starrysteph's Reviews (471)

The Phoenix Pencil Company is a magical investigation of family history, the power of your personal story, and how even pure intentions around community and connection can be warped. And it’s all explored through family pencils - and the women who have the power to bring their words back to life. 

Who has the right to your story? How can stories reshape personal, national, and political narratives? Whose stories are broadcast and whose are hidden or restructured? 

Monica lives a quiet life, splitting her time between studying and coding for a program called EMBRS that connects strangers with shared data through digital journals. But she’s worried about her elderly grandparents. They’re the ones who raised her, but they now live alone in Boston, and her grandmother Yun was just diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Yun has a heart-wrenching history, having lived through two wars in China and disconnected from her cousin and once-closest friend Meng. When Monica’s program connects them once again, Monica’s story is interwoven with Yun’s fading memories of her childhood. Yun worked for the Phoenix Pencil Company and the women in her family have the power to Reforge a pencil’s words, but what was once used for connection and love quickly becomes abused by their government for espionage and betrayal.

I was gripped by the family saga, maybe more so by Yun’s memory chapters than Monica’s present day. But both women are richly characterized with compelling stories. Monica is a bit more anxious and isolated, and Yun is sometimes harsh and stubborn. They make decisions they aren’t proud of, forgive and seek forgiveness from others, and burn things to the ground once or twice.

It’s striking to read about how the stories we love so dearly can be used to harm instead of connect. Everything can be exploited. It’s especially poignant when Monica learns to reframe these ethical questions and apply them to her digital program and the data it collects (something we should all really be thinking about!). 

I thought the concept of Reforging was fascinating, especially how you can Reforge both through pleasure or pain - and how pleasure isn’t always framed as the best option by the end. It’s important to not look away from harm and hurt, and sometimes stories do cut you like knives. 

I liked the threads of romance and the stepping out of loneliness that binds Yun and Monica, but I didn’t adore Monica’s relationship. I thought their supportiveness of each other was lovely, but it turned a bit cheesy and superfluous and eventually started to detract from the other parts of this story that I much more wanted to read. But what really rocked me was there was a betrayal that I thought was forgiven far too easily (and reframed their entire relationship very negatively for me). I did appreciate the arc with Monica feeling nervous to share her queerness with her grandparents and how that resolved.

There’s a highlight here on the stories that might embarrass us, but also how only some stories are preserved in history. It’s a gorgeous reminder to investigate all truths and not accept words at face value, to turn towards our pasts, and to protect our stories however best. Many of these characters have fierce desires to preserve all stories, but you don’t have the right to anyone else’s but your own.

Overall, this was a touching family saga and I was drawn in immediately by the magical elements. I would recommend this to anyone who loves record-keeping, generational storytelling, and the ethics of preserving history (digitally and physically). 

CW: self harm, fire, war, injury, death, unintentional outing, abandonment, racism, xenophobia, dementia, grief, bullying

Follow me on social media for book recommendations!

(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

Detained is a the sort of reading experience that comes along once in a generation – a memoir that I wish I could firmly place in the hands of everyone currently living in the United States.

D Esperanza was only thirteen years old and on his own in Honduras, caring for his little cousin, giving up school to work any job he could, and missing his parents (and little sister he had never met) in el norte.

Along with two other cousins, D embarks on a frightening, long, and dangerous journey north to Mexico and then across the border to the United States. But after surviving so much together, the four boys are ripped apart and placed in child detention centers. 

Although D’s parents are desperate to bring him home at any time, they are separated for another five months. D is moved from facility to facility in the middle of the night, treated with condescension and apathy, and faces a myriad of cruelty under Trump’s family separation order and the larger violence of US immigration policies.

D survives, thanks to everything he pours into his journal, the friendships he forms with other kids going through the same terrors, and a mentor who becomes a sort of brother (and later helps him to bring his words to the wider world). 

He writes with the raw & unfiltered voice of a child - and his journal entries are lovingly addressed to the grandmother who passed months before he decided to leave Honduras. There is a lot of trauma in these pages, and D faces every situation with resilience and strength way beyond his years. 

