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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Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until—betrayed and brokenhearted—she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America—but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.
In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations of the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I give up. I've read Purple Hibiscus, about 50 pages of Half of a Yellow Sun, and now this four-hundred-page story. I have disliked the stories and the storytelling voice in each of them. No more.
The weird part is that I do not comprehend why I simply do not like this writer's stories. It makes no sense to me; she is not deficient on any craft level, she is writing about women in genuinely important and interesting situations...and I just can not enjoy these words. Third strike, I'm out.
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) will grant you access to the ebook for $14.99. You'll like it better than me for sure.
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StreetWhys: A Dickie Cornish Detective Mystery by Christopher Chambers
Rating: 3.25* of five
The Publisher Says: Washington, DC’s notorious detective, former street denizen Dickie Cornish, faces off with bloodthirsty cops and the justice department in the latest thrilling release by award-winning noir author Christopher Chambers.
In StreetWhys, underground detective Dickie Cornish faces a vindictive murder rap from his past if he doesn’t agree to help prove that the fentanyl ravaging the streets of DC is bankrolled by shadowy donors of a certain former president. Broke and desperate, Cornish soon finds himself on a collision course with shady public defenders and corrupt police officers, forcing him to use his street connections to flip their plan. Or die.
Chambers’s Dickie Cornish series has met with widespread critical acclaim. Publishers Weekly dubbed the series debut, Scavenger, “[A] no-holds-barred crime novel...a 21st-century twist on traditional hardboiled noir.” The Strand Magazine selected Standalone, the second book in the series, as one of the “Top 25 Mystery Novels of the Year,” adding “It’s apparent that the modern heir to Chandler, Woolrich, and Cain is Christopher Chambers, enough said.” And renowned crime author George Pelecanos raves that the series "really nails Washington, DC in the current environment."
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Third Dickie Cornish mystery, first that I've read; I think I'd need to get the first two before I really felt the buzz of connection with the characters I require to fully invest in a series mystery. I liked the noir edges of the setting and the prose.
Might end up retroactively promoted if I get the first two as much into my good graces as this one. I won't urge you to start here but it's worth considering going back for Scavenger.
Three Rooms Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) wants $18.00 for a paperback. Pricey.
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LIES OF A TOYMAKER by KELLY ANN JACOBSON
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: In this retelling of the classic Pinocchio, Paige, a queer teen and wooden-toy maker’s daughter is slowing turning into wood, must cross the demonic Land of Toys to stop the evil Deathsprites before they destroy her world.
Award-winning author Kelly Jacobson (Tink and Wendy) delivers her latest fairytale retelling in LIES OF A TOYMAKER, a cross between the classic Pinocchio and a Stephen King novel like The Gunslinger, Paige (a queer eighteen-year-old girl) is a wooden-toy maker’s daughter dragged from state to state as her mother, Petta Vitaly, hawks her creations from their caravan. When they finally return to Petta’s hometown, Paige discovers Toy Palace, her family’s animatronic toy business, but she keeps the discovery from her mother—only to find that she has begun to turn into a wooden marionette.
With the help of two girls who use Paige’s interest in them to pull off the heist, Paige breaks into Toy Palace and finds out some of the family history her mother has been hiding from her. Though Paige is abandoned by the two girls, she discovers a captive fairy in one of the upper rooms of Toy Palace, Prince Alexio, who shows her that an entire realm, the Land of Toys, has been destroyed by fairies called the Deathsprites—and that her family has been using Prince Alexio’s powers to help the evil fairies gain power through the animatronic toys they are selling for the last eighteen years.
Unable to cope with this new information, Paige runs away from Toy Palace and the captive prince, but her mother and a Toy Palace manager end up rescuing Prince Alexio instead. He finds Paige and takes her to the Land of Toys, where the Deathsprites have been turning sweet toys into terrible monsters determined to kill everything in their path. With the help of the talking cricket and Paige’s newfound strength as a marionette, the two must cross the realm of piled toy parts and frightful creations to stop the Deathsprites from making a portal to Earth that will bring destruction on that planet, too.
LIES OF A TOYMAKER is a queer feminist YA retelling of the classic that reexamines what it means to “lie” for the benefit of others, and how the lines between truth and fiction are not always as clear as they seem. The book is told from several different perspectives, but follows Paige’s journey most centrally. Many classics from the original story make an appearance, such as the whale, the talking cricket, the fox and the cat, and the Fairy with Azure Hair.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: I'm not a big booster of the Pinocchio story, it has always made me bit...uneasy...in some basal-ganglia ways. I'm no less squicked out by this retelling. It's possible my feeling that this story, after all the other stories retold by her I've carried on about was not of the same caliber.
It's really not reasonable that I can't separate a story I don't like from its interpertation by a storyteller I very much do, but here we are.
Three Rooms Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks for $9.99 to let you read the ebook, which...of course...is entirely up to you.
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The Trial of Anna Thalberg by Eduardo Sangarcía (Tr. Elizabeth Bryer)
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Does evil lurk in the shadows of the forest, or in the human heart? Eduardo Sangarcía’s tale of one woman’s witch trial opens the door to deeper horrors.
Anna Thalberg is a peasant woman shunned for her red hair and provocative beauty. When she is dragged from her home and accused of witchcraft, her neighbors do not intervene. Only Klaus, Anna’s husband, and Father Friedrich, a priest experiencing a crisis of faith, set out to the city of Würzburg to prove her innocence. There, Anna faces isolation and torture inside the prison tower, while the populace grows anxious over strange happenings within the city walls. Can Klaus and Friedrich convince the church to release Anna, or will she burn at the stake?
