emilyinherhead's reviews
1143 reviews

The Pairing by Casey McQuiston

emotional funny lighthearted 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

5.0

This is a book I’ve been eagerly anticipating since it was announced, a new queer romance from the author of Red, White & Royal Blue; One Last Stop; and I Kissed Shara Wheeler; all of which I’ve previously read and loved.

The Pairing takes place during a European food and wine tour that winds through France, Spain, and Italy, and it’s about two exes, Kit and Theo, who were supposed to go on said tour together four years ago. The problem is that they had a huge fight on the plane back then, and broke up before it even began. And now, unbeknownst to each other, they’re both cashing in the vouchers they received and taking their do-over tour at the same time. What could go wrong??

The love story is a slow burn, sweet and tender and very horny (I’ve heard that the working title of the book was Sluts in Europe, so do with that what you will). It is delightful to follow these two as they dig into their own individual issues, work through their past miscommunications, and figure out a way forward.

What really takes this reading experience to the next level, though, is the DETAIL. Casey McQuiston researched the hell out of this book, and it shows—from determining which wines would realistically be paired with which fancy French foods, to looking inside a specific Italian grotto via 3D virtual tour before setting a scene there, to spending time in many of the places they would describe in the book so they could include little pieces of their own experience. It all truly feels like you’re there.

Anyway, TLDR: if you want to spend a few weeks meandering through Europe and enjoying all of the incredible local food, drink, and entertainment (wink) without leaving your couch, this is your book.

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

mysterious medium-paced

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

5.0

This was easily my most anticipated book of the summer. And—I won’t drag this out—thank goodness, it lived up to the hype for me!

The God of the Woods is a mystery set at a summer camp in the Adirondacks in 1975, where a camper named Barbara Van Laar has just gone missing. Liz Moore tells the story through many different points of view, taking us back to the 1950s and 1960s to fill in necessary backstory about Barbara’s wealthy family (who owns the camp) and the folks who work for them. It’s very tangly and it digs deep into class inequality and money and reputation. I guessed one of the reveals toward the end, but there were other twists I didn’t see coming, and the whole thing wrapped up SO satisfyingly.

I love a well-written mystery for the plot, of course, but Moore gives us more (heh) than that—I wanted to keep hanging out in this setting, with these characters, almost as much as I wanted to find out what happened. The almost five hundred pages went by in a breeze, and I wouldn’t have minded if it had been longer. This was a completely compelling and immersive reading experience, a near perfect summer novel; I can’t recommend it highly enough.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

adventurous funny medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

As the author herself says in an interview with Waterstones, “it is a time-travel romance about bureaucracy, empire, and cigarettes.” The unnamed main character works for the Ministry of Time as a bridge (somewhat of a helper, keeper, teacher, and roommate all rolled into one) for one of the people the Ministry has experimentally brought forward to the present from the past. Her charge, based on a real figure from history, is Commander Graham Gore, a member of a doomed Arctic expedition in the 1840s.

The interactions between Gore, his bridge, and the other “ex-pats” (time travelers) are truly the best part of the book. There’s just so much confusion and charm! And romance, of course, which, combined with the aforementioned elements of bureaucracy and empire, ultimately leads to a whole big mess. I won’t say anything else, but trust me that this book is a good time (and really impressive, especially for a debut).

Exhibit by R.O. Kwon

challenging tense slow-paced

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

3.0

This story starts with a photographer named Jin Han going with her husband to a party, where she meets and develops a friendship with a ballerina named Lidija Jung. This slowly morphs into something more when Jin’s husband won’t fulfill some of her desires and she is forced to seek satisfaction elsewhere.

Sounds pretty juicy, no? But in reality, this is solidly a Literary Novel. The writing is excellent, Kwon’s vocabulary is advanced and eclectic, and the focus on Art and Big Questions reigns supreme. It’s both explicit and not, simultaneously. The mood is a bit removed, a bit dreamlike, the narrative weaving between the present, the past, and mythology from Jin’s family history. I sometimes found myself unsure of my physical or temporal location within the story. I’m not sure I would describe the experience of reading The Exhibit as “enjoyable,” as I like my characters to feel a little more immediate and less distant, but I did leave with a lot to chew on and think about. Jeff and Rebecca discussed it on a recent book club episode of the Book Riot podcast, too, which added to my appreciation of the novel’s artistry.

McSweeney's 73: Manifesto by James Yeh, Dave Eggers

informative medium-paced

3.5

This is a themed issue, a selection of manifestos presented chronologically, spanning all the way from “The Manifesto of Futurism” (1909) to “Manifesto for World Revolution,” “Press Conference for a Tree,” and “Destroy All Manifestos” (all 2023). It’s a compelling move, publishing all of these manifestos together in this way. Less compelling, however, are André Breton’s “Manifesto of Surrealism” (1924) and Fidel Castro’s “Second Declaration of Havana” (1962). These pieces in particular are QUITE long, and—dare I??—BORING! To me, at least. No disrespect if they’re your jam (I’m assuming everyone has, of course, read these two niche historical documents). The Castro is where I lost my momentum, and was the reason I set the collection down for *checks notes* two whole months.

But I’m glad I ultimately continued, because just a few chapters later I encountered Valerie Solanas’s “S.C.U.M. Manifesto” (1967), a highly entertaining screed against the male sex (S.C.U.M. stands for “Society for Cutting Up Men”), which begins thusly (before continuing to go outrageously hard for the subsequent twenty pages):

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex. (139)

BADASS.

Some of the other favorites that I discovered after making it over the Castro hump:

• “Redstockings Manifesto” (1969)
• “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female” by Frances M. Beal (1969)
• “The Combahee River Collective Statement” (1977)
• “No Stage” by John Lee Clark (2015)
• “Manifesto for World Revolution” by Kalle Lasn (2023)

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

challenging hopeful tense medium-paced

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

3.0

In Parable of the Sower, we follow Lauren Olamina, a 15-year-old who lives in a walled-in community outside of Los Angeles, as she and her family fight to survive in a world that is increasingly hot, resource-scarce, and violent.

This reading was my second, the first being in November of 2017, and as much as I hate to say it, I might’ve gotten less out of the story this time around. Going along with Lauren on her journey (she eventually has to leave her community when the violence they’ve been holding at bay finally arrives in earnest) was engaging, though difficult and horrible in many ways, but her character annoyed me more than I remembered. And I felt a little icky about a relationship she has with a much older man, which I had completely forgotten about. Still, it’s worth a look if you haven’t read it before; the parallels with our current world are impressive and unsettling.

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

2.5

The Robber Bride focuses on three main characters, Tony, Roz, and Charis, whose mutual friend Zenia has recently died. They are all not-so-secretly relieved, because from the way they talk about her it’s clear that she wasn’t really a friend at all, but an intimidating and toxic presence, a manipulative figure who apparently did some things to each of them in the past that kind of ruined their lives. But hold on ladies, because she might not actually be dead?? WHAT A JUICY PREMISE.

And Atwood is such a smart, capable writer, so ahead of her time when it comes to feminist thinking and representation, so in control of her sentences and phrasings. I mean, does this not put you in the exact mindset of someone being caught up in a whirlwind relationship with a slightly sus yet irresistible person?

This friendship with Zenia has been very sudden. She feels as if she’s being dragged along on a rope, behind a speeding motorboat, with the waves sloshing over her and her ears full of applause; or as if she’s racketing downhill on a bicycle, with no hands and no brakes either. She’s out of control; at the same time, she’s unusually alert, as if the small hairs on her arms and on the back of her neck are standing straight up. These are perilous waters. But why? They’re only talking. (148)

Are you not immediately transported by these short descriptions?

A refugee from the land of middle age, stranded in the country of the young. (84)

She’s out in the blue, she’s blowing away with the wind. She’s lost. (167)

Atwood is also funny, in a perfectly dry, affectless way:

Roz is waiting for the Testicle Society, herself. The Ball Costume Ball. She used to love masquerade parties; maybe it would perk her up some to come as a scrotum. That, or the Ovarian Cysts; for that, she’d make the effort. (101)

And yet! I felt personally victimized by this book. 

