Review: "Service" by Sarah Gilmartin

Service by Sarah Gilmartin
Published June 2024 via Pushkin Press
★★★★

Ireland, then and now: Then, Hannah is a waitress at an upscale restaurant in Dublin, Daniel its celebrated chef, and Julie his supportive wife. Now, Hannah has distanced herself and her memories as much as she can from her time at the restaurant, Daniel is on trial, and Julie is struggling to figure out what she believes happened—or didn't happen—and how much she can give up, can block out, in order to stand by her man.

I read this on the strength of the publisher, GR friends' reviews, and, if I'm honest, the cover. The book cycles through the three perspectives—Hannah's, Daniel's, and Julie's—and though the book gets off to a relatively slow start, it's smartly written. Gilmartin is careful in her layering of Daniel's character in particular: it's not a matter of a 'there's no black and white', exactly (what happens is not in shades of grey), but he's never allowed to become one-dimensional. I did not enjoy either Daniel or the sections in his POV, but they were invaluable in keeping the story a complex read.

It is worth reading both the author's note at the end and the discussion questions; the latter have a few too many yes-or-no questions for my liking, but they frame some things differently than I would have gone for, which is always useful. I'll keep my review short—there are things I'd love to discuss with people who have read it but don't want to put in a review for fear of spoilers!—but the book has made to want to hunt up Gilmartin's first novel and keep an eye out for future works.

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

Review: "Wish You Weren't Here" by Erin Baldwin

Wish You Weren't Here by Erin Baldwin
Published June 2024 via Viking Books for Young Readers
★★★★

Juliette and her mortal enemy have a good thing going—they turn up to each other's parties, trade the same lackluster birthday gift back and forth, and generally stay out of each other's way. Priya reigns during the school year, but in summer camp is all Juliette's own...until her final summer as a camper, when Priya shows up. At her camp. In her cabin. And there's nothing Juliette can do about it.

I read this for 1) summer camp and 2) the novelty of YA enemies who aren't awful to each other, and it did not disappoint on either end. Now, make no mistake—this is not summer camp like you've seen it in real life. This is a very YA-novel summer camp in which, despite the director's protestations, money seems to be no object and a two-story cabin can be assigned to only two(!) campers. Some suspension of disbelief is required, as is an acceptance that side characters and plots will not get their fair due.

But the lack of enemy drama? I love it. The book is basically enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, but it's pretty low-key on the romance front and manages to keep the drama somewhere other than between Juliette and Priya. I'm reminded, minus the turn to romance, of a playful enmity I had with a classmate when I was about twelve—we didn't actually wish each other ill, but it was fun to argue, and neither of us took it personally. (We're no longer in contact beyond the barest of social media interaction, but I bet we'd get on well as adults.) Juliette and Priya have a similar dynamic—even when they're arguing, they're not cruel about it, and it makes it a much more fun book to read. I'd have been thrilled if this had been a book about friendship rather than romance, actually (as much as I love a good f/f story, I love a good friendship story more...and they're few and far between in YA), but the dynamic is fun enough here to bump it up to four stars.

(Don't pin your real-life summer-camp hopes and dreams on this book, though. That's like me pinning my early-2000s southern US boarding school hopes and dreams on 1940s British girls boarding school fiction. Expectation vs. reality...)

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

Review: "London on My Mind" by Clara Alves

London on My Mind by Clara Alves
Translated by Nina Perrotta
Published June 2024 via Push
★★★

Dayana has always wanted to go to London—but not like this. When her mother dies, she's sent from Rio to live with her father in London...and with her father's wife and stepdaughter, whom Dayana has never met. The one bright spot in her new life is Diana, whom Dayana meets when Diana is climbing over a fence to escape from Buckingham Palace...and who, you can imagine, has a secret or two.