Set in the Holy Roman Empire during the Protestant Reformation, The Trial of Anna Thalberg is a story of religious persecution, superstition, and human suffering. While exploring the medieval fear of witches and demons, it delves into enduring human concerns: the historical oppression of women, the inhumanity of institutions, and the existence of God. Frantic in pace and experimental in form, this is an unforgettable debut from Mexican author Eduardo Sangarcía.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: It is astonishing to me that this is a debut novel. Assured, boldly complex storytelling voice meets trenchant story of a woman's fate being determined by men who only see her surface beauty and project their own sin and evil onto her.
I can't shake the uneasy, repellent lushness of Anna's torture by the churchmen. It is a big hurdle to me when women's suffering is presented in a prurient way; I was also a bit underwhelmed by Klaus's characterization stopping at stoical devotee of Anna's.
Restless Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requests and requires you surrender $10.99 in US currency to gain morally sound access to this tale.
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Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulnerable student at an elite college, forced to navigate an opaque past, an uncertain future, tragedies on two continents, and the tantalizing possibilities of love and freedom
When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world with no place for the undocumented. Her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties, and secret societies—which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper’s skepticism: She is both fascinated and repulsed.
Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: A kind of autofiction, this novel is by one of Harvard's first-ever undocumented graduates. I am absolutely the target reader for this story, totally in support of the author's just clain to live here, to contribute her piece to the greatness of the world; yet I did not care about Catalina, her stand-in. I was repelled by Nathaniel, her love interest, because he simply never came across as more than a tiresome man of no perspective and a lot of blather.
So, despite feeling great eagerness at the start, I was not engaged. YMMV, of course.
One World (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges $12.99 for an ebook edition.
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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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Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell by Alexandra Horowitz
Rating: 2.5* of five
The Publisher Says: *A New York Times Bestseller * A Science Friday and Library Journal Best Science Book of the Year *
From the #1 bestselling author of Inside of a Dog and The Year of the Puppy —“an incredible journey into the olfactory world of man’s best friend” (O, The Oprah Magazine), Alexandra Horowitz’s follow-up to her New York Times bestseller explains how dogs experience the world through their most spectacular organ—the nose.
To a dog, there is no such thing as “fresh air.” Every breath of air is loaded with information. In fact, what every dog—the tracking dog, of course, but also the dog lying next to you, snoring, on the couch—knows about the world comes mostly through his nose.
In Being a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz, a research scientist in the field of dog cognition and the author of the runaway bestseller Inside of a Dog, unpacks the mystery of a dog’s worldview as has never been done before.
With her family dogs, Finnegan and Upton, leading the way, Horowitz sets off on a quest to make sense of scents, combining a personal journey of smelling with a tour through the cutting edge and improbable science behind the olfactory powers of the dog. From revealing the spectacular biology of the dog snout, to speaking to other cognitive researchers and smell experts across the country, to visiting detection-dog training centers and even attempting to smell-train her own nose, Horowitz covers the topic of noses—both canine and human—from surprising, novel, and always fascinating angles.
As we come to understand how complex the world around us appears to the canine nose, Horowitz changes our perspective on dogs forever. Readers will finish this book feeling that they have smelled into a fourth dimension—breaking free of human constraints and understanding smell as never before; that they have, however fleetingly, been a dog.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I noped out at: "It is the brain that knows (or doesn't), and that swoons with the rush of a memory of hot chocolate after a long winter's day playing outside, or balks at a urine smell in the subway, source unseen."
Dim your brights, Doctor Horowitz. That's not the tone I was looking for. YMMV, as always.
Scribner's (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) ebook costs $12.99. You'll know if that style suits your readerly ear.
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Adrift (A Mer Cavallo Mystery #1) by Micki Browning
Rating: 2.5* of five
The Publisher Says: AGATHA AWARD NOMINEE • In this breathtaking mystery debut, a marine biologist turned divemaster stands accused of a chilling crime after a dive gone wrong. But do the murky circumstances point to an accident, a murder, or a supernatural encounter?
Mer Cavallo thought adjusting to a laid-back life in the Florida Keys would be a breeze. But when she rescues a floundering diver who claims to have seen a ghost, she’s caught in a storm of intrigue. News of the encounter explodes on social media, attracting a team of ghost hunters who want to capture proof that a greenish ghoul haunts Key Largo’s famed USS Spiegel Grove shipwreck.
Mer knows the wreck inside and out, and agrees to act as their safety diver. When Ishmael, the charismatic leader of the group, vanishes during a midnight dive, everyone except Mer is convinced the ghost has claimed another victim. Topside, the tenacious detective in charge of the investigation finds Mer’s involvement in both incidents suspicious, and her enigmatic neighbor resurrects ghosts from her past.
Determined to find a rational explanation, Mer approaches Ishmael’s disappearance as any scientist would—by asking questions, gathering data, and deducing the truth. But the victim’s life is as shrouded in mystery as his disappearance. Still, something happened under the water and before long, she’s in over her head. When someone tries to kill her, she knows the truth is about to surface. Maybe dead men do tell tales after all.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I'm not in the mood for blandly competent prose and a standard plot. "Mer fell silent for a bit, chewing on the possibilities. Amber probably didn't want to see her. Lindsey definitely didn't want to see her. Detective Talbot had the authority to keep her from a potential crime scene, and apparently had no reservation about exercising said authority. Well, then. She'd just have to get her information another way."
At 25%, I'd already forgotten who Amber and Lindsey were. Not enough to keep me interested.
Alibi / Random House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges $5.99 for an ebook. Borrow it from the library.
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