I struggled over how to rate this book for a long while and I think I've finally arrived at a conclusion I can somewhat explain.
Warning: This entire review has mild to bigger spoilers for this book so if you do not want to read about that, please just get the book now - or don't. It's up to you~

What I liked:

The entire setting was very intriguing - setting up a mystery case by going from everyone in a courtroom being absolutely sure about who the bad guy is to the entire thing growing more and more convoluted and complicated as each person in the courtroom recalls memories that lead the reader up a false road....I really enjoyed that part! I've never read anything quite like it, and I have to agree with other reviewers in that it's apparent Angie Kim has real-life experience with the courtroom; it really shone through every carefully arranged scene. Some things had a pretty dramatic touch which overall fit the theme of the book quite well.

One of the characters, Mary Yoo, is in a pretty similar situation to the author herself - a Korean girl who moved to America in her preteens and had to completely assimilate to a different culture that was downright hostile to her at times. The entire Yoo family and the background they all carried around, as well as Janine (another Korean woman married to Matt, an American doctor) and her insecurities about herself and her position in this world, were beautifully, if painfully, explored and I'm sure I'm not just talking out of my ass when I say that Angie Kim got at least partially inspired by her own life and wrote it into words. It felt raw and messy and flawed and utterly, painfully human and it struck a chord even in me who will never fully understand what it means to be a stranger in your own country.

Overall, flawed and messy characters seem to be the author's absolute strong suit and I highly enjoyed that asepct even though it made me downright uncomfortable at times.

What I didn't like:

But, Sylla, you might ask: why give this book such a bad rating if you enjoyed the human messiness of it all? Well, sadly: there's a pretty good reason for that, and it's how Autism is handled in the entire novel and is made the center of attention without centering autistic characters at all.
(CW: Child Abuse, Ableism)

The entire novel hinges on the fact that an HBOT facility (which stands for "hyperbaric oxygen therapy") blows up in the middle of a dive and kills two of the people inside, a mother (Kitt) and another mother's autistic child, Henry. Now the first sign of alarm for people somewhat versed in the medical field (and what I had to look up): HBOT is actually not even fully approved for the "treatment" of autistic children because the data is inconclusive. There is just not enough evidence to support claims of these kids being "healed" by spending a while in a pressurized chamber with 100% oxygen delivered to them via a diving helmet. But that is, sadly, not all and definitely not the thing I disliked the most.

I started this book without really knowing what I was getting into and at first, I was simply reading and puzzling along about whether or not Elizabeth, mother to the deceased Henry mentioned above, was actually the person to set the fire or not. I started getting uncomfortable at some point (and couldn't really put my finger on it) because while the book and its characters focus a lot on their respective autistic or otherwise disabled children, none of them ever gain their own voice in the process.
And while I somewhat understand that I guess, the fact that most of these mothers and their pain was centered when it came to their disabled kids was just downright disgusting to me the more I thought about it. Is it hard to be a mother? Well, obviously, but to constantly center the pain of everyone around a child in need of more support for whatever reason is just really not the way to go about it in my opinion.
Also, I was just very uncomfortable with the fact that every one of these characters believes that their autistic kids can be "cured", while the only people to oppose the HBOT thing (a bunch of protesters of which only one gets a name) and the search for a "cure" for autism are only superficially described and serve as antagonists for basically the entire novel.

One of the main characters is also shown having to come to terms with the fact that she did abuse her child since she just told herself, "But I didn't hit him so it's not abuse, right!"
Obviously, this is something people do have to face and I have to say I'm glad she did because the things described were enough to make me feel sick to the stomach and empathy for her poor son. It nonetheless left a bad taste in my stomach, especially compared to everything I said above.

TL;DR: I feel like I have to give this book a 2-star rating because the portrayal of autism while just depicting how much parents of autistic kids suffer is not something I want for autistic people to read; I can only imagine the hurt it would cause. It's a well-written book with a highly interesting premise and set-up but overall, I just couldn't enjoy it for these reasons and I cannot recommend it exactly for those as well.

My first 5-star read of the month goes to this beautiful and harrowing letter to a mother that cannot read - Ocean Vuong's first novel, after publishing several critically acclaimed poetry collections. In this rather short book, our main character, Little Dog (called so after a fashion of giving children "bad" names to scare away demons) recounts his life in America, growing up with a mother and grandmother both still ravaged by the war that tore apart their country, Vietnam.

Less than 300 pages are enough to capture the crushing reality of growing up in a foreign country, ostracised through both skin colour, language problems and later, through loving the "wrong" person, the "wrong" gender. The narrative is fleeting, broken up by thoughts the narrator associates with a certain topic, fleeting autumn leaves of a conversation he never quite managed to have with his mother that way, as he tries to explain to her what being an author is about. How words can explain things while also simultaneously rendering us mute in the process, a mothertongue torn apart by a mother not having gone to school because of the war.
 

The novel is sad (a word that does not even attempt to capture the raw emotions dripping from each line) and yet, somewhat, comforting - to know that, despite struggles, Little Dog is still alive, is still searching for things to make sense of, is still holding to his place in the world, however fragile it might be. It ends, after turmoil and death, with the laughter of his mother, the person who made him, who he is - the Rose that has risen.


I cannot recommend this book enough, though I hope people pay attention to the content warnings!

This book was one of the more intriguing and horrifying I read this year! 

Moreno-Garcia's language pulls you right into the book itself until you can feel the Doyle House pressing down upon you with its weighted, horrible history and its dreadful loneliness. Noemí was a wonderful protagonist I instantly felt connected to - her witty responses, her entire, carefully constructed personality... she was an utter delight and easily one of my favourites, followed by our dear Francis, a shy, even forlorn young man trapped in a family history so convoluted and polluted it's hard to stomach.

I also found out that this book is apparently supposed to be made into a short TV series and I am delighted. The entire setting works perfectly for that purpose imo and I cannot wait to get back into the dark world of "Mexican Gothic" once it airs!

 

The worldbuilding of this first book in the Orïsha-Series is beautiful, the magic system is intriguing, and I have to yet again remark on how important storytelling is in this story (as I did in my Raybearer review) - much of the backstory, especially when it comes to the magic system, is told to both us and the characters itself via a story, or a legend, or both, often accompanied by beautiful visualization of said story. I was a big fan of that!

Another, though definitely sadder aspect, were the parallels between what Zélie and her friends, as well as the other Divîners, had to go through and still suffer throughout the story itself, and the very real oppression of black people (mostly documented in the US at this moment and the moment these books were written, but also generally throughout the world). The author, Tomi Adeyemi, even says so in her Author's Note by the end of the book. I am glad she was able to put her pain, her tears, and her suffering into words, even though I wish she didn't have to. 

While all of this is definitely why I am glad this novel exists for the ones who need and want it, it just personally didn't click with me. I liked the characters well enough (I have complicated feelings about Inan) and their personal struggles were painful to read about. Overall, though, the story progressed too fast for me, especially when it came to some of the love stories - I personally like to have some time with that sort of thing. I'm still going to read book 2 at the very least since I got it from the library, and I'm interested to see if that, for instance, changes throughout the series.

Generally speaking, there were enough things for me to at least like about this book that I'm glad I read it, even though it didn't spark as much joy and as many feelings as I'd hoped it would.