Review: The Vanishing Half

3 stars. What can I say about this that hasn't already been said, more eloquently than I ever could? The Vanishing Half is another must-read from this author, a compelling study of race, family, and identity. Twins Stella and Desiree were born in a small town meant for light-skinned black people, and both of them carry this with them through their upbringing, adolescence, and eventual adulthood, veering in opposite directions until separate from each other, forging different lives. Their daughters, born into different worlds, bounce around each other through happenstance, tightening the tapestry's weave until a full and colorful picture emerges. It's thought-provoking, beautiful, and interesting.

I love Brit Bennett's writing. She takes these huge, thorny themes and writes about them with such ease. The Vanishing Half is so smooth, so flowy, it's almost a trick. I really rooted for her true and distinct characters, occasionally insufferable in understandable ways, as we all are. The way she writes about place, too, felt absolutely crucial to the story's success, from sunny L.A. to cold New York to the small town vibes in Mallard, Louisiana. These details and others, like the glimpses into drag shows and musical theater and medical school, make the snapshots of each arc even more vivid and bright.

Books like this are truly humbling and important. It's probable that I'm deeply underread, but I don't think I've encountered a book that so clearly and plainly explores the ties between race and family. Bennett is certainly not the first - and there were times I honestly felt like The Vanishing Half was a little referential - but that's where she stuck the pin for this one, and it really worked. I have my own thoughts about blood ties, kin, family, however you want to say it, but there's no doubt it does shape your identity, stamping you visibly or invisibly in ways that will never wear off.

So, why 3 stars? I loved the subject matter, the plot, the characters, the ending, the writing style ... but for me, it really came down to my personal reading experience. I dragged my heels a bit, losing interest halfway through. Bennett also tip-toes around using a device she used in The Mothers, writing as a sort of collective voice on behalf of a small town. That sort of thing is not for me, as a preference. I want to be clear though that I'm RECOMMENDING THIS, because it is masterful and worth studying and worth considering long after you finish it.

The Vanishing Half on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Broken Harbor

5 stars. Broken Harbor ---> Broken Heart. This one was excruciating, and I caught myself with a clenched jaw more than once. I don't think I know of another author who can write so deeply about serious, acute, emotional pain. Why do we love this stuff?! I don't know, but I can't wait to dive into the next one, lol. If I were to rank the Dublin Murder Squad books, this one would be near the top.

The mystery: a family is found murdered in a stalled housing development near the ocean, outside of Dublin. (The setting: appropriately gloomy, isolated, half-constructed and half-abandoned, bleak and freezing cold.) Patrick Spain has been brutally stabbed, and his two children smothered in their beds. Jenny Spain, having suffered a similar knife attack, has survived and is in the hospital. Our hero: Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy, strolling onto the scene with his own story after his cameo in Faithful Place. Step right up to the plate, Scorcher, it's your turn for one of those classic Frenchian life-altering, terror-inducing, world-shattering mysteries that leaves us, as witnesses, equally shattered.

Honestly, not sure how I'm going to get through this spoiler-free, so FYI - SPOILERS AHEAD. You've been warned.

Kennedy, like most of French's protagonists, starts his book confident and capable, having stuffed a painful past into an ordered, black-and-white, neat and tidy life. To him, there's a reason, or an explanation, for everything. Even caring for his mentally ill sister has strict parameters - a deep-seated strategy he refuses to veer from. He's good at his job, he follows the rules, and he keeps his temper under control. Control the chaos - that's his thing. Without control, he's adrift. Everything’s adrift.

(I've read him described as a really unlikeable protagonist - not to me. Toxic boss behavior aside, I loved him. Or maybe, I understood him.)

And I totally thought we were going to witness the crumbling of that carefully-built lifestyle, from start to finish. I totally thought the lesson would be that his need or desire to have control = a futile, useless effort, all the way. The final act (by this I mean, Dina and Richie's betrayal) was a swerve, and a satisfying one. I was glad, honestly, to see Kennedy, not totally, but just slightly, justified. I was glad to see his need for control even mildly validated, even if he didn't want it to be, necessarily. Even if I didn't want it to be. (Again, I'm referring to Dina and Richie's actions - nothing pertaining to the case itself.)

Does that make sense?

Probably not.

Re: the case itself - French always weaves Ireland's Issues - economic and otherwise - into the narrative and it's phenomenal (and phenomenally relevant) here. The precise clarity with which she writes about shattered hopes and dreams is almost horrific. And I loved the animal aspect. When we got to read the wildlife forum posts, it was a genuine WTF moment for me. A couple of the clues weren't exactly ... groundbreaking, but they unfold themselves nicely enough. It's a scary case, though the scariest moment for me personally involved considerable damage done to an alphabetized bookshelf.

