Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.
Think about using it yourselves!
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Kukum by Michel Jean (tr. Susan Ouriou)
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Finalist, Governor General's Literary Award in the Translation Category
Longlist, 2025 Dublin Literary Award
A Quebec bestseller based on the life of Michel Jean’s great-grandmother that delivers an empathetic portrait of drastic change in an Innu community.
Kukum recounts the story of Almanda Siméon, an orphan raised by her aunt and uncle, who falls in love with a young Innu man despite their cultural differences and goes on to share her life with the Pekuakami Innu community. They accept her as one of their own: Almanda learns their language, how to live a nomadic existence, and begins to break down the barriers imposed on Indigenous women. Unfolding over the course of a century, the novel details the end of traditional ways of life for the Innu, as Almanda and her family face the loss of their land and confinement to reserves, and the enduring violence of residential schools.
Kukum intimately expresses the importance of Innu ancestral values and the need for freedom nomadic peoples feel to this day.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Heartfelt love stokes equally deep incandescent outrage. "My children were born in the woods. My grandchildren grew up on a reserve. The former were educated on the land, the latter in a residential school. When they returned, they spoke French. The white priests forbade them from speaking Innu-aimun and even punished those who did. Another tie had been severed between the generations. They thought that by robbing our children of their language they would make them white. But an Innu who speaks French is still Innu. With yet another wound."
I'd rate it more highly had it not felt...novelistic...and that is not its stated brief. The author's written eight or more novels so I suppose the cadence of fiction is natural to him now.
Arachnide Editions (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks a reasonable $17.99 for a trade paper edition.
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The Unraveling of Julia by Lisa Scottoline
Rating: 3.25* of five
The Publisher Says: From a #1 international bestselling author, a gothic, suspenseful tale in which a young widow inherits a Tuscan estate from a mysterious benefactor and finds herself thrust into the crosshairs of a dangerous conspiracy—a “compelling thriller with dashes of romance and excellent twists!” (Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author).
Lately, Julia Pritzker is beginning to think she’s cursed. She’s lost her adoptive parents, then her husband is murdered. When she realizes that her horoscope essentially foretold his death, she begins to spiral. She fears her fate is written in the stars, not held in her own hands.
Then a letter arrives out of the blue, informing her that she has inherited a Tuscan villa and vineyard —but her benefactor is a total stranger named Emilia Rossi. Julia has no information about her biological family, so she wonders if Rossi could be a blood relative. Bewildered, she heads to Tuscany for answers.
There, Julia is horrified to discover that Rossi was a paranoid recluse, who believed herself to be a descendent of Duchess Caterina Sforza, a legendary Renaissance ruler. Stunned by her uncanny resemblance to Rossi, and even to Caterina, Julia is further unnerved when she unearths eerie parallels between them, including an obsession with astrology.
Before long, Julia suspects she’s being followed, and strange things begin to happen. Not even a chance meeting with a handsome Florentine can ease her troubled mind. When events turn deadly, Julia’s harrowing struggle becomes a search for her identity, a race to save her sanity, and ultimately, a question of her very survival.
Twisty, transportive, and haunting—this is suspense with a passport.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Sudsy summer fun. Very much in the vein of Gothic mistress...nay, creatrix...Ann Radcliffe and, more especially, The Italian (1797).
In common with what I honestly feel sure is the source material, it's convoluted and overcomplicated; it repays close attention; and gives the frisson of uncertainty and unreality that the character is undergoing to the reader as well.
Grand Central Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks $14.99 for an ebook. Entertainment at a reasonable price to my mind.
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My Life as Edgar by Dominique Fabre (tr. Anna Lehmann)
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Edgar loves nothing more than listening to the birds in the trees, the squeaking of moles in nearby chalk quarries, the conversations trickling out of the carpeted offices surrounding his favorite park in the suburbs of Paris. He also listens to the hushed conversations of passersby, strangers who whisper that he is “not all there.”
But what constitutes the supposedly insufficient nature of Edgar’s interior life? Dominique Fabre gives himself over to Edgar’s way of seeing, his sensitivity, his innocence and wisdom, his longings and perceptions, his tentative interpolations into the social fabric of 1960s France, and in each passage we find a stirring answer. Fabre’s lucid, layered, and utterly fresh bildungsroman will take you by surprise and leave an immutable mark on your heart.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: In under two hundred pages, this story will twang whatever heartstrings you still have and make you realize how seldom you really look at anything.
Before me, I really wonder what there was. Kids often believe that everything begins the moment they’re born, but not your humble servant Edgar. I’m not even sure I could find the place where I lived before without making a mistake, Madame Clarisse Georges. I’m still not all there, but I know how to hide it well. I’m grown up now. I’m still quiet and unassuming too, but I’m not sure that won’t change. Sometimes I want to shorten all this and get right to the train station platform, to the moment we’re going home. I’ll be eleven then.You're charmed or you're not, but that's a representative of the tone (and Mme Georges is a creep).
All y'all who like Flowers for Algernon but would prefer to smile while reading it, all y'all who like Zazie in the Metro but would prefer not to work that hard, here's us a book. It doesn't really linger in the mind, though, so not An Event...a pleasant Sunday's pleasure read.
Archipelago Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) only wants $13.99 for an ebook. If you need some sincere sweetness, spend it.
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If You Love It, Let It Kill You: a novel by Hannah Pittard
Rating: 2.75* of five
The Publisher Says: A refreshingly irreverent novel about art, desire, domesticity, freedom, and the intricacies of the twenty-first-century female experience, from the acclaimed writer Hannah Pittard.
A novelist learns that an unflattering version of herself will appear prominently—and soon—in her ex-husband’s debut novel. For a week, her life continues largely unaffected by the news—she cooks, runs, teaches, entertains—but the morning after baking mac ’n’ cheese from scratch for her nephew’s sixth birthday, she wakes up changed. The contentment she’s long enjoyed is gone. In its place: nothing. A remarkably ridiculous midlife crisis ensues, featuring a talking cat and a game called Dead Body.
Steeped in the strangeness of contemporary life and suggestive of expansive metaphoric possibilities, If You Love It, Let It Kill You is a deeply nuanced and disturbingly funny examination of memory, ownership, and artistic expression.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: It struck me as desperately sad, not in the least funny, and unpleasantly like walking in on two friends having what we all know is their last fight.
Plenty of zingers if you're into the insult-comedy skits of the Aughties, Conan O'Brien-lite.
Henry Holt and Co. (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) think it's worth $14.99 for an ebook. I'd be frothing mad if I'd paid that for it.
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In Vitro: On Longing and Transformation by Isabel Zapata (tr. Robin Myers)
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: A MEDITATION ON IN VITRO FERTILIZATION THAT EXPANDS AND COMPLICATES THE STORIES WE TELL ABOUT PREGNANCY.
Medical interventions become an exercise in patience, desire, and delirium in this intimate account of bodily transformation and disruption. In candid, graceful prose, Isabel Zapata gives voice to the strangeness and complexities of conception and motherhood that are rarely discussed publicly. Zapata frankly addresses the misogyny she experienced during fertility treatments, explores the force of grief in imagining possible futures, and confronts the societal expectations around maternity.
In the tradition of Rivka Galchen’s Little Labors and Sarah Manguso’s Ongoingness, In Vitro draws from diary and essay forms to create a new kind of literary companion and open up space for nuanced conversations about pregnancy.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: The author tells a deeply personal story of the incredible demands motherhood makes. There's a huge added emotional and financial burden pursuing fertility treatments, but none of it is ever easy. Getting treatment for infertility cost Author Zapata a giant emotional fortune just in dealing with misogyny (which surprised and appalled me, given where she was).
I myownself have always felt in my water that parenting (not just mothering) is what comes after birth, the washing feeding teaching consoling raising right parts; after reading this candid memoir I'm more sure than ever that birthing is, or should be, less emphasized by the Cult Of Mother. Read this journey to see if you think it's the right path for you.
Coffee House Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges $16.99 for an ebook. Compared to how much IVF costs, a bargain.
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Black Foam: A Novel by Haji Jabir (tr. Sawad Hussain & Marcia Lynx Qualey)
Rating: 3.75* of five
The Publisher Says: From award-winning Eritrean author Haji Jabir comes a profoundly intimate novel about one man’s tireless attempt to find his place in the world.
Dawoud is on the run from his murky past, aiming to discover where he belongs. He tries to assimilate into different groups along his journey through North Africa and Israel, changing his clothes, his religious affiliations, and even his name to fit in, but the safety and peace he seeks remain elusive. It seems prejudice is everywhere, holding him back, when all he really wants is to create a simple life he can call his own. A chameleon, Dawoud—or David, Adal, or Dawit, depending on where and when you meet him—is not lost in this whirl of identities. In fact, he is defined by it.
Dawoud’s journey is circuitous and specific, but the desire to belong is universal. Spellbinding to the final page, Black Foam is both intimate and grand in scale, much like the experiences of the millions of people migrating to find peace and safety in the twenty-first century.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I came to this read naïve about how much goes into seeking asylum on the deepest personal level:
He thought about getting up and walking out of the meeting, since his fate was already clear. But then a new idea took hold of him, filling him with energy. He would tell the truth. He would tell his own story, and the European would hear something he’d never heard before. He would tell his own great secret for the sake of his salvation.How incredibly brave, honest, and hopeless did this practiced dissimulator have to be to tell the whole truth in a desperate final attempt to survive.
Again, he lifted his head. The European’s lips still held the traces of a smirk, but this quickly slid off when he saw David staring into his eyes so firmly it confused him. The European set the pen aside and resettled his thick glasses, then clasped his hands and placed them under his chin, looking keenly at David.
David said: ‘I’m Free Gadli.’
The translator faltered, then dropped into silence and turned to the session’s secretary, who hadn’t written a single letter but was instead staring at David in astonishment. The European was confused as he saw the young men’s expressions but couldn’t understanding what was going on. He angrily ordered his translator to explain. The translator looked at David, as if giving him one last chance to take it back. Then he cleared his throat and translated in a low voice: ‘He says he’s one of the “fruits of the struggle.” ’
Nuance and honesty are rare in the man's world, gifts grudgingly given, currency hoarded until the final moment comes to bet everything. More than three and three-quarter stars might've come had I been given more than the tightest of focuses on him as he wriggles, twists, bulls ahead, and strives against hopelessness. I just wore out.
Amazon Crossing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks you politely for $16.99 to read a trade paper edition. You read that right.
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JEAN-LUC PERSECUTED by C.F. Ramuz (tr. Olivia Baes)
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: A novel of love, betrayal, madness, and downfall from an iconic Swiss writer of the early 20th century.
Jean-Luc Persecuted follows the ill-fated life of an unhappily married man. When Jean-Luc’s wife pursues an affair and leaves him with their child, Jean-Luc’s behavior becomes more and more erratic. He falls to drinking, behaving recklessly, and squandering his money.
The narrative follows the explosive downfall of a lone man and his unstoppable mental collapse, surrounded by villagers unable to effect real change. This novel, never before translated, exemplifies the earthy, realistic, often allegorical style of iconic Swiss writer Ramuz.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: A short work...under two hundred pages...by a (male) writer of whom the publisher asserts, "Ramuz pioneered a common Swiss literary identity, writing books about mountaineers, farmers, or villagers engaging in often tragic struggles against catastrophe." Not being Swiss, I can't comment on that; I'll note that Swiss literary identity follows linguistic lines if his eponymous foundation's standards of awards for meritorious Swiss literary work IN FRENCH are to be believed. (Also, we're due another awardee by his foundation this year as they're made every five years. I've never heard of any past winners.)
