Heaven is a Bangalore slum populated with women who got left behind - widowed, abandoned, escaped. The central characters are five girls with big dreams who support each other through the trials of their hand-to-mouth existence.

A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF HEAVEN shines a light on a community of people who are ignored and overlooked - brown girls, poor girls, gay girls, trans girls. The flowery language of the novel brings the beauty of each girl's life to the surface as they learn to make the best of their situation, often by seeing the talents the others have and working to lift them up.

The chapters read like vignettes - brief glimpses into the life of each girl and her family. I was often left wanting more. I feel like I got the bird's eye view of this community rather than a deep knowledge of any one character. I think this is a book whose imagery will stay with me long after I've forgotten the plot details. I've never even been to that side of the world, let alone to Bangalore or a slum within it, and I still felt as though I could see it right there with the characters.

I do feel like I have to say there was some clunky handling of Joy's coming out as trans. I think it was an attempt to illustrate the rest of the community making the switch with her name and pronouns, but to me, the use of her deadname and incorrect pronouns lasted too long and began to feel like deliberate misgendering to make a plot point.

Cassie Hanwell is an exceptional firefighter. When her estranged mother asks her to move cross-country to help take care of her during an illness, Cassie transfers to the local station, a station where women are explicitly unwelcome and underestimated. Though she's determined to be the best and not draw attention to her womanhood, Cassie finds herself falling for the station's kind and thoughtful rookie.

Look. This is a sweet story filled with wonderful characters that should be heartwarming. Instead, it's full of weird ideas about trauma and grief and forgiveness. I really did like Cassie and Owen and was rooting for them. I love the premise of a woman firefighter telling the men what's up and I I liked that she had a complicated relationship with her mother. But. But. In order not to spoil anyone planning to read this book...

Thanks to Random House for the free advance copy of this book.

HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST is part memoir and part educational text. Kendi sets out anecdotes from his own life to illustrate the variety of ways racism manifests in America and how it is closely intertwined with other prejudices we hold.

The writing in this book is simple and straightforward - you do not need a deep academic understanding of race to grasp the concepts Kendi brings to the reader. You will come away with that deep understanding after reading this book.

This book helped me untangle a lot of things that get conflated in our society. We often confuse race and ethnicity, or race and class, or many of the other subsets of racist thought laid out in each chapter. I was made to think about these things from angles I had never considered before, and I closed the book with not only a better understanding of my own ingrained racism but a framework for working against it - literally, how to be an antiracist.

Sarah McBride came out at trans her senior year of college. Her memoir, TOMORROW WILL BE DIFFERENT, covers her coming out and her rise as a trans rights activist. It's also the story of how she fell in love with and lost her husband, also a trans activist, to cancer just days after their wedding.

McBride's story is one of the most compelling memoirs I've ever read, political or otherwise. Her lightning-fast move from newly-out to being the first openly trans person to speak on stage at a major party convention is head-spinning and inspiring. She's also a great writer - she is able to clearly and concisely explain not only what her experience of being a trans woman feels like, but also to place the struggle for trans rights into context, both in today's politics and in the history of civil rights movements in this country. If you are new to learning about trans people, this book is a great place to start.

I also really appreciated her continual acknowledgment of her relative privilege. Trans people are among the most marginalized in our society, but McBride sees her own advantages - white, conventionally pretty, wealthy, with a strong support network - and uses her position to advance the position of all trans people.

Her description of gender dysphoria as feeling like a kind of homesickness is the first time I've ever felt like I might understand what it feels like to be trans. As a cis person, I'll never really know that internal pain, but who hasn't felt homesick? I found that illustration so helpful.

And as for her relationship with Andy. All the tissues, all the tears. I want to write more about it but I'm already about to cry again.

Cyril Avery was born out of wedlock to an unmarried girl in 1940s Ireland. Adopted out to parents who were, at best, indifferent to him, Cyril is left to his own devices to contend with his sexuality - especially in regards to his best friend Julian - in a country where gay relationships were illegal. THE HEART'S INVISIBLE FURIES follows Cyril's life through to the current day, along with all the loves and losses he endures along the way.

Okay, okay! I finally read the book every last one of you has told me to read! And I loved it! This book is so funny and so sad and so sweet. Cyril is such a wonderful oddball and I rooted for him the whole time. It's also a fairly quick and easy read for such a long book - the writing just carries you right along.

I think the best part of this book is his evolving relationship with Alice. Once they reconcile, they have the kind of friendship anyone would be lucky to have. I did wish he'd gotten more time with Julian to reconcile, but I think this way was pretty true to life. It would really have been that hard to find closure.

Usually I would ding a story for having as many coincidences as this book, but I actually loved it here. I loved how Cyril's birth mother's story was woven into his own, even before he knew it. Life can be strange and unbelievable sometimes, I guess.

Arthur Less is a middling, middle-aged novelist whose old boyfriend is getting married to someone else. Less decides that the only way to decline the wedding invite is to be out of town, so he cobbles together an itinerary of book events that will take him around the world.

I'll be honest - I was very skeptical of this book despite it having won the Pulitzer Prize. It sounded to me like EAT PRAY LOVE for a man, and literary books advertised as "hilarious" are usually some weird satire I don't understand. Well, I am here to eat crow and tell you I loved this book.

It is actually funny! It's a dry, sarcastic, British-style humor, making light of all the ways life disappoints Less. The way things underwhelm him, the way he is unremarkable, and the way he is never quite sure about how he got to where he is reminded me of another literary Arthur, Arthur Dent from the HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE books.

I really loved the ongoing discussion in this book about what makes a relationship worthwhile and successful. LESS really breaks apart the societal message that you must be married to one person for your entire life to have truly known love. A variety of forms of commitment and togetherness are represented in the book, and represented as real and accepted. It felt truly refreshing.

ON EARTH WE'RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS is a letter from a son to a mother - a boy known only as Little Dog writing to a mother who cannot read. His letter traces his family's traumas from the horror of the Vietnam War to the devastation of the opioid epidemic. Even amid the destruction, Little Dog's words find beauty inside the desperation.

I don't even know how to begin to write a review for this book. It's like trying to find the words to describe an art installation. This book is about trauma and violence, but also about holding tight on to the people you love in an effort to survive. Race and class and sexuality and masculinity and a dozen other issues collide with each other to paint a rich portrait of a young man just trying to make himself seen.

Vuong explores language deeply in this book. Not just how we use words, but the roots and nuances of words, phrases, and idioms, in both English and Vietnamese. His writing is somehow both dreamlike and clear as a bell at the same time.

Whether or not the narrator's mother ever comes to understand and clearly see Little Dog for all that he is, we the readers are shown his full complexity, and that's really the point of this book, I think - to say that to be seen is to exist, and to be misunderstood or overlooked is to die, figuratively and literally.