Now, I'm a sucker for princess fantasies and for moving-to-a-different-country stories, so this seemed right up my alley. It's a very quick read (I started it on the way home from work and hit 70% before bed; finished it on the way to the gym the following morning) and something of an alternate-universe story—in this storyline, Princess Diana is alive and well (and royalty in her own right rather than someone who married into a particularly complicated family) and pulling quite a lot of strings. (I think the book is supposed to take place a bit in the future—say another ten years from now—and Dayana is young enough to reference 'the late 1900s', which...I am dead.) I'd probably have preferred a moving-to-Rio book, just because I am so much less familiar with Brazil than with England, but...you take what you can get! (And since I believe the author is Brazilian—and the book is translated from Portuguese—it makes sense that London would be considered the far-off-and-interesting place.)

The description calls this an 'unlikely London romance', though, and that...seems about right. I ended up wishing that the royalty plotline hadn't made it through edits, because it feels the least fleshed-out of the parts, and a lot of things just don't make sense. (Someone climbing over the fence at Buckingham Palace? In heels and a dress? Repeatedly? And not getting caught? Or Dayana thinking that 'staking out' Buckingham Palace to see if someone goes in should involve going to the front, public, swarmed-with-tourists entrance... Or not thinking twice about having a messy make-out session in front of piles of tabloidy press...) I enjoy some fluffy wish fulfillment, but I also want logical underpinnings.

Dayana is a teenager, and she's dealing with messy emotions involving grief and abandonment, and these things inform her character heavily. They don't always make her likeable—one of the first things Dayana does is scream at her stepmother for being well-intentioned but overwhelming—but they do make her feel realistically teenaged. The push-pull of new family dynamics is interesting, and I appreciated that her relationship with her stepmother and stepsister is allowed to be complicated (not always good, not always bad). I did wish Dayana could have a bit more external focus, though: even as the book progresses, she tends to hear someone else's story and make it all about her own story and what she's going through. And those things are valid (and again, very in line with a teenager who still has some growing up to do!), but so are the other characters' stories. Dayana will probably be most relatable to those who experience their emotions as big and bursting.

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

Review: "Royal Scandal" by Aimée Carter

Royal Scandal by Aimée Carter
Published March 2024 via Delacorte Press
★★★

Read this almost exactly a year to the day that I read the first book in the series—and again on a long flight. In Royal Scandal, Evan has started to find her footing within the royal family...more or less. But as the book goes on, and death threats turn into murder attempts, it becomes ever clearer that not everyone is happy with her new role—and they'll do anything to stop it.

I was very entertained by book 1, but I am not as convinced for book 2. Because...as much as I wanted this to be a series, I was hoping for new conflict in each book. Instead, it seems that the conflict is: book 1) Evan gets used to being a royal in the public eye, and not everyone wants to see her succeed; book 2) the same people really, really don't want her to succeed; and book 3) presumably she vanquishes the people who really, really don't want her to succeed. Was it still fun to read? Yes. But it reminded me of why I stopped reading YA dystopian trilogies—the second book always felt like a placeholder between the plot and worldbuilding of the first book and the conclusion of the third book. Cliffhanger and all.

Will I read book 3 anyway...? Well, yeah. Ideally on another intercontinental flight. And I can confirm that, especially when the third book is out, it'll make for a nice light series to zoom through all at once. But I think I'll not be too sorry if this stays a trilogy rather than growing longer.

Review: "I Am a Bacha Posh" by Ukmina Manoori

I Am a Bacha Posh by Ukmina Manoori (with Stéphanie Lebrun)
Translated by Peter Chianchiano
English translation published 2014 via Skyhorse
★★★

The concept of bacha posh is fascinating to me: in Afghanistan, a substantial number of girls are raised—temporarily—as boys, filling in the gaps in families where there are no sons. As a stand-in son, a bacha posh can play with the boys, can run errands, can hold jobs and earn money and help support the family, can have a taste of freedom. But when she hits adolescence, the veil goes on, and she is expected to return to the restricted life of a woman. Marry, have children, obey her husband in all things, never leave the house without a chaperone.

Manoori was one of these children—raised as a boy but expected to give up her freedoms when she got older. But she refused: she had grown used to those freedoms and preferred to chart her own path. This would be no small thing in Afghanistan now, and it was no small thing then; although Manoori says that she knew numerous girls in her area who temporarily took on the role of “son”, it was certainly safer to be known as a boy than as a girl who has been asked to be a boy, and it was not socially acceptable to remain as a “son” beyond adolescence. Moreover, although Manoori sees no conflict with Islam, the Taliban’s rise to power made it clear that not everyone felt the same way.