I always think of Tana French's books as Very Adult. They're wordy, thinky, contemplative. When I pick up something by her I have to be in the mood to 1) pay attention and 2) wallow in something muddy for a while. Though she nails family dynamics well, I was glad they were on the lighter (though no less dramatic) side here. I LOVED THE ENDING. I loved the themes. The Witch Elm was disappointing and very feel-bad, but I'd love to keep going with this series and check out The Searchers.

Broken Harbor on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: The Survivors

4 stars. Jane Harper is a must-read for me, and she should be for anyone else interested in exquisite mystery thrillers with complex characters involved in complex crimes. In this one, a body of a young woman is found, throwing a small coastal town into chaos. But the core of the story is not a traditional whodunnit - it's also about a storm that ravaged the town over ten years ago, leaving three victims in its wake. I say this adoringly, but: blah blah blah, secrets, clues, family drama, unanswered questions, misplaced blame, etc. etc. etc.

For some reason this one is less of a compelling mystery and more like a ........ feel-bad story. Don't get me wrong, it's a pageturner and I wanted to know the answers, but it felt very grim getting there. Maybe I've forgotten how Harper flavored her other books, and maybe I'm inactively looking for a pick-me-up / grand escape in my reading these days, but it didn't quite hit the spot like I expected it to.

That being said - how wonderfully refreshing to read a book with a young father as the hero, unraveling the mystery with his loving, reliable partner. Also refreshing: a twist I didn't see coming, unexpectedly profound words on grief and guilt, a fantastic ending. Harper really nails those. I also appreciated the pacing and the length of this one, just concise enough to keep me up late thinking "just one more chapter..."

Clever title, BTW! The concept of the Survivors as an art piece is awesome, but obviously the word refers to our characters - each a trauma survivor in his or her own way. I really loved the very human and very heroic failures illustrated in this story, despite the utter darkness seeping out from between the lines. Harper plays with the concept of hero/villain once again, exploring the choices and decisions that lead us down one path or another. Or, maybe, landing us somewhere in-between.

The Survivors on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Pet Sematary

4 stars. Absolutely horrific. This took me eight months to read, for multiple reasons: pandemic burnout, lack of interest, but also maybe lack of enthusiasm for a book filled with such potent dread you can taste it. I'm so glad I stuck with it, though, because I blasted through to the end in a kind of obsessed panic. Phew, it's dark. Despite the fact that Pet Sematary narrates the story of a doctor who moves his family from Chicago to Maine for a new job - and their subsequent adjustment to the new way of life - this is really, quite definitely, undoubtedly, unsubtly about death.

Death in all its forms, shapes, and sizes. Death as an act and an experience and a thing to be feared, or revered. Death as tragedy; death as escape. Death through the eyes of children; adults; victims; survivors. Death as it is dealt with by different cultures and faiths and religions. King dives deep - really deep - into the idea that death is somehow both the most natural, universal truth of being human, and also one of the most unnatural, surreal events to encounter. Worse still, should it be somehow reversed.

I went in knowing already many of the iconic moments in this book, but the one that truly twisted me up inside was the revelation about Rachel's sister, Zelda. The sequence describing her illness and death had me terrified. It's often King's scenes like this - unexpected detours or side scenes - that really dig deep. Another one that comes to mind is the parlor scene from The Stand ... the interaction between Franny and her mother had me struggling to breathe. It's so good.

From a technical perspective, I would argue that this isn't one of King's best-written books (he knows this). That ending, lol. But also the pacing seems off, and the level of detail during certain scenes (and normally I love his level of detail!) had me skimming. It's a little outdated, a little misogynistic like a lot of King's older writing. Still, it's a must-read for fans of horror and of King. I sort of feel like I have an experience under my belt now, like a notch in my bed post, or an achievement unlocked. There's something really vivid about this one.

Pet Semetary on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: All Things Cease to Appear

5 stars. Wow, how brutal was this? I can't believe I went from the magic of Daevabad to All Things Cease to Appear. Guess it's true: I really do read everything I can get my hands on. And you know what? I loved it just as much. This is one of the most harshly human stories I've ever read, and also a lot of other things: a pageturner; a character study; a mystery. There's a murder, and a small town, and a marriage, and it takes those familiar ingredients and bakes something truly special. Painfully, sharply special. Haunting in every meaning of the word.

