salimah's reviews
954 reviews

Maybe This Time by Cara Bastone

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective medium-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

4.0

Piglet by Lottie Hazell

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challenging dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

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

3.0

I am not sure what this book's thesis is. Is it that a woman in a larger body, who is identified solely by the size of that body (and her love of consumption)--to the point that her actual name isn't given until the very end of the story--only has one reaction to devastation, which is to consume to the point of unraveling?

Is it that the characteristic of gluttony, foisted on her by a set of circumstances in which she was protecting/enabling someone else's disordered eating, is so ingrained, so indelible, that another person's actions cause her to regress to the most cliched version of self-sabotage?

I don't know. . . it's not that this kind of thing could never happen or does not happen. I just feel like we've all read/seen this oversimplified version of this story before and nothing new has been brought to the table, so to speak.

And is food the the villain of this story or its hero or both?

And why, why, why not detail the betrayal that sets off this chain reaction of binging and stuffing and public humiliation? The author does not serve her story by holding it back as it could only realistically be one thing (or one-thing adjacent). Rather self-indulgent, no pun intended.

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

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adventurous funny hopeful inspiring mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Truly enjoyable-- a fresh take on the mystery/spy novel.

My Ex-Life by Stephen McCauley

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emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

The Boy Who Cried Bear by Kelley Armstrong

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adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.0

Expiration Dates by Rebecca Serle

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emotional hopeful medium-paced

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

3.0

I am all for a book subverting my expectations, even if the breadcrumbs become obvious about a third (or less) of the way through. What makes the subversion unsatisfying is when the execution doesn't earn it. This book is not ostensibly about a love triangle, but at the risk of oversimplifying its very engaging premise, that is what it boils down to. I'm glad it wasn't summarized that way, because I would have likely avoided it (my least favorite trope). And the lackluster three-star review aside, I did like it.

Ultimately, this is not a romance--and that's okay, welcome even, as I read plenty of those to my delight--and hopeful, but open-ended endings bring a unique satisfaction. In this case, though, there needed to be just a little bit more there, even without an HEA or an HFN. Even without making promises, even with an open-ended conclusion, an epilogue would have been helpful because I don't fully buy the way we got there. Or, I needed more of a justification by way of showing more of the characters' interiority/thinking throughout. . .

The author convincingly delivered an appealing relationship prospect for her heroine on the one hand and portrayed an established friendship that developed after a failed romance attempt on the other that is less convincing when the details of that unraveling are revealed, so when the heroine's epiphany comes it feels inorganic to the emotional and rational inclinations of all the characters.

Wellness by Nathan Hill

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challenging emotional funny reflective sad tense medium-paced