Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Length: 310 Pages
Genres: Contemporary, Literary Fiction
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

"'It completely fetishizes black people in a terrible way,' Tamra went on. 'It makes it seem like we're all the same, as if we can't contain multitudes of personalities and traits and differences. And people like that think that it says something good about them, that they're so brave and unique that they would even dare to date black women. Like they're some kind of martyr.'"

My interest was first piqued by this book when it was the center of the controversy involving this years Reading Rush, and it when it became this month's pick for the Hotties Book Club I knew I had to read it. I really struggled with my rating, simply because I didn't fly through this book, I didn't love it as much as some of my other four or five star reads, but I came to the conclusion that this book is definitely (at the least!) a four star read.

Told in in two different POVs, we follow Emira, called "Mira", Tucker, a 25 year old woman who is a babysitter to the talkative, and sometimes difficult, Briar Chamberlain, and Briar's mother, Alix. Alix is an influencer who talks at graduations, panels, and even has a coveted role in the Clinton campaign and who is the definition of a privileged white woman. She rarely talks to Emira, or Briar in fact, until one fateful night when Emira is forced to take Briar to a grocery store and is accused of kidnapping her. After that is a succession of cringe-inducing attempts to make some sort of amends with Emira, who would just rather forget the whole thing occurred. To complicate things further, a man took a video of the whole incident. This man just happens to be Kelley Copeland, Alix's Highschool-Ex who she credits with ruining her senior year.

Kiley Reid has an effervescent and easy writing style that hides within it a deeply meaningful and moving story. I related to Emira very much in her struggles to find her place as an adult while watching her friends succeed at both jobs and relationships. She's 25 and it seems like the clock is ever looming the background, something I feel keenly at 24. I loved Emira and her relationship with Briar, and I admit while Reid did make it easy to, at times, sympathize with both Alix and Kelley, I ultimately felt they were both in the wrong. I wish that Emira could have had a better ending, but it was realistic and fitting.

This novel has experiences in it that I will never know - the threat of being arrested or simply seen as a liar just because of the color of my skin, the fear that a boyfriend might be fetishizing you for being a certain ethnicity - and I think it is something that everyone like me, white, cis, privileged in that regard, needs to read.

Books I Read for ReadEHthon!

I've always wanted to visit Canada. The natural beauty, the promise of snow, was everything a Texas girl could dream of. So of course I wanted to participate in the ReadEHthon, hosted by some great Canadians and one of my favorite booktubers, Kayla at BooksandLala. To go along with my reading I decided I would make a classic Canadian treat - the matrimonial cake! Sandwiched between two layers of slightly salty and sweet crumble is chewy date paste. I followed this recipe from Lois at Polish Housewife, but made it Gluten-Free by using Red Mill's 1-to-1 Baking Flour and Gluten-Free Quick Oats instead! It turned out wonderfully. Without further ado, here are my reviews.

I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World by Kai Cheng Thom

Length: 150 Pages

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction and Poetry

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

Prompt: Read a Book with Nature on the Cover

"I want to live in love and believe in love. If I have to die, I want to die in love. This whole world might be coming to its end, or it might be in the midst of an enormous and terrifying change that leads to something better. Either way, I want to through it in love with the people I love."

Trigger Warnings in this book for Suicide, Depression, Mental and Physical Abuse, Death, and Rape

This book by Kai Cheng Thom put so many of my own thoughts into words in a much more eloquent and moving way than I ever could. This slim volume tackles everything from Cancel Culture to the #MeToo movement to Rape and Childhood Abuse all interspersed with her fiery poetry and shocking wit. Kai Cheng Thom's intelligence jumps off the pages along with her wry sense of humor, which made this hard to put down, despite the hefty topics it covered. My favorite parts were "Chronicle of a Rape Foretold" in which she discusses the supposed safety within the LGBTQ community and the abuse she endured at the hands of a member of that community and how people, friends and mentors, blindly stood by. Another one was "Melting the Ice Around #MeToo" in which she discusses how a white, cis gay man was accused of rape and how little was done about it versus when a Trans woman of color was called out for emotional manipulation and how she was hounded until she was forced to exile herself from all social media. And yet another one was "A School for Storytellers", which examines what do stories really mean, the impact they have on us, and the responsibilities we have as storytellers.

