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Best & Worst, Black Authors, celebrity memoir, Fiction, literary fiction, Memoirs, romance

Our Best and Worst Books of 2024

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Another year of reading is coming to a close and as always, we share with you what our best and worst books of the year were.

Taynement’s Best:

“I think of Constance’s hushed voice whenever we were cleaning together. Once some things get dirty they can never be clean again and once some things are broken they can never be fixed.”

I stumbled upon this book randomly. I sometimes go to the bookstore just for a happy high and I take pictures of the featured book display and go down the list to see what is available in my library. Sugar, Baby was and from the moment I read this book it has not left my mind and that’s why it is my favorite read. I couldn’t stop gushing about it to Leggy. I love books that remind you that life isn’t black and white. I don’t think enough promo was done for this but here is my review. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Some other faves:

  • Hold My Girl by Charlene Carr (another underpromoted book, I couldn’t even find it at the bookstore. The book asks the question “What defines a mother?”. Full review here)
  • Here One Moment by Lianne Moriarty (I never thought I would have a Moriarty book on my “best of” list but here we are. Full review here)
  • How To Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair (What a memoir. Full review here)
  • A Kind of Madness by Uche Okonkwo (Enjoyed these collection of short stories)
  • Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi (Listen, I am just as surprised as you are to see this here)

Leggy’s Best:

“In the rare hopeful hour, I tell myself this darkness has a purpose: to help me recognize light if I ever find it again.”

I heard such good things about this book when it was released in 2023 but I never got around to reading it. Finally, I cracked it open in 2024 and I understood why it was recommended so much to me. Read my full review of this one here.

Some other favorites:

  • The Wedding People by Alison Espach. I read this last month and really, really liked it. I feel like everything might have been wrapped up too neatly but I still really enjoyed my reading experience. This will probably be my first review of the new year.
  • Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Rich people being badly behaved will always have my heart in literature. You can read my review here.
  • James by Percival Everett . You can read my review here.
  • Summer Fridays by Suzanne Rindell. I think this is my favorite romance of the year.

Taynement’s Worst:

I tried but I couldn’t get over the premise. Maybe it is possible, but it’s hard for me to imagine that someone would fall for the identical twin brother of the person who raped and impregnated her and have that child have an Uncle/Dad relationship? I know I say life isn’t black and white but this was not it at all.

Leggy’s Worst:

This book was just badly written and just bad. This was also the only book that I gave one star this year soooo it earned its place.

Thank you so much for sticking with us this year. Let us know your best and worst books of the year in the comments. Happy Holidays, everybody!

Taynement & Leggy

Fiction, Historical, literary fiction, Mystery

Book Review: The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

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“Rich people, thought Judy—she thought this then, and she thinks it now—generally become most enraged when they sense they’re about to be held accountable for their wrongs.”

It’s early morning, August 1975 and Barbara Van Laar has gone missing. She’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished 14 years ago, never to be found. As a search begins, we find ourselves chasing down the secrets of the Van Laar family, their history, the 14-year-old stone cold case and the blue-collar community working in the shadow of this powerful family.

“It was funny, she thought, how many relationships one could have with the same man, over the course of a lifetime together.”

Liz Moore is the writer of Long Bright River which was a huge hit during the pandemic. I remember being the odd man out on that book because I did not like it and gave it 2 stars. I also realized that I had read her 2016 novel, The Unseen World, which I frankly have no recollection of reading, but Goodreads tells me I gave this book 4 stars. Anyway, I wasn’t going to read this book because it was getting so much hype, and I remembered my experience of her previous book and was going to stay away until I saw her on Obama’s list. I was intrigued that a mystery novel made it on there, so I decided to finally pick it up and was not disappointed.

“This is one of the few sheer pleasures Louise knows in life: the near-otherworldly feeling of touching another human’s body with your own body in a way that, for the first time, transcends mere friendliness. These are the times in her life that Louise has felt most acutely the animal nature of her humanity, and therefore they have been the most comforting. To be a human is complex, and often painful; to be an animal is comfortingly simple and good.”