This book really sneaks up on you, and I highly, highly recommend going in blind, so I won't summarize except to say, broadly, that this book is about a young couple that moves into a house with a past in a small town. But it really is about so much more than that - grief, hope, despair, love, faith, art, belief, loyalty, and betrayal. Tragedy. Joy after tragedy. Arrogance. The hunt. Rage. Peace. And so much more.

By the time it ended, my heart was in my throat. Sometimes it's hard to turn my analytical brain off, but this book washed over me to the point of serious emotional investment. I ached for these characters and I felt connected to them - the female ones, particularly, dug under my skin and will probably live there for awhile. They made interesting, different choices, and pursued unusual paths, which lent itself to the plot but also a sense that this story is real. It feels like real life. I think I fell in love with each of them, a little. For whatever that's worth.

I really commend Elizabeth Brundage for taking a familiar skeleton of a story and painting its image in a new light. The way things unfold and the way she writes about the in-between spaces and the way she leaves nobody untouched and the way she works through darkness and light and the way things unfold ... it's absolutely brilliant. I want to read it again so I can sift through the sand more carefully; the first read was too white-knuckly, in a good way. I need to think about it some more and maybe, if I’m lucky, discover some of its secrets.

Flagging this for my best of the year list, for sure.

All Things Cease to Appear on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: The Empire of Gold (The Daevabad Trilogy #3)

5 stars. Absolutely incredible, breathtaking, gorgeous, well-written - this trilogy is an instantly classic piece of fantasy fiction that will captivate and inspire for years to come. As I mentioned in my review of book two, it's been awhile since I felt a full-on fanatic obsession for a piece of writing, and it's been so nice to feel it so deeply, gulping down a story at the risk of ignoring and forgetting everything else about my life.

First things first, I guess, which needs to be a bit of a disclosure: I'm pretty into all things Egypt, and have been since I was a kid. I read textbooks about Ancient Egypt for fun. I love trying to cook Egyptian recipes. I've watched all the National Geographic documentaries. I am fascinated by Egyptian culture and, well, blah blah blah, I know I'm not alone, or special. Egypt is fascinating. But I'm saying this because this trilogy scratched an itch for me personally, and that undoubtedly impacts my review.

All that being said, and I cannot emphasize this enough, Chakraborty's creation of a diverse historical fantasy world in this trilogy is really well-done. She respectfully incorporates - honors - a culture that is often twisted, skewed, misunderstood, and manipulated in today's modern world. I really admire the way she navigated this, threading that needle so well. In an interview, answering a question about writing outside of one's own culture experience, she said: "Is it your place? Sometimes the answer is no. We have to learn to be okay with that. If you love the history and culture enough to write about it, you have to respect the people enough to hear what they’re saying. What are you doing to lift their voices?" (Source)

I'm not the right person to weigh in on this with any sense of authority or expertise, but I learned so much from the way she wrote this story that I can't help but feel she clicked it all into place in a good way. A fair way.

Other things I'm obsessed with:

• The ending! A lot more hopeful that I was anticipating - my heart was in my throat for so many of the characters.

• The themes! As always, Chakraborty explores a lot of Big Stuff like religion, family, politics, heritage, power, and the cost of peace with an expert hand. I'll genuinely be thinking about the way she pokes around concepts like justice and free will for days.

• The characters! Characters who experience trauma and emerge totally traumatized, what a concept! Characters who are beyond comprehension yet beautiful and admirable in their own ways (Sobek ILY). Plus the room she creates for characters who are otherwise villainous.

• Nerdy stuff, like character names and structure and pacing and plotting!

• The world. Colorful and vivid and full of true history and lore. I still struggled with the various tribes and their backgrounds, but it doesn't matter. This world is so rich and it never feels too magic-y or too info-dump-y or too show-off-y (technical terms, every last one of them). I think often about how to marry a good idea with good execution, and I think many authors are (don't kill me) sort of rarely successful. There are always things to nitpick about one or the other and of course one directly impacts the other. But the narrative here felt really purposeful and beautiful at the same time.

I'm not ready to let go, but I actually do have to like, get back to work and do my job and take care of my responsibilities and stuff. Or maybe I could just start the whole thing over again. Decisions, decisions.

The Empire of Gold on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy #2)

4 stars. My never-ending quest to finish trilogies continues! And honestly, this one is so awesome. I'm really in love with these books and the way everything - the characters, the worldbuilding, the magical plot - comes together. I re-read The City of Brass so I'd be fully prepared, but I didn't expect to be so fully immersed. I'm about to dive into Empire of Gold and my biggest hope is simply that my heart survives it.

