
I think P Djeli Clark is kind of a master of worldbuilding, and not just in the terms of creating the world, but in terms of figuring out how much of it one needs to reveal to create a cohesive narrative in itself. So the Kluxes, the monsters in this world that Maryse and her friends are trying to destroy and save the world from, are kind of monsters hidden amongst men. They were allowed into this world based on the overwhelming festering hatred within members of the KKK that already existed and more and more are let in as this hatred grows in other human beings and other tremendously racist things going on during this time in American history. So they fester within the hatred of these people and eventually they fully take over and consume the vessel from inside out until there's nothing but an inhuman, hungry, evil thing remaining. And what makes it worse is that--not just within the plot of the story but overall within the world that P Djeli Clark has created--these creatures are intentionally spread, this hatred is intentionally encouraged within others to make more room for this monstrous, hungry entity that wants to come in and take over.
On the less horrific and more our-protagonist-centered side of things, there's also a beautiful exploration of the folklore. Each section of this book is begun by a historical exploration of what ring shouts are and they're just woven into The Narrative of this book without, you know, a tremendous amount of explanation. They are as true and as real (even more true and more real) than the hatred and the bigotry of the KKK. But where Ring Shout really stood out for me was its character work. I really loved Maryse and her friends (both those on this world and in the spiritual world where Maryse has a connection to) all of them have suffered a tremendous degree of loss but are still all called together to fight this threat, not just to themselves but to the world at large. But instead of being sort of dour and bound and restrained by this, like, tremendous degree of purpose that they all have, together they find that their community and their love for one another and the support and the joy that they can find together is actually the greatest strength that they have, even more so than magical swords.
A really important element of this story and Maryse's journey overall is Maryse's reckoning with her own emotions and, at first, her refusal to deal with her trauma and her festering of her own hatred against these people who have harmed her and her family seem seems like it is the strength that she needs to defeat the Kluxes and their whole deal. But ultimately where she draws her strength from and where her success in the end comes from is not from hatred but from love, the tremendous amount of love, that she has for her friends and they have for her. Truly have no notes. I cannot wait for the next thing that P Djeli Clark writes cuz I will be picking it up.
I think P Djeli Clark is kind of a master of worldbuilding, and not just in the terms of creating the world, but in terms of figuring out how much of it one needs to reveal to create a cohesive narrative in itself. So the Kluxes, the monsters in this world that Maryse and her friends are trying to destroy and save the world from, are kind of monsters hidden amongst men. They were allowed into this world based on the overwhelming festering hatred within members of the KKK that already existed and more and more are let in as this hatred grows in other human beings and other tremendously racist things going on during this time in American history. So they fester within the hatred of these people and eventually they fully take over and consume the vessel from inside out until there's nothing but an inhuman, hungry, evil thing remaining. And what makes it worse is that--not just within the plot of the story but overall within the world that P Djeli Clark has created--these creatures are intentionally spread, this hatred is intentionally encouraged within others to make more room for this monstrous, hungry entity that wants to come in and take over.
On the less horrific and more our-protagonist-centered side of things, there's also a beautiful exploration of the folklore. Each section of this book is begun by a historical exploration of what ring shouts are and they're just woven into The Narrative of this book without, you know, a tremendous amount of explanation. They are as true and as real (even more true and more real) than the hatred and the bigotry of the KKK. But where Ring Shout really stood out for me was its character work. I really loved Maryse and her friends (both those on this world and in the spiritual world where Maryse has a connection to) all of them have suffered a tremendous degree of loss but are still all called together to fight this threat, not just to themselves but to the world at large. But instead of being sort of dour and bound and restrained by this, like, tremendous degree of purpose that they all have, together they find that their community and their love for one another and the support and the joy that they can find together is actually the greatest strength that they have, even more so than magical swords.
A really important element of this story and Maryse's journey overall is Maryse's reckoning with her own emotions and, at first, her refusal to deal with her trauma and her festering of her own hatred against these people who have harmed her and her family seem seems like it is the strength that she needs to defeat the Kluxes and their whole deal. But ultimately where she draws her strength from and where her success in the end comes from is not from hatred but from love, the tremendous amount of love, that she has for her friends and they have for her. Truly have no notes. I cannot wait for the next thing that P Djeli Clark writes cuz I will be picking it up.
Miles Morales: Spider-Man by Jason Reynolds
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
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
3.5
This book follows Miles Morales as Spider-Man a little further down his timeline, where the superpower honeymoon period is ended and now he has to not only balance these new superpowers with being a teenage boy and having his real life catch up to him (because it didn't really stop once his superpowers began), all the while his superpowers are, as far as he knows, going a little bit haywire and acting up on him. So Miles is an Afrolatino boy from a poor community in New York, and in addition to witnessing how poorly his community are treated by people who are not part of it, he also has a foot in this other world as he is on scholarship at a super prestigious high school. He feels a tremendous amount of pressure to succeed; he's not just doing it for himself, the people that he grew up around are seeing him/his success and attaching a lot of hope to it, so the pressure from this is extreme. And at the same time while he's at boarding school he is one of very few Black students there so he's got this very specific and tight rope to walk, especially when one of his teachers begins to act incredibly racist towards him, and while he's there he has very little (if any) support to sort of mourn and come to terms with and experience the horror of the Black boys in his community who are slowly going missing. Nobody's talking about it and obviously the cops aren't doing anything. So while trying to figure out (1) what's going on with his superpowers, (2) what's going on with all of these young Black men going missing, (3) figuring out who is the person who's trying to get him kicked out of/losing his scholarship to attend this university, Miles is also having to figure out internally (4) how to find a balance between his anger as a tool for enacting change to actually get these things solved, and a restraint because very often that selfsame anger is used to demonize young Black men when they show it outwardly. And of course, it wouldn't be a Spider-Man story if Miles did not, throughout all of this, (5) have to reckon with what it means to have his powers and what responsibilities should be his now that he has them versus how he can use them for his own gain.
One thing I really liked about Reynolds's book is that I think he writes children very honestly. The ways that Miles acts when he is at school with his friends, or getting really flustered and tongue tied around his crush, or having stage fright in terms of sharing poetry that he has written, all of that felt very honest and true to a teenage mindset and the preoccupations and priorities that a 16-year-old would have, whether or not they had superpowers. I also love that at no point (despite Miles having these superpowers) was there ever any question of him being a kid. When he's interacting with his mom and dad--despite them not being preternaturally gifted with speed and dexterity and, like, magical spiderwebs that shoot out of their wrists--when Miles feels scared and in trouble, they are who he turns to and they provide a source of comfort, and it's really good to see a kid so loved on page. And that was made all the more true by the contrasting examples that Jason Reynolds put all around Miles, of people who didn't have so close a relationship with their parents or didn't have one at all, and how those different familial structures, and a lack of or an overabundance of support, change the way that kids are enabled to thrive.