This book is a master class in well written prose. I thought the descriptions and the turn of phrases were fantastic. This story is told through multiple perspectives taking us on a history journey through the Van Laar family. We get Tracy, a young meek girl who is suffering from her parents’ divorce and is sent to this camp by her father for the summer to avoid actually spending time with her. Alice, mother of the missing Barbara who also lost her son 14 years ago and is addicted to pills having never gotten over the disappearance of her son. Louise, a 26 year old camp counselor who is “engaged” to a boy from a wealthy family and wonders if this will be her ticket out of poverty until she encounters what it’s like to become a scapegoat to a family that finds you expendable and Judy, the first female investigator in the state at 26 who is smart, observant and very good at her job.

“she also believed that part of a mother’s duty was to be her daughter’s first, best critic; to fortify her during her childhood, so that in womanhood she could gracefully withstand any assault or insult launched in her direction. This was the method her own mother had used upon her. She hadn’t liked it at the time, but now she understood it.”

This book was a 5-star read for me till the end when I deducted a star because it was the worst ending. The author takes us through the book and dangles multiple suspects at us only to completely drop all of them for an ending that I found so unrealistic and ridiculous. I can’t believe her editor let her keep that ending. It just did not work for me at all. I gave this book 4 stars because I did not think the ending lived up to the entire work for me, but I still recommend it for the journey.

Have you read this one? Let me know in the comments.

Leggy

Fiction, literary fiction, women's fiction

Book Review: Here One Moment by Lianne Moriarty

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“I have noticed that even people who claim everything is predestined and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road”

It was supposed to be a short, domestic, uneventful flight from Hobart to Sydney. We meet the passengers boarding the plance and get a short description of various characters. All of a sudden mid-flight, an older lady starts walking through the aisles, pointing at passengers and telling them their cause of death and the age at which they will die.

Some had long life predictions (we’re talking over a 100) and some had predictions that were round the corner. No one was spared because even the little baby got a drowning prediction in a few years. It was all a joke to everyone as the woman seemed to be in a dream like state and when she got back to her seat and asked for water, it seemed like a case of dehydration till a few month later, the first prediction comes true…exactly as she said it.

“You won’t necessarily win against fate, but you should at least put up a fight”

Once the lady, whose name is Cherry by the way, started giving the predictions, my anxiety shot all the way up because I imagined being trapped in the air and someone giving me unsolicited information about how and when I will die but once the first prediction happened, I was hooked. And was hooked to the very end. In the Moriarty books I’ve read, it usually takes her a while to get us to the point so having the premise from the get go was a welcome pleasant surprise.

“Everyone loves a particular version of you, and when that person is gone, that version goes with them.”

Moriarty did her big one here because the development of the story was great. We go back in and learn about Cherry, who is the main character and we learn about her upbringing and her life till the moment on the plane. Her mother being a clairvoyant was definitely an interesting tid bit. At the same time, we get to know a couple of characters who were also on the plane. We get to know more about their life and to make it even sweeter, Moriarty drops little easter eggs here and there that show connections among the characters.

“La vita va veloce: this life goes fast, much faster than time”

Part of getting to know the other characters involves how they react once the predictions start coming true. It was interesting to see how some were still cavalier about the whole thing while others took it very seriously and went over the edge convincing themselves that they could control their fate. I liked the balance of light and breezy and thought provoking because some story lines explore what could have been with certain life choices chosen or not chosen.

I always say Moriarty is an overrated writer and I can’t believe it but I enjoyed thisone and I would recommend. Because it’s quite intriguing, the pages go by fast. If you have read this one, what did you think?

Taynement

Fiction, literary fiction

Book Review: Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

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“There has never been, in the history of all human interaction, a way for a woman to explain effectively that she’s calm when a man has suggested she isn’t.”

