Adichie writes a letter to her friend about how to raise her daughter as a feminist, posing 13 guidelines that offer thoughtful questions into the process of raising strong girls.

This a short, quick read, and I adore Adichie's bold writing. This is my new baby shower gift to any friends having or adopting children. :) While I didn't agree with every single item, I loved about 99% of her principals, and found myself nodding my head as I read. I especially loved the role-reversal question, which is one I often use - "Would someone say the same thing about a man?"

I especially loved item eight - rejecting likability. So often women are told that "people" might not like something...and men aren't. Just...YES. :)

This is a book I wish I had received as a young adult. I'm thankful that my mom reared me to be a feminist.

Loosely based on 1,001 Arabian Nights, Sharazad volunteers to marry the caliph, determined to hold him accountable for the girls he marries and then kills the next morning. As Khalid listens to her stories and as Shazi continues to survive night after night, we learn more about Khalid's pain and the curse on his family.

This book was definitely driven by plot and has somewhat relatable characters, and Ahdieh definitely kept me wanting to find out what's next. I enjoyed the book, but I'm left with a lot of confusion. I also couldn't get into her writing style, but this tends to be a more personal thing. While the blossoming love beween Khalid and Shazi is believable, I don't know if much of a "case" was made for Tariq in the background - I didn't care much for his (Tariq's) part of the story, and while I liked the "role reversal" that tends to happen in a love triangle, I just didn't have a lot invested in him in the first place. I'm a big fan of loose ends, but I felt like this story held too many loose ends - after nearly 400 pages, I should know a little more how/why the magic works and what's really going on behind the scenes. Maybe this will be more clear in the next book.

Again, fantastic, fun plot. Characters are great. The writing styles and patterns just weren't for me.

This story follows the interactions of artist-photographer Mia Warren and her daughter, Pearl, and the Richardson family. After a lifetime of moving across the country, Mia says that this is finally the place they will stay. We read the story in reverse, chronicling the perspectives of the four Richardson children - Trip, Moody, Lexie, and Izzy - and how each of their lives become entwined with and impacted by Mia and Pearl...and how a little uncertainty and wonder in an orderly town like Shaker Heights can change the course of several lives.

This was my first read by Celeste Ng, and it certainly won't be my last. While reading about each of the characters, I wasn't sure where this story was going..and then BAM, around page 100 she rips your heart out. Even though the book is written in third person, it reads like a first person glimpse of each character - and even though there isn't a definitive break in when the stories switch (like when we finally hear Mia's full story, to Lexie's story, to the court case) the flow isn't confusing at all. Ng has a way of flowing in and out of topics so subtly you barely notice that you're covering so much ground so quickly. Pair this with the uncanny parallelisms with her characters (Bebe and Mia, Izzy and Pearl, Her attention to this kind of detail is a huge strength.

This book asks some hard questions: what makes a parent, particularly a mother? What makes a family? What defines a good or bad choice - are there good and bad choices? Do people understand the weight of cross-cultural adoption and the issue of race? Is "because this is how things are done" always a good reason to keep the status quo? There's a lot going on under the surface that it will take some time to unpack.

We're also left with a lot of questions, which I love: Does Mia go to meet her parents? Does she contact Mia's father (and his wife)? Does Izzy find Mia and Pearl? Where do Mia and Pearl end up - and do they find a place to finally "stay"? This would be delightful for a book discussion.

Pairings: The Mothers, Under a Painted Sky, The Girl who Fell from the Sky.

Tyrell and his family have been down on their luck and are living in a shelter after eviction because their Dad is in jail and they can't make the rent. Trying to get out of their not-great situation, Tyrell comes up with an idea - he'll throw a big party and DJ like his dad did, and that'll make him enough money to get his family an apartment again...and then he can save up to take care of his girl, Novisha, while she goes to college.

Booth's writing is phenomenal, believable, raw, and empathetic. Even though I haven't been in the exact situations Tyrell is in, I identified with his worry "am I going to mess this all up?" and his need to assert his independence as a teen moving into adulthood. Booth's character development and slow reveal of the full picture of Tyrell's situation is fantastic, and it's a pivotal reason the book works so well.

I also loved the contrast between his relationship with Novisha and his friendship with Jasmine. Novisha was perfect in his mind, and they did have similarities on some level with her Dad being out of the picture...but Jasmine understood where he was coming from in a completely different way because she was there, and she was homeless too.

I think this book might've been banned, and I can definitely voice that I wish I had access to a book like this in high school. There are some graphic scenes, but I think one of the safest places teens can be introduced to these realities is in books, and Booth has given a realistic, accessible-but-not-too-graphic depiction of real situations. I'm thankful that Booth wrote this book.

Rachel has grown up in the city, but after a crisis, she moves in with her grandmother in rural area. Through this story, and following others within her story: Laronne (a neighbor friend), Roger (a friend in the rural town), Jamie/Brick (who saw them fly), and Nella (her mother), we see that Rachel's move through her grief and trauma correlates with her accepting both wholes of her cultures.

Durrow has incredible character development. I enjoyed the way she built this story through the voices of multiple characters, all who changed over time. I constantly wanted to know more, and I really loved the way that she incorporated Nella's diary in order to tell the full story. The bird metaphors she chose as many of the characters were moving towards adulthood was apt. I also loved the open-ended nature of this book in that we really don't know what happened fully, and I think that's the appropriate ending for such a story. There's no way for us (and Rachel) to fully know what was happening and what had happened both in her mother's mind and where her Dad was. While we as readers may hope for everything to be tied up neatly, not all things can. This is executed by Durrow fabulously.

Durrow also captures the tension in Rachel's bi-racial experience in a way that I, as a privileged white person can catch a glimpse of, but can acknowledge the dual nature of "Wow, I can't understand," and "Wow, this must be such a difficult experience to be not fully accepted in both of these worlds." Eye opening.

Recommended.

Pairings: The Bluest Eye, Black like Me, I know why the caged bird sings

Amazing.

No words.

The end of this book:

"See, you don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking."
She turned out the light and I patted my son's body lightly and went back to sleep."

This absolutely RIPPED ME TO SHREDS. I was reading on the kindle so I didn't realize this was the end. I also didn't realize until the end So thanks, Dr. Angelou, for making me cry in front of strangers on the airplane. :)

Recommended.

Mimosa is the daughter of an aromateur in California who is balancing learning her future career and struggling through fitting in as a teen in a diverse high school. Having learned the secrets of her trade since she was a child, she knows the smell of heartache, euphoria, and lies...and the most important rule of all, "Aromateurs cannot fall in love." After accidentally "fixing" a potion to the wrong person, Mim and an unlikely acquaintence, Court, work together to undo the situation.

While the writing style wasn't my personal favourite, this is actually what I want to compliment the most. Lee's main descriptor of smell all throughout the book naturally makes sense, but functions in a way I haven't seen a lot of authors do. Smells evoke such deep memories the mind, and Lee's background in perfumery absolutely makes this book shine. The scent/mood matches are perfect. This book is lighthearted but also carries deeper themes, and may have overtones in relating to 1st and 2nd generation families...and what happens when a family member chooses differently than the "correct, expected" path.

Recommended.

Pairings: not sure

Bennett's novel traces the story of three young people: Nadia, a young independent girl with a promising future and a secret; Luke, an adult pastor's kid who still bears the weight of this "duty"; Nadia, the "good Christian girl" who showed up at church one day and barely left. And the Mothers...named and unnamed, always watching, sometimes judging, but always yearning to instill their wisdom and wondering about their own choices.

Bennett traces the heavy themes of "what if" throughout this novel, and it's painful at times to see because we can relate to our own whatifs that can keep us awake at night. Bennett's character development of her main characters is true and steady, and the intertwining theme of the different types of mothers/mothering/mentoring we experience (some good, some bad) shows that none of us are exempt from "good" and "bad" and "absent" mothers and influences. We are all daughters who turn into mothers, whether we have biological children or not - we care for those among us because it's our nature...some of us do it well, and some of us don't. But we all mother and have a mothering influence - it's a thing that cannot be divorced from being a woman.

Bennett's writing is beautiful and true, and I imagine there were a lot of themes/notions I didn't pick up on in this book. I can't believe this was her first novel, (I'm pretty sure this is her first) and I'm hoping to read more from her.

Dana, a young, African-American girl of the 1970s, finds herself inexplicably linked to Rufus, a distant white relative in the 1800s. As Dana is continually "called" back in time to Rufus, Dana is forced to adjust to life as a slave as her reality, and faces the dissonance between her current life in the 70s (married to a white man) and her "past-current" life seen as a "freed slave" in the 1800s.

Wow, wow, wow! Butler is an incredible writer! She asks and examins hard questions in this book: How could people really believe other people were property? What made slaves stay? What made them leave? And that's just scratching the surface - this book is thick with imagery, symbolism, and all kinds of literary devices I can't remember right now. ;) I'd love to teach this book in a high school AP class!

Butler's character development of her main characters is fascinating. Dana's "assimilation" into slavery over the period of the book is completely believable. The other slaves' "rejection" of her makes sense. Rufus's back-and-forth, hot-and-cold nature makes sense in his context. It's all about survival. At the end, the "role reversal" of Kevin and Dana (Kevin calling out how awful Rufus had been, and Dana making excuses for him) was incredibly fascinating, and I'm still mulling over the symbolism there. There was so much going on in this book!

There were a few parts that I found confusing, but I honestly think they were confusing because I was reading this as a white woman.

I simply cannot imagine how groundbreaking this book (and her others!) were when it was first published. This is definitely a read-again. There's a lot to digest here, and I don't think I got all of it in the first read. I'm *really* looking forward to reading more by Butler!

Pairings: The Handmaid's Tale; Poisonwood Bible; Things Fall Apart; The Time Machine

When it comes to 1 Corinthians, Fee is one of the best.