The Yoo family runs Miracle Submarine, an experimental therapy treatment. When the pressurized oxygen chamber catches fire and explodes, killing two patients and injuring others, blame immediately falls on a mother suspected of wanting to kill her autistic son. But as the trial unfolds, everyone’s secrets and half-truths come to light.

Wow, talk about a page turner! This book kept me guessing right up until the end. Several times I did not see a revelation coming, and this book is a testament to how seemingly innocuous actions can be misread when their context is stripped away.

MIRACLE CREEK is also a lot more about motherhood than I expected. It’s about what we expect from mothers, especially the mothers of disabled children - perfection, martyrdom, never a negative thought or a wish for a different life. And it really takes a hard look at ableism and the stigma around autism. Much of the book hinges on whether Elizabeth was doing the right thing in regards to her son Henry’s autism. Was she giving him the best opportunities or was she trying to “cure” him? Where is the line between those approaches?

It’s really impressive how many complicated questions like this are woven into MIRACLE CREEK, and I haven’t even touched on the immigrant narrative underneath all this. I’ll be thinking about the nuances in this story for a long time.

Thanks to Harper Collins for the free advance copy of this book.

Near the end of the Vietnam War, Hằng's brother Linh is separated from their family, sent to America with a rescue group. Six years later, she makes the horrific journey to Texas to find him. Along the way, she gets a ride from LeeRoy, a city boy who dreams of being a cowboy. What Hằng didn't expect was that Linh would not remember her, their family, or Vietnam once she finds him.

I can honestly say I've never read anything like BUTTERFLY YELLOW. As far as I can recall, I've never read any YA about the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and certainly not from the perspective of a young girl who survived it. It covers PTSD, family separation, language barriers and more.

One of the most unique things about this book is the way Hằng's voice is shown on the page. Her dialogue is written as the Vietnamese syllables that match the English words. It's a bit slow to read, but it showed me how frustrating it was for her to try to make herself understood. It's really an incredible authorial choice and I loved it - not in the least because I now have a better understanding of how the diacritical marks affect pronunciation.

LeeRoy I found to be a bit less compelling than Hằng. He was certainly sweet but I grew tired of his wannabe-cowboy thing quickly. I wasn't really sure why he stuck around to help either, beyond needing to be there for the plot.

The slow unfolding of Hằng's full experience in the war and boat travel to America rang true to what I know about repressed memories and PTSD. Her gradual realization of her own story and how much she could and should tell others made this book into so much more than your average YA boy-meets-girl.

Thanks to Counterpoint Press for the free copy of this book.

The Mother lives with her husband and three daughters in the suburbs of Atlanta, where, as an Indian American, she is one of the few people of color and is relentlessly harassed. When she finally snaps during a police raid on her house, The Mother is shot in her own driveway. The book flashes between past and present, showing us a lifetime of dehumanizing experiences.

THE ATLAS OF REDS AND BLUES is short - 250 pages, with many pages holding only a few paragraphs or sentences. But I feel like I've lived The Mother's life alongside her; I've seen her best and worst moments. The joy of her children, the grind of her job, the love of her dog, the endless questioning of her right to exist.

The fragmented style leaves you feeling as shattered as The Mother - tiny cracks building over time. It did take me a minute to remember which characters matched which names, as they're all referred to as Middle Daughter, my hero, The Real Thing, etc. But in the end, I won't forget any of them anytime soon.

In Houston, an Afro-Latino boy battles his way through his teenage years, dealing with his sexuality, his angry brother, his absent father, his mother's struggling restaurant, and more. We see him through his coming-of-age in a series of short stories that also expand outward to other residents of his community.

LOT, to me, is about love and despair and how to the two overlap. Love and despair over family, chosen family, and your hometown. Despair that makes you want to leave and start fresh somewhere new, but love that keeps you here. It's a complicated set of emotions, especially when what you're loving and what you're despairing aren't fixed points.

I've read several short story collections recently that contained a few overlapping stories, but I don't think I've ever read one quite like this, with one continuing plotline that runs the whole book interspersed with other neighboring stories. I felt like it gave me a deeper connection to the characters - I wasn't left feeling like I read an incomplete story like I often do with other collections. I think I'll be chewing on this one for a long time.

The women who work at sports apparel brand Truviv have silently put up with varying levels of harassment from their male boss for years. When a spreadsheet documenting the bad office behavior of Dallas men begins circulating, they decide to add his name to the list, unwittingly setting off a chain of catastrophic events.

WHISPER NETWORK is a ripped-from-the-headlines story that transposes the Shitty Media Men list that kicked off Me Too from New York media to Dallas lawyers. It follows that chain of events pretty closely, with a secret spreadsheet that eventually becomes public, and the ensuing debates about what constitutes harassment, how the revelations of these behaviors should be addressed, and how and when women should be believed.

I went into this expecting a thriller, but the main plot is really more of a slow burn. I also inadvertently spoiled one of the big reveals for myself when I googled a term I was unfamiliar with, so learn from me and put your phone down while reading!

I thought this book did a really good job of teasing out all the tangled feelings (most? all?) professional women deal with in regards to meeting society's expectations of them as mothers and employees. It really gets into how you can play by all the rules and still lose because a man will always have more power over you, whether that's professionally, socially, financially, or other.

I do wish there had been a wider range of women represented in this book. There were a couple women of color and one lower income woman, but as far as I could tell, they were all straight, cis, femme-presenting women. Then again, maybe that’s just another way to show that you can conform to the rules in every way and still be punished.

[ 2019 reread review ]
As a young boy, Theo Decker survives an explosion in an art gallery that kills his mother. This sets off a chain of events that will last decades. Theo is bounced around between friends and relatives as he grows up, making and losing friends along the way, all while he desperately tries to keep a major secret about the explosion.

I first read THE GOLDFINCH in 2016. I could not remember many plot details, but I remember being completely absorbed in Theo and Boris' world. On rereading, this absolutely held true for me. This book gets dinged a lot for being overly long and descriptive, but I find myself drawn in, losing track of time as I fall into Theo's thoughts. It's one of the most detailed and immersive portraits of grief I've ever read - especially interesting given that the main character barely understands that he has spent his whole life in this state.

There's been much discussion leading up to the movie release about THE GOLDFINCH's shortcomings, specifically the way the supporting characters are virtually all racial and ethnic caricatures. I'll be totally honest - I did not clock this at all when I first read the book and I am grateful to those who spoke up about this. It's a reminder that we can all do better and read harder, and I hope I'm better attuned to this sort of thing in the future so the burden of pushing back does not rest solely on people of color.

[ 2016 first read review ]
A little overly long, but in a way that you often didn't realize right away we'd been on a topic for ten pages: the best kind of long, twisty tale that keeps you hooked.

Thanks to Ecco Books for the free copy of this book.

Narrated by her granddaughter, THE SEVEN OR EIGHT DEATHS OF STELLA FORTUNA is, well, the story of the life of Stella Fortuna and all the times she nearly died, from a childhood incident with boiling oil in her rural Italian village to a head injury in her old age in Connecticut. More interesting, of course, is the story of the life she lived between these near-death experiences.

This book totally drew me in. The writing is warm and lush, never overwrought. Given that the story is based on the author’s real-life grandmother, it really has the feel of a person telling her family history, sorting through lore and legend to find the truth.

And Stella. She belongs on the shelf with Evelyn, Kya, and other literary women fighting the patriarchy for the right to live the kind of life she wants to live. She’s the kind of woman who got labeled “prickly” or “difficult,” when really she’s just pushing against the boundaries placed on her, unwilling to let men take what they want from her.

Book two in the THOUSANDTH FLOOR series, this book picks up where the first one left off. Set in a future where the whole of Manhattan is a thousand-story skyscraper where the higher up you live, the wealthier you are, this series is sparkly and outrageous and full of backstabbing and secrets.

I hate to discuss too many plot details because so much of this book relies on what happened in THE THOUSANDTH FLOOR and it's pretty obviously the middle book in a trilogy. I still really love this world and the lives of the supperrich teenagers who live on the top floors (think somewhere between GOSSIP GIRL and CRAZY RICH ASIANS to imagine the level of wealth and intrigue).

So what I will say is that whole first half of the book is more or less everyone dealing with their feelings about the events of the first book. It takes a long time to get going, and even when it does, it's small steps. I also found it really frustrating that Mariel's point of view didn't show up until the very end of the book. I would have loved to see more of her watching from the margins.

Regardless, a lot happened in the last 30 or so pages and I do want to see how this all ends, so I'll be reading the third book for sure.