Book 176 of 2024: Bunny by Mona Awad

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Samantha Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is repelled by the rest of her cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision. 

Y’all this book was fucking UNHINGED. And I mean that in the best way possible. The boom is full of dark and toxic people, from the bunnies to Samantha herself, and the power struggles between them. Samantha was a fantastic character; she was so unlikable and sarcastic and mean to the Bunnies before being invited into their world, and I couldn’t help but adore her and all of her craziness. What I really enjoyed about this is that the book started out as a pretty standard dark academia with rivaling girls, but more sinister and ritualistic practices of the Bunnies are thrust upon the reader at the midway point. The book was also a hilarious commentary on literary masters programs. Sharp, macabre, and bizarre, I definitely recommend Bunny if you support women’s wrongs.

Book 177 of 2024: James by Percival Everett

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. Everett takes the story of Huckleberry Finn and flips it on its head, making the enslaved Jim the narrator; Jim thinks of himself as James, and has a rich interior life to which his white enslavers are completely oblivious.

Final book for Phyllis’s Former Student Book Club 2024! It’s been a fantastic year of reading retellings and this book was the cherry on top. This book was incredibly smart and sharp. There were so many humorous moments, which were in juxtaposition to the horrors of slavery that the book did not shy away from. One of my favorite things about the novel is Everett's depiction of how James and his fellow enslaved Black people talk. He and his family speak better English than their enslavers, but they hide their skills whenever whites are around, talking in an exaggerated 'slave dialect' so that the whites will not feel threatened. 'Jim' is thus a persona, a mask that James puts on so he can navigate the impossible world he was born into. The reader sees this time and time again throughout the book in all of James’s interactions, and I was truly fascinated by his character’s depth. The book was mixed with engrossing adventure and heartfelt insight, making it a true standout read for me. I definitely recommend picking up James!

Book 178 of 2024: All Fours by Miranda July 

Rating: ⭐️⭐️/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey.

Now hear me out—I’m a big support of women’s wrongs. And this book was full of them. But I absolutely could not sympathize or find anything redeeming about the main character. She put herself into so many terrible situations where she made the absolute worst choices, and she seemed to blow up her life and her family stability for absolutely no reason other than the fact that she was sex-crazed and unsatisfied in all areas of her life. The novel was provocative and raunchy, but sometimes it seemed like the only point of the book was to be provocative and raunchy with no overarching themes or resonating points. The writing was poignant and there were some passages that I did enjoy. However overall this book was just uncomfortable, unrelatable, and unenjoyable.

 

Book 164 of 2024: The Memory Police by Yoko Ozawa 

 

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

 

On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past. 

 

Buddy read with @paging_dr.bookworm! We had a lot of great discussions as we read this and I’m glad we read it together. This book had such an interesting premise, and unfortunately it fell a little flat of my expectations. The writing itself was beautiful and the author did an excellent job at creating a surreal, dystopian atmosphere. The characters were strongly developed and I enjoyed getting to know them. The story definitely had 1984/We vibes. I think from reading those books, I had a bit more expectation that a book about the terrible power of a totalitarian regime would at some point reveal said regime and its motivations. But unfortunately the reader is left to guess who controls the Memory Police, why things are erased and reasoning behind selection items for erasure, and who makes the decision to erase things. This really frustrated me as I wanted the narrator to make some grand discovery about the world she was living in, but instead everything kind of just faded off. I also think an epilogue would have helped wrap things up a bit better and could have provided more context to the ending. 

 

Book 159 of 2024: All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker 

 

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

 

1975 is a time of change in America. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing. When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy with one eye, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, is abducted. His best friend Saint is left reeling and is determined to unravel the mystery of her beloved friend’s disappearance. Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another. 

 

Literary mystery is such an underrated genre and it is quickly becoming one of my favorites! My friend/mentor/book club host Phyllis recommended this book and I am so glad I read it (let’s be real, her recommendations never miss). This book was such a unique blend of a missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, and a story about love and friendship. The story spans decades and I loved how everything developed over time—it felt realistic and at the same time gave the characters so much room for growth and development. Patch and Salt were incredible characters, and I loved how each of them sought the truth in their own ways. The book was long long but I was never bored and the book never felt like it dragged. Whitaker is an excellent writer and I definitely plan to read more of his works. Really loved this and definitely recommend it! 

Book 78 of 2024: A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

On the streets of White Roaring, Arthie Casimir is a criminal mastermind and collector of secrets. Her prestigious tearoom transforms into an illegal bloodhouse by night, catering to the vampires feared by society. But when her establishment is threatened, Arthie is forced to strike an unlikely deal with an alluring adversary to save it. Calling on some of the city’s most skilled outcasts, Arthie hatches a plan to infiltrate the sinister, glittering vampire society known as the Athereum. But not everyone in her ragtag crew is on her side, and as the truth behind the heist unfolds, Arthie finds herself in the midst of a conspiracy that will threaten the world as she knows it.

I’m a bit behind in my @bookishswiftiesclub reads for the year, but my Libby hold for this book finally came through! This was definitely an entertaining read! I loved the writing style and the different points of views of the various characters. Arthie was such a complex character and I loved how more and more of her background  is revealed throughout the book. There were a lot of twists, turns, and betrayals, and I ate all the drama and suspense up! I really enjoyed the romance elements of the book and thought Flick and Jin were perfect together. And I also enjoyed that there was a lot of action and intrigue! The book ends on a bit of a cliffhanger so I’m excited to see how everything resolves in the second book!

Claudia is used to disregarding her fractious family’s model-minority expectations: she has no interest in finding either a conventional career or a nice Chinese boy. She’s also used to keeping secrets from them, such as that she prefers girls—and that she’s just been stealth-recruited by Veracity, a referrals-only online-dating detective agency. A lifelong mystery reader who wrote her senior thesis on Jane Austen, Claudia believes she’s landed her ideal job. But when a client vanishes, Claudia breaks protocol to investigate—and uncovers a maelstrom of personal and corporate deceit.

This book has been in my TBR for a while, and I received an ARC of its sequel earlier this month, so I figured I should probably get to reading this one! This book can be described as a mix of a literary mystery and a family drama, two genres, which I very much enjoy. There were a lot of literary references throughout the book which were fun to catch. I think I enjoyed the family drama aspects of this book more than the mystery portion. At time the mystery seemed to drag on, and the final solve wasn’t as exciting as I expected. The main character spends a lot of time referencing a beloved detective from a series she enjoyed throughout her childhood. I think this helped explain her motivations and give some background to her character, but after a while, the references got to be quite excessive. But I really loved the relationship. Claudia had with her mother and siblings, and how those changed throughout the book. The book had great lesbian and Asian representation. Definitely looking forward to the next book in the series!