I think this books of essays is required reading for anyone - Trans, Straight, White, Republican, Democrat or neither - and you certainly don't have to agree with it all. I didn't. But there is still so much to be learned and this is just a small stepping stone, one full of compassion and love, along the way.

Bride of New France by Suzanne Desrochers

Length: 294 Pages

Genres: Historical Fiction

Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

Prompt: Read a Book With a Loving Relationship

"Laure blows out the candle and rests her head on her arms. Her dreams are strange in Canada. They are filled with the screams of the forest."

I was really excited to dive into this novel by Suzanne Desrochers simply because I find the subject, and the time period, so fascinating. And I think if you're interested in those things too, then this novel holds merit for you. However, if you're looking for an exhilarating piece of Historical Fiction then I suggest you look elsewhere.

Bride of New France takes up the mantel of telling a fictional account of one of the filles du roi, or "The King's Daughters", French women chosen to sent to Canada in order to be wives to the settlers there. 800 women would be sent to Canada, or "New France" as they called it then, from 1663 to 1673. They had dowries paid for by the King, and chief among their duties was to produce as many children as they were able. We experience all of this through the eyes of the protagonist, Laure, who has lived in the Salpêtrière, a place that housed everything from the mad to infants who lost their mothers in birth, ever since she was taken from her parents as a child. She is one of the Bijoux, girls who make lace and have hopes of one day leaving for a better life. After a letter intended for the King slips into the wrong hands, Laure is chosen as one of the girls to be sent to Canada. While there she learns about true hardship, endures the worst winter of her life, and finds companionship with an Iroquois man named Daskeheh. 

The sights, sounds, food, clothes, and living conditions of the time period were fascinating and obviously lovingly researched, nevertheless, I was let down by this book. When I finished the book and read the acknowledgements in the back I learned that this book started off life as the author's thesis, and it shows. We are told everything - Laure's thoughts, what she does, conversations she has, etc. The entirety of the novel is exposition, and because of that I didn't really connect with any of the characters. Laure's most meaningful relationship was with her friend, Madeleine, and when something tragic happens to her I had already forgotten by the next chapter, it had so little impact on me. I also was put-off by the descriptions and characters of the Indigenous people in the book, even though Daskehah was far and away the most intriguing person in the story. They were painted as noble savages, and the women were decried as seductresses who took the French men from their good French wives. It certainly left a sour note. I wish this could have been better, because it such an interesting subject and one that has very little written about it!

The Body of the Beasts by Audrée Wilhelmy

Length: 192 Pages

Genres: Literary Fiction

Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

Prompt: Read a Book by a Canadian Publisher (Arachnide Editions, an Imprint of Anansi Press)

"Let's summon the butcher to skin the creature.

Who said when he saw her, 'There are no words...

This doe's hair is blond, her breast but a girls.'

Then he pulled out his knife and he quartered her."

Trigger Warnings in this book for Incest, Pedophilia and Dubious Consent

I've struggled to rate this, waffling between 2 and 3 stars. The writing was beautiful, lyrical, and it coupled with the story reminded me of one my favorite authors of all time, Angela Carter. This book is a dark little fairytale, a story of a family with branches so criss-crossed they confuse even the members. They live in a lighthouse, Osip and Benedikt-Sevastian, the only remaining children of the Old Woman. Benedikt-Sevastian has a woman, the wild Noé with strange scars and sea-tangled hair. Osip is satisfied at first with just watching them - he's been a voyeur since he was child, starting out with his mother - but then he too wants to have some of  Noé. She births Mie, who can enter the minds of animals, and three others, all boys. Mie tries to understand her mother who sews together animals that only exist in her mind, a bat-winged fawn that represents her daughter, and others. She doesn't speak to anyone, not directly, and her children yearn for her.

Even though I thought the writing was beautiful I didn't enjoy the aspects of incest and pedophilia. Osip with his mother, and Mie who longs for him at age 12. Every part of this book is permeated with sex, some consented to and some not, and it left me feeling disturbed. I don't know if I would recommend this, I can't really even put my feelings on it into words. It was a strange one for me.

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

Length: 231 Pages
Genres: Young Adult, SciFi, Dystopian

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
Prompt: Read a Book by an Indigenous Author

"We go to the schools and they leach the dreams from where our ancestors hid them, in the honeycombs of slushy marrow buried in our bones. And us? Well, we join our ancestors, hoping we left enough dreams behind for the next generation to stumble across."