Another thing that as a Spider-Man Enthusiast myself I really enjoyed was it's obvious that Jason Reynolds knows and loves the Spider-Man Mythos, and the way that he blends it with Miles's preoccupations and the story was wonderful. I think he did a great job of making not just a Miles Morales story but a Spider-Man story.
I didn't really enjoy Miles's best friend and comic relief character Gankey. I found him to be quite juvenile, far more so than a 16-year-old would be. Like, he acted I think emotional maturity age of a middle schooler in a way that I think sort of pulled me out of the story a couple of times. He had his moments of some emotional depths but they were always replaced by, like, a funny oneliner or whatever and I didn't necessarily love that. He felt very much like a comic book comic relief character, there for just one or two panels, and I don't know that that necessarily translated to novel form in a way that I personally responded to. But nonetheless, Gankey was always in Miles's corner and it was really good to see a sort of healthy relationship between two young men like that.
I also thought that the introduction of poetry as a sort of form of self-expression and figuring out one's own identity was a little bit on the nose as a literary device, but I do think it was a valuable one regardless. It was a fun through line to follow as Miles sort of began to reckon with what he was and who he was and his position as a person with a relative amount of power compared to other people. I think it was a little bit on the nose but overall I think it was an effective way to that part of the story, but I sort of wish that it had been interwoven a little more organically, like Miles's crush on a poet at his school perhaps prompting him to write this poetry by himself rather than it being an assignment, that might have been, I think, a little bit more effective for me personally. I only mention this because it contrasts so heavily with a theme-exploration device that Reynolds used in another aspect of the story that I think was woven in beautifully and very organically so the contrast to me kind of stands out. The one that I think was done very, very well was Miles talking to the Black men of his community (including his father) and sort of exploring the ideas of anti-Blackness as an inherited and a shared trauma within his community. The Mystery of the story (which was incredibly easy to solve, but I don't think the point of it was that it was complicated ,so I'm giving it a big old pass there) but the point of it was it was a story that had happened over and over and over again: when the Black men around Miles were young, something happened in their lives--whether within the criminal justice system or within their educational systems or what have you--they were placed at a constant disadvantage or forced to react with anger after somebody kept poking and poking and poking at a bruise that ultimately led to their futures and their progress being derailed. And Miles is allowed, through these conversations, through this building of community, to sort of figure out that what's happening to him is part of a cycle that's been going on for decades (if not centuries) and find that strength within himself and use that anger in a way that benefits not just him but his community as a whole, and gives himself basically some Solid Ground to stand on to figure out what his identity is, whether or not he's Spider-Man, whether or not he's anything other than himself.
Overall, I think Jason Reynolds is a really talented writer if he writes more Spider-Man stuff, you know I'm going to be picking it up, just because I think he understands the, like, ethos and the pathos of this character in a way that really jives with my understanding of him as well.
One thing I really liked about Reynolds's book is that I think he writes children very honestly. The ways that Miles acts when he is at school with his friends, or getting really flustered and tongue tied around his crush, or having stage fright in terms of sharing poetry that he has written, all of that felt very honest and true to a teenage mindset and the preoccupations and priorities that a 16-year-old would have, whether or not they had superpowers. I also love that at no point (despite Miles having these superpowers) was there ever any question of him being a kid. When he's interacting with his mom and dad--despite them not being preternaturally gifted with speed and dexterity and, like, magical spiderwebs that shoot out of their wrists--when Miles feels scared and in trouble, they are who he turns to and they provide a source of comfort, and it's really good to see a kid so loved on page. And that was made all the more true by the contrasting examples that Jason Reynolds put all around Miles, of people who didn't have so close a relationship with their parents or didn't have one at all, and how those different familial structures, and a lack of or an overabundance of support, change the way that kids are enabled to thrive.
Another thing that as a Spider-Man Enthusiast myself I really enjoyed was it's obvious that Jason Reynolds knows and loves the Spider-Man Mythos, and the way that he blends it with Miles's preoccupations and the story was wonderful. I think he did a great job of making not just a Miles Morales story but a Spider-Man story.
I didn't really enjoy Miles's best friend and comic relief character Gankey. I found him to be quite juvenile, far more so than a 16-year-old would be. Like, he acted I think emotional maturity age of a middle schooler in a way that I think sort of pulled me out of the story a couple of times. He had his moments of some emotional depths but they were always replaced by, like, a funny oneliner or whatever and I didn't necessarily love that. He felt very much like a comic book comic relief character, there for just one or two panels, and I don't know that that necessarily translated to novel form in a way that I personally responded to. But nonetheless, Gankey was always in Miles's corner and it was really good to see a sort of healthy relationship between two young men like that.
I also thought that the introduction of poetry as a sort of form of self-expression and figuring out one's own identity was a little bit on the nose as a literary device, but I do think it was a valuable one regardless. It was a fun through line to follow as Miles sort of began to reckon with what he was and who he was and his position as a person with a relative amount of power compared to other people. I think it was a little bit on the nose but overall I think it was an effective way to that part of the story, but I sort of wish that it had been interwoven a little more organically, like Miles's crush on a poet at his school perhaps prompting him to write this poetry by himself rather than it being an assignment, that might have been, I think, a little bit more effective for me personally. I only mention this because it contrasts so heavily with a theme-exploration device that Reynolds used in another aspect of the story that I think was woven in beautifully and very organically so the contrast to me kind of stands out. The one that I think was done very, very well was Miles talking to the Black men of his community (including his father) and sort of exploring the ideas of anti-Blackness as an inherited and a shared trauma within his community. The Mystery of the story (which was incredibly easy to solve, but I don't think the point of it was that it was complicated ,so I'm giving it a big old pass there) but the point of it was it was a story that had happened over and over and over again: when the Black men around Miles were young, something happened in their lives--whether within the criminal justice system or within their educational systems or what have you--they were placed at a constant disadvantage or forced to react with anger after somebody kept poking and poking and poking at a bruise that ultimately led to their futures and their progress being derailed. And Miles is allowed, through these conversations, through this building of community, to sort of figure out that what's happening to him is part of a cycle that's been going on for decades (if not centuries) and find that strength within himself and use that anger in a way that benefits not just him but his community as a whole, and gives himself basically some Solid Ground to stand on to figure out what his identity is, whether or not he's Spider-Man, whether or not he's anything other than himself.
Overall, I think Jason Reynolds is a really talented writer if he writes more Spider-Man stuff, you know I'm going to be picking it up, just because I think he understands the, like, ethos and the pathos of this character in a way that really jives with my understanding of him as well.
The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
I think The Neighbor Favor was just all right and I think a large part of that is because I don't love the miscommunication trope and I especially hate lying in any sort of romantic scenarios, and a whole lot of this story was spent in the time when Nick knew what was going on where he knew that he was the Mystery Strick with whom Lily had been emailing/falling in love, but Lily was kept in the dark about his identity. There were sort of two sequences of falling in love, and the first one where they're getting to know one another over email felt lovely. I felt that that was just a very, very sweet way of demonstrating how close two people can get even without having ever met just because, on like a soul-deep level, they vibe with one another. I felt the honesty of the banter, the organic development of the friendship into something more, and the heartbreak alongside Lily when Strick ghosted her. I just I could not get swept away in the feelings and the romance the second time around the two were falling in love, because the whole thing was built on dishonesty, and that miscommunication (or lack of communication, more accurately) led to Nick behaving really badly toward Lily. Nick was trying to push Lily away "for her own sake" because he's just "so messed up" and she'd "hate him forever if she found out and then he'd lose a friend", but then he kept drawing her back and getting all romantic... only to push her away before drawing her back again. And this poor girl was experiencing this awful whiplash after having been ghosted by a guy that she really really liked and having that rejection mess with her self esteem yet again. Meanwhile, Nick is sabotaging her attempts to find love in other places as well, cuz he's obsessed with her and doesn't want to see her with anyone else, but he does not tell her the truth that he was Strick and that he's caused her all of this emotional turmoil over the past couple months in the first place, which absolutely sucks!
Because we are in both points of view, we do get Nick's point of view and we get an explanation as to why he wasn't honest with her, but frankly it falls a little bit flat. If your dishonesty is the only thing holding the two of you together, if she would hate you and never speak to you again after you told her the truth, then probably that's what should happen! That's what needs to happen to be fair to her at all, and by continuing the dishonesty, you are demonstrating that you are right about yourself: you are not a good partner for this person. I feel that the period between Nick finding out that she was *that* Lily and Lily finding out about him being Strick, if that timeline had been shortened, and then it was just a lot of like Nick grovelling and trying to make up for the lying and the the misleading and all of the everything, I think then it could have worked a little bit better for me. But after Lily does find out, because it took so long for it to happen, Nick's grand gestures just feel a little bit too little, too late. I don't trust him. And I think the speed with which Lily forgave him for that felt way way way too fast. I get that Nick had a lot of trouble with his family life and his home life, but that is no excuse for sort of dumping the overcoming of that trauma onto this woman and sort of making her feel the burden of having to fix you.
And it really really stinks because I feel like if the romance arc timeline was different--if there was a seriously compressed duration of time between Nick and Lily finding out the truth about one another and that we lengthen the aftermath of Nick working on himself and working FOR Lily, then her falling in love with him demonstrating that he is willing to put effort into her--I think I would have really, really enjoyed the book, because Forest does a pretty great job with character work. Both Lily and Nick are quite well-rounded and complex characters with their own unique support systems that blend together really well, and the chemistry between them is great. Lily's family dynamic of feeling like the underachieving wallflower because her family doesn't understand the markers of success in her career, but still knowing she's deeply loved hit so hard for me, especially in all the Sister Moments of standing up for yourself among them or rallying around them when they need support. With Nick, it was the found family giving him the adopted feral cat treatment of "we'll be here when you're ready to heal" but also not letting him stay up his own ass too much and getting him to get out of his own way was also great. And I LOVED when those worlds collided--a real romance, I think, one with lasting power, is one where each part of the romance's communities work well with each other. Forest did a great job with that.
Also, for the most part, her prose is quite clean and quite readable and nothing really pulls you out of the story. That is a little less true in the Nick chapters because Nick had a tendency of telling rather than showing his emotions. Or rather, showing and then directly after telling, which is, I think, the most frustrating way to do things. So he would do an action that indicates that he wants to protect and take care of Lily and then directly after that the sentence would be something like "he wanted to protect her and be the man she deserved," and it's like. buddy. we know. Not only because you just did a thing that kind of demonstrates that, but because you've said that like 50 different times already (and the reason you've had to say it 50 different times already is because you continue to lie to her).
UGH, but the bits that I did like I I liked quite a bit! I liked the way that Lily and Nick bonded over writing and about Black fantasy, and about creating a more diverse space for readers, and about how that shared passion just sort of grows and blooms and was important in both of their individual arcs as well. I liked how well they got along with one another's families. Despite being, you know, a giant lying jerk, I liked when Nick *was* there for Lily; I like that when she needed him, he'd come to her rescue. I liked how into each other they were, emotionally and physically. And I think their banter and, again, their chemistry was was wonderful, it was beautiful while it was on the page.
I just really hated the premise and the setup and it really soured the rest of it in a tremendous way for me. If you're a little more okay to the idea of, I don't know, miscommunication and just sort of flat out lying and a little bit of gaslighting in your romances, this is definitely one that I would pick up, but if like me those things are sort of hard limits for you, I cannot in good conscience recommend this book. However, given my enjoyment of the other elements of the writing, I will be reading more Kristina Forest in the future.
Because we are in both points of view, we do get Nick's point of view and we get an explanation as to why he wasn't honest with her, but frankly it falls a little bit flat. If your dishonesty is the only thing holding the two of you together, if she would hate you and never speak to you again after you told her the truth, then probably that's what should happen! That's what needs to happen to be fair to her at all, and by continuing the dishonesty, you are demonstrating that you are right about yourself: you are not a good partner for this person. I feel that the period between Nick finding out that she was *that* Lily and Lily finding out about him being Strick, if that timeline had been shortened, and then it was just a lot of like Nick grovelling and trying to make up for the lying and the the misleading and all of the everything, I think then it could have worked a little bit better for me. But after Lily does find out, because it took so long for it to happen, Nick's grand gestures just feel a little bit too little, too late. I don't trust him. And I think the speed with which Lily forgave him for that felt way way way too fast. I get that Nick had a lot of trouble with his family life and his home life, but that is no excuse for sort of dumping the overcoming of that trauma onto this woman and sort of making her feel the burden of having to fix you.