In 1980, a wealthy Jewish businessman, Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later and the family moves on with their lives. Two simple minded brothers are arrested for the crime after marked bills used to pay for the ransom are found in circulation but only a couple thousands are found with them. They are imprisoned with the underlying understanding by everyone that there is someone else who masterminded the whole thing and has gone scott-free. Nearly 40 years later, it is clear that nobody has ever gotten over anything, after all. Carl is barely functioning when he’s at home. Ruth, his wife, has spent all her time protecting her husband’s emotional health and left the kids to their own devices.

“They had watched all this, as the understanding of what had really gone wrong in their lives revealed itself to them, which was that the tide pool you’re born into is only manageable if someone gives you swimming lessons. Or, put more simply, in order to be a normal person, you had to at least see normal people.”

The three kids born into the family – 2 brothers that were alive during the kidnapping and a sister that was born after the kidnapping but born into a life that has been shaped by the most consequential thing in their lives. Nathan’s chronic fear won’t allow him to advance at his law firm and is constantly anxious. Beamer rose to Hollywood fame by writing a blockbuster that involves a kidnapping and now has not been able to write anything else and has had to watch his writing partner go off and start a successful series that Beamer suspects is based fully on his family. Beamer deals with his perpetual terror by consuming anything that will numb him – drugs, food, women. Jenny has spent her entire life so bent on proving that she is better than her family, railing against capitalism while accepting the money she is paid every month from the family business.

“The irony of it nearly crushed her. She had been locked in a debate with herself her whole life about how to be good in the world, and the only thing she left out of that very private conversation she was having was the actual work of being a nice, normal human being.”

I like a book that knows the characters they are writing about. I love the process of recognizing a character and just reveling in them being who they are and the author making no apologies for them. I recognize that people grow as they become older but as I’ve become older, I recognize that more people remain the same than grow. I think in a society and generation where we go to therapy and talk a lot about introspection, we have convinced ourselves that we are constantly self-improving, but I would posit that we are just talking about the same issues with our therapists over and over again and learning coping mechanisms, but we aren’t changing.

I say all this to say that the characters the author created are amazing. They are proudly Jewish and rich with all the trappings that come with that. They have grown up insulated from the rest of the world and it has played out in their lives and the author lets us be a spectator to their glorious lives. These are characters that seem so real, you feel like you can see them and you think you know them.

“Maybe that was the real Long Island Compromise, that you can be successful on your own steam or you can be a basket case, and whichever you are is determined by the circumstances into which you were born. Your poverty will create a great drive in your children. Or your wealth will doom them into the veal that Jenny described at her science fair, people who are raised to never be able to support a life so that when they’re finally allowed to wander outside their cages for the first time on their way to their slaughter, they can’t even stand up on their own legs. But the people who rise to success on their own never stop feeling the fear at the door, and the people lucky enough to be born into comfort and safety never become fully realized people in the first place. And who is to say which is better? No matter which way it is for you, it is a system that fucks you in the ass over and over, in perpetuity, and who is to say which is better?”

I loved the end of this book. I thought it was realistic. Rich people keep being rich and keep being bailed. This is not a fairy tale. We live in a capitalist society, and this is what it looks like. No one is better at the end of the book and that’s something you have to sit with and accept. You want to read about rich people being rich living their lives in their bubble and never knowing real life? This is the book for you but also what is even real life? Whatever life anyone is living is real. I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

Black Authors, literary fiction, race, women's fiction

Book Review: Hold My Girl by Charlene Carr

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Tess and Katherine are two women who could not be any more different but they have one thing in common, they both desperately want to have a child. Katherine is married and has spent most of her life trying to be perfect, obsessing over her home and family looking perfect. The one thing that’s missing is a child. Tess is recently divorced, estranged from her family and generally unhappy. Both women underwent IVF a year ago at the same hospital. Katherine’s resulted in a baby girl, while Tess had a stillborn.

A year later, Katherine is about to celebrate her daughter, Rose’s first birthday while Tess is still grieving her loss. Katherine, who is biracial (half black/half white) has been harboring a secret fear due to her daughter’s pale skin and bright blue eyes and her fear is confirmed when both women receive a call from the fertility clinic letting them know that their eggs were switched. This starts the story of one woman’s life falling apart while the other thinks it’s a start of a new life for her and Carr takes us on a journey for the battle for Rose.

