This book kept my attention for sure.  Set in Minneapolis, the murder mystery unfolds against the backdrop of the fallout of Bosnian War.  The backstory and the main plotline are both graphic, with scenes of torture and sexual assault. It advanced the story, but was it is not my favorite reading. 

The focus on the women who were part of the Bosnian militia was interesting and the characters' histories provided an opportunity for a complex discussion of trauma, war, and rape that I appreciated.
**
SPOILER ALERT:
The thing that bothered me the most was how the entire story is built around the concept that a refugee came here using false papers because she was wanted for war crimes.  Regardless of the fact that in the story, she was wanted for those crimes because a powerful man whom she saw rape her mother and oversee the killing of her entire family falsely accused her of war atrocities, it still did not sit well that in this powerful story about war refugees, stolen identity to hide a criminal history was a key feature of the story.

I also felt like the ending was incredibly unrealistic and after such an intricately well-crafted story, the author just phoned in a HEA for the stoic, isolated, independent lead character that came complete with a savior husband and motherhood.
**
Not recommended.

I haven't read many pregnancy books or memoirs in the last 20 years, even though there was a time before that where I voraciously consumed them for a while. There as a lot here to really like and also places where even I felt like it might have been TMI. For folks who like those gory detailed books like Stiff or The Book of Eels, this book is for you!  I love the raw honesty and her take on the complexity of pregnancy and birthing, even while I cringed in places it went farther than I cared for. I do always love normalizing the many ways that bodies birth and the Big Feelings that are experienced while trying to navigate the judgment and pressure of growing babies.

For people in that phase of life, I can see this being a great resource, but otherwise I am not so sure it is worth the time.

Not not recommend.  

This book was a slog. More than 700 pages of pretty dry biographical writing was a lot to get through, but I definitely learned a lot. I would say that I had came in with a pretty negative opinion about Hoover, both as a person and as a president, and after reading the book, I have to say that was based on a ton of misinformation.  

Orphaned at a young age, he was taken in by Quaker relatives in Oregon who cared and provided for him.  He learned the value of honesty, hard work, and public service -- all of which he held fast to his entire life.  I had no idea his commitment to ending hunger and his work in getting food distribution systems in place for civilian populations impacted by war and economic instability.  I was impressed at the value he placed on community service and his early use of media to influence social change rather than through legislation was fascinating, as well as the ways in which it backfired against him.

Having seen the play and movie Annie more times than I can count, I associate Hoover strongly with what I thought was his empty political promises: a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. The idea that he fundamentally believed that everyone should be fed and that we had the capacity to make sure that no one went hungry and that everyone's prosperity should rise together was completely lost on me before reading the book.  I didn't understand that his commitment to everyone collectively tightening their belts for the good of the community during hard times was used against him in the way it was.  The politics of that was fascinating.

His relationship with his very independent wife was equally interesting, as she controlled the finances and essentially lived where we wanted and did as she pleased while he pursued his career around the world.
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I can't say that I would necessarily recommend the book -- and certainly not for the average reader-- but for political or historical buff, this is actually a really good read.

​Not not recommended.

Having the information in this book probably makes it worth reading.  The writing is rough.  Much of the book feels like a 5 paragraph essay, where there is a vague opening paragraph that tells us what the essay is going to tell us, then spends three paragraphs with introductory sentences giving an overview of the forthcoming paragraph, and then a paragraph summing up what has been told to you.  It is unfortunate that this format means the material in the book has been made into a book instead of into a long essay.  So much of the book should just have been cut.  I was so bored as paragraphs, maybe chapters, were spent telling us that we should came about indigenous folks from Central and South America without telling us why or giving us the details of the ways in which they have been oppressed and excluded.  The points in the book where we finally got to the details of these things were really interesting.  But getting there was so painfully slow going that what I really want is for everyone to spend time learning about the topic, but in a different, more efficient format.

Not not recommended.

