Review: "Outofshapeworthlessloser" by Gracie Gold

Outofshapeworthlessloser by Gracie Gold
Published February 2024 via Crown
★★★

First there was Grace Elizabeth—happy on skates, but without skating being her whole life. Then there was Gracie Gold—gold in name and on the ice. And then, perhaps inevitably in the pressure cooker that is a competitive, heavily image-focused sport, there was Outofshapeworthlessloser.

Gold is not here to pull punches—while her primary focus is on skating, and her skating career, she also delves deep into what was going on both in skating culture and within her personal life that impacted that career, for better and often for worse. I don't follow skating, but it sounds like a roller coaster of an experience, both on and off the ice.

Mostly chronological, the book loses some focus near the end as Gold shifts to occasional non-linear chapters. In particular, I wished that the chapters about her current relationship and about her changing chest size had been folded into the rest of the book rather than standing largely alone—the latter in particular makes sense in the context of the book, as skating is ones of those sports where a shifting body can require a lot of adjustments, but setting it as a separate chapter dilutes the impact (we don't see it affecting Gold throughout) and adds to the occasional sense that this is her chance for a manifesto. (Or...a chance to get things off her chest?)

Gold is perhaps at her most interesting when considering how different coaching styles impacted her training—in particular, the focus on (to paraphrase) the way young skaters are often asked to give 110% until they burn out, and her wondering whether there could be a different, more sustainable model that would allow skaters longer, healthier careers. I don't have the background for an informed opinion on what sort of success is possible with a comeback after the rise and (partial) fall of a skating career, but she raises interesting questions about when, and under what circumstances, it is time to call it quits—and when it is worth carrying on.

Skating is still very much Gold's world, in various ways, but I'll be curious to see whether her eventual next steps are in line with that or whether she'll shift directions.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Since She's Been Gone" by Sagit Schwartz

Since She's Been Gone by Sagit Schwartz
Published February 2024 via Crooked Lane Books
★★★

These days, Beatrice—better known as Beans—is a successful psychologist. As a teenager, though, her mother's unexpected death turned her life upside down, and she spent months in treatment for an eating disorder. She recovered, but ED is still by her side when things get tough...and now, her entire world has tilted on its axis. Beans's mother might still be alive.

Since She's Been Gone is a fast-paced read, shifting between past (eating disorder with a side of grief) and present (mystery with a side of eating disorder). The mystery takes place over quite a short time frame, only a few days—this helps keep things moving, though I think I would have preferred a longer time frame to better get to know some of the supporting characters, particularly Eddie,* her boyfriend.

But the book is doing a number of things that are unusual here. This is one of a very, very few books I've read in which the protagonist is an adult who has had and recovered from an eating disorder, and one of even fewer in which the character—and the author—is a therapist and has the language to discuss the disorder with knowledge, nuance, and (yay) a general lack of numbers. (If the author does not have personal history or extensive professional knowledge about eating disorders, I would be quite surprised.) This probably sounds like an odd thing to get hung up on, but take it from someone who has a niche reading interest or two—it's unusual, and it's well done.

The time jumps didn't work quite as well for me. It might be that I read the book all in one go, or that the chapters are relatively short, but the shifts in time, while consistent, always felt a bit choppy to me. Because the book avoids the cliché so well in the present-day mental health narrative, I'm also rather disappointed that it uses one of the bigger clichés in YA eating disorder fiction: no spoilers, but Emily and her storyline could be plucked from (or dropped into) any number of books set in treatment centres, and it would be hard to tell the difference. Not the end of the world in a story, but I'd like to know how Emily could have helped to drive that timeline in a less expected way.

I won't go into the mystery much (by the time I read the book, I had completely forgotten what was in the book description, which is just the way I like my mysteries), but I'll say that it seems inspired by the Sackler family—if that's not a rabbit hole you've ever gone down, have fun with Wikipedia! And then look up Nan Goldin, because while she has nothing to do with this book she's done some effective advocacy work on the subject.

*Not to be confused with ED

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Tears of Gold" by Hannah Rose Thomas

Tears of Gold by Hannah Rose Thomas
Published February 2024 via Plough Publishing House
★★★★

Women are so rarely the instigators of war, and so often the ones who suffer the consequences. In Tears of Gold, Thomas pairs portraits of women who have lived through—and still bear physical and/or emotional scars of—war with their own words and, sometimes, self-portraits.

