TwoNightStands

Key’s wife wakes up one day and tells him that she wants a divorce because she’s in love with their neighbor, Chad and has been having an affair with him for years. He is stunned because Chad’s wife and his wife have been friends for years and their children used to play together, and they have each other over all the time. This revelation kickstarts the insane years to come in their lives. It’s one thing after another and the waves just kept coming and knocking them down.

I was so torn reading this book. I think people take back cheating spouses all the time but when someone comes out and admits that their spouse cheated and they took him/her back, they’re met with a lot of shame and scorn. The number for infidelity in marriages is not looking good. I tried to verify the claim in this book that 1 out of every 4 couples experience infidelity in their relationship. I could not find an exact number that corroborates this exact claim but every number I could find was alarmingly high. So, somebody has to be lying. People are taking back cheating spouses all the time; they’re just not talking about it or they’re not in the public eye enough for it to matter.

Harrison decides to write about his marriage in a glaringly honest way. He is transparent about having the feelings so many of us think good and Christian people don’t. He talks about the break down and buildup of his marriage without being voyeuristic about it. Marriage is brutal and he wants to show you exactly how brutal it is to make a vow to be with someone for the rest of your life. Even his pastor reminded him that he can divorce her if he wants and assured him that it was sanctioned by the Bible, but he chose to fight for his marriage.

This is exactly what I’m torn about. I do not think these kinds of marriages should be fought for and I worry that a lot of people are going to read this book and decide to stick it out in terrible marriages because of this book. Also, they haven’t had years of distance from these events so who’s to say that this marriage is even going to actually go the distance. Are they going to come back in a couple of years and tell us they’re divorcing? I’m not convinced that they won’t. A lot of fighting for this marriage just seems like Harrison is doing all of it and the actual cheater is demanding a lot of things to decide to stay.

I also had to check my internalized misogynistic self and ask myself if this was a book written by a woman who took back a cheating man would I be more okay with that? There’s nothing in this book that I haven’t heard and seen men get away with in marriages and still stay married without me even blinking an eye. It’s almost like I expect men to act that way but when a woman has the audacity to step out of her marriage without being penalized for it, I suddenly feel uncomfortable reading it?

Harrison also talks about all his faults in the marriage. Honestly, I can’t imagine being married to him. He’s a humorist writer and has an amazing sense of humor but a lot of it was at the expense of his wife and a lot of it was mean. I don’t like mean humor especially in romantic situations. He rarely helped out around the house and basically let his wife do everything related to their children. I appreciate him being able to do the internal work and not stand there and say, “I am the perfect suffering husband married to this whore of a woman!”

Anyway, this is one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve read all year. I gave it 5 stars on Goodreads. If you read it, I’d like to know your thoughts.

Leggy

Fiction, literary fiction, women's fiction

Book Review: My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin

3 Jul 2023 twonightstands

It’s 1998 and it’s Isabel Rosen’s last semester at Wilder College. Isabel is an only child who is still reeling from the loss of her mom her freshman year. Isabel feels like a misfit in college but does her best to fit in where she can. One night, a sexual encounter with a “friend” leaves her feeling even more shaken when her friend, Debra tells her that it was rape.

Trying to put the incident behind her, Isabel suddenly finds herself in a secret affair with her teacher, Professor Connelly. The affair seems to give Isabel more faith in herself that is until incidents unfold that let her know that it all might have been an illusion.

I have no recollection of adding this to my TBR but I tackled it as soon as it became available and it ended up being one of the books I have read the fastest, this year. I enjoyed this one because it was quite different and quite compelling. When I say different, I mean that it was a different style of writing. The plot wasn’t exactly linear and focused on one particular storyline. It was a lot of different pieces of material that ended up as a nice dress.

While Isabel was the main character and focal point, she also served as an axis to many other story lines that wove together. We learn more about her family life and what life was like for her growing up. We learn about her friend group in college and the behind the scenes drama of two of her professors who are also friends with Professor Connelly. It definitely sounds more complicated than it was because it was easy to follow and it made sense as you read the story. I particularly enjoyed the little snippets when Isabel would let us know what happened to someone later in the future.

