3.5 stars

Hm. I think I would've liked this a lot more if I'd read it soon after finishing the first book. (I wanted to, but my library didn't have it at the time.) Because despite my very low threshold for horror, I wasn't really creeped out by this one? Didn't even have trouble sleeping while/after reading it.

But the characters and setting are, as always with Chupeco's work, wonderfully developed. Again, if I was reading this with stronger context from the first book I think I would've felt more immersed, but on its own I felt a little emotionally distanced. The stakes felt lower and less urgent. The relationships weren't quite as compelling.

Still, this was a nice venture out of my usual reading comfort zone, and I enjoyed it overall.

content warnings:

Spoiler

major character "death(s)", minor character deaths, gore, blood, murder, violence, mentions of rape and sexual harassment, mentions of pedophilia

rep:

Spoiler

biracial Japanese-American MC, Japanese and Japanese-American major & minor characters

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CONVERSION: 9.9 / 15 = 3.5 stars

Prose: 5 / 10
Characters & Relationships: 7 / 10
Emotional Impact: 6 / 10
Development / Flow: 6 / 10
Setting: 8 / 10

Diversity & Social Themes: 4 / 5
Intellectual Engagement: N/A
Originality / Trope Execution: N/A
Rereadability: N/A
Memorability: 3 / 5

While my own Asian parents' style is somewhere between Tiger and Western, I definitely recognized a lot of the attitudes expressed in this book. The self-aware reflection is engaging, making Chua more likable as a person despite her controversial parenting practices, and I was pleasantly surprised by how funny and playful this book turned out to be.

Some interesting turns of phrase and evocative emotions, but I never connected with any of the characters and I was not a huge fan of the POV changes or the main characters going unnamed through out. (I know each of these serves a narrative purpose, but in my opinion it put me off enough to outweigh its effectiveness.) It's a very morose book, as befits the events it describes, but only the last chapter really changes tone so overall the whole thing was quite monotonous — the tone/mood might have been this book's greatest strength.

I was originally unsure about the plural in the title, but once you meet the other women in question it definitely works. Could have done without the prologue, though the girls and the premise were fascinating. The dreams and summantive ending were overkill; the end doesn't stand alone without a sequel for closure.

I had a hard time following the plot; too much depended on preexisting knowledge of cultural aspects and remembering details previously mentioned.

This was a lot of fun to read, with vivid characters from Alvin himself to his extended family to his fascinating classmates. Honestly, I'm a little jealous of Alvin, because as a kid I wanted an older brother and to be a middle child ... though I was a pretty social second grader, so I can't imagine how debilitating the performance anxiety / selective mutism must be, especially at an age where children already feel like they don't have a lot of say in their lives.

But having worked with elementary school students for years, I feel like Alvin and his friends don't quite come across as kids so much as how older people — i.e., teenagers and up — tend to think of kids. There are quite a few jokes that play on how literal-minded and naive he is (not in a mocking way necessarily, more of an "aw how precious, please never grow up") but at the same time, he uses several turns of phrase that I certainly wouldn't have understood at that age even though I read a lot and my parents spoke relatively fluent English. I also don't love the internalized sexism ("Rule #1 of being a gentleman is you can't hit girls"; girls can't punch ... though this assumption is proven wrong!) even though it's something that I unfortunately do see in my first graders, if not to the extent that Alvin carries it. And some of the actions Alvin takes, while they do convey believably childlike thoughtlessness and lack of general awareness of others, are a little hard to believe when he seems like the kind of kid who would mostly follow the rules and principles he was taught by the adults in his life.

Also, the ending was really frustrating. I'm not sure if it was meant to be a cliffhanger, because I'm sure the situation feels like a big deal to Alvin (though it seems fairly trivial to me, having more life experience and having seen some of the other scrapes he's gotten himself into), but it felt like the book just ended abruptly. Which unfortunately doesn't really make me want to continue the series.

This was a required read in elementary school, as part of a larger unit about the Japanese and Japanese-American experience circa WWII. I enjoyed the book, and I really liked the simulation we did: the teachers had us pack and bring in bags (if you forgot, they gave you a stack of dictionaries) that we had to carry throughout a very long walk around the school, then we measured out chalk outlines for "cells"/rooms as described in the book.