Tag: Book blogger

Review: Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century edited by Alice Wong

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Anna: Why do we read? For entertainment, yes, but part of that enjoyment comes from the thrill of briefly living in and therefore learning about an experience that’s not your own. My favorite books as a kid featured fantasy worlds like Hogwarts and Narnia. As a mature reader, I still find myself reaching for different worlds, but I’m less interested in fantasy. I’m more interesting in learning about the every day lives of other people around the world.

That being said, when I kept hearing about Disability Visibility I realized there was a huge gap in my reading experience.

Disability Visibility is an essay collection edited by the activist Alice Wong. I do not identify as a disabled person, so please take my words with a grain of salt. But this book came highly rated and recommended by disabled people in the bookish community.

This book gives space to an amazing amount of different voices. The essays are about prejudice, misrepresentation in the media, accessibility, advocacy, and perhaps most importantly, just being a disabled person.

This collection also got me thinking about just how many “first person” narratives I’ve really read about disability, both fiction and nonfiction. It’s no new thing that disability has long been misrepresented in the media, especially in the issue of own voices representation. As a teenager I, unfortunately, consumed what I now call “trauma porn”, which romanticized illness and disability and killed off characters, promoting the harmful ideas that disabled bodies are better off dead. This included The Fault in our Stars and Me Before You, the movie adaptation of which casted an able-bodied actor for the role of a quadriplegic.

Now, I try to research authors before reading books, to make sure I read own voices stories. We also like to think that we’re slowly moving toward a more accepting and accessible society. I know that being an ally is more than slapping closed captions on my Instagram stories and reading just one book about disability. But I hope this is just the beginning of my disability reading and learning journey.

Review: The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He

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A hardcover copy of The Ones We're Meant to Find rests on a wooden table in a coffee shop. An iced green tea and a coffee sit behind it. A laptop rests on the book's right.

Alexis:

I’ve been trying to read more sci-fi and dystopian, so I was excited when I won this book and got it in the mail!

The Ones We’re Meant to Find follows sisters Kasey and Cee. Cee is stuck on an abandoned island with nothing but a robot for company. She has amnesia, but she does remember her sister, Kasey, is out there somewhere. And she needs to find her.

Kasey is a 16-year-old STEM prodigy living in an eco-city, which is basically a city hovering in mid-air that’s an oasis from the rest of the polluted planet. She has always felt like a loner, and she can’t stop thinking about when Cee went missing.

I really liked how Kasey and Cee have opposite personalities. Cee is a caring, social butterfly, and Kasey the quiet loner; their characters are foils of each other, and it works well. 

I read He’s debut novel, The Descendant of the Crane, and I feel like both her writing style and her characterization have improved! The pacing was great, and I enjoyed seeing the plot unfurl, along with a massive plot twist.

That being said, if I’m being honest, I sometimes wasn’t sure what was going on in Kasey’s chapters. Because she’s a scientist, her chapters contain a lot of science, and I had to re-read certain paragraphs, especially since He created the future science herself. I honestly feel like I need to just re-read the entire book to get a better picture, as I sometimes had a hard time picturing what the world looked like. I almost wanted more info dumps, because scientific and futuristic technology was thrown at the reader rather than explained.

I also had a bit of a hard time connecting with Kasey, as she often felt a little too unfeeling; however, I know that was intentional, so I didn’t let it affect my overall rating. 

I was especially invested in Cee’s story and the mystery of her past. I loved the themes of humanity, sisterhood, and the environment. And not to mention, I love the cover!

VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

Review: The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

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Alexis holds a library copy of The Bone Shard Daughter in front of a fence and trees.

Alexis:

At first, I wasn’t sure this book would be for me. I was unaware that it has a total of five POVs, some in first person and some in third person, something I’m usually not a fan of. The writing style is slightly more “tell” rather than “show,” and the book takes a while to set up the scene for each character.

However, I found myself drawn into this story. All of the characters have very interesting backstories and motivations, and I found their stories engaging, and the world itself to be fascinating. While Jovis’ perspective was my favorite, as he seemed to have the most personality (and more page time than the other characters, besides Lin) I never found myself bored by any of the perspectives. 

While the pacing remains fairly slow throughout the book, I hardly noticed it, because there was such an atmosphere of mystery and suspense; there were so many mysterious things working in the background that I found myself endlessly curious about, and I kept wanting to know what was going to happen!

