Super busy at the moment, been on holiday, work is crazy and my laptop has been in the repair shop. I'm currently working through all the books I've read recently and will be posting again soon.
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COW n. /ka?/ A piece of meat; born to breed; past its sell-by-date; one of the herd. I really enjoyed this book. It's a story about a group of women who don't know each other but whose lives intersect, who are on journeys to discover who they really are. Tara is a documentary producer working in a mysogyistic office and raising her six year old daughter on her own. Cam is a high profile blogger and committed to her child-free life. Stella, grieving after the death of her twin sister, is the PA to a photographer. This is a book about friendship and relationships and dealing with the crap life throws at you. I love Dawn O Porter's writing and how unflinching she is about covering subjects that other authors would shy away from with complete honesty. If you're not keen on earthy language or frank sexual talk then you might find this a bit of a turn-off, but I loved it. I thought parts of the plot line were a bit far-fetched, but it was still immensely enjoyable to read and had me cringing in places (Walthamstow Wank Woman) and the responses of the media and social media were so horrifyingly believable (especially that of the Daily fucking Mail). The three viewpoints of the women were different enough that it was easy to keep track of who was narrating what. If I have one criticism about this book, it's that sometimes it felt like someone brainstormed 'Shit Women Have To Put Up With That Men Don't' on a bit of flip chart paper and then wrote a book about it, but other than that this was a really sound read. 4 stars I wish I could say I knew exactly what the author was trying to do with this book, but I'm not entirely sure I do. On one hand we have Natalie, over-achieving, ultra-controlling left-brained alpha female. She is basically Tracy Flick from Election. She eschews all high school boys, seeing them as the quickest way to ruin her reputation and her ambition and controls the minutiae of her relationship with her best friend. She is massively judgemental of all other girls for everything from their sexual behaviour to their clothes to their (lack of) ambition. Basically, Natalie is what every feminist-hater thinks a feminist is. Humourless and man-hating. On the other hand we have fourteen-year-old Spencer, who is a sexual being and isn't afraid to show it. She thinks slut-shaming is sexist and that women should be allowed to wear whatever they like, as long as it empowers them. Of the two, I come down more on Spencer's side, but Spencer doesn't exactly have a happy ending. A nude photo she sends a boy goes viral and she gets publicly shamed and I think this ending is a shame. Spencer at least tries to stand up to Natalie and show her that her brand of radfem isn't helpful But then again, having said that, I can see where Natalie is coming from in her 'hate all men' agenda. Because the boys at their school are really disgusting. They are basically parodies of hormone-driven, sexually abusive teenage arseholes. And I imagine that yes, every school might have a couple of these types of boys, but an entire campus full of them? I *think* the message of this book is that radical feminism can be as damaging as no feminism at all. 3 stars “Waiting On Wednesday” is a weekly meme where bloggers can showcase upcoming releases that we are eagerly waiting for. This week my Waiting On Wednesday pick is The Smoke Thieves by Sally Green. Here's the blurb: A princess, a traitor, a soldier, a hunter and a thief. Five teenagers with the fate of the world in their hands. Five nations destined for conflict. In Brigant, Princess Catherine prepares for a political marriage arranged by her brutal and ambitious father, while her true love, Ambrose, faces the executioner's block. In Calidor, downtrodden servant March seeks revenge on the prince who betrayed his people. In Pitoria, feckless Edyon steals cheap baubles for cheaper thrills as he drifts from town to town. And in the barren northern territories, thirteen-year-old Tash is running for her life as she plays bait for the gruff demon hunter Gravell. As alliances shift and shatter, and old certainties are overturned, our five heroes find their past lives transformed and their futures inextricably linked by the unpredictable tides of magic and war. Who will rise, who will fall and who will unlock the secrets of the smoke? This was a book about a girl who is so deeply immersed in grief over her beloved dad's death that she manufactures a relationship with a random boy in her school and emotionally pressures her best friend to go on a crazy-arsed road trip across the country to take part in a quiz show to win $200,000 only to prove herself literally the worst friend in the world at the last moment. Have I missed anything? The problem I had was that I could totally see how this book could have been great. I could see what the author was trying to do. She just didn't do it that well. It was painfully obvious that Will had only half-arsed feelings for Eva. They weren't even ambiguous. They were tepid feelings. He might as well have walked up to her with a big sandwich board over his shoulders with 'I only have tepid feelings for you' written in green neon. Only I bet she still would have thought he was in love with her. The baddie aunt was comically bad and thoughtless and controlling. It was like someone