sarahxify's Reviews (703)

 This is what I expect millenial fiction to be. Jessie Tu's sharp and absorbing novel follows Jena, a violinst who was a child prodigy but threw away her career as a teenager. She is now in her twenties and trying to find her feet in the world. I talked about this in episode 44 of the Bookcast Club podcast.

Episode link:
 https://www.thebookcastclub.com/podcast/episode/4ab9bc62/44-recent-favourite-author-discoveries

For fans of: The Pisces by Melissa Broder 

 This was just fine, just not really interesting me or making me want to go back to it. Read about 50% and gave up 

This novel follows three sisters, whose mother suicided when they were young. As adults they are each dealing with this trauma in their own way, and are uniquely affected by it. 

I liked the concept of this novel, exploring longterm grief and trauma and how ideas from childhood spill over into adulthood. However, overall I found these themes to be let down by the execution. The characters were all fairly one-dimensional, and I found a lot of their dialogue to be quite forced and stagey. I found this to be a big letdown in a novel tacking such interesting themes. This novel is being marketed as literary fiction, but I would definitely describe it as contemporary, not lit fic. 

Thanks to Netgalley and Blackstone Publishing for an ARC. The Ocean in Winter is out on 6 July 2021. 

This is about a group of new immigrants during Australia's gold rush, longlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize. 

I enjoyed reading this, a book that is certainly about an untold era of history. It was also refreshing to read about racism from the perspective of Chinese-Australians; these are important issues not often discussed in the context of racism. It was quite well-written, and I liked reading from each of the perspectives. 

This book had a lot of potential, but for me it never quite took off. I think I would have liked it more if it were a little longer and we got to spend more time developing each of the characters. 

For fans of: 

How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang 

This book was a fair bit slower than the first one, and I can't say that I enjoyed it quite as much. But all in all I still really like the series and will be going straight on with the next one. 

 Thanks to Netgalley and World Editions for this ARC!

I found the style and structure of this novel really intriguing, and enjoyed the way we got to follow the various parts of Babakar's life and history through the eyes of different characters. However, in general I found the scope of the text and the number of characters to be a bit much, and I didn't really engage with the story on any deep level.

For fans of A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma.