Book Review: The Nowhere Girls

Author’s Page: Amy Reed

“The Nowhere Girls are here. They are everywhere.” -Amy Reed, The Nowhere Girls

Grace Salter, Rosina Suarez, and Erin Delillo are different. They don’t belong. They’re invisible. Grace is the new girl, daughter of a former Southern Baptist minister who knocked her head and became liberal. Rosina is a queer girl in a Catholic, conservative immigrant family. Erin is obsessed with the sea and Star Trek: The Next Generation. She secretly hopes she might be an android.

Together, the three of them form an unlikely trio of friends. Prompted by the pleas for help found carved into the corners of her new bedroom, Grace begins to investigate the fate of Lucy Moynihan, a girl who was run out of Prescott for daring to publicly accuse three high school boys of gang rape. In Lucy, the three of them recognize a facet of their own struggles. From all of their shock, their pain, and their frustration at the continuation of the status quo, the three of them form The Nowhere Girls, a group meant to resist the misogynistic culture of Prescott High School.

What It Does Well

This book reads like those justice stories you see posted on the Internet that you always know, deep down inside, aren’t completely true. It also struck me as similar to those semi-manifestos cobbled together from a stream of a dozen Twitter posts that gets posted around social media. While the three girls are the general focus of the novel, it jumps around between perspectives in an attempt to address other topics as they relate to feminism. Sexuality, sexual orientation and identity, religion, healthy relationships, friendship, intersectionality, and mental health all crop up throughout the story.

Even though the book doesn’t shy away from the feeling of pain and fear and entrapment felt by so many different girls as well as the sense of futility often felt when faced with disbelief or anger when suffering is shared, it’s still a book; justice is the end game, and justice is what you know you will inevitably get.

In this way, I really liked the book. While it deals with similar themes as books like Asking For It (Louise O’Neill) or Speak (Laurie Halse Anderson), this book is more anthem than lament. It’s a portrayal of what COULD and SHOULD happen if all women everywhere were to put aside their prejudices and came together to support one another.

On a more literary level, I loved the structure of the chapters. Each chapter is titled after the character whose point of view is shared. Grace. Rosina. Erin. A few other important characters receive their own chapters in addition to a great many chapters titled “Us”. Personally, these were my favorite. These chapters jumped around between many different women all across Prescott, exploring different experiences and situations and how they are all impacted by the actions of the Nowhere Girls in different ways.

What It Doesn’t Do Well

At the same time, while the “Us” chapters were some of my favorite, I think that the sheer scope of the number of characters and stories also took away from the depth of stories. Even though the book is almost 400 pages long, there isn’t a lot of space to dedicate to developing each and every one of the characters, which left me wanting more even with Grace, Rosina, and Erin, the three main characters. In some cases, it also made me feel like some of the secondary characters were reduced to stereotypes–which, in a way, might have been done on purpose, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that I still wish I could have learned more about them.

Rating: 5/5

Book Review: You Know You Want This

Goodread’s Page: You Know You Want This

Author’s Page: Kristen Roupenian

We only got worse after that. He was like some slippery thing we had caught in our fists, and the harder we squeezed the more of it bubbled up through our fingers. – Kristen Roupenian, You Know You Want This

Quick Overview of the Stories:

Bad Boy: I loved the writing style of the perspective of “we”. It starts out the story with a band and the ending sets the tone for the book: This will be dark. This will be grotesque. This will be strange. This is an exploration of sex and gender and power.

Look at Your Game, Girl: Captures the “creepy” factor perfectly as it outlines the power dynamic that exists between a young girl and an older man even though the girl KNOWS that she shouldn’t speak to him and the man, for all appearances, seems to be poor and homeless.

Sardines: This story ups that “strange” factor. I loved the idea of taking a situation that seemed so mundane and so achingly realistic and creating an unexpected exit to the cage in which the main character feels she is trapped.

The Night Runner: I was conflicted about this story. It’s interesting in that it takes place in what seems to be a very different setting, but it’s also interesting in that the ones who have the power in this story are a large collection of young girls (and they aren’t afraid to use it).

The Mirror, the Bucket, and the Old Thigh Bone: I found this story to be very whimsical. It’s an interesting analysis of vanity, selfishness, and love, and it has a very set tone as a twisted fairy tale in comparison to the rest of the stories.