had done a flip chart - based focus group on What Teenagers Don't Like and came up with: - Adults who talk about sex - Adults who try to boss them about (Which is interesting, actually, because as a Brit with an interest in U.S. current affairs, it seems to me that What Teenagers Don't Like at the moment is politicians who are funded by the NRA) It needed more humour in it (and yeah, I know it's a book about grief, but it is possible to mesh humour and grief). It needed something to lift the atmosphere, to provide a bit of spark. As it was, the writing style was like taking a walk through warm, humid air. This really wasn't one for me. I'm currently in a huge slump and I don't know if it's because work is going crazy, or because I'm not sleeping properly or because I just keep picking dull books, but this book didn't really help. 2 stars (maybe 2.5) This was a complex, interesting novel about a girl who lives her life over and over again until she finally gets it right. Imagine Groundhog Day with more Nazis and fewer laughs. Ursula Todd is born on 11th February 1910 and dies with the umbilical cord around her neck. Then she is born on the 11th February 1910 and survives birth but dies in childhood. She lives her life over and over again, tiny facets or decisions changing each time to give different outcomes. This is a fascinating look at how the seemingly insignificant choices we make in our lives have a huge, world-spanning impacts. I really enjoyed the characters and although I listened to this on audiobook (which is always a bit hit or miss with me and the success depends an awful lot on the narrator) and I was gripped the whole way through. And although it is definitely a complex book, it was remarkably easy for me to follow. And I'm not one for dense, literary novels. Like, at all. Kate Atkinson has an interesting way of writing about complex characters with emotional depth and a crazy plot line whilst remaining completely accessible. If only more authors had this talent. She did the same thing in Behind The Scenes At The Museum, another excellent book and one that has several parallels with this one (complex mother-daughter relationships, a study of how the first and second world wards impacted the lives of ordinary civilians). The only tiny criticism I'd have is that I want to check I understood the ending correctly. Also I got the impression that Ursula's mum has the same ability/curse as her, but if this is ever resolved then I must have missed that bit. I finished this book over a week ago and I still can't stop thinking about it. I really want to go back and read it as a paper book so I can flick backwards and forwards between lives. 4.5 stars “Waiting On Wednesday” is a weekly meme where bloggers can showcase upcoming releases that we are eagerly waiting for. This week my Waiting On Wednesday pick is The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo. Here's the blurb: Xiomara has always kept her words to herself. When it comes to standing her ground in her Harlem neighbourhood, she lets her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But X has secrets – her feelings for a boy in her bio class, and the notebook full of poems that she keeps under her bed. And a slam poetry club that will pull those secrets into the spotlight. Because in spite of a world that might not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to stay silent. Not for me, I'm afraid. This novel had so much potential - the premise is that six children mysteriously disappeared and eleven years later only five come back and with no memory of where they've been for the intervening decade. There was so much promise and the author could have literally gone anywhere with the plot, but instead she meanders around for a while and then chooses the least interesting of all the possibilities as the denouement. I was so disappointed by the ending, I can't tell you. I really didn't like the characters that much, because, who knew, having no memory of your life means you don't have much going on personality-wise. We only get the viewpoints of three characters (two of the returned kids and the sister of the boy who is still missing) so there are three people who could have had some input to the plot but don't. There's one character who is all set up to have some kind of psychic ability, but then it turns out that she doesn't. And her narrative was the most annoying of all. The author does this weird thing with spacing her words out all over the page, presumably to make up for the fact that no real plot or characterisation is happening. Such a shame. This could have been great but it wasn't. 2 stars “Waiting On Wednesday” is a weekly meme where bloggers can showcase upcoming releases that we are eagerly waiting for. This week my Waiting On Wednesday pick is Chemistry Lessons by Meredith Goldstein. Here's the blurb: From advice columnist Meredith Goldstein, a dazzling, romantic, and emotionally resonant YA debut about a teen science whiz in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who tries to crack the chemical equation for lasting love and instead wreaks havoc on herself and the boys in her life. For seventeen-year-old Maya, the equation for happiness is simple: a dream internship at MIT + two new science nerd friends + a perfect boyfriend = one amazing summer. Then Whit dumps her out of the blue. Maya is miserable until she discovers that her scientist mother, before she died, was conducting research on manipulating pheromones to enhance human attraction. If Maya can finish her