Hi friends! It has been brought to my attention (I’m ashamed that someone had to bring this to my attention and I didn’t know better already) that my more negative review of The Bluest Eye hurt feelings and was dismissive of those who relate to it. That was not my intention, and I am truly sorry. It was unfair for me to say that I didn’t like this book just because it made me uncomfortable. It is a brilliant book precisely BECAUSE of how unflinching and challenging it is. As a white woman, I need to be more cognizant of my privilege and recognize when I have an opportunity to learn and grow, instead of just facing away because something is hard. In the future, I will do my best to be more aware of the effect my reviews can have. I’m afraid that I dissuaded people from reading this book - please, read it. It is important to challenge your perspective and experience, especially when it’s hard. Especially when the voices have historically been oppressed. I truly want to learn and grow and do better. I’m going to keep trying to read books that challenge me, even when it’s hard and sad to face that this was someone’s reality. If you have advice on how I can do better, I’ll take it! Slide into my DMs!

I hope y’all will give me the grace of being patient with me as I learn how to review with fairness and honesty without being dismissive or hurtful. My original review is below.

(Original review)
The Bluest Eye was my first ever Toni Morrison. It was incredibly disturbing to me and I’m not sure I’d recommend it to everyone. It’s about a poor black 12-year-old girl, Pecola Breedlove, who you learn at the beginning is pregnant with her father’s baby.

The narrative is well structured and switches between the perspective of Claudia, a neighbor girl who, along with her sister, is sort of friendly with Pecola, and background information on the people in Pecola’s life. Pecola, with her dark skin and features, is considered “ugly”, and prays everyday for blue eyes that she thinks will make her beautiful.

The writing is lovely, as is to be expected. I just really struggled to stomach this story. Pecola’s life is miserable, full of trauma and abuse. The story is heartbreaking. I definitely understand why this book is important, but while I do enjoy a good tragedy, this story was too horrible for me. I know it was fiction, and I know Morrison was making a lot of points about beauty standards and racism, but I still ended up being distressed by the plot. I felt sick to my stomach for the whole second half of the book, and the ending left me feeling just gross and upset. It was just brutal the whole time, with no hope, and the graphic abuse (of both children and animals) was too much for me to handle. 2.5 stars because the writing is superb, but be warned if you read this one - the subject matter is extremely heavy.

I finished Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga last night and what a gut-punch. This book is about the mistreatment of First Nations people and kids at the hands of the Canadien government. It goes into detail about seven kids who were attending high school far from their families in Thunder Bay, Ontario, who were all found dead, and five of them in the water.

This book also goes into the history of residential schools and the abuse faced by Indigenous people sent to them, and the extreme repercussions of the system today where survivors face intergenerational trauma as a result. Talaga also describes the lack of educational resources that tribes face today - education is funded at a lower rate for Indigenous students, setting them further and further behind. There are often no or extremely sub-par schools (or even running water) in remote First Nations communities, so lots of kids end up being sent to high school far from their families, in a big city for the first time, alone, living at a boarding house with little supervision.

This book is extremely compelling and thoroughly researched. Talaga is a clearly skilled investigative journalist and writer. I’m not a huge reader of nonfiction (as in... it’s a struggle for me to get through normally) and I found this book to be a good combo of compelling and informational. She gives you the facts and she also shows you the community’s pain. I would highly, highly recommend reading this book.

2.5 stars. Thanks to @atriabooks for sharing The Falconer by Dana Czapnik with me! It follows Lucy Adler, a seventeen-year-old tomboy “pizza bagel” which apparently means a mix of Jewish and Italian heritage, who is a star basketball player at her school, has an unrequited crush on her best friend/rich-boy Percy, as she goes through her senior year of high school in NYC.

This book didn’t really have a plot? It just kind of follows Lucy around the streets of NYC as she goes about her life. I’m okay with this in books sometimes, but this book kind of dragged at times because of it, and I found myself losing interest.

Lucy has moments where she has all these opinions about life that came off as judgmental. There were tropes like “that’s why I have so few female friends, all they want to do is talk about their diets” and other moments where she judges girls for caring about their appearance... it felt tired. Here’s another quote: ‘“Do you ever think makeup is a signifier of our inferiority?” I ask her. “Like, we have to put all this shit on our faces to get noticed and guys don’t. Maybe this whole process devalues us as human beings.”’ ....this is coming from a 17-year-old? Maybe I was just super immature at that age but this is not what I was thinking about. Also it felt very much like if you don’t care about looks, you’re superior to those who do.

