Category: Historical

Book Related Topics, Fiction, Historical, LGBT, literary fiction, Memoirs, romance, women's fiction

3 for 1 Book Reviews

twonightstands

It’s been a minute, so figured I’d do a three-fer before the year runs out. The reviews features a beloved author, a memoir and a Booker Prize winner.

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid: If you have been a long time reader of the blog then you know how much I love me some TJR, in fact I ranked all her books here. I was excited to read this one but it pains me to say that it didn’t hit the way the other books did. One of the things I like about TJR as an author is how versatile she is and how she doesn’t have a formulaic writing style. This one centered around Joan who is an astronaut. Based in the 80’s it showed how she had to fight to be recognized in her field but it was also a book about Joan’s sexuality at a time when she couldn’t necessarily be loud and proud. In hindsight, seeing how much praise this book has received, I am wondering if I’m the problem. Now don’t get me wrong, the book was not bad at all but I do think it was all over the place. There were so many storylines and timelines and didn’t seem well put together as is typical of TJR. It took me a minute to get all the characters right and remember their respective timelines. It also felt like I was being forced or told what to feel and I’d rather it be organic.

Flesh by Davis Szalay: FOMO got the best of me, and I had to see what all the fuss was about and even after reading it, I still don’t get it. Listen y’all, I am trying to get used to this new wave of abstract writing. The book follows Istvan from when he was a teenager in Hungary where he experiences something traumatic and then we follow him to London as he gets older and lives a completely different life, almost as if the incident never happened. As he gets older and has all these different experiences, I keep thinking they would have some connection to each other but the more there didn’t seem to be one, the more confused I got about what the point was. I do think it is a very character driven book (which aren’t usually my favorite) so that could be the explanation for that but if the character didn’t seem to be processing all the things that were happening to him and doesn’t seem to care, it’s very hard for us the readers to be invested and care as well. The ending felt like walking into a glass door because I didn’t realize that was the end. It was very abrupt. Someone needs to explain to me why this was the winner of the prize.

Accidentally on Purpose by Kristen Kish: Kristen from Top Chef fame wrote a memoir and she is such a lovely person (and a hottie) and that was probably most people’s motivations for reading this book and unfortunately it was just okay. I know everyone wants to write a memoir but if you are not willing to be VERY open or share salacious details then it’s okay to just leave it in your journal. Kristen does the thing where you share but you aren’t really sharing anything. Even when she gets to certain points, she doesn’t name names. You do get the sentiment of the title where it feels like everything just fell into place for her in her career, even though she has the talent, there was still a great deal of luck on her side, and I appreciate her owning that because sometimes successful people feel like admitting luck diminishes their hard work. I also liked how she admitted not having a desire to find her bio parents (she is adopted) and not really looking into her Korean roots until later in life. Kristen does share her deep love for her wife, and you can see it come through. There is a point in the book where she is talking about her and we hear sniffles and honestly, it felt put on (don’t hate me!). I don’t think there should be one formula for a chef’s memoir, but I will say that there wasn’t that deeeeeep passion for food that you usually hear from other chefs, and it just seemed like something that’s part of her life. It felt like there was more of a passion for hosting (and that’s okay). I listened to this on audio. Overall, I don’t think it was terrible, but I don’t think it was very good either.

So there you have it. Have you read any of this? What did you think? Do you want to check out any of this after reading these reviews? Let me know!

Taynement

Fiction, Historical, literary fiction, race

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

twonightstands

“Eight of the ten commandments are about what thou shalt not. But you can live a whole life not doing any of that stuff and still avoid doing any good. That’s the whole crisis. The rot at the root of everything. The belief that goodness is built on a constructed absence, not-doing. That belief corrupts everything, has everyone with any power sitting on their hands.”

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran by America in a senseless accident and his father moved them to the same country responsible for his mother’s death. His father’s life in America is that of survival and making sure that Cyrus also survived. But now, after his father dies, Cyrus is truly alone and is struggling with a lot of addiction issues while developing an obsession with martyrs. He decides that he also wants his death to mean something as he stumbles upon an art installation in New York City where a woman who is dying of cancer is lying there every day until her death, talking to anyone who wants to talk.

“There’s this story I read one time, some old-school Muslim fairy tale, maybe it was a discarded hadith I guess, but it was all about the first time Satan sees Adam. Satan circles around him, inspecting him like a used car or something, this new creation—God’s favorite, apparently. Satan’s unimpressed, doesn’t get it. And then Satan steps into Adam’s mouth, disappears completely inside him and passes through all his guts and intestines and finally emerges out his anus. And when he gets out, Satan’s laughing and laughing. Rolling around. He passes all the way through the first man and he’s rolling around laughing, in tears, and he says to God, ‘This is what you’ve made? He’s all empty! All hollow!’ He can’t believe his luck. How easy his job is going to be. Humans are just a long emptiness waiting to be filled.”

