Tag: tea

Review: Modern Divination by Isabel Agajanian

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Alexis holds a copy of Modern Divination.

Alexis:

⁣Modern Divination is a new adult contemporary fantasy that partially takes place at Cambridge University. It follows two main characters: Aurelia Schwartz, a witch from the US, and Theodore Ingram, her fellow student and rival. When another witch is murdered, Aurelia is pulled into the murder mystery and finds herself teaming up with Teddy.

Things I Liked: 

  • This book is very atmospheric, which is a trait I always love!
  • I also loved the witchy aesthetic. Aurelia, as a green witch, cultivates plants, and I enjoyed when she worked her magic.
  • Tea vibes! Since it’s set in England, there’s plenty brewing of tea and talk about tea. 
  • Teddy has strong Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle vibes.
  • I really enjoyed the style of dialogue and the deep conversations between Aurelia and Teddy.
  • In the same vein, I enjoyed the overall writing style. 
  • There’s also Jewish, bisexual, and nonbinary representation. 

Things I Didn’t Like As Much:

  • ⁣The plot itself is very minimal. I love a good murder mystery and was expecting it to take up more of the story. However, this is a very character-driven and introspective story, and the plot is left on the very back burner. I also found the actual plot itself to be lackluster, and the villain to be flat and uninteresting, unfortunately.
  •  Sections of the story are confusing. I felt like I needed to reread explanations because I was constantly double-guessing what I knew and didn’t know. Some of the transitions between chapters were also a little unclear, and I had to reread them for clarity’s sake.
  • Lastly, the magic system could have been explored more. There were some revelations at the end of the book that fell flat for me because I didn’t feel like I knew the magic system well enough. 

Overall, I did really enjoy the focus on the characters. Both Aurelia and Teddy are well-rounded and have plenty of flaws, and Aurelia’s friendship with her flatmate/best friend, Ryan, is written well. However, I wish the story was clearer and had a bit of a stronger plot.

VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐/5⁣

Review: Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop

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Alexis:

I hate giving a book 2 stars, but this one just wasn’t doing it for me.

I liked the overall idea, and I enjoyed the descriptions of the food. 

However, the writing style was stiff and didn’t have any variety to it; it felt like every sentence was the same length. It was very much so “She said this. They did this.” 

I found the dialogue and characters to be the same. The dialogue sounded very unnatural, and it didn’t help that all of the characters talked the same way. There was no subtext to the dialogue; it was all, “I’m sorry Auntie. I didn’t mean it.” “That’s okay. I still love you, Vanessa.”

Besides that, there was a lot of name dropping. There’s a scene in the Louvre where Vanessa and her love interest dissect every piece of art. Vanessa constantly talks about how fancy her aunt is, and name drops designers left and right. At times, it felt overly elitist. 

The romance in the book was also pretty weird, including insta-love that just didn’t feel genuine to me. 

And finally, whenever the background characters heard one of Vanessa’s predictions, they always accepted them as truth. I found this odd. I’d be very weirded out if I heard a prediction about my life come out of a stranger’s mouth, and I expected there to be more conflict from this. 

I was hoping this book would be a nice, easy change of pace, but I just found it a little disappointing. 

VERDICT: ⭐⭐/5

Review: We Never Asked for Wings by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

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Alexis:

Anna and I both read The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh years ago and we loved it. We Never Asked for Wings has some similar themes: pregnancy, motherhood, family, and honesty.

The book opens when Letty, a young and troubled mother of two, leaves her children alone to go to Mexico to find her parents. Her parents were living with her and taking care of her children, and she doesn’t know how to be a mother.

The story mostly alternates between Letty and her young teenage son, Alex. While Letty navigates motherhood, Alex navigates school and a budding relationship with a girl named Yesenia, all while caring for his six-year-old sister Luna and searching for the father he’s never known.

I mostly connected with Alex as a character, as his dreams and motivations felt real and true to character. He was a good and innocent character who happened to be in a bad situation. However, because the story did focus on him so much, the book tended to lean towards a more YA vibe.

I think Diffenbaugh did a good job with certain struggles of the Espinosa family, such as poverty and citizenship.

However, I struggled to connect with Letty. She was almost overly flawed, so much so that I disliked reading about her character. I was annoyed with all of her actions. She neglected her family and continued to make a string of bad decisions, including getting her son drunk. She had some almost-redeemable moments towards the end, but it wasn’t enough of a character arc for me.

My biggest problem with the book is that you can tell Diffenbaugh struggled to write the story. In the acknowledgments, Diffenbaugh says, “They say book two is hard. Whether or not this is true I don’t know, but I believed it to be true, and so this book was hard for me. Really hard.”

While I enjoyed the overall core of the story, as well as the motif of bird and feathers, parts of this book felt off. When Wes, Alex’s father, is finally introduced, he never feels like a round character. He, and his personality and motivations, just sort of hover in the story.

The events in the latter part of the book feel too melodramatic. While somewhat believable, Alex’s actions are a little too out of character. And after all the dramatic events at the end, it wraps up just a little too nicely.