I'm sure it went over fine a hundred fifteen years ago but it's pretty misogynistic and deeply appalling on any modern level of consideration for its rank abusive character. I rate it as high as I do because it's good to see how far we've come, and it's good to have proof...this was unexceptionable when it came out this century!...that this progress is speeding up.
Deep Vellum (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) wants $9.95 for an ebook.
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Someone to Watch Over You by Kumi Kimura (tr. Yuki Tejima)
Rating: 3.75* of five
The Publisher Says: An unsettling, poignant debut novella about unusual connections fostered by the covid pandemic, perfect for fans of sharp literary fiction that reflects and confronts our world.
It’s early 2020, and with the world in chaos as covid spreads, two lonely people, both seeking to break with their pasts, meet and start sharing a home.
One is a former security guard who was captured on video knocking down a protester who died soon afterward; the other, a former teacher accused of driving a student to suicide.
In an oppressive atmosphere of tension and fear, the pair avoid direct contact and communicate through notes and their shared presences, close yet distant. Their odd connection, with neither affection nor trust, brings them a kind of privacy and safety they both need—but at what cost?
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Pushkin Press's Japanese Novellas series is a fantastic way to discover new-to-you literatures without investing many hours in reading a novel. Japanese literary culture likes the novella format. I do too, and this one's the first translated into English from this author.
The two characters are trapped by COVID in a strange town with a stranger for company...a sense of claustrophobia pervades their lives, and interactions are intimate quite quickly despite their brief acquaintance. Each carries a terrible guilt that, as the story meanders along, they work to explain and justify. Satisfyingly direct about emotions, reticent about personal feelings; the ending is fulfilling.
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks $11.99 for an ebook. I would not feel upset had I paid that much for it.
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Mbaqanga Nights by Leonora Meriel
Rating: 3.25* of five
The Publisher Says: 1989.
The African Jazz Pioneers are in full swing. The club is hopping. Glasses and plates are pushed aside as the room dances.
What’s so special?
Look around. The faces are black, brown and white. It’s Durban, South Africa. It’s apartheid. It’s illegal.
When a pair of young music lovers decide to follow their dreams and open a jazz club that will host their favourite musicians, they have little idea of what stark choices they will be facing as the political situation heats up and riots tear through the surrounding townships.
With an epic tale that starts in the depths of a Ukrainian shtetl, and winds its way back and forth across oceans – history and memory serve to create a personal story of individual choice – and the fate of nations.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I hoped to hear more than I did about the nightclub founded by the grandsons of Ukrainian Jewish emigrants to South Africa than the emigrants themselves. Both stories were, in themselves, interesting enough. I would not pick up the emigration one on its own.
Not a bad read, but one that shorted the plot I most wanted to read about. Fans of Jewish-persecution stories will enjoy the parts I found tedious, and possibly the inherited rebellion against segregation/apartheid as well. These are familial Social Justice Warriors.
Granite Cloud (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges $4.99 for an ebook. Reasonable return on investment IMO.
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Such Sweet Thunder: A Novel by Vincent O. Carter (foreword by Jesse McCarthy)
Rating: 3.75* of five
The Publisher Says: This must-read rediscovery, published in an elegant and unabridged paperback edition with a new foreword, is a literary masterpiece poised to take its rightful place in the American literary canon.
Such Sweet Thunder immerses readers in the life of a precocious infant, Amerigo Jones, and then tells the story of his first 18 years as he becomes aware of the adult world, from racism and crime to falling in love. All the while, in one of the most moving homages to parents ever to appear in literature, Amerigo is protected by Viola and Rutherford, who are loving and, mostly, even-tempered, but also desperately young — teenagers themselves when Amerigo is born — and poor.
When it was finally published in 2003, 40 years after Carter completed it and 20 years after he died, Critics hailed the novel’s “unflinching condemnation of a society that rejects bright, eager Black children” (The Cleveland Plain Dealer).