"I want the whole world to know that I have pain," Aisha says. "I have gone through a lot, and many other women in my village are going through a lot." (69*)

Thomas sticks to simple themes here: though she draws on techniques and traditions from religious art in particular, the women in her portraits are always the focus, with their faces rendered in the most precise detail of any part of the painting. There are portraits of Yazidi, Rohingya, and Nigerian women, along with a few portraits from other conflicts (Afghan, Ukrainian, Uyghur, and Palestinian women). I love Thomas's choice to maintain a particular style for each region—they're beautiful portraits individually, but grouped together (pages 76–77) you can really see the care individuality she's given each piece.

I read the text mostly on my e-reader but viewed the images on my computer, and I would strongly recommend reading this in a form that allows you to see the pictures in full color—I imagine that, in person, with the gold leaf and the richness of the lapis lazuli at its full power, these are even more striking.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.

Review: "A Woman in the Polar Night" by Christiane Ritter

A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter
Translated by Jane Degras
First published 1938; reprint published February 2024 via Pushkin Press Classics
★★★★★

What marvellous fun. I've been meaning to read this for years (I love me a good off-into-the-frozen-wilds real-life adventure story), but I'd been putting it off because I'd gotten it in my head that it would be a serious, grim account of survival in those frozen wilds, and instead it's...well, the words that kept coming to mind as I read were things like marvellous, delightful, plucky, and smart.

Ritter was an Austrian painter, and this is her only book—an account of the year she spent with her husband on the island of Spitsbergen, which is far, far, far north in Norway. It was the 1930s, and this was the sort of adventure that was acceptable for men (her husband had been in Norway for several years at that point) but not for women. Pretty much everyone she knew advised her against going, but her own expectations were perhaps a bit...rosy:

The little winter hut appeared to me in a more and more friendly light. As housewife I would not have to accompany him on the dangerous winter excursions. I could stay by the warm stove in the hut, knit socks, paint from the window, read thick books in the remote quiet, and, not least, sleep to my heart's content. (loc. 145)

Her husband writes, devoid of irony:

It won't be too lonely for you because at the northeast corner of the coast, about sixty miles from here, there is another hunter living, an old Swede. We can visit him in the spring when it's light again and the sea and fjords are frozen over. (loc. 153)

And so off to Norway she goes, and is swiftly disabused of her original romantic notions.

I look round for a bed. I am seized by a secret horror of the two bunks with their hard straw mattresses. Who knows what wild hunters last slept there.

"Where is the boudoir you promised me in your letter?" I ask my husband.

"It's not built yet," he replies. "First we have to find planks. The sea sometimes throws them up." (loc. 454)

But for every moment of well-bred horror that she has, she finds many more moments of beauty and awe. There's the fortnight when she's left alone in the hut and the first big storm comes, and she finds herself digging the hut out day after day, hoping that her husband is safe and trying not to think too much about the alternative—and she gets on with it, because what else can she do? There are the mildewed clothes that she finds under a mattress and, after investigating their provenance, chucks into the sea. There are the months of unending darkness, and the weeks when they wait and hope for the ice conditions to change to improve hunting. If she despairs, she rarely lingers in it, and instead dives back into new experiences and new lessons and the beauty of their frozen isolation.

It's worth noting that one of the major points of this Arctic adventure was to trap and hunt for fur—something that has fortunately gone out of fashion. I've been vegetarian since I was four and cannot imagine hunting, especially for something under so much threat as polar bears; the attitudes toward hunting have to be taken within the context of the book's time. But it says something about Ritter's writing that by the end of the book even I (well, part of me) was hoping(!) for a polar bear for Ritter and her husband.

The book has never been out of print in Germany, and someday I'd like to try a reread in the original German. 4.5 stars.

How varied are the experiences one lives through in the Arctic. One can murder and devour, calculate and measure, one can go out of one's mind from loneliness and terror, and one can certainly also go mad with enthusiasm for the all-too-overwhelming beauty. But it is also true that one will never experience in the Arctic anything that one has not oneself brought there. (loc. 1297)

Thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley. Quotes are from an ARC.

Review: "The Gymnast" by Joanne Slazyk

The Gymnast by Joanne Slazyk
Published 2023 via Joanne Crymble Publishing LLC
★★★

This is a quick gymnastics read for the middle grade crowd, and if I'm honest I wasn't expecting all too much. But The Gymnast was a pleasant surprise: in it, Riley—a talented gymnast—has to switch gyms when a change in circumstances means that her parents can no longer pay her gym fees. The new gym is an adjustment, to say the least. But...what I like best is that Riley ends up focusing just as much on Nia, a younger gymnast whose parents struggle even more financially than Riley's, as she does on her own gym circumstances.

