jaduhluhdabooks's Reviews (333)

CLARISSE AND JOE ARE HAPPY. 

Ok, you know when your close friend comes up to you and is like "I have a secret talent... I can sing." And you're excited for them so you happily take a seat to listen and immediately when they start you just know they can't sing and no one in their life has been kind enough to tell em? Well, that's what this book felt like. Someone isn't being honest with our girl during editing.

I am here and will always be down for a Black protagonist and Black love and everything Black. Always rooting for that and also, I want to read a good book. But the writing was subpar at best and I think I'm being kind when I say that. It was choppy and wildly disorganized. I could hardly follow transitions when they happened and EVERYTHING about Lore and her love interests felt forced and wasn't even given enough room to develop. The timing is soooo weird, and while the author is telling me 2 weeks have passed it's felt more like 2 months and when 2 months has passed it's felt more like 2 weeks. 

The design of world is also interesting and discombobulating. Like I barely understand the difference in the fae lineages and species and also, ain't no WAY, she get out that queens castle the way she did. I luh? g 

I'm also not bought into Lore. Like she seems wildly childish to me, and while I was ok with that in the beginning because I love a good coming of age story, the moments that were clearly supposed to constitute as her growth, didn't align for me nor make sense for how I understood her character. Also, Asher - babes. Saw that coming from the beginning. YOU BOTH WERE GONE FROM THE CASTLE AT THE SAME TIME AND ONLY ONE OF YOU ARRIVED BACK AND THEN LATER THE OTHER!?. nah. 

Everything felt predictable and I think Finn is WILDLY underdeveloped but a character I actually want to know. It was just boring and hard for me to stay engaged. Overall, underwhelmed and sad because I wanted to LOVE it. But I won't let this stop me from reading Black fantasy!! It matters !!! And I have high hopes for the second boook! A debut is hard!

A gorgeous novel that takes the intersecting lives of six human beings, a ghost, and a magical café and pulls at the heart strings of deep loss, regret, and acceptance. Over the course of a few months, Toshikazu introduces us to the lives of these characters, their deepest turmoils and wants and dreams. I quickly became so attached the narrative of grief that was real amongst them all, but also the beauty of joy found and lived in the midst of such intense grief. 

I often don't have words for how I'm so "joyful" having experienced so much pain, but simply friendship is the balm. Having people to do the good and hard days with makes it so worth it and real and normal. I don't know what I would do if I could go back and talk to someone who passed or in the future, someone I could know...but I do know that I wouldn't give up the chance even if just for a little while, to have a conversation, to gaze and smile back at someone, before the coffee got cold.

I just didn’t care about these characters … and I think this series and world has run its course for me. 

It has taken me many years to finally sit down and sit in the words from Alice Walker. Following Celie and Nettie's story was heart breaking and healing. A rich and vulnerably articulated artistry woven through tendrils of friendship, first loves, heart breaks, and restorations.

There's so much in this text. So much to unpack. To sit with. Being raised in the church in unpacking so much of my own journey of discovering the ways in which white supremacy manipulated my views of God and the church and the idolatry of man over woman. 

Listening to Nettie journey through this deconstruction felt healing to know that it was an art being indulged in long before me and that Black women then and now continue to sit at the pinnacle of change radicalizing the religious world in a signicant and necessary way. There's also the deep rooted connected I feel to Celie. 

A dark skinned, big boned woman, with attraction to women, but an obligation to men. It's such a beautiful tribute to finding ways to love yourself as you are and not me ashamed of the blemishes and the scarring that so many of those deemed beautiful continuously point out or find a way to highlight outside of your other 

enchanting qualities. There is so much beauty is Celie's character that I can't put it into words, but I feel them. And I appreciate them. And my heart both breaks and soars for her. Her journey. 

Her life. Her survival. Her care and her love. For people, for 

community, and later for herself. 

So grateful for this read.

Such a powerful book. Wrecked me and reminded me in not alone in this life lived with mental illness and finding stability in the everyday. John. You’ve done it again.

What a novel. So critical. Timely. Painfully acute to the totality that comes with chronic illness. The complexity of Aza's character is so well flushed out because it's not complex in the ways that sometimes characters and morality or choice shows up. It's complex because it's so human. 

As someone who just now learning language for the invasive thoughts that creep and tuck and cause so many different compulsions in my every day, this book both struck a cord of discomfort and of knowness. John rarely fails to miss the mark with how retrospective his characters can be and what they represent far beyond that their circumstances. I thought a lot about friendship in this book and how I'm still learning how to be a good friends with boundaries as these new diagnoses and life changes happen. 

Aza and Daisy are such a real and raw portrayal of what every friendship with invasives looks like. And I feel so incredibly seen by their portrayal in this book. I've owned this book since I was 17 and started to acknowldge that maybe just maybe I was an anxious person. It has taken be 7 years to finally read it and I'm grateful that I did. It's been such a walk and this portrayal of not getting better but learning to adapt and live with these thoughts and compulsions is the authentic reality and I'm grateful that it's ok in this book and in real life.