_lia_reads_'s Reviews (757)

"The past is greedy, always swallowing you up, always taking. If you don't hold it back, if you don't dam it up, it will spread and take and drown. The past is not a receding horizon. Rather, it advances one moment at a time, marching steadily forward until it has claimed everything and we become again who we were; we become ghosts when the past catches us. I can't live as long as my past does. It's one or the other."

Thanks to Riverhead books for providing me with a free digital ARC of this work. However, as soon as I started reading the digital copy, I knew that I needed to get my hands on a physical one as well.

Real Life follows Wallace, a biochem graduate student in a Midwestern town as he grapples with his identity, his relationships with his colleagues and friends, and his past and future. Wallace has kept his distance from his cohort of graduate students, as a tactic of self-preservation, often feeling that he is an outsider as the only gay African-American in his group of friends. It is a quiet book, focused more on character development than on a racing plot. I was absorbed by Taylor's writing style and carefully crafted and poetic sentences. His writing is just beautiful and reflects Wallace's state of mind as his world is rocked by the dynamics in his group of friends. I enjoyed the different portraits of sexuality and relationships presented by the various characters, even through all of their difficulties. The book is by no means an easy read, with several triggering incidents and tough discussions. However, it is an important look at a character struggling through his life in graduate school (which I very much related to) and trying to figure out if the life he is in is truly 'real' life.

5 stars all the way.

TW: sexual assault, depicted several times; depression; suicidal ideation; homophobia; racism

Jenny Lee has taken on an interesting project of adapting Anna Karenina for a modern audience. Rather than simply retelling the story in this new setting, she has modified certain elements that nod to Tolstoy's work while also making it feel fresh and updated. For example, setting the story among the elite 1% of NYC mirrors the opulence of the Russian aristocracy while also feeling relevant to many other stories today. I appreciated the inclusion of the diverse characters, particularly the half Korean Anna, which made the book feel updated and more realistic. However, maintaining other elements of the original, particularly "Count Vronsky" as a character name, felt clunky and I wish that had been handled differently.

I honestly enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would. The beginning was slow and I felt disconnected from the characters. However, as I got more into the drama, I was hooked. I went into the book knowing that it had been compared to episodes of Gossip Girl, but I was pleasantly surprised at how it was less superficial and dealt well with some difficult issues like revenge porn. The characters felt one-dimensional at times, but the primary ones like Anna and Vronsky were more developed. I liked the changes that Lee made to the story, for the most part, particularly the plot lines that differ from the original work. That said, you don't need to have read Anna Karenina in order to appreciate Anna K. The latter is more a hat tip to the original Russian work, rather than an exact retelling.

Overall, I felt that Lee's work was a clever reinterpretation of a classic that captures the essence of Tolstoy without making it feel old fashioned.

TW: Suicide ideation; death; heavy drinking and drug use; revenge porn; assault

3.5-4 stars

I wanted so badly to love this book. I enjoy books set in the 1920s, such as The Great Gatsby, and often gravitate towards well-written historical fiction. However, The Glittering Hour fell short for me.

The opening premise, alternating between two different times a decade apart, was interesting. Selina writes letters to her daughter, Alice, telling her about her life at a certain moment in the 1920s. Through the letters and the longer narrations, we learn about Selina's romance with Lawrence and her romps around London with her friends. There is some intrigue, particularly surrounding Lawrence and Selina's general desire to be free from the constraints of her more conservative family. As the book progresses, you also start to question from where Selina is writing and things begin to not unfold as they seemed they would.

My biggest hang up were the characters themselves. It is difficult for an adult to write a child character, and Grey certainly struggled with Alice. But more broadly, the characters felt flat and one-dimensional. Maybe I have a cold, unfeeling heart, but I didn't really care about Selina and Lawrence's romance and got frustrated by them. The book frequently switches between the two time periods, which was easy to follow, but the narration also flips between characters at seemingly random moments. One particular moment was when all of the sudden we were following Lawrence's roommate, a character that had been mentioned but barely played a role in the book until that point. I wanted more of the side characters––like Flick, Theo, and Edith––who were honestly more interesting than Selina and Alice.