It took me a while to actually start this book because every time it would check out to me; I would send it right back. I saw it so much on Instagram and on so many lists. I read the blurb and felt bored but eventually I decided to just give it a go and I absolutely enjoyed it. One of the reasons I was avoiding this one is because I expected it to be depressing. Martyrs? Lord. But once you meet Cyrus and his self-righteous deep thinking, you can’t help but roll your eyes at all his navel gazing. For a book that explores death, depression and sobriety, it never feels depressing. I actually found it funny in so many ways and the wry humor kept me reading even though Cyrus is the embodiment of “youth is wasted on the young”.

“The performance of certainty seemed to be at the root of so much grief. Everyone in America seemed to be afraid and hurting and angry, starving for a fight they could win. And more than that even, they seemed certain their natural state was to be happy, contented, and rich. The genesis of everyone’s pain had to be external, such was their certainty. And so legislators legislated, building border walls, barring citizens of there from entering here. “The pain we feel comes from them, not ourselves,” said the banners, and people cheered, certain of all the certainty. But the next day they’d wake up and find that what had hurt in them still hurt.”

This book is Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel, and everyone knows I grade these on a curve. I’ve never read any of his poetry and I wonder if his writing would have felt familiar if I did. This is an ambitious work that sometimes misses the mark but through Cyrus, we investigate the concept of identity, especially living in a country that caused your mother’s death. And even though you want to lean into your identity as an Iranian, you find out that most of your thoughts and even your addictions are thoroughly American. As he dives into his family’s history – his father’s slow descent into despair and alcoholism, his uncle dressed as the Angel of Death during the Iranian war to convince dying soldiers to die with dignity and not try to desert the army – you begin to understand why Cyrus is so obsessed with death.

“An anthropologist who wrote about how the first artifact of civilization wasn’t a hammer or arrowhead, but a human femur—discovered in Madagascar—that showed signs of having healed from a bad fracture. In the animal world, a broken leg meant you starved, so a healed femur meant that some human had supported another’s long recovery, fed them, cleaned the wound. And thus, the author argued, began civilization. Augured not by an instrument of murder, but by a fracture bound, a bit of food brought back for another.”

Cyrus doesn’t want to be just another depressed boy who kills himself. He wants his death to mean something, and he is convinced that the woman who is dying in a New York art gallery will help him understand how to make his own death mean something. I really loved Cyrus’ discussions with Orkideh. When he tells her of his plans she says: ahh, another Iranian man obsessed with martyrdom.

“Why should the Prophet Muhammad get a whole visit from an archangel? Why should Saul get to see the literal light of heaven on the road to Damascus? Of course it would be easy to establish bedrock faith after such clear-cut revelation. How was it fair to celebrate those guys for faith that wasn’t faith at all, that was just obedience to what they plainly observed to be true? And what sense did it make to punish the rest of humanity who had never been privy to such explicit revelation?”

I didn’t know the author was a poet before starting this book but the amount of quotes I want to share with you shows you how incredibly well this book is written. Did it set out to do too much and at the end succumbed to cliche? Yes. But I liked the journey and even the cliche ending didn’t dim that for me. I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

Fiction, Historical, literary fiction, Mystery

Book Review: The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

twonightstands

“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

Black Authors, Fiction, Historical, literary fiction, race

Book Review: James by Percival Everett

twonightstands

“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

Fiction, Historical, literary fiction, race, thriller

Book Review: The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb

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

Fiction, Historical, literary fiction, race

Book Review: Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

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

Fiction, Historical, literary fiction, romance

Book Review: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

twonightstands

“Because while musical prodigies are always celebrated, early readers aren’t. And that’s because early readers are only good at something others will eventually be good at, too. So being first isn’t special – it’s just annoying.”

Elizabeth Zott is a chemist, a single mother and a very reluctant cooking star host of the beloved, Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (continuously proclaiming how hard it is and using chemistry terms!) proves to be very popular and revolutionary. She’s not just teaching women how to cook but daring them to change the status quo of things in the early 1960s. How did a chemist with a masters degree get here? How did she end up in the kitchen? Well, you’re in for the most unusual love story.

