Category: Fiction

“Our family rejected materialism and popular culture and yet we also produced it. The show…paid for the SUVs Mother and Daddy drove, the lake house, the ‘spiritual retreat’ that was actually a villa in Saint John. It paid for the car seat I rode home in from the hospital, the muslin blankets I was swaddled in when I slept. It paid for my first backpack when it came time for me to go to school, Mother having by then completely abandoned giving lessons in the living room, not just because her time and energy were better spent promoting our brand but also because marketing said that what our audience wanted at that point was a character who was ‘normal.'”

17 year old Essie has grown up in front of the camera as the youngest member of a reality TV show family called Six for Hicks (think the Duggars). Her father is a famous televangelist and has built up a congregation and an audience by saying controversial things and parading his family around for America as the perfect example of what a family should be. There’s a problem though, from the first page we are informed that 17 year old Essie is pregnant and her mother scrambles to find a way to make the problem go away and decides to find her a husband.

The Book Of Essie is a very engrossing and riveting story that is quite difficult to put down. I read this book in one seating, and it is the perfect summer read. This book tackles some pretty heavy topics but it doesn’t really go into anyone of them in detail so no trigger warning needed here.

Though it was pretty predictable (once you read the first 50 pages you can tell what’s coming), it still had my attention and intrigued me enough to want to know what happened next. That did not dampen my enjoyment of it at all, I just read on to discover if my suspicions were right. The book is told through the voices of Essie, her friend Roarke and a journalist called Liberty with her own childhood traumas as well.

On the other hand, this is a debut book and it shows. The author tries to pack way too many plots that end up not being fleshed out. Essie picks Liberty to be the journalist who interviews her for her wedding storyline on the show because of her background. I honestly felt this could have been left out because it was so rushed and didn’t really add anything much to the plot except to explain why Essie picked her.

The writing could have been better, the characters come off as stereotypes instead of real life people. For a book containing some objectively disturbing content, it never moved me because the author just tells us things instead of showing it to us, like a newscaster giving you the facts. The characters never feel real so you don’t root for anybody because you can literally see the author pulling the strings.

If you’re fascinated by reality tv shows you’d love this book. I think there is a potential here and I’ll be looking out for this author in the future. I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads and would recommend this because it is a fun and fast book to get through.

Have you read this one? Did you like it? Let us know what you think in the comments!

“Later, I would be told I had a twenty percent chance of maintaining a full-time job, a twenty-five percent chance of living independently, a forty percent chance of attempting suicide, a ten percent chance of succeeding.
I was twenty-six years old.”

I love family dramas, give me a quiet slow burn between family members written really well and I’m absolutely sold. This story is about living with mental illness from the perspective  of the person with the illness and and the loved ones who have to be around the illness and how it affects them. Lucia is the younger, vibrant, spontaneous and mentally ill sister who is very much loved and adored by her sister, Miranda – responsible, older, mama bear whose entire existence becomes an obsession with getting Lucia to take her pills and stay healthy.

“Our mother might’ve said this: that immigrants are the strongest, that we leave our homes behind and rebuild. Everywhere we go, we rebuild.”

As the two Chinese- American sisters get older, we see them make vastly different decisions that drive them further apart both literally and figuratively. Lucia lives life on a grand scale, making huge, impulsive decisions, that take her to different corners of the earth. She marries an Israeli man, Yonah, who she leaves abruptly to fulfill her desire to have a child and she has one with a young undocumented immigrant named Manuel.

They end up moving to Ecuador to raise their kid but the truth remains that she cannot escape her mental illness as she still has to live with her brain everywhere she goes. The voices come and they take her hostage.

“Querencia. It refers to that place in the ring where a bull feels strongest, safest, where it returns again and again to renew its strength. It’s the place we’re most comfortable, where we know who we are—where we feel our most authentic selves.”

As we examine Lucia and her brain, every character around her is fully developed and fleshed out and do not just exist as caricatures to drive Lucia’s story forward. We hear about the lives they built for themselves before and during Lucia. This story is told from alternating perspectives so everybody gets a turn to tell their side of the story. Everybody’s story is treated as important and worth hearing. My favorite was the harrowing story of the undocumented Manuel in New York city and how consuming that experience of being absolutely scared of your own shadow for fear of being caught and deported, can be.

“And then, her worst fear: that the line between her sister and her illness was becoming irrevocably blurred”

Mira Lee’s portrayal of mental illness in this book is raw and very real. It was actually quite difficult to read. She makes the readers question where a person ends and their mental illness begins? What are Lucia’s eccentricities and what are her symptoms? When is she being spontaneous and vivacious and when is she being manic? When is she just sad because she’s human and this is life and when is she actually depressed? what are her thoughts and what are the voices?

There are times when everything here is beautiful but a lot of times in this book, everything is just sad and heartbreaking.

I gave this book four stars on good reads and I definitely recommend it.

Have you read this? did you enjoy it? Are you going to read it?

