Knowing that there was some sort of BIG PLOT SURPRISE kind of marred my experience of reading this book. It's basically a modern take on The Boy In the Plastic Bubble, with a twist! I enjoyed the achingly sweet and funny beginning, when Madeline (girl in 'bubble') discovers Olly (boy who moves in next door) and their interactions through the window and emails. As things came to a head, I knew what was going on, but it didn't dissuade my interest in seeing how things would shake out. All in all, I enjoyed the theme of what truly matters in life (to LIVE IT), even if it was a little on the cheesy side and hard to suspend my disbelief most of the time.

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This novel follows the lives of twin sisters (and their loves, their families) after they return from studying abroad at grad school in London to their native Nigeria in the 1960s. As they settle into their separate lives, civil war turns their world upside down. I didn't pick it up as much as I would have liked, since I'm partial to really plot driven stuff and, though unforgettable, the story seemed to meander a bit. Maybe it was the haunting subject material that kept me from furiously turning pages. Yet, learning about Biafran war in Nigera was fascinating stuff - a vivid and immersive experience.

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(review for books 1-7) At first, I was a little disappointed that there needed to be a horrible Disney-esque killing off of a parent right at the beginning to drive the main character's motivation. And the event that drags Emily and her brother Navin into the world of Alledia, is their mother's kidnapping by a rather disgusting tentacled beast. Yet the story, world building, and breathtaking illustrations completely make up for this one quibble. It's a wonderful tale of good vs evil and that things are not always what they seem. There are familiar elements of classic fantasy: curses, chosen ones, wise men, masters and apprentices that are comforting, as well as clever plot twists. I also love that the protagonist taking the lead is a girl and in many ways it reminds me of my absolute favorite book from when I was about my son's age: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle - wherein a young Meg Murray is on a quest with her younger brother to save their father and lots of crazy, otherworldly things transpire.
Reading a graphic novel is a completely new experience for me and so very enjoyable. It adds such an intimate way of seeing a character's emotions or the setting of a scene. I wonder if I am being spoiled with Kibuishi's beautiful imagination and illustrations. I love the two page spreads whenever the characters happen upon a new magical place.
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I usually try to parse out reading WWII novels, but there seems to be a wealth of them being published lately. I have thoroughly enjoyed every one of Chris Cleave's novels, so there was no way I would put this one off, and I was thrilled to get my hands on an advance copy. (I highly recommend Incendiary, Little Bee and Gold.)

Cleave's stories are all so emotionally eviscerating, so I was on my guard to read one set mainly during the London Blitz and the Siege of Malta. What makes his novels so unique, is their raw, visceral, emotional gut-punch material and, notably: a huge guilty secret. I think that might have set myself up to not have those expectations met. I kept waiting for some terrible undisclosed plot point to be revealed about one of the characters and that never really happened. Which was my bad, really. This was much more nuanced stuff: lovely, yet unpretentious, it's a stark and vivid story of how war transforms people. Knowing that his grandparents love letters inspired the story is just so wonderful. And there were certainly those telltale Cleave scenes of raw, visceral emotion. Once Mary becomes an ambulance driver in London, there are some episodes that are very difficult to read and one where she faces her own death that is written in the most harrowing way. And after reading this book, I feel as if I, too, have been to Malta during the siege. Alistair's time there is so real you can taste it, and there, too, are some unforgettably written scenes - one that reminded me of Little Bee, in a way.

At first it was difficult to emotionally attach to Mary, ostensibly the main character. She starts off as aloof and naive, and goes on quite a difficult journey - coming of age during WWII. It was slightly easier to identify with Alistair from the beginning, and his trials as he goes off to war. But I think that is probably by design, and somewhere along the way I fell a little bit in love with her as her motivations change.

“There was a sadness in her mother’s eyes. Mary wondered whether it had always been there, becoming visible only now that she was attuned to sorrow’s frequency.”

I didn't realize that I really did enjoy this book until it was over, which was fitting, given one of my favorite passages - when she realizes that she loves Alistair:

"When the hour had come for the war to take him away, that had been the first and last moment she had known without doubt that she loved him. One knew how one felt only when things ended."

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This book was worth the hype! I haven't gleefully turned pages so quickly since reading Eligible. In fact, it there are many similarities to Eligible and other favorite satirical works like Where'd You Go Bernadette and Big Little Lies. The ensemble cast consists of the dysfunctional Plumb family as they descend into their worst selves when the family inheritance is depleted, thanks to the reckless elder brother Leo. After reading the description, I thought that this story would revolve mainly around Leo, yet the opposite seemed to be the case. I became intimately involved with every individual caught in his orbit (not just his siblings) and all of their personal struggles. The character development and intricate plotting made for a delightfully fun tale. It ends in a very tidy, and slightly far-fetched, manner: not a perfectly happy ending for everyone, but the right one.

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I had really high hopes for this story of a woman who tries to escape her life and travels all the way from Sweden to Iowa, only to find her host has passed away. It sounded like the perfect palate cleanser after some somber February reading. Alas, it was so contrived and unsurprising. I could sense the author's attempt at a sweet story of an outsider that happens upon a town full of 'wacky' rural characters, yet there was no real depth to any of them.

