This book was a really enjoyable and easy read. I liked the story, but I thought the writing wasn't super impressive. This book felt a bit contrived and predictable at times. I also wasn't impressed with the ending. However, it was still fun to read and I would recommend it to someone who likes fast paced thrillers.

Loved. If you haven't read these, do yourself a favor and get them from the library immediately. I did enjoy the first book a little more, but I read this one equally quickly.

The story was the strength of this book, in my opinion. I wanted to find out what happened, and although it was somewhat predictable, it was still fun and quick to read.

However, the characters were lacking for me. I thought Katie was annoying, Devin was cold, and Eric was an especially bad parent to Drew. 3 stars.

Swing Time is a novel about two girls growing up bonding over a shared skin color and love of dance in London, and their paths taking very different directions. It weaves through the years mostly following the unnamed narrator, and her relationship with her childhood friend Tracy. As kids, Tracy is the star of the show. As adults, the narrator works as a personal assistant to a big pop star and has mostly lost touch with her childhood friend.

I don't know if Zadie Smith is for me. It took me a long time to get into a groove with this book. I don't like books where it feels like the narrator is just floating though life and going along with whatever... this narrator was so lackluster for me. I was bored by her perspective and lack of... opinion? Action? I really have a problem with passive narrators. I don't know. Something about the writing made this a serious effort for me to finish reading.

Towards the end, I started enjoying the book more. Part of the plot has the narrator traveling with the pop star to Africa to build a school for girls. The issues surrounding the school seemed plausible, and reading about the cultural differences and the narrator's relationship with her African ancestry made her more interesting and human.

This book got a lot of hype, and overall I'm glad I read it, although it did not leave me yearning for more Zadie Smith.

Pachinko is described as a sweeping family saga, and sweeping saga it is. The novel follows a Korean family living in Japan from the early to mid 20th century. Sunja, the "main character" in my mind (although the book follows many characters through the years) gets pregnant when she is young and unmarried by a rich gangster. Isak, a minister with tuberculosis, marries her anyway and takes her to live in Japan with his brother and sister-in-law. The book then follows the lives of the family through the wars while living in a foreign country where they face discrimination and various hardships.

The writing is descriptive yet to the point. I learned a lot about the dynamics between Koreans and Japanese, and the book inspired me to spend some time on Wikipedia reading more. However, the characters and plot weren't compelling enough to keep me coming back. Although I did enjoy the book, it took some effort to get through.

Today I finished reading The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel. It was a quick and enjoyable book! My rating: 4/5

The Stranger in the Woods tells the true story of Christopher Knight, a reclusive hermit (well, he might not describe himself like that but that's how I see it) who spent decades living alone in the deep woods of Maine. He survived years in a homemade camp by stealing food and supplies from nearby cabins and became infamous in the area. I remember hearing about the story when he was caught a few years ago and was excited to pick this book as a BOTM.

It was really interesting to delve into the mind of Chris, and the author's descriptions of their interactions helped me gain a better understanding of what Chris is like. I am definitely not a super solitary person so reading about someone who chose to spend years completely alone avoiding society was astounding to me. I could never do it!

This book is a pretty short, well written, and easy to read. If you are looking for a quick read that might send you on multiple google/Wikipedia sprees, this book is for you.

This book was so, so beautiful. It is filled with lyrical writing, compelling characters, and an important story, somehow neatly packaged in a little over 200 pages. It follows Nadia and Saeed as they fall in love and eventually flee from their home city during a war.

I didn't even know that this book had magical elements before I started reading it... and I wasn't even mad. It worked so well. Usually if I don't realize that a book is magical realism (or it hasn't been marketed that way) I get annoyed. This book, not at all.

Exit West is thought provoking, painful, and hopeful. I would highly recommend this to everyone.

This book was so much better than I anticipated from the inside cover blurb. Also I'm usually more of a plot driven reader and this book, while it has some plot, is mostly driven by the main character Andrea.

Andrea is pushing 40 for most of the book. She's happily single, works a job she doesn't love, and talks to her therapist about her life and past, including growing up with a drug addicted father. Her relationship with her activist mother is complicated, and her brother and sister-in-law have a sick baby who is unlikely to live for more than a few years. The book jumps back and forth between Andrea's past and present.

All Grown Up is smart, brilliantly written, funny, and thought provoking. Andrea doesn't fit the typical "heroine" profile, but is very likable while being flawed and human. I'm blown away by this book.

I'm a huge fan of dystopian novels. The Road is one of my all time favorites, I loved Station Eleven, and I am still very excited about Hulu's version of The Handmaid's Tale. When I saw a dystopian novel as one of my BOTM choices, I had to read it.

American War is set in the not too distant future and follows the story of Sarat from her childhood near the banks of the (now much larger) Mississippi through her radicalization during the second American civil war. The world has been forever altered by climate change, and when the south refuses to give up the use of fossil fuels, a war begins.

Sarat and her family live for a time in a refugee camp, where she meets a mysterious man who teaches her about the world before while simultaneously training her to hate a"Blues" (northerners). As the violence of war continually affects Sarat and the people she loves, she does not sit idly by but takes up arms for the Southern cause. Sarat is constantly motivated by her desire for revenge.

This book was especially scary because the imminent threat posed by climate change makes Akkad's imagining of the future believable. However, as a whole I never felt truly connected with Sarat or any of the book's characters. While I enjoyed this book overall, I don't feel compelled to recommend it to others.