VERDICT: 3 stars

 

Review: Lab Girl by Hope Jaren

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Anna: Welcome to my April memoir review! This month my memoir of choice was Lab Girl by Hope Jahren. I thought this called for feet and green tea.

I’m really enjoying the challenge I’ve seemed to have given myself in 2019 of reading a memoir a month! I’m finding memoirs particularly enjoyable to listen to on audiobook, because I can easily listen to them at work. I listened to Lab Girl this way!

I found Hope’s life fascinating. Her love of science is so beautifully described—she thinks and writes so differently than I’m used too. There are breathtaking descriptions of trees and plants, which I found peaceful (although sometimes they made me a little sleepy!) I also liked how Jahren framed the narrative events of her life around chapters of release plant studies. My reading taste however, craves narrative, and I think what I enjoyed most were the scenes of Hope and Bill’s quirky friendship and the descriptions of her Scandinavian family.

Something that bothered me was Jahren’s use of dialogue tags that weren’t “said.” “Said” is, in my opinion, the only necessary dialogue tag 90 percent of the time, and I find other tags endlessly distracting, and this was especially the case in this book. All the “replies” “answered” “sighed” etc. in this really stuck out to me! This is quite the pet peeve, I know, but this is something I couldn’t avoid noticing on audio.

As a person who studied English and works in book publishing, the value of scientific research is something I take for granted. I read memoirs about writers all the time, something I never really realized until this book. Lab Girl reminded me of the importance of science in our world. Something Jahren repeatedly talks about is the fact that scientists don’t receive enough funding to carry out expensive and necessary research. This is something I knew but honestly never think about. Lab Girl helped me realize the importance of scientific funding and has even made me look at trees differently.

VERDICT: 3.5/5 trees

 

Review: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

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Alexis: Read 3/17/19

Well, this book is certainly a saga. It feels like three different books, because really, it is. Pachinko covers four generations of the same family, from the early 1900’s to the 80’s. The story opens with Sunja, a Korean peasant, who meets a wealthy businessman and forms a relationship with him. When Sunja becomes pregnant, she finds out that the businessman is already married. So instead, she accepts a generous offer of marriage from Isak, a sickly Protestant preacher.

The amount of detail Lee manages to pack into this book is astounding. She covers the historical and political aspects of each time period. The book especially focuses on what it means to be Korean during a time when the country is taken over by the Japanese and then later split into two. Her characters deal with the dysphoria that they feel as Koreans living in Japan, as well as discrimination. I really enjoyed learning about the history and culture of Korea, and I could really go for some Korean or Japanese food right about now!

While extremely detailed, Pachinko is written matter-of-factly, with no flowery descriptions. Lee writes from a distant, omniscient point of view. At the end of the book, Lee discusses her reasoning behind this. She says, “‘Fair’ seems like a simple word, but I think because my subject matter is so troubling and controversial, I wanted my narrator to be as objective as possible” (494). Lee certainly achieves this, as the book, especially the first half, almost reads like a historical account. At first, I found the tone off-putting. But once the book became more political, I understood the need for distance. Still, that doesn’t neglect the fact that I prefer to get more into characters’ heads and emotions. I love character-driven stories, and while this was that, I never felt too involved in the characters’ lives.

For example, Lee has a bad habit of simply stating “and then he died.” When she did this in the beginning of the book with Yoonie, Sunja’s father, I did a double-take. She nonchalantly stated his death and they hardly went into it in the next chapter, and she repeats this throughout the book. While I understand her distance, as a reader, this was very off-putting. I wanted to feel each death and life-changing event the way the characters did.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, even if I had to enjoy it in chunks. I learned a lot about Korea’s history and the history of misplaced Koreans. I really don’t know how to rate it as a whole, as it covered so much ground.

History and detail: 5 stars

POV and writing style: 2 stars

Characters: 4 stars

Review: The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See

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Alexis: Read 5/11/18

“‘Tea reminds us to slow down and escape the pressures of modern life,’ he says. ”

There are some rare books out there that I just know I’ll love, and this was one of them. Okay, maybe I read it because I love tea and the reviews were good. But what other reasons do I need?

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane ended up being my top book of 2018!

The section part of the book is a fascinating, and sometimes disturbing (let’s just say I’m a twin) detailed exploration of the Akha people and their way of life. The middle is a little slower paced, but it masterfully meshes Li-yan’s Akha culture with the modern way of life in China. The last section explores Li-yan’s new life and Haley’s life in California. Haley’s life is revealed through documents, letters, and essays.

See manages to weave an epic story while also exploring China’s history, the history of tea, and what it means to be Chinese and Chinese American. She handles each of her characters with care (in their characterization, that is; they all go through some incredibly tough situations). The only character that felt out of place was Ci-teh later in the book, though I understand why she turned out the way she did.

Overall, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane is a beautifully written story, the core of which focuses on the relationship between mother and daughter, and the promise of finding one another again.