What I did not enjoy with this book was how much I disliked Isabel. I don’t think this will apply to everyone and I totally understand she was going through a rough patch, but I really just wanted her to pick her head up and make better choices. I felt better when some characters in the bool alluded to the self doubt that was portrayed to us. Somewhere along the line, I think Florin was trying to draw a parallel between what happend to Isabel and the Clinton/Lewinski scandal but I don’t think it connected.

Overall, I very much enjoyed this one and recommend it. While I recommend, I can see how this can be divisive so if you read or have read this, let me know your thoughts!

Taynement

Ranking Taylor Jenkin Reid’s Books

19 Jun 2023 twonightstands

You have to be under a rock if you have not heard of Taylor Jenkins Reid. She has had a recent explosion of popularity and a lot of her books are making their way to screen (even though I am finding out that for some reason, they don’t seem to translate well to screen).

It’s always been a goal of mine to read all her books and I finally got around to reading them all. I thought it’d be fun to rank the books from my least favorite to absolute favorite. I think it’s easy to see the difference in my tops and bottoms. I am not a romance person and her earlier works seem to lean towards that vs. the later books where she created worlds that seem so realistic.

Anyways, here we go!

9. Forever, Interrupted – Took me a while to read this one but even though I made sure to read this when I was ready. It didn’t quite do it for me. Didn’t care for the protagonist and I got bored and trust me, I understand grief! You can see my review here.

8. One True Loves – At first it sounded far fetched but then it seemed like Emma’s choice was clear as day so everything felt like going through the motions.

7. Maybe in Another Life -This was a sliding doors type situation. We go back and forth and see what Hannah’s life could have been depending on choices she made. It got a little muddled but I enjoyed it but I don’t think TJR stuck the landing with this one aka the ending wasn’t my fave.

6. After I Do – I liked this because it just felt real. Wasn’t sure what the ending was going to be but I was pleased with it.

5. Evidence of the Affair – A short story only available in the Kindle Unlimited series, I enjoyed this one. It’s straight up in letter format but what a compelling story. You can find my review here

4. Malibu Rising – Talk about world building spanning across generations. My kind of book. The ending wasn’t the best but I enjoyed the book. My review is here.

3. Carrie Soto is Back – You couldn’t convince me Carrie Soto wasn’t real. Great book that just uses tennis as the anchor but it is so much more than that. Review can be found here.

2. Daisy Jones & The Six – The only way to consume this book is via audio. It’s a shame the screen adaptation didn’t do it justice but what a book. Review here.

1. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – What a masterpiece of a book. I always imagine it as a grand opera. I’d be curious to see if this doesn’t top everyone’s list of TJR books.

What do you think? What are your rankings?

Taynement

african author, african stories, Fiction, literary fiction, Nigerian Author

Book Review: A Spell of Good things by Ayobami Adebayo

12 Jun 2023 twonightstands

“Now hear me well—what is not yours is not yours o, even if you marry the person that has that thing. If it is not yours, it is not yours o.”

When Eniola’s father loses his job, his life becomes a series of unfortunate events. His family goes from a 3 bedroom apartment to a studio apartment for all 4 of them – his dad, his mum, Eniola and his sister, Busola. His dad falls into deep depression leaving his mum to cater for the entire family. Eniola tries to help his mother by running errands for the local tailor, begging on the streets and being as good as possible to avoid causing his parents any grief.

Wuraola is a beloved child of a rich renowned family. She’s a doctor doing her residency program and also dating Kunle, the son of an equally wealthy and ambitious politician. As they get engaged and their relationship becomes more volatile and violent, Wuraola is trapped between not shaming her parents and loving Kunle out of his madness.

When Eniola’s parents are forced to make a hard choice between educating him or his sister and a local politician takes an interest in him, it leads him down a path that leads to the destruction of two families.