This book had me thinking hard – in a good way! I really enjoyed it. For me, it was a unique story in that I haven’t read anything with this storyline and that in itself is surprising as it seems like a very likely thing to happen. There were so many layers to the story that I cannot give away without spoilers but I truly kept going back and forth on who has the right to Rose? What makes a mother? One person carried her to term and raised her for a year but the other is biologically her mother.

The author is a black Canadian woman and I expected more in terms of Katherine’s race and how it played into the battle – in court and within her husband’s family. I also wish we got as much of Katherine’s parents as we did of her husband’s family. That being said, Tess was fully developed and we definitely understood every facet of her life and what made her who she is today. Carr did a good job of navigating multiple narratives with multiple characters and also time spans without it feeling bogged down.

While I highly recommend this book, I do want to let you know that there are some trigger warnings with topics of rape and infertility. Ultimately the book is about motherhood. Being able to be one, the journey to being one, the longing to be one when your body betrays you and all the side effects it comes with. This book is definitely one that would be a great one to discuss with others.

Taynement

Black Authors, Fiction, Historical, literary fiction, race

Book Review: James by Percival Everett

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“Belief has nothing to do with truth.”

When enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to sold to a man in New Orleans and separated from his family forever, he decides to hide in nearby Jackson Island until he can decide what to do. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father on that same day. This leads to a collision that leads to Jim being wanted for murder and being a runaway. This also leads to a dangerous journey via a raft, down the Mississippi River towards the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

“At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.”

I avoided this book for the longest time because I believed it would be too depressing for my state of mind at the time. I went to Barnes and Noble with a friend who bought me a copy of this book and seeing how slim it was, I decided to just give it a go and then couldn’t put it down. Everyone says this is a retelling of Huckleberry Finn, which is a book I’ve never read, so you don’t have to be worried about not getting it if you haven’t read it. I decided to ignore all talks of a retelling and just read the book as its own thing. Even though this book is about slavery and its many horrors, Everett finds a way to make it a great adventure novel that always tried to put the humanity of its characters at the forefront of the novel.

“I did not look away. I wanted to feel the anger. I was befriending my anger, learning not only how to feel it, but perhaps how to use it.”

I don’t understand why the Goodreads blurb of this book calls it “ferociously funny”, there’s nothing funny about this book. I can’t even think of one scene that made me laugh out loud. This book is serious and thought provoking and no, this is not euphemism for boring. It really gives you a lot to think about, especially the power of language, how we use it and how it’s used to empower or colonize a group of people. This is not an easy book to read because lots of terrible things abound and most of these terrible things happen to people because of the color of their skin but Everett’s writing makes it a fast read.

I found this book to be suspenseful and heart wrenching and I gave it 5 stars on Goodreads.

Have you heard about this book? Have you read it? Let me know in the comments what you think about it!

Leggy

Chick-Lit, Fiction, romance, women's fiction

Book Review: Summer Romance by Annabel Monaghan

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“When I’m quiet I can hear my heart yearning for impossible things. I want a perfectly pared-down home, and I want to hang on to every scrap of the past. I want a break from my kids without missing a single minute of their lives. I long for a partnership, and I long for freedom. I long to be enmeshed with someone without losing myself. I want all of it.”

Ali is trying to start living life again. It’s been two years since her mother died and one year since her husband left her. She has decided it’s time to take off her wedding ring, actually go through the divorce and start living life again. So, no one is more surprised than Ali when the first time she takes off her wedding ring, she meets someone. Ethan is completely taken by her after her dog pees on him at the dog park. After a weird ending to a first date, Ali discovers his identity and decides to have a fun summer with him and then move on. Everyone loves a summer romance: it’s always fun and ends just in time for no one to get their heart broken.

“It’s a lot easier to work through other people’s problems. I think I must be very attached to my own.”