While I sometimes struggle with the accessibility and writing style of adult fantasy, I found this book to be a great segway from my usual YA fantasy. It was also nice to see a fellow twenty-something in a book, as Lin is twenty-three.

So here’s what you need to know before going into this book:

Lin, the Emperor’s Daughter, is trying her best to get her memories back after an illness. She’s also trying to figure out what her father, who can wield bone shards, is keeping from her. 

Jovis, the Empire’s best smuggler, is on a mission to find his long-ago kidnapped wife. He finds a mysterious little otter-like creature, Mephi, who becomes his sidekick, and who quickly became my favorite!

Phalue is the daughter of Nephilanu Island’s governor. She’s a fighter who’s trying to win the hand of her girlfriend. 

Ranami, Phalue’s girlfriend, is a woman with a heart of gold who’s doing her best to make a difference in the world. 

And finally, Sand is a woman stuck on a remote island, whose job is harvesting mangoes. But she doesn’t remember why she, or the other island inhabitants, are there, how she arrived, or who she really is.

The Bone Shard Daughter is one heck of a debut, filled with political intrigue, creatures created from bone shards called constructs, and a chilling yet thrilling ending filled with twists and turns.

VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Review: The Infinity Courts by Akemi Dawn Bowman

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Iced green tea Starbucks drink sits next to a library hardcover copy of The Infinity Courts, in front of a herb garden

Alexis:

Time for a 5 ⭐ review!

I’ve been busy finishing up my thesis, and now I have to start studying for my comprehensive exam. But I managed to read The Infinity Courts during my work breaks!

The Infinity Courts follows Nami, an eighteen-year-old who is murdered on her way to her graduation party. But when she ends up in the afterlife, she finds that it’s run by an AI named Ophelia, who has crowned herself queen of Infinity. She manages to escape and find a group of rebels who are working to take down the AI known as Residents or Rezzies.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I’ve been meaning to delve more into sci-fi, and this was definitely a good segway from my usual fantasy. The POV is first person present tense, and this worked really well for the story. I liked Nami’s perspective, and I really enjoyed reading from her point-of-view. She felt very well-rounded; I knew her thoughts, emotions, fears, and hopes and dreams. 

I found the world and worldbuilding to be fascinating. The different courts were interesting, as were the Residents and the Princes of the courts. The book focuses a lot on heavy-handed themes like humanity/what it means to be human, emotions, the greater good, and the meaning of life. I thought Bowman handled these themes with care, and I liked reading about the characters’ attempting to reconcile with the world that they’re thrown into. 

As for the plot, it’s definitely your classic group of rebels trying to take down the enemy plotline, which I enjoyed! There were some interesting side quests and stories, and despite being nearly 500 pages, I never felt like the story got bogged down. And, to my shock, there was a plot twist that floored me, and that doesn’t happen often to me anymore.

I’m looking forward to the sequel! (Even if this book made me never want to use Alexa again).

Review: The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco

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Alexis:

Today is the last day of National Library Week! I’m always grateful for my local library; most of the books I’ve read lately have been from the library, whether digital books on my Kindle or physical library copies. Since I’m finishing up grad school, I don’t have a budget for book buying!

Now onto my review:

The Bone Witch follows Tea, a necromancer capable of wielding Dark Magic. She only learns about her power when she accidentally raises her brother, Fox, from the dead. Fox accompanies Tea as she travels around the eight kingdoms and trains to become an asha in order to learn how to control her magic. 

Chupeco’s writing style is lovely and lyrical, and the sentences flow like water on the page. The amount of detail and worldbuilding they manage to include in this book is mind boggling at times. I loved learning about all of the delicious foods Tea gets to experience, and I loved reading about the beautiful, unique huas that Tea and the other ashas wear, as well as their powerful necklaces called heartglass. The magic system was dark yet lovely, and I enjoyed learning about it. 

The story is set in two different time periods. Before each chapter is a mini-chapter set in the future, when Tea is seventeen, from the point of view of a Bard asking Tea questions. Unfortunately, these prologues before each chapter didn’t really work for me. I kept waiting for the events that were hinted at in the future sections to happen, but they don’t happen in this book. Because of this, I constantly felt like I was waiting for the actual plot to happen, and it made this whole book feel like a prologue to me.

That being said, I think if you love slower-paced, coming-of-age stories that are heavy on the detail and lyrical images but with minimal plot, then I definitely think this is the story for you. 

VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐/5

NOTE: It’s also worth noting that I happened to get this book from the library when Chupeco opened up about how they received hate and xenophobia when this book was first published. It sucks when authors and books receive hate for dumb reasons and things out of their control. I will always be honest in my reviews, but I don’t tolerate hate and bad ratings for books and authors purely because some people don’t like where the author is from??

That is all. Have a great weekend, everybody!

Review: Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

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Alexis:

My first 5 ⭐ read of 2021 (finally)!

If you haven’t already heard about Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn, it follows sixteen-year-old Bree, who is accepted into an early program at UNC Chapel Hill, alongside her best friend, Alice. Still healing from the recent death of her mother, Bree finds herself thrown into a secret world of magic and demons, amongst the descendants of King Arthur who call themselves “Legendborn.” 

Before reading this, I kept reading spoiler-free reviews that said, “I’ve never been interested in the legend of King Arthur and the Roundtable, but I loved this book!” And I can now say that I wholeheartedly agree.

So many important themes are packed into this book. Deonn tackles racism, slavery and colonization, love and family, loss, healing, grief, and trauma, as well as the pressure of college.

I found the main characters to be well-rounded and likeable. Bree is a great main character with a lot of agency despite the world around her, and the first person POV worked well for her story. I have to say, I liked Nick, Bree’s Legendborn love interest, better in the beginning than by the end, but I have a feeling his character is going to evolve in the sequel. I also enjoyed getting to know Sel’s morally grey character and backstory. 

The one con about this book is that the Legendborn world was a little tricky to understand, though if I’m being honest, it was so much easier for me to understand than Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. That being said, there were a lot of info dumps, and it made it worse that I read the Kindle version, so I couldn’t just flip back to re-read sections in order to get a better understanding of the world. However, this didn’t deter me from loving the story! 

I also thought that Deonn could’ve easily made Bree eighteen years old, especially since the story already takes place on a college campus, and it would’ve made the story (not to mention the love interests) make more sense; however, I understand the publishing market prefers sixteen year olds.

I’m looking forward to the sequel!

Review: Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas

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Alexis:

Well, my laptop stopped charging, and I had to wait to get a new charging port. It’s hard updating a blog without my laptop! Thankfully, it’s all fixed now, so time for another book review!

Lost in the Never Woods is a modern day Peter Pan retelling that takes places when Wendy turns eighteen years old. A string of child disappearances all keep coming back to her, only reminding her of when her own two little brothers disappeared years ago without a trace. And then Peter Pan shows up in Wendy’s town.

I enjoyed Thomas’ writing style in Cemetery Boys, and I likewise enjoyed it in this one. It was spookier and less lighthearted than Cemetery Boys, while keeping the heartwarming magic of Peter Pan. 

The basic plot reminded me of the middle grade series Peter and the Starcatchers, which I read when I was younger, so I think if you enjoyed that series, you’ll like this book. I liked the themes of childhood and trauma that Thomas explores; this book focuses a lot more on Wendy’s trauma and emotions than plot. I’m also always a sucker for a book featuring spooky woods.

My one main critique is that the final plot reveal at the end wasn’t my favorite. Also, the characters weren’t as well-rounded as I would have liked. There’s a smaller spoilery critique that I’ll include down below. But overall, I enjoyed this one. 

VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

SPOILERS BELOW:

Okay, so Peter Pan romance, right? I don’t have a problem with that except, well, Peter is a child. He goes through a weird growth spurt in this book and ends up being physically around Wendy’s age by the end, but mentally, I believe he was still around 13? I don’t know, it was a little weird having them have a romance at the end when Peter just ends up going back to being a child. As much as I love romance, I almost wish this book had focused more on friendship rather than a really slow burn romance.

Real Talk & a Half-Review: The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

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Alexis:

Do you think DNFing is talked about enough in the book/literary world? Or do you think it’s perceived as being too negative a topic?

I don’t DNF books often. I only do if I A) really can’t stand the writing style/topic or B) if I lose interest in the story. But I always strive to be as honest as I can when it comes to my reviews. When I read a book, I can’t ignore the fact that I have a creative writing background, so things that some readers can get over/don’t think are a big deal, I often can’t ignore.

All that being said, since I really enjoyed The Ten Thousand Doors of January, I was looking forward to reading Harrow’s new book.

Unfortunately, finishing this book just feels like a chore. I got halfway through, and I found myself not caring about what happens to the main characters.

The Once and Future Witches follows three estranged sisters in the 1890s in a city called New Salem, the City Without Sin, after the original Salem burned down. The sisters join the suffragette movement and attempt to bring back the lost magic of witches. 