Trigger Warnings for Death, Racism, Mention of Torture and Rape

I originally ordered "Moon of the Crusted Snow" by Waubgeshig Rice for this prompt, on the recommendation of Kayla, but it (much to my chagrin) didn't arrive in time. So I picked up another one of her recommendations - The Marrow Thieves - and I'm so happy I did. It turned out to be my favorite book I read.

In a future North America destroyed by global warming, white people have lost the ability to dream. Madness follows, until they find a shocking solution in Indigenous people. They have held onto that ability to dream and now they're being hunted for it. Just like Residential Schools of the past, where they wanted to "kill the Indian in the child", they have set up new "Schools" for one express purpose - to extract marrow.

Francis, "Frenchie" has lost his parents and his older brother but won't give up. Eventually, he finds a place among the found family of Miigwans, a man full of stories and heartbreak. With him is Wab, who has a scar down one side of her face, Chi-Boy who loves Wab, twins Tree and Zheegwon, children Slopper and Riri, Elder Minerva, and later on, the beautiful Rose who Frenchie grows to love. All of these characters were important to me and I cared for them all so much. Along the way we learn of some of their "Coming To" stories, how they got where they are, the horrors they went through to become the people they are now.

This story questions what it takes to become a monster. Are we born that way, with some sort of evil always lurking just under the surface? Or are we forced to become one? I loved this story so much and was so pleased with the ending. It gave me so much hope and made me feel there was hope for the world I'm living in right this very minute.

Reading Rush 2020: Hoopoes, Romance, and Racism

I decided to participate in my first ever Reading Rush this year and had a lot of fun doing it. I only finished five books unfortunately, but I really hit a moment where I was burnt out on reading! I'm still including my sixth book in this post even though I didn't finish it in the set amount of time.

Another thing I wish to address is the controversies surrounding this year's Reading Rush. The hosts, Ariel and Raeleen first ran across some mixed feelings from the participants when one of the challenges included reading outside which for so many is not a viable option during the Pandemic. They quickly amended it to reading a book outside or a book that has a title relating to outside, or to become creative with it, which I felt was a good compromise. They also had a book club pick that everyone was supposed to read together. Their pick was "Such a Fun Age" by Kiley Reid. They later did a live Q&A where they were going to discuss the book but revealed they hadn't even read it and made fun of the fact that they hadn't. "Such a Fun Age" is the debut novel of Kiley Reid, a black woman, and the novel deals a lot with performative allyship, which was just the icing on top of this unfortunate cake. It all comes across as careless and extremely insensitive, and people are rightly upset with them. For more information I recommend this video from Joel at FictionalFates (he addresses it towards the end of the video) and this video from Myonna at Myonna Reads. They put it much better than I ever could!

For some fun and inclusive book clubs I highly recommend Hotties Book Club, The Crusty Club, and Bibliophiles Book Club!

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
Length: 112 Pages
Genres: Fantasy
Rating 5 out of 5 Stars

Prompt: Read a Book on a Different Continent

"One drunken evening, many years on, In-yo would say that the war was won by silenced and nameless women, and it would be hard to argue with her."

So this may be cheating because this book not only takes place on a different continent but actually in a whole other world! This gorgeous novella by Nghi Vo takes place in an Asian inspired fantasy world with fox girls, talking birds, and codes sent through star charts. We follow the cleric Chih and their neixin, a hoopoe named Almost Brilliant, as they travel to Lake Scarlet where the now dead Empress was once exiled by her husband. With her she took many different girls, some of the Emperor's other wives, and one, a servant girl called Rabbit because of her jutting front teeth. Chih is there to learn the truth behind the legend from Rabbit, now elderly and the only person left at Lake Scarlet. This story was told with such poetry that I was entranced by the very first words on the page. 

I loved learning the history of the barbarous Empress from the North, In-yo, and her rise to power using her wits and, sometimes, acts of violence. 

This story was one of the most original fantasy ideas I've read in a long while and can't wait to pick up the next novella in the series. My review really doesn't do it justice. It's a must-read for any fantasy lover! If you would like to learn more about how this novella came to be read this wonderful interview with Nghi Vo!