And it really really stinks because I feel like if the romance arc timeline was different--if there was a seriously compressed duration of time between Nick and Lily finding out the truth about one another and that we lengthen the aftermath of Nick working on himself and working FOR Lily, then her falling in love with him demonstrating that he is willing to put effort into her--I think I would have really, really enjoyed the book, because Forest does a pretty great job with character work. Both Lily and Nick are quite well-rounded and complex characters with their own unique support systems that blend together really well, and the chemistry between them is great. Lily's family dynamic of feeling like the underachieving wallflower because her family doesn't understand the markers of success in her career, but still knowing she's deeply loved hit so hard for me, especially in all the Sister Moments of standing up for yourself among them or rallying around them when they need support. With Nick, it was the found family giving him the adopted feral cat treatment of "we'll be here when you're ready to heal" but also not letting him stay up his own ass too much and getting him to get out of his own way was also great. And I LOVED when those worlds collided--a real romance, I think, one with lasting power, is one where each part of the romance's communities work well with each other. Forest did a great job with that.
Also, for the most part, her prose is quite clean and quite readable and nothing really pulls you out of the story. That is a little less true in the Nick chapters because Nick had a tendency of telling rather than showing his emotions. Or rather, showing and then directly after telling, which is, I think, the most frustrating way to do things. So he would do an action that indicates that he wants to protect and take care of Lily and then directly after that the sentence would be something like "he wanted to protect her and be the man she deserved," and it's like. buddy. we know. Not only because you just did a thing that kind of demonstrates that, but because you've said that like 50 different times already (and the reason you've had to say it 50 different times already is because you continue to lie to her).
UGH, but the bits that I did like I I liked quite a bit! I liked the way that Lily and Nick bonded over writing and about Black fantasy, and about creating a more diverse space for readers, and about how that shared passion just sort of grows and blooms and was important in both of their individual arcs as well. I liked how well they got along with one another's families. Despite being, you know, a giant lying jerk, I liked when Nick *was* there for Lily; I like that when she needed him, he'd come to her rescue. I liked how into each other they were, emotionally and physically. And I think their banter and, again, their chemistry was was wonderful, it was beautiful while it was on the page.
I just really hated the premise and the setup and it really soured the rest of it in a tremendous way for me. If you're a little more okay to the idea of, I don't know, miscommunication and just sort of flat out lying and a little bit of gaslighting in your romances, this is definitely one that I would pick up, but if like me those things are sort of hard limits for you, I cannot in good conscience recommend this book. However, given my enjoyment of the other elements of the writing, I will be reading more Kristina Forest in the future.
A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
I absolutely loved this story. It was sold to me as “polyamorous Dracula’s wives join together to overthrow him”, and honestly? I wish I hadn’t heard that. Not because I felt it spoiled things, but because I think it cheapens the impact of the story.
Constanza’s (I regret calling her by that name, because it was given to her by Dracula/her abuser) (who is never directly named and thus afforded power by way of adding to his mystery) journey of self discovery after her identity is stripped from her is empowering, and her reclamation of her religious/ethical convictions, sexuality, and understanding of her intelligence and power was exactly the story I needed when I read this book. The relationships between her, Aleksei, and Magdalena, as well as the hints to the original story of Dracula, are just icing on the cake. I absolutely devoured it.
We follow the point of view of Dracula's first wife, a young woman named Constanza. I regret calling her by that name, because she has forgotten her real name and Constanza is the name that Dracula gave her when he sired her after a incredibly traumatic event happened to her and her family. And she comes back to life as a vampire and takes revenge on the people who hurt her, and feels tremendous amount of debt to and love for the person who (she feels, at the time) allowed her to save herself. But as the story goes on and as her sire's selfishness and cruelty and calculation become more and more evident, Constanza finds herself in an increasingly tense and difficult situation, one in which her agency is stripped from her and she is sort of forced into a role of learned helplessness. Never before have I read something that evoked in me the tension of being in an abusive relationship, the terror of being powerless in your own home against someone you still love and are connected to deeply.
I keep calling him Dracula. He's never actually named within the book. There are a couple hints--like there is a passage where they're talking about some annoying English people called the Harkers in Victorian England that the family has to deal with at some point--and there's a tremendous amount of, like, vampiric lore that I feel was popularized if not created by Bram Stoker within Dracula. But regardless, he is never directly addressed by name as such. As I said, the novella is told in Constanza's point of view but it is also told with the direct address: YOU did this, YOU are a monster, with the "you" being Dracula in this case. For much of the story, while he holds the majority of the power, this distancing, this almost mythologizing of this incredibly powerful figure, not even giving him a name because that would be to make him base, gives him a tremendous amount of power. But towards the end given what happens the "you" goes from just a telling of what's happening to an accusation. It's Constanza's taking back her agency, it's her reclaiming The Narrative that was taken from her the moment that she was killed. Her journey of self discovery after her identity is stripped from her is empowering, and her reclamation of her religious/ethical convictions, sexuality, and understanding of her intelligence and power was exactly the story I needed when I read this book.
But until we get to that point of empowerment I cannot describe to you the degree of tension that this book holds. The power and balance is is so skewed as to almost not need to be mentioned, C and D, they're on such stratospherically different levels of control within this situation. It's one of the most accurate depictions that I have ever read about of an abusive relationship and it was absolutely chilling. The introduction of Dracula's other partners with Magdalena (who Constanza has a, like, very deep depth of emotion towards) and then Aleksei (who she also loves but in a slightly different way) it's that love and it's the those connections that finally empower them. But it I feel like the way that they love is so inhuman and vampire in nature; I think St Gibson did a really really good job of demonstrating that there is a monstrosity to this type of thing as well. Though the novella was quite short and it predominantly focused on the reclamation of agency for Constanza (and then also of Magdalena and Aleksei to a lesser degree), I feel like it also did an excellent job of addressing, like, classical vampire preoccupations, like the things that are at the cornerstones of most vampire stories. So we address themes of religiosity; of what it means to actually be a monster; of the unchanging and unadaptable nature of vampirism and what that means in its positives, like the sort of eternity of beauty, and what that means in its negatives, in terms of stagnation and how that can disallow you to continue existing in a modern sense.
I truly think that vampires are probably the sexiest monster and that that is an intentional thing; there's a tremendous degree of like sensuality and sexuality within this novella and I really enjoyed how St Gibson played with the themes of, like, vampiric obsession versus love, of ownership versus agency, of queerness, of stagnating beauty, about how the sort of societally prescriptive ideas of what love and romance are meant to look like don't necessarily play well with the mythos of this thing, and does the monstrosity come from the fact that you are undying and you need to consume blood and Life Force to live forever or are you a monster because people consider your way of living and your way of being monstrous? I don't think it's coincidence that many queer people attach ourselves to stories about monstrosity and I think St Gibson plays that line and sort of makes it evident as to why those connections exist in the first place. I absolutely loved A Dowry of Blood I will be reading everything St Gibson has to write from here on out.
