takecoverbooksptbo's reviews
153 reviews

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson

informative sad tense fast-paced

4.0

A fast-paced and intense recounting of the lead up to the US Civil War. This isn’t mind-blowing, but it is engrossing. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Sexism, Gun violence, Racial slurs, War, Racism, and Slavery

Moderate: Colonisation, Alcohol, and Alcoholism

The Skunks by Fiona Warnick

emotional funny lighthearted 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

2.5

A Zoomer Less than Zero with more charm but less impact. Warnick is a decent writer but the whole thing feels very ripped-from-the-feed. It’s not bad if you’re an avid reader of this post-graduation aimlessness vibe, but it’s pretty cloying and chaste in parts. You’re better off reading The First Bad Man or Mysteries of Pittsburgh. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal death, Infidelity, and Toxic friendship

Minor: Sexism and Misogyny

Negative Space by B.R. Yeager

challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.0

A plotless exploration of dark magic, depression, teen angst, sexual awakening, and alternate dimensions. It’ll test your patience, but the ending makes it (mostly) worth it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Mass/school shootings, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Blood, Body horror, Racism, Self harm, Gore, Grief, Homophobia, Death of parent, Outing, Violence, Vomit, Toxic friendship, Drug abuse, Dysphoria, Abandonment, Addiction, Deadnaming, Toxic relationship, Injury/Injury detail, Suicide, and Transphobia

Moderate: Racism, Animal cruelty, Car accident, Cultural appropriation, Alcoholism, Dementia, Fatphobia, Forced institutionalization, Sexual content, Homophobia, and Animal death

Minor: Terminal illness, Antisemitism, and Biphobia

The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard

challenging dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol and Death

Moderate: Suicide, Child death, Chronic illness, Death of parent, Gun violence, Misogyny, Physical abuse, and Sexual harassment

Minor: Blood, Suicide attempt, and Toxic friendship

Blackouts by Justin Torres

challenging mysterious sad 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? It's complicated

4.0

A mixture of Calvino's polyphonous Invisible Cities, Mendelsohn's myserious memoir of queer New York The Elusive Embrace, and the touching diasporic dissonance Noor Naga's autofiction If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English, Justin Torres' Blackouts is a multifaceted love story.

There are so many different types of love explored in the novel: friendship, romance, familial love, carnality, love of art, romanticization of the past, care work, among many others. While it's not a clear-eyed novel whose beginning-middle-end structure is immediately satisfying, the miasmal atmosphere and haunting presences of the book resonate far beyond its conclusion.

In a way, Torres gives us a ghost story, but, in another way, Blackouts could be considered a truthful synopsis of our mediated existence. A novel of ideas, it asks, what is biographical or personal truth when it can only ever be revealed through the cleaning-up process of storytelling? Is the past meaningless in the face of an inexhaustible present? Or, alternatively, is the past the only thing that can bestow meaning, given that our personhood can only be defined by the collage of memory and documentation that exists to tell us who we are? Torres doesn't embark on the journey to answer these questions, but to get the reader to think about them, to meditate upon our fragile bodies in relation to the deep time of our actions.

Blackouts is a remarkable book, but it's certainly not for everyone. At times, its elliptical structure gets in the way of the story being told, and the characters floating through the narrative seem too vaporous to picture without the substantial archival material bound up with the text. Having said that, I think most who pick it up will find something to love.      

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Forced institutionalization, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Infidelity, Homophobia, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Medical trauma, Abandonment, and Mental illness

North Woods by Daniel Mason

adventurous emotional mysterious reflective 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

5.0

This book is incredible. Telling the life of a house over the course of four centuries by focusing on twelve characters from varying time periods, North Woods is a heartfelt and imaginative rumination on the relentless march of time and on our roles as caretakers on this planet. Our individual bodies may not be around for longer than a century, but the impacts of our bodies on the land we occupy may be felt for generations to come. 

Wild Houses by Colin Barrett

emotional funny tense 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? It's complicated

4.0

Colin Barrett isn't reinventing the Irish Crime Novel in any major way, but this is a worthy entry into the genre's annals. Taking place in the Irish town of Ballina during the course of one festival weekend, the story itself traces the margins of the city's festivities. The characters are largely unremarkable: a reclusive high-school dropout living in his dead mother's house, small-time drug-dealer brothers who invade the drop-out's house with an unwanted guest, a teenage bartender whose boyfriend is missing, and mothers and fathers living, dead, and mentally ill. The devil is in the details, though, and Barrett gives the characters populating Wild Houses so much humanity and pathos that you can't help but empathize with their disaster-skirting lives.
 
The plot itself hangs upon coincidence, like all good melodrama. However, the narrative cleverly uses these plot contrivances to show the imprisoning atmosphere of living your whole life in a small town. Everyone is known, yet no one is known well. As the climax approaches, the minor tragedies of everyone we've met start to take on greater significance in the face of the uncaring world's ability to go on without them. 

This was such a pleasant surprise. I would definitely recommend picking it up if you have a chance, this is likely to be a sleeper hit at the end of the year. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Panic attacks/disorders, and Cursing

Moderate: Body shaming, Bullying, Sexual harassment, Suicide attempt, Suicidal thoughts, and Death of parent

Minor: Violence, Drug use, and Drug abuse

Boys In the Valley by Philip Fracassi

dark emotional tense fast-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? Yes

4.25

Despite some misgivings about how Fracassi resolves the conflict between the real-world harms Catholic institutions have inflicted and the spiritual salvation that the religion offers, this book rules. As possession narratives go, you’d be hard pressed to find a book that is paced this well and also finds time to develop characters, mood, and dread. There are some very scary, unsettling moments in this story. I’d highly recommend it if you want an action-packed horror story that will tug at your heart-strings a little bit.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Death of parent, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Child abuse, Suicide, Confinement, Murder, Blood, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, and Torture

Moderate: Alcoholism, Sexual content, Self harm, and Grief

If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution by Vincent Bevins

challenging inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

Vincent Bevins might be the best journalist-historian working today. Between his outstanding 2021 book The Jakarta Method and this one, he’s laid out a convincing set of events that both confound and elucidate the modern era. If We Burn takes aim at what it calls « the Mass Protest Decade » (the 2010s) and tries to find the reasons why internet-fueled and hypermediated uprisings in far-flung places like Egypt, Brazil, Hong Kong and Tunisia had such varied and often disastrous political effects. Bevins uses first-hand accounts of the events, along with rigorous historical research to look into how reactionary forces were able to co-opt protests that almost universally began as horizontalist, neo-Anarchist demonstrations and movements. If you’re looking for the reason why the mass protests of the 2020s have failed to result in meaningful progressive change, this is your book.

White Horse by Erika T. Wurth

dark emotional sad slow-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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction

Moderate: Blood, Child abuse, Murder, Suicide attempt, Car accident, Gun violence, Colonisation, Drug abuse, Violence, and Classism

Minor: Toxic relationship, Pedophilia, Abandonment, Car accident, and Mental illness