“Imagine if all men took women seriously . . .“

Zott is the only female chemist at Hastings Research Institute, even though her male colleagues constantly come to her for help, they do not think she is smart enough. They find her too uppity because she refuses to make copies, make coffee, or anything else that her male colleagues aren’t required to do. They are also resentful of the fact that she is beautiful and does not want to date any of them, be groped or “accidentally” touched. She experiences so much sexism at work until she meets the often oblivious Calvin Evans.

My favorite thing about Garmus’ characterization of Evans is that she does not write him as a perfect paragon of feminism. Yes, he does not logically understand why Zott is not treated better, given the intellect she possesses and he takes her ideas seriously, but he is still just a man. He proposes to her even though she already told him she does not intend to ever get married. He automatically assumes that she would change her name and completely blanches at the suggestion that if it isn’t such a big deal then he should change his to hers.

This story is filled with so many great side characters. A neighbor that could have been the stereotypical nosy neighbour but Garmus writes her to be so much more. If you’re an animal lover, there’s a dog named six-thirty that most animal lovers would absolutely adore. I am not an animal lover but even I appreciated his contributions to the plot! A priest that fleets in and out of Calvin and Elizabeth’s lives, a very smart and delightful daughter called Mad! and a secretary at Hastings that makes Elizabeth’s life a living hell!

I’m getting weary of reading about quirky female characters who are written like they’re on the spectrum but are not written consistently. Elizabeth in my opinion was very naive, socially awkward and sometimes delusional. There are so many times I just felt like this character was not at all realistic.

The blurb on this book says it’s supposed to be laugh out loud funny, I didn’t find it funny. This book should actually come with a trigger warning – there’s a brutal rape, an attempted rape and suicide. I don’t think I even smiled once. The character said something about subsidized child care in Sweden and I had to google this because I was quite shocked that this would be a thing in the early 60’s which is when this book was set in and I was right, subsidized child care was not a thing till the late 70’s in Sweden. I wonder why her editor didn’t catch that.

Anyway, I did enjoy this book overall and would recommend it. I went into it with extremely high expectations built up by bookstagram and I think I was ultimately a little let down. I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads. It is a debut novel and I must say, it read like one. If you enjoy quirky characters and a charming cast of support characters, then this one is for you.

Leggy

Fiction, Historical, LGBT, literary fiction, race, romance

Book Review: Olga Dies dreaming by Xóchitl González

twonightstands

“You must remember, mijo, even people who were once your sails can become your anchors.”

Despite all the factors against them, Olga and her brother, Pedro ” Prieto” Acevedo made it in New York. Olga is a rich wedding planner for Manhattan’s elite while Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrified latino neighborhood in Brooklyn. On the surface, they’re living the American dream but there is something more going on underneath it all.

Olga may be creating dreams of love for other people but she is unable to fall in love herself until she meets Matteo, who forces her to examine long buried family secrets. 27 years ago, their mother, Blanca left them to advance a militant cause that was suppose to free native people all over the world. But with nothing achieved, she comes barreling back into their lives like she didn’t abandon her children all these years ago.

It took me a long time to pick up this book, because the cover and the blurb do it no favors. I think the blurb is quite accurate but I just didn’t expect it to have so much life and culture and such a strong narration. This book is told through the perspective of both Olga and Prieto and interspaced by the letters their mum writes them through the years. Letters that strictly scolds them for whatever decision that spreads through the grapevine that she disapproves of.

I enjoyed Olga’s narration the best, it’s filled with so much snark and wit while Prieto’s was almost stifling. The secret he’s hiding and the length he has gone to hide it is almost suffocating as he tells us upfront and then we carry it throughout the book. Prieto sets out to become a politician to help Puerto Rico and his Brooklyn neighborhood but along the way, he bites off more than he can chew.

The Acevedo family is so boisterous and filled with so much love and joy. I loved reading about everyone in the family, how they all chip in to help each other out and how they find the spaces they are needed to fill up, whenever anyone is about to be left behind. It reminds me of a big Nigerian family and I could relate so much to it.

While I enjoyed the characters in this book, I felt like the political commentary was not subtle at all. Maybe the author did not intend for it to be subtle but I felt at some point that I was being hit over my head with a hammer by a lot of it, especially on gentrification. I feel like it’s all been said before, and sadly, there wasn’t anything new. Also, this is largely a character driven book, so if you’re not into that, this book is definitely not for you because I feel like you live in the narrators’ heads a lot.

I also would love to read the reviews of actual Puerto Ricans for this book because it deals with a lot of actual law and politics involving Puerto Rico. I did not know that the PROMESA law was a real law signed in 2016 until I googled it. I wonder if actual Puerto Ricans enjoyed the use of this as a plotline especially as the opinions on this law and the way it was enacted afterwards is largely negative even though it was propped up by a lot of famous Puerto Ricans.

