nerdyprettythings's Reviews (515)

cw: child abuse, r*pe, gay panic, cults
This book had a lot going on and most of it didn't work for me. I was surprised by one part of the mystery, but otherwise felt like it was lacking in those moments. Instead, the horrors the children in the story experienced were presented in a very matter-of-fact tone, while in the present day every time I got a little on the edge of my seat for the characters, the book quickly reassured me they were fine. From the start I was sad to find out this was another "surprise - you got a big inheritance!" book that has been the center of so many thrillers, but I had heard good things, so I pressed on. The cult angle was interesting, but ultimately kind of dropped.
I also had an issue with the handling of the three children as adults. There's a sort of deification post-trauma of one character, vilification of another, and dismissal of the third, and the main source of a lot of information on one of the characters comes from an unreliable and dangerous gay man.
Finally: the whole premise of this book falls apart when one of the children from the house is so easily found years later. The police wouldn't have believed the story we get from the start, and the estate certainly wouldn't have been turned over so easily.

This isn't an essential-read memoir, but if you're a huge fan of Jeopardy!, like I am, you won't regret it - I especially recommend the audiobook narrated by Alex Trebek and Ken Jennings. Much of the book was a series of anecdotes about Trebek's life, but I liked the final few chapters, about modern changes to Jeopardy!, his cancer diagnosis, and seemingly the thoughts he wanted to make known before he died, best. I also appreciated his rejection of Pascal's wager toward the end of the book, that takes guts in the face of death and the internet's armchair philosophers.
Finally - he waited until the book's final words to mention that all proceeds from the book were being donated to charity. It was a classy move, and it fit right in with the bits of his personal commitment to charity that he expressed in the book.

Ehhhhh? This book did a lot of things that I really liked, but there were a lot of times I wanted it to move along, and I considered DNF’ing when I figured out who committed the murder. The POV was a little frustrating at times - the 1st person MC was so convinced of his own goodness, and I think the author wanted me to be, too. But there was just so much suggesting that he actually always kind of sucked. All that said - for my time put in, by the end every tie was knotted and the writing was excellent. I particularly liked the layered ways the book looked at identity and the complexity of the single middle-aged uncle.

This book is a really well-woven story of a woman, her mother, and their lives when she was a child and when they reconnect. The juxtaposition of Gifty's search for answers in her neuroscience program and her upbringing in an Assembly of God church, opiate addiction, and her relationships all undergirded the complicated mother-daughter dynamic.

The story felt so timely, too, especially with the inclusion of the author's real hometown in Alabama, where Gifty's family deals with racist remarks from her schoolmates, their parents, and members of their church. In the south, they're a Black family, with all that implies - their immigrant status is less important to their neighbors than the prejudices they have against African Americans.

I had been wanting to read this book for a while, especially because of the conversation around religion I'd been told was in the book. In nearly every way, I grew up completely differently than the main character, but I grew up in the same pentecostal sect. I was thrown into my own history, especially with the description of the way pastors use prayer and music to manipulate the emotions of the congregation, and especially the impact this has on children. Gifty grows up proud of her strait-laced ways until she realizes no one else is taking it as seriously as she does, and as an adult, her stories about church are weird to her friends. I related so strongly to this part of her character, and though I didn't turn out quite like her (I won't be found in a church unless it's for a wedding), I really enjoyed reading about the way she dealt with dis/belief as she aged. It's a big part of my upbringing that I haven't seen much in fiction.

I was sold on the promise of this book as a Black Mirror-esque story, and I think it delivered on that. The last few chapters especially brought a nice creep factor. But the most fun, creepy sci-fi parts were at the very beginning and very end of the book, and it felt like a bit of a slog through the middle. The story is a little Frankenstein-ish, and I wish the main character had felt and expressed more of the moral dilemma than she admits to. Instead, she does a lot of navel-gazing about her marriage and relationships, and near the end especially, it felt like rehashing what we'd been over while something so much more interesting was happening.
On a personal note, as a huge fan of audiobooks, I think listening to the audio negatively impacted my experience of this one. The narrator has a sort of detached, pessimistic tone that made it feel like the main character was unhappy about having to tell me her story.