literaryelephant's reviews
1060 reviews

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones

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dark emotional reflective sad tense
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Though I wished the characters had been given more individual personality (they are all basically embodied pain), I thought this was an incredible (historical) story of generational trauma and the wealth divide in Paradise, a Barbados beach and village. The format and prose is somewhat circular, offering a range of perspectives branching off of two recent crimes and filling in details before honing in on sharp narrative points. Brutal and sad, but well-placed on the Women's Prize shortlist this year. 
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Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America's Cheap Goods by Amelia Pang

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.0

This is the sort of nonfiction book I think everyone- especially first world consumers- should read. It's a little hard to recommend it that widely though given the very dark nature of the content; CWs for all sorts of human rights violations, including explicit descriptions of torture. This is certainly one of the most difficult books I've ever read in terms of bleakness, but if you can stomach the disturbing scenes I'd highly urge you to pick up this book as ongoing forced labor is a topic we all should be more aware of and resistant to. Your purchases matter. Lives are literally at stake. I will never buy the same way having read this book. 
The only reason this isn't a 5-star for me is that I rate based on personal reading experience (as opposed to importance of content or objective merit) and I found myself slightly confused by the info-heavy background chapters on Chinese sociopolitical history, which is the fault of my own gaps of knowledge and not of this book, which does an excellent job condensing a lot of information into a readable length of work. 
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No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

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challenging emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Timely, somewhat relatable, and worth the short time it took to read, but I found the underlying message about social media being useless or even frivolous in the face of real life tragedy to be a bit too simplistic. I did however appreciate the exploration of Proteus Syndrome, though due perhaps to the fragmented style of the book I was never able to engage emotionally in a way that the subject seemed to call for. Lots of food for thought here, though the storytelling didn't quite work for me. 
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Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Though an easy and compelling read when I needed one, books set in this era that don't challenge or even acknowledge the inherent sexism/homophobia/etc. of the time period don't tend to work for me. My expectations were probably off from the start, as I'd assumed this story would focus on the virgin birth investigation when really that's only a small piece of a larger domestic drama; I'm less interested in reading about marital issues, personally. Even so, I might have had a fine time with this book if I'd been able to sympathize with the MC, but unfortunately I found her questionable treatment of someone else's trauma and lesbian relationship untenable. Additionally, while I like the idea of the controversial ending, it does not feel cohesive with the rest of the story, to the extent that both pieces detract from each other. A gripping read for the right reader perhaps, but I wish this spot on the Women's Prize longlist had gone to another book. 
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Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan

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challenging dark emotional funny lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

An exciting addition to this year's Women's Prize list; Dolan admirably captures the plight of a young bisexual woman who's not sure what she wants from life or how to get there. Our MC's two romantic relationships upon moving to Hong Kong fulfill very different needs for her, pulling our protagonist in conflicting directions and eventually forcing her to choose a single path. Dolan's writing is sharp and intuitive, the MC's longing and malaise shockingly sympathetic. My only complaint is that the first two sections of the book, covering each of Ava's romances individually, ran about twice as long as I needed to understand them and left me somewhat bored, while the final chapter of the three characters juggling each other I found so tense and captivating that I wished this dynamic had taken up the bulk of the novel. 
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Luster by Raven Leilani

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This is a worthy and necessary addition to the generally white-washed Disaster Women category of books, and I loved both Leilani's acerbic prose and the social commentary drawn out through her struggling narrator. And yet, while it makes sense for the plot of such a book to feel rather aimless, the lack of direction makes this a story too meandering and aloof for my personal taste. Happy to see this one getting some attention with the Women's Prize, and I like what it has to say on the whole, but didn't particularly enjoy the experience of reading it despite the incredible writing at the sentence level. 
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The Butchers' Blessing by Ruth Gilligan

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

A compelling exploration of the role of folklore in Ireland and the increasing friction modernity brings against old traditions. This is such a nuanced look at some of the ways beliefs can function for individuals and greater communities, grounded in Irish political turbulence and the 90's outbreak of BSE (mad cow disease). I found some of the perspectives here a bit more engaging than others, but was drawn in by the connections between characters and thematic richness. 
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Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is a beautiful puzzle wrapped up in novel form. The SFF element is evocative and appealingly unsettling, but the plot is driven rather by the mystery at its core, which plays out through subtle clues delivered in dialogue and small events leading up to the inevitable climax. I absolutely loved my time spent in this strange world, the only downside being that I'm a good puzzler and found the MC's revelations to be superfluous to the unspoken hints about what is happening. That the reader has more knowledge of the "real world" than the MC makes this imbalance more or less unavoidable, though easy enough to overlook while enjoying the rest of the book's content. 
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The History of Bees by Maja Lunde

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dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-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? Yes

3.0

Unfortunately this ended up being a story I liked more in concept than in execution. It's an impactful tale about the effects of humans on nature, and the possibly very dire consequences of such- specifically related to the mass extinction of bees. It also examines three parent/child relationships. I liked the ending of the book a lot more than the beginning, as it explores how the three threads of the book are connected and what happened with the collapse of the bee population, but the family explorations never quite came together for me or felt particularly engaging. 
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A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad tense medium-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

2.0

I was neither planning nor planning not to read this book, it just happened to be shiny, new, and ubiquitious at a time when I needed something low-stakes, and it fit that bill. I have no doubt Maas fans are going to continue to love this series, but I think my reading taste has changed enough since I started ACOTAR that this was never going to be a top-tier read for me in 2021. I probably won't do a separate review, so I'll just touch on my main complaints here. 

1) There are more cringe-worthy sex scenes than plot points in these 700+ pages so it just reads like thinly veiled porn. I don't mind a few explicit scenes but personally I'd rather have angst than excessive smut. No shade to others who may be looking specifically for this content. 
2) I swear the sexism just gets worse with every volume of this series. I think a drinking game based on phrases like male pride, arrogance, smugness, etc. would be deadly. I know Maas uses 'male' and 'female' as nouns as a way to show these characters aren't human men and women, but it is... awful to read. She would've been better off making up new terms, but either way there should be more than two genders in play. Even beyond terminology, misogyny seems to be what makes this whole world spin, so enter with caution. 
3) The rules of operation in this world are too fluid for my preference. There's no way ever to get a grasp on how things work or what to expect because so much of the plot is driven by characters accidentally using magic in ways they didn't intend and don't understand, not to mention new ancient world-changing magical items appearing 4 books into the series. The latter is explained in the book but it feels like cop-out rationale; Maas is clearly improvising as she goes and it's all a little too convenient and hard to pin down for my taste. I like clear constraints. And 
4) Nessian's relationship is basically Feysand Take 2. I was hoping that fresh character perspectives might push this series in some new, interesting directions, but instead it just feels like a repeat. If Feyre had been the eldest of her siblings and Rhysand had been born Illyrian rather than High Lord, this would have been their story. The personalities are... exactly the same, the characters are just in slightly different life circumstances. It's boring. 
And far too long. 
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