My other complaint was how the book resolves itself. I won't go into too much detail, for fear of spoiling. But, I'll simply say that things wrapped up a little too neatly for a situation that wasn't easy...

2.5 stars rounded up.

This book was weird. And I'm not sure if it was weird in a good way or not.

Choi presents the reader with a story told in 3 acts, or 3 different trust exercises. Trust exercises both amongst the characters but also between the narrator and the readers. I can't tell you much more about it without giving away the plot. But the work boils down to two different main thoughts: What is the truth? And who gets to decide what the truth is?

Does truth come from a place of power? Or from the perspective of the victim? Or from some combination of the two?

The overall questions of the book are intriguing, but the story was hard to contend with at times. I appreciated the shift that occurs between the first and second parts. However, the third part felt clunky and awkward (maybe that was the point?). The characters are all awful, some more than others, and I think this is part of Choi's point. Her prose style was not my favorite, being overly verbose at times, but I think it will appeal to some.

Overall, I think if you approach this novel thinking of it an experimental exercise, you will get more out of it. This was not the mindset I had going in, which affected my appreciation, but I someday hope to revisit it with that in mind.

3 stars

TW: Pedophilia, sexual assault of minors, murder, alcoholism

This was a beautifully written story of two generations of women, separated by almost a century of time. Josephine, in 1925, is a sharecropper in the South, struggling to get by and dealing with uneasy relations with her new neighbors. In 2017, Ava (a descendant of Josephine) has just moved in with her white grandmother, whose descent into dementia threatens Ava and her son's comfort and safety.

Throughout the story, female bonds run strong, both between (grand)mother and child and between friends. There are so many strong, female characters supporting one another when the going gets tough. I loved the thread of healing that runs through the story as well, and the casting of these healers as being in touch with a more magical, almost supernatural, part of the world. The book dips its toes into magical realism without emphasizing it.

I struggled with the pace of the book, particularly with Josephine's sections. Her story was interesting, at times heartbreak and uplifting at others. But it was slow-moving and I sometimes found myself wanting to get back to Ava's POV. Perhaps this was also because Ava's story was more familiar to me, something that has been told many times and thus easier to latch onto. Sexton's writing is well-crafted but the story was at times difficult to follow and left a lot of loose ends hanging. I would have liked a slightly longer story to give more of a conclusion.

Overall, I felt that the stories told here were important, I just wanted a little more from the execution.

TW: Racism

Thanks to Netgalley and Scribner for an e-ARC of this book!

This book was all kinds of weird and disturbing but in a way that was super intriguing. Ada and her father are healers, not quite human but that have taken on human forms. In order to heal, they have the ability to literally open people up or reach into them to remove the sickness (lots of people have described this as super gross, but I found the descriptions tame). The story is told from Ada's point of view, alternating with very short interludes of people from the town describing experiences with Ada and her father. Throughout the book, Ada is striving to be human and in the process falls in love or lust for a human man, Samson. She has to decide whether to abandon Samson or try to heal him, and either choice will change the course of her life forever. Regardless of the path she chooses, this is not a traditional love story...

There is not strictly a plot, but instead a series of stories that move chronologically. Rainsford's prose is lyrical and and sparse, leaving much to the imagination. By the end of the book, some questions are answered but others are purposefully left vague and open to the reader's interpretation. I loved the world that Rainsford created, twisting a fairytale-like premise with something darker. I would not describe the story as pure fantasy but rather a form of magical realism. It worked well as a novella but I also didn't want to leave the weird world that she has created. I read this in one day because I couldn't put it down. I look forward to reading more of Rainsford's writing.

I can’t believe it took me so long to read this series. It has now become a favorite of mine and I can’t wait for the conclusion of the trilogy to come out at the end of June!

The Kingdom of Copper is the sequel to The City of Brass (which I reviewed earlier in my feed!). The prologue of the book picks up where the first book ends but the rest of the book’s events are set 5 years in the future. I don’t want to say too much about the plot, for fear of giving too many spoilers about either book in the trilogy.