Cat Person: Ooooh, this story just makes you feel awkward as you read it, but it so beautifully examines the ability of two people to perceive the same situation so differently. As emotions rise and rise, everything is continuously cut down by one character realizing that they’ve completely misinterpreted what the other felt. But that ending…

The Good Guy: I was really hesitant to read a story called “The Good Guy”. I thought I would hate it because it would feel to high-handed from either perspective–that of a guy who thought of himself as a “Good Guy” or a girl lamenting the number of guys who call themselves “Good Guys”–but damn, it did it well. It’s the longest story in the book by far, but it’s worth it.

The Boy in the Pool: I enjoyed this story in how to flips the power dynamic of beauty and sex on it’s head. It’s a woman exploiting a man.

Scarred: This one is most similar to The Mirror, the Bucket, and the Thigh Bone in that it’s a bit more fairytale-esque, a bit more separate from a modern world. There are more hints of it, but it reads a bit like a parable.

The Matchbox Sign: One of my favorites. This story examines the concept of female hysteria and how it persists into the present day with diagnoses of pain and other medical disorders. Kind of like Sardines, the ending clinches it.

Death Wish: Very strange. The premise is that the main character, who’s down on his luck and living in a motel room for somewhat-alluded-to reasons, meets a girl who seems to get off on putting herself in dangerous situations. The story made me the most uncomfortable, although I’m guessing that was the ultimate purpose with the intent to also draw attention to that question: “Did she bring this on herself?”

Biter: Fabulous ending story. It’s so visceral, so strange, and then at the end it wraps up the story of a girl who loves biting people into the frame of how the stories of those who are assaulted can be perceive.

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What it Does Well:

This collection of stories does everything well, in my opinion. It deals with relevant, polarizing topics, and even though I could feel myself beginning to disagree with character perspectives, I always wanted to keep reading.

There is also an element of absolute, mind-warping WEIRDNESS that permeates the stories. There are so many that start out normal–uninteresting, even–and then an element of the strange comes out of nowhere and takes the story to a completely different place. The Matchbox Sign and Sardines are both wonderful examples of this, where I found myself looking up from the box and staring quizzically at whatever was in front of me, asking myself: “Did I really just read that?”.

Even the ones that weren’t shockingly weird had a certain element of strange to them. Biter and Bad Boy both have it. The Night Runner and the Mirror, the Bucket, and the Thigh Bone have it. The pervasiveness weirdness seems to even bring out the strange in the stories that seem the most normal, making the reader reflect on the strange in our everyday lives and, most importantly, in our human interactions.

Rating: 5/5

Book Review: The Au Pair

Goodread’s Page: The Au Pair

Author’s Page: Emma Rouse

“An empty double page marks the overwhelming grief that followed our arrival.” -Emma Rous, The Au Pair

Seraphine Meyers and her brother Danny are the true Summerbourne twins, born in the middle of summer on the estate that has been in their family for generations. Scandal and mystery has always filled the whispers and gossip spoke by the people in the nearby village about her family. They speak of changelings, affairs, and death. On the day of their own birth, their mother died by falling from the cliffs at the edge of the property.

When Seraphine, mourning the death of her recently deceased father, comes across a photograph showing her mother holding only one baby on the day that her and her brother were allegedly born, she begins to investigate the dark secrets surrounding her family.

What it Does Well:

The Au Pair does a surprisingly good job of predicting reader assumptions and throwing them on their head in the first third of the book. I will confess that I thought I had all of the “mysteries” completely figured out only to have characters point blank tell me I was wrong by revealing new information or negating information I thought to be true.

Additionally, each of Laura’s chapters (that take place in the past) is meant to address something that Seraphine questions in the present. Each new thing that Seraphine learns in the present is often subtly referenced by Laura in the past, weaving together a nice back and forth. Everybody has some piece of information to share as Seraphine and her family begin to construct the events that took place prior to and the day of her and her brother’s birth.

What it Doesn’t Do Well:

While this book kept me engaged and I DID want to know the answers to the many presented mysteries, I also didn’t feel any particular emotional connection to the characters. The book seems to claim “family relationships” as one of its themes, zeroing in on unhealthy or bad relationships within families, but very few of the characters ever do anything nice or pleasant to make the reader care about them either. People die and/or are murdered, and I felt very little shock value in the reveal.