mother’s work, maybe she can get Whit back. But when her experiment creates chaos in her love life, she realizes that maybe love and loss can’t be understood using the scientific method. Can she learn to trust the unmeasurables of love and attraction instead? So I'm having a bit of a reading slump at the moment and can't really seem to get my teeth into anything. I picked up this book in the hopes that it would jolt me out of my funk. It didn't, but it wasn't a bad book either. The story is about a twenty-something woman, Katie, who lives in a grotty flat-share in London and has a badly-paid job in marketing and it's all a bit depressing, except that ever since she was a kid growing up in Somerset, living in London is all she's ever wanted, so it has to be good. Right? The underlying moral of the story is that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Not exactly profound, but not a bad moral. There are some really funny bits to it and if you overlook the bit where there is zero diversity and the author makes some quite disparaging generalisations about people from Somerset then there is some really engaging characterisation too. The only thing I didn't really like about this book was the romance, which for a chick lit book is a bit of a problem. The lead man is nice enough, except his main function seems to be to rescue Katie from her humdrum existence and this leads to literally the cheesiest ending to a book that I've read in quite some time. Honestly, I prefer to see women rescuing themselves and making their own lives better rather than relying on someone else to do it for them. I'm all for romance, but it's a bit sad when one person's happiness depends on the other person facilitating it for them. So all in all this was an okay book. I can see why Sophie Kinsella has made an absolute mint in churning out books like this. Haute literature it ain't, but it can be pretty good fun. 3 stars This was a melancholic, thoughtful book that I unfortunately read at a time when I didn't much feel like being melancholic or thoughtful. It's not to say this isn't a good book. It's a very good book - I think. The writing is very careful and reminds me a bit of David Levithan. The problem I had was that I was in the mood for something a bit more ... plotty. And given that this book is about two characters who are about to die, I thought I was on to a bit of a winner. Instead, I got a book about two teenage boys who called by a mysterious government (?) agency to say that they are going to die that day. This isn't a surprise to them - everyone who dies gets a phone call just after midnight to give them the heads-up that they have less than 24 hours to go. The two boys take it in turns to narrate the events of their last 24 hours and how they reconcile themselves, or not, to dying. It's quite a gentle book and I found it really interesting how their lives intersected with so many others. I liked Mateo and Rufus and I felt like I really knew them by the end of the story. Plot-wise, what I wanted to happen was for Rufus and Mateo to use their last day to infiltrate Death-Cast, get caught, thrown in a dungeon, escape, have a car chase, get double-crossed, caught again and then have a big showdown with the evil mastermind behind Death-Cast who would turn out to be like one of their parents or the president of the USA or something. This is not what happened. What actually happens is that Mateo and Rufus decide to have just a really nice day of eating in diners, cycling around New York and singing karaoke. Which is fine, except it ended up just dragging on a bit. Nothing interesting really happened. And that would have been okay, except for the whole idea of Death-Cast. How do they know who is going to die? Spoiler alert: we never find out. And I think I remember the MC wondering exactly the same thing. I found it really hard to get behind the idea that people would just accept being called to say their number was up and no one would try and investigate exactly *how* this whole thing worked. The existence of Death-Cast sets up some interesting philosophical questions about predestination and causality, but ultimately because we never find out how Death-Cast works, these questions are never really answered. And I know that the nature of Death-Cast isn't the point of the book. The point of the book is, if you knew you only had 24 hours to live, what would you do with it? it's a parable about living your life to the fullest. I get that. But I just couldn't get past the whole thing of how Death-Cast worked. I think if you're looking for a gentle, thought-provoking book, this could be a winner for you. It wasn't really for me, but I could see how others might like it. 2.5 stars “Waiting On Wednesday” is a weekly meme where bloggers can showcase upcoming releases that we are eagerly waiting for. This week my Waiting On Wednesday pick is Girl Made Of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake. Here's the blurb: For readers of Girl in Pieces and The Way I Used to Be comes an emotionally gripping story about facing hard truths in the aftermath of sexual assault. Mara and Owen are as close as twins can get, so when Mara’s friend Hannah accuses Owen of rape, Mara doesn't know what to think. Can her brother really be guilty of such a violent act? Torn between her family and her sense of right and wrong, Mara feels lost, and it doesn’t help that things are strained with her ex-girlfriend, Charlie. As Mara, Hannah, and Charlie come together in the aftermath of this terrible crime, Mara