coolfoolmoon's Reviews (357)

Eat the World

4.0

emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

as a decade plus long marina fan back in her and the diamonds era she needs to release more poetry books bc in the intro she says she tries to make them songs but they were really just poems and i know she has plenty more locked and loaded. she makes beautiful music and beautiful poetry!

Content Warnings

Model Home

Rivers Solomon

3.75

dark sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Almost a five star read for me, I was hovering around 4.75, until we got to the twist / reveal. It immediately shot down a full star, and even then I be lower because the twist / reveal pissed me off so bad it made me feel like the book was bad the entire time. I was onboard with

the Nightmare Mother being a metaphor for racism, or child abuse, neglectful parents, the stress of being the Black family in a white neighborhood or the Black family who made it to upper middle class status, the Nightmare Mother being more focused on the oldest child as a metaphor for the pressure the oldest child to live up to the success the parents created. And honestly much more. The Nightmare Mother as metaphor would've worked and all the scenes where Ezri doubts themself, combined with their many many diagnosis would have made them an excellent unreliable narrator, one that despite questioning if they hurt those animals as a kid you're still rooting for, still sympathizing with them and their siblings and their mother who was admittedly cruel but caring in her own way, something many people can relate to. But the reveal that the Nightmare woman without a face was mostly the racist neighbor we first meet is so... girl fuck you. You just spit in my face. And the nerve to have her explain everything was like oh so you think I'm an idiot. You think I don't have critical thinking skills? That entire chapter, the biggest chapter, takes away from the entire story. Soured my whole opinion of the book.

I was even confused before the twist / reveal, but I liked what I was reading I saw where we were going, I was in for the ride. Instead I got kicked head first out of the car. And for what! The reveal made the book bad because it was a bad reveal. I don't ever even wanna reread this book, unless I can take out the last couple chapters.

Content Warnings

Let Us Descend

Jesmyn Ward

3.75

mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Not to be a presumptuous asshole but I feel like I could write something a whole lot better. Love the writing. I just cant quite pinpoint what was missing. At one point in my notes I wrote "i hate that i just had the thought this is unbelieveable magical realism but um am i wrong?" Oof.

Content Warnings

Real Life

Brandon Taylor

2.75

emotional tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

listen, i’m an adult. i didn’t have the same grad and undergrad experience as everyone else but i did have a pretty normal high school and middle school experience. this book was annoying. i thought we got over this in our teen years! this isn't a knock against taylor’s writing, the writing was good if it frustrated me this much of course. but the story overall frustrated me because it made me angry the same way I feed her to the beast and the beast is me frustrated me. get that black person away from all those toxic white people and get that black person a best friend of color! in both books things got slightly better for the black mc when they had a bestie of color. NOT a coincidence. so negative points for the story but the writing was decent and tolerable dare i even say good.

Content Warnings

The Color Purple

Alice Walker

5.0

emotional funny reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Exactly! That’s what the fuck I’m talkin about!

Content Warnings

Corregidora

Gayl Jones

3.5

dark informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Huh. Okay. So I didn't like it but I think if I reread it in a few years I’ll like it, so maybe I did like it. The connection between Black women and birthing and slavery and christianity / “be fruitful and multiply” will always be a relevant conversation, even a thousand years from now when the Brazil or United States and any form of slavery or oppression is a distant memory studied in the history books.

Content Warnings

Under the Udala Trees

Chinelo Okparanta

4.5

emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Read parts I through V in one day and had to not continue to VI because I needed to sleep. An unfortunate heartbreaking universal story,

but one of the final lines "God, who created you, must have known what He did. Enough is enough." really got to me as it was something little 11 year old me needed to hear when I realized I was gay and had to come to that journey alone.

Profound. Beautiful!

Content Warnings

Mind of My Mind

Octavia E. Butler

4.0

adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I liked this one a lot a lot more than the first book! First one I was like its kinda weird to be thrown into a fantasy land like this. Now that we have an origin story, its pretty cool. I don't so much like the commentary but it is all interesting.

Content Warnings

What You Are Looking For Is in the Library

Michiko Aoyama

4.5

hopeful lighthearted reflective relaxing medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

My cousin gave me this book to read and what a great read! So perfect and relevant to my life right now and would be a perfect book for when you're feeling lost. Thank you cousin!

Content Warnings

The Three of Us

Ore Agbaje-Williams

3.25

tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

It's an alright debut. I don't know if I'd follow the author not consciously but maybe in five or ten years she’ll write another book and I’ll see her name in the library and go huh that name looks familiar, and maybe I’ll like that book. Who knows. We’ll see.

Content Warnings

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