I really enjoyed the first 100 pages but unfortunately it started to drag after. I’m not a huge fan when couples get together early in the book. Being a queer historical romance, I was expecting there to be a lot more yearning but they got together very quickly. I liked their relationship and them as individual characters, but it was very plot heavy in the middle and then the third act conflict between them just felt off. I really liked the ending though, I thought it was very well done and overall the writing is great. I’m interested to read more from this author.

This book was brilliant. This is my fourth book by the author and they continue to amaze me every time. The writing is stunning and unique, and the story is fascinating and heart breaking. As an atheist who is not very knowledgeable on this type of spirituality, there were definitely times that I was a little confused or disconnected when the spiritual parts really ramped up. I was looking at some reviews after reading and I came across some people saying that Emezi themselves identifies as ogbanje, which explains and adds so much to the story! I would love to read Emezi’s memoir and then come back and reread this one, I can definitely see this becoming an all time favorite.

Don’t judge me lol

Honestly just wasn’t really interested and kept spacing out

I’ve always known about the Japanese internment camps but not the details. I had no idea the amount of laws the racist government officials made to try to justify their actions, and how those laws are still negatively affecting us today. Thank you George for your many years of activism!

This book was littered with flaws but I ate it up anyways lol

A debut covering themes of sex work, hypersexuality, religious trauma, and mother daughter relationships that unfortunately doesn’t go as far as it should’ve. An engaging and interesting read, but it doesn’t bring anything new to the topics it’s covering nor does it break from the standard “cliches” we’d expect from this type of premise. The writing was good but there were some typos and errors that were not caught in editing. Agnes makes a lot of decisions that directly (and almost purposefully) puts her in danger and the end result is not usually realistic to what actually would’ve happened. For a book that’s presumably about the dangers of sex work, the author was not willing to go to there. Everything seems to be touched on very superficially, and the ending wrapped up a little bit too quickly and nicely. This is very much a debut, but I can see the author coming out with some solid books in the future. I will say, I was in the perfect mood for this sort of book so I did end up actually really enjoying the reading experience even though I have many critiques (hence my good rating lol)