While many of the “mysteries” revolve around affairs, a great many characters in the book don’t seem to like each other. Sometimes it seems like they can’t stand each other. In particular, every family member seems so incredibly rude to each other (both past and present) that I find it amazing that they have any relationship at all.

I think that one of the only relationships that exists in the book that seemed natural and kind was that between Edwin and his au pair Laura, but even then she was being paid to take care of him and the book didn’t dwell very much on if she enjoyed caring for him. Laura says repeatedly throughout the book that she doesn’t mind watching Edwin extra when his parents repeatedly ask for more assistance, but there isn’t a large amount of description to back up her claim.

Overall, it was entertaining, but it wasn’t riveting.

Rating:

3/5

Book Review: Sadie

Goodread’s Page: Sadie

Author’s Page: Courtney Summers

It makes my stomach ache, how, at a time like this, I can’t make that word come out of my mouth perfectly enough to convince him. I can’t describe how bad it feels, this inability to communicate the way I want, when I need to. –Courtney Summers, Sadie

Sometimes my vocabulary doesn’t contain words to describe the ability of a story to be so very gripping and so very terrifying all at once. This book tells a story that is so terrible, but therein lies the power of it. Except, at the same time, it feels so gut-wrenching and strange to praise a story like this because it’s so dark and just so deeply sad.

When Mattie is found dead, Sadie’s world crumbles. She hasn’t had an easy life–unloving mother, high-school dropout, and teased for her stutter–but it had all been worth it for Mattie, her little sister. After a half-hearted police investigation, Sadie sets out to avenge the death of her sister, but fast forward a few months and nobody knows what has become of her.

Before picking up the book, I had heard that the real way to read it was to actually listen to it, and now I understand why. The book is told from two perspectives. First, from the perspective of Sadie herself. Second, from the secondhand account of West McCray as he reports on his investigation of Sadie’s story on his serialized podcast.

What It Does Well:

The narrative style of this book is one of it’s most powerful story telling elements. The podcast transcripts of the book take place significantly after anything told from Sadie’s point of view, letting the reader jump back and forth between the visceral experience of Sadie on the hunt for her sister’s killer and West McCray as he stumbles from clue to clue, trailing after her, trying to piece together what happened as you, the reader, want to scream when you recognize the lies, deceits, and false assumptions that leave him (and the rest of the world) puzzled.

The second most powerful element of this book is simply its story. It starts out heavy, and I felt myself continuing to read with a growing sense of unease, dreading that the story would be dark and sad and–most terrible of all–quite realistic. While Sadie isn’t a real person, her story is more than likely similar to so many other girls who have gone missing. Sadie doesn’t magically escape from the danger around her; she suffers for having faced it.

Like the women whom Sadie and West McCray come across, and like Sadie herself, I could tell right when the book began to veer into the territory of abuse and I could feel myself trying to avoid it at all costs. It grips your stomach and you feel sick, but the allusion to something about which others won’t properly speak, the mentions of feelings and impressions that don’t seem right, makes it impossible to ignore. Yet, you ignore it. You conjure other explanations because it can’t be THAT. Not THAT.

I was trying to avoid coming to terms with what the book was about, I realized that I had become just like the characters, just like Sadie’s mother, Sadie’s grandmother, like towns poor and rich alike, refusing to believe that something so terrible could happen. I became like West McCray, cycling through excuses about why he doesn’t want to investigate the story of Sadie. I wanted to put the book down.

What It Doesn’t Do Well:

This isn’t something that the book didn’t do well, but it’s something to be aware of: this book is dark. It involves Sadie dredging up childhood traumas. It involves her investigating the trauma of others. And it also shines a light on the denial and behavior of others that allow a lot of different cases of childhood abuse to occur.

Rating:

5/5

Book Review: Children of Blood and Bone

Goodreads Page: Children of Blood and Bone

Author’s Page: Tomi Adeyemi

“I teach you to be warriors in the garden so you will never be gardeners in the war.” – Tomi Adeyemi, Children of Blood and Bone

What It Does Well:

I read this book because it was showing up EVERYWHERE and I was hearing about it from EVERYONE. That being said, I completely understand why. This book is a rare young adult fantasy novel; it’s diverse in characters, world, and influences.