Hither, Page by Cat Sebastian
Length: 200 Pages
Genres: Historical Romance and Historical Mystery
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
Prompt: A Book with a Cover the Color of My Birthstone

"Secrets were the invisible skeleton of society. Everything depended on the strength of secrets, and on not being to see them; like a skeleton, once the secret was visible to the naked eye, something had gone drastically and irretrievably wrong. That was when people started to die."

Trigger Warnings in this book for scenes featuring PSTD and murderous goings-on

I absolutely adored this novella by Cat Sebastian, who've I've heard of but never read anything by. Hither, Page, follows James Sommers, who was a surgeon during WWII who has now settled into the boring domesticity of country life in Wychcomb St. Mary, and the mysterious Leo Page, a spy charged with finding out the truth behind the death of the local charwoman, Mildred Hoggett. Mildred had the dangerous habit of going through peoples things, and now Leo suspects its cost her her life. This was so comforting and fun, while also doing its best to fully flesh out more serious topics - like James' PTSD. 

The mystery was one that actually kept me guessing to the end, and while I felt things were wrapped up a little too neatly, I understand that this was the type of story where it fit to do so. James and Leo's relationship is a lovely, romantic thing, and I loved the Christmas setting in an English village. I also liked almost all of the supporting characters, and was impressed by how fully-realized they felt despite the short length of the story. I can't wait to pick up the next book in this series!

The Patient by Jasper DeWitt
Length: 224 Pages
Genres: Horror and Thriller
Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars
Prompt: A Book That Starts with "The"

"Inside Joe's room, someone was laughing. But it wasn't Joe; it couldn't have been. It didn't sound human at all. Instead, what emerged from that room was a sepulchral, moist, hacking chuckle that sounded like it came from a rotting throat."

Triggers Warnings in this book for child abuse, rape, sexual assault, antisemitism, mental illness, and animal death

I was quite looking forward to this book by debut author Jasper Dewitt, and while it was certainly entertaining (I blazed through it), I found myself a bit disappointed, too. My interest was piqued when I found this book had originally been a story posted to the Reddit Nosleep, a place where people post their scary stories, and this book smacked of it. At about 21% into it I had encountered antisemitic slurs (not very helpfully crossed through like most of the curse words in the book) and child sexual abuse. It felt shocking for simply the sake of being shocking. Similarly, a supposedly intelligent doctor makes an interpretation that is laughably Freudian when this story is supposed to take place sometime in the early 2000s. The depiction of mental illnesses, specifically schizophrenia, was done in such ham-fisted way I was left reeling.

The main character, a young doctor who we only ever learn the first name of - Parker - has experienced mental illness first hand. His mother was schizophrenic and he says that she is the reason he became a doctor in the first place, while also portraying her as some snarling, urine soaked monster. We follow him as he comes to work at CSA, or the Connecticut State Asylum, where he learns of a patient that has made his home there for more than twenty years, one who drives every doctor who tries, and fails, to treat him, to suicide. The monster of the book was so interesting and it reminded me a bit of Pennywise in the way it operated. I was really glued to the page during the interactions between Parker and the patient, Joe, who is in my opinion the most intriguing character of the story. DeWitt is really quite good at giving us descriptions that sink us right into the scene. I loved how he made use of not only sight, but sound and smell, which I think too often authors neglect. It's obvious that he can write an excellent story, I just wish he hadn't relied on tired and harmful tropes to do so.

Budding Romance by Lara Kinsey
Length: 36 Pages
Genres: Historical Romance
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Prompt: Read a Book Outside

"Something about the spindly Miss Smythe-Barney reminded Nicolette of a delicate plant. Something that resisted cultivation, like wild violet or back raspberries. They needed just the right soil, just the right mix of light and shade, just the right amount of attention to make them thrive."

I purposely chose something quite short for my pick to read outside because I live in Texas and on the day I chose it was 93 out (not too bad, really) and while the tree I read under provided my ghostly skin the coverage it needed, it also provided lots of ants. Budding Romance by Lara Kinsey is a sweet little story featuring Dorothea Smythe-Barney, a former governess who has recently bought a chateau to make into a girls' school in France. Along with the chateau comes the unruly, overgrown gardens that need a strong hand to shape them into something beautiful. So she hires Nicolette Laurent, an in-demand gardener with a rakish personality. I deeply enjoyed their flirtations (especially when Nicolette buys Dorothea four chicks!) and thought it was really beautiful. Another thing I enjoyed was the delicious descriptions of food and all the talk of flowers. I'm giving this a 3.5 only because I wished they had been a little more fleshed out, and that the writing, while lovely, consisted mostly of telling vs. showing. In such a short book I understand it's hard to really convey the love between two people, and I think it would have benefited from being a bit longer. 