This “colossal work of fiction” (The Kansas City Star) and “vibrant portrait of African-American life” (New York Times) is set in an era marred by racial segregation and relentless, daily injustices and yet renders with deep appreciation and artistry a time and place enriched by a widely influential African American culture and a fierce feeling for family and community.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: A truly magisterial story of Black life and love, family first and last, all set at the dark historical juncture of the 1930s made still darker by racism. No wonder no one would take this on! It's too honest to make white people feel good and virtuous. It's a weirdly lyrical storytelling voice, one that keeps you reading...it's a really dark story, so that carrot leads when reader fatigue sets in.
I'm not five-starring it because it is much too long...650+ pages...and, like Ellison's Invisible Man, overly recursive. It vitiates the kind of pacing that makes the pages fly by. YMMV, of course, and no matter what, you owe yourself a long look at the available ebook sample before you pass it up. It's possible you'll ring like a freshly struck bell at first read.
Pushkin Press Classics (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requests $13.99 for an ebook. Well worth the spondulix for the right reader.
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The Last Conclave by Glenn Cooper
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: A vanished conclave. An empty Sistine Chapel. And a secret buried for eight centuries.
From internationally bestselling author Glenn Cooper comes a gripping Vatican conspiracy thriller that has already topped the charts in Italy.
When Pope John XXIV is found dead in his bed just two years after his election, the world braces for a new conclave. But as the cardinal electors are sealed inside the Sistine Chapel, something unthinkable happens.
Hours pass. No smoke rises. No vote is announced.
And when Vatican Secretary of State Elisabetta Celestino breaks protocol to open the doors—she finds the chapel empty. The cardinals have vanished without a trace.
CNN religion expert Cal Donovan is on-site to cover the conclave, but soon finds himself swept into a global investigation. As panic spreads and theories abound, Cal uncovers a chilling trail leading back to a centuries-old order—one that has waited in the shadows to cleanse the sins of the Church... with blood.
Ancient secrets. Ruthless power. And a final reckoning that will shake the foundations of faith.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Lotsa detail on the Conclave and its history, which I loved; a very quick overview of the Cathars (not, please note, a name any one of them would recognize) that felt satisfactory to me; and overall enough hither, thither, and yon-ing to keep you from realizing you've read this before.
Vatican evildoing is something I really enjoy. This iteration was fun for its timing in a papal election year, but pretty fantastical so you can just ride along.
Lascaux Media (non-affiliate Amazon link) asks for $5.99 for an ebook. Seems reasonable if you're into Vatican skulduggery.
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Ciao, Amore, Ciao by Sandro Martini
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: This dual-timeline saga based on true events is “vivid and gripping… A terrific read” (Kirkus Reviews).
When journalist Alex Lago discovers an old photograph in his dying father’s possessions, he slowly unravels a secret stretching back to World War II that could topple a political dynasty.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: No one anywhere ever has led a blameless life; but sometimes blame is more powerful, more burdensome, harder to forgive, than others. This is the story of one of those times. It moves between timelines of grieving today to acting yesteryear.
I found the switching between the timelines unmotivated by the action, and the evocation of the wrongs of the past pretty exculpatory for what they were.
Black Rose Writing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) sells paperbacks for $24.95.
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The Blue Book of Nebo by Manon Steffan Ros
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Prize-winner in three categories of the 2019 Wales Book of the Year Award, The Blue Book of Nebo paints a spellbinding and eerie picture of society’s collapse, and the relationships that persist after everything as we know it disappears.
After nuclear disaster, Rowenna and her young son are among the rare survivors in rural north-west Wales. Left alone in their isolated hillside cottage, after others have died or abandoned the towns and villages, they must learn new skills in order to remain alive. With no electricity or modern technology they must return to the old ways of living off the land, developing new personal resources.
While they become more skilled and stronger, the relationship between mother and son changes in subtle ways, as Dylan must take on adult responsibilities, especially once his baby sister Mona arrives. Despite their close understanding, mother and son have their own secrets, which emerge as in turn they jot down their thoughts and memories in a found notebook. As each reflects on their old life and the events since the disaster which has brought normal, twenty-first century life to an end, The Blue Book of Nebo becomes a collective confidante, representing the future of their people and a new history to live by.