While I admire that this book focuses on sisterhood, magic and fairy tales, and the advancement of women, I was never sucked into the story. Despite all three sisters having interesting backstories, they don’t feel well-rounded on the page, and for some reason, I only found myself caring a little about Beatrice/Bella’s character, but not enough about the others to continue reading. 

I don’t mind a slower pace in books; in fact, The Ten Thousand Doors of January has a fairly slow pace. But The Once and Future Witches feels insufferably slow to me. While I love Harrow’s imagery, the writing in this book feels repetitive. The plot seems to move in circles rather than in a line. And important information was revealed later rather than earlier. 

This is a historical fantasy book, set in the 1890’s, as I mentioned previously. But the book is in present tense, despite the beginning being in past tense…? The present tense just doesn’t fit, and I think it was a strange choice. 

And finally, there are some uncomfortable moments for me when it comes to race. Obviously, in 1890’s America, race was a huge issue. I know that “colored” was the term used back then, so why do I feel uncomfortable reading it every time? Maybe because this is a historical fantasy book, which automatically means it’s set in an alternative timeline/alternate history (like New Salem).

Juniper, one of the sisters, curses like a sailor, which again, doesn’t seem to fit in the story. But I’m sure women cursed in the past, right? Oh, definitely. But I know for a fact that “hot damn” was not around during that time period. Most of the curses she spews sound extremely modern, and it takes me out of the story. So if Juniper can swear in a modern way, why couldn’t “colored women” simply be changed to black women? And the fact that Harrow described a Sioux woman as a “clay-colored woman” only made me feel even more uncomfortable. One of the sisters, Beatrice, is heavily involved with a character named Cleo, a black woman, and clearly she is all for equality, but it still doesn’t erase the smaller, uncomfortable details. 

Have you read this one? Do you agree or disagree with me? Maybe other readers will have a different experience; books are up for interpretation, after all.

Review: Stitching Snow by R.C. Lewis

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Alexis:

I absolutely loved parts of this book, but other parts bored me.

The first fifty pages didn’t rope me in, but once Essie leaves the cold planet of Thanda, the story becomes much more interesting.

Essie’s character is by far the most interesting part of the story. She’s a strong but well-rounded character, and it’s rare to find a heroine who loves math, coding, puzzles, and mechanical engineering, not to mention cage fighting, in a book. Once we begin to know her character better, her motivations are clear, and her past is interesting. And I absolutely loved her misfit drones, especially Dimwit, a shining character on the page (despite being a drone!). 

I enjoyed how this was a retelling of Snow White. It was fun piecing together all of the sci-fi versions of the fairytale, but the fairytale pieces didn’t distract from the story, only added interesting twists. 

However, I wish the worldbuilding and imagery were more drawn-out. I initially liked Dane’s character, but it was like I could only glimpse him on the page. Even though he was basically in every scene, he started to feel like a background character.  Lewis did a great job describing Essie’s “stitching,” or coding, but when it came to images of the characters or the world, sometimes it fell flat.

That being said, I still enjoyed it overall! 

VERDICT: 🍎🍎🍎.5/5

TW: Kidnapping, child abuse, rape, murder/death, war

Review: Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat

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Cookbook surrounded by cooking materials

VERDICT: 4 stars

Anna: This book will truly change how you cook! 

Salt Fat Acid Heat is a cookbook that is meant to be read. It first teaches you the science behind the four basic elements of cooking- salt, fast, acid, heat. There are then recipes in the back to put your skills to practice.

This book teaches you how to season from within with salt, how to properly use fat as a cooking medium or as a seasoning, how to balance meals with acid, and, finally, how to transform food with heat. 

My husband and I both love to cook, and we read this back to back, cover to cover. Samin inspired us to make immediate changes to our kitchen by investing in some new staples, reorganizing, and immediately putting her recipes and tips to the test.

Some tips of hers that I’ve been putting into practice are: to salt ahead of time and for as long as possible, to let meat come to room temperature before cooking, and to always heat my pan before adding anything. I’ve always been a fan of roasting veggies, but her simple tip of briefly boiling vegetables instead has been revolutionary!

My only complaint with this cookbook is that it is very meat-heavy. There are dozens of chicken recipes, specifically, which seems to be a favorite of Samin’s. To each his or her own, but as someone who favors vegetarianism, I’m a little disappointed with the overwhelming emphasis on meat.

Even so, I highly recommend you pick this up if you want to spice up your cooking!