maiakobabe's reviews
3840 reviews

Death at Morning House by Maureen Johnson

adventurous funny mysterious fast-paced

3.75

Marlowe is a smart teen who happens to get into a spot of trouble with some accidental arson while on a date with the girl of her dreams, and then runs away to an absurd summer job on one of the thousand islands on the St Lawrence River. Marlowe joins a group of five other teens who already all know each other to serve as a tour guide for Morning House, the mansion of a rich doctor and eugenicist who summered with his seven children on the island in the 1920s- that is, until two of them died there. And the island has seen another death, more recently. Marlowe didn't show up to solve crimes, but if she wants to make it home at the end of the summer, she'll have to. Similar in tone to the Truly Devious series, this book was a very easy and fun listen. I wish the eugenics thread had either been cut, or better developed, but Marlowe is a delightful character to follow and if this book gets a sequel I will definitely listen to it. 

Tokyo These Days, Vol. 2 by Taiyo Matsumoto

challenging dark emotional medium-paced

4.0

Shiozawa continues to attempt to build a collection of artists for a new manga magazine. He visits old friends, writers whose talent he's loved for years. Some of them have retired from the business. Some are busier than ever. Some love the direction their work has gone since Shiozawa last saw them; others believe their work has become soulless and commercial. I love how the authors are portrayed as unique, flawed humans with human histories. They have families, disabilities, insecurities, dreams. We meet Chosaku's  ex-wife and daughter on a weekend visit. Hayashi continues to struggle with her main artist, Aoki, who struggles with insomnia and flees back to his hometown. Creating manga is depicted as half a calling, half an affliction. 

Pageboy by Elliot Page

3.75

This has been on my to-read list ever since it came out, and I finally picked it up. This book is an honest, sometimes painfully honest, accounting of Elliot Page's life up until his decision to come out as trans. He grew up in Canada, the child of divorced parents, with a hostile step-mother, an emotionally manipulative father, and overworked mother who initially did not accept his queerness. He started acting in elementary school and found it a freeing creative outlet, even when he hated the overly-girly clothing the roles often forced him into. Like many people who start in the film industry very young, he was taken advantage of sexually by adults who should have kept him safe. These experiences are written about less graphically than the blistering gender dysphoria and numbing disassociation that followed Elliot from his teens into his twenties. He threw himself into movie projects and love affairs, running away from a secret that nearly ate him alive. I'm so grateful that was eventually able to come out, because it really sounds like staying in the closet might have killed him. This book is not written chronologically; chapters center on themes, projects, or relationships. I understand that choice while also wishing that more of then teen chapters had been placed earlier in the book- sometimes the way the book kept slipping backwards in time felt a time bit repetitive. But it also felt honest to the experience of someone who kept backsliding in his ability to be honest with himself, until hitting the rock bottom of mental health, when there was no other choice but to be true.

The Ribbon Skirt by Cameron Mukwa

hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

4.0

This is a gentle queer comic for younger readers. Ten year old Anang decides they want to make a ribbon skirt to wear to an upcoming powwow. A ribbon skirt is a piece of celebratory clothing typically worn by Anishinaabe women, and Anang isn't entirely sure what their friends or community will think about them wearing one. But the spirit world encourages Anang. The lakes, the crows, turtles, waves, and trees participate in helping Anang gather all of the supplies they need, despite some light resistance from other characters in the story. Short and sweet, this is lovely introduction to two-spirit and nonbinary identities for a kid who hasn't heard of them yet, and an affirming story for a young person who already inhabits a gender-nonconforming space! 

Woe: A Housecat's Story of Despair by Lucy Knisley

emotional funny fast-paced

3.75

Given the square format, I thought this was going to be a picture book but when it arrived from the library it was a full color 200 page collection of all the instagram comics author Lucy Knisley ever drew about her much loved fluffy orange cat, Linney. These comics are deeply relatable for any cat owner. I'd read pretty much all of them online before but I enjoyed seeing them all again in this collection. 

Life Lines: Comics by Jason Martin

emotional hopeful reflective

4.0

Bay Area Cartoonist Jason Martin collections stories from across his long memoir comics career in this, his second anthology. The stories relate friendships, experience touring with bands, working temp jobs, his life-long love of music, tabling at comic conventions, and the kind of mundane moments which crystalize into perfect gems when held and examined so tenderly. Martin's writing is compassionate and clear, and it holds a kind mirror up to a familiar world. 

Out of Left Field by Jonah Newman

emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

3.5

This coming of age comic spans Jonah's four years of high school, including crushes, dates, a first sexual experience, and that teen classic, joining a sports team to impress a boy and gain popularity. Jonah is a nerdy, closeted gay freshman with few friends when he joins the team. On the team he gains confidence and a spot in the school cafeteria- but he also fails to stand up to his teammates when they make increasingly sexist and homophobic things about other students. I enjoyed the complexity of Jonah's relationship with a female best friend, and with a boy he wants to date, but isn't comfortable being seen with in public. The book doesn't have a neat ending; the messy way some characters interactions end mirrors of confusion of teen years. 

The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

3.75

Devon is a single mother on the run from an abusive family, living undocumented in England, a borderline alcoholic, searching from town to town for a contact who will lead her to the people who make the medicine her young son needs to be safe. Devon also isn't human; super strong, impervious to cold, she can see in the dark and the species she comes from eat books to survive. She has perfect recall of every text she's ever eaten but none of them help much in her current precarious state. Woven through this tense narrative is a second timeline of Devon's past. Raised as a precious and rare daughter of an old book eater family, she grew up in a manor house on the moors, treated like a princess- one whose marriage and reproductive choices were entirely controlled by the powerful men around her. When Devon rebelled, her first child was taken from her. But her second was born with a complicated and dangerous hunger, and a need to kill in order to survive. This is a dark story, a thriller with fantasy elements, with content warnings for violence, gore, rape, cannibalism, alcohol abuse and physical abuse. I found it a gripping listen on audio, and I enjoyed the narrator's northern English accent, well chosen for the setting of the story. But it's not a light read and at times Devon's depression and despair were hard to sit with. Take care that you are in the right space of mind to enjoy this story before you start it. 

The Deep Dark by Molly Knox Ostertag

dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

5.0

This was exceptional. Mags, a recent high school graduate, lives a carefully controlled life. She cares for her aging grandmother, she works her restaurant shifts, she doesn't party, she doesn't let anyone get too close, even the girl she's sleeping with, who has a boyfriend. Also, she's feeding a dangerous secret, something fanged and strange that lives in the dark. Then Mags' careful routine is disrupted when a friend from childhood, Nessa, turns to the little town outside Joshua Tree where they both grew up. Nessa is being chased by a darkness of her own, and wants answers about a confusing childhood memory. The storytelling, the page layouts, the mixed use of color and black and white, all combined to build such delicious tension in this queer horror tale. Highly recommend! 

The Pale Queen by Ethan M. Aldridge

hopeful mysterious medium-paced

3.0

A beautifully illustrated original queer fairy tale. Agatha, the daughter of a miner, dreams of a university education but it seems out of reach to a country girl. Then she encounters a pale magical woman from the forest, who tricks Agatha into owing her a favor. This turns into a series of tasks with increasingly dangerous consequences. I loved the watercolors, especially during scenes set at night. The story is aimed at fairly young readers, but still engaging for an adult.