Basically, it felt like the author was trying to say too much and make this teen have so many grand epiphanies that her character felt muddled. She also has a moment where she laments big box grocery stores, she thinks that you shouldn’t eat meat unless you can kill it yourself... and so on. It was exhausting.

I felt let down by this book. It wasn’t all bad, it just felt tired and a little boring and like it was trying too hard to be alternative and feminist or something, but also was judgmental of women who weren’t as smart as Lucy. There were definitely some moments that held my interest, but overall the mixed messages and meandering plotlessness just didn’t work well for me. However, this book has received lots of praise from others, so I’d still say give it a try if it sounds like the type of book you may like!

“Black feminism is not a reactionary project. It is not about the damage that white girls do. Not solely or primarily. Black feminism is about the world Black women and girls can build, if all the haters would raise up and let us get to work.”

“White privilege works by making the advantages white people have invisible while making the supposedly “poor” choices of people of color hypervisible.”

Just wanted to start with two quotes that show the power and brilliance of Brittany Cooper’s writing, because I cannot do this book any amount of justice in my own words. Eloquent Rage was the last book I finished in February. Cooper writes about her journey to becoming a Black feminist, and what it means to her. I found her writing to be very engaging. It felt like she was my friend, telling me about her life, but also that she was the smartest friend I ever had. Her writing feels astute and at the same time entirely vulnerable and open.

I always appreciate books that bring a different perspective than my experience, and teach me something or point out something I haven’t thought about, and this book does that over and over. Like, Michelle Obama’s hair during Trump’s inauguration as a quiet act of rage in the form of refusal. Just something I’d never have even thought about without reading this.

I definitely recommend this book. And thanks to Renée @book_girl_magic for picking this book for her February book club read!

I loved Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi. Her voice is so distinct! I feel like if I blindly started reading one of her books without knowing it was hers, I’d be able to tell.

It’s a little bit hard to describe the plot of Gingerbread. It’s about Harriet, her mother Margot, and her daughter Perdita, but mostly about Harriet. It’s about where she grew up - on an island that may or may not exist - and how she came to live in England, and the complicated relationship she has with the family of benefactors that brought her and her mother back from the maybe not real country. Oh, and of course it involves some gingerbread that some people can’t get enough of, especially Harriet’s mysterious childhood friend Gretel.

Oyeyemi mixes the plausible and the unbelievable in a way where you just have to suspend your disbelief and stop trying to make sense of everything as you read her books. This book has talking dolls, runaway houses, and seemingly impossible journeys. At the same time, her relatable characters ground the story in authenticity in a way that makes it feel completely real. I, personally, am a huge fan. Although at times the plot was a little bit confusing or hard to follow, and I found myself needing to reread sentences or sections, it still worked for me. Her prose is so whimsical and just delicious.

This book is strange, funny, and just so totally inventive. It’s not a book to be devoured - I recommend giving it your full attention and enough time to digest it. It’s absolutely worth it.

I really enjoyed Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. It’s not often anymore that I start having that “this is new!” feeling while reading a book. But, that’s how I felt reading this one, which was exciting. I love that feeling.

Every Heart a Doorway is the first book in the Wayward Children series. It’s a young adult fantasy novella set at a school for wayward children. These children have had adventures to magical lands, and have all returned back to their “home”, much to their chagrin. At this school, the children mostly all feel like the world’s they visited are their actual true homes, and are desperate to find a way back. When a new student, Nancy, arrives, and suddenly people at the school start getting murdered, Nancy and her new friends have to figure it out before it’s too late.

This book is YA, and to me, it reads YA. I sometimes struggle with that, which is why I don’t pick up YA very often, but I was prepared for that going into this one. The mystery was a little bit predictable, but that’s okay. What I really loved about this book was the message that it’s okay to be different. It’s okay to not fit in, and to feel like you don’t belong. I also loved that the story felt so whimsical and nostalgic and magical. It’s just so great!

I am excited to continue with this series. The next few books actually delve into the different fantasy worlds, which I think will be really fun to read about. Overall, this book has dark fairy tale vibes with characters you root for. I’d recommend it if you like fantasy, don’t mind YA, and want to read about characters that will tug at your heartstrings.

(#partner @fsgbooks) • The Unpassing by Chia-Chia Lin follows a Tawainese immigrant family living in Alaska. Early in the book, the youngest of four children, Ruby, dies of meningitis. Gavin, the books narrator and the family’s second oldest child, also contracts meningitis and survives. The book is a portrait of a family struggling with grief, with isolation, and with just living. After Ruby’s death, the father is sued for a bad septic job that poisons a customer’s son. The family, but especially the parents, really struggle and sometimes just fail at keeping it together.