“He stared back at her, unconcerned. She had always marvelled at his calm assurance that everything good in his life would either remain the same or get better. He took good fortune for granted. As though it were impossible that it would abide only for a spell. She had never been able to shake the sense that life was war, a series of battles with the occasional spell of good things.”

A Spell of Good Things delves into class privilege, politics, poverty, familial and societal expectations in Nigeria. We were introduced to Adebayo with Stay With Me and she doesn’t disappoint with her second book. Reading this book right after the recently concluded Nigerian elections and seeing the parallels really made me sad. Local politicians collecting young, barely teenage boys and turning them into murdering, kidnapping and election box snatching thugs for their own political ambitions and never giving them anything in return besides drugs, food and money.

This is a familiar story for anyone who grew up in Nigeria where our politics is extremely violent. It was so sad to see Eniola’s path to the eventual climax of the book and because we got a lot of his family’s history we can’t help but understand why he took the only option he had at that point.

“What if everything that is to happen has already happened, and only the consequences are playing themselves out?”

This book needed a better editor to tell Adebayo to hurry it up. The narrative started out meandering. I kept wondering where the book was even going. It took way too long for the narrative to start moving. We got so many unnecessary scenes that I personally felt added nothing to the story. Adebayo would spend so long describing things that added nothing to the scenes and I was fascinated that an editor didn’t ask her to cut them out.

When the narrative picks up, it really does but then it leads to such a saturation of events in the latter half of the book that could have been spread out and would have made the book much stronger than what we got. I also think that while I entirely sympathized with Eniola, I was very indifferent to Wura. Stay With Me packed such a punch and was such a delight to be immersed in and made you care about every single person in the book but unfortunately, that is not the case here.

My favorite character ended up being Wura’s mother whose story I found so interesting and would have loved to hear more about. How her elder sister raised the rest of them and sacrificed so much to ensure they all married rich men and all became first wives and then continued ensuring that they never had to depend on a man for the rest of their lives. It was amazing to read and every time Adebayo focused on her, I gobbled it all up.

“Time was unforgiving, it didn’t stop, not even to give people a chance to scrape themselves off the floor if they’d been shattered.”

I still definitely recommend this book despite some of my concerns. I think it’s a good story and I can’t wait to continue seeing where Adebayo’s career goes from here. I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

african author, african stories, Fiction, literary fiction

We Chit Chat: Rootless by Krystle Zara Appiah

30 May 2023 twonightstands

Taynement: Time for another Chit Chat!

Leggy: This was entirely a coincidental Chit Chat. We just happened to be reading this book at the same time. How did you decide to pick this one up?

Taynement: My sister-in-law is an avid reader and her review had me intrigued, so I added it to my TBR pile.

Leggy: I picked this as my Book of the Month pick for March and just happened to finally pick it up this month

Taynement: What made you pick it up as your choice?

Leggy: It was frankly the only thing that sounded great plus, I like to support my African sisters. What did you think of this one?

Taynement: A lot of our chit chats tend to be African authors. I liked it. Granted, it had the stereotypical African author book filled with pain and suffering but I was still intrigued.

Leggy: I liked it as well. In fact, I would have rated this one a lot higher than I did, if I didn’t absolutely hate the ending. I think this was great for a debut author. I always grade debut authors on a curve.

Taynement: You know, I was going to ask you about this. You always make reference to debut authors on a curve. How do you define the curve?

Leggy: I always give them one extra star. I didn’t with this one because the ending pissed me off so much. But I always add an extra star to whatever I think the book would have been if it wasn’t a debut book. I like to encourage the arts. lol

Taynement: Before we get to the end, what were the things you liked about the book?

Leggy: I thought a lot of it was realistic. I recognized the families and the African pressure to fit into a mold. I recognized the shame that comes specifically from failing in an African family. I also thought the plot was fast and moved forward easily. It was a compelling story. I liked that Efe and Sam weren’t childhood sweethearts. I actually kept expecting that.

Taynement: I agree with you on the compelling story point, that was what I liked the most about it. Regarding the shame, I think I have read so many African stories full of expectations and shame that I now roll my eyes at it. I get a little irritated now at that storyline especially when it involves grown adults.