Anyway, this is a debut book and I can’t wait to read what else the author has for us in the future. I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads. Have you guys read this one? Is this a book you have on your TBR list?

Leggy

dystopian, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical, romance, Young Adult

Book Review: Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan

twonightstands

“Some scars are carved into our bones – a part of who we are, shaping what we become.”

Daughter of the Moon Goddess is inspired by the legend of Chang’e, the Chinese moon goddess, in which a young woman’s quest to free her mother, pits her against the most powerful immortal in the realm. Xingyin who has spent all her life on the moon discovers that her mother, the moon goddess, is actually a prisoner on the moon. One day, her magic flares and brings her mother’s powerful jailers to the moon to investigate forcing her to flee the only home she’s ever known. Alone and afraid, she makes her way to the Celestial Kingdom where she disguises herself and comes up with a plan to break the enchantment keeping her mother on the moon and gain her mother’s freedom.

“I was no longer a child willing to drift with the ride – I would steer against the current if I had to. and if I won, by some miraculous stroke of luck, I would never be helpless again.”

I was very excited when I found out about this book. Fantasy? Female protagonist? A Chinese setting? CHECK! I think I was expecting more Poppy War so, this protagonist and the entire world building fell flat for me. The story telling and world building wasn’t strong enough to immerse me into this world. Xingyin comes to the celestial kingdom and finds a job as a maiden for a powerful family and no one even investigates her background? Okay, I’m going to let that go.

But then she competes and wins a place as Prince Liwei’s companion and no one knows where she’s from, who her family is and nobody bothers to ask or investigate? It just rang so ridiculous to me that a stranger would be let near the heir to the throne without even a single question asked. Also, the competition to be selected as Prince Liwei’s companion was an absolute joke. I just expected it to be more intriguing, to show us how cunning or smart our protagonist was but it was all rigged for her to win.

This is a YA fantasy so of course there’s a love triangle. I thought this trope was being phased out of YA but I guess not. I found Prince Liwei to be a very 2 dimensional character, entirely predictable. A prince who is too good and cares too much. A prince who is better than his father but detests all the obligations he has to fulfil as the crown prince like being betrothed to a member of one of the most powerful families in the kingdom. He just wants to train and fall in love with whoever he wants and paint and care soooo deeply without having to make any tough decisions.

Wenzhi, the other love interest, is a high ranking army official who has won so many battles and brought great respect to the celestial kingdom. He has a dislike for all things royal and just wants to fight. He’s competent and smart and mysterious. Yet another person who was just allowed to rise in the army ranks even though no one knows where he’s from.

“It was only later that I learned the Chamber of Lions was reserved for the army’s most skilled warriors. While most had taken months, a year even to master every trap, it took me a matter of weeks.”

Xingyin was great at EVERYTHING she tried. She shot an arrow for the first time and was just an absolute natural. She learnt everything and became so strong in a matter of weeks. This is a woman who spent all her growing years in solitude and has never worked out a day in her life. She almost beat Prince Liwei in archery a mere month after she started training even though he had trained all his life.

Anyway, a lot happens in this book so at least you get a lot of bang for your buck. I think because I read a lot of fantasy, this book was not for me. It wasn’t very good world building, the politics isn’t intriguing enough for me to ignore the plot holes and the romance wasn’t passionate enough for two people, not to talk of a three way.

I do think if you enjoy romance books and YA literature, you’re going to enjoy this book. If you enjoy epic fantasies or if you read Poppy War and are looking for a dupe, this book is not for you at all. So while this book was not for me, I actually think it has an audience. It has above 4 stars on goodreads so it’s definitely popular.

This is one book that I wanted so badly to talk to someone about after I finished it so much so that I’m so desperate to join an in-person book club. Have you read this book? Did you enjoy it? Let me know in the comments.

Leggy

Book Related Topics, Chick-Lit, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical, romance, Uncategorized

What I’ve Been Reading Lately: 4 Quick Fire Reviews

twonightstands
Image result for what i've been reading lately

When I’m not reading the latest literary fiction books, I’m reading backlist titles that are fun and don’t require any thinking on my part. These are the sort of books that have kept my mental health in check this year. Enjoy 4 short reviews for the price of one!

1. The Hike by Drew Magary

27833803

“This future you live in . . . would I like it?” “Honestly, it’s probably not that different from the world you know. Some people are happy. Some people are angry. There are wars. I don’t know if time makes much of a difference. The world changes, but people act the way people always do.”

Ben takes a business trip to rural Pennsylvania and decides to take a hike while waiting for his meeting. He stumbles on a hiking path and starts down the road only to find himself in the middle of a nightmare. He is warned that if he gets off the path he will die. With no other choice but to move forward, Ben finds himself encountering monsters, and talking crabs, men from the 18th century and giants who are trying to kill him. He spends years on the path just trying to find his way home. He is told he just has to stay on the path and track down the “producer” – the creator of this bizarre world to get back to his family.

I picked up this book because it was recommended as a spooky read for halloween. They were wrong because this isn’t a spooky read at all. It reads more as fantasy or an adventure tale. There was nothing scary about it. Also, everyone mentions the last page being amazing. I didn’t think it was that great and I figured it out before I got to the end of the book, maybe because I was looking for it after reading all the reviews that were amazed at the ending.

I gave this one 3 stars on Goodreads. I really don’t know who would enjoy this book. It’s very bizarre but I guess if you liked Alice in Wonderland, you might like this one? It was a fun read to me.

2. Forge of Destiny by Yrsillar (Forge of Destiny #1)

56351235. sx318

Ling Qi is a girl who has had to survive in the slums for years but she has just been recruited for having the talent that might make her an immortal in the future if she works hard. Ling is from a world ruled by immortals and stalked by beasts and spirits. The immortals are the richest and most revered members of the empire. Sent to the prestigious Argent Peak Sect to harness her talent, Ling is determined to take advantage of every opportunity given to her at school. She must work hard to catch up with her peers who are from rich immortal families and have been training for this their entire life. The sect grants the students only three months truce, for three months they’re not allowed to kill or fight each other but after the three months all bets are off. Ling struggles to advance and be stronger in time for the end of the truce and also gather enough allies who’ll stand and fight with her when the time comes.

I quite enjoyed this book. It ticked off a lot of my fantasy loves – female protagonist who’s not here to fuck around, school/training a la Harry Potter, strong enemies and allies. If you love progression fantasy, this is the book for you. I really enjoyed this one but I must say it got slow at the end and I wanted to see more of the bigger picture, so I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads. Ill definitely be continuing the series.

3. Iron Prince by Bryce O’Connor and Luke Chmilenko (Warformed: Stormweaver #1)

55559974. sy475

Afflicted with a painful disease and abandoned by his parents because it, Reidon has been a ward of the state all of his life. He has had to fight all his life for a place at the academy where he has been training and getting beat up. His perseverance gets him noticed by the most powerful artificial intelligence in human history who grants him a CAD – a Combat Assistant Device- with awful specs but an infinite potential for growth. Reidon is at the bottom of his class at Galens Institute with everyone wondering why the reputable school admitted someone with such horrible specs. He becomes a target for everyone who thinks he shouldn’t be there. Reidon begins a slow but determined journey up the school rankings determined to be the greatest fighter the universe has ever seen.

Again, I love fantasy books set in school and this was such a fun read. I love main characters who are underdogs and you get to root for them as they defy the odds. I gave this one 4 stars on Goodreads. It’s nothing deep but if you’re looking for fantasy that you don’t have to think too hard about or keep up with a lot of characters then give this one a go.

4. A Wicked Kind of Husband by Mia Vincy (Longhope Abbey #3)

43473742

“Lucy picked up her skirts and danced down the hall to her own door. “I’m going to run away to Ireland!” she yelled. Cassandra followed after her. “Haven’t the Irish suffered enough?” “Maybe a pirate will kidnap me. If I’m lucky.” “If we’re all lucky.”

Cassandra has seen her husband only once – the day she married him. She’s perfectly fine with this arrangement because she only got married to secure her inheritance anyway. She doesn’t care that he has essentially banned her from going to London because she’s still going to go when he’s guaranteed to be out of town. Until he shows up in London too and gets into an argument with her where they don’t even recognize each other. Cassandra finds herself sharing a house with her husband for the first time while he’s trying everything to get her to go back to the country and leave him alone. Joshua has his life exactly how he likes it and doesn’t want something as inconvenient as a wife ruining all that. But can he resist falling in love with her?

I really enjoyed reading this one. I’ve had pandemic brain this entire year and reading romance and fantasy have been the only thing keeping me afloat. If you enjoy historical romance, this is the book for you. The characters are absolutely delightful and watching them fall in love was really cute. Definitely give this one a shot. I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads.

Have you read any of these books? Am I the only one whose reading patterns have completely changed this year? Let me know how your reading year has been so far!

Leggy