Constanza’s (I regret calling her by that name, because it was given to her by Dracula/her abuser) (who is never directly named and thus afforded power by way of adding to his mystery) journey of self discovery after her identity is stripped from her is empowering, and her reclamation of her religious/ethical convictions, sexuality, and understanding of her intelligence and power was exactly the story I needed when I read this book. The relationships between her, Aleksei, and Magdalena, as well as the hints to the original story of Dracula, are just icing on the cake. I absolutely devoured it.
We follow the point of view of Dracula's first wife, a young woman named Constanza. I regret calling her by that name, because she has forgotten her real name and Constanza is the name that Dracula gave her when he sired her after a incredibly traumatic event happened to her and her family. And she comes back to life as a vampire and takes revenge on the people who hurt her, and feels tremendous amount of debt to and love for the person who (she feels, at the time) allowed her to save herself. But as the story goes on and as her sire's selfishness and cruelty and calculation become more and more evident, Constanza finds herself in an increasingly tense and difficult situation, one in which her agency is stripped from her and she is sort of forced into a role of learned helplessness. Never before have I read something that evoked in me the tension of being in an abusive relationship, the terror of being powerless in your own home against someone you still love and are connected to deeply.
I keep calling him Dracula. He's never actually named within the book. There are a couple hints--like there is a passage where they're talking about some annoying English people called the Harkers in Victorian England that the family has to deal with at some point--and there's a tremendous amount of, like, vampiric lore that I feel was popularized if not created by Bram Stoker within Dracula. But regardless, he is never directly addressed by name as such. As I said, the novella is told in Constanza's point of view but it is also told with the direct address: YOU did this, YOU are a monster, with the "you" being Dracula in this case. For much of the story, while he holds the majority of the power, this distancing, this almost mythologizing of this incredibly powerful figure, not even giving him a name because that would be to make him base, gives him a tremendous amount of power. But towards the end given what happens the "you" goes from just a telling of what's happening to an accusation. It's Constanza's taking back her agency, it's her reclaiming The Narrative that was taken from her the moment that she was killed. Her journey of self discovery after her identity is stripped from her is empowering, and her reclamation of her religious/ethical convictions, sexuality, and understanding of her intelligence and power was exactly the story I needed when I read this book.
But until we get to that point of empowerment I cannot describe to you the degree of tension that this book holds. The power and balance is is so skewed as to almost not need to be mentioned, C and D, they're on such stratospherically different levels of control within this situation. It's one of the most accurate depictions that I have ever read about of an abusive relationship and it was absolutely chilling. The introduction of Dracula's other partners with Magdalena (who Constanza has a, like, very deep depth of emotion towards) and then Aleksei (who she also loves but in a slightly different way) it's that love and it's the those connections that finally empower them. But it I feel like the way that they love is so inhuman and vampire in nature; I think St Gibson did a really really good job of demonstrating that there is a monstrosity to this type of thing as well. Though the novella was quite short and it predominantly focused on the reclamation of agency for Constanza (and then also of Magdalena and Aleksei to a lesser degree), I feel like it also did an excellent job of addressing, like, classical vampire preoccupations, like the things that are at the cornerstones of most vampire stories. So we address themes of religiosity; of what it means to actually be a monster; of the unchanging and unadaptable nature of vampirism and what that means in its positives, like the sort of eternity of beauty, and what that means in its negatives, in terms of stagnation and how that can disallow you to continue existing in a modern sense.
I truly think that vampires are probably the sexiest monster and that that is an intentional thing; there's a tremendous degree of like sensuality and sexuality within this novella and I really enjoyed how St Gibson played with the themes of, like, vampiric obsession versus love, of ownership versus agency, of queerness, of stagnating beauty, about how the sort of societally prescriptive ideas of what love and romance are meant to look like don't necessarily play well with the mythos of this thing, and does the monstrosity come from the fact that you are undying and you need to consume blood and Life Force to live forever or are you a monster because people consider your way of living and your way of being monstrous? I don't think it's coincidence that many queer people attach ourselves to stories about monstrosity and I think St Gibson plays that line and sort of makes it evident as to why those connections exist in the first place. I absolutely loved A Dowry of Blood I will be reading everything St Gibson has to write from here on out.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Sexism, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Murder
Moderate: Death, Domestic abuse, Gaslighting, and Pandemic/Epidemic
Risdaverse Tales by Ruby Dixon
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Sometimes, formulaic is exactly what you want a book to be: comfortable, tried and true, and predictable in all the right ways. For me, Ruby Dixon delivers. Her Risdaverse includes the masaka, the same aliens from her Ice Planet books, and the utter devotion to their partners and baseline gentle protectiveness just do it for me. Regardless of the underlying hero trope—royalty, bodyguard, grumpy isolationist with a heart of gold—and their levels of charisma/jokiness, they’ve all got that in common! And the heroines are varied in desire and somehow perfect for their respective partners.
Also, though the stories are quite short and need to focus even more deeply on the partnerships than standard, we still get more information about/develop nuance in this world. The stories aren’t sequential in the Risdaverse series, and I’m pretty sure a few take place before some of books in the Ruby Dixon Literary Universe that I’ve already read, but that didn’t impact my enjoyment, nor did I feel lost in the chronology of the universe at any point.
Overall, I feel this collection was just long enough to keep from feeling repetitive, and was a great way to escape a reading slump and read what felt like complete stories despite only having the brain space for a very short thing at a time.
Also, though the stories are quite short and need to focus even more deeply on the partnerships than standard, we still get more information about/develop nuance in this world. The stories aren’t sequential in the Risdaverse series, and I’m pretty sure a few take place before some of books in the Ruby Dixon Literary Universe that I’ve already read, but that didn’t impact my enjoyment, nor did I feel lost in the chronology of the universe at any point.
Overall, I feel this collection was just long enough to keep from feeling repetitive, and was a great way to escape a reading slump and read what felt like complete stories despite only having the brain space for a very short thing at a time.
Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers
emotional
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
2.0
I really wanted to love this book; I feel like it speaks to a lot of the things that I really loved in my reading last year of women in their quarter life crisis era kind of making poor decisions and everything crashing around them, and to some degree that is true about Grace. However, where I think this book kind of fell flat for me is the one place where a book cannot fall flat for me without it kind of ruining the whole thing and souring in my mouth mostly and that is: within the characterization.