Leggy

Taynement adds: I audio’d this book and didn’t quite have the same experience Leggy did. Like we have said before, a narrator can make or break a book and I did not like the different narrators as it made for inconsistencies. My favorite narrator was the voice of Manuel and I was bummed when his next view point was read by another (female) narrator vs. the original. All I am trying to say is I would not recommend audio’ing this one.

“Belief is a commodity. It can be packaged, bought and sold. It’s true of saint’s bones, and it’s true of my ministry.”

If you are looking for a fun, mindless book that goes by quickly but is also a page turner – look no further because, this is the book for you. Main character, Will wakes up with 108 prophecies about the future, from insignificant things like knowing that person x is going to buy chocolate ice cream at a particular date and time to significant ones like predictions about the President of the United States and other major world events.

He starts putting some of these predictions anonymously on a website. They find their way to Reddit and when the first 3 predictions come true, the whole world starts calling him “The Oracle” and he begins to garner buzz. He also starts selling some of the prophecies about the future to huge corporations for a shit ton of money and as more and more of the predictions start coming true,  the buzz is elevated to a full on obsession on finding out who the person behind this is. Unsurprisingly, he makes massive enemies that include a well known televangelist Fox News type character andthe President of the United States.

I found the beginning of this book to be the best part because it hits the ground running from the very first page. The action is fast paced, you’re trying to learn all the characters and discern who you should be rooting for. Then you get to the middle and the tempo just drops down and all you want to do is get to the end see how it ends.

I hated the main character. He was so freaking whiny and I wish he had been more of a smart and cocky individual that didn’t spend all his time thinking “woe is me, I have such a hard life, ooh all the millions in my bank account” and there wasn’t a single character that I found well written or likable, they were all just bland caricatures.

I found the plot of the book original. I kept thinking it was such a great idea for a book and would make an amazing movie. This would have made a better screenplay. Which is funny because even though this is a debut novel for Charles Soule, he is a seasoned comic book writer who writes for Marvel. An editor should have taken a hatchet to it and weeded out the many arcs that the book could have done with out. So many things bogged down the plot and slowed down its progression. It was as if the author was like “I need this book to be 400 pages so what can I throw at them and try to make it stick?”  Fun fact: most of it doesn’t stick. 

The cons of this book not withstanding, The Oracle Year worked for me as a breezy read. This is a proper summer beach read. A spy chick-lit type book, if you will. Think of it like Gossip Girl or Empire (in its earlier seasons). A show you don’t take seriously and is not the best but you also can’t get enough of it. I would recommend this book if you’re looking for something to pull you out your reading slump or you just read a very heavy book and need a reading palate cleanser. I gave this book 3 stars because it did the job I expected it to do – it entertained me.

Have you read this book? If yes, what did you think? If no, do you think you’d give it a chance? Let me know in the comments!!

Leggy

AND THE WINNER IS…*drumroll*

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I went through the loss of a loved one in 2015 and it put me in a really dark place I was desperate to get out of. The quest for this had me reading a few “self-help” books, trying to find solace and answers. None of them quite hit the mark and I assumed it was just me. This led me to actually coming to the conclusion that self-help books are actually a load of crap (for me, at least or I just may not have come across the right one).

I was thinking back to books that really had an impact on me and realized that they were not necessarily filed under the “self-help” category. Reminds me of that saying that the things you need usually come in unexpected packages, eh? Here are a few books that I found encouraging:

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo: This is probably a cliche one as I assume almost everyone has read this book. And honestly, if you haven’t, you should. Following the journey of a shepherd named Santiago, Coehlo masterfully weaves in a story of the ambition, love and frustration while really dropping nuggets on how to have a hand in fulfilling your destiny. Santiago encounters a whole number of obstacles that mirror the downs of life but also shows how he is able to pick himself up using tools he picks up and also in the form of human beings along the way.

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes: A memoir of sorts by TV writer, Shonda Rhimes. Shonda chronicles the pre, during and post of a year in which she decides to say yes to anything she is asked to do in order to overcome her crippling fear and anxiety that was overtaking her life and basically making life decisions for her. Rhimes covers a wide array of topics like weight, being a working mom, realizing she was not cut out for marriage and walking away from an engagement, being a single mom on purpose etc.

I’ve read a number of reviews where people did not like this book and actually thought she was bragging, being obnoxious and repetitive. Maybe it was the timing of when I read it but I absolutely was here for this book and it gave me so much fire in my ass. I audiobooked it, so I got to hear her live commencement speech recording , which I absolutely loved. I thought it was a good wake up call for anyone needing some nudging in their life.

The Shack by WM. Paul Young: I read this book a very long time ago at the recommendation of a friend after a discussion on faith and spirituality. The book centers around a father who loses one of his 5 children and is trying to navigate through his grief. He receives a mysterious letter in the mail asking him to meet someone named “Papa” (His wife calls God, Papa) at a shack.

He gets to the shack and spends the weekend with 3 occupants who are supposed to represent the Holy Trinity. God the Father is an African-American woman, Jesus is Middle Eastern and the Holy Spirit is an Asian woman. They go through different encounters and he asks so many questions and between the three they dispel the man made notions of what it is to be a believer.