Five years after landing in Daevabad with Dara, Nahri has grown as a healer and has reluctantly embraced her status as a member of the royal family - for now. Ali is happily building a city far from his home, living at peace with his new abilities - for now. But in a city like Daevabad, full of tension among tribes, the status quo is fragile and cracking. With looming threats from abroad and within, each of the players in this game learn, unpleasantly, the enormous cost of change, and of peace.

Like the first book, this is truly a spellbinding whirlwind of beautiful colors and rich elements. The not-so-subtle exploration of themes like racism, religious persecution and inherited conflict continues, but it's still never preachy - in fact, it doubles down in its insistence that these things are as futile as they are ingrained and unavoidable, a tragic reality that each character has to learn and navigate.

I rolled my eyes at the romance in the first book, but I didn't mind it here, because it totally expands what "romance in YA/adult fantasy" can look like. (Or, I should say, what I want it to look like, which is a little less trope-y, a little less soulmate-y, and a little more malleable/non-monogamous). I docked a star instead because it's a little slow in the beginning/middle, and because for the life of me the tribe history and conflicts never clicked into place.

Regardless, these books are favorites. I think I might purchase beautiful hard copies, because I really see myself wanting to re-read. I'm fully invested and fully enamored by this world and want so much more. It's been so damn long since I felt myself in the first blushing throes of full fan obsession, but S.A. Chakraborty fucking hits it out of the park with every character, every development, every action-packed fight scene, every carefully-written line about oppression and social injustice. I can't not feel a little squeal-y, to be honest.

The Kingdom of Copper on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Plain Bad Heroines

3 stars. Inn-turr-ess-tinggg. I'm thrown. I didn't hate this, don't worry, but something about it was, well, excruciatingly annoying to me. Between the quirky footnotes, the flashbacks, the lack of horror, the sheer wordiness of it all... plus, character access felt shallow; toe-deep, and the viewfinder felt off-kilter, like we could only see one corner of the full picture, or we could only look at it sideways.

The whole thing just didn't come together in the right way, for me. And it's very possible that it all just went over my head, too.

Story 1: Present. Three young women, two actresses and an author, are brought together to make a movie about Story 2.

Story 2: Early 1900s. Three young women die under mysterious circumstances (two stung by a swarm of yellow jackets; one ate poisonous flowers) at a school for girls in Rhode Island, and the principal must deal with the aftermath.

Our questions: did something sinister lead to their deaths? Why do strange and unusual things still happen on the school's land? How will they make a movie about its hauntings, despite its hauntings? And WTF does Mary MacLane have to do with it, other than connecting all the main characters and being kind of an original badass herself?

And also, in addition to being about all that, it's about women in love with each other and the many different colors of being queer. Which is wonderful.

But back to that sideways viewfinder. Maybe it was sideways, maybe it was foggy. I just couldn’t bring it into focus. I just couldn’t figure out what I was looking at. Carefully built momentum took me nowhere. Deep dives seemed pointless. The author led us down rabbit holes that didn't seem relevant or resolved. It's full of excellent moments, for sure, but the connective tissue just wasn't strong enough, for me. I hate to say it, because this mood board has almost everything I love on it - it's just, when I step back and look at it as a whole, it's a mess.

And back to that shallow character access. Especially in Story 1, I never really got to know the three girls. For real, deep down. The narrator (anonymous? Did I miss something?) tells - it's very tell-y - a lot about their actions and thoughts but they somehow still seemed so ... flat.

Finally, though this is marketed as horror, it doesn't really hit in a scary way. There are creepy moments, and a lot of meta-exposition on the academia of horror (which I admittedly loved), but no true frightening moments. I couldn't even really tell if the stakes were that high, honestly. And the climax proved, unfortunately, that they weren't, canceling any delicious dread I felt as the mystery unfolded.

So there it is. No regrets, truthfully, because I was absolutely picking up what it was putting down about queerness and queer history and I loved the gothic tropes and the themes. And I can't rate this any lower because it is truly impressive and ambitious and like I said above, it's possible it just went right over my head. I would LOVE for someone to convince me what I missed and what it’s all about and why I should LOVE it. But here we are. Thanks for listening, anyway.

Plain Bad Heroines on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Survivor Song

5 stars. Well, in a world that has turned out to be pretty wishy washy, I can always depend on one thing: Paul Tremblay will stress me out. I have no idea how or why he managed to get things so right, nor why I decided to pick this up now of all times, but here we are. Survivor Song is, as expected, a brutal and tense book full of awful things happening to good people. It is full of pain and fear and inconvenient, unfortunate truths. It didn't fuck me up as much as some of his others, but yeah, it's an immersive nightmare, if you're into that sort of thing, which I am. Lol.