This book is a slow burn. Told from a child’s perspective, things felt a bit choppy to me at times, and not everything that happened was fully explained. But, I think that’s just truer to what a child would actually observe.

The siblings try to move past Ruby’s death by befriending neighbors, exploring the woods, and just doing kid things. But the grief and dysfunction in the family has a hold on everyone - the oldest child, Pei Pei, acts out. Natty, The now-youngest brother, doesn’t understand why Ruby isn’t coming back. The dad is frustratingly passive, and the mom blames the dad for all their struggles and longs to return to Taiwan.

This book is definitely more character driven than plot driven, although the plot isn’t completely stagnant. The dread is palpable as the family comes apart at the seams. It doesn’t feel like everything is going to be okay, which is refreshing somehow. The setting of an isolated home in Alaska in what was supposed to be a neighborhood that didn’t get built adds to the gloom. It was painful to watch the family in their struggles.

I really liked this book. It would be a great choice for API month. I’d recommend this if you like darker stories of families that are character driven.

(#partner @aaknopf) • The River by Peter Heller was exactly what I was looking for - a quick engrossing read that kept me drawn in and emotionally invested.

The River is set in the wilderness on the border of Canada, following Wynn and Jack on their long planned canoe trip. Things quickly go awry as a wildfire starts approaching, and get more sinister after they hear a man fighting with his wife in the fog. A couple of days later, they encounter the man, alone, claiming that he can’t find his wife.

This book has elements that I love - a wild setting, a thrilling plot, likable characters, and high stakes. You get to learn more about Wynn and Jack’s background, and they’re both bookish which makes it kind of fun. My fiancé works in wildfire, so I enjoyed the details of the wildfire element too.

This book had more going for it than just a good plot, too. The friendship between Wynn and Jack, their similarities and differences, and the way they each looked at the world and situation differently made their relationship and characters seem real. Also parts of it def made my eyes fill with tears.

If you’re looking for a fast-paced book that’s more than your traditional thriller, and if you like books set it the wilderness, I’d highly recommend giving this one a try!

Thanks to @randomhouse for sharing Daisy Jones & The Six, my second Taylor Jenkins Reid, with me! I liked it a lot.

This books is a written oral history of the singer Daisy Jones and the band The Six, who combined to be Daisy Jones and The Six. It clearly takes some inspiration from Fleetwood Mac, and Daisy’s pill popping ways reminded me of Valley of the Dolls (which is even mentioned in the book). The oral history style allows the story to move along really quickly and lets you get to know the characters quite well.

I really like stories about fame and fortune and life in Hollywood so I think I was inclined to like this book just for those elements. Hollywood in the late 60s/early 70s is just such a fun setting. The characters felt pretty well developed to me too, although some were a little caricatured (the bandmate Eddie who was constantly jealous of Billy, the aloof misunderstood Daisy, Daisy’s “prince” husband who was controlling and abusive). The romantic tension between Billy, the singer and most talented member of The Six, Daisy, and Camila, Billy’s wife that he was completely devoted to, was really great.

Something else pretty cool was that TJR included all the song lyrics from the band’s hit album. However… I struggled to hear the music in my head (and maybe this is why I’m not a musician - I mean the fact that I can’t hear songs in my head just from descriptions of them - well that and my complete lack of musical talent). For that reason, I think the show, which has been optioned by @reesewitherspoon, will be BETTER! I think the show will be able to bring more emotional depth to the characters through actually bringing the music to life. And if you want to see who I pictured in each of the roles, head over to my blog to see my dream cast.

Miracle Creek is a courtroom drama. I don’t think I’ve ever read a courtroom procedural type of book before, but I loved it. The case is about the explosion of an oxygen chamber called the Miracle Submarine. The chamber was owned by a family of Korean immigrants, and two patients died in the explosion. The book follows days of testimony in the case where the mother of one of the victims, an autistic child, is the defendant.
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I loved the courtroom set up. It made the pace fast, and I loved getting to hear about the events of the night of the explosion from different perspectives. The story took so many twists and turns, too. I was certain one person was guilty, then I was certain it was someone else, and so on! It kept me guessing. The set up and writing made it fast with an almost thriller-like feel since I couldn’t put it down and had to know what happened, but it didn’t have the dreaded typical thriller anxiety or tropes.

Just calling this book a page-turner, though, doesn’t do this book justice. It also explored themes of motherhood, parenting of special needs children, and the unique struggles of immigrant families, and felt authentic in doing so. I was totally engrossed by both the plot and the characters.

I feel a little bit bad teasing this book so early because it doesn’t come out til April 16, so you might have to wait a little while to snag a copy. But it’s worth the wait! I highly recommend it.