I know that the writing in this book is well loved by a lot of readers, but I just could not get into it.  The western, masculine world of the wild west just isn't for me. It was a bit of Don Quixote, a bit of Lonesome Dove, and a lot of expecting Brokeback Mountain without an ounce of romance. It was just men making their way in a world of other men--and horses-- in a way that just did not resonate for me.  It did make me want to go back and read Lonesome Dove, though, since I loved that series in the 1990's and I wonder whether it holds up such that I would like it now or would I find it as boring as this novel was.

​Not recommended.

This book really grew on it.  It started so slowly. The third or maybe fourth Iranian book this year, I found the initial development of backstory to be tedious.  But, somewhere along the way, I was gripped by the storytelling and really appreciated the way the characters grew into complex relationships that intertwined and made seemingly horrible people understandable. And of course all of the trauma caused by all of the things that happen during times of resistance and revolution and revolt.  I ended up really appreciating the story, the romances, the family dynamics, the politics, the heartaches, the life choices people make...really well written, well plotted, and well edited.

​Recommend.

This is an odd little read.  The concept of the book is really intriguing.  There are two stories and you can read either one first. If you have the paper version, you flip the book upside down to read the second story.  It is such a cool concept, especially when within the story there is a book that is a a dairy in the back behind a printed book.  

It is also a complex murder mystery with intergenerational secrets held by an erudite family. It is hard to keep up with the story and I lost track of some of the characters and plot strings.  Although the books are set 50 years apart, they are intricately linked together as the first book holds the key to solving the murder in both the first story and the second.  I do love a clever premise and I usually appreciate a really complicated storyline, but this one lost me one too many times, especially as I was trying to figure out how the two books went together. Maybe I just wasn't patient enough, but the constant games and unreliable narration definitely worn on my attention span.

Very clever, but not recommended.

This started off as a pretty typical adoption story memoir about inter-racial adoption in the PNW, but turned into a really compelling story of family, love, and what-could-have-been.  Instead of a tidy tale about how the early 80's white adoptive parents didn't appreciate how racist small town Southern Oregon was and how they didn't address her cultural heritage, we got something quite different. I wrongly anticipated this was going to be a Holt International-type fraud case that I have read quite a bit around.  I was so surprised to find that while the first part read that way, that is not where the story went at all.  Even the first part, which was almost a stand alone story of childhood longing to belong, was way above average in terms of writing and I found it neither trite, nor self-absorbed. Her compassion for her adoptive parents is evident and complicate and was really moved by the nuance of that relationship--even in the first part of the book.
​
As the progresses and she explores connection with her birth family, the story is not what she--nor the reader-- expect. It is both simpler and more complicated, but the ultimate question about whether she was "better off" having been adopted out is never presented as an easy one. The relationships with the birth family unfold in much the same way as the rest of her relationships, with depth and emotional layers that are so often left out of memoirs like this that have an agenda they want to develop.

Recommend.

If you liked Daisy Jones & The Six, you will probably love this book.  It is written in that same interview style, in this case for a documentary film about the main characters.  It feels a little choppy in the beginning as you get to know the characters and figure out who is telling which parts of the story, but once that clicked, I just could not stop reading. 

The foreshadowing was so suspenseful and just when you thought that everything was wrapping up, there was a whole new era in their lives to come--which is one thing I do like about audio books in particular: If you aren't watching the screen, you have no idea if you are 5 minutes or 5 hours from the end.  With a paper book, you always know how much farther you have to go.

I appreciated the flawed characters. Their abusive childhoods and drive to be elite athletes, even when the established sports organizations didn't want them or were only interested in exploiting them.  The relentless focus on winning, not just for the main characters, but for all of the athletes and coaches, and the complexity of their lives when the competition wasn't just on the ice.  I was so captivated by the motivations of the characters, but also their complexity.  No one was all good or all bad.  Everyone had depth.  

The plot itself was complicated enough to keep me focused, the writing was solid, but the character development was what I jut couldn't look away from. I love the unexpected, untraditional ending that felt way more in line with the developed story than a conventional love story epilogue.  

​Recommend.