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nicdoeswords's reviews
75 reviews
We Ate the Dark by Mallory Pearson
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
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
5.0
*My copy of this ARC was gifted by the author. Aside from wanting to keep up my netgalley rating, I was under no pressure or obligation to read or review it ahead of its release.
We Ate the Dark is a masterclass in atmosphere. This book covers a lot of thematic ground — female friendships, the dark side of magic/witchery/power, growing up and away from the people you love, death and loss, jealousy and guilty, etc — and does so through meticulous setting and character work. The town of Loring sparkled with description, and I felt like I could practically taste each winding road and bend in the river and sticky vinyl seat at a diner.
Perhaps my favorite thing about this book was the ways it navigated the idea that you can often find yourself disliking someone you love. Many of us do have this seemingly unbreakable bond with people we met when we were young, and the ways that bond can be tested teach us a lot about what it's like to love and be in relationship to another person. The lines between lover and friend and family member blur into a really beautiful tapestry dedicated to telling us about love! How cool is that.
This book is marketed as sapphic literary horror, and delivers on all counts. I'm a weenie so the horror felt like the perfect amount for me: unsettling and creepy and a little gorey but very much within what I felt like I could handle. The lyrical language and descriptions also offered a bit of distance from the grotesque, which I appreciated. The messy sapphic relationships also slapped, and I think every character felt deeply deeply grounded in what it's like to be a queer woman in the world. I felt really seen as a lesbian in this story! That always means a lot to me as a reader and it's no surprise that Pearson nailed the execution.
My other favorite thing (and I think an important note for potential readers!) is about the ending. I'm not going into any specific details so don't worry about plot spoilers, but skip the following if you want to go in totally blind.The ending, both in terms of plot and in terms of relationships, was left really open, and I think that was such a smart choice. We get some closure around Sofia and the Fissure but not much, and Pearson really trusts the reader to figure it out and close the loop on their own. I am a "too easy closed ending" hater so this was ideal for me. I also LOVED that Marya and Frankie didn't end up putting labels on anything or sharing a Hollywood kiss. The messy in between works perfectly for them as characters and the way their relationship blossomed over the course of the story.
I could say so much more but I think I am going to leave it here for now and share more gushing on my booktok account. For now just know that I loved this story and cannot wait for it to come out and find its readership!
We Ate the Dark is a masterclass in atmosphere. This book covers a lot of thematic ground — female friendships, the dark side of magic/witchery/power, growing up and away from the people you love, death and loss, jealousy and guilty, etc — and does so through meticulous setting and character work. The town of Loring sparkled with description, and I felt like I could practically taste each winding road and bend in the river and sticky vinyl seat at a diner.
Perhaps my favorite thing about this book was the ways it navigated the idea that you can often find yourself disliking someone you love. Many of us do have this seemingly unbreakable bond with people we met when we were young, and the ways that bond can be tested teach us a lot about what it's like to love and be in relationship to another person. The lines between lover and friend and family member blur into a really beautiful tapestry dedicated to telling us about love! How cool is that.
This book is marketed as sapphic literary horror, and delivers on all counts. I'm a weenie so the horror felt like the perfect amount for me: unsettling and creepy and a little gorey but very much within what I felt like I could handle. The lyrical language and descriptions also offered a bit of distance from the grotesque, which I appreciated. The messy sapphic relationships also slapped, and I think every character felt deeply deeply grounded in what it's like to be a queer woman in the world. I felt really seen as a lesbian in this story! That always means a lot to me as a reader and it's no surprise that Pearson nailed the execution.
My other favorite thing (and I think an important note for potential readers!) is about the ending. I'm not going into any specific details so don't worry about plot spoilers, but skip the following if you want to go in totally blind.
I could say so much more but I think I am going to leave it here for now and share more gushing on my booktok account. For now just know that I loved this story and cannot wait for it to come out and find its readership!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Grief
Moderate: Body horror
Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser
3.5
Extremely fun and sweet! My number one wish is just that it had been longer — the stories themselves didn't feel quite interconnected enough (aside from sharing a cast), which makes sense knowing that this was expanded/adapted from a webcomic. This is also me continuing to be a newbie with graphic novels, but I did find myself really yearning for a throughline that more solidly drove the pace of the vignettes from one to the other, rather than each being separate and feeling like the momentum was kind of starting over with each of the five chapters.
This Wicked Fate by Kalynn Bayron
adventurous
emotional
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
I enjoyed this! I think the first book was a bit snappier in pace (which is just so common with a second vs first novel in a series/duology) but it was fun to blast right into the second book and get to see these characters get their ending. Briseis is plucky and a lot of fun to follow, and I continue to appreciate the way family is so central to this story. They believe in her but they take care of her too! Lovely stuff. Some action scenes felt a bit rushed/confusing but that also was probably because I was reading so quickly, which I feel like the series does really invite with such high stakes and major players throughout.
Black Girl, Call Home by Jasmine Mans
challenging
emotional
I am not star rating this book because I'm not sure where I land, so here is just a longer review in text form with my overall thoughts. Content warnings apply here for homophobia, racism, police violence and murder, and forced sterilization. (I listened to all of the poems on audio while doing other things, so I may have missed something! But these are the main ones I remember.)
Black Girl, Call Home is a fairly long poetry book, coming in on audio at just over 2 hours. Many of the poems are on the shorter side, though. We get a lot that are just one or two lines long. By and large, the shorter poems were my least favorite of the bunch. Some of that had a Rupi Kaur-esque cant to them, which might appeal to some readers—they were fairly simple in language, and generally just a pithy sentence in response to the call of the poem's title. The ones I liked more were generally longer.
Mans writes across a variety of topics, from home life to culture and media critique to historical events and more. As a result, this collection felt at times disjointed, bouncing between topics/settings/scopes and making me wonder if some of these ideas wouldn't be better served in books of their own. (There is a series of poems directed to/about prominent figures, including Kanye West, that really won me over and felt underserved in the middle of this long collection.)
When the poems worked, however, they really worked for me. My favorites tended to be related to the speaker's relationship with her mother, all tied together neatly at the end with our final poem, which, in audio, consisted only of a long dial tone. The tension of Mans' identity as a Black lesbian felt extremely poignant and well conveyed, and I appreciated the rawness of the compassion she has for the family members, particularly her mother, whose implied rejection comes from a place of love. It's a complicated homage to a specific cultural dynamic and I felt it was deftly conveyed.
While I did really like the audiobook, which is read by the author, I would recommend picking this book up in print and flipping through for poems that really speak to you as a reader.
Black Girl, Call Home is a fairly long poetry book, coming in on audio at just over 2 hours. Many of the poems are on the shorter side, though. We get a lot that are just one or two lines long. By and large, the shorter poems were my least favorite of the bunch. Some of that had a Rupi Kaur-esque cant to them, which might appeal to some readers—they were fairly simple in language, and generally just a pithy sentence in response to the call of the poem's title. The ones I liked more were generally longer.
Mans writes across a variety of topics, from home life to culture and media critique to historical events and more. As a result, this collection felt at times disjointed, bouncing between topics/settings/scopes and making me wonder if some of these ideas wouldn't be better served in books of their own. (There is a series of poems directed to/about prominent figures, including Kanye West, that really won me over and felt underserved in the middle of this long collection.)
When the poems worked, however, they really worked for me. My favorites tended to be related to the speaker's relationship with her mother, all tied together neatly at the end with our final poem, which, in audio, consisted only of a long dial tone. The tension of Mans' identity as a Black lesbian felt extremely poignant and well conveyed, and I appreciated the rawness of the compassion she has for the family members, particularly her mother, whose implied rejection comes from a place of love. It's a complicated homage to a specific cultural dynamic and I felt it was deftly conveyed.
While I did really like the audiobook, which is read by the author, I would recommend picking this book up in print and flipping through for poems that really speak to you as a reader.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Police brutality
Moderate: Homophobia
Forced sterilization is another content warning!
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
slow-paced
5.0
I don't have a rating yet (I'll be rating 4 stars at absolute minimum) because I'm percolating still but I finished this book and made so many little noises of distress. When was the last time a book's ending bodyslammed so hard I felt like I had been launched into a flaming wormhole? My god. Incredible writing, tight plotting, and a kind of relentless horribleness that pressed me through the end but left me feeling kind of ill. Maybe in a positive way? I'll need to sit with it to tell. You are going to want to check your content warnings before reading this one.
update: I am BACK to give baru cormorant her deserved five stars
update: I am BACK to give baru cormorant her deserved five stars
Queen of the Tiles by Hanna Alkaf
emotional
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
tense
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
4.5
WONDERFUL! Oh I loved this book, which is a mystery/study in grief set at a Scrabble tournament. Pitch perfect YA in that I felt really connected to my teenage self while reading, and a total love letter to language. I learned so many words I could play in Scrabble! And also that I would get creamed in Scrabble by any of these characters, lol. Really fantastic if I'm honest I think everyone should read this, not least because of how quickly i tore through it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief
The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings
I am withholding my review of this book in support of the Harper Collins Union!
Nine Liars by Maureen Johnson
I am withholding my review of this book in support of the Harper Collins Union!