rickjones's Reviews (1.66k)

I'd highly recommend this book to anyone who really enjoys crafts and cooking, as there are many creative ideas for projects and recipes you can make yourself. Unfortunately I don't really have the patience for either of those things, or for reading stories that are mostly about mundane happenings, as these are. Focusing on the mundane doesn't necessarily make this a terrible anthology, there were a number of talented people involved who seemed satisfied with the end result of their contributions, but personally I felt it tedious to read through all of them. Again, from an arts perspective this book is really a feat of teamwork and creativity, especially since it was compiled and shipped during the height of the pandemic, but if you're looking for something that's exciting storywise you may want to look elsewhere. If I ever am babysitting or raising kids of my own I'd definitely revisit this anthology to utilize some of the craft ideas provided though.

This is a beautiful anthology highlighting the stories and perspectives of a diverse group of native women. The youngest contributors to the anthology are a group of middle school students, whose works close out the book with hope and joy. Each story in the anthology focuses on empowering native women by affirming their resilience both as individuals and as community members. A variety of emotions are explored within the anthology, but every one of them, anger, sorrow, helplessness, power, strength, and joy, connect to a wider narrative of the love native women have for themselves and each other, and how that love is transcendent. Highly recommended, but please mind the content warnings below.

This is easily the most disturbing story I've ever read. The narrators' straightforward and steady reporting of their increasingly monstrous experimentation with science and art add to the horror of it, they seem to feel no doubt or remorse in pursuit of their lofty and depraved projects. Within this story love is vulgar, bodies exist to be exploited, and the primal self is restrained under a thin guise of rational humanity.

Doctor Quintana and his colleagues believe their superiority to be expressed through their intelligence, through their professionalism, through their seemingly noble pursuit of what lies beyond death. Yet their work is dependent on their inhumanity, revealed ugly and unforgiving through their routinely ableist, racist and classist dismissal of their victims' rights as people. A hundred years later Doctor Quintana's legacy is ironically all but forgotten.

The remains of his ambition rest in his derelict comemadre plants and the metal frogs preserved for his second decapitation victim, then distributed as objects of comfort to those who followed. It's these frogs which distinctly unsettle his grandson Sebastian, and begin the boy's unraveling, which culminates in the novel when he becomes a willing sacrifice to his ex-lover's meticulously planned yet disconcerting work of art once again involving the inherited comemadre plant.

Fully immersive and disturbingly creative, Comemadre presents a ruthless world brimming with repetitive imagery and odd anxieties, which travel through a hundred years of history. I'd recommend this book to anyone looking to read a truly unique horror story, but please be wary of the subject matter and content warnings below. 

This is not the first story I've read where letters from the past intersected with the present, but the presence of them in the home the entire time, within the pages of books Ingrid's daughters touched and moved and never thought about again, added an aching, unresolved tension to the narrative. Altogether I felt the book was engaging and unique. Each of the principle women almost have a magical quality to their behaviors and beliefs. I appreciated how familial intimacy was displayed through their expressions of oddity, such as Flora's collecting and discarding of teeth, her naked mermaid swims with her mother, and Nan's lifelong proclivity towards motherhood.

Most characters involved here had personalities and motives that flowed and crashed like the ocean in Ingrid's backyard. Even her perspectives were difficult to pin down, thought she spent all her writing time describing them. I didn't really like any of the characters much, though I understood them and why they acted and thought the ways they did, all except Gil. It's Gil who we start the story with, who we first feel empathy towards, and who we come to realize hides a monstrous selfishness underneath his persona of a witty, loving, apologetic writer and father. Much like Ingrid, I, the reader, grew to quit forgiving Gil, to quit loving him, to quit lying to myself that he loved her, although much too late. Ultimately this story is really about the marred adulthood of a young woman who was held responsible for her older professor's trespasses against her and marooned with him by both her educational institution and her closest friend. This betrayal, and many more waiting in her future, forms the context of her life, up until her apparent death. Whether Ingrid's death was purposeful, an accident, or never really happened at all is left ambiguous. The truth of her story is left less important than how it was read by the people left behind, namely her daughters, who grow into oppositely minded adults believing their mother either died by suicide or would one day return to them. The novel ends with familial tensions never fully resolved or satisfied, but dissolving by the weight and tides of time. 

This was an interesting and exciting story that was reminiscent of Heathers, The Craft, and Jennifer's Body. Becca's newfound friendship with the Squad gives her the sense of belonging she's always craved, but at a price. Before long her hunger and her power begins to spin out of control, leading her to question how far she's willing to go to sate it, and if her Alpha really possesses the judgement necessary to protect the group.

The plot went off into directions I didn't see coming and ended with a darker twist than what I had expected from a young adult book. Becca's world is definitely grisly, she and her friends spend one night a month baiting themselves for predators, and tackling their cognitive dissonance when they consume someone they're not certain was deserving of a death sentence. Additionally, Becca is dealing with internalized shame from being sapphic and having been humiliatingly rejected in the past. Varied experiences of victimization, victimhood, vengeance and how to go on living with them are displayed throughout the narrative, with each girl having their own perspective on their bloodthirsty secret, which begin to splinter into disillusionment. 

I really enjoyed the art for this book too, it was dynamic and full of expression, supplying additional meaning in some scenes where words weren't used. For the most part I felt the panels were paced well, giving the story almost a cinematic effect, though they were some instances where I couldn't follow what was meant to be happening on the page. Overall I would recommend this story to others who feel they can handle the subject matter. I was pleasantly surprised by its fresh depiction of werewolf lore and plot that continued to complicate itself.