I typically avoid young adult fantasy because I always feel like the storytelling is weighed down by tropes. While this book does follow many of those dreaded tropes, it’s also very refreshing in the new stuff it’s able to bring to the table. Children of Blood and Bone is told in a fantasy, magic-filled version of Nigeria and is heavily inspired by Nigerian folklore. In this way, I found the book interesting. The world building that went into explaining magic system, culture, and other obvious, visible elements of the character’s lives was therefore quite different than what you get in the majority of YA novels.

However, I really feel like that was all I enjoyed about the book. I liked the IDEA of what Children of Blood and Bone could be more than the ACTUAL STORY of Children of Blood and Bone.

What It Doesn’t Do Well:

While Children of Blood and Bone brings diversity to a typically very white and European YA fantasy table, I also really struggled to read it for the young adult fantasy tropes that it dragged with it.

First off: I really can’t keep getting on this ride of the young, poor, hot-headed teenager living in a small, impoverished village making a trip to a capital or a castle of some sort to discover that they are magically gifted. (This may, of course, be due to reading the Red Queen series recently. Some of the similarities between Children of Blood and Bone and Red Queen were jarring.)

Second: One of my biggest pet peeves is large cities in fantasy or science fiction novels being divided into “sectors”. This is compounded when there are factions of the population that are oppressed and forced to live in certain “sectors”.

Third: When there is a character who is royal or, in some way, upper class and privileged, they will inevitably be shocked to learn of the reality facing “their people” or “their country” when they are suddenly removed from their cushy lifestyle. It doesn’t mean that Amari or even Innan’s character arcs in that respect was unwarranted, but there could have been a bit less content there. It’s already quite obvious what’s going to happen.

In fact, I really think that Amari’s point of view chapters didn’t add anything in particular to the story. Overall, I disliked reading them.

Fourth: The pacing in this book was really jarring.

While I was reading, there were more than a few times where I had to pause, put the book down, and then read a section aloud to whoever was sitting by me to show just how dramatic a jump it made at times. It’s a long book, so I’m guessing that there were parts that just had to be edited out, but I think that it might be an example of quality over quantity.

In regards to the formation of relationships, it made some of them incredibly unbelievable. Characters go from trying to murder one another to falling in love so quickly I found myself counting the number of pages between the last time they had tried to stab each other to the moment they began expressing romantic interest in them. It was a bit cringe-worthy, constantly reminding me of why I feel like I have to explain myself to others whenever I pick up a YA fantasy novel.

Rating: 3/5

Book Review: Hag

Goodreads Page: Hag

Author’s Page: Kathleen Kaufman

At this, the Cailleach would release a single drop of indigo dye onto the topmost layer. See, she would tell her daughter. See? It bleeds through the topmost path and onto the next. In this way, so many things from the next world touch ours, and our world touches the layer beneath. -Kathleen Kaufman, Hag

What It Does Well:

Horror in the strain of folklore and witches is something that I can’t help but love. Hag has the added bonus of being written in a not-quite-stream-of-consciousness kind of way with a pinch of a somewhat-unreliable-narrator that is, at the same time, all-knowing. Dark, ancient, and epic are the sorts of words that come to mind when I think of how to describe it, for it dwells on massive concepts like time, lineage, and family instead of small things.

In Hag, Alice is neither the first nor the last in a long line of women that aren’t quite the same as everyone else. They stretch back to the Cailleach, a hag that still slumbers in the cliffs of Scotland. Their names lining the margins of the family Bible, the varied stories of their lives supplement Alice’s story of rebelling and embracing the destiny that she has foreseen for herself, but though Alice is the main focus of Hag she is just another in a line of women.

I think that the most enjoyable part of the book was the variety in the stories of the women in Alice’s family. Each interacts with their gifts in a different way and experiences society’s acceptance or rejection of themselves in slightly different manners, highlighting the changes in the available and acceptable domains of women at different times in history. The cyclical nature of the women’s lineage is highlighted through repetitive text, which annoyed me at the outset but, once familiar, came to be enjoyable and sought after. Motifs fill the stories, connecting many disparate parts into one cohesive whole.

What It Doesn’t Do Well:

While I’m all for lyrical, wandering writing style, this story cross the line for me a bit. Particularly in the beginning and right before the end, I thought the story dragged a bit. I liked that Alice was the common “story” around which many other revolved, but there were times where her story wasn’t particularly interesting. Similarly, the ending, with so much emphasis on a great “something” that would happen got a bit boring while continuing to wait for that great “something” to occur.