However, in a more abstract sense, this book does a nice job of interrogating race in the context of the fantastical medieval Muslim-inspired world that S.A. Chakraborty has created. The characters constantly find themselves questioning what it means to have ‘pure’ blood and which race is meant to rule the kingdom. The conflict between different political and religious beliefs feels real and relatable.

When I read fantasy, the most important part for me is the world that is created. The world building of this trilogy is phenomenal and Chakraborty’s writing makes you really feel as though you understand the system in which these characters operate. The characters themselves are richly written, another important element of a story for me.

Overall, if you love books with political intrigue in addition to fantasy elements (think Game of Thrones with less sex), you will love this trilogy. My favorite aspect of these books is the setting, which feels so unique in the fantasy book world. I can’t wait for the third book and hope to see more from Chakraborty in the future!

Girl, Woman, Other explores what it means to a woman, and especially a woman of color, in Britain. Each chapter focuses on a different woman, grouped into sections of three women directly related to one another, either by blood or by other social relationships. As the book progresses, this network of relationships becomes more intertwined and complex, speaking to the interrelatedness of the human experience.

Evaristo's prose treads the line between traditional prose and poetry. She uses poetic phrasing, for example, to emphasize moments of extreme emotion while the prose is saved to further the story. The style may be hard for some readers to get used to––in addition to the lack of quotation marks and much punctuation––however I found it unique and enjoyable. This book would be beautiful read aloud.

There were some characters with whom I connected more than others. But I enjoyed the variety of experiences that are presented. Evaristo acknowledges that there are many different ways to be a woman. The characters grapple with sexism, racism, transphobia, and homophobia and all find ways to be strong in the face of these prejudices. I enjoyed seeing the journey that each character experienced within the confines of her chapter, as well as the ones that continued in future chapters.

I struggled a little with the last section, which is structured differently from the rest of the book. But the epilogue saved the story for me. Overall, a powerful read that I recommend to everyone

TW: Rape; domestic violence; racism; homo/transphobia; child abuse/pedophilia; miscarriage

I think this may be a case of expecting too much from a book. When I read the description, I got excited about this world of pirates, mermaids, and magic. And while the book delivered all three, the execution was not always great.

One thing the book really excels in is world-building. Grace has created an interesting, island-based world in which everyone has magic that is expressed in different ways. I enjoyed her descriptions of the different islands and the politics of the kingdom. In the early parts of the book, there are a lot of descriptions of how soul magic––the magic that only the main character's family is allowed to practice-- is accomplished, and it is quite gruesome. This took me a bit by surprise early on but I went with it.

The story is told through the perspective of Amora, the princess of the island kingdom of Visidia. She's one of the more unlikeable main characters I've read and it was really unclear throughout the book whether or not we were supposed to root for her. She's a spoiled brat, who is incredibly self-righteous and yet very naive (the latter of which is not really her fault). She improves as a character as the book goes on but not by much. The secondary characters, particularly Bastian and Vateae the mermaid, save the story, but are often too secondary. Vateae is an especially interesting character but often gets demoted to simply be an elaborate plot device. I wanted more for her and her journey.

The ending of the book clearly sets it up for the sequel but also left me feeling discourages for Amora. While the book sets her up a strong female character, her fate at the end––without giving anything away––dismantles that impression.

Overall, this is a case of an interesting premise with a story that let me down. I think it will certainly appeal to younger readers, or those who are more avid readers of YA fantasy. But for me, it missed the mark.

2.5 stars, rounded up.

I'm not sure what else can be said about this memoir that hasn't already been said. I listened to the audiobook, performed by Obama herself, and that enhanced the experience of the story. Through the book I learned a lot about her background and early years of her life that I didn't know much about before. Her gentle ribbing of Barack throughout was hilarious and really spoke to the depth of their relationship. The more recent political chapters were interesting, especially seeing her perspective on the things that happened during the presidency. This part of the book is an insider's look at what it is truly like to the be the FLOTUS.

Overall, a book I would recommend to everyone.