With all of the reading challenges I do, and the number of books I read for book tours and @netgalley I definitely don't do a great job at tackling my TBR. So this year I am going to take it seriously and try to get as many of these checked off my list as possible!
Carried over from last year's TBR:
The Lies that Bind - Emily Giffin
Fight Night - Miriam Toews
Out of My Heart - @SharonmDraper
The Lindbergh Nanny - Mariah Fredericks
Our Missing Hearts - Celeste Ng
We have Always Been Here - Samra Babib
Mad Honey - Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan
The School for Good Mothers - Jessamine Chan
From the Ashes - Jesse Thistle
The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre - Natasha Lester
The Book of Two Ways - Jodi Picoult
The Hypnotist's Love Story - Liane Moriarty
Imposter Bride - Nancy Richler
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid
I own almost all of these so there is literally no reason I can't read them in the next 375 ish days so I'm gonna do it this time!
New additions that are REALISTIC. These are books I know I have been approved for on Netgalley, have in my school library or already own
We Rip the World Apart - @CharleneCarrauthor - so excited!!!
Pageboy - Elliot Page
The Red String Theory - Lauren Kung Jessen (I requested it with @readforeverpub and so 🤞🤞🤞)
Finally Seen - @KellyYanghk
Pineapple Street - Jenny Jackson
How to Prounounce Knife - @souvankhamthammavongsa
Sunshine Nails - Mai Nguyen
Truly Madly Guilty - Liane Moriarty
Second Chances - Harriet Zaidman
And a few "we'll see" books including two carried over from this year:
The Picture Bride and Untamed + Spare, Dial A for Aunties & Hijab Butch Blues
January 2, 2024
My first book of 2024 ended up being a DNF
I started reading How To Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa and just did not enjoy it. I'm not sure why I added it to my 2024 TBR, but it just was not the right book for me. Oh well, I am still confident this year will be a better year for checking books off my TBR, even if some end up being dnfs!
January 20, 2024
Well so far, my TBR for 2024 is already leaps and bounds better than my TBR for 2023 haha!
Mad Honey
Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan
Mad Honey has been on my TBR for a while, and I am SO glad I finally got to it. @jodipicoult is one of those authors I've read sporadically since I was in High School, and yet I tend to forget how much I love her books. Everytime I pick one up I get so absorbed in her writing. I love that the suspense and twists and bold choices in narratives that jump all over the place but somehow work because she wrote it.
I could sit and talk about this book, if you've read it recently and want to chat about it I would totally be up for that, DM me. But in the meantime, here are the things that stood out to me about this book.
1. I loved that it was co-authored, and as a result, featured some own voices aspects. I rarely read the end pages of a book, usually there is another book so pressing and I don't really care how many publisher's children and neighbour's cousins the author wants to thank, but this time I read every word of the authors' notes. I didn't look up @jenniferfinneyboylan prior to reading, and I am glad I did because it kept one of the twists a huge surprise for me, but I definitely want to read her other books.
2. The twists. There was 1 main one that left me up at 2:30 a.m. shocked, but Picoult is an expert at throwing curve balls.
3. The unfolding story in two timelines and POVs. I absolutely hate this kind of thing in MOST books, but as Picoult said in her author's note about a conversation with Boylan "You can write a story in reverse", maybe she needed to add, "if you're writing with Jodi Picoult".
4. The characters were great, generally well developed, and most had large arcs and transformations. Their learning journeys, especially about a main theme, were well done.
5. As always, Picoult did a great job of the court case. I love that Jordan was back and that she referenced Nineteen Minutes and the Pact. I think I read those in early university so it's been A WHILE but the reference didn't go unnoticed for me.
If you've read anything Picoult before, definitely pick this one up, I don't think you'll be disappointed. 🐝
We Rip the World Apart Charlene Carr
I am so fortunate to have had the opportunity to read and review an ARC copy of We Rip the World Apart by @charlenecarrauthor! I recently discovered this fantastic Canadian author by reading Hold My Girl near the end of last year and so I couldn't wait to read this one!
Evelyn, a white female meets her husband Kingsley in Jamaica. When the political climate became dangerous in the 1980s, the young couple moved to Toronto and raised their young son, Antony. Growing up half black in Toronto in the late 90s/early 2000s was a different kind of dangerous, and Evelyn and Kingsley feared for their son's life anytime he came in contact with the police, whether that be during a peaceful rally, or unfortunately could even happen when driving his car or walking down the street. When their nightmares are realized and Antony is killed by police officers, their family is never the same.
Evelyn's daughter Kareela (Antony's much younger sister) is the other FMC and shares her POV mainly in 2022. She is living with her boyfriend (who is white) and when she finds herself pregnant she is unsure if she wants to both commit to the relationship she is uncertain about and bring a child into the world. As the story unfolds, readers learn that the complexities of being Black or in a mixed-race relationship in Canada, as well as the discrimination they face on a daily basis, and even more so, the dangers that come with that discrimination.