If some parts had been trimmed down a bit, I could definitely see myself giving Hag five stars.

Rating: 4/5

Book Review: Fangirl

Goodreads Page: Fangirl

Author’s Page: Rainbow Rowell

“To really be a nerd, she’d decided, you had to prefer fictional worlds to the real one.” – Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

What it Does Well:

This book has all of the hallmarks of a good young adult novel that I should LOVE. It’s got some possible love triangles. It’s got “the move” to college. It’s got a “nerdy” main character. It’s even got fan fiction!

Even more than that, it’s got realistic characters.

When Cath, the main character, moves away from home to go to college for the first time, she faces problems that I feel like I and many others faced or feared. I was worried about making friends. I was worried about being myself around new people. I was worried about such simplistic things as going to eat in the dining hall for the first time (which was literally the most frightening thing in the world).

Cath navigates these problems in a realistic manner, facing some down, ignoring others, and making excuses. As a reader, I found myself wanting to shout at her to DO something or NOT DO other things. Rowell does a fabulous job of getting you inside the heads of her characters so that you understand their motivations and desires before they’re even able to articulate or recognize them. When Cath says that she has to go home to visit her sick father, the reader understands that, while her father is important to her, it’s also a convenient escape from her problems on campus. When Cath says that she enjoys writing fan fiction because she can use characters that she’s already familiar with, the reader understands that, while it’s valid that Cath can have a preference for writing, she’s also using it as an excuse for not dealing with some of the problems and losses in her life that she doesn’t want to acknowledge. The book is rife with this dramatic irony; the reader always seems to understand more than the characters.

Clearly, the copy of Fangirl from my library had been well loved. The book jacket was held on by a single piece of tape and the first few pages fell out the first time I opened it.

What It Doesn’t Do Well:

I’ve heard it said before that Rainbow Rowell is good at writing character driven novels. I’ve never read her other books before, but Fangirl definitely supports this claim. It’s about character, exploring character, learning about the characters, putting the characters in different situations, studying how they react.

Fanfiction is often the act of putting pre-made characters into new situations and exploring how they would interact with the environment, the situation and each other. For that reason, it made a wonderful backdrop to this story because that’s really all the story is: an exploration of how Cath reacts in a variety of situations with a variety of different characters.

In terms of plot, there are a lot of ideas but the ideas very rarely go anywhere or are very loosely tied up in the end in such a way that I wouldn’t really call them finished. The relationship between Cath and that one boy from her fiction class (I can’t even remember his name so clearly he was really noteworthy)? Disappears for a quarter of the book only to re-emerge briefly at the end. The fiction professor that tries to get Cath to write? Features prominently in the beginning of the book only to reappear briefly to nag Cath about her story. The story that Cath is supposed to be writing? Forgotten and rarely referenced until a few lines at the very end of the book. Cath and Wren’s estranged mother? Reappears throughout the story, never deliberately discussed by Cath, and then oddly referenced at the very end of the book.

Who Should Read This Book:

This book is clearly a favorite among young adult fiction fans. I can see why: it’s a character study of a realistic girl experiencing realistic situations to which many readers can relate. Despite my dislike of the lack of plot, I related to the book to an insane degree that made me realize just why it is so incredibly popular with so many people. It’s a good book and you won’t be disappointed so long as you aren’t getting into it for the resolution of plot.

Rating: 3/5

Book Review: The Winter People

Goodreads Page: The Winter People

Author’s Page: Jennifer McMahon

“Madness is always a wonderful excuse, don’t you think? For doing terrible things to other people.” – Jennifer McMahon

What It Does Well:

The Winter People was just the book that I was looking for at just the right time. It’s the end of winter in the Midwest and I first picked it up at the end of February during Women in Horror Month because it came recommended as a combination or folklore, witchcraft, and, in particular, the story of motherhood wrapped up in a horror story.

The book is paced rather well, switching between three different characters who have or are living in West Hall, Vermont. First, is Sara Harrison Shea, a woman living in the early 1900s whose story is told through excerpts of her journal that have been collected and published by her family members. Second is Ruthie, a 19 year old girl living in what was once Sara Harrison Shea’s house in the modern day. Her mother, Alice, goes mysteriously missing, leaving her to care for her younger sister. Third is Katherine, a painter who comes to West Hall to investigate the mysterious death of her husband.