D asks again and again why nobody cares, why nobody will give him a simple answer, why he is dragged away in the middle of the night without a chance to say goodbye, and so much more. It was an unraveling experience to see the pain inflicted in my own backyard through a child’s unfiltered eyes. He writes assuming that nobody will ever read his words, and that lends itself to such powerful and honest emotion. 

I was grateful for the epilogue and the chance to see that D is doing okay and working on healing, but no child should ever have to go through ANY of what he experienced. There are threads of hope in these pages, as he meets Iván and forms relationships (brotherhoods, really) with some of the other boys in his Alpha 13 tent in the “overflow” facility in Tornillo. But overall it is devastating and deeply infuriating.

An absolute must-read that isn’t easy to live in, but is the reality of this country. I’m glad this book exists and I hope it to see it absolutely everywhere once it’s released. 

CW: death (family), violence, grief, forced institutionalization, xenophobia, racism, car accident, injury, animal death (pet), confinement, deportation, colorism, terminal illness

Follow me on social media for book recommendations!

(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

How freeing would it be to simply … lean into monstrosity? To make that dangerous bargain? To unapologetically and unwaveringly hunger for power? 

I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me is a wonderfully fanged & clawed & bloodthirsty villain origin story. And you won’t ever stop rooting for her.

Laure Mesny is a brilliant ballerina. But despite being top of her class and as talented as the rest of the dancers, she’s overlooked time and time again. Parisian ballet just isn’t willing to let a Black girl shine.

When Laure discovers a powerful entity in a river of blood beneath the city, she strikes a deal. She’ll get godlike powers and become undeniable … but power always comes with a cost. And her violent ambition makes her a target to everyone.

Laure agonizes over her need for art and a cutthroat world that pushes her down again and again. She’s had to work twice as hard as any of her peers, has to be perfect just to be seen. And she’s furious about it.

I was viciously hooked from the start. The prose is rich and relatable, and while the dance world isn’t always portrayed completely accurately, the themes of sacrifice for success and destroying yourself for your art will ring true for any creative. 

Laure faces prejudice - both racist and classist - from her peers and from the oppressive institution itself. They’re always demanding more. More loyalty, more sacrifice, more unpeeling yourself. And when she starts to bite back, it’s so satisfying. (Let her do it all!!)

I did think that sometimes we got lost in the richness of the writing, and I wanted a bit more information and context, specifically around the gods and powers and bargains. The vibes were consistently delicious, but I wish there was a bit more to solidly place us in this reality. But the atmospheric horror of the violence and the rivers Acheron and Leche were so, so good. The QUOTES I could pull from this!

The ballerinas were (mostly) rancid and the eclectic group of fellow bargainers who become a bit of a found family were all fleshed out well and quite unique. I lowkey felt like this could have been SO much more sapphic and I thought we were heading in one direction (Laure is bi), but we mostly left that energy on the table. 

Overall, I loved this and really want to dive into the sequel! If you’re into “good for her” rage and girls becoming monstrous gods to find their freedom, please pick this one up. 

CW: murder, death, blood, body horror, racism, toxic friendship, gore, classism, body shaming, bullying, injury, self harm, abandonment, fatphobia, misogyny, fire, gaslighting, grief, vomit

Follow me on social media for book recommendations!

Womb City is absolutely brutal - a journey into a horrific imagined future Botswana where bodies and wombs are sold, oppressive patriarchal systems are all-powerful, and nothing is quite as it seems.

We’re following Nelah, a woman desperate to maintain her status in life and have a child. But her relationship is infertile and she is existing in a body that has previously committed a crime – so her powerful husband picks apart her microchip data and an AI determines her worth to society. She lives with a crushing amount of terror and dread that one day, she’ll fail one of their tests.

She’s hanging on by a thread until a devastating hit-and-run that leaves a young woman dead. Nelah and her secret lover must avoid a ghost hungry for revenge, protect Nelah’s child, and figure out what is actually moving the cogs of her world.

