An audio play about trans women staying at a hotel in Thailand awaiting surgeries.  It is short (and free from audible) and packs quite a bit into the format, but I think that its lack of length led to a lack of depth that could have been explored because the characters were interesting and the dialogues among them  particularly good. But because of the format as a short audio play, I felt like there was a lost opportunity to do more with them, leaving it feeling hollow and superficial.

​Not recommended.

It was particularly interesting to read this following The Mountains Sing, since it is about a wealthy family in pre-Castro Cuba just before Basista fled the country.  It is written in two time periods, with the main story being a modern day journalist, the granddaughter of the protagonist in the historical plot, who visits Cuba to scatter her grandmother's ashes and discovers the mysterious past of her grandmother.  It is less depressing than The Mountains Sing, since both storylines here are peppered with romance and moments of joy, despite having some similar heartbreaks relating to the war.  In both eras, the romances seemed forced and trite, but the writing is smooth and the historical aspects and perspective interesting.

Not not recommended. 

not This was a really intense book. Set in Vietnam, it has a definite pro-capitalism political bent to it, but mostly it was just really sad and depressing.  The violence was brutal, which I know is part of a story set in the midst of a war, but I kept waiting for things to come together, for there to be some point to the agony.  Usually, a novel is going to tie things up in a way that gives meaning to the story and this just didn't do that.  It felt more like real life--war without meaning, just loss and hurt.  This had the added misery of having neighbors turn against each other with a mob mentality that hurt.  I am not saying that the writing wasn't good or that the tying up of the strings of the story wasn't good. I am saying that this was such a downer.  

​Not not recommended.

This is a heavy, heavy read.  The story spans the adult life of a seamstress from Trinidad and while it includes descriptions of the small joys from her life, it is a series of heartbreaks that reflect the life experience of many women trying to make their way in the world.  Sexual abuse and assault, domestic violence, heartbreaks, the loss of children to death and the complexity of relationship, poverty, caste, forced immigration, and the list goes on.  If you need a read to put your life in perspective, maybe this is it.  I kept waiting for the ray of light and hope, but it wasn't there and the end left me the saddest of all.  Not "have a good cry because the character you love dies a sweet death" kind of sad, but the kind of sad in my bones that makes me wonder if humanity is even worth saving after all.
​Not recommended.

not This is an extremely well written murder mystery, with interesting and complex detectives working to solve a horrifying crime that brings up a lot of personal history.  The conflicts of interest and other ethical issues this raised gave a layer to the story that I found compelling. I flew through the book, as it is quite a page-turner.

That said, there were a number of pieces to this story that fall into the category of over-used plot lines that perpetuate myths about sex abuse and child abduction, even while ultimately bucking against those myths in favor of a different, over used story line that is equally rare in real life that I won't discuss here because the there is indeed a "twist" that would be ruined by doing so.  Suffice it to say that if you are looking for detective novel that will suck you in with great writing, this isn't a bad choice.  It just doesn't bring anything new to the genre.  
Not not recommended.

I really struggled with this book.  I started it quite a while ago and stepped away from it multiple times.  In fact, it took me more than six weeks to finally finish it.  The initial section is fairly graphic in terms of the gruesome description of leprosy and what it did to the main character's body and how it changed his personality.  Maybe this was necessary to really set the stage for how isolating it is to have a condition that ravishes a body and causes such ostracism from society. It is, indeed, this backstory that is the foundation of the story.  I was able to get past this, but I really could not get past the rape scene and the rapist's incessant rumination over it.  Just so much time and energy was put into explaining what happened and how much he regretted it and yet he does nothing that might look like making amends.  It was too much for me.  

​Do not recomment.

A love story about reconnecting with a lover from their past, it is another mentor/mentee, we-have-to-keep-our-relationship-a- secret story, which I just do not like at all.  It wasn't terrible, it just wasn't Blakely's best work.

Not recommended.

This free "podcast" collection of Queer stories from storytellers was mediocre, except that I really liked the last story by Chase Strangio about arguing his first case at the US Supreme Court.  So, I am recommending it just for this last story, which was totally unexpected and didn't go along at all with the rest of stories.

Recommend.

I am just never really a fan of the boss-type, young inexperienced new person on the job romances.  This one was par for the course on that front. Not recommended.