In this prize-winning and best-selling new novel, Manon Steffan Ros not only explores the human capacity to find new strengths when faced with the need to survive, but also the structures and norms of the contemporary world.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Post-apocalyptic stories have been a staple of my reading diet since the early 1970s, when we thought a new Ice Age was looming. *sigh* sounds lovely in fiery 2025, no? This means you'd nest be at the top of your game to hope to impress the old curmudgeon.
Not really happening here. It's a YA for sophisticated high-schoolers who love Greta Thunberg. Well enough executed, but I'm not fourteen anymore; I'd gift it to smart fourteen-year-olds in a heartbeat.
Deep Vellum (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) says "$12.95 please" when you check your ebook out. Worth every penny.
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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!
As she says:
People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.
So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.
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Pan by Michael W. Clune (30%)
Rating: 2.5* of five
Time's The 100 Must-Read Books of 2025 selection
The Publisher Says: A strange and brilliant teenager's first panic attacks lead him down the rabbit hole in this wild, highly anticipated debut novel from one of our most distinctive literary minds.
Nicholas is fifteen when he forgets how to breathe. He had plenty of reason to feel unstable already: He’s been living with his dad in the bleak Chicago suburbs since his Russian-born mom kicked him out. Then one day in geometry class, Nicholas suddenly realizes that his hands are objects. The doctor says it’s just panic, but Nicholas suspects that his real problem might not be a psychiatric one: maybe the Greek god Pan is trapped inside his body. As his paradigm for his own consciousness crumbles, Nicholas; his best friend, Ty; and his maybe-girlfriend, Sarah, hunt for answers why—in Oscar Wilde and in Charles Baudelaire, in rock and roll and in Bach, and in the mysterious, drugged-out Barn, where their classmate Tod’s charismatic older brother Ian leads the high schoolers in rituals that might end up breaking more than just the law.
Thrilling, cerebral, and startlingly funny, Pan is a new masterpiece of the coming-of-age genre by Guggenheim fellow and literary scholar Michael Clune, whose memoir of heroin addiction, White Out—named one of The New Yorker’s best books of the year—earned him a cult readership. Now, in Pan, the great novel of our age of anxiety, Clune drops us inside the human psyche, where we risk discovering that the forces controlling our inner lives could be more alien than we want to let ourselves believe.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I lost patience, and interest, here:
"What are you, the weed police?" she said.I'm too old for this. I hate the feeling of smoking...anything that foul filling my mouth activates the rejection response if you follow me...and the overblown lingering loving gaze on something that nauseates me, well, it's not the first and I strongly suspect won't be the last instance of suchlike nonsense.
But now the others were looking at me. The long burble of the bong sounded accusingly under Tod's sucking mouth. His eyes, lit from below by the lighter he held at the bowl, shone like wet stone in a face made indefinite by shadow.
Clearly it speaks to others, it's a huge success, but it is Not For Me.
The Penguin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks $14.99 for an ebook. If you're 25 or nostalgic for when you were, maybe.
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I'll Look So Hot in a Coffin: And Other Thoughts I Used to Have About My Body (57%) by Carla Sosenko
Rating: 2.5* of five
The Publisher Says: An intimate, irreverent memoir about one woman’s experience living with a deformity, and her quest to find freedom and joy in her body.
Carla Sosenko was born with Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome, a rare vascular disorder that resulted in a mass of flesh on her back, legs of different sizes, a hunched posture, and other idiosyncrasies big and small. She spent years trying to hide, but later experimented with reckless exhibitionism in a masochistic quest to be seen. She couldn't stop worrying about how she measured up; she ruminated on the comments other people felt comfortable making about her body.
