Some essays were stronger than others, but overall this was a thoughtful, intersectional, unruly collection of reflections on our societal expectations of womanhood. I’m glad I picked it up.

I listened on audio and the range of the narrator astounded me. Overall though, I was disappointed by this book. The overall story intrigued me, but when it switched to Polly's perspective is was a much slower listen. I loved pretty much all the parts from Deming's perspective but found Polly frustrating as a character. I really wanted to sympathize with and understand her but seeing her son in too much pain for too long before her choices were truly explained kind of ruined that for me. Then once the book got there, her justifications just kind of fell flat, or were too little too late. And overall the tone was just so sad for so long that it became hard to return to. I wanted to like it more than I did.

While the story and characters never really captured me, there was so much that I absolutely loved about this novel. Diaz’s writing style is like nothing I’ve ever read. It is a beautiful cyclone of nerd culture, Spanish slang, high brow diction, Dominican history, and quick wit. It is so rich with such an uncommon combination of allusions that surely there can only be a handful of people in the world world who could immediately identify every reference. And this is part of what makes it great, that Diaz’s voice is so fiercely and unapologetically his own. Despite detailed footnotes on Dominican history and politics (which I loved learning about) there is so much more that I had to look up to understand (even more so as a non-Spanish speaker), or else breeze past with half-understanding, and I got the feeling that this was part of the experience, that Diaz expects his readers to do their part to KEEP UP in the way that anyone being transplanted into another culture would have to, and that he has confidence in his readers’ ability to do so. It is a dizzying, incandescent ride that I would definitely recommend for the pure experience of it.

I did like this book, especially Evelyn's story, but it somehow felt incomplete. I didn't feel like I really knew TC until the very end, and I never really got a grasp on who Jackie was at all. I listened on audio and the narration was amazing, the story kept me interested, but I felt like it all never really came together. I felt like there was a specific message the story wanted to tell (and I wanted to receive as a reader), about family, racial justice, etc. but I was never able to decipher it.

Captivating, heartbreaking, strangely hopeful. I was drawn in by the themes of sisterhood and mental health, but stayed for the thread of empathy running throughout the story. I don’t know that I’ve ever read a book written with such tenderness and compassion towards its characters, even in their faults. I truly loved and felt for every character in the story, despite their mistakes and humanity. The book raised such thought-provoking questions about how much we can really understand another’s perspective, and whether we need to in order to have compassion for them. Altogether beautifully written, woven, and executed. It’s a story I’ll be sitting with for a while.

This book took a turn I wasn’t expecting, especially for YA, and totally shattered me. It is a captivating, heartbreaking, illuminating look into the life of one Haitian-American teenager. Every character was so multi-faceted and vivid, made even more so by the great narration of the audio version. The last third of the book read almost like Shakespeare, which I know sounds hyperbolic, but something about the storyline, the way everything came crashing together at the end... Well I won’t give it all away, but this book will be staying with me for a long time.

Listened on audio (read by the author) and it was such a fun, powerful experience. Really made it feel like a spoken word novel, if that makes sense. It had the theatricality of slam poetry with the storytelling of a novel. And it was all executed so perfectly.

This was a quiet, long read, but one that was very educational for me. It spanned most of the 20th century, which made it a very effective introduction to the recent histories of Korea and Japan, as well as relations between the two. I would have liked to felt more connection to the characters, especially the later ones, and more of a sense of completion/unification at the end regarding the themes and characters, but I would still definitely call it a beautifully written novel, very much worth the time to read. It left me wanting to read more novels centered on Asian history.

Still prefer Pride and Prejudice. This just didn’t have the same spark.