2022: I was on board with close to 85% of this book. 

I remember reading Blair's viral Twitter thread about abortions and unwanted pregnancies back when it was posted in 2018. I enjoyed how she reframed the conversation to revolve around how men cause all unwanted pregnancies, simply by the fact that every time they orgasm, they can cause a pregnancy. Men are fertile 365 days a year, whereas women are arguably only fertile during a small window of time each month. If you remember these two claims and the original Twitter thread, you're not missing much by reading the rest of this book. 

I think this book provides a number of helpful arguments for my future conversations about abortions with people who are very religious. Blair states from the start of this book that she is a religious person, a Mormon with six kids, and she is still very pro-choice. However, her perspective is that she would like to decrease the number of abortions that happen. The basic premise of this book is "do you also want to reduce the number of abortions that happen in America everyday? Here are some ways to do that!" Unfortunately, this also involves her advocating for the benefits of the pull out method (sure, she realizes that it's hard to use the pull out method perfectly every single time you have sex. But it's still listed as a viable alternative to abortions.)

My personal goal would not be to reduce the number of abortions in the United States. My goal is to reduce the barriers that we as a society have introduced that limit access to abortions. But if I need to compromise on anything when it comes to abortion access, I am absolutely willing to increase the amount of information out there about how to prevent getting pregnant in the first place. I also agree with Blair's numerous claims about how much more men should care about birth control - vasectomies for everyone!

By the end of the book, Blair shares a source for every claim she's made in the book. So by that standard, I give this book a solid thumb's up. And if you're looking for talking points when discussing abortions with your religious friends and family who are in cishet relationships, this book will help. But that's about it.

2022: top notch fiction to end the year on

I plowed through this book in about 48 hours to finish by the end of 2022, and although I did put some pressure on myself to finish, I so thoroughly enjoyed the journey. It gave me very similar vibes to my experience with The Vanishing Half. Maybe I was simply primed by both books involving the name Bennett, but they both explored passing as white and how two siblings had different reactions to the same childhood experiences. Both are excellent family dramas with worlds that I could have spent much more time exploring.

I loved the growth in the relationships between the characters and the ocean and how it evolved throughout the generations. Depending on the location they were living, the characters were either heavily into swimming or surfing, but they were always connected to the ocean (which I loved reading about). Wilkerson also spent a lot of the book diving into the push and pull of where you are from versus where you live. Both generations of characters ended up spending the majority of their adult lives away from where they were born, and it was super interesting to see how that influenced them, in both big and small ways.

"Because the people you loved were part of your identity, too. Perhaps the biggest part."