Carr did an excellent job with this one, her #ownvoices story gives readers such a neat perspective, especially in the Canadian context, because there are people out there who think racism doesn't exist in Canada or "isn't as bad as the states". Thanks so much to @netgalley and the publisher, @harpercollinsca for giving me the chance to read this fantastic ARC, with a pubdate later this month!
Hijab Butch Blues
Lamya H
This one was on my "Maybe, We'll see" list for this year's TBR, but I realized I had been approved for it in Netgalley a while back and never read it, so I figured before I forget, I had better read it asap!
Hijab Butch Blues is a memoir made up of several essays as well as discussion of people and values described in the Quran. Lamya discovers she is a lesbian as a young adult, but knows that in her family and culture, this is not something that will be easily accepted. As an adult she moves to New York and attends university, it is once she is there that she finally finds her way and is able to live a life more closely related to the one she dreams of (though she still faces many challenges with being muslim and a lesbian and can never fully be herself with her family and more conservative friends or acquaintances).
I enjoyed this book and felt connected to the author as she shared her story. As far as memoirs go it was well done, relatively easy to follow and despite having essays it was generally in chronological order rather than simply based on theme. At first I really appreciated the sections discussing the Quran, primarily because I know very little about it and wanted to learn more. That being said, I did get a little tired of it eventually, in the same way I would when reading a book with Christian bible verses. I see myself as "religious enough", I understand most of the religions I've been introduced to, have an idea what going to church/mosque/temple etc. entails, and have read enough of the New Testament to recognize the quotation system when referenced in other places (ex. John 3:16). That being said, I usually skim the quotes when I see them as chapter headings and take author's discussions with a grain of salt, and when a book has several references I usually am not overly interested. So when I realized what extent this book quoted and discussed the Quran I did lose a bit of interest, but I did stick through because I really appreciated the other parts of the writing and understood the connection between the quran verses and her experiences as a muslim woman.
Overall, it was a great book with lots of new perspectives for me to explore. I am really glad I got a chance to read it and would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for my ARC copy!
February 10, 2024
I'm not quite sure how I am going to describe my thoughts on this one... I just finished it last night and it is definitely still simmering in my subconscious, but not for the reasons books normally do.
I love Celeste Ng's other books, but found this one harder to get into than I was expecting. This story is about Bird, a young adolescent boy who is part Asian and lives with his single dad in a dorm in Cambridge. Somewhat dystopian, the story is set in the States but the time period is unclear, and there is significant reference to a fictional Crisis that involves anti-Asian sentiments and forced removal of children from homes that may have controversial (read: unpatriotic) values. Bird's mom disappeared after writing something that was deemed inappropriate under recent guidelines and is connected with spreading ideas that lead to protests. As these protests continue, Bird begins to miss his mother and wants to search for her, but even searching for her is extremely dangerous, as libraries and internet searches are heavily monitored and censored.
It was actually quite fitting that I read this book this month as I am also reading and reviewing lots of banned or challenged books, a theme that is woven throughout this story. I liked that Ng included lots of relevant issues such as questionable reasons for removing children through CFS, racism, anti-Asian policies, discrimination and censorship, problems that have occurred in the past and present and could easily occur in the future, while also making a fictional set of events and problems so that this book tells its own story. That being said, I did find this one less interesting that her other books. I really struggled to stay with it through the middle 2/3 of the story, though I found the beginning and ending pretty interesting. In fact, I think the best part of the book was the last 20-30 pages. I'm not sure what it was that made me struggle to find it as "riveting" as the cover purports this book to be. Perhaps I needed the mother's story/perspective earlier on? Maybe the slow reveal of information was just a bit too slow? Whatever the reason, I'm still glad I read it and would still recommend it, but not as highly as I would recommend her other books. Interestingly enough, I did notice this one got slightly lower average ratings on goodreads in comparison to her other books, so perhaps I'm not alone.
March 9, 2024
This one had been on my list for a while, and despite it being a WWII histfic (a subgenre I am just feeling super overdone with right now...) I was looking forward to it and prioritized it on my TBR. I enjoyed the fashion piece the most I think, and didn't mind a bit of the spy/secret identity stuff, but in the end, I gave it several good attempts but just could not get into it. I watched as my kindle went left unattended for a few days at a time before finally giving in and either attempting to read Alix or reading something else "just for a quick break", all signs that this is a book that needs to be DNF'd. It definitely had promise, and was one that maybe if I wasn't in an anti-WWII hist fic phase MAY have worked out, but unfortunately it just didn't have enough good things going for it to be the right fit for me. With too many good books out there, DNF'ing just has to be a part of life... but I'm curious about others' thoughts on this one.
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