I was hesitant at first because I thought it was a religious book but it wasn’t at all. I really like the fact that God was represented as a loving one and not the rule maker and punisher as often portrayed. It was adamant in showing how religion was very different from a relationship with God. The book has since been adapted into a movie starring Octavia Spencer.

What books have you read that have been inspiring to you in your life? Do you have any actual self-help books that you’d recommend? I’d love to hear them in the comment section.

Taynement

“Sometimes the world don’t give you what you need, no matter how hard you look. Sometimes it withholds” 

Somehow, subconsciously, I think I might have adopted Leggy’s reading goal of reading more [female] African-American authors because here I am with another one. This book was on all the “best” lists last year and even though it didn’t seem like a book I would be interested in, I had it on my TBR read because…FOMO. I shall not be left out. So to my library waiting list I went and I finally got to read it.

The quote above encapsulates the general vibe for the characters in the book. Life can be unfair no matter how much you will otherwise. Told from the perspective of 13 year old Jojo, we see a glimpse of his life living on a farm with: his little sister, Kayla who trusts no one but him and practically clings to him all the time, his protective grandpa who he is close to, his dying grandma, his mom, Leonie – a drug addicted young lady with not a single maternal bone in her body and finally his Caucasian father, Michael who rotates in and out of jail.

Leonie decides to take her kids on a road trip to go pick up Michael who is being released from yet another stint in jail. That journey is how Ward gives us background on our characters as we hear about their lives before the present day interspersed with a mystical character that we are first introduced to via stories told to Jojo by his grandpa.

Guys, I tried but this book just didn’t do it for me. Hint #1 was how long it took me to read it. Once a book takes me forever to get through, then it’s not a good sign. I don’t think I expected as much fantasy and mystical elements as this book had. I am usually not a fan of that, so this lost the book points from me. This could be a me problem but for the life of me, I could not figure out what time period this book was set in. At first, I thought it was way back in the slavery days till something would allude to more modern times and I just gave up trying to figure it out.

I could understand what the book was going for – a haunting, harrowing tale but somehow, I just couldn’t be bothered. The stories were enough for your heart to go out to various characters involved but somehow, I was not invested. The story line did not interest me or make me want to know what happened next. I also wasn’t a fan of the sequencing, which is much harder to follow when you are already uninterested. I am not quite sure how I finished this book, to be honest.

Overall, I see quite a lot of high praise for the book but unfortunately, I am not one of them. This is not a criticism of the writer’s skill because, I do think she is a good writer, I just think the story was just not for me.

This book received 2 stars from me on Goodreads.

Taynement

For someone who doesn’t quite like YA as a genre, I seem to read a lot of it. “The Hate You Give” was all the buzz last year and I decided to get in on the action and see for myself. 16 year old Starr Carter is living two lives. One in the poor neighborhood that she lives in and another in the private school she goes to, across town. The neighborhood comes with a different kind of lifestyle from the one the people she goes to school with have. Her neighborhood has drugs, gangs and Starr has already witnessed the murder of a little girl in a drive-by, when she was younger.

Unfortunately, Starr gets to witness another murder when a white cop fatally shoots her unarmed best friend while she was in the car. The book is about the aftermath of dealing with the trauma of witnessing something of that magnitude and how there are so many angles to it and it is really such an unfortunate thing that is a reality in our country today.

It is timely, given the climate of the country right now but it is also a relief that the book was well written and able to convey it’s message in a simple way. What I liked about the book was how it was just relatable and human. Thomas does write the book as people would talk in real life. Meaning she didn’t edit for correct grammar and the characters who speak in slang were written exactly that way. I can see how this could be distracting but I felt it added to the realism of the book’s topic.

Another thing Thomas did well was capturing the conflict Starr felt within depending on who she was hanging out with. For many of us African American adults, we recognize that we have to put on a different face/mask at our place of work vs. when we are with our people. Trying to see if it is a justification or if you are indeed being a sell out is something most black people deal with everyday. Or dealing with the little remarks from her white best friend who sometimes thought she talked about the “race thing” too much or made seemingly harmless (but slightly) racist comments to their Asian friend.

“What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?”

The quote above is one that encapsulates the struggle Starr feels when she is still processing and is not ready to speak on what happens. Her community feels like she needs to stand up for them but they don’t understand that she is dealing with a heavy trauma. Yes, we should always do the right thing but at what point do we draw the line between doing what’s right for others and self preservation for your own sanity?

Overall, I recommend this book and think that it does a good job of telling a message to teenagers but still a good read for adults. My gripe with most YA books is how juvenile they come across but I didn’t get that vibe with this book. It was a heartbreaking story told honestly without coming off as too preachy. Discovering where the title of the book comes from was also a little nugget of discovery.

P.S In case you missed it in our Books to Movies post, this book is being turned into a movie with Amandla Stenberg as Starr.

Taynement