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

Length: 333 Pages

Genres: Mystery

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars
Prompt: Read a Book that Inspired a Movie You've Already Seen

"Mrs. Allerton shivered. 'Love can be a very frightening thing.'
'That is why most great love stories are tragedies.'"

Trigger Warnings in this book for racism and murderous goings-on

I'm a big fan of both of the Poirot and Miss Marple TV shows so I've been long needing to actually read one of Christie's novels! I chose Death on the Nile and enjoyed it very much and even though I had seen the 2004 adaption of it I still found myself shocked by the ending. I think that this book is a fine example of not only the original mystery novel, which is such a popular genre today, but also of the style of that time - the often dry descriptions and straight to the point dialogue, which I understand is not everyone's cup of tea. I personally found it refreshing and intriguing to see how much styles have changed. 

Death on the Nile's mystery is a clever one - that of the murder of heiress Linnet Ridgeway on a steamboat in Egypt. She is recently married to Simon Doyle, a man who was once the fiance of her good friend Jacqueline de Bellefort who has now taken to stalking the couple. Written in her blood is a damning piece of evidence, a J. As with any Christie there are a plethora of characters each with a mystery of their own - from the Italian Archaeologist Richetti to Linnet's American trustee Andrew Pennington to the lovely, but cowed, Cornelia Robson. My favorite character from the outset was Jacqueline de Bellefort - she is complex, sympathetic, and dangerous. My other favorite was the serious Rosalie Otterbourne, who secretly hid a tender heart. The only thing keeping this novel from easily being a four or five star read was the racism.

I know the common excuses - "it was published in 1937, after all" - but Christie has a history of racism against about anyone who wasn't white and English. The black characters are treated as inhuman, something to laughed or marveled at. One character even ascertains that Asian people are uneducated so they take death better than the Englishman. I could not, in good conscious, give this book a four or a five star rating because of this.

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware

Length: 388 Pages
Genres: Mystery and Thriller
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
Prompt: Read a Book in a Genre You Want to Read More Of

"Hal straightened, trying to make out the letters. They were tucked behind one of the bars and hard to see, but as she tilted her head to one side, suddenly the morning sunlight caught the marks at just the right ankle, illuminating them so that they glowed as if written in white fire.

HELP ME, it said, in tiny crabbed letters."

Trigger Warnings in this book for mental and physical abuse, violence and murderous goings-on

My sister has been trying to get me to read this book forever and so I decided to make it one of my reads for the Reading Rush and how happy I am that I did! The main character, Hal, is a new favorite of mine. I loved her strength and determination, her unwillingness to give up even when it was what she wanted most. 

Harriet "Hal" Westaway is down-on-her-luck. Reading tarot cards on the Brighton Pier hasn't made her much money and now a man who lent her some money is looking to collect - in blood or money. She's desperate to keep her little attic flat, the one she shared with her mother who tragically died in a hit and run. So it seems like fate when she receives a letter claiming that she may be the recipient of the fortune of a woman named Hester Westaway. But it can't be right, this Margarida Westaway cannot be her mother because her grandmother was not Hester, but Joan. A plan forms in her mind, and a solution to her problem. She'll pretend to be the right Harriet Westaway. There she meets three sons, each tormented by the memory of their childhood at the mysterious Cornish estate, Trepassen House, and at the hands of their cruel mother. And even more concerning is the fact that the woman who is supposed to be her mother has been missing for more than twenty years.

This mystery was perfect for me. I adored the Cornish setting, and the Gothic old Trepassen House complete with bitter old housekeeper Mrs. Warren, who follows the same vein of the classic Mrs. Danvers. I didn't put the pieces together until they were spelled out for me on the page and I loved that. I actually sat up in the bed and gasped! The only thing that made me a little wary was the depiction of the gay relationship in the book, but it was so insignificant that I was able to ignore it. Please pick this up if you need a dark book perfect for a stormy night-in.

A Bit of Agatha Christie...