Dr. Ramola Sherman, already nervous about a new rabies-like virus infecting the human population in Boston, is thrown into an intense emergency situation when her pregnant friend from college, Natalie, is bitten by an infected man. The two of them realize they must navigate from an overrun hospital through an infested area to reach a safe clinic before it's too late, challenged at every turn by miscommunication, government failure, untrustworthy citizens, and Natalie's worsening condition.

Sound familiar? Yyyyyikes. But it's really good. This is probably going to come across as super presumptuous, but I think it's Tremblay's best-written book to date. It's very simple in premise and execution (sort of like an episode of The Twilight Zone or a less-darkly-comedic Creepshow), and he's lost a lot of the analogy-laden writing that weighed down previous books. It's just snappy and well-paced and very frightening. I would also say that he absolutely nails the balance between horror and heart, which is tricky and rare.

I also really admire his female characters in this one. Actually, all the characters. For such a short book, I feel like he committed a ton of time to research, not just the scientific/medical stuff, but the personalities and motivations behind the choices his characters make. You can absolutely expect the sort of grisly ending that would be inevitable in this situation, and Tremblay knows this, so he focuses a ton of effort on the journey we take to get there. And it works really, really well. By the time it hits, we care. A lot. It's really emotional.

The use of location and space in this reminded me a lot of The Stand, which puts you smack dab in the middle of Boulder, CO - street names, landmarks and all. I'm guessing the highways, hospitals and other areas featured are accurate, which makes this even more badass and wonderful. It lends yet another real life flavor to what is already a devastatingly real story.

I think we can expect that Paul Tremblay's work will continue to evolve and grow in new ways. I think we can also expect that no matter where he goes, he will always be reliable for a good, fucking good, scary story. Consider me a superfan.

Survivor Song on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (HP #1)

Feeeeeeeelings. Like many of you, I grew up with Harry. These books were read aloud to me as a young person and I revisited them many, many, many times after. I was there for the midnight releases, the casting announcements, the movie premieres, the fanfiction, the websites, the art, the wonder, the excitement, the tinkering, the raised eyebrows, the broken promises, the disappointments, and then the ultimate betrayal. The ongoing betrayal. That sounds ridiculously dramatic, but let's not be vague about it: the creator of this generation-defining series expressed narrow-minded, transphobic beliefs and then doubled down. It's a painful story and it's one that I can't really seem to look away from, because it's interesting and horrible and bruising.

I am not trans, and so I cannot even begin to understand the depths of personal and public trauma she has caused for some and continues to cause. But I still feel the need to process it ... to sort through the *gestures* big mess of it all. I really started considering a re-read when I hit the Pandemic Wall, like so many of us have in the past few weeks, under a few conditions: (1) I'll read my physical copies to avoid leaving a data footprint that could benefit her in any capacity (lol), (2) I'll read with a more critical eye and try to learn from it and (3) I'll let myself enjoy the books if it feels right. There are a lot of articles and think pieces about reconciling art with its artist (or separating it), and I'm going to lean on them if things get weird. They will.

---

Reviewing would be pretty much impossible, so here are my notes:

• Almost right away - Chapter 1 - there are clues. Not too many, and not enough to make things confusing, but the level of planning JKR did is astounding.

• The tone here is so playful and clever and humorous. I know the books get darker because the wizarding world gets darker (and the characters get older), but I'm going to miss the easy, readable flow she uses in Book 1.

• The characters are distinct and arrive fully fleshed out, which I find to be rare in fiction, when every individual comes from the same mind.

• I wonder how influential the editing process was on this before it was published, and how little it influenced the later books. At some point it must've reached a point where the publishers were like, okay, just let her do her thing, which probably led to the extreme bloat toward the end of the series. I wonder what Harry Potter as a whole would've looked like had every book been packaged as neatly as this one.

• I know this resonates with everyone but reading about how a letter could arrive one day offering you a literal escape from your horrible life into a magical one is so vivid and hopeful I could almost taste it.

• Things that surprised me: there are very few spells mentioned or described. Some, but not nearly as many as I remembered or expected. Also, the early appearance of the centaurs.

• How much could have or would have been different had Dumbledore just been honest with Harry from the beginning?

• This book - the imagery, the dialogue, the faces of the characters - is so, so, so intertwined with the first movie. They are inseparable in my brain, partly because I think the first movie matches so closely what I saw in my head reading it for the first time. It's a shame movies 3-8 don't subscribe to that tone for consistency's sake.

• Ultimately, there's no denying that this gave to me and many others an incredible doorway. I really enjoyed re-reading. There's plenty of heart, soul and magic to be found in these wonderful books, despite the actions of their author.

Note: I won’t be including any links to purchase on HP-related posts.