Leggy: What did you think of Efe and Sam’s relationship before the kid? Did you think they were ever really compatible?

Taynement: I thought they were cute especially like you said, how they grew into love. But I think they were idealistic and didn’t want to face that they grew up and were different. They didn’t have the same core values. So to answer, they got to a point where they were not compatible but didn’t want to admit it because they were used to each other.

Leggy: I thought they weren’t compatible. And I think Sam would have realized it if he had just listened and believed her when she spoke about not wanting kids. If one person doesn’t want a child, break up!

Taynement: On the flip side, Sam was vocal about wanting kids is the onus not on her as well to listen?

Leggy: I don’t think he was vocal enough to be convincing because once she said she didn’t want kids he stopped talking about it all together but innately believed she would come around.

Taynement: It’s interesting that the book fleshed out Sam’s childhood trauma but didn’t flesh out Efe’s. In fact, it was all very vague.

Leggy: Very vague. Her life before 5 when her family was in London kept being touched on but never expounded on. Reading her parts of the book when she was younger gave me anxiety.

Taynement: I also tried to imagine how a 5 year old would get scars on her back and if it was so bad why would her parents send her back unceremoniously to the same country that put her through so much trauma. Quite frankly, overall, Efe’s childhood was haphazardly written.

Leggy: I also thought it was utterly insane that they let her younger sister get married so early. It made no sense to me at all. If they prioritized education so much, why would they let their daughter go back to Ghana at 18 to get married? I just don’t think she did enough justice on telling Efe’s family’s history and motivations for the decisions they made.

Taynement: So can I say that I am surprised I liked this book because I thought Sam and Efe were both selfish people aka very unlikeable characters?

Leggy: I think I liked it because of that. To me, this book is essentially a romance novel. The difference is that Sam and Efe aren’t like the typical couple you root for in romance. They utterly love each other, yes but they shouldn’t have been together. Sam’s life would have been so much better if he had married a different woman. Efe’s life would have been better if she had married her white boyfriend.

Taynement: Why did it take so long for Sam to realize that she was going through postpartum depression? Oh man! I think she would have been miserable if she married her white boyfriend.

Leggy: I actually think he was the first person who listened to what she actually wanted to do and then took steps to make sure she realized her dreams. He set her up with auditing classes. He set her up with her job. He was fine with her not wanting kids and if they had ended up in the situation of having kids, he could have afforded a nanny.

Also, it took so long for Sam to realize that she was overwhelmed because they’re both selfish people. Sam made a lot of decisions after they had the kid that didn’t involve her happiness in any way, at some point he didn’t even want her to go back to work.

Taynement: We can’t give away the spoiler but that “big thing” that happened where Efe took it upon herself to take action was silly for so many reasons.

Leggy: I was absolutely appalled. Her decision making skills is absolutely zero. It made no sense to me at all.

Taynement: And that’s when the story took a nosedive for me. Did Efe have to go that far? Why mention it at all? Why drag your sister in it? This one I thought was REALLY selfish.

Leggy: And that part of the book and the end made me not grade this book on a curve even though it’s a debut novel. I can’t in good conscience give this better than I rated it.

Taynement: So, my sister in law also hated the ending but I was actually okay with it. Where the writer was headed otherwise did not seem realistic to me. I didn’t see how they could move past the hump.

Leggy: Tayne, I almost threw this book over my balcony when I read the ending.

Taynement: LOL. I was like WHOOOAAA but also, yep, I’ll take it.

Leggy: I figured it out when I realized the chapters were still counting down to something even after we caught up to the beginning scene of the book. That’s when I was like oh, this is what this writer is heading to. You know, I’m a romance girl. Please give me a happy ending.

Taynement: The more we talk about this, the more I want to take away a star because I just remembered another thing Sam did with Efe’s cousin. There were so many loose end stories that were like huh? That particular story did not add or remove from the story.

Leggy: And then it had no impact on anything. I guess it was like making them even. You did this and I did that. So now we can forgive each other and move on.