I wondered early on whether the practice of bacha posh would have been able to continue after the Taliban’s takeover in 2021. This book was published in English in 2014, so of course it predates that series of events, but it’s still relevant—because the Taliban first came to power while Manoori was coming of age and, you know, trying to live her life.

As a book, it’s okay but not amazing (I’d recommend The Underground Girls of Kabul for a more comprehensive look); Manoori doesn’t always seem to grasp that other girls and women would be perfectly capable of doing the things that she does and has done with the freedoms afforded by being outside the strict box of “female”, and the focus is really on a chronological story rather than, e.g., scenes and characterization and broader picture. (Also, while I think the cover is striking, after reading the book it mostly just seems strikingly inaccurate.)

That said, it’s a short read into an experience I know very little about, and one that feels important to understand some of the complexities of being born a girl in Afghanistan.

Review: "The Redemption of Daya Keane" by Gia Gordon

The Redemption of Daya Keane by Gia Gordon
Published May 2024 via HarperTeen
★★★★

Daya knows who she is—and she knows that her small Arizona town will never be fully on board. This is not a town where queer kids thrive; it's a town where conservative Bible culture is thriving and the safest thing to do is keep your head down and submit. To not be a girl crushing on other girls—and in particular, to not be a girl crushing on the girl who is the poster child for the local megachurch.

I'm drawn to stories of queerness and also stories of religion, and I like intersections in my reading—and, better, I like it when it's not all fire and brimstone, and even the...let's call them 'less sympathetic'...characters are allowed some complexity. Here, although Beckett's parents stay pretty one-note, Daya's mother is interesting—she reminds me a bit of Aunt Ruth in The Miseducation of Cameron Post: trying to do the right thing, but not always able to see that not everybody falls under the same 'right thing'. Or maybe Jeanette Winterson's mother in Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (who asked the titular question, which...tells you something about her, no?)...in any case, she's trying, but not in a way that is helpful to Daya.

The thing that interests me most about the book is the end, and...well, to avoid spoilers I can't say too much about it. But I'm always glad when a book takes the expected ending and turns it on its head. (This is even more true for YA books, which—partly because of the common emphasis on romance—can start to feel predictable.) The Redemption of Daya Keane did not go where I was expecting it to, and although I wouldn't mind a clearer tying up of certain threads (let's call this 3.5 stars), a bit more mess and a bit less predictability than usual makes me a happy reader.

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

Review: Short story: "Cut and Thirst" by Margaret Atwood

Cut and Thirst by Margaret Atwood
Published May 2024 via Amazon Original Stories

You just can't really go wrong with Margaret Atwood. When "Cut and Thirst" opens, three women are sitting in a backyard, plotting the best way to commit a series of murders. Poison? Defenestration? And just how far can they convince themselves to go...?

After half a moment to orient myself in this story, it was a lot of fun. The women's once-maligned friend Fern becomes almost beyond the point, but we eventually see what real revenge—if you're of a certain bent—might look like. It makes for a playful story, but better than that, it's one of platonic friendship that has stood the test of time. Lovely to see these women banding together, not just meeting for gossip and nefarious planning but also making sure that Fern, who is no longer so agile as once she was, has a steady visitor list. (I'm thinking of a family member and that family member's friend—they had a weekly walking routine, and then when cancer came knocking they just adjusted things so that one drove the other to chemo and then they had lunch. It was a powerful thing to witness, and I'm getting similar energy from this short story.)

Perhaps if this were a novel, things would turn out differently at the end of the story...but it's an engaging read, especially if this is a sort of friendship you value.

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

Review: "Someplace Like Home" by Bobi Conn

Someplace Like Home by Bobi Conn
Published May 2024 via Little A
★★★★

Three generations of women in rural Appalachia: Helen raises her children strictly and with little room for “extras”, but her home is more or less a happy one, a safe one. Her youngest daughter, Jenny, is a Kentucky girl through and through, and she imagines that her adult life will mirror the small-town stability she grew up with—but as she gets older, she’s also swayed by the thrill of being courted by someone she views as out of her league. And the choices she makes based on that thrill—choices very in line with time and place and a limited range of ambitions for her future—will come to define, if not haunt, her life. And then there’s Jenny’s daughter, also a Kentucky girl through and through but, eventually, with a more reflective view on her family’s history than either Jenny or Helen has ever really been able to apply.

The story moves chronologically (with some slight deviation at the end; more on that in a moment), starting with a relatively broad look at Helen’s young-married life but spending most time on Jenny’s story. You can see the spiral before it even begins: her paramour Rob is, to an outside eye (or, for that matter, to anyone in Jenny’s life), Bad News from the very beginning…but all Jenny can see is that she is young and unsophisticated, and someone older and ‘cooler’ has taken an interest in her. You can guess, maybe, the general direction in which her story goes.

Jenny's story is, Conn says in the introduction, a fictionalized version of her mother's life. Fictionalizing real life can be risky, but here I think it pays off—I don't know how much here has been changed from Conn's mother's life, but I suspect that a basis in reality is giving us a story with fewer easy answers and happy endings than pure fiction would have. Jenny's perspective is sometimes hard to take—she's Rob's staunchest defender, even (or especially) when he doesn't deserve it. Rob didn't explode every day. He didn't hit me every day or make me have sex with him whether I wanted to or not. Some nights he did, but not every night (loc. 2395). She's always looking for the romance she'd imagined she'd have, even when all the evidence says that she's looking in the wrong place, looking for the wrong hero. It's...not a tack I've ever taken, and I hope it's not one that I ever will, but I think we've probably all known someone in some form of Jenny's shoes.

This is a multigenerational saga, and the one thing I'm not much a fan of is the 'looking back' tone of Jenny's daughter's section, which takes me out of the story somewhat. I think I would have preferred a continuation of the more chronological structure, one in which we see more clearly how this third generation has taken shape and has learned from—or sometimes not learned from—those who went before them. I imagine it may be done as it is because Conn has already written a memoir (which I now want to read); perhaps continuing that story felt too much like a retread of the memoir material.

I lived in the South for a while—not in the same state or the same circumstances that Jenny and her mother and daughter do—and I'm always drawn to these stories of various forms of hardscrabble lives. Reminds me of the hot humid air, of crickets singing in the evening.

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

Review: "Rubber Duckie Shifter Next Door" by Mia Harlan

Rubber Duckie Shifter Next Door by Mia Harlan
Published May 2024 via Mia Books
★★★

Rachel is struggling to find her footing as the part-time guardian to her best friend's kids, and she doesn't have time to date—unless, as it turns out, there are rubber ducks involved.

I read this because I cannot resist the weird: I've read my fair share of dinosaur erotica, so rubber duckie romance seemed like a natural next step. In Rubber Duckie Shifter Next Door, Sig is (you guessed it) a shifter, and he shifts not into a werewolf or whatever else is popular these days but into (you guessed it again!) a rubber duck. Now, the logic of this shifter world is a little vague; readers are meant to take Sig's explanations about how, when shifters develop their powers, they shift into their favorite thing (Sig really, really loves rubber ducks). I'm not quite sure what the advantages of this sort of shifter life are: Sig doesn't need air, which could be handy, but in his shifted form he can't move or speak or do anything autonomous, really. Makes you wonder what would happen if, say, someone picked him up while he was in duck form and locked him in a box...wouldn't even have to be nefarious! Could just be a kid told to clean up. (I can't help but think that if I'd grown up in his world, I'd try to cultivate an intense interest in something that would be practical to shift into.)

It's an odd little story, and it's meant to be an odd little story (an...odd duck of a story?). The romance relies heavily on a 'fated mates' concept, which is not one that I've read much of (just, like...Twilight...which I can't image is the best example...) but seems to be a speculative-fiction form of instalove. Your mileage may vary—fortunately I wasn't looking for much in the romance department (being in it, again, for the weird); also fortunately, the lusting happens only between humans, as Rachel is intrigued by shifting abilities but mercifully not turned on by yellow rubber bath toys.