Annabel Monaghan wrote one of my favorite romance books of 2022 – Nora Goes Off Script which we reviewed on the blog. Her follow up, Same Time Next Summer, I thought was not as good as her previous offerings. I reviewed it on Instagram when it came out last year (follow us on Instagram – nightstands2) and found it quite juvenile. I think with this her latest offering, she has returned to what I liked most about her writing in Nora Goes Off Script. I think Monaghan is at her best when her characters are matured and have lived life. She writes women who are leaving old love and meeting news ones very well. Also, she writes kids really well. The kids in her book are never annoying or obnoxious in a way that makes you wonder who is the kid and who is the parent.

“I am the architect of my own experience.”

Everyone knows romance novels follow the same formular. Two people meet, they fall in love, something happens in the last 20% of the book to drive them apart and then they resolve it and live happily ever after. One thing I liked about Summer Romance is that what is going to keep them apart is immediately obvious and not dumb at all. So, I never felt that dread of getting to about 80% of the book and suddenly a misunderstanding pop up and drives the couple apart. It’s a summer romance, we know it’s destined to end after the summer. Ethan the main character should have been more annoying to me, but I think I liked Ali way too much to be annoyed by him. I just wanted her to be happy and if she loved it, I loved it too.

“And now I can never unknow the truest true thing – the intensity of the love you feel will match the intensity of its loss. This is practically physics.”

Her relationship with her ex-husband and all the ways she let herself go in the marriage was fascinating to read. I really enjoyed those parts of the book. It is fascinating to see the many ways marriage is sustained by community and how it ultimately fell apart after Ali’s mother was no longer there to pick up the parts of the marriage that her ex-husband refused to be an equal partner of. Anyway, I quite enjoyed it. It’s an easy book to get through. It is well written and a good book to read during the summer. I gave this one 3 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

Fiction, race, romance

Book Review: Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan

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“I will never stop vomiting with shame.”

The Gresham family is hosting the wedding of the century. Their oldest daughter, Augie is getting married but there is so much more going on. The wedding is being orchestrated by the matriarch, Lady Arabella who is heavy on maintaining appearances and spending money. Money they do not have as her husband is hiding the fact that they are in debt. Besides planning the most extravagant wedding, she is also trying to marry off her son, Rufus who is in love with the friend of the family, Eden.

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination”

When I tried to write the summary of the book, I had to pause for a minute because there was SO MUCH going on in this book that I don’t even know what the primary story is. The good thing about Kwan is that he has a formula and if you have read his Crazy Rich Asians trilogy then you know what to expect because it is basically the same format and feel. You can expect over the top characters, opulence out the wazoo and insufferable characters. I believe that whatever you felt about the 2nd and 3rd book of the series, is how you will feel about this book.

‘I don’t know the Philippines. I believes some of the maids we had growing up came from Cebu.”

Now, the bad. Kwan is quite the tedious writer to me. Much like the over the top characters and events in his books, I find his descriptions over the top as well. I find the annotations at the end of every chapter annoying even though I feel he probably thinks they are quirky and funny. There were so many storylines to follow and I don’t even know if it was necessary. I don’t know what genre Kwan identifies with but he is basically a romance writer and I think maybe he adds the extra storylines to not fully qualify as one.

“WHICH ONE OF YOU BITCHES IS MY MOTHER?’ Cosima said with a sneer.”

Speaking of insufferable, noone tops the Gresham matriarch, Arabella. She is Asian but seems to have some kind of self-hate? Kwan does allude to racism and discrimination and I can understand Arabella’s motivation to be someone in the upper class. But me thinks she went too far. Kwan didn’t delve really deep into what I call Arabella’s insecurity but my take on it is that’s why she married a white man – to dilute her kids so to speak – so they weren’t looked down on like she was and she looked down on Eden who was Asian. Even though I know this is how it is for some, I felt dissatisfied that Arabella never reached a place of self introspection and truly was just insufferable to everyone around her and especially awful to her children.

“You are also getting too much sun and people will think you are a peasant.”