Taynement: That being said, I would still recommend this book.

Leggy: Oh absolutely. I think it’s a compelling read. I can’t wait to see what she writes next. I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads.

Taynement & Leggy

Fiction, women's fiction

Book Review: Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

15 May 2023 twonightstands

“You’re depressed, not crazy. It’s not insane to be depressed in this world. It’s more sane than being happy. I never trust those upbeat individuals who grin no matter what’s going on. Those are the ones with a screw loose, if you ask me.”

William Waters is born during a time when his family experiences the loss of a child. This event sends his parents into a state of apathy for living and for their roles as parents to their son. William, who grows up neglected and barely acknowledged by his parents, escapes his household through a basketball scholarship. In college, he meets Julia Padavanos, an ambitious and self assured young lady who sweeps up Williams in her plans for their future. With Julia comes her family; she is inseparable from her three younger sisters: Sylvie, who is happiest with her nose in a book and who is waiting for her one true love who she thinks she will instantly recognize and vice versa. Cecelia, the family’s artist who suddenly ends up pregnant at 17 and Emeline, who believes she is the Beth in their sisterhood (the weak sister and the one who dies in the book Little Women). But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable loyalty to one another.

“That Mark Twain quote about how the only reason for time is so everything doesn’t happen at once? I feel like everything that’s ever happened in my life is happening”

Napolitano treats her characters with such tenderness even in the face of so many bad decisions. The characters in this book felt real to me. I have 5 sisters and even though I would never make the decisions that these women make in the book, the complexities of their relationships are very well written and fleshed out. Their mother’s reaction to Cecelia’s pregnancy that mirrored so much of her own young years was so interesting to me. Even though the sisters’ dad was barely physically present in the pages, the way his influence on the girls shown through was so impressive to read. The title of the book comes from what their dad would say to them every time they entered a room – Hello Beautiful!

This book also explores male friendships – the relationship between Kent and William was so heartwarming to read. You could tell a woman wrote this friendship. The way they were there to carry each other and see each other through the world from the first time they met was very touching to read. It was great to see William step outside his family and meet people who were prepared to carry him through his worst days.

“William once had the thought that his fiancé (Julia) seemed to stride about the world with a conductor’s wand, while Sylvie brandished a book, and Cecelia, a paintbrush. Emeline, though, kept her hands free in order to be helpful or to pick up and soothe a neighborhood child”

When an unexpected tragedy occurs in the family and Sylvie makes a bold decision to choose her happiness over what people would say and over her sisters’ feelings, the bond between the sisters is shattered in a very irreparable way causing one of the sisters to be set afloat on her own in New York City, abandoning Chicago, the city she has grown up in and loved all these years.

While I would never make the choice Sylvie made, I saw it coming from miles away and I’m fascinated by how much Napolitano’s writing doesn’t make us question it as much as we would have in the hands of a more careless writer. It happens and you just think: that’s life. This book revolves around mental health, family expectations, ambition and our definition of what love is supposed to be or look like.

“She was all of herself with him and even felt there was room for her to become more. When he rested his eyes on her, it was without judgment or expectation, and in that space, Sylvie felt her potential: for bravery, brilliance, kindness, joy. All of these sails rested on the deck of her ship; they were hers, but she hadn’t seen them before.”

I’ve only read one other Napolitano book, Dear Edward, which I reviewed here and didn’t quite like. I actually think she has made a fan out of me with this new book. I picked up Hello Beautiful because it is an Oprah Book Club pick and even though I do not keep up with any of the celebrity book clubs, I was intrigued because a lot of the reviews surrounding this book mentioned it being a Little Women retelling which you do not need to read to enjoy this book. Having read Little Women though, I think it made the plot predictable for me because I kept waiting to see how she would pick up the big plot points from Little Women which had to be included otherwise it would not be a retelling.

It’s really hard to review a character driven book because all the major plot lines you can discuss feel like spoilers that would ruin the reading the experience for someone else.Anyway, I truly enjoyed this book. I picked it up from a book store in the morning and finished it in 24 hours. I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads and strongly recommend it.