“The dead never really leave us.”

The perfect cover to convey the isolation and darkness of winter…

The three women are all bound together by the ultimate question: Can the dead walk again? At what cost? (Clearly, the answer is yes or this wouldn’t a story. The real question being explored here is if it’s worth it.)

Sara Harrison Shea is regarded as regarded as a crazy woman after the death of her only daughter. Alleging she would find a way to see her daughter again, she recorded her struggles and her learning from Auntie in the journal that she tore apart and hid throughout her house. Though her niece found them again and published them for the world to see, parts of it still remain missing to this day–including the vital instructions needed to make the dead walk again.

Together, Ruthie and Katherine in the modern day must work together to find the pieces of the mystery that have been found scattered and hidden throughout West Hall and in the very home in which Ruthie lives. The stories of missing people in West Hall aren’t just stories: they’re true. Ruthie and Katherine have to piece together their own losses to make sense of a story that stretches back a century to find the real reason that Katherine’s husband died and why Ruthie’s mother has gone missing.

As the mysteries grow, I found myself more and more intrigued in where the book would go. It’s a surprisingly complex tale of interconnected stories that pleasantly disproved my idea going into the book that it would be a story just about zombies or witchcraft.

What It Doesn’t Do Well:

Oh, so close! I would have given this book 5/5 stars had it not been for the ending–or, rather, the climax of the book.

The ending itself (as in, the last few lines) was open-ended and well-told enough to make me enjoy it, but somewhere within the climax all of the suspense just fell away. It was just shocking. There I was, racing through the book, desperate to find out what happens, and within what should have been the most thrilling part of the book I was just confused and disinterested.

However, when all is said and done, I enjoyed the book. It wasn’t something that I had to force myself to read nor was it something that I had to read while ignoring something annoying or silly. It was complex, well-written, and included so many oh-so-delightful twists and reveals.

Who Should Read This Book:

I would call this a light horror book for new horror fans or fans of spooky tales. There’s very little blood or gore, and the emphasis is really on the mystery more than anything else.

Rating: 4/5

Book Review: His Favorites

Goodreads Page: His Favorites

Author’s Page: Meg Walbert

But here the story bends. From here there is never not a day without Master’s shadow across my life–a solid bar, a locked turnstile that brings me up short, trapped on the other side of where I thought I was going, the place I once imagined I would be. – Kate Walbert

I came across this book from NPR’s book concierge along with a few others. It was filed under such tags as “Ladies First” the “Dark Side” and “Rather Short”, all of which I find to be exceedingly true.

What It Does Well:

His Favorites navigates being an extreme stream of consciousness lacking in any chronological order by also being incredibly short. It jumps back and forth between different periods of her life almost seamlessly, which was surprisingly not disorienting to read.

Kate Walbert does a fantastic job of conveying the personality of Jo through clipped up moments of her life, and she does it all while establishing the event that will hurt and shape her. Jo herself passes judgement on herself, her actions, and the actions of others as the story is told, as its told more or less from her point of view as if she were narrating at random different points of her life.

It’s a book that’s ripe with lines that I wanted to write down for later, and by the end of reading the book (which is ridiculously short) I had gone through nearly a whole stack of tabs.

“What is it with you girls always apologizing? As if everything is your fault–the Fall of Rome, the Crusades, Watergate, we men the cause of ever great fuckup in history and you girls the sorry, sorry magpies. Apology parrots. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said, his voice a falsetto.

Another aspect to the book that I found enjoyable was that it didn’t glorify or dwell upon the sexual and abusive relationship around which the majority of the book swirls, and from which it’s title–His Favorites–is taken. There are a few rather explicit moments, but for the most part there is only a reference to them having taken place, which I was a bit relieved about. I felt like I was holding my breath every time there was clearly space for something to occur only to have a vague reference or a cutaway be supplied by Jo as she begins to narrate something else. There was no glorification of her relationship with Master, though it is understood that she did, at one point, glorify him.

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What It Doesn’t Do Well:

I found the title of the book jarred a little bit with what I read.

In the end, with the focus of the last few bits of the book and, in particular, the closing line, I didn’t feel like such an emphasis was on her relationship with Master or the aftermath of it either.