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So this was a recommendation from my mom, who is a pretty big fan of thrillers. Whereas, I need a good convincing to pick one up. Most of the time our recs are hits (she told me about Me Before You, I got her reading The Hunger Games), but this was a miss for me. I liked it fine. It was a pretty compelling mystery, but I need more emotional pull and character development from my books. I think I would enjoy seeing the movie version of Fool Me Once - I appreciate a good action/whodunnit flick. This narrative is the kind of stuff I imagine goes on in those serial cop shows like Law and Order (no, I've never watched one), complete with slightly ridiculous dialogue. Sorry mom! Our batting average is still good, though.

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This book gave me FEELINGS, and not the good kind. The main characters seemed like caricatures and not real women. I also felt as if it was kind of sexist. The two friends take different paths in life: the cookie cutter 'housewife' and 'career woman' roles. These roles are filled in an annoyingly stereotypical way. Sarah wants marriage and a family - she is shallow and boring. Lauren is career driven - she emotionally detached and sexually liberated. There is much navel gazing, and then... the end. I know that men are quite capable of writing women characters (Memoirs of a Geisha is what immediately leaps to mind), but I truly felt like the author had zero grasp on the female psyche and his style (So. Many. Sentence. Fragments.) was not my favorite. I will admit that it was a somewhat hypnotic read, and that carried me through to finish the book.

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There are a few stories from This American Life that will always stay with me, and Lindy's was one of them. Last month, as I was looking through past months of Book of the Month Club selections to add to my order, I read the description for Shrill and made the connection that this was her book. It was equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, as I thought it would be - full of great insights:

"Women matter. Women are half of us. When you raise every woman to believe that we are insignificant, that we are broken, that we are sick, that the only cure is starvation and restraint and smallness; when you pit women against one another, keep us shackled by shame and hunger, obsessing over our flaws rather than our power and potential; when you leverage all of that to sap our money and our time - that moves the rudder of the world. It steers humanity toward conservatism and walls and the narrow interests of men, and it keeps us adrift in waters where women's safety and humanity are secondary to men's pleasure and convenience."

Her story of navigating the pitfalls of life as a woman (and the ubiquitous misogynistic, racist internet trolls) gives me hope that we are on the path to improvement, rather than ruin.

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Jodi Picoult's novels pretty much defined my reading life during my early 20s. I have read at least a dozen of her books. Not all of them have been home runs, but they have all given me something to ponder. She is truly a master storyteller, and the queen of analyzing moral dilemmas.
Small Great Things is up there with the best of them, although I had to put it down occasionally, it was so gut wrenching. Reading the parts told from the white supremacist father's point of view was so difficult, and downright nauseating at times. But these are the kind of things to which we must bear witness. I can't imagine what it must have been like for Picoult to write those passages, given that her viewpoint is crystal clear and bordering on political statement. Nonetheless, it's a statement that needs to be made and is made well. I highlighted so many passages - the ones I've included here were just a fraction of them.

"How am I supposed to encourage my son to be better than most people expet him to be? How can I say, with a straight face, you can be anything you want in this world - when I struggled and studied and excelled and still wound up on trial for something I did not do?"

There is so much to unpack in this novel on race, truth and our perception of both.

"Love has nothing to do with what you're looking at, and everything to do with who's looking."

I thought that it got a little long winded in parts (I'm not the biggest fan of courtroom drama) and she infused every possible nook and cranny of the character's lives with racial tension, even including a conflict between Kennedy and her mother over whether her daughter should dress up as the black Disney princess Tiana, which felt heavy handed at times - but, again, it is the truth of the world we live in.

"How many exceptions do there have to be before you start to realize that maybe the truths you've been told aren't actually true?"

It was difficult for me to read and hope for an acquittal for Ruth. Because on one hand I wanted a happy ending - on the other, I couldn't help but think about the many people in her situation that would not receive justice and a happy ending. However, true to form, Picoult broke out some fantastic plot twists near the end and turned the tables on how I thought it would play out. It was a truly satisfying ending.
I don't think I've read a book on social justice written by a white person. The entire time I was reading it, I couldn't help but wonder what my black friends might think or say about Ruth's point of view. Then her author's note at the end made so much sense, pointing out the fact that:
"if I'd written only what I knew, my career would have been short and boring...For years I had done my homework and my research, using extensive personal interviews to channel voices of people I was not: men, teenagers, suicidal people, abused wives, rape victims....When it comes to social justice, the role of the white ally is not to be a savior or a fixer. Instead, the role of the ally is to find other white people and talk to make them see that many of the benefits they've enjoyed in life are direct results of the fact that someone else did not have the same benefits."
I applaud her and her very worthwhile small great thing.

"We met an Aboriginal man, who showed us the Emu in the Sky, the constellation near the Southern Cross that is not a dot-to-dot puzzle, like our constellations, but the spaces in between the dots - nebulas swirling against the Milky Way to form the long neck and dangling legs of the great bird. I couldn't find it, at first. And then, once I did, it was all I could see."

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