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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If you liked Sapiens, you will probably love this book, too. 
I think I liked it more and I really liked Sapiens. The book is really clever in its layout, focusing on different aspects of women's bodies and how those can be traced back to various "Eves" who were the first ancestor to have those traits.  The author has a sense of humor that sometimes made me giggle the way one might giggle in a middle school sex ed class, but there were also entire sections that I found really interesting.  Her discussion about the history of midwifery was just fascinating.  From breastfeeding to menopause to tools to legs and hearing, this book kept me engaged the entire time.  I particularly loved the discussion about hearing ranges and loss in men and how male hearing loss corresponds with the pitch of young women's voices and babies cries.  

As a side note, I was pleasantly surprised at how the author dealt with trans-ness throughout the book.  It was a rare treat to have a book so rooted in bodies and particularly women's bodies be so nuanced in its treatment of trans bodies.

Highly recommend.

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This is a sweet sweet sweet young adult fiction about two trans-masculine kids exploring friendship and love together and apart.  Written for a slightly more mature audience than Cemetery Boys, this is one of the few trans-masc narratives that I have felt expressed the joy of transitioning and questioning ones gender identity, as well as the difficulties of navigating that experience in the context of complex familiar and cultural systems that are not always supportive.  This adds a layer of complexity by exploring the relationship between the two friends as their relationship moves between friendship and romantic interest, with one family supportive and one not.  There are themes of child sex abuse, but not related to the trans characters and none of that sub-plot is at all graphic, but the juxtaposition of how the Catholic family rallies around the child abused within the church while continuing to be unsupportive of their trans child is an interesting example of how families can step up for one child, while letting down another one, such that children growing up with different issues can have wildly different support networks.

​Recommend. 

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This book is a cross between Under The Whispering Door and Let's Pretend This Never Happened.  It is a very hyper read, with a high energy, scattered, neurotic narrator whose prose reflects their whirlwind existence.  Filled with demons and death hounds and the grim reaper, who haplessly and unknowingly kills people and animals by just pointing to them, the storyline itself is just weird, with even weirder characters.  I love quirky, but this is a quirky beyond what I could keep up with, as the storyline gets more bizarre and harder to follow.  Some parts are admittedly clever--like the whole concept of the "beta male" who is definitely not the alpha male, but who is doing all right in the wake of the alpha males.  I was never quite sure if the main character was really experiencing becoming a "death merchant" or if the whole story was goin to end up being a grief induced hallucination.  I'm actually still not sure, but since there is apparently an entire series, I suppose if this question haunts you after the first book, you could keep reading.  I, however, could barely tolerate the disjointed hyper-ness of volume one, so this is one series I will not be getting sucked into. I do know one Jennifer Lawson fan I will be recommending this to.

Side note: While there is a short-lived subplot that makes reference to a trans woman one of the characters is romantically corresponding with, there is some transphobic content that I thought was unnecessary and crass.
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​If this book is for you, you can click here to purchase this book and support My 50 Bookish Friends blog project.  For Under Whispering Door, click here and Let's Present This Never Happened, click here.

This review is going to include some spoilers that you might not want revealed for you if you are going to read this one, but I am so irritated with this book that I can't help it.  I am so sick of the "plot twist" that reveals that the case that so clearly appears to be one of domestic violence on the surface is actually a woman who has set up a situation to blame the boyfriend/husband for it.  Most recently made particularly popular in the wake of Gone Girl, this storyline is supposed to suck us into blaming a otherwise controlling or violent man when, surprise, it was never domestic violence at all.  All this does is perpetuate the myth that women lie about domestic violence and that whenever these allegations arise, we should be extremely skeptical.  This plot is particularly upsetting in the context of trying to raise awareness about and normalize trans-ness by telling a compelling and complex story about a trans teen girl in an unhealthy and violent relationship.  The development of her character is lovely.  She isn't a trope or a shell of a person.  Her mother is supportive and she has had supportive allies, as well as having experienced devastating transphobia and hate crimes.  This level of detail and this quality of writing could have been done without feeding into dangerous tropes about domestic violence.  I'm so disappointed.

Cannot recommend.

In typical John Irving fashion, this very long tome could easily have been three novels since the story wrapped up at several points, then droned on for a while during which time he rebuilt the stage for the next plotline.  During these downtimes, I was bored and frustrated with the narration--wanting it to have just ended at the previous climax instead of starting a whole new story.  But of course, once, the new scene was set, that story was worth telling and so we would go around again.  It is an unusual writing style and I can't say I love it.  It is reminiscent of A Prayer for Owen Meaney, which I also love-hated for the same reasons I struggled with this one.  There is so much to love here--dynamic Queer characters (include an absolutely unique and wonderful trans woman finding her place in 1950's America), a ghost story, extreme family dysfunction, and characters mulling over their role in the universe.  As with Owen Meany, I find the narrative over masculinized, though, and by that I mean that the characters don't resonate with motherhood and no one is nurturing.  In a multi-generational family novel like this, I prefer the storytelling to be more emotive and immersive, like The Color Purple or The Vanishing Half.  And while I say that, there is something unique about Irving's way of contextualizing alternative family that is enthralling and remarkable.  I have recommended both Owen Meany and Chairlift to a number of people who have enjoyed it substantially more than I did, but I can't give it a general recommend for general audience.

​Not recommended.

There are some things about this book to really love, particularly in the second half, but I had to really slog my way through the first part of it.  There is a lot of graphic intimate violence use to set the scene for what at first feels like an intergenerational story about trauma and "survival" that doesn't feel like survival at all.  The story itself, though, gets muddled before it gets sorted out at all, as it begins to unfold on two timelines--the original one of misery and a second one in which a movie is being made about the first one and so research ensues that leads to being able to fill in some of the blanks in the historical timeline. 

Eventually, and I do mean eventually because it takes a very, very long time, the two storylines start to make sense and remarkably intertwined as the connections become clear.  The second half or so of the book shifts away from the abuse and neglect, but leaves the pain and dysfunction that comes from unstable and unsafe early lives.  The impact, of course , of intergenerational trauma plays out through the lives, leaving expected fallout in its wake.  

Once we move beyond the backstory, the book significantly improves as the main character becomes obsessed with learning to fly as a young girl and remains fixated on that throughout her life, leading to adventures and relationships, with story twists and turns that are unanticipated, but not entirely unforeseen. 

If you can make it through the sexualized violence, addiction, and generalized misery that is the backbone of the story and like historical women's fiction, you'll do well with this one. Also, if you are interested in flying airplanes or travel to the north and south poles, you will probably find those parts of the story particularly interesting.  For me, the start was too much of a struggle to get through for a recommendation, even though by the end I liked the story.

Not recommended.

This YA romance-ish novel is just the best of what that genre has to offer.  It is poignant, with richly developed characters and plotting that weaves themes through the story in ways that allow the emotional complexity of life to come through.  The protagonist is a gender bending model, awkward in their body, but in such a way that others see them as compelling and intriguing.  While the story moves into the world of high end modeling and photography, the young adult struggle to find meaning in work transcends age.  Early in the book, a character dies, setting up a backdrop of fragility as characters move in and out of grief and deal with it in different ways.  The miscommunications and lost opportunities to connect ring true and bring heartaches, only some of which can ever be healed.  An added bonus, the book is set in Oregon in places I am familiar with and love. The pull of the big city life is juxtaposed against the uniquely Oregonian way of life west of the Cascades.   It is a lovely novel, complex enough to demand attention, sweet enough to be heartwarming, and touching enough to be moving.

​Recommend.  

This is a pretty sweet little YA romance with a nonbinary lead character who is quite likeable. I love these new books coming out where the characters are Queer, but that isn't the entire focus of the book, but rather just a subplot that supports the main storyline.  I also appreciate a character who is hardworking, good at something they love, and on a path not typically seen in YA books, in this case being a baker while in high school.  It is just a lovely, light romance for a younger audience that I liked.

​Recommend.

There was a lot that was fun about this book. It is about a high girls field hockey team in the late 1980's who collectively get it into their head that they can influence their ability to win by engaging in witchcraft.  Having been on girls teams in the 80's, so much of this story was reminiscent of those experiences.  The details were exquisite, reminding me of so much 80's pop culture that I had forgotten about.  From the California Raisins to all sorts of one-hit-wonders, it is amazing how many things were so popular for a bit and then just faded out of my mind.  The hair, clothes, phones, and news headlines descriptions brought a rich backdrop to the story. And the nicknames! They just do not have offensive nicknames now the way we did then.  It isn't a bad things that we don't have them, but kids today just do not appreciate how subtly ruthless girls were back then. 
The story is written in an unusual style in which the narrator will jump forward in time from the story to put things in context, like rape, casual racism, and transphobia.  This is an interesting way of being able to present may of the things we thought and didn't think in the 80's that would be just so offensive now. 
In many ways, the writing, both the style and the detail, was a distraction from the story itself and I sometimes forgot the storyline, being so lost in the era and social commentary, leaving me to delve not only into to my own memories, but also to thoughts of how much things have changed.  This might also be because I know exactly zero about field hockey and things like the "rotating rhombus" and the other hockey lingo left time for my mind to wonder. 

I also really loved the collective delusion that the kids on the team work themselves into.  How they fed off each other while using a Ouija board, doing "light as a feather, stiff as a board," and other "witchcraft" was realistic and, again, so rich with contextually accurate details.

​Recommend.