We get a lot of lip service about Grace and her depth of relationships that she has with people such as Xiomara and Agne,s her friends from her hometown, and the depth of her connection with Yuki once the two of them meet, but none of that is really explored on page, nor does it really feel believable. I'm not saying that a woman who is in crisis and having an identity crisis in the way that Grace is having is unrealistic, and that when a woman is in that sort of a position she might be more of an emotional taker than a giver, but at no point did I buy that Grace had any qualities that would make people like her at all. When her friends come to her with problems, she is quite unsympathetic and cannot seem to understand that they might have issues themselves, and the way that the book is written it doesn't seem as though we're meant to consider Grace just, like, an unlikable (and thus interesting) character because of that; we're meant to sort of be taking her side and and believe that she's in the right when she minimizes other people's problems. It's as though she's less a character in her own right and more the on-paper idea of what a super burnt-out, very anxious and depressed, type-a, high achieving Black queer woman would look like.
I think this becomes most clear when you see the conversations that characters have with one another. They feel quite stilted and wooden, as though instead of two people talking, it's an attempt to prove a point. There's a conversation in particular that I'm thinking of of where a friend of Grace's from her hometown comes to visit her while she's staying with Yuki in New York, and while they're out for drinks this friend of Grace's ends up telling her about some struggles that he has with worrying about letting his father down and how much he's had to sacrifice within his own life in order to make sure that his sister and his father are okay and safe after the death of his mother... and out of kind of nowhere this conversation turns into what I think is meant to be an argument? because we're told that they're angry at one another? but really it doesn't read that way at all all. And the conversation, despite these two people being inebriated enough to have a drunken argument on page, are talking incredibly lucidly and woodenly *around* one another. I don't know how to explain this without spoiling it, but it very much felt like "how are you two close enough that he calls you his sister and you don't know each other well enough to understand what the other one is saying and where they're coming from? How do you know each other so little but still have this professed closeness and adoration for one another??" And it'd be fine if it was just one relationship where Grace was just like "oh, okay. Okay, like, I've kind of been a bad friend to this one person and I didn't know him very much at all and that's a thing that we have to overcome," but truly it's every relationship in the book. Everyone that she talks to kind of sounds exactly like that. There is no distinction in terms of character voice.
By far the best part of this book is the sort of last 1/4th or 1/5th of it where Grace is finally reckoning within herself about all of the everything that she's been putting off up until that point and realizing how much by imposing all of these rules upon herself, she has sort of stunted her own ability to grow as a person... and I think that would have felt a lot better and more honest if we felt any of that in the first 3/4ths of the book. Instead that was something that we had to very much infer. I did enjoy that Grace took the time to heal for herself. I enjoy that, you know, she started therapy. I enjoy the fact that she started sort of destigmatizing the idea for herself that she was a person instead of, like, a highly achieving machine. All of that felt very important, but the lead-up to there didn't feel honest, and it truly felt like reading like two different stories, one of which was boring and kind of a slog to get through (like, it kind of put me in a slump), and the rest of which felt like a conclusion to a different story, a conclusion that didn't really work because there was nothing concrete to conclude from.
And I think it's a shame because I think Morgan Rogers is a very gifted writer in terms of the prose that she puts on page. It felt and read very clean lyrical without being purple prosy and I think she has the capacity to write really, really intense and nuanced character relationships. Like Grace's relationship with her father towards the end when they finally sat down and had a real conversation, I was like "oh, there it is! there's that depth, there's the messiness in the confrontation when you guys talk to one another that you were capable of this entire time!" but these are the only two characters that you even pseudo-fleshed out. So it's like "oh, you had so much meat! you had so much meat and you just didn't cook it." And I feel like if you're going to flesh out two characters in a book about sort of the start and the falling in love process and then the disillusionment and disenchantment of figuring out that both of you are people with flaws... if you're going to do that, you've got to make the love interest the [other] person that you flesh out too.
Perhaps I could have put up with all of the rest of the woodenness and the two-dimensionality of the other characters if at the very least Yuki and Grace's relationship was given the page space and the nuance that it deserved. Unfortunately, Yuki did kind of get "not like other girls"-ed out of being a character and into being almost like a prop for Grace's coming to terms with who she is. Yuki kind of got the 500 Days of Summer treatment, which was a damn shame because she could have been very interesting. I did like how unapologetically queer this book was and I did enjoy the at least attempts of found family (not only with Grace but also that Yuki had her own family before Grace came along and how Grace was welcomed into that group as well), I just wish the characters were a little less prop and more people. That instead of standing in for things that I think the author wanted to say, they were allowed to say those things through their actions and connections with one another and let those actions shape the story and the plot moving forward.
We get a lot of lip service about Grace and her depth of relationships that she has with people such as Xiomara and Agne,s her friends from her hometown, and the depth of her connection with Yuki once the two of them meet, but none of that is really explored on page, nor does it really feel believable. I'm not saying that a woman who is in crisis and having an identity crisis in the way that Grace is having is unrealistic, and that when a woman is in that sort of a position she might be more of an emotional taker than a giver, but at no point did I buy that Grace had any qualities that would make people like her at all. When her friends come to her with problems, she is quite unsympathetic and cannot seem to understand that they might have issues themselves, and the way that the book is written it doesn't seem as though we're meant to consider Grace just, like, an unlikable (and thus interesting) character because of that; we're meant to sort of be taking her side and and believe that she's in the right when she minimizes other people's problems. It's as though she's less a character in her own right and more the on-paper idea of what a super burnt-out, very anxious and depressed, type-a, high achieving Black queer woman would look like.
I think this becomes most clear when you see the conversations that characters have with one another. They feel quite stilted and wooden, as though instead of two people talking, it's an attempt to prove a point. There's a conversation in particular that I'm thinking of of where a friend of Grace's from her hometown comes to visit her while she's staying with Yuki in New York, and while they're out for drinks this friend of Grace's ends up telling her about some struggles that he has with worrying about letting his father down and how much he's had to sacrifice within his own life in order to make sure that his sister and his father are okay and safe after the death of his mother... and out of kind of nowhere this conversation turns into what I think is meant to be an argument? because we're told that they're angry at one another? but really it doesn't read that way at all all. And the conversation, despite these two people being inebriated enough to have a drunken argument on page, are talking incredibly lucidly and woodenly *around* one another. I don't know how to explain this without spoiling it, but it very much felt like "how are you two close enough that he calls you his sister and you don't know each other well enough to understand what the other one is saying and where they're coming from? How do you know each other so little but still have this professed closeness and adoration for one another??" And it'd be fine if it was just one relationship where Grace was just like "oh, okay. Okay, like, I've kind of been a bad friend to this one person and I didn't know him very much at all and that's a thing that we have to overcome," but truly it's every relationship in the book. Everyone that she talks to kind of sounds exactly like that. There is no distinction in terms of character voice.