This is a world with AI, elevated technology (including microchips that monitor and control you and simulated wombs), and body hopping with multiple life spans. And in addition to all the technology, there are ancient gods that may or may not have active powers. While all of this was fascinating and cool, it became very convoluted very quickly. I found myself struggling to connect all of the dots and to keep up with the plot while holding so much information in my mind. 

Although the details of the society are quite different from our current reality, the commentary is very realistic and hits hard. These characters are being punished for the bodies they were placed into (only the very powerful get to retain memories/cultural knowledge and choose their physical forms). They are punished for thoughts and for simply having the potential to commit crimes. The tension and fear is unreal, even in just the first chapters. It reminded me a bit of a Black Mirror episode. 

The characters are complicated. They are imperfect, and even the protagonists make some rough decisions. I definitely felt as though I was living their journeys with them and understood their thought processes. I enjoyed a lot of the prose, but I sometimes felt the dialogue meandered and was a bit unrealistically melodramatic - and the book overall was overflowing.

The plot touches on SO much. Misogyny, racism, xenophobia, classism, violence, infertility, and beyond. It tackles patriarchy through body swapping, how insidious and all-powerful oppressive systems can become, and it blends in tech and folklore as well. It’s a whirlpool of terror and was a bit of a challenge to read, understand, and process. And then that ENDING! You’re never given a chance to settle into anything expected.

I was fascinated and my jaw was on the floor and truthfully I’m still having a tough time figuring out my thoughts on this one and who I would recommend it to. It was a RIDE for sure. 

CW: murder, death, gore, body horror, misogyny, car accident, infertility, rape, infidelity, classism, gaslighting, grief, trafficking, police brutality, incest, cannibalism, vomit, child abuse

Follow me on social media for book recommendations!

Magical. Immersive. Hard-hitting. A sharp gaze both inwards at our current reality and a beam of hope towards the future.

What does it mean to be too much, to be too frightening, even in a world that has accepted the extraordinary as ordinary? How can you find groundedness, solace, and love when you have been exiled from your home?

Somadina is everything you learn to expect from an Akwaeke Emezi book. 

Somadina and her twin Jayaike are attached at the hip and are bonded so tightly they almost feel like one person. Their West African town is detached from the rest of the world thanks to a terrifying chasm known as the Split, which also grants every child one magical power once they come of age.

The trouble is, Somadina and Jayaike have an unusual coming-of-age. And as the town turns against Somadina, Jayaike vanishes from his bed. She’ll do anything it takes to bring him home, no matter the dangers, no matter the natural borders of her world, and no matter the community that refuses to hear her. Somadina has to set off on an otherworldly journey and learn some truths about herself … and her world.

The darkness Emezi loves to spotlight is a bit lessened for their third young adult story, but this is still not an easy story of growing up. Somadina faces backlash from the people she should have always been able to trust, and she has to make terrible choices.

But through her struggles, she learns to see the light within herself. She learns to heal, and that forgiveness will be a journey. She learns that her community is a web and that she can find more love anywhere she turns. And she embraces her powers and her deity, grounding herself in her spirit. 

There’s darkness within Somadina that she must learn to accept and balance, but she is always very likeable and earnest. I loved being in her head and I thought her characterization was beautifully done. 

Somadina’s community is filled with magic, but so many of them refuse to open up to new strangeness. They keep things contained, they report their powers, and they inflict sharp punishments. They need to understand their history in order to shape their future, but even though it impacts them every day, they don’t see the full scope of their past. (Not terribly hard to place this in our current reality.)

Though the world is fantastical, there is also truth here - Emezi beautifully integrates Igbo culture and pieces of their home. The culture and world are so richly described and honored. Emezi also writes in the afterward about the pain of being in exile from your home when it is not safe to return to the land that raised you, and that has inspired a lot of Somadina’s journey.

Somadina’s world is queernormative, but if you are a spirit-touched child or a child who is marked in some way as different, you are pushed to the outskirts of society. It hurts, and even at the end of her journey she doesn’t quite feel whole. But she has hope and dreams for her future, and that’s what is most important. Not every box is checked and not every question is answered, but the ending was exactly right to me.

