I enjoyed the surreal aspects of this story involving what AM could fathom and create to torture the humans. It gave me a good scare. Unsettling at moments, scary, triumphant in others.

I'm excited to read more of Yaa Gyasi's work. Each chapter is another character's perspective moving through the generations of the two family lines. A powerful read spanning 300 years that does a great job of showing how interconnected the lives of the different generations are. The characters are each unique and felt like individuals. Akua, Willie, and H being a few of my favorites. This is on me but I did take a long time with pauses in between chapters. While I found the different perspectives were handled very well, keeping the story moving without the chapters becoming disconnected, I would recommend reading two chapters (one generation of the family tree) at a time if you expect to take pauses. I do find it hard sometimes to keep track of what is happening when jumping from one storyline to another (see Triangulum and how it jumped from the past and present), but when I was reading the book more consistently I was able to follow fairly well and was deeply invested.

This book also covers a lot of difficult and potentially triggering topics. Gyasi handles them, I believe, respectfully and honestly, but it still can be a lot! 

A fantastic introduction to one of my new favorite authors!

Bless the poor soul that reads this book. I only made it about 40 pages in wading through the never ending paragraphs of unnecessary information and boring prose. 

ACAB

This was a fun read that I'm still trying to wrap my head around. It's split into three sections with the first and last telling two timelines simultaneously (1999 and 2002). The nameless narrator believes her mother has been abducted by aliens who are now attempting to communicate with her. The first section of the book is its strongest, even though I tend to get confused with this type of storytelling. I tend to lose track of the plot when jumping from one timeline and to the other. I'll get invested in what's happening in 1999, go back to 2002, and then forget what has happened once we return to 1999, but that may be my distracted ass trying to focus on two things at once lol. This section felt emotional and mysterious. By the end of the first section, I wanted to start the book over with the new information revealed (little did I know that I, in fact, did not have as much information as I thought). 

The middle section is where things started to slow down and complicate for me. Here, we jump to 2025, following our narrator as she is essentially dragged along from one strange event to another. The writing here slowed considerably from part 1. I can get so bogged down by slow writing that I put the book down for a few days. I didn't feel as invested as I did in part 1. Characters didn't get as much time to feel fleshed out like I feel Part and Litha did.

(Also, with M/A/R/K and The Returners and the surveillance company, there's too many secret organizations for me to follow and not enough aliens for me. There is some good creepy sci-fi, I feel, with the implant tests to monitor (and later influence) the poor citizens' activities.)

The final part of the book aims to tie everything together and I think Ntshanga did a decent job at doing so. The reveal

(about her mom)

was surprising but believable. After the second section, going back to the dual timeline format was refreshing. Overall, I'd recommend this book if any of its themes resonate. I like how it explores the themes of capitalism (and how it directly affects the environment) and post-apartheid South Africa. I like the messages and stories being told. I like the level of chaos that the book embraces, making me accept things that may seem... out of this world  😜 I am left wishing the book could have explored time more like it does riiiight at the end. Great book! Engaging writing for the most part and a creatively refreshing read.

This book was very middle of the road. It was fast-paced and the mini cliff hangers at the end of most of the chapters kept me reading. The payoff isn't the greatest but the journey is fun for what it is. The writing is very simple to digest with something always happening (for the first third of the book at least).

I'm going to spoil the entire book!

Libby (our narrator of Part 1) and her husband, Jaime, do a house swap with a couple they've never seen or met or heard of. It's this big expensive house in the country. The rich couple is staying at their apartment while their daughter is in surgery. But OOPS turns out they don't have a daughter! So why do they have a strange room filled with antique toys?? Rich people are weird, but not to Libby! Libby lovvvvves rich people and idolizes this couple that she's only seen in internet searches and in pictures in the house. She talked all this shit about what rich Tara would or wouldn't do as if she knew this person???? Later she finds Tara's anti-depressants and is shocked to find out that rich people can be sad too. Oh, but does any other this end up mattering? Not really because it's not even this rich couple who coordinated this house swap. But if not them, then who???

Why do most of the characters in this book exists? Many seem only to exist for dead ends and misleads. Libby is constantly worried about Jaime's ex from 10 years ago who is living in the guest house of Jamie's mom. Damn, people are either Libby and Jaime struggling to get by or rich as hell in this book. The way Libby stresses about Jaime's ex is annoying as hell. She's been with him for 4 years and she's worried about an ex from 10 years ago. In the end Hannah only serves to create relationship drama. Her whole character exists to break up Libby and Jaime, but why? Because she thinks they'd be a better couple? People really play games, huh... This book is a lot of Straight Culture.

So what's happening? Well Libby is actually a person named Karen who stole a travel buddy's identity after a fire in a hostel they were staying at. Karen, feeling like her life is over, takes Libby's identity and it's been her as the narrator. In the second part, it's the real Libby (Beth as she goes by) who narrates AND SHE SUCKS. Damn everyone in this book needs to go to therapy, especially Libby and Beth! Okay we learned what happened on this Thailand trip. Beth and Karen become friends and travel together until Beth gets jealous that Henry is interested in Karen and not her so what does Beth do? Drug Karen and Henry!! Beth sucks and thought that Karen died in the fire. Karen thought Beth died.

But who set up the house swap??? Beth's abusive first husband who finds Libby (Karen) and plans to scare and kill her. He's in their apartment right when Beth shows up to confront Karen about why she's taken her identity. They fight and Beth ends up killing her first husband. The police think Karen did it! Uh oh! Except oh wait the cops don't think it was her and arrested some random person! Oh and then Beth does confront Karen and they agree to forgive each other and leave each other alone forever?????? What the fuck???? What kind of pay off is that???? What were the stakes in the end????

Oh but we aren't done because even though the mystery is solved and there really isn't anything happening in the last third of the book, there's more. This is where Hannah admits to POISONING THE DOG (WHY DID THIS HAPPEN. WHAT DID THIS DO FOR THE STORY) and plotting to break up Karen and Jaime. Blah blah I couldn't care less. Jaime: "Oh I didn't realize that me giving Hannah attention was encouraging her to have feelings for me!" Men are stupid!!

I also don't love how by the end everything revolved around babies and being pregnant because it was treated as like some reward to Karen????

In the end, Karen gets arrested anyway for the murder of Beth's first husband, vowing to bring Beth down someday.

I don't like really any of the characters in this book. The characters aren't really that interesting, Libby being only interesting until the mystery is explained and you know who is after this couple.

You know what though, all that said, I did read this book ferociously over 3 days because the short chapters, easy writing, and fast pace (all of which reminded me of The Da Vinci Code) so I can't say I didn't have a good time. The 2.5 comes from the mildly suspenseful vibe of the big rich house. When they leave the house, the atmosphere disappears unfortunately. It's a decent cozy read for cold days in the winter.

This was my favorite volume so far. There are some really beautiful panels (like that full page spread! wow!) in this. I'm excited to read more when I get my hands on the further volumes. 

Wow, this book!! My friend recommended me this and I'm so grateful.
 Some great quotes (more to come when I am reunited with my copy!):
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

I really feel like the story really picks up once Jody dies. Janie really isn't even the focus of the story it seems. But once Jody dies, Janie emerges as a full character as opposed to simply Jody's wife. This mirrors Janie becoming more outright about getting what she wants. And she does! I love love love Janie with Tea Cake even if he's TOO STUBBORN for his own good.

Read this book. Read this book again. Read this book to love a character. 

A strong collection of short stories. Characters all seem to be dealing with grief in some form, be it a person now lost, a life once lived, an emotion once felt. My favorites include "The Hospital Where" and "Through the Flash". 

I enjoyed this book overall. The pacing was slowwwwwwwwwww though. Much slower than I typically read. Going in, I thought I knew the story of Frankenstein fairly well, but I was wrong. In every depiction of Frankenstein's monster that I've seen, he cannot speak or speaks very basically. But on page 68, everything changed in the book for me. The monster speaks! The most interesting part of this novel is the monster's part of the journey. He was caring, observant, loving throughout his story as he figured himself out. His story moved me, really.

I think I didn't care enough about Frankenstein though. He's not likable, but he's also no that interesting. Be ready to spend a lot of time reading landscape descriptions and wordy sentences. Can I really put the latter as a fault though? This is an older form of English that I guess was wordy but damn Mary, maybe a few (a lot) of these sentences could have been shorter.

The book felt rewarding to finish. I say down with Frankenstein and let the monster live.