I really enjoyed Beyond the Cerulian Sea and so I was disappointed that I did not love this book.  I really don't like being spoon fed morality in my novels and this one left nothing up to interpretation.  The metaphors and symbology were just too obvious and the pionts felt like they were being rammed down my throat at some points.  I obviously think that having trans representation in fiction is important and powerful, but my underlying take away from this book was that only magical beings (read Queer) can take care of magical kids and magical beings can only depend and trust magical beings. I can understand where this mentality comes from, but I just think that there is a lot more nuance than what this books allows for.  I found it pretty depressing, rather than inspiring, and a letdown.  The first book took quite a while to grow on me, but once it did, I was all in.  This one had the benefit of my coming in really excited for it and just progressively getting more and more let down as it went on.

Do not recommend.

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I somehow missed that there was not just one, but two new Hunger Games books and a new movie since I last visited this series.  What a treat it is to read a series where the books hold up on their own and don't invite a cliffhanger so you have to get the next book to feel a sense of closure.  Both of these books, which are prequels to the original trilogy, were really well down and worth reading.  I love that we aren't spoon fed the analogies to modern politics, but the complexity of the relevance is nevertheless there.  

Highly recommend both of these.

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I was a little nervous to start reading a Stephen King book. I am not a fan of horror, so have always shied away from his books, despite Delores Clayborn being one of my all-time favorite reads and having liked Eyes of The Dragon a few years ago.  I was therefore pleasantly surprised by the first part of this book, which is the set up for the actual adventure that comes fairly deep into the book.  This set-up portion of the book is exquisitely written, developing characters with depth, describing their friendships and interactions with so much detail and nuance that I was really sucked into the story before any of the fantasy part even started.

Unfortunately, once the actual adventure story starts, the narration lost me.  This was in large part because of the way in which the narrator describes the many people he encounters who have disabilities or disfigurements.  From blind and Deafness, to Dwarfism, to many others, the ableism and stereotypes that he employs in his descriptions of these characters shows such a lack of understanding of what it is to live with a disability that I could not suspend my disbelief and judgment.  He spends an exorbitant amount of time comparing and ranking their conditions, while at the same time saying things like: "Dissing disabled people is crap behavior even if they are an asshole."  As if having a a disability means that you should be coddled and pitied and given a pass for being a terrible human being.    As if that attitude is respectful of people with disabilities instead of a reflect of their dehumanization and othering.  

​Not recommended.

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I feel pretty terrible about this review. In a time when I think it is particularly important for us to reflect on the Holocaust, the violence of othering, and the horrors of ghettos and "camps" and determining human survival based on the official papers you carry, I am very sorry to report that this WWII book about all these topics is not to be recommended by me.  WWII historical fiction is usually a pretty easy sell for me, so this is almost certainly not why I didn't like it.

It started weird. This is because the story takes place in two time periods, while also telling a fictional vampire horror story that one of the characters wrote.  But you do not discover that is what is happening until really far into the book and it makes for a very confusing read.  And it felt almost like the author was deliberately trying to make it confusing.  Maybe she thought it would build up like a mystery and, to a large extent, I would call it a mystery, but it felt forced and unnecessary.  Yet, if you ignore the bizarre allegory vampire storyline distraction at the beginning, I found the book interesting enough at first and quite enjoyed the early character development that was mired in intrigue.

But even setting aside that problem, it just became more and more complicated as it jumped back and forth between narrators and time periods and between the actual story and the story-within-the-story.  I love a complex plot that makes me pay attention, but I kept thinking that this was a plot strategy meant to hide the ball.  And indeed, there were pieces of the story that were obviously being withheld--huge pieces of the story, like why one of the main characters has facial disfigurement from some type of trauma that most everyone in the story seems to know about and is alluded to over and over, but isn't spelled out for the reader until way past the point that I still cared.  It ended up just not being this big deal after all the hype to get to it. And again, I just felt like it was deliberately being done that way despite it not making any sense not to tell the reader.

Perhaps the most prominent reason for my not liking it was the gratuitous, graphic details of the violence that felt added for shock value.  Not that the Holocaust wasn't shocking and I don't disagree that some level of description of the details is appropriate and I don't want to discount that for survivors the horrors went on and on and on, each more horrific than the last.  There was just something about the way it was written that left me feeling like it was another game the author was playing with me as the reader.  I don't know how we learn about the time period without hearing about the details of the violence, but here it was done in a way that as I was reading I was aware that I was reading this book about this horrible thing that was designed to convey to me how horrible it was instead of letting the story unfold naturally.  In the context of the other unusual plotting choices, I just could not get into it.  So much so, that I had to take several breaks from it to read other things before coming back to finish it.

Not recommended.

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​This is not what I was expecting.  Not only was it no what I as expecting, but even when I was well into the story, things would happen that I did not see coming.  Twice in a short period of time, I was out walking and audibly gasp at the unexpected turn of events. It wasn't that I didn't find the story plausible, because once it happened, it was obvious that it could have happened that way, but I was just so surprised and I cared so much about the story and he characters.

The "women" here are the women who joined the military as nurses and were deployed into combat hospitals during the Vietnam War. From deciding to enlist to deployment to coming home to the many twists and turns of life after that, I loved everything about this story.  The complicated relationships, the struggles, the trauma, the recovery, the heartaches, and the way she writes about the constant, crushing sexism of that era was all so tangible, so well conveyed.  

