gxuosi's reviews
326 reviews

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-joo

5.0

all day every day therapist mother maid nymph then a virgin nurse then a servant just an appendage live to attend him so that he never lifts a finger 24∕7 baby machine so he can live out his picket fence dreams (the blank pages at the end were a haunting deliberate choice)

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

2.0

i don’t know man … you want me to support an enemies to lovers plot where an 18 year old has SINCERELY repeatedly threatened to kill a 16 year old child who’s at early admissions college … you have lost the fuckin plot bro

Feathers of Snow by Alice Ivinya

4.0

idk why i didnt write a review tbh. i enjoyed the hell out of this.

Mother of Strangers by Suad Amiry
Did not finish book.

dnf at 25%. the author clearly is more accustomed to nonfiction and the story telling didn't quite translate for this. i do know in the end we learn about the real people these characters are fictionalized retellings of, but that just makes dwelling on a teenager's sex organs even creepier. not to mention the whole desire to marry a child and the weird undercurrent where the suit maker thinks the protagonist is a child prostitute. just deeply uncomfortable narrative choices that had little to do with what the story set out to tell the reader.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

3.0

hmm. (you lost me in part 3 when the sentences became stunted, disjointed, and packed with allegories i couldn't unweave.)

From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout
Did not finish book.

dnf at 27% incredibly boring with bizarre thinly veiled racism and the stupidest fucking fantasy land names. i couldn’t have been paid to care. i’d have spent my time better scrubbing the shit out of a septic tank.

Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo

4.0

sean was so fucking unlikable that it felt like my teeth were grinding to dust as i read. what a chronically horrible person

The Tradition by Jericho Brown

1.0

once again i'm not sure it's fair to rate a book on a scale of 5 when it's literally therapy trauma dump for the author. i did like this more than “milk and honey” by rupi kaur, but marginally so. the author sort of hates himself too much to make poetry where we can sympathize with his plight because in his poetic allegories, he references untenable crimes he attributes to himself and carnal jealousy over rabbits procreating. there were moments where i felt like i saw the author and others where words piled up like a barricade to make me turn away.

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

1.0

i'm not sure it's fair to rate a book on a scale of 5 when this was so very clearly therapy for the author. it's like walking into her therapy session and saying she's bad at speaking. it was however a deeply disappointing book after all the hype it got. the formatting and poetic structure was lacking on most pages where there was nothing more than a sketch and a tumblr quote broken in half by the enter key arbitrarily. there were some pages with poems or prose that had real substance, things i could connect with. i don't know man, i'm just walking away unsatisfied.

Brown: Poems by Kevin M. Young

2.0

i literally have no idea what most of this was and maybe that’s on me but man i could not find the tone, pacing, rhythm, or intent of most of this. it was either so straight forward that there wasn’t anything deeper being alluded to or i was in over my head finding the meaning of 80% of the book. there were some really good moments where i felt like i found the rhythm only to lose it again quickly.