It goes on for FIVE HUNDRED TWENTY pages, and it takes almost half that amount before we start getting any of the actual tea about Zenia beyond vague allusions. SO much time is devoted to the full backstory of each of the three surviving friends, and it’s all fine and interesting enough, but MARGARET, where was your editor?? We get it, everyone has had their own version of a shitty life, and we can see the effects of their childhood experiences on the people they’ve become. But is it all necessary? Could we not have done a similar thing in the space of a tight three hundo—or hey, I’ll be generous—three fifty? Could we not have shortened that build-up just a little? Anticipation is great, but when it drags on too long, I start thinking about jumping ship.

In conclusion: not my favorite of the Atwoods. The setup is interesting, but I have minor annoyances with every character, the suspense is overdone, the tone is fairly dismal on the whole, and the damn thing is too long.

True Biz by Sara Nović

informative reflective fast-paced

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

4.5

The setting is River Valley School for the Deaf, and the situation is that several students have gone missing, leaving headmistress February scrambling to figure out what happened and where they’ve disappeared to. We quickly flash back to months prior, when the school year is just beginning and Charlie, one of the missing students, has just transferred to RVSD from a nearby mainstream high school. The narrative alternates between Charlie, February, and a few additional students, teachers, parents, and significant others as the timeline catches up with itself and we slowly figure out why Charlie and her friends ran.

I loved this story for many reasons. The campus vibes are exquisite, and Nović is so good at writing believable teenagers in all their emotional, rage-filled glory. Balancing the teen angst, there’s a simultaneous adult storyline from February’s perspective, about her upbringing as a hearing CODA (child of deaf adults) and her relationships with her wife, Mel, and her deaf, aging mother, who has dementia.

But above all, it was the immersion in Deaf culture for me—the way signed conversations were formatted in the text, the inserted bits of February’s lesson plans about Deaf culture and history, the illustrations of ASL signs, the debates about cochlear implants, Charlie’s conversations with her roommate about BASL and how the Deaf community is not immune to racism, the ideas about accessibility and how the world is geared toward hearing people, the importance of schools specifically for deaf people and their struggles with budget cuts and closures, the horrors of language deprivation and the overwhelming joys of successful communication. True Biz pulled me in right away, and I didn’t want to put it down. It’s truly unlike anything I’ve read before. I can’t wait to see what Sara Nović writes next.

Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication by Oren Jay Sofer

informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

The central idea here is that conversation is all about conveying needs and figuring out ways to meet them. Sofer writes that “conflict generally occurs at the level of our strategies—what we want,” and that “the more deeply we are able to identify our needs—why we want what we want (italics mine)—the less conflict there is.” As someone who deeply values understanding and being understood by others, I was very into Sofer’s ideas and strategies.

He talks a lot about emotions and how to manage them in order to more effectively communicate, and I found this extremely helpful too. Here are a few quotes I underlined:

Developing emotional agility involves three capacities: identifying emotions, finding balance with our internal experience of them, and expressing them openly without blame or judgment.

Every time my attention goes outward to blame someone, I can pause and investigate: Is this person solely responsible for my reaction? What meaning am I making about this event? What do I need?

The more we take responsibility for our feelings, connecting them to our needs rather than to others’ actions, the easier it is for others to hear us.

I’m often in my head, dwelling on scenarios and replaying conversations, sometimes regretting what I said or did in the moment, when I should have taken time to think things through and calm myself down before responding or acting. If you’re this way too, or if you’d just like to get better at listening, empathizing, and expressing yourself in ways that minimize conflict, definitely give this book a try.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

emotional hopeful slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

I enjoyed this book but didn’t love it as much as I expected to, likely because the bar was SO high based on all of the outrageously positive reviews I’d seen, and also partly due to my own state of mental depletion while reading.

Something about the many different characters and their intertwining lives and backgrounds was ever so slightly difficult for me to follow, or maybe I just mean that it slowed me down and took me out of the narrative to keep remembering who was who and how everyone was connected. But the story is lovely! I appreciated the focus on interconnectedness, community, and mutual support. It feels like a book I will enjoy more and be better able to fully sink into on a re-read.