Past here are spoilers, so if you plan on reading the book skip ahead to the next heading. As Jo begins the process of trying to move away from her relationship with Master, she begins to dwell more and more on her relationship with the female friends that she lost after the accident (one dead and one estranged). She marks the loss of their relationship as one of her greatest losses as well as one of her greatest hurts, so much so that it makes up the ending lines of the novel. It seemed strange to me that the title of the book was His Favorites when the act of Master preying upon her vulnerability was more just another event in a long line of problems that make up Jo’s life.

Yes, the central part of the book revolves around the events that make up her relationship with Master. Yes, she reflects on what happens and yes, she extolls her anger–for it to have happened, for her school to have not listened, and against Master himself. However, it seemed like the bookending of the story with the tragedy that took away her female friends and a reflection of how she still felt their loss placed greater emphasis on their importance than the importance of Master.

Who Should Read This Book:

Well, I think anybody should and could read this book.

That being said, it gets a bit preachy at the end–something which I was wholly comfortable with, but if you’ve felt uncomfortable or disagreed with a lot of the sentiments around the expression of women’s anger or the #MeToo movement it might be a bit too much for you. (In which case, I would actually almost advise more that you read it. It just might be a bit less enjoyable, but learning occurs through discomfort.)

Rating: 5/5

Similar Reads: The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer, Rage Becomes Her by Soraya Chemaly and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Book Review: Heart berries

Goodreads Page: Heart Berries
Author’s Page: Terese Marie Mailhot

That was our last night together, because it was enough. I realized that love can be mediocre and a safe comfort, or it can be unhinged and hurtful. Either seemed like a good life. – Terese Marie Mailhot, Heart Berries

Oh gosh, first off: This was one of those books that I had to read in segmented sections. It’s dense. It’s poignant. It’s full of meaning. It’s not the book that you race through, glossing over sections to get the main point of things.

I’m hesitant to share my opinion on this book because I know that there were systems and constructs and ideas that it touches upon that I really don’t know anything about. I don’t feel like it’s my place to share what I think about them because I haven’t taken the time to learn about them adequately or I haven’t experienced them in such a way where I can form an opinion.

However, I want to share what I thought about this book because I think it’s a book that needs to be shared.

What It Does Well:

This book is honest.

This book is about need and pain.

Throughout the books, she recounts various points of her life–the loss of custody of her son to her ex-husband, her stay in a mental health facility, a tumultuous love relationship, communication with her mother, and, finally, the realization of the influence of sexual abuse that she experienced during her childhood. Everything is recounted in an honest way; there is good light shown upon Mailhot, but also bad light. She fesses up to her faults, and it makes the revelation of wrongs that were done to her that much more saddening.

It was actually reading through the question and answer section at the end of the book that I really felt I understood some of the main components that made up the book. In it, Mailhot addresses how she began writing the book and also how she goes about the writing process, both of which reveal how this book is so breathtakingly honest about the needs and pains that she experienced in her life.

She identifies that when she first began writing Heart Berries that they were “written and published as fiction” and that through the writing process she realized that she had been “using the guise of fiction to show myself the truth, and the process of turning fiction into nonfiction was essentially stripping away everything that didn’t actually happen to me, and filling in those holes left behind with memory”. The act of writing the books seems to have been, as she says, “me moving forward and putting myself at the apex of my own story”, the practice of learning to articulate what has happened to her.

This act–articulation–is something that she also addresses, speaking about the need that is often placed on Indian writers to represent fathers and women in a certain light, fearful of perpetuating a stereotype. Additionally, she speaks of the onus placed on survivors of sexual abuse to somehow “tell it differently, spare people melodrama, explicative language, image, and make it new”, which, when I reflected on it, seemed surprisingly accurate to how stories of abuse are often treated. It’s widely “accepted” when it’s new, but as it becomes commonplace it’s almost looked down upon more and more as “more of the same”. Yet, women continue to experience these things in the same way as has been carried out before–so why should the story change?

What It Doesn’t Do Well:

Nothing.

Okay, there’s probably something that somebody could say they didn’t like about this book–in particular, I could see the stream of consciousness style of writing being grating for certain people. I, however, can’t get enough of that style of writing.

Yes, there were certain parts that I didn’t understand, that wandered a bit, that slipped away from me, but it was still beautiful to read and I can appreciate that.