Leggy

celebrity memoir, Memoirs, Non-Fiction

Book Review: Love, Pamela by Pamela Anderson

1 May 2023 twonightstands

I actually don’t know what the temperature of Pamela Anderson’s popularity is at the moment but in the 90’s she was a household name. She had her persona – blonde, big boobs, very sexual and let’s be honest ditzy. But we never really know the full story so I was interested in watching her Netflix documentary when it came out. It was also announced that she had a memoir coming out and I knew that I would be interested in reading that as well. The doc came out first and after watching, I definitely saw her in a different light and she is much smarter than most of the world gave her credit for. I was also curious to see how different the book was going to be. From the documentary, I learned that she kept very detailed journals and I think this helps in some of the clear details that she has in her book.

Pamela walks us through her childhood in Canada. Her parents’ quite frankly – toxic relationship which I think played a part in her toxic relaionships when she got older. Pamela’s childhood is impactful in her story because she suffered a lot of sexual abuse before the age of 18. This abuse included one from her babysitter and in another incident a situation with 4 boys. I had to take a breather after reading that part because you just wonder how one gets over repeated sexual assault.

She tells us about her career and relationships and of course her most high profile one with Tommy Lee. His jealousy, her miscarriages and how bad the paparazzi was to her. Of course she touches on the sex tape and we get to hear things from her point of view. There was a TV show about Tommy and Pam and I never stopped to think how she would feel about it and how it affected her. It was great to see her devotion to her boys and them being the reason she couldn’t be with Tommy even if that is what she wanted.

While Pam is all about seeking answers in whatever form – she shares her friendship with a pastor and she reads a lot of self help, I still think there is a gap in her relationship with men. Even if it was not her experience, I think she should have still addressed the accusations against Hugh Hefner. Pam holds Playboy in high esteem and only spoke highly of them. The same goes for Rick Saloman and she is still a huge advocate of Julian Assange.

All in all, I thought she met most of the tenets of a memoir and was pretty open about her life. It was a quick listen (5hr+ audiobook) and I feel like I got to know the generous, kind hearted, intellectual side of her that I’d never learned about from the media. I do wonder if watching the documentary affected my opinion of the book since some things weren’t new to me but overall it’s a quick read if you are looking to get a memoir checked off in your TBR list.

Taynement

Fiction, Historical, literary fiction, race, thriller

Book Review: The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb

17 Apr 2023 twonightstands

“Music’s the gift. Caring’s the gift. And you give it to others now. There are a lot of ways apart from a concert hall to make a difference in someone’s life.”

Ray is a young, black man who loves playing the violin and he is good at it. His family is not supportive, especially his mom who tried to get him to stop playing and instead get a job at Popeyes for a stable paycheck. He ignores her and continues to play with borrowed violins from school. One Thanksgiving, his grandmother – the only family member who believes in his talent, gives him her father’s violin and when he goes to clean it up he finds out that it is a Stradivarius, a priceless type of violin. This becomes a blessing and a curse as his family suddenly takes interest in it and want to sell it and split the proceeds.

Another family, descendants of the family that enslaved his great-grandfather, also come forward and claim it belongs to their family and sue Ray. On the blessings side, Ray’s profile rises and he starts booking gigs and qualifies for the Tchaikovsky Competition—the Olympics of classical music. A competition no American has ever won. Everything seems to be going great until the Stradivarius goes missing. Ray is suddenly under pressure to find his violin while also practice for the competition.

“Second, he learned that doing what you loved may not be enough, that all the passion and perseverance that roared like blood within you could be trumped by factors that you could never control—factors like the color of your skin, or the shape of your eyes, or the sound of your voice.”

I really enjoyed this one for many reasons but mainly because this book wasn’t just one thing. The book managed to be a family saga, a thriller, a book about following passions, overcoming the odds and also exploring the ugliness of our nation’s history. I liked how Slocumb built the story of Ray’s career as a violinist. We got to be there from the beginning and go through his obstacles and breaks and it felt realistic. As a black person, reading some of his obstacles pursuing a character that the world has stereotyped as “not black”, you understand because every black person has faced being put in a box and being told what you can or can’t do.

