This book will take you on a roller coaster of emotions, but it is such a fun ride. Geeta's alleged murder of her husband has granted her a kind of freedom, and soon other village women recognize that they too could rid themselves of their oppressors. The mood ranges from sad to angry to elated, but ultimately the friendships, community and Geeta's dry wit result in a truly enjoyable read.
This book made me silently weep whilst eating toast and drinking tea at my dining table at 7am.
This book blew me away. As someone not particularly partial to traditional vampire tropes, I was stunned by Kohda's unflinching depiction and upending of them. An ornate and close-to-consciousness writing style made this book impossible not to lap up and savor.
This deeply unsettling collection of statements from the human and humanoid crew of a space-faring Six Thousand Ship in the 22nd is as successful at establishing stakes through minimalist writing as it is at problematizing production-focused workplace culture. The similarity Ravn implies between the states of mind and being of the humanoids and the alienated human crew bears particular mention as evidence of the skill and heart with which this book was written.
(Content warning: This book deals heavily with the topic of trauma and sexual violence.)
I was so enamored by this debut by Chantal V. Johnson! The author has said herself that she wrote the book trying really hard not to resort to the popularized buzz words around trauma, and the result is a piece of literature that breathes new air into discussions surrounding issues that have long been around - like misogyny, feminine beauty standards, PTSD, eating disorders, etc. I appreciate how she shows the minute ways in which past trauma continually impacts people - in an Uber, for example, when the driver makes a wrong turn and Vivian suddenly plunges into a fear-spiral about getting abducted. This is a really important work about cultural allowances of everyday sexual violence. It's witty, it's engrossing, and it entreats the reader to examine the world around them for ways they are contributing to the brokenness.
I loved this book. A speculative, alternative vision of the U.S. that hits just a little too close to home, HESTIA STRIKES A MATCH had me at turns laughing out loud and grinding my molars in disgust. I have such a soft spot in my heart for brusque, dramatic elderly ladies and Mildred hit that note precisely. Grillo makes wry observations about human behavior in a landscape that feels hopeless. Luckily for readers, Hestia's tale is hopeful and smart.
Three timelines converge in a nonlinear narrative that knots itself up and doesn't quite come undone in a moving exploration of loss, grief, and the role of a biracial Asian person in an infectiously white society. Simultaneously, and also at several different points in time, you are introduced to an 80s noir detective show with its torn-leather-jacket-wearing star, Raider, and an enigmatic tech company promising a battery that solves the energy crisis. It's also about queerness, the few days before Christmas, and cereal milk. I loved Flux, and I will be madly talking in circles about it for a very, very long time.
Choose this book if you are up for some experimental writing! This story is not told chronologically but if you are like me, you'll appreciate it for the occasional vignettes that speak to some part of your life in a relieving, "wow-I'm-so-glad-somebody-put-
this-to-words" kind of way.
This blistering debut took me on quite a journey within the single sitting it took for me to consume it. Full of tension and foreboding, it delves into the relationship between memory and truth, the ripple effect of trauma and the damage we inflict upon those who remind us of the most hidden parts of ourselves. Love it.
This book is a masterclass on making characters come alive on the page. Cara Romero is a Dominican mother and immigrant trying to get a job in the middle of the Great Recession in New York. In a matter of 12 sessions (each chapter = one session), she spills the secrets of her life to a career counselor who will ultimately decide whether she is job-ready. In the course of these sessions, we learn about Cara's family of origin, the people who depend on her, and the depth of her grief for her estranged son whose sexuality she had trouble understanding. This is a loving story about the difficulty - and necessity - of change.
