pravda_iskra's reviews
70 reviews

I really loved Cleopatra and Frankenstein, so I’m sad to report this book was a letdown in comparison. Really did not like Avery’s character arc at all (

why did she have to cheat on Chiti? Especially with a man? Could it not have been enough that Avery didn’t want kids and Chiti did? That alone would have irrevocably ruined their relationship, no weird digression with Charlie needed.

). The last Avery chapter felt like the end of one of those after school specials from the 90s and early 2000s.

Bonnie was my favorite. The weird jabs at Pavel’s English were unnecessary.

Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly

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emotional

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

1.0

Please stop writing about Eastern Europe if you don't know the faintest thing about Eastern Europe.

I guess the author had the idea that no one who possibly knew anything about the Russian language, Moldova in both the Soviet era and the present, the USSR as a whole, language in the USSR, queerness in the USSR, immigration within the USSR, names in Eastern European cultures that use patronymics etc. would ever read this book. Clearly, as she makes the most annoying, grating, elementary mistakes.

I skipped down to the acknowledgements to see if somehow this had gotten past someone from Moldova or Russia (or any Russian-speaking person) but there wasn't any name listed that could conceivably be from someone from that area or speaks that language.

For instance, Valdin isn't a Russian name. Did she perhaps mean Vladlen, a very Russian Revolution era name combining Vladimir and Lenin? The way she transliterates the characters' last name renders it Serbian and not Russian, since despite their Slavic roots, they have different letters? The Serbian č is the Russian Ч and cannot be rendered as a simple "c", because the sound it denotes is "ch". Does she know that Russian doesn't have an H sound, so no one from Soviet-era Moldova with Russian ancestry would be named Anthon? It's Anton, both amongst Romanian and Russian speaking Moldovans. I know because I've lived there for several years. Does she know that no Moldovan citizen would ever sum up Chisinau by Malldova , especially a person who immigrated in 1979, decades before Malldova would ever exist? Malldova was already old news in 2021....it was old news while I lived there for the first time. Does she know Russia doesn't allow dual citizenship (though of course there are ways around that...)? Does she know almost no man named Vladimir would go by Vlad? I mean, this is just basic information that could easily be googled.

Aside from these glaring mistakes, I found the ending to be particularly rushed. Everything tied up too easily with a neat little bow. Valdin

gets married, his ex having been in love with him the whole tie

, Greta finds a woman who loves her for who she is, and SURPRISE, the most interesting subplot (

that their mother might be cheating with their uncle's husband)

is resolved in the ending pages (

their dad is ok with it/they have an open marriage

) even though this has been eating away at Greta for pages and pages.

The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced