abbie_'s Reviews (1.79k)

I felt like I needed something a little easier to read in the early days of January, when my brain was mushy from work, so I turned to some fantasy/horror-esque fiction in the form of this queer biracial retelling of Frankenstein! It delved deeper into themes of identity & belonging than I expected, but at the same time, didn’t go quite deep enough to be satisfying. It was an enjoyable read in that it was entertaining, but it hasn’t stuck with me hugely. 

The main part that does stick with me now, three weeks after finishing it, is the disbelief I felt at one of the main turning points of the novel.

Dr Frank has perfected her embryo and is almost ready to implant into Hannah, when she realises her now-evil (again, a bit lacklustre in the development there) brother has fertilised it. Blinded by her ambition, she lies to Hannah and implants it anyway, putting a piece of Ezra into her partner without her consent?!?! Hello?? This seems so out of character. Like you just spent months creating this embryo, literally just do it again. The risk vs reward is not adding up here.

I know that the ‘monster’ (Ash in this case, the nonbinary offspring created by Dr Frank) needed motive to become so, but lord it was hard to suspend my disbelief there.

I did really like the little peek into Indonesian culture, specifically with regard to Bugis society where there are five recognised genders. The gender identity aspects of the novel were the most compelling, along with the limits of scientific research, ethics, and how far people are willing to go in the name of ambition. 

A little forgettable, sometimes questionable, not mad I read 

I’m making a fun challenge for myself where all the books I read for the StoryGraph’d 2024 Genre Challenge have to also be queer 🌈 So I found this one for ‘a crime or thriller novel in translation’. Snare follows Sonja, a newly single woman fighting for custody of her son while being entangled in a drug smuggling operation, plus a messy affair with a woman who is in denial about her sexuality. 

If I can just talk about Agla for a minute - I was in the closet as a lesbian until I was 26 (though out as ‘bisexual’ before then) so I get the denial. Being out can be hard. But Agla is so deep in denial it was painful - and I couldn’t help but wonder why Sonja continued to put up with it. It must be so difficult to be with someone who clearly loves you, yet refuses to acknowledge a core part of herself. 

Onto the drugs and smuggling and the like - this part did keep me guessing until a giant clue near the end and I was actually able to sort of work out who the kingpin was! I *mostly* enjoyed Sonja’s methods for smuggling

until she poisoned two sniffer dogs. That was awful.

I know she was pushed to the edge but I really had a bad taste in my mouth after that. It also felt a bit iffy that the only characters of colour that appear in the story are all drug dealers.

Probably the most compelling part of this book was Bragi’s storyline! A customs officer being pushed out of work due to his age, he’s desperate for a way to help his wife who has been placed in a subpar care-home due to severe dementia. Finding out what happens to those two would be my main motivation to pick up the sequel. 

The narrator, Suzannah Hampton, does a decent job, but I do wish publishers would make an effort to find narrators who at least speak the language a book was translated from, if not someone from that country altogether. Can’t help but think the Icelandic names were often butchered. 

Overall, I probably won’t be in a hurry to continue with the series, if I do at all. 

Picked up this beautiful copy of The Sea Cloak & Other Stories at the weekend and felt compelled to read it straight away. The stories within this book are just as beautifully written and translated as the cover illustration. The way Qarmout writes about Gaza, the sea, the women and children who live there, it’s a love letter to a place whose complete destruction we are currently witnessing in real time. It’s devastating, haunting.

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Published in 2017, these super short stories explore the tense reality of living in a country under occupation. Qarmout depicts children scrambling to make a living searching through rubble, men navigating fraught tensions just to work and not end up dead, women grasping for a life just out of their reach. Hypocrisies are laid bare, dreams of freedom (in more than one sense) shared, lives cut short by brutal and needless violence.

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I was struck by one story where a woman is reliving her sexual assault while caring for a child. The child is oblivious to the woman’s inner turmoil, happily watching Masha and the Bear, a show my nieces both love. Do the children of Gaza not deserve to continue to live carefree lives filled with silly cartoons? We see videos of children carrying other children, both deceased and alive, forced into the role of caretaker so young. World powers must surely see this too, and yet they continue to do nothing.

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Keep reading and amplifying Palestinian voices, both fiction and nonfiction, don’t look away from the atrocities that have been ongoing not just for the last 100+ days, but 75 years.

thanks to Libro.fm for my ALC!

I’m not having much luck with audiobook narrators in 2024 so far! I liked the concept & content of this book, but the narrator’s performance kept pulling me out of it. I’m not sure what the consensus on this is (if there is one!) but I like my audiobook narrators to just READ me the story. Please don’t act it out. It makes me cringe internally 😭 This narrator was physically laughing when it would say ‘she laughed’ or sighing, or getting so angry when characters were arguing, it made me uncomfortable and not in a good way. 

BUT me feeling awkward about the narration aside, this book was good! It focuses on Mickey, a twenty-something writer who is pushed out of her flashy media job in favour of another Black girl who, in the company’s eyes, will be more malleable. Mickey posts a searing manifesto about racism in media to be met with… crickets. Deflated, she heads home while she figures out her options, including what to do about her seemingly perfect girlfriend. This book does feature a love triangle, which usually just irks me but frankly I enjoyed the drama 👀

It’s very much a slice of life story, about figuring yourself out in your twenties, with the additional weight of how Mickey is treated as a Black lesbian in an industry that prizes whiteness - or a palatable, easy-to-digest brand of diversity. It’s messy and there’s no real resolution. Mickey makes poor decisions, self-pities, but that’s the reality of lots of our twenties!

Middle of the road, though probably would have liked it a lot more if I’d read it in print!

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

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My 2024 ARCs got off to an incredible start thanks to Jacqueline Roy! I hope more people pick this up because it’s just a beautiful piece of fiction. I had been wanting to read The Fat Lady Sings when Penguin reissued it in 2021, so when I spotted Roy’s name pop up on Netgalley and saw conjoined twins, Windrush generation, dementia, I hit request and readied myself for heartbreak.

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I’ve read a couple of books that tackle dementia and they’ve all been wonderfully done, in my opinion. In Memory of Us is no different. Roy uses a dual timeline and dual POVs to fantastic effect, both to flesh out the twins’ stories and to highlight Selina’s battle with the disease that’s slowly stripping away her memory. Her deteriorating mental state is heartbreaking to witness.

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The other most compelling part of the book for me was (obviously) Zora’s journey to discovering her sexuality, while growing up in the 60s amidst hatred fuelled by Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech. The queer aspect of this story took me by surprise but was a welcome addition.

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Roy fleshes out the twins’ relationship to each other and the other characters in the book with deft ease. I never once felt my attention slipping, I felt moved but not emotionally manipulated, I raged along with the twins.

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A must read for anyone interested in stories focusing on memory, Windrush and complex family relationships!

V cute, v steamy, v joyful! Trans people just living their lives in the 1950s and loving each other. Read this for Queer Your Year 2024 for the ‘T4T Love story’ but this was actually T4T4T 👀 I’ve not read anything centring poly-am love before and I was there for it. Madeline is adorable, Audrey is fierce, Victor is also adorable and together they are *chef’s kiss*.

I did notice quite a few spelling mistakes, sometimes just the wrong word completely, and I know that’s to be expected with self published books. I also thought Victor and Audrey’s history was a bit glossed over. 

The other reviews don’t lie, there’s a lot of smut here, but it is a vibe

Read the third and final (for now) Cho Nam-joo available in English and while it doesn’t match Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, it’s definitely better than Saha! 

This short story collection muses on similar themes to Kim Jiyoung- South Korean women and the challenges they face due to the country’s traditional gender roles. My favourite was probably Miss Kim Knows, about a woman who joins a company after Miss Kim, a low-ranking woman who basically kept the company running, has been let go. But she doesn’t go without a fight, enacting a quiet revenge on those who constantly underestimated and undervalued her. I also liked Night of Aurora, which featured an older woman finally making room for what she wants out of life. Dear Hyunnam Oppa was also quite a satisfying one, a woman finally wakes up to what a shit her fiancé is and absolutely roasts him via a letter. 

But I can’t say I’d recommend the audiobook. The narrator chooses such an odd array of accents and put-on voices for the characters, it kept taking me right out of the stories.

Translated by Jamie Chang

Tween girls being a tad feral - I know this word is overused a lot these days when a book is about women/girls doing things slightly outside the accepted norm, but to be fair, one of them does shit in a box and blame it on a dog. 

Abreu does an excellent job of conveying the atmosphere of a sleepy village in the Canary Islands, the heat of the summer, the volcanic landscape, the striking disparity that exists between locals and tourists. We follow two girls, Isora and Shit (yes, idk either), who embody toxic tween girl relationships. They constantly cross boundaries, obsessed with one another, then enemies, leading one another to dangerous situations, being each other's be-all-and-end-all, not speaking for days, weeks. There are physical fights, awful first sexual experiences, overwhelming feelings. 

And yet, all that, and I felt slightly at a remove from the text itself. I agree with some other reviewers that the girls often came across as older than they were, though I'm also aware that girls are forced to grow up quicker than boys. 

Crude and atmospheric, vulgar and sticky. 

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC! 

This is definitely a story of our times, unfortunately. When immigrants are criticised for fleeing danger and seeking refuge, when people so desperate for safety they would cross the Channel in a dinghy are called opportunists. Set in an unnamed country, in a town by the sea, The Singularity is, in a fun twist on the title, a cacophony of different voices, all coming together to paint a devastating picture of motherhood and the plight of the refugee. I found it a bit confusing at times, as often the author literally splices one POV into the other, using slashes to demarcate, but that’s likely just because I was reading it during my busiest time of year at work. With the proper attention, this book would be stunning. I can definitely see it making some prize lists this year. It has a haunting quality, which is a testament to the translator (Saskia Vogel, working from the Swedish). If it makes a prize list, I think I’ll give it a reread. 

I was super excited by this queer little book set in a mining town in the north of England, and in many ways it did deliver but I was also left wanting a bit more from it. I read it during a mega busy period at work, so it took me about 3 days to read the first half. The second half which I read in one sitting landed much better, so perhaps it’s one of those books best devoured all in one go. 

Pity explores (however briefly) the lives of a few men, queer and straight (and some not as straight as they appear) in a mining town in Barnsley, Yorkshire. I live in an old mining town myself, and I really enjoyed the exploration of the effect Thatcher had on the industry, as well as the expectations on men to perform a certain type of masculinity. 

The star of the book is Simon, a drag performer with a few side hustles (including his OnlyFans account and betting shop gig) to make ends meet. He wants to take his drag to the next level, make it art instead of some quirky entertainment for pissed punters. The book explores his relationship with his father, often walking on eggshells around his som, as well as his blossoming relationship with Ryan, a gay man who doesn’t seem fully comfortable accepting Simon’s feminine side when he’s in drag. 

There are also several little asides told in a chorus-like manner - gossip from locals, CCTV footage. These parts felt like they had potential, but I’m not sure, something felt not quite developed. I did love the cutaways to the miners, it is a brutal industry and it’s a little mind-boggling how much a town can be built around coal and the men who dig it out of the ground. 

Overall, I enjoyed it but wanted more from it. Would definitely pick up the author’s future works!