Meanwhile, my library has acquired several more of Harlan's oddities in the past couple of days...does this mean that I'm fated to read more inanimate-object-shifter-fated-mate stories? Only time will tell.

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

Review: "Second Night Stand" by Karelia Stetz-Waters and Fay Stetz-Waters

Second Night Stand by Karelia Stetz-Waters and Fay Stetz-Waters
Published May 2024 via Forever
★★★★

Izzy has something to prove and a lot to lose: the theatre she bought as a space for her burlesque group is a money pit, and she needs the prize money from a reality TV show to keep from going under. Meanwhile, Lillian has just been told that her ballet company is at risk of being defunded...unless they bring in the exposure, and the prize money, from the same show. Neither woman is looking for romance, not with so much on the line...but things don't always go to plan.

This was a no-brainer of a book for me—lesbian romance with dancing and reality television? Yes please. Both the ballet and the burlesque performances are disappointingly vague, but the reality TV portion is a lot of fun: we don't see a ton from the other competitors, but what we do see is pretty tongue-in-cheek, with producers manufacturing drama left and right...but drama that everyone knows is for the cameras, and that doesn't spill over into real life. I enjoy reading about (fictional) reality TV far more than I enjoy watching the real thing, and books where the characters are self-aware about what they've signed up for are right in my sweet spot. Sometimes the tongue-in-cheek goes a little too far to be believed (like the friend who makes herself an "influencer" badge that lets her get away with...just about everything?), and sometimes the fast-forward moments are odd (telling me that the characters "tossed a few over-the-top taunts back and forth" (loc. 994) without sharing the taunts just makes me think that there was nothing witty enough to put in), but I can forgive a lot for characters who have honest conversations and are genuinely trying to do the right thing...and for books where the conflict is not about some evil villain or other but more complicated things.

This book is collaboration between two married writers, one of whom is an established romance writer and for one of whom this is—I think—a first book, and I'll be interested to see if they keep cowriting. I love how much more available, and how much more varied, queer romance has become in the past couple of years.

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

Review: "Cactus Country" by Zoë Bossiere

 

Cactus Country by Zoë Bossiere
Published May 2024 via Abrams Press
★★★★★

Bossiere's boyhood was both banal and singular: a childhood move to an RV park in Arizona meant running free with the other park kids, some of whom were there year-round and some of whom dropped in and out. Desert life meant javelinas and paloverde beetles, chasing freight trains and washing windows and enduring the question are you a boy or a girl? over and over again. No space for anything in between, but equally no space for the simpler answers that Bossiere wished to give.

The boy I was does not know there are other children like him. He only knows his own body, his own desert. How to keep pace with the boys in the pack and how to blend into the brush under gnarled ironwood trees. The boy only knows how to survive. (loc. 3727*)

This is my favorite book of 2024 to date. Just the setting would intrigue me—I've never been to the American Southwest, and there's a dusty sort of pull to the idea of growing up in an area so remote yet seasonally touristy. But add to that Bossiere's wrestling with gender, and the way it's not so much a personal understanding of gender that is the problem but the assumptions and demands the rest of the world makes and runs with—and then add to that race and class and economics and education and gendered violence and the park residents who helped shape Bossiere's understanding of what it meant to be a girl and what it meant to be a boy—and the layers get ever thicker. It helps that Bossiere brings an intensity to the craft of writing that was honed in the scorched days of Arizona summers—feels like something where that intensity came first but translates extremely well to writing.

If this story sings in your bones the way it does in mine, I recommend picking up The Sunset Route for some of the same themes and maybe for roads not taken in Cactus Country.

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

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

Review: "Pointe of Pride" by Chloe Angyal

Pointe of Pride by Chloe Angyal
Published May 2024 via Amberjack Publishing
★★★★

Carly's goals are pretty straightforward: she wants to make it out of the ballet corps and into a soloist position before she retires. She wants to be her best friend's best-ever maid of honor. And she wants her vagina to stop, well, cock-blocking her.