Of course, there’s no way I could end this review without shouting about the prose. It’s perfection. Every sentence is precise, the world is expansive, and you flow from scene to scene with clarity and ease. 

I totally flaked on jotting down quotes, so I might have to come back and add some of my favorites another time.

Another brilliant Akwaeke Emezi piece!! 

CW: death (child), murder, war, kidnapping, torture, animal cruelty/death, abandonment, body horror, bullying, cannibalism (sort of), dometic abuse

Follow me on social media for book recommendations!

(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

Saving Five is a brief but empowering & inspiring memoir - with speculative elements!

The topics covered are quite dark, but as the subtitle suggests, the tone is more optimistic. Amanda shares her story of surviving sexual assault, fighting for better legal rights for survivors (she passed the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act in 2016), pivoting from her career hopes and dreams, and also reflecting on her childhood and healing some past trauma there.

There are speculative elements. Between the bits of her college-aged journey are pieces of a metaphorical journey through 5 different realms that represent the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Amanda has to travel with several younger versions of herself and successfully pass through each doorway. She revisits sad memories from her past and has to learn to acknowledge and grieve the trauma that she once buried. 

I found the writing engaging and easy to follow. However, I didn’t quite feel like I got to know Amanda, which is really why I pick up memoirs! This is a pretty short book, and a lot of it is spent just catching us up to speed and explaining how the legal system works and the different barriers that Amanda had to face. 

Amanda’s story is so inspiring, but I wanted more of her. The moments of the book that really moved me were the moments she allowed herself to be a bit more vulnerable, sharing her emotional process or quieter thoughts or just letting us exist in her current state instead of telling things to readers. 

There are also a lot of Harry Potter mentions, which were honestly quite tough and jarring and felt so very unnecessary. And I wasn’t quite sure where her personal story ended - is her evidence still being held or did she decide for or against pursuing her personal court case? She’s obviously sharing her story publicly at this point, so I was curious about that and understanding the more individual legal journeys that survivors go through.

I definitely walked away with a lot more knowledge about the legal side of sexual assault - and the inner workings of passing laws - and I’m very excited for Amanda to have the opportunity to go to space and lean into whatever is next now that she’s won this massive battle. She’s remarkable. 

CW: rape, child/domestic abuse, grief, medical trauma, mental health, Harry Potter references

 <b><a href="https://beacons.ai/starrysteph">Follow me on social media</a></b> for book recommendations!

Follow me on social media for book recommendations!

(I received a free copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

HOLY SHIT! Settle in and don’t tremble too hard. This is a horrifyingly rich, gory, slow burn revenge story - featuring a Native vampire. 

In 2012, a struggling professor is called in to receive an old diary that once belonged to one of her ancestors. Hopeful for something intriguing to write about to achieve tenure, she dives in.

The journal opens in 1912, as Lutheran pastor Arthur witnesses a series of strange deaths. Mixed in with his ruminations are transcribed interviews with a Blackfeet man named Good Stab, who visits him weekly and shares bits of his life as confession. 

But Good Stab claims to be more than human, and his story continues, he begins to unravel a series of horrors going back years and years to a horrific Blackfeet massacre. 

This is a very slow burn, similar to the rest of SGJ’s books. You really sink your teeth (haha) into these characters, seeing them process moments that are seemingly mundane. But every scene gives you so much more insight. It usually takes me a minute to get fully into his books, but once I do it’s hard to remember that the characters are fiction and hard to disconnect them from my own mind and skin. 

The tension is agonizing, and whether or not you’re thrown by certain twists or you’ve put the pieces together, you’ll most definitely be anxious. The last 30% might have been my all-time favorite Stephen Graham Jones conclusion. I couldn’t look away during that final stretch.

The most challenging part of this book is getting situated with the language. I can’t speak to how accurate the 1912 dialogue is (and according to the author’s note the Lutheran aspects are a bit improvised), but it FELT authentic. And that made it a bit difficult to follow at times. The Good Stab transcripts were a little bit easier than the Arthur entries, but honestly I had to reread several paragraphs from both sections several times to make sure I wasn’t missing anything and that I understood the action that just went down. I think the book is absolutely worth it, but I can understand folks getting frustrated or confused and not wanting to push through.