In this candid and funny memoir, Carla shares what existing in an unconventional body has meant for her self-image, mental health, relationships, and career. She writes of having liposuction at eight years old and obsessively gaming Weight Watchers points. She probes the way the materialistic, looks-obsessed Long Island town of her childhood influenced her psyche. She wrestles with the rise of Ozempic after years of working to reject diet culture. And she tries to parse whether it is in spite of or because of her physical differences that she is a chatty, outgoing social butterfly who chose a high-profile career in media and is obsessed with fashion. Most of all, Carla explores the ways in which she’s felt alone and without not disabled but different; the recipient of pretty privilege, but also fatphobia; too much, but still never enough. We see what it means when she learns to claim her body—and mind and spirit and life—for exactly what they her own.
A clarion call for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider or believed they should take up less space, I'll Look So Hot In a Coffin offers hope, recognition, and a new way to understand ourselves—by celebrating what sets us apart.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: A key insight in one's path to healing is that the painful old way was in fact your own choice, and served a genuine need as you perceived it. Carla has that insight a lot, and tells us each time. I got tired of it when the subject was desiring men's attention, wanting their validation, instead of just being horny.
I'm glad I read it because I needed to be reminded how very easy it is to be casually cruel to Othered people. I'm glad I stopped when I realized we were going to fail the Bechdel test on her inner monologue.
The Dial Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks $14.95 for an ebook.
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Garbage Town (45%) by Ravi Gupta
Rating: 2* of five
The Publisher Says: The secrets of Fresh Kills were meant to stay buried.
Raj Patel grew up in the shadow of Fresh Kills, the largest landfill the world has ever seen. At sixteen, he’s watched the Staten Island crime family tighten its grip on his town’s lucrative trash business, but he’s kept his distance from their dirty trade—until now.
When Raj and his friends make a chilling discovery deep within the dump, they embark on a search for answers. But they aren’t the only ones looking for the truth, and their pursuers will stop at nothing to guard their secrets. Faced with an impossible choice—protect themselves or expose what they’ve found—Raj and his friends quickly realize there’s no one left to trust. And the deeper they dig, the higher the stakes. Soon, they’re in way over their heads, and the only way out might be through.
In Garbage Town, Ravi Gupta weaves a heart-pounding mystery with the raw intimacy of a coming-of-age tale. Follow Raj and his friends in this late ’90s adventure as they learn that some secrets can’t be unearthed without a price. This might just be the moment that strips them of their innocence—if they can survive.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Weird tonal whiplash...like Scooby Doo, Where Are You? suddenly had a gun battle and Alan M. shot Shaggy. Pick one, this mashup ain't workin' for me.
Then "You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. (Deuteronomy 28:6)" showed up at 45%...not the first bible verse...so I chose to be blessed going out.
Greenleaf Book Group (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks $25.99 for a hardcover, and does not offer an ebook. I suspect you already know what my advice is.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Wicked Innocents: Case No. 1 (48%) (The Frontenac Sisters: Supernatural Sleuths & Monster Hunters) by S H Livernois
Rating: 2.5* of five
The Publisher Says: A little girl spins a hateful web
On Halloween night, Nelly Huggett's mother chases her through the woods, screaming venom, knife in hand. Gillian isn't a nice woman, but this is different.
She is different, strange, not herself. Nelly's father has been acting odd, too, and her brother... So Nelly does what any other precocious ten-year-old would do-she calls supernatural investigators and sisters Hyla and Lizeth Frontenac, in the hopes they might find out what happened to her family. But in the Huggett house, perched on the rugged Maine coast, the sisters discover that nothing is what it seems. Not the Huggetts and certainly not Nelly. Is she just spirited? Misunderstood? Or is she a liar, like everyone says?
She is a dangerous foe, this little girl, with a devious imagination and a dark secret. A dangerous foe whose deception just might ensnare the sisters forever.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: It just stopped mattering to me here:
Lizeth smiled sadly. "Maybe Nelly has a Hyla of her own, a friend who's stood by her through everything."
"That's what I'm hoping."
Halfway through the book and they're still just talking about Nelly without knowledge of her; that is a pacing problem for an investigation-based story for me. Whip it up! So I quit.
Boonies Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) wants $15.00 for a trade paperback.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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