I didn't realize this was the same author who wrote The Nightingale, which is an absolute all time favorite of mine.  If you loved one of those, I think you would love the other, even though they are quite different in nature. The writing is impeccable.  I can't say that I am anything close to an expert on either WWII or the Vietnam War, but I know enough to have been impressed by the amount of research that had to have gone into the books.  I'm focused on my 50 bookish friends list, but I loved this book enough that I contemplated diverting from the list to read more of her books.

When the book was over, I left wishing there was more.  Not an epilogue -- I didn't think that was warranted, but more of the details of the story along the way because the storytelling was just so good. The depiction of the friendships that weave through the book were so vivid and impressive.  I loved the ending.  I love the middle parts.  I loved the twists and turns and the heartbreaks and most of all I loved the women in the story.
 
Highly recommend.  
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I was under what I now know to have been the quite mistaken impression that this was a trilogy.  I was sadly, sadly disappointed to discover at the end of this book that it is not in fact a trilogy.  Indeed, it is now planned to be a full series.  I am very aware that this is likely the new Outlander series, where I will get 20 books into a series that is promised to be a 21 book set, with no estimated release date for the last one.  I just don't know if I can emotionally invest at this level again.  I miss the solid trilogies: Hunger Games, Legend (which added a fourth book years later, but the trilogy stood alone), Xenogenesis, Discovery of Witches (I know she added more, but the original trilogy was also a set), and Anne of Green Gables (again, the first three culminated an ending and if you didn't know there was more, all would be good in the world). This was not a solid trilogy. This was a telenovela, designed to suck you in and then using the ridiculously stupid amnesia plot twist to leave you completely hanging at the end of the book. 

This was just such a disappointment.  It was particularly a disappointment because all three books were really intricate.  The plotting was so complicated that half-way through the second book, I went back to the beginning of the first book to read it again because I want to make sure that I was following the interwoven stories of the secondary characters.  These side stories are so compelling and I didn't realize how much they would tie into the main storyline as things progressed.  They are written like backstory, not foreshadowing, and what is included there is really rich in detail that is needed to understand the big picture.  In the middle of the third book, I also backed up and reread about 10 chapters for the same reason.  And if I am completely honest, I also backed up because I didn't want to get to the end. This was because I expected that it was going to be over.  Now, I feel like there was no reason at all to have pre-ordered the book and started reading it on the day it was released.  I definitely should have waited until the series was completed before I even started the first one.

Likely, if there is ever an ending to the series, I might update my recommendation here, but after being rivetted through all three books, completely captivated by the magic and the politics, as well as the love story in this complex universe that was created, I just cannot recommend something that ends on such a cheap cliffhanger.  I really just felt like this was designed to make me have to buy more books and for her to get a deal with Netflix or Max for a series that never ends.  It was just such a disappointment.
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One of the best unreliable narrator books I have read in a while, the twists and turns of this little gem took me on a journey I was not expecting.  Without giving spoilers, I didn't love the ending, which was the only unexpected turn in the entire book and was kind of a let down after so much work went into the plot up until then.  It is a story of tourist, on a vacation to try to escape the recent trauma of her life, who meets a local that turns into a one-night fling that takes a dramatic turn.  It is a fun, free audible book that I can't quite recommend, but definitely cannot not recommend.  A solid end to a full year of reading.

Not not recommended.

I loved this book.  Stephanie Foo, of This American Life fame, combines exceptional storytelling with high quality journalism in this memoir about her experience of child abuse, neglect, and abandonment. The first part of the book is the story of her childhood, written with compassion and reflection.  But then, she shifts gears in the second part of the book, where the book follows her path learning about trauma and trying so many of the approaches to healing that are available from body work to EMDR, traditional and alternative therapies.  She reviews the research and data, then weaves that into her experiences in a way that was unique, interesting, and informative.  She holds herself responsible for the ways in which her unaddressed trauma made life for those around her more difficult, while also modeling the ability to recognize that and not beat herself up for what she did when she did not know better.  It is another really great read about abuse, resiliency, and healing.

Plus, she reads it herself and she has that podcast voice and cadence that is so recognizable.

Highly recommend

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I thought this was going to be a better read than it was.  Although in some ways, she shares intimate details about her alcoholism and mental health struggles, I often felt like she was going through the motions of telling her story in the sort of superficial way people do.  The telling of the story is neither chronological, nor set forth by organized topic or thought, but rather a collection of stories with gaps and jumps that left me feeling like I never got to the point.  At times, I thought the recounting of the experiences to be justification for behaviors that hurt people in a way that I just didn't find compelling, but more of a "look at the terrible things I did while I was drinking" rant.

   Not recommended.

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I was unprepared for the raw introspection that this provides about a child starved for love, affection, and attention, in the midst of a pediatric cancer treatment that removed part of her jaw bone.  Her description of being bullied and ostracized following was painful, but that paled in comparison to the emotional impact of her experience of illness and hospitalizations.  I was stunned by her frankness about the ways in which she enjoyed being sick, having surgeries, and the attention that came with it.  Her vivid and detailed accounts of trying to make herself sicker was both heartbreaking and shocking.  People who love horses will not find it at all surprising that she finds particular joy and acceptance riding and caring for horses at a stable.  

The writing in the book is strong and her story provides a unique perspective, yet I did feel like something was missing from the book.  There didn't seem to be an overall arc or theme to the story that held it all together, which I think left me feeling a little disappointed by it overall.  That said, I have mad respect for someone who can take such a harsh and honest look at their motivations as a child and young adult and take public accountability for that.  All in all, I have really mixed thoughts about recommending the book, so I am going to call it a Not Not Recommended.

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