Enter Nick. His goals are also pretty straightforward: with his dance career over, he's desperate to transition into photography. He wants to be his best friend's best-ever best man. (See what I did there?) And if there's a way to get over his recent heartbreak in the process...

Needless to say, these things are not as A-to-Zed as Carly and Nick hope.

I read this based on the strength of Angyal's first two books (one nonfiction, one romance—it's the romantic leads of book 1 who are getting married in this one), and it doesn't disappoint. There's a lot going on here: both characters questioning their futures and their personal and professional worth; what Carly is working through medically; the wedding; Carly's determination to earn her place rather than relying on her family's name (and money); and on it goes. Neither Carly nor Nick is entirely my preferred sort of romantic lead (I lean towards characters who keep their emotions in check and talk things out; Carly has quite a bit of a temper, and Nick in particular is not exactly keen on open communication), but they're well done, and I appreciate that they're quite different characters than Heather and Marcus of Pas de Don't.

The speed with which Carly gains social media followers doesn't really make sense to me—she starts to get big jumps in followers as soon as she starts posting, and I would find it more realistic if she'd already had a number of followers that was, like...not big enough to impress publicity directors but big enough to impress your average Joe?...or if there'd been more to-do about other dancers with bigger followings sharing her posts, or something. (The flip side of that is that I expect that professional dancers probably do have an easier time building follower count than...I don't know, UPS drivers...because their work is by nature aesthetic in a way that usually translates well to social media, and it's done literally as a performance for the public. How many times have you looked up a performer on social media after an event? And how many times have you gone looking for your UPS drivers on social media?)

Probably my favorite thing is this, though: Carly's not a principal dancer. She's been in the corps for years, and she knows that if she doesn't make it out of the corps soon, she never will—and that when a principal retires, there will be articles in big-name newspapers; when a corps dancer retires, there will be applause backstage. It's not that prestige is the point, but...we all dream, don't we? And most people don't make it to the top. They don't have their name in the lights, and romance novels aren't written about them. It's nice to see a version of the story where the heroine has the unusual job of dancer but is still playing a quieter role.

Not sorry that this seems to be turning into a series, because I'd like to see more dance romance on my shelves.

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

Review: "Pack Light" by Shilletha Curtis

Pack Light by Shilletha Curtis
Published May 2024 via Andscape Books
★★★

But speed had no effect on my morale; I knew every hundred miles would yield surprises waiting for me. The trail always provided. For myself, I knew I would get to wherever it was when I would. I had everywhere to go and nowhere to be. (loc. 827*)

Burned out professionally and struggling personally, Curtis set herself a new challenge—to hike the Appalachian Trail, Georgia to Maine. She knew what it took to hike long distances, but she didn't know how much the trail would challenge her or how much it would inspire her, and she wasn't sure how safe she would, or wouldn't, be as a queer Black woman on the trail.

On the face of it this is an Appalachian Trail memoir, but Curtis's story is just as much about her childhood and mental health as it is about becoming a thru-hiker. Without spoiling the details, I'll say that she had a fair amount to work through, and she (sensibly) went into the AT with no expectation that it would 'fix' anything—but hoping that she could find something akin to peace. The writing isn't my favorite, but Curtis writes directly and with passion.

I'm particularly interested in her experience as a Black woman on the trail. A recent survey from The Trek suggested that the overwhelming majority of AT thru-hikers are white, and only a tiny fraction are Black (this is not news, but it's always nice to have data!), and Curtis knews going in that she'd be not only a minority on the trail in more ways than one, but she'd be a visible minority. And as much as indignant straight white men might have wanted to claim that that didn't matter, they're not the ones having to ask themselves how much of a threat other hikers, or locals, could be to them. Curtis discusses this fear frankly—and some of the experiences she had on and near the trail that make it quite clear that her fears were well founded—and I found it startlingly sad, if not surprising, that the place she felt safest was in the vicinity of NYC, where day hikers flood the trail and diversity abounds. (Diversity and people getting out on the trail are fantastic, obviously—just that one should also be able to feel safe deep in the woods with few people around.)

