This is one of my 14-year-old daughter’s favorite books, so I had to give it a whirl, even though I am not a big fan of thrillers. At first, I thought it was going to be a YA rehashing of Serial - so many similarities! However, it turned a little bit more towards “I know what you did last summer“ and I enjoyed the banter among the kids. It was humorous and authentic, not an adult in sheep’s clothing as many YA novels tend to be with the dialogue. I will say that I am not at all happy about the dog situation (IYKYK) that was unnecessary, but overall it kept me guessing until the end and was rather entertaining.

Whew. This one was really hard to read and so totally rage inducing. I definitely don’t want to sound like the women that doth protest “not all men” because I entered into a partnership with someone who absolutely respects me, our family, and carries his weight - for real and not statistically inflated. But also… The book starts with her husband being so awful that it’s almost satirical. Hiding her things (such as amusing mugs and artwork) because he doesn’t like them(!?) and being homophobic were the least awful(!), piled on top of the typical gaslighting that many women who come from conservative communities, or get married young, don’t realize is abusive - ‘go make me a sandwich’/‘why don’t you have time to cook and clean’/‘what do you do all day’ kind of ridiculousness, in those early postpartum weeks, no less.
I think most people have heard the statistics of men’s inflated sense of how much housework they do, ‘emotional labor’ has been a term in our lexicon for a while now, Covid exposed how mothers are America’s social safety net, if you spend ANY time on TikTok- you’ll know that young women have absolutely figured out that marriage mainly benefits men, etc. and I think there should be a book pulling all of these threads together. But I don’t know if this is it.
Other than some fascinating history of patriarchy and how it’s baked into our culture, a great deal of the book feels like the author’s unburdening of her trauma - which is ENTIRELY JUSTIFIED. I just feel as if it’s a narrative that is trying to straddle two approaches and they each negate the other: while being a very salient point, arguing ‘marriage and heterosexual men are all mostly awful’ turns off women like myself who truly have a fulfilling partnership, but the text wouldn’t be as emotionally compelling without the rant about the hordes of truly awful and just clueless men she’s had to deal with who need to learn better. So I’m on the fence about it, I guess, but I’m glad I read it.

Thank you to Random House and Netgalley for the complementary digital copy of The Strange Case of Jane O. I was very excited to snag this advance copy, because I am a Karen Thompson Walker completionist. Having now read all three of her novels, I would say this one was slightly different than the first two with a more ambiguous sci-fi/speculative aspects, but still riveting stuff.

As a new mother seeks the help of a psychiatrist when she experiences a series of unexplained blackouts, hallucinations, and a powerful sense of foreboding, it becomes increasingly mysterious as to what might be happening when she “disappears” from her life. That the novel is told from the psychiatrist’s perspective was engrossing as I, the reader, was trying to figure out what was happening alongside him. Walker apparently used actual case notes from the neurologist Oliver Sacks, who I’ve always meant to read and have now put ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat’ on my TBR. How reality for some people can seem stranger than fiction is fascinating. There are also chapters written from the woman’s own perspective, but in the form of letters to her child in case something happens to her, which added to the unsettling and mysterious tone.

I will say, if you are not a fan of ambiguity and concrete explanations, especially with endings, this might be a frustrating read. I found it compelling and thought provoking reading, as I love this genre of literary fiction with just a tinge of sci-fi/speculative fiction. When asked about choosing this genre for her novels, Walker said in an interview with Lit Hub,  “There is a pleasure in being reminded that we don’t yet know all there is to know about the universe—much less about one another.” YES.

Reading this was much like watching anything that happens in the 🤡 presidency: shocking, but not surprising. The election misinformation? Yes, we all knew that they allowed all of the lies -but the depth of the  targeted deception, fake accounts and the subsequent unaccountability!? Or the correlation between instagram and teen girls declining mental health? Sure, it’s premised on getting ‘likes’ and rife with kids bullying with targeted posts or comments - but the depth of algorithms that detect someone deleting a selfie to then target messages about weight and appearance? It’s freaking unconscionable. As are the leaders from around the world not regulating Facebook in order to push their own political campaigns. And now we’re learning that Meta has been working with the Chinese government to help censor its citizens.The list goes on.

It is so infuriating how Facebook has infiltrated and upended society. It’s really hard to continue using Instagram honestly, and I had the intention of keeping Facebook only until my kids were out of high school, as so much information for parents is tied to groups there. I do grapple with just chucking it all, but then I saw the Sarah Wynn Williams herself still has a Facebook account despite everything so that she can communicate with her grandparents. I hope that her speaking out will spark some sort of change with social media. What the author reminds us of, is that it could have been a force for good in different hands.

File this under “essential reading” and automatic five stars for sticking it to Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and all of these careless/craven/callous monsters.

Wild Robot’s meteoric rise to popularity in middle grade fiction happened after my kids aged out of that reading level, or were too obsessed with graphic novels at the time. But I have always been curious to read it because the concept and illustrations looked captivating. I also see it constantly circulating in and out of our elementary school library. When the movie came out, I decided I would finally give it a go - and I’m so glad I did! It has all the great teachable moments you find in fiction for that age range, a wonderful sense of humor, high stakes emotions handled with care, while the characters and setting were so vividly rendered. Now to watch the movie!

As someone who is very wedded to my routines, I never picked up Atomic Habits because I feel like I already live this lifestyle! But, it came up when I was searching for available audiobooks from the library and figured it might be entertaining in the way someone who likes to cook watches the Food Network. This is exactly what it was like, and I now have a few new tips and tricks I can add to my arsenal of type-A tendencies. I recognize a lot of techniques I see in society today, which indeed might have been influenced by this book. It is chock full of great information about how to establish routines and work towards goals. I highly recommend it and I’ll definitely be giving it to my kids, too!

Y’all, I tried! I firmly fell into the ‘didn’t love it’ camp of this polarizing novel. I appreciated it for being one of those weird books that goes off the rails while having some really profound moments that speak to a certain group of people. Ostensibly, I should fit into that group of middle aged women. I heard the author, I just didn’t feel like she was speaking to me.

I understand she was trying to write about the all-encompassing exhaustion of motherhood, how people change throughout the course of a marriage, and how we put ourselves into boxes. But the pace felt haphazard, going from monotonous navel gazing to small bursts of WTF action.  The highly sexualized content (not sexy, IMO, despite the blurb) seems to be the turn-off for most dissenters, but didn’t bother me at all. I just was never emotionally invested, maybe because the things that gave the main character so much angst didn’t resonate or jive with the broader commentary on modern marriage and motherhood. I felt like she was worrying so much about being desirable, what other people are doing in their lives, or being perceived by others. Not in a “keeping up with the Joneses” kind of way, but just being way too invested in other‘s minutiae rather than her own.

Give me a midlife crisis novel that goes in unexpected directions, for sure. And I do love a weird novel. But I think my flavor of weird is more Melissa Broder or Carmen Maria Machado than Miranda July. 

Thank you Simon and Schuster and Netgalley for the complimentary digital copy of Broken Country! Sadly y’all, I don’t think this one is worthy of the hype. A solid drama with elements of family clashes, a love triangle, some courtroom drama, a lovely English countryside setting, etc. I just didn’t buy into the love story that didn’t get much setup, and both of the twists I felt could be seen a mile away.

I wish the author had gotten to the ‘reveal’ much earlier in order dig into what comes AFTER. (Won’t say much more because of spoilers.) I am also not a fan of novels where the forward motion of the plot relies on the first person narrator withholding information. If you prefer more plot versus character study, then I think you might enjoy this book. I was entertained, and was curious to see how she would bring it all together, but overall felt it was melodramatic and soapy.

From the jump, I was sucked in the by unexpected turns and action-packed moments in this ‘romantasy’ novel. But then I became frustrated with the main character, who is ostensibly a strong female warrior, but does not demonstrate that in any real sense. There is a lot of relying on the male character’s heroics and conflicts that relied on misogyny that gave me the ick in order to move the plot forward.
It was entertaining and kept me turning the pages, but I don’t think I’ll continue with the series. I would suggest picking up The Lost Queen by Signe Pike for a similar vibe but with fantasy based off on the author’s deep research into Celtic mythology.

This was a bit of a disappointment… Learning how to approach art in a new way sounded as if it would be enlightening and advance my love for art. Alas, it mainly exposed the cynical world of art curation and felt disillusioning. The author seemed to bounce all over the place, not really coming to any cohesive theories about art appreciation. Which I guess is kind of the point: how we view art is, and will always be, subjective and indefinite. I think this could have been whittled down to a thoughtful article, rather than a an entire book.