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30 reviews
dnf at ~51%. i just can’t read another page. the only thing worth reading is when the translators argue in the footnotes and those are few and far in between. the book is so overly written that it’s become an insult to itself and it entirely fails to deliver what the book blurb claimed the book would be about. the the narrator is so deeply unlikable that reading another word from her perceptive made me feel such utter dread that i couldn’t pick the book back up. i grabbed this for the mystery and primordial polish forest full of horrible mushrooms which were ultimately sidelined by dead soldiers, lying neurotic people, and sexual fantasy.
dnf at 11%. i have read too many amazing nigerian fantasy and scifi books to spend time on one that isn't grabbing my attention from the start. it's 2025 and i need to start dnf'ing sooner when i'm bored or not vibing with the book. also really frustrated at the way sangoyomi writes the passage of time. events are described with no clear mention of time passing until pages later or even a chapter later when it's mentioned a week or more has passed during or before those events.
dnf at 17%. it’s just not what i thought it was gonna be. it doesn’t inspire any emotions, even anger. so i don’t really see the point in finishing it.
dnf at 48%. yu hua attempted to write a surrealist critique of modern capitalist china and the degraded value of human life. instead we got a shallow surrealist stroll through stunted half plots with the continued vilification of people with HIV and other STDs as well as queer people and sex workers. it’s just not worth my time to read a humanities fiction that’s totally lacking in compassion.
dnf at 38%. there's nothing inherently wrong with this book. it's just not hitting the way i need it to and it really isn't as introspective as i was hoping. mostly it was my failure to understand how key the "childhood" part of "beautiful country: a memoir of an undocumented childhood" was going to be as apparently this book never escapes her youth. even if it was told entirely through tableaus of her childhood, i would have liked more retrospection of the reality that child wang qian did not recognize in the moment and context on how these events culminate in who qian julie wang is now.
dnf at 11%. i don’t have the time or patience to read a story by a white author about racism filtered through the victimized and racially prejudiced white child in the 60s as a collective of black women fulfill the magical-black-character trope in efforts to save her. especially when other reviews make it clear lily never actually unpacks her racial bias, continues to be fatphobic, and rosaleen’s story is sidelined by lily’s ignorance of it happening. i do not have it in me to suffer that.
dnf at 70%. between the raucous rancid sex in the mulch with strange men, the rotting haunting grandmother begging magnolia to meet her aborted baby in some weird pro-life guilt fest, and now magnolia coming up with compliments and positive things to say about her rapist—i’m done with this god awful book. the book description did this book a million favors by leaving out 80% of the plot and not warning the reader at all about any of the content of the book. i beg you to read a comprehensive list of trigger warnings over on storygraph before you read this damned book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Sexual content, Blood, Vomit, Abortion, Pregnancy
Moderate: Addiction, Domestic abuse, Rape, Alcohol
Minor: Death, Drug use, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Excrement, Trafficking, Death of parent
additional tags: underage drinking, rape apologists, unsafe sex, age gap, financial abuse, necrophilia
dnf at 46%. i was genuinely so conflicted over dnf'ing this book that it took an hour to decide if this was the right thing to do. i was so frustrated with having to make this choice that i quite frankly felt like i could cry. the problem i'm having is i just hated this book. i tried to explain away why i wasn't vibing with it, that i was fine till part 3, that it's one of nnedi's oldest novels. but at the end of the day- if i finished this book i'd being giving it 1/5 and by dnf'ing it... i can avoid rating it.
dnf at 41%. this was such a crushing, soul-sucking, gutting disappointment. i loved my heart is a chainsaw and spent months excitedly waiting to read this. but it turns out what gave my heart is a chainsaw any of its self proclaimed heart was completely absent here.
i loved the idea of jennifer trying so hard to not be who she used to be that she’s become a non-believing adult and letha being so wrapped up in her final girldom that she’s become who jennifer used to be. but the rest falls apart from there. i didn’t even remember who banner was and had o read a book 1 recap…
the story is tangled in a pit of POV swaps without headers, nonlinear memory recalls, and less than mentally sound conversations leading nowhere. it’s nearly impossible to keep up with even if you perfectly remember the first book. what made the first book such a good story was how connective it’s tissue was, how well written our in-the-know character is, and that nonlinear diversions or POV were few and far enough between that they were comprehensible. i am genuinely so disappointed that this book fell apart for me.
dnf’d at 24%. i really wanted to like this. there was so much i should have liked. the slow mental decline of a woman mourning her wife who isn’t really dead ala “The Seep” Chana Porter. a woman gone missing who returns and isn’t Quite The Same anymore. the underwater eldritch horror of it all. but the book is SO disjointed with 2 POVs who both have nonlinear narration and neither narrator is really reliable. both miri and leah relive moments from their marital bliss in disconnected tableaus, neither serving to help us love their character or understand them deeper.
maybe the book plot is still at the bottom of the ocean with half of leah’s soul.
maybe the book plot is still at the bottom of the ocean with half of leah’s soul.