By far the best part of this book is the sort of last 1/4th or 1/5th of it where Grace is finally reckoning within herself about all of the everything that she's been putting off up until that point and realizing how much by imposing all of these rules upon herself, she has sort of stunted her own ability to grow as a person... and I think that would have felt a lot better and more honest if we felt any of that in the first 3/4ths of the book. Instead that was something that we had to very much infer. I did enjoy that Grace took the time to heal for herself. I enjoy that, you know, she started therapy. I enjoy the fact that she started sort of destigmatizing the idea for herself that she was a person instead of, like, a highly achieving machine. All of that felt very important, but the lead-up to there didn't feel honest, and it truly felt like reading like two different stories, one of which was boring and kind of a slog to get through (like, it kind of put me in a slump), and the rest of which felt like a conclusion to a different story, a conclusion that didn't really work because there was nothing concrete to conclude from.
And I think it's a shame because I think Morgan Rogers is a very gifted writer in terms of the prose that she puts on page. It felt and read very clean lyrical without being purple prosy and I think she has the capacity to write really, really intense and nuanced character relationships. Like Grace's relationship with her father towards the end when they finally sat down and had a real conversation, I was like "oh, there it is! there's that depth, there's the messiness in the confrontation when you guys talk to one another that you were capable of this entire time!" but these are the only two characters that you even pseudo-fleshed out. So it's like "oh, you had so much meat! you had so much meat and you just didn't cook it." And I feel like if you're going to flesh out two characters in a book about sort of the start and the falling in love process and then the disillusionment and disenchantment of figuring out that both of you are people with flaws... if you're going to do that, you've got to make the love interest the [other] person that you flesh out too.
Perhaps I could have put up with all of the rest of the woodenness and the two-dimensionality of the other characters if at the very least Yuki and Grace's relationship was given the page space and the nuance that it deserved. Unfortunately, Yuki did kind of get "not like other girls"-ed out of being a character and into being almost like a prop for Grace's coming to terms with who she is. Yuki kind of got the 500 Days of Summer treatment, which was a damn shame because she could have been very interesting. I did like how unapologetically queer this book was and I did enjoy the at least attempts of found family (not only with Grace but also that Yuki had her own family before Grace came along and how Grace was welcomed into that group as well), I just wish the characters were a little less prop and more people. That instead of standing in for things that I think the author wanted to say, they were allowed to say those things through their actions and connections with one another and let those actions shape the story and the plot moving forward.
Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree
adventurous
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
I think in retrospect I like Bookshops and Bonedust a little more than I like Legends and Lattes! We get a lot of the same of what I enjoyed from L&L in B&B but at an elevated level.
Where in L&L, Viv has to start a business ground-up, in B&B you see her stretching her entrepreneurial skills to fix up an existing business, which sets the groundwork for her future endeavors, but also demonstrates that she already has good business instincts and makes her successes feel more earned. However, rather than the plot hinging on her business sense/ability to fix up this bookshop, in B&B the entrepreneurship is less The Point and more the vehicle by which Viv makes very close friends and builds community. I actually believe the found family element of this book a little more than I did those of the predecessor. We actually see Viv get close to/develop relationships with the people in this town, like the dwarf Baker with whom she engages in a romance (though I didn't necessarily like the romantic subplot very much; it was sweet and felt surprisingly realistic despite knowing that it wouldn’t be endgame, but I think an actively FWB situation where both parties were ACTUALLY okay with the knowledge that it would end would’ve worked better), and the foulmouthed ratkin owner of the bookshop and her finicky owl-pug pet, and the socially anxious skeletal construct. Even the lightly antagonistic relationships felt honest, because you’re not gonna like everyone new you meet. Perhaps because these side characters felt a lot more fleshed out, it felt as though Viv's relationships with them grew more organically as well.
There was also inbuilt tension coming from B&B being a prequel. You as the reader alongside all the characters know that Viv is going to have to go away eventually. There's an awareness that being here is a temporary measure for Viv because she's still at the beginning of her career and adventuring is still a thing she wants to do. But the clock ticking doesn't stop Viv from being a compulsively kind and likable person, so naturally bonds are going to form, and it’ll hurt when they must be broken by distance and time.
I also found the plot to be far more
consistent than it was in its predecessor. I feel like in L&L there's a lot of very "not much happening for most of the book" and then at the end there was a sense of "and suddenly there's a conflict and we have to build and grow from there!" which I still had a lot of fun with, but in B&B, there was a consistent plotline building throughout. The mystery of what’s going on with the shady characters coming into town employed by The necromancer who Viv’s adventuring party is hunting down remained ever-present regardless of what they were doing vis a vis fixing up the bookshop.
Baldtree’s settings are really what makes the cozy of his cozy fantasies kick in for me, and I love how he paired that in B&B with the aesthetics of necromancy; I feel like it's just cool and neat especially paired with the backdrop of a bookshop. And maybe this is just because I really like books but I'm not a drinker of coffee in the slightest, I did prefer the bookshop as a setting, and all the fun plot elements that went along with it (book clubs and author signings and mystery book sales… so so so cute!)
In L&L, Viv’s love for coffee is preesrablished, so in B&B I really enjoyed seeing Viv fall in love with stories and reading. It was great from a character building perspective to see her actively expand her horizons and grow to be more than what she could have been had she stayed this hot-headed warrior and continued on with Rackham's Ravens. I feel like it's BECAUSE she was forced to slow down that she became the person who could survive adventuring and retire and become who she needed to be for the events of L&L to occur. This book acted as a great “origin story” for the Viv we know and love.
Overall, I feel like Travis Baldtree leveled up as a storyteller with this book, and I'm excited to see where he goes from here.
Where in L&L, Viv has to start a business ground-up, in B&B you see her stretching her entrepreneurial skills to fix up an existing business, which sets the groundwork for her future endeavors, but also demonstrates that she already has good business instincts and makes her successes feel more earned. However, rather than the plot hinging on her business sense/ability to fix up this bookshop, in B&B the entrepreneurship is less The Point and more the vehicle by which Viv makes very close friends and builds community. I actually believe the found family element of this book a little more than I did those of the predecessor. We actually see Viv get close to/develop relationships with the people in this town, like the dwarf Baker with whom she engages in a romance (though I didn't necessarily like the romantic subplot very much; it was sweet and felt surprisingly realistic despite knowing that it wouldn’t be endgame, but I think an actively FWB situation where both parties were ACTUALLY okay with the knowledge that it would end would’ve worked better), and the foulmouthed ratkin owner of the bookshop and her finicky owl-pug pet, and the socially anxious skeletal construct. Even the lightly antagonistic relationships felt honest, because you’re not gonna like everyone new you meet. Perhaps because these side characters felt a lot more fleshed out, it felt as though Viv's relationships with them grew more organically as well.