So basically, if you couldn’t tell, I wasn’t really a fan of this book. It was convoluted, I didn’t care for the characters, the characters had no growth and every reaction – bad or good was just extreme. I can caveat that if you love romance novels, there might be a payoff for you but in my case, that didn’t work in my favor. I think Kwan needs to learn to streamline, have a focal point and just put more into the characters so we actually care about them. Let me know what you think if you have read it!

Taynement

Black Authors, celebrity memoir, Memoirs, race, women's fiction

Book Review: Leslie F*cking Jones by Leslie Jones

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“You are with yourself every day, all day, all night—might as well like yourself.”

Leslie Jones is a comedian who is best known for her role on SNL for a couple of years. This memoir describes her life – from her childhood growing up in the South with a military father, her early high school and college days playing basketball, her early stand-up days driving from gig to gig and living from paycheck to paycheck to being cast on SNL which came because of a Chris Rock recommendation. I did this book on audio and I’m going to be reviewing this book on audio because I’m pretty sure this book on audio is very different from the printed book. For context, the printed book is 288 pages, the audio is 17 hours of Leslie just telling you, her story. It’s a long podcast filled with streams of consciousness and sometimes she even says – “I don’t think this was in the book but let me tell you about that time when…”.

“My talent can take me anywhere I want to go. I’m not conceited or cocky. I’m just convinced.”

I knew nothing about Leslie before I picked up this book. I’ve never heard any of her comedy and I don’t even watch SNL. I just know her as a public figure who was on SNL. So, I definitely went into this one completely blind about her story. Leslie grew up in the South with very young parents. Her parents got married when they were 18 and tried to do the best they could with what they had. Leslie’s ability to keep moving forward no matter what happened to her is very inspiring to listen to. She talks about her coming to the realization that she was black and a dark-skinned black girl at that and always asking her father if she was beautiful. She talks about hoping that her success will convince people who look like her to just keep going and that it gets better on the other side of being a grown up.

“I remember hearing Diana Ross once say, “Know who you are because if you don’t, they will make you what they want.”

Leslie is a very complicated person. There are a lot of things that I didn’t agree with, but I respect the fact that Leslie was always herself. Win or lose, she was always going to do it her own way and that takes a lot of courage to decide that who you are is enough. Did I listen to some of the stories and think she overreacted? Yes. Do I also think that it’s problematic that I think a dark-skinned black woman needs to tone it down? Absolutely. There is a lot of things living in America makes you internalize, and Leslie has internalized none of that. She tells you story after story of her trying to navigate her career – the things she did wrong and the things she got right. Consistently calling people out who she felt disrespected her because she’s a woman or because she’s black.

“I knew I wasn’t going to have children as far back as when as I was twelve. I am not a pain person. You’re telling me you’re going to pull a whole human out of my pussy? (For a start, I’m going to need more than six weeks off.) We saw a film in health class called something like The Beauty of Childbirth—but all I saw was hideous shit. What’s beautiful about snatching a baby out of a woman’s ass? The fuck? My cousin Rhonda even delivered a baby in our house, and I remember that there was so much blood…
None of this was going to happen to me.”

Leslie talks about her decision to not have kids. The abortions she had before going into planned parenthood for some much-needed sex education so that she could prevent getting pregnant. She was with one of her partners for a very long time and he wanted kids, but she was sure that if she stayed with him, she would be stuck and not achieve her dreams. Also, his mother hated her, and she got tired of the disrespect and left him. But as soon as she got pregnant the first time, she knew she was never going to be a mother. She knows that her mother would be disappointed about her decision to never have kids especially now that she has the resources to actually afford them but it’s a decision she made with clear eyes and has never regretted.

“He’s a grown-ass man. If you don’t watch out, you’re both gonna die—you’re both gonna sink in that same boat.”