So we get exact transcripts (though Arthur struggles with some of his vocab) of Good Stab’s interviews, and then free-flowing Arthur journal entries. Good Stab is very deliberate and consistent, playing with his language and making Arthur uneasier and uneasier. And the fascinating part is watching Arthur’s writing morph as Good Stab has more and more of an impact and his words wriggle into his head. It’s an excellent game of cat and mouse to witness.

This is a revenge story, and the Good Stab’s actions are fictional and supernatural (and maybe a little cathartic), but the actions of colonizers that incited this revenge are very real. If you haven’t heard of the Marias Massacre, look it up before you read to have a fuller understanding of the true horrors depicted here. (The mass killings of buffalo are of course true as well.)

The gore is gory! I don’t even know if I need to warn you, but maybe if you’re a first time SGJ reader I ought to. He never holds back. There are terrible deaths of both humans and animals, and torture and violence that go beyond death, and detailed body horror, and just a lot of grief and pain. 

There is rich symbolism in all the horror here. There are questions around guilt and responsibility and family legacy. This is a book that throws the weight of history at you and forces you to sit with it, lingering in its trauma.

It is very, very clever. It’s horrible and gruesome and visceral and soul-crushingly devastating. It’s sometimes funny (really!). It is a lone, furious more-than-a-man against colonization, false justice and rights, callous ravagers of land, men hiding behind faith and absolution, and violence that means nothing to them. And meanwhile he is alone in his fight, grieving and forever separated from his people and his home.

READ IT.

CW: murder, death (child/parent), animal cruelty/death, genocide, violence, gore, body horror, blood, torture, injury, fire, rape, racism, gun violence, cannibalism, suicide, war, grief, alcoholism, vomit, religious bigotry, mass shooting

Follow me on social media for book recommendations!

(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

The Reformatory is a bone-chillingly gripping and gut-punch of a story following a young boy sent to a segregated reform school in Jim Crow Florida. 

Gloria was supposed to look after her twelve year old little brother Robbie after their mom dies and their dad has to flee to Chicago. But when he kicks the son of the most powerful family in town (in her defense), he’s quickly sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys.

The moment he steps onto the reform school’s grounds, Robbie is surrounded by hauntings and haints. He learns about the horrible history of the institution, and has to do his best to survive the present. While Gloria does everything she can to free him from the outside, Robbie has to protect himself and his new friends from horrors in this world and beyond.

It’s more of a haunting historical fiction piece than a supernatural horror- there are endless horrors, but they lean devastatingly more into the truth of this place & time (Jim Crow systemic racism) than into ghosts and spooks and terror. While jumpscare-y at times, the haints are more lost and wandering and sad than ever truly frightening. 

Gloria and Robbie are so beautifully characterized, and knowing that they (as well as several other characters) are inspired by the author’s family history makes their burdens even harder to bear. Their details and the specific events of the book are fictional, but their spirits are most certainly real.

Gloria can’t stop herself from speaking up and trying to correct injustices, even though it lands her in peril again and again. She’s clever and resourceful and you feel her frustration and anger and despair as even her best-laid plans go wrong because of, well, 1950s Florida and the white supremacist system that is crafted to hold her down. 

And Robbie is so naive and still relatively bright-eyed at the start of the story. It hurts to watch him be forced to grow up at lightning speed and face trauma after trauma. If you’re dubious about the narration of a 12 year old, he is still pretty perceptive (sometimes the ghosts have to help him along) and has a strong moral compass that will make you want to stick in his head and pray he survives with as much of himself intact as possible.

The cast of supporting characters is excellent as well. Gloria’s community was so distinct and all of the different people in her circle were intriguing. She’s got a caring network of almost-family and people that are - thankfully - willing to fight with her. And where Robbie is a bit innocent, Gloria is much wiser and SO perceptive. It’s fascinating to see her break down even a minute facial expression and see the moment when a person reaches their breaking point. Gloria has some supernatural abilities as well (premonitions). But Gloria is also still a child, and still believes to an extent in justice and that she can do things while following the rules and have everything work out. I sort of wish she came to an understanding that that was impossible a bit sooner. 