“And none of that mattered. No matter how nice the suit, no matter how educated his speech or how strong the handshake, no matter how much muscle he packed on, no matter how friendly or how smart he was, none of it mattered at all. He was just a Black person. That’s all they saw and that’s all he was.”

I will say though, at a point I thought Ray’s experience with racism was A LOT but then reading that Slocumb incorporated everything that he himself (a violinist as well) had experienced in real life and I had to snap myself back to the reality of being a black person in America and navigating a mostly white career world.The other part of the book is figuring out who could have stolen the violin. In a rare occurence, my guess on who it was, was actually correct.

I recommend this book. It engaged me and I wanted to find out what would happen next. I read this one but I have heard that the audio is quite good. On a random note, I am curious why there are two different covers for this book.

Taynement

Uncategorized

Book Review: Kings of Paradise by Richard Nell

3 Apr 2023 twonightstands

“I’ll be part of your book, Mother, but not like Egil or Haki or Rupa. I’ll be Omika, the giant. I’ll be the monster who frightens little girls. That’s what I am. I’ll butcher the whole world one by one with my bare hands, and when they’re all dead, the lawmakers and priestesses and all their servants, then I’ll go to the afterlife and find you, and I’ll make you their queen.”

Ruka is born disfigured and Norse (a god) is a genius who is only spared death because of his mother’s love. Born into the snow covered wasteland of Ascom, he lives outside of the city with his mother away from all human interaction. Now the church has declared him an outcast and he is filled with hatred and a hunger for vengeance from all those who have wronged him.

Kale is the fourth and youngest son of the King of Sri Kon who has no direction in life. Born with a silver spoon and a touch of naivete on how the world should be, he struggles to figure out his path in life. At 16, his father forces him to train with the marines and prove himself. He struggles to establish himself as a leader and gain favor in the eyes of his father and possibly win the love of his life as a bride.

Both on extreme sides of the earth, unaware of the existence of each other’s world, Kale and Ruka are set on a path of collision. Where one wants to burn the world down and the other wants to save it, only one can truly be king.

“Ruka stared at the corpse of the boy he’s killed, and his stomach growled.”

Kings of Paradise‘s very first sentence is the quote above. I love a good antihero. If you can do heinous things in a book and murder everybody in sight and still get me to root for you? I’m on board. Ruka is the best anti hero i’ve read in a long time. The book literally opens with Ruka eating the flesh of a boy he just killed (this is not a spoiler, this is literally the first page of the book). Everybody I’ve recommended this to, I’ve had to implore to continue past that scene because an amazing story is going to unfold. But I completely understand that grimdark fantasy books aren’t for everybody but Ruka is the type of character I say all the time that I want to read about. Nell does an amazing job of juxtapositioning Ruka’s current reality to his traumatizing childhood. Being so isolated and not knowing any human touch apart from your mum. His POV is one of the best i’ve ever read. Watching Ruka become who he becomes gives you such a deep sympathy for his character. You want him to succeed despite what his success means for the world.

“Love is the very worst reason for a prince to marry”

Kale is written as the complete opposite of Ruka. He’s kind, he’s close to his brothers, he’s in love with this childhood friend and his father is paranoid and ruthless beyond measure. His story is one of compassion and trying to figure out his place in the world as a 4th born prince who is of no great importance to the throne and who doesn’t have any particular talent that his father can take advantage of. Kale as a character was interesting but ultimately I always rooted for his father. I found Kale to be insanely naive and I found his father to always be right even though I think we’re supposed to think his father is hard. But I found the King of Sri Kon to be an amazing character whose ascendant to the throne I would love to read a whole book about.

When he tells Kale about how his family was murder and how he and his aunty were only spared by coincidence and how he ascended the throne at such a young age even though he was never even near the line of succession and then proceeded to murder and cripple all his enemies. I legit got chills reading it. Also, everyone knows I hate romance in my fantasy. So that’s another knock on Kale, he’s in love and his love makes him make very naive decisions. Don’t get me wrong, I was never bored reading his POV, he’s still a great character but I think everything pales in comparison to a great anti hero who isn’t stopping to fall in love.

“What…do I want?” Ruka put his hands to his awful face and closed his golden eyes, shuddering with what could have been a laugh, or a sob. “I want a world where love is not a crime, Priestess, a world where children are not doomed to misery because they are different. I want only laws with mercy, and justice, and wisdom…but I will settle for your pink insides in my palm, and your brains on a rock.”

So why not 5 stars? The last 20% of this book was extremely rushed. I kept wondering why the author kept feeding us all these details instead of showing us and taking us through the actual action. Nell takes his time and meticulously crafts this story and then ends up giving us a time jump in the last 20% of the book? I think if you’re going to write a sprawling fantasy series then you should take your time. A time skip in a fantasy book is extremely lazy. Hopefully the second book rectifies a lot of my complaints. Overall, I utterly, wholeheartedly recommend this one. Come find me and talk about it with me if you’ve read it or if you read it on my recommendation. Solid 4 stars.

Leggy

Fiction, Historical, literary fiction, race

Book Review: Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

13 Mar 202313 Mar 2023 twonightstands

The year is 1973 and Civil Townsend, a Black nurse in Montgomery, Alabama has just started a new job at the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic. Since she has a car, she is assigned home visits. Excited to make a difference in the Black community, she is up for a rude awakening with her first assignment. First of all, she finds out her patients are living in squalor in a one room cabin. Then she finds out that her patients are 11 and 13 year old sisters, India and Erica. She is supposed to give them this new birth control, Depo Provera but they are so young and have not even kissed boys. She gives them the shot anyways but Civil can’t get them or their living conditions out of her mind.

The next time Civil is supposed to give them the shots, she can’t bring herself to do it. Especially when she realizes they are only being assigned this because they are black and poor. Civil is from a middle class family, her dad also in the medical field as a doctor so she takes them under her wing and helps the whole family (their dad and their grandma. Their mom died when they were young) more often than she should. She buys them clothes, does their hair and even takes it upon herself to apply for a subsidized apartment.

One day, Civil goes for a scheduled visit with the girls and realizes that the powers that be have taken advantage of their dad and grandma being illiterate and done something horrific and irreversible to the girls. Civil is filled with so much guilt and leads the way in getting justice for them. The book takes us down this journey and fastforwards many years later when they are all grown and Civil goes down memory lane.

I was gifted this book for Christmas and didn’t know what it was about but I liked it. It’s a heavy subject matter so if you are looking for something light, this is not the book for you. This book was set in 1973 and in 2023, it serves as a reminder of all the injustices that black people have had to face and still face today in America. The book has parallels and makes mention of the Tuskegee study. Perkins-Valdez does a good job of creating a world that is real and you feel everything that Civil does. I enjoyed the fact that Civil is black and came from a well to do family while we also meet India and Erica on the other side, who were impoverished. It drives home the point, for those who don’t know, that being Black is not a monolith and just like everyone else, we run a spectrum.

I loved how human she made Civil. As a reader, you think like Civil that there is no other route than to help the family, because why not? But Perkins-Valdez adds the plot where it is brought to Civil’s attention that she may be making them feel like a charity case and she has to ponder when helping crosses the line to interfering. Even when the book fast forwards to 2016, you can still see Civil grappling with the choices she made. If you are wondering if the back and forth was distracting, I can assure you that it wasn’t. There was more time spent in 1973 than 2016.

This is a book I expect to evoke many emotions (might not be positive) but it’s oh so necessary for us to never forget what was done before and what could still be. The book isn’t all dreary as there are secondary story lines surrounding Civil’s personal life. Her ex, Ty, her mom and her relationship with the girls’ dad. I definitely recommend the book and despite the subject matter, it managed to be a quick read.

Taynement