A lot of the conflict does come from a "mean girl" plot, which I'm never thrilled about—it's a popular plotline for a reason, but I think it's overdone. The mean girl is afforded some complexity, but the other "bad" character is not, and I'd just much rather see fully realized characters with the good and the bad worked in. I'd also have liked to see more of Riley's teammates, old and new; there's a minor plotline involving the new teammates, but they just don't have enough time to get fleshed out.

With all that in mind—a solid read. I will not be reading the next book in the series (because it is about golf), but I can see this one at least being a very good fit for tweenagers or thereabouts.

Sample-Chapter Showdown: Romance IV

The Gentleman's Book of Vices by Jess Everlee (Carina Adores)
Escape to the Swiss Chalet by Carrie Walker (Aria)
Midnight Ruin by Katee Robert (Sourcebooks Casablanca)

It's time for a sample-chapter showdown! Three romance novels enter the ring, and only one will exit...or more than one. Or—we'll see how it goes, shall we?

The Gentleman's Book of Vices:
They said every copy should be rooted out and burned. Said that they should bring back hanging for sodomites and smut peddlers just for Cox alone. They said all that, and sales had boomed so spectacularly that Miles was still earning on the scandal. (loc. 343)

On the surface, Charlie and Miles don't have too much in common. The one has family wealth and shows it, with the ability to cater to his own whimsy in the weeks before his wedding. The other writes smutty novels to keep his shop afloat. But as it turns out, they share some of the same...whimsical...tastes in books—and other things—and before long things get complicated...

If anything is clear from this preview, it's that the book will be lively and entertaining, with no shortage of wit (and of course no shortage of complication). The late 1800s mean that difference can be risky, and these are characters who have, to varying extents and in various ways, decided to live with some level of risk rather than stuff themselves into the shape expectation demands. I'm very curious about the role of Alma, Charlie's fiancée, in this book, because she's been set up to perhaps have a backbone of steel under that genteel exterior.

If you find The Gentleman's Book of Vices to be a good fit, take heart: it's the first in a series, with book two already out and book three to follow soon.

Escape to the Swiss Chalet:
Wedding bells are ringing, and August is ready...until it all comes crashing down. Forsaking the heat of her namesake, she heads to the Alps for a new adventure...

These two sample chapters don't get into the meat of it—by the end, August is still ready and eager to marry George, and the details of what goes wrong are still a mystery. The seeds of something wrong are there, though: a romantic partner who ridicules the heroine's job and (probably more crucially) hates her cat is only ever going to be a villain. August's voice is strong, though, and these chapters give hope that this will be on the smarter end of romance novels. I'm curious to see where this will go—what will go wrong with George, just how she ends up in the Alps, and what shape her work and private lives take when everything is upended.

Just in time for winter!

Midnight Ruin:
The Greek gods have never been this steamy—or, actually, I rather think they were (the Greek gods were not exactly known for their lack of decadence), but Midnight Ruin puts a whole new spin on it. Here we have Eurydice, who is happily entangled with Charon...but can't quite get Orpheus out of her mind. Charon has given her the green light to do whatever she needs to do in order to get Orpheus out of her system...but none of them anticipates quite how it will feel to be tangled together as three.

Based on the sample excerpts, I'd place this as erotica rather than romance, though it remains to be seen how much the rest of story will focus on carnal pleasure and how much it will focus elsewhere. Either way, the temperature dial has been turned up to eleven—this is not for you if you like your romance sweet and clean, or with just a bit of spice; this is for you if you like your romance raw and explicit and, well, naked.

I love retellings, and while I'm not sure I'll read the full book I'll definitely investigate the rest of the series to see what might catch my interest—this seems like a ton of fun from start to finish.

The Verdict: I'd guess at which book I'm most likely to read, but to be honest, I've already read one of these—I picked up Escape to the Swiss Chalet from the library after it was released. But these are three wildly different books, and it's hard to compare them head-to-head because it depends heavily on what you're looking for: queer historical romance? Light, hetero contemporary with a side of wish fulfillment? Or a particularly smutty take on mythology?

Thanks to the authors and publishers for providing free previews through NetGalley.

Review: "Belly" by Emily J. Johnson

Belly by Emily J. Johnson
Published 2023
★★★

A memoir of food and family and struggling with both. I don't have a ton to say here, but I appreciate that Johnson opted to focus more on binge eating than on anorexia, the latter of which is far more commonly discussed in memoirs. It sounds like when Johnson was a teen, her mother instinctively helped her through that restriction with a finesse that even now, even, with updated research, can be hard to come by—but when she started struggling with bingeing rather than restricting, shame became much more of a factor. There's also a good sense of just how much plays into mental illness; it's not just one thing but a thousand things all bouncing off each other.

What I would have liked to see: Johnston describes her eventual recovery as nearly instantaneous, which is fascinating but surprising to me, and I would have liked more detail there. (Among other things: Is this peer-reviewed? Is it being replicated anywhere? Or was she just fortunate to stumble upon the right unscientific method for herself at the time?) Still, an interesting addition to the genre.

Review: Canadian Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday

Canadian Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday
Published January 2024 via Forever
★★★

These days, Aurora's life is simple but solid: she teaches dance and makes complicated coffee drinks, she's (mostly) over the eating disorder that plagued her younger years, and she tries not to spend toooo much time around her mother. But as a teenager, she couldn't dream of this: focused on a ballet career on stage, and largely isolated from her peers, she picked a random cute boy she'd met and reinvented him as her Canadian boyfriend.

That worked well enough, and then she grew up and moved on—but now the real-life Canadian boyfriend has shown up at her studio, and everything goes topsy-turvy again.

I'm low-key fascinated by the way Canadian Boyfriend feels like an updated, smarter Harlequin. You have a dancer and a hockey player (classic setup), and some conversations they should have had sooner (classic conflict), and exes who are either dead or dreadful (verrrrrry classic; means that they can't compete for the hero/ine's affections), and a heroine still battling some old demons.

But the updates: Mike is a hockey player, and a good one at that, but he's not the star of the show—he gets it done but isn't the sole reason his team wins their games. Aurora has a ballet background, and in one version of her life she could have been a star, but...that wasn't in the stars (so to speak), and she's happier for it. (The book doesn't, for various reasons, wax lyrical about her dancer's body, which alone is a step up from category romance, and for that I'm grateful. Also, I love that she's in that sort of liminal space of food issues where things are mostly better, but there's a ways to go—it's a hugely common and important space but one that is usually ignored in favor of more dramatic moments.) I whimpered aloud when we got the first hints that Mike and his wife, who semi-recently passed away when the book opens, hadn't had things quite as rosy as they'd seemed (because goddamn do I hate it when the ex is both evil and dead; it makes me sprain my eyeballs from how much rolling they have to do)...but then things get more complicated, and we get both realizations from Mike and open conversations between Mike and Aurora about that marriage, and my eyeballs remained uninjured.

I do wish they'd had those conversations-they-should-have-had-sooner, well, sooner—although I can understand both why Aurora shouldn't have had to bring it up sooner and why earlier discussions might have inhibited rather than eased the way for their romance. This should go over really well with those who like their romance classic but...emotionally available, let's say. 3.5 stars.

Side note, with a side of cryptic: I did read the discussion questions. (3) This is one of my favorite parts of the book, because it happens so rarely in romance novels. (7) Not really, but when Mike jokes about calling Olivia Daughter, that hit me like a punch in the gut, because my dad (whom I called by his first name) made similar jokes. (10) Ball pits are absolute germ buckets, and I am sufficiently germophobic that I wouldn't be caught dead in one. Actually, if you'll excuse me, just reading about them makes me need to go wash my hands...

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Work It Out" by Eva Siedler

Work It Out by Eva Siedler
Published January 2024 via Entangled
★★★

To get the movie role he's after, Jake needs visible abs—and to get visible abs, he needs a plan. Luckily, that's what Rayah offers: since the end of her gymnastics career, she's opened Explosion, a resort with a focus on helping clients meet their fitness goals. It's perfect...as long as Jake can hide his health concerns from Rayah. And as long as nothing else goes wrong...

What worked for me: this is a high-energy and fast-paced read, with likeable characters and a bit of quirkiness to keep things interesting. Readers who like to follow characters through a romance series might find some satisfaction here—I can't be sure that there are more books to come, but there's enough setup for a few characters that I wouldn't be too surprised if this isn't the last we see of Explosion. For some inexplicable reason I am fond of gym-setting romance, and I love that we see a health condition that doesn't show up much in fiction (and that the author is writing from her own experience). It's also a book that runs high on big feelings and emotional conversations, which, while not entirely my thing, is better than stoic heroes who are determined to be the manliest men who ever did manly-man (and will likely be an unreserved plus for those who are in it for the feels).

What didn't work so well: there's a lot going on. In addition to Jake's health, there's Rayah's backstory, which is pulled from real-life USA Gymnastics stuff and sometimes becomes the...frontstory? Is that a word? There's drama with Rayah's best friend and with Jake's costar and with Rayah's father; there's a subplot regarding the small town where Explosion is located and a subplot about a skeevy insurance agent and at least three love triangles that I was sure of, but possibly more. (Oh, also, Pierce should have been fired, probably more than once.) I was left thinking that the least exhausting thing about Explosion would be the exercise, and...I wouldn't have minded a significant trimming of subplots to calm things down a bit.

What was overdone: The use of 'cupcake' as an endearment could have been dialed back 50% and it still would have felt frequent. And...I read or heard something recently talking about the emphasis some romance novels put on tiny heroine + big hero, and holy moly but that is here in spades. It's not a new thing—skim just about any romance novel from the 60s and you'll find plentiful descriptions of the heroine's tiny waist or slim build. And here at least it makes a certain amount of sense; Rayah is a former gymnast, and it's unusual at best for an elite gymnast to be anything other than compact. But when even the heroine herself is thinking The bed's a king, and I'm ever so little (loc. 1335*), the description has become a caricature of a caricature. 80% fewer references to how little she is and we'd still have gotten the point.

The positives outweighed the negatives here, and I sped through the book in a couple of days—it was one where I suspected from the cover alone that I'd enjoy the story, and I did. But I hope that if this turns from standalone to series, the next books will get a bit more streamlining.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Review: "Just Keep Pedaling" by Connie Ness

Just Keep Pedaling by Connie Ness
Published 2023
★★★

In the 90s, Ness took a leap and joined the Peace Corps. Wanting somewhere tropical, she landed in Uruguay: Most of the land in the countryside around Brum was used for grazing sheep and cattle. The land was very flat, and there weren't many trees. The country roads were rocky and straight. Ironically, I had wanted tropical and instead I got North Dakota: flat, barren landscape with no trees. (42)

But she ran with it, because...that's what you do. Tasked with supporting small businesses, she quickly realized that she'd be starting with the basics, like how (and why) to track expenses and profits. Money is often a theme of Peace Corps memoirs, partly because volunteers may not be used to living on a (small by US standards but generally reasonably generous by local standards) stipend, and partly because of the gulf between standard of living for middle-class and up parts of the US and standard of living for often remote parts of developing countries. How writers talk about it varies; Peter Hessler talks about being determined to spend his whole stipend each month, because it went so far in China but saving it would amount to a pittance in the US, while Susana Herrera struggles to grasp that although by US standards she is by no means wealthy, her income as a single woman—not to mention resources outside her Peace Corps stipend—makes her seem wealthy, and white, to her community in Cameroon. Meanwhile, Ness falls somewhere in between: her stipend feels small initially, but, perhaps because she was in Uruguay to talk business, the numbers interested her, and she offers comparisons of how, e.g., she spent her stipend and how much somebody in the community could expect to earn. (Similarly, she confirms something I've always wondered...that the US credit card makes for a backup plan, at least when on holiday.)

It's not all money, of course, and it sounds like Ness made some strong connections—she was lucky to be paired with a local counterpart with whom she clicked, and who had his finger on the pulse of local life and needs. I imagine a lot has changed since Ness was there, but it was satisfying to read about a place and culture about which I know so little.

Review: "The Christmas Fayre on Holly Field" by Lilac Mills

The Christmas Fayre on Holly Field by Lilac Mills
Published August 2023 via Canelo
★★

This had its moments—I like the unconventional setup of a hero who is living in a well-converted van rather than being the town's richest and most eligible bachelor—but my gosh, I cannot get behind a hero whose MO is to stalk a woman, infiltrate himself into her life so that he can secretly take notes and pictures, and then publish all that to his very well-trafficked blog so that he can profit off her. I guess the upside is that if he had been a murderer he'd be easy enough to identify...? Maybe it would be a little better if he were struggling to make ends meet and desperately needed a hit series on his blog (I'm not convinced that this would be better, but let's run with it for a minute)...but even then, he notes even as he starts stalking following Harriet that any number of his followers would be thrilled to take on the 'challenge' that he sets for Harriet and be the willing, consensual, informed subject of his stalking blog series. He just...he has no excuse.

I also cannot get behind side characters whose reactions are 'but he's not a murderer, right?' There is a whole lot of space between 'murderer' and 'person you want to be in a relationship with and trust with your kids', folks.

The 'focus on buying used rather than new' angle is one that I appreciate—I am a dedicated secondhand shopper, and at this point I can safely say that at least 75% of my wardrobe (excluding things like socks and underwear) was purchased secondhand. I am currently dressed in a secondhand jumpsuit that has earned the approval of my s.o.'s conservative, hyper-conscious-of-other-people's-opinions parents. (Did not tell them it was secondhand and might well be from the 90s. Some things are better left unsaid.) But...Harriet takes Owen's challenge to buy used instead of new to mean that, instead of being very careful about the new things she buys, she should buy 'loads' of secondhand things every few days. She's saving money, but I don't think it ever really truly registers to her that that's only part of the point.

I could get past Harriet's loose interpretation of the challenge, but jeepers creepers I cannot sign off on Owen. Please, please, if your loverboy has been stalking you, lying to you, and gaslighting you, all for his personal profit...cut him loose, and consider reporting him to the authorities. You can do better.

Review: "The Highway and Me and My Earl Grey Tea" by Emily Smucker

The Highway and Me and My Earl Grey Tea by Emily Smucker
Published 2020 via Muddy Creek Press
★★★

A few years ago, Smucker set off on an adventure: in an effort to figure out if where she was raised was where she wanted to stay, she took to the road, planning to spend a month at a time in different Mennonite communities.

It's an experience that I suspect a lot of people would benefit from—trying out different places without pressure to stay, seeing what works and what doesn't. Smucker used the time to work on building a freelance writing career, so she wasn't tied to anywhere in particular; she picked her locations partly based on places she was curious about and partly based on where she could find contacts who had a room to rent out. It was also a year to think (for various reasons) about grief and how to process it, and about what it means for bad things to happen (or, for people to do bad things) within a religious community, and about what being a Mennonite meant to her:

But the truth is, most of my Memmonite experience came from one specific church, with one specific group of people who respected me and valued my ideas. I didn't actually have a wide understanding of the Mennonite world as a whole. At least, not as it stands today. And part of the reason I wanted to take this trip was to explore what a modern "Mennonite" identity really entails. (24)

It makes for a fairly quiet book, but a layered one. Smucker is also one of few writers I've read who are not Amish but have a comfortable 'in' to that culture, as her mother was raised Amish and of course there are more general connections too. Smucker spent the year in areas with strong Mennonite connections, not in Amish communities, but she visited with some Amish folks and talks a bit about the differences and what surprised her, and I get the impression that the Amish folks she talked to connected with her far more readily than they might have a total outsider because, well, she wasn't a total outsider. As someone who is perpetually curious about cultures that seem so far from my own, I found it to be an interesting perspective. I'll note that Smucker's religion is a big part of her identity, but there's absolutely no preachiness about it—just part and parcel of the experience.

Review: "Chellsie's Challenges" by Chellsie Memmel

Chellsie's Challenges by Chellsie Memmel
Published March 2023
★★

Heartfelt but underdeveloped. Memmel is a top gymnast—she has more than a few gold medals to her name, plus an Olympic silver—and this slim book takes the reader through some of her competitions. Unfortunately, while the writing is fine, the structure and plotting leave something to be desired. The first half of the book is a runthrough of early life and competitions up until she retired; there's a brief break where she talks about doing other things, like getting married and having kids and trying out American Ninja Warrior, and then most of the second half is about returning to gymnastics. (I do appreciate that when Memmel started gymnastics, her gymnast parents put her in a gym other than their own for the sake of boundaries and maintaining a healthy relationship—I've read too many memoirs talking about parent-coach relationships being difficult!) But it's short: the Kindle edition clocks in at 68 pages, leaving precious little time for things like character development or what it felt like to be in the gym, or on the competition floor, or even things like how she met her husband.

Obviously I don't know whether Memmel looked for an established publisher (and, if so, what conversations were had) or whether she always intended to self-publish, but I wish she'd gone the established-publisher route and worked with a ghostwriter to really flesh out her story. It seems to be that this is one perk of being on a global stage—if you want to tell your story, there are absolutely publishers out there who will want to help you shape that story and amplify your voice. There's potential here, but it's not fully tapped.

Review: "Appalachian Awakening" by Nance Sparks

Appalachian Awakening by Nance Sparks
Published January 2024 via Bold Strokes Books
★★★

Amber has it all figured out—until the rug is pulled out from under her and she realizes just how much she doesn't know about herself. A snap decision leads her to (for her) the unlikeliest of places—the Appalachian Trail.

I have wide but generally predictable reading tastes, and this was only ever going to be right up my alley—lesbian romance on the Appalachian Trail? Sign me up. Here, the heroines are near polar opposites: Amber has spent decades working her way up the career ladder, and her position as a wealthy and powerful CEO is all she's ever been told that she should want. Leslie, meanwhile, has spent roughly the same amount of time working whatever seasonal jobs will let her pursue her true passion, long-distance hiking.

The book stays in Amber's POV throughout, which is interesting—Leslie is the more relatable character to me, and since the author is (like Leslie, not so much like Amber) clearly well versed in hiking, I might have expected Leslie to take the reins on occasion...but staying in Amber's head keeps her more relatable, I suppose. Although she doesn't have experience in the woods, Amber does have research skills, and she avoids a lot (not all!) of the pitfalls that novice hikers stumble into. Better, she takes it all in stride—I'm not a huge fan of pratfalls and bumbling heroines, so I appreciate how willing Amber is to go outside her comfort zone and learn something so foreign to her.

The side characters aren't quite as fleshed out as I'd prefer, and the dialogue gets stilted in places (you can take the woman out of the boardroom, but you can't take the boardroom out of the woman?), but you just can't go wrong with romance in the woods. A solid addition to my AT/CDT/PCT/etc (read: long hikes) shelf.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Escaping Mr. Rochester" by L.L. McKinney

Escaping Mr. Rochester by L.L. McKinney
Published January 2024 via HarperTeen
★★★

This time, Jane fights back.

Jane Eyre is my all-time favorite book. I probably need to revise that assessment (though—in my defense—I have never liked Rochester; I'm in it for Jane's agency), but for now it stands...and it's such a delight to see new takes on the novel. Especially ones that are queer, especially ones that treat Rochester as the ass that he is, and especially ones with POC heroines. And Escaping Mr. Rochester delivers on all three counts.

This is Jane Eyre in an alternate history: There's a queen on the British throne (perhaps Princess Amelia of the United Kingdom? In the book it's Queen Amelia the Second); Bertha hails from New Orleans rather than from Jamaica; Jane (canonically plain, whatever that means) and Rochester (canonically harsh of feature) are both described as stunning/handsome/etc.; Jane and Bertha are both Black. And this Rochester is cruel, far crueller than the original book would have him—though of course, in the original book, he is cast as a hero.

McKinney is not shy about adjusting the original story as she sees fit, and the book is better for it. I've gone on record many times before arguing that adaptations of classics almost always work better when the writer doesn't feel obliged to hew too closely to the original—things that made sense in the early 1800s don't always make sense in the 2020s, after all. Here, McKinney flicks away side characters if they're going to get in the way, recasts Helen as someone who was something other than a perfect angel child, and of course turns the love story of the original on its head.

Jane is warier here, but not necessarily more street smart—if anything, she verges at times on reckless as she and Bertha get to know each other. In many ways she's not really Jane; she's an original character dropped into the Thornfield world to do battle with Rochester's extra-slimy stepbrother. (I never wanted to marry Rochester...but I really, really wouldn't want to marry this Rochester.) I do wish there'd been a bit more depth to this version of Rochester: villains are at their most interesting when they're allowed some good parts alongside the bad, and villains whose entire existence seems to be dedicated to villainy (not even high-level villainy, but low-level nastiness) have never brought me as much joy. I'd also have loved to see a bit more worldbuilding for this alternate universe, because a lot of the language is quite modern, but there's much that isn't explained (race relations, how visible queer people are, what happened that we ended up with a Queen Amelia the Second), and I'm chronically, terminally curious.

Three cheers: one for queering Jane, one for diversifying her, and one for escaping the dread Rochester.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Loveboat Forever" by Abigail Hing Wen

Loveboat Forever by Abigail Hing Wen
Published November 2023 via HarperTeen
★★★

A fun addition to the Loveboat universe—in Loveboat Forever, Pearl is in Taipei for the summer to wait for an Internet cancellation to die down. A pianist by training, this is her first real chance to spread her wings, to try out new instruments and connect to parts of her identity that she's never really given much thought.

I enjoy this series but am not convinced that the book was better served as part of a series rather than a standalone. That is...Pearl is at a summer program for teenagers...but she more or less does whatever she wants. Skip class? No problem. Sneak out? No problem. Take a day trip? No problem. Take an overnight trip? No problem. We see her go to a language class maybe once, and a music class once or twice, and...mostly she's off doing her own thing. It just leaves me wondering why she needed to be in Taipei as part of a quasi-academic program rather than, e.g., spending the summer in a cousin's spare room or something.

A side note: This is one of many recent books that is trying to be gender-inclusive (hurray!) but flubs by having the POV character immediately identify girls as girls, boys as boys, and nonbinary people as people—never a moment where the POV character goes wait, I'm not sure I got that right. What's interesting to me here is that it's Pearl's mother who is most realistic about it: late in the book, Pearl's mother misgenders Pearl's friend Hollis, and Pearl corrects her. "Oh," she [Pearl's mother] says, looking confused. "They/Them. I'll try to remember" (376). And I love that—we need more of this sort of moment, not more instances where characters walk into a room and immediately and correctly identify everyone's gender.

(While I'm off on a tangent, should I note that I found at least four places suggesting that the book was not proofread? Tsk tsk. Not the author's fault, but a major publisher should know better.)

At any rate...it's a fun book, but I'm glad to see that the author's next book seems to take place outside the Loveboat universe.

Review: Longform essay: "Two Women Walk into a Bar" by Cheryl Strayed

Two Women Walk into a Bar by Cheryl Strayed
Published January 2024 via Amazon Original Stories

Two women walk into a bar. They both love the same man—and they aren't so sure about each other.

Strayed brings such richness and complexity to this story of her mother-in-law, Joan, a woman who could probably have been described as a Character for most of her life. They were not easy friends, but they found their way to loving each other regardless. And as Joan reached the end of her life, Strayed was right there with Joan, and with Strayed's husband, to see her out in as comfortable a manner as possible.

What I love most about this is the balance between Strayed's obvious respect and love for Joan and her refusal to paint Joan from behind rose-colored glasses. This is one of my favorite offerings from Amazon Original Stories to date—I'd read a full novel about a character based on Joan, or Joan's mother; there's pretty much no way it wouldn't be interesting. A lot of complication here, and a lot of compassion.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "The Atlas of Us" by Kristin Dwyer

The Atlas of Us by Kristin Dwyer
Published January 2024 via HarperTeen
★★★

The last few months have been awful, and Atlas doesn't have much hope left—so she's been sent out to the wild to do community service trail work. It's not voluntary, and it's a place her father loved deeply—one of the last places she wants to be. On the trail, Atlas is no longer Atlas: she's rechristened Maps, and she's set to work alongside people with equally oblique trail names: Sugar. Books. Junior. King. And it's King, a team lead in his second year of the program, who interests Maps most.

The shape of this community service program is fairly vague—unlike many troubled-teen programs (which this one might or might not be, officially—probably for the best, considering how problematic the troubled teen industry is!), there's little adult oversight, with just-barely-no-longer-teens teaching teens—or telling them to figure it out. Neither Books nor King, the leaders in Maps's group, is talkative, but it's King to whom Maps gravitates, and it's King whom Maps needles and spars with, and it's King with whom she trades smoldering gazes.

Where I really wished for more understanding of this community service program is with fire. It's two things that perhaps speak to something bigger: at one point, Atlas makes an error with fire, and she's read the riot act; later, another character makes a different error (though it's never clear what it is) with a fire, and—I just want to know, were at any point in time these characters taught fire safety basics? Because I'm not convinced that they were. (Fire errors aside, Maps is the designated tent-setter-upper, and she receives almost no more instruction than 'figure it out'.) In a dry state when climate change is upon us, that's just...a sign of bad planning, bad leaders, and a bad program. (I'm also really curious about their trail names, because...typically, trail names are earned, not bestowed ahead of time. I wonder what names they would end up with if they were to name each other?)

With all that in mind: I'm quite sure that I'm going to be in the minority in my neutral-positive opinion here—this will go over like gangbusters for readers of Simone Elkeles and the like. I'm in it for the wilderness, though, rather than for the romance, and I think this would have been a excellent book for me if it had been about friendship rather than romance—but I suspect that most readers will be in it more for the smoldering gazes, and they'll get more out of that (significant) chunk of the book than I did.

Go forth and into the woods, folks. Learn some new skills. Earn a trail name. Don't set anything on fire.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Heiress" by Rachel Hawkins

Heiress by Rachel Hawkins
Published January 2024 via St. Martin's Press
★★★★

There should be some kind of warning when your life is about to change forever. (loc. 53*)

Ashby House is a legend, and so is the family that owns it. When Ruby dies and ownership passes to her adopted son, Camden, he wants nothing more than to forget the house, forget the tens of millions of dollars that come with it, and live a quiet and normal life. But his wife, Jules, isn't so sure that the money wouldn't make a difference...and the rest of Cam's family is not content to let that money lie untouched in a bank account they can't access.

To complicate matters: everyone knows more than they're saying.

I read this because I love a good enormous-rambling-house mystery, and also because I read a number of Hawkins' YA books once upon a time and have been curious about what she's done with adult mysteries.

The shift in genre has paid off: this is satisfying. You know early on that most of the characters are harboring secrets, and few of those secrets, when they come out, are surprises—but learning the hows and the whys and the outcomes makes it worth it to keep reading. I can get frustrated with twists so sharp that they zigzag without warning, but here, for most of the twists, we can see enough of the shadow of what's coming that the twists feel like they fit naturally into the story. Few characters come out of this book looking squeaky clean, but somehow I still found myself rooting for many of them, and that's satisfying too.

The one thing I really would have liked more of: the house! I live in a studio apartment, and that suits me just fine, but I'd like to get the house drama somewhere. I wish we'd seen more of Jules exploring, wandering through a library and billiards room and servant's quarters that haven't been used in decades and seeing it all through her eyes, or Ruby's.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.