There was also inbuilt tension coming from B&B being a prequel. You as the reader alongside all the characters know that Viv is going to have to go away eventually. There's an awareness that being here is a temporary measure for Viv because she's still at the beginning of her career and adventuring is still a thing she wants to do. But the clock ticking doesn't stop Viv from being a compulsively kind and likable person, so naturally bonds are going to form, and it’ll hurt when they must be broken by distance and time.
I also found the plot to be far more
consistent than it was in its predecessor. I feel like in L&L there's a lot of very "not much happening for most of the book" and then at the end there was a sense of "and suddenly there's a conflict and we have to build and grow from there!" which I still had a lot of fun with, but in B&B, there was a consistent plotline building throughout. The mystery of what’s going on with the shady characters coming into town employed by
Baldtree’s settings are really what makes the cozy of his cozy fantasies kick in for me, and I love how he paired that in B&B with the aesthetics of necromancy; I feel like it's just cool and neat especially paired with the backdrop of a bookshop. And maybe this is just because I really like books but I'm not a drinker of coffee in the slightest, I did prefer the bookshop as a setting, and all the fun plot elements that went along with it (book clubs and author signings and mystery book sales… so so so cute!)
In L&L, Viv’s love for coffee is preesrablished, so in B&B I really enjoyed seeing Viv fall in love with stories and reading. It was great from a character building perspective to see her actively expand her horizons and grow to be more than what she could have been had she stayed this hot-headed warrior and continued on with Rackham's Ravens. I feel like it's BECAUSE she was forced to slow down that she became the person who could survive adventuring and retire and become who she needed to be for the events of L&L to occur. This book acted as a great “origin story” for the Viv we know and love.
Overall, I feel like Travis Baldtree leveled up as a storyteller with this book, and I'm excited to see where he goes from here.
Dreaming with Birch: A Tree Spirit Short Read by Heather Sanderson
Another book from a friend for which I can leave no review!
My best friend growing up was a willow tree in my neighbor's front yard. Reading this book felt like a hug from that old friend through the aether. I was also pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of Birch's folkloric history and its medicinal/practical uses around the world. Lots packed into very few pages here.
My best friend growing up was a willow tree in my neighbor's front yard. Reading this book felt like a hug from that old friend through the aether. I was also pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of Birch's folkloric history and its medicinal/practical uses around the world. Lots packed into very few pages here.
That Night by Cyn Balog
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
I think a problem for my reading of this book is that it was presented to me as a thriller; the vibe is very much more in line with a CW-type teen drama, 13 Reasons Why-esque story until the last 20 ish pages (which unfortunately did nothing to change my opinion on the above).
The dual timeline worked insofar as it kept me reading/wanting to know how (1) Hailey's past where she's falling in love with Declan and her friendships with Kane + the (unmemorable-except-for-how-much-girlhate-there-was) girls Hailey hung out with are strong and (2) Hailey's present as a deeply depressed, presumed psychotic girl with no friends, marry together. However, in neither timeline was there any sense of urgency, of a building darkness in The Past that could inform the present or of a looming darkness in The Present that is contextualized by the past, which I consider a staple of the thriller genre. Nor was there any active threat to Hailey in the absence of a less defined mood of tension. There's some mystery implied given Hailey's amnesia about the day of Declan's death, but not nearly enough to warrant the plot hinging on the fact that she killed him in a jealous rage thinking he was his new girlfriend , which the whole plot hinged on. Since it WAS the lynchpin of the mystery, I'd have expected there to be at least a tad more weight placed behind that, and not,,, Hailey kind of being terrible to be around.
And she was terrible to be around, both in the present and past timelines! That was the nail in the coffin for me as a reader, personally. It made some sense in the present, where her ennui and lethargy can be explained by her depression, but in the past she is just as uninteresting, lowkey misogynistic, and hyperfocused on a boy who is, frankly, far too good for her (truly boggles the mind that anyone liked her in any way at any point). I'd be fine if she was just unlikeable. The killer is that she was boring. Mainly I read on to see how her terrible but at least somewhat interesting friends would get on.
There were some interesting ideas brought up re: the ways that perfect-on-the-outside people are just as flawed as everyone else, and the ways that religiousness can be either part of that veneer or the cause of a pressure that makes the veneer crack, but given the marketing of the story, I expected less introspection and more dynamism to carry the plot. And it seemed, given the ending, that the author intended for that to be the case and for the book to be a thriller and not a literary fiction piece pontificating about grief in the youth, so I feel justified in wanting and expecting that! I still had fun with this book, but in a vague sort of way which I don't think I'll be returning to.
The dual timeline worked insofar as it kept me reading/wanting to know how (1) Hailey's past where she's falling in love with Declan and her friendships with Kane + the (unmemorable-except-for-how-much-girlhate-there-was) girls Hailey hung out with are strong and (2) Hailey's present as a deeply depressed, presumed psychotic girl with no friends, marry together. However, in neither timeline was there any sense of urgency, of a building darkness in The Past that could inform the present or of a looming darkness in The Present that is contextualized by the past, which I consider a staple of the thriller genre. Nor was there any active threat to Hailey in the absence of a less defined mood of tension. There's some mystery implied given Hailey's amnesia about the day of Declan's death, but not nearly enough to warrant
And she was terrible to be around, both in the present and past timelines! That was the nail in the coffin for me as a reader, personally. It made some sense in the present, where her ennui and lethargy can be explained by her depression, but in the past she is just as uninteresting, lowkey misogynistic, and hyperfocused on a boy who is, frankly, far too good for her (truly boggles the mind that anyone liked her in any way at any point). I'd be fine if she was just unlikeable. The killer is that she was boring. Mainly I read on to see how her terrible but at least somewhat interesting friends would get on.
There were some interesting ideas brought up re: the ways that perfect-on-the-outside people are just as flawed as everyone else, and the ways that religiousness can be either part of that veneer or the cause of a pressure that makes the veneer crack, but given the marketing of the story, I expected less introspection and more dynamism to carry the plot. And it seemed, given the ending, that the author intended for that to be the case and for the book to be a thriller and not a literary fiction piece pontificating about grief in the youth, so I feel justified in wanting and expecting that! I still had fun with this book, but in a vague sort of way which I don't think I'll be returning to.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness and Self harm
Moderate: Misogyny and Murder
Filters by Emily Fairchild
reflective
medium-paced
I have a hard time rating things my friends wrote (especially things they wrote when they were literally teenagers, looked back upon with adult eyes), so I won't be doing that! Suffice it to say, this collection of essays and poetry transported me back to a friend telling me about the hidden gems of a city I was a stranger to and she had seen grow into something different than it was when she first met it. Thanks for taking me to Pitt St., Em.