must face a trauma from her own past and decide where Charlie fits into her future. With sensitivity and openness, this timely novel confronts the difficult questions surrounding consent, victim blaming, and sexual assault. “Waiting On Wednesday” is a weekly meme where bloggers can showcase upcoming releases that we are eagerly waiting for. This week my Waiting On Wednesday pick is Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman. Here's the blurb: Kiko Himura has always had a hard time saying exactly what she’s thinking. With a mother who makes her feel unremarkable and a half-Japanese heritage she doesn’t quite understand, Kiko prefers to keep her head down, certain that once she makes it into her dream art school, Prism, her real life will begin. But then Kiko doesn’t get into Prism, at the same time as her abusive uncle moves back in with her family. So when she receives an invitation from her childhood friend to leave her small town and tour art schools on the West Coast, Kiko jumps at the opportunity in spite of the anxieties and fears that attempt to hold her back. And now that she is finally free to be her own person outside the constricting walls of her home life, Kiko learns transformative truths about herself, her past, and how to be brave. A luminous, heartbreaking story of identity, family, and the beauty that emerges when we embrace our true selves. This was an interesting book and even now, a week later, I'm not sure how much I liked it. I mean, I definitely liked it, but I'm still trying to work out how much. Emma and Henri are as close as sisters can be. They have plans to be mad old cat women when they're ancient. In fact, they have their whole lives planned out. Then Emma betrays Henri and the two girls relationship goes sour. And then they get stranded on a desert island together. I've given it four stars because I think it was quite well written and it kept me guessing and I liked the toxicity of the sisters' relationship. I think the romantic element with Alex probably wasn't necessary, but he was another facet that kept me guessing and the girls played him off against each other, so he added to the general poisonous atmosphere. The dual timelines were good and I liked seeing the lead up to the two sisters falling out. In fact, both time lines kept me guessing to the end. The ending was wrapped up nice and neatly, so no room for a sequel. Eh. Four stars. I liked it four stars' worth. Maybe three. 4 stars Seventeen-year-old Stevie is trapped. In her life. And now in an eating-disorder treatment center on the dusty outskirts of the New Mexico desert. Life in the center is regimented and intrusive, a nightmare come true. Nurses and therapists watch Stevie at mealtime, accompany her to the bathroom, and challenge her to eat the foods she’s worked so hard to avoid. Her dad has signed her up for sixty days of treatment. But what no one knows is that Stevie doesn't plan to stay that long. There are only twenty-seven days until the anniversary of her brother Josh’s death—the death she caused. And if Stevie gets her way, there are only twenty-seven days until she too will end her life. This was a pretty good book about a girl who blames herself for her brother's death and who spirals into depression and an eating disorder as a result. Disclaimer - I've never suffered from an eating disorder and don't know anyone who has, so I have no RL experience of this topic. However, I thought that the subject matter felt quite realistic. I liked the characters, although I didn't really get a sense of any of them really *suffering* as a result of their disorders. I know something about the physical symptoms of an ED, and I didn't really pick up on that here. I also understand that ED sufferers can be pretty tricksy in the ways they avoid eating and the way they battle their treatment and likewise I didn't really see a lot of that. I've read quite a few books focussing on eating disorders, and this one was pretty middle-of-the-road. It wasn't as harrowing or as socially-incisive as Wintergirls, but it wasn't as dull as others I've read. It was okay. In fact, it dealt with the notion of grief better than the ED thing, I thought. The characters were fine and I liked the toxic relationships between the MC and her mother and best 'friend'. I never really got a sense that Stevie was serious about her suicide plans and it felt like the author was pulling her punches in terms of the impact of this book. The character I liked most I think was the psychiatrist. She was really well portrayed and sympathetic. All in all this was an okay book. 3 stars Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme that gives us all a chance to highlight upcoming releases that we're particularly excited about. This week, my Waiting On Wednesday pick is Lady Mary by Lucy Worsley. Here's the blurb: Mary Tudor’s world is turned upside-down when her father, Henry the Eighth, declares his marriage to her mother is over and that Mary isn’t really his child. How can he do such a thing? Banished from court and separated from her beloved mother, Mary realises her family will never be as she hoped. Alone for the first time in her life, Mary must fight for what is rightfully hers. Despite what anyone says, she will always be a princess. It is in her blood. But without her fierce mother by her side, will Mary find the strength? Is there anyone Mary can trust? And how will she survive? Popular historian Lucy Worsley tells the thrilling, dramatic and touching story of Henry the Eighth and Catherine of Aragon’s divorce as you’ve never heard it before. This was a long, tangled but pretty gripping story about a woman with a shady past that catches up with her. So the premise of the book is that our MC, Lara is stuck in a dull-ish marriage with a man she's not suited to. They've tried to have children and are up to their eyeballs in IVF debt. To clear the debt and give herself a bit of breathing space from Mr Boring, Lara takes a well-paid contract in London and commutes on the sleeper train from their house in Cornwall every week. On the sleeper, she meets Guy, who is totally hot and fancies her back. Unfortunately, Guy is also married and the two start up a saucy affair. That's when this book starts spinning off into a slightly more bonkers plotline. We switch points of view to Lara's friend, Iris (who is also struggling with her past) and take off to Asia. Everything is a bit thriller, which is a genre I don't typically go for, but I'm really glad I did here. It was gripping and fun and I could totally see what the ending was going to be but I didn't care. I've read quite a few Emily Barr books, every since Backpack (her first book) was published, and I think she's a really sound author. She's not like high literature or anything, but she writes a really good yarn with fleshed-out characters. Also, I listened to the audiobook of this an the narrator was spot on. She did really good voices without going over the top and really added something to the narrative. I don't get on with every audiobook as sometimes the narrator can ruin it for me, but in this case the narrator was great. The only criticism I'd have of this book is the overwhelming lack of diversity. Seriously, every single person is white, hetero, cis, able-bodied and middle class. Lazy, lazy writing. I know thrillers are all about the plot, but actually Emily Barr is really good at characterisation too, so it wouldn't have been difficult to make this book more diverse. Not every LGBT character has to have their story arc about coming out, not every BAME character has to have their story arc about overcoming racism (although these story lines are important too), there's no reason why thrillers can't be diverse. Everyone deserves to see themselves in books. Lack of diversity aside, this was still a good book. I listen to audiobooks while I'm decorating or doing chores, and this one brightened up my boring work for a good week or so! 4 stars Okay, so this book's blurb starts off as follows: Things Chloe knew: Her sister, Ivy, was lonely. Ethan was a perfect match. Ethan’s brother, David, was an arrogant jerk. Well, I wonder where on earth this plot could possibly be going? No, I'm being snarky, but there was an element of 'Well, obviously Chloe and David are going to end up together'. Spoiler Alert: they do. Despite this, there were a couple of twists that kept it interesting and on the whole it was pretty well written. The autism representation was authentic (I know from experience) and made me chuckle in recognition in a few places, especially with the bluntness with which Ivy and Ethan speak and their mortification when they get social situations wrong. Ivy and Ethan are both moderately high-functioning and were really great characters. David and Chloe were similarly interesting characters although obviously in a different way and the relationships they had with their siblings was very touching. This wasn't a very long book, but it was a nice enough read and everything was sewn up nicely in the end. 4 stars This was a really readable book, beautifully written, that challenged my opinions and made me think about what I'd do if i were ever in the situation the characters in this book find themselves in. So can I just start by saying what an arsehole I thought Sara (the mother) was. As a mum, I totally get that if your child was diagnosed with a life-threatening condition then you would do literally anything to cure them, and I don't blame her at all for conceiving a 'designer baby' whose cord blood could be used to treat her ill child. However, I think it's not great parenting to have another baby and to tell them constantly that the only reason they were born was to save their sibling. Like, they have no other use in life. Pressure, much? Also, she's a crap parent because literally all her attention goes on Kate and she leaves her other two children to basically fend for themselves. THEN, when her saviour child speaks up and says, No, actually, I like having both of my kidneys, she throws all her toys out the pram. I think Jodi Picoult meant for us to identify with Sara's horns-of-a-dilemma situation, but actually there was no dilemma. She was completely unidentifiable and I didn't like her one single bit. The story is told through multiple viewpoints, so the story is like a bunch of threads all woven together. It didn't make the story as confusing as you'd think it would be, and it added something to the story (I still thought Kate and Anna's mum was an arsehole). I totally felt for Anna and rooted for her. Ditto for the dad. I wasn't a fan of Kate - I thought she was pretty whiny (I KNOW! I know she has leukaemia and has a reason to whine). I felt so sorry for Jesse. And Campbell and Julia's will-they-won't-they romance thing was okay but not really relevant to the main story. I kind of knew what the end was going to be - I think because this was such a famous book and then a high-profile film, the ending had just seeped into my consciousness - but it was good nonetheless. A definite ending. This book has been on my radar for a little while and because last week saw the 100th anniversary of women being awarded the right to vote (albeit in the most caveat-laden way possible) I thought it would be a good time to finally pick it up. This book is a well-researched, well-written account of the women's suffrage movement and the impact it had on society. It explores the difference between suffragists and suffragettes (legal/non-violent vs violent/illegal activity) and the effect the war had on women and children and the movement in general. The narrative is told from three points of view - Evelyn, who is middle-class, intelligent and longs to go to university, except she can't because she is a girl; May, who is liberal, gay and fairly well-off, who lives with her suffragist mother; and Nell, who is working class, who works in a munitions factory during the war, doing the very work that inspired one politician (whose name escapes me at the moment), on the passing of the Representation of the People Act 1918, to say, 'they've earned it [the right to vote]'. Like you have to earn the right to be treated like a human fucking being. May and Evelyn's paths cross at the very beginning of the book and then diverge as Evelyn becomes involved in the Suffragette movement and May, a Quaker and a pacifist, pursues the Suffragist path. May and Nell meet and fall in love, but apart from that the strands of the story don't intertwine, even though I kept expecting them to. The author does a great job of showing how the suffrage movement and the First World War impacted the three girls, but I don't know. I kept thinking they'd meet up again. This was literally the only criticism I'd have of this book, though. The characters were just great - I really rooted for them even when they were doing things I wouldn't have or were making dumb mistakes. They all grew and learned and developed as the story progressed. I was pleased (?) that there was a bittersweet ending - the ending of the book is in 1918 when the Representation of the People Act is passed in the Commons, but the three girls in the book still won't get the chance to vote until the law was amended in 1928 because the 1918 Act only applied to women over thirty. I thought the portrayal of working-class suffragists was fab. Traditionally, we only really hear the narrative of middle-class suffragists - the sorts of ladies who were educated to a point and then were expected to sit at home having tea, producing children (who were shipped out to nannies) and running households. They had time on their hands to go out demonstrating and leafleting and protesting. What we don't so often hear about is the suffragists working in factories or doing piecemeal work at home with loads of children running around their feet. Yes. This book was great. Go and read it now. 4.5 stars Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme that gives us all a chance to spotlight the upcoming releases we're eagerly anticipating. This week, my Waiting On Wednesday pick is I Have Lost My Way by Gayle Foreman. Here's the blurb: Around the time that Freya loses her voice while recording her debut album, Harun is making plans to run away from everyone he has ever loved, and Nathaniel is arriving in New York City with a backpack, a desperate plan, and nothing left to lose. When a fateful accident draws these three strangers together, their secrets start to unravel as they begin to understand that the way out of their own loss might just lie in helping the others out of theirs. An emotionally cathartic story of losing love, finding love, and discovering the person you are meant to be, I Have Lost My Way is bestselling author Gayle Forman at her finest. This was an okay-ish book set about sixty years from now where, following a global virus that wiped out all the male humans, women now run the world. And the world is a nicer place. I was really intrigued to read this and it had a lot of promise but ultimately there was a bit too much waffle from the MC and not enough exploration of some key gender concepts. I've read reviews where people have found this quite a man-hatey, rad-fem book. I can see why, I guess. The author has set up a world where men have disappeared and subsequently so did all the crime and greed. But this is a bit of a post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc (I know! Latin! And so early in the morning) argument and I don't think it was what the author meant. Just because the Utopian society came about after the men were wiped out, doesn't mean it came about *because* the men were wiped out. I think the author was actually trying to say that it was a global cataclysm that lead to a society where there was no crime or greed. And yes, a lot of the characters do speak about men in disparaging terms, but the only characters who do this are the ones who have never known men. And I guess if you've never known men, you might hear about all the awful things that happened pre-apocalypse and think that men were the root of all evil. When River meets Mason, she refers to him as 'it', which is pretty awful, yes, but don't forget she's grown up in a world that has no male pronouns, no boys or men. For River, meeting Mason is like aliens descending to Earth. And Mason? He's misogynistic, thinks women are weaker than men, that they should dress like bikini babes. He's grown up in a battery farm where violent video games are the only source of entertainment, where boys and men are kept in militaristic cells and violence is the norm. We're all a product of our upbringing and Mason is definitely a product of his. So why only three stars (and I'm being generous with three stars)? I guess it's because this actually wasn't a great book. The characters were a bit limp and I never really got a feel for who they were. The main character, River, was annoying and childish and spoke in random all-caps to get her stroppy point across. I was quite surprised she was considered mature enough to have a vote on the collective council, to be honest. None of the characters really grew or changed and I found them a bit meh. Also, the author never mentions what happens to trans women in the male sanctuaries (in fact, we don't learn a lot about the male sanctuaries at all, other than that they're violent places). Are there trans women? I think in a book that sets out to explore the concept of gender, it was a mistake to leave this out. Trans men are mentioned in a kind of oblique way, and actually it would have been better if this could have been explored a bit more. There was a kind-of romance, but I was never really sure if it was romance or just friendship and it seemed really tepid. The plot went well for the first half of the book and I could see lots of different directions it could have gone in, but the second half of the book just fizzled out and the ending was more of a whimper than a bang. So yeah, it was okay and it had a lot of potential but it could have been a lot better and would probably have worked better as a dual-narrative book. 3 stars This was an incredibly moving graphic memoir, beautifully illustrated, about a family whose roots are in Vietnam, but who emigrate to America after the fall of Saigon in 1975. I'm from the UK, so the Vietnam war isn't really part of our collective memory - we know about it from war movies or news articles or books, but I don't know anyone who fought there. A long time ago I used to work with an Australian woman whose parents fled to Australia from Vietnam, but because I was younger and more self-absorbed and worried about seeming too prying, I never asked her anything about it. The Best We Can Do has taught me a lot about the history of Vietnam and what the Vietnamese people on both sides of the conflict went through, as well as the aftermath, and in doing so I think it's taught me more about what refugees in general go through. Books like this make you feel so lucky to be living the life you do. There's a bit at the end that shows the actual refugee documentation photos that were taken of Thi and her family in a camp in Malaysia and I think that was the bit that affected me most of all. As well as being a book about the impact of war and refugee status on families, this is also a book about becoming a parent and the changes it wreaks on your life. I could hear echoes of my mother's voice speaking to me in my own childhood ... but I could feel the voice coming from my own throat. This is such a mum thing to think and I can remember thinking exactly the same thing when my own children were born. And the illustrations in this book are exquisite. Just, so beautiful. They're done in a kind of pen and ink / watercolour style and I could have sat looking at them all day. Recommended for everyone, but I think this will especially strike a chord with parents. 5 stars Five teenagers from different parts of the country. Three girls. Two guys. Four straight. One gay. Some rich. Some poor. Some from great families. Some with no one at all. All living their lives as best they can, but all searching...for freedom, safety, community, family, love. What they don't expect, though, is all that can happen when those powerful little words "I love you" are said for all the wrong reasons. Not what you'd call a happy-go-lucky book, this one. Ellen Hopkins explores, in her trademark free-verse style, the many and varied reasons that teenagers end up in prostitution. The story is set around the US but focuses on Las Vegas and is told through the eyes of a number of teenagers who each tell their stories. Spoiler alert: none of the stories are happy ones. I rooted (if you can call it that) for some of the characters more than others. Seth was an idiot. I wasn't really a fan of his. The others I felt sorry for in varying degrees, but they were all very human. Although there are five viewpoints going on here, it never felt too cluttered and I moved from one story to another and back again quite seamlessly. The writing is incredibly intense - I felt like I'd been wrung out by the end and the characters haunted me (and not in a good way) afterwards for a while. All five characters' stories are wrapped up at the end, for good or bad, and there was the sense of an ending. 4 stars Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme that gives us a chance to highlight upcoming releases we're eagerly anticipating. This week, my Waiting On Wednesday pick is More Than We Can Tell by Brigid Kemmerer. Here's the blurb: Every day Rev struggles with the memories and demons of the time before he was adopted. He’s always managed just fine, until a letter from his birth father brings hellfire, fear and danger back into his life. Emma escapes her life in an online game she built herself. Virtual reality is so much easier than real life. But then another player joins the game and suddenly ultra-violent threats start to stream in . . . When Rev and Emma meet, they are fighting a darkness they can’t put into words. But somehow they hear each other and together they might be able to find a way out . . . |
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