Leslie talks about the complicated relationship she had with her father who wanted so bad for them to make something of themselves. She talks about her now deceased brother who was deep into selling crack during the crack epidemic in California. One of her regrets is that none of her family is here to reap the benefits of her success. As she describes her father, you get the feeling that she is hoping that her audience doesn’t judge him too harshly. She talks about how great he was when she was young and how he always told her she was gorgeous but also told her that she is a woman and black and she would have to fight hard to get anything in this world. You can tell that Leslie feels guilty that she chose herself unlike her brother who was stuck trying to take care of an alcoholic father. She was single minded in the pursuit of her career.

“The world’s not going to stop for that shit. This doesn’t define who you are. Don’t make this the focus of your life. There’s always going to be hurt before you get to the right place.”

All in all, I loved listening to this book, and it made me actually laugh out loud. So many times, I would stop and send Tayne a voicemail of something that I found incredibly funny. Like Leslie asking her therapist if she’s promiscuous because she was sexually abused when she was young and her therapist asking her if she’s considered that maybe she’s just a slut. It made me laugh so much because Leslie was like – you know what? you’re right. Anyway, I recommend this book and wish Leslie Jones continued success in all her endeavors. I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

Chick-Lit, dystopian, Fantasy, literary fiction, Magical Realism, romance, women's fiction

Book Review: The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

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“You can’t stay married to someone forever just because they climb out of your attic one afternoon.”

Lauren returns to her flat in London late one night to be greeted by her husband, Michael. There is only one problem – she’s not married. She’s never seen Michael in her life. But according to her neighbors, friends and family, this is her husband, they’ve been together for years. As Lauren tries to make sense of this situation, Michael goes up the attic to change the bulb. In his place, a new man emerges from the attic and a slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren has to decide what truly matters to her in a man. How do you decide to stick with what you currently have if there is a chance that better could be coming down from the attic? When do you stop trying to get better?

“She has always thought of her willingness to go along with things, her outsourcing of decisions to friends and circumstance, as passivity, not courage. But observed and described by this man she likes so much, she can almost believe in herself as someone with an audacious spirit.”

This book was my pick for Book of the Month in April and the description intrigued me. When I finally picked it up, it was a fast but exhausting read. Reading Lauren continuously go through man after man was insane. It tired me out. I can’t even begin to imagine what Lauren felt living it. I think Gramazio achieved what she set out to do with this book. I also found the attic to be a metaphor for dating apps or dating in general, when do you decide to settle with good enough? Is there always going to be better? When do you make a decision and stick to it and see how far that decision takes you and your partner until it ends, or it doesn’t? If you can switch out men for eternity, what determines when you stop?

“In the years before the first husband emerged from the attic, she had felt the burden of long singleness lying upon her. Being happy to be single had felt obligatory, a statement of feminism or autonomy or just a way to head off coupled friends who she didn’t want feeling sorry for her. The weight of that requirement had made it difficult, sometimes, to figure out how she really felt.”

Another thing I loved that Gramazio demonstrated was the autonomy of the other person to also decide to not be with you. Even though, Lauren sent man after man back into attic, there were men that she thought she could be with who unknowingly went back to the attic and out came a completely new person. In the end, it wasn’t just up to Lauren to make a decision, you can make a decision and the other person can decide that they don’t want you or life happens, and the relationship just doesn’t work out. Even when Lauren decides to stop exchanging the men, the men had to make the decision to also stick with her and also the attic kept luring them back in.

“She’s chosen her husband. She hasn’t met him, but she’s chosen him. And if he’s not right, she’ll get out of it the old-fashioned way: an immense pile of onerous legal chores that wear her down over the course of many months, and a determination to keep it cordial that ultimately collapses over a missing vase that they both fixate on as a metaphor for their mutual failings.”

Ultimately, this book ended the best way it could have possibly ended. I understood the choice the author made to end it in the way that she did, and I quite appreciated the ending. By the time I got to the end though, I was so tired of reading this book because I was worn down by the many, many men and how quickly they came and went. We never got to know any intimately. All in all, I enjoyed this book and recommend it. I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads.

Have you read this book? Did you enjoy it? Let me know in the comments.

Leggy