There is a central antagonist (and he is RANCID), but it’s never unclear that he is just one player in this system. And getting rid of him would solve some immediate dangers, but isn’t a fix-it-all solution because it is truly the entire society that is harming them. 

There’s a lot of violent racism here, including murder, and child abuse in all forms. Make sure you’re in an okay space before reading.

Though this is a long read (nearly 600 pages), the pacing is excellent and it’s hard to stop turning pages. The most difficult part is, of course, the brutality and horror of the content. So while I was gripped, I had to take reading breaks in order to let myself process and take a few breaths outside of this world. I’m not sure we needed all of the length, either - it is a lot of graphic child torture.

You will be SWEATING nonstop. No character’s safety is guaranteed, and my mind was spinning and conjuring up different scenarios and hypotheticals and maybe daring to hope once or twice. 

I’m grateful for the ending we were given, but I don’t see the weight of this book leaving me for a long, long time. 

CW: murder (child), racism, lynching, slurs, child abuse, fire, torture, forced institutionalization, hate crime, rape, confinement, slavery, police brutality, pedophilia, blood, grief, bullying, gun violence, classism, gaslighting, body horror, vomit, cancer, terminal illness, abandonment, animal cruelty/death, sexism, antisemitism

Follow me on social media for book recommendations!

(I received a free copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

The River Has Roots is one of those stories that feels like it was written oh-so-precisely for me. How is it that I’ve just set it down for the first time and I’m already so hungry to open it again? 

We follow sisters Esther and Ysabel, who have a deep bond and know each other inside out. They live in the in-between town of Thistleford, which sits on the edge of the river Liss and borders ancient and powerful Faerie. 

As members of the Hawthorn family, they tend and sing to the magical willows on their land and devote themselves to their care. As the eldest, Esther already has suitors, but when she finds herself entranced by a lover from Faerie, her sisterly bond and both of their lives are in danger.

In this world, grammar is magic. It is the transformation of lands and people, both through puns and through logic. At times it is wickedly clever, at times it is simple and pure, and at times it is cheeky and playful and might prompt an exasperated sigh.

I don’t know how Amal El-Mohtar got me to intimately understand Esther and Ysabel in a few sentences, but I was moved by their bond and was captivated by their push and pull. They raise each other up so beautifully, but of course have to balance their love for each other with their own desires. Esther’s ferocious protection of Ysobel and her need to ensure that her bond with her family remained forever intact is so compelling. It pulls threads from The Two Sisters but forces ill will and jealousy right out of the picture. 

Esther’s lover is nonbinary and frequently changes shape, though their essence is always the same. It’s a beautiful depiction of queerness as transformation, and though you are sometimes cemented in one form, you can still be ever-shifting. 

The prose is DELICIOUS. I expected nothing less. It’s so lyrical and poetic and to me, never felt more than enough. This is a lush, fairytale story & world and the words uphold that atmosphere perfectly. There’s so much playfulness with grammar-as-magic (truly laughed out loud) and also so much beautiful symbolism in the nature surrounding the sisters. 

The River Has Roots left me aching once it ended, both because the story touched me and because I couldn’t believe it was over so quickly. It feels as quick as a chorus, but nestles comfortably in the grimoire of existing folk songs that are as deep as they are simple and stick in your brain. I would have read a full length novel about these sisters, but I also didn’t sense anything was missing. 

I found myself humming The Wind and Rain and The Hazards of Love and all those other songs of love and loss and violence and sisterhood that have become part of my blood and bones over time. Some of them are actually mentioned or referenced, but either way, they’re all part of the same landscape (murder ballads and beyond).

In short: men are worthless, sisterhood transcends everything, and words have immense power. I would like to scream about this to everyone, please!!

CW: murder, death, violence, queerphobia

Follow me on social media for book recommendations!

(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)