Curtis has set out to change those demographics, at least in a small way—she's en route to be the third Black person, second Black woman, and first queer Black woman to complete the triple crown (AT, CDT, and PCT). I hope this book can be one of many resources for others to follow in her footsteps.

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

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

Review: "The Arrest" by Kate William (created by Francine Pascal)

The Arrest by Kate William (created by Francine Pascal)
Published 1993
★★★

Book two of this miniseries and chaos reigns, as per usual. (Spoiler alert, for anyone who still wants to read this decades-old soap opera.) Elizabeth is formally arrested for manslaughter and forced to spend the night in a cell with (gasp!) ladies of the night, though the book does not openly say as much, just makes it clear that they are evil sluts. (As usual, very in line with the tone of this series, which treats "evil slut" as redundant.) Her completely fucking inept lawyer-father weakly suggests that Elizabeth lawyer up with an actual defense lawyer, then lets her wave off the suggestion and has exactly no lawyerly advice to give. (I'm not sure what sort of lawyer Ned Wakefield is supposed to be, except apparently not a very competent one.)

Meanwhile. Jessica—who spiked Elizabeth's drink at the dance, which may or may not be the reason there was a car crash (with Elizabeth presumably, though not definitely, driving) and Jessica's boyfriend is now dead—is as sociopathic as ever:

Jessica turned to look at the door that led to the bathroom connecting her room with her sister's. Elizabeth had been arrested. Elizabeth was in jail. Even though Jessica had played that silly joke on Elizabeth and Sam, the accident obviously had had nothing to do with Jessica. It was all Elizabeth's fault. Jessica leaned against the window frame, a smile on her lips. It was a sad smile, but it was the first time she'd smiled since the accident, so she took it as a sign. A sign that if Elizabeth was punished for Sam's death, then Jessica really would start to feel better. (18)

Even if their father did clear Elizabeth, even if she didn't spend the rest of her life in jail where she belonged, Jessica had finally realized the one thing that would make her feel better. The one thing that would ease some of the pain caused by Sam's death. And that was revenge. (27)

O...kay. Yes. This is absolutely a normal and healthy thought process. Definitely. So Jessica goes off to try to steal Todd, who—complete moron that he is—still hasn't reached out to Elizabeth, and now convinces himself that spending lots of time with Elizabeth's twin, who is now throwing herself bodily at Todd, is a good way to reconnect with the girlfriend he's abandoned. And if that's not bad enough, he tries to comfort Jessica over the loss of her boyfriend: "I do know how you feel," Todd whispered. "I really do. I miss Liz so much, I feel like I'm losing my mind." (82)

Um...no? No. Sam died, Todd. That's why Jessica misses him. You miss Elizabeth because you abandoned her when she needed support, and you still haven't so much as picked up the phone to call her.

I can't even with Todd.

By way of B plots, we have 1) Bruce still pining over a girl he now thinks is a slutty slut and thus not worth his playboy time; 2) Lila's mother visiting for the first time since Lila was two because Lila is dealing with trauma; and 3) Nicholas Morrow trying to find a girlfriend and going on some completely irrational TV show as a result. Here's why Nicholas thinks he's a catch: He didn't drink, gamble, drive too fast... (22). Y'all, how many high schoolers do you know who are worried about whether or not their boyfriend is a gambler? I'm not saying there aren't any 16-year-old card sharks or slot machine fiends, but...surely not so many that that's a thing Nicholas thinks should set him apart? Oh, and when he takes one of the girls from the TV show out, they're forced to change their dinner plans: By the time they were seated at their table—not at the expensive French restaurant he had planned on, but at Bobo's Burger Barn, the only place that would allow Susan in in her flip-flops... (99). You mean to tell me that there is one place in town that will allow flip-flops? This seems...suspect.

Meanwhile, poor Lila—her mother is visiting from Paris, and Lila's friends are bored stiff at hearing Lila talk about it. And...as much as it sounds like she's a little one-note, of course it's all Lila can think about. This is the mother Lila has been thinking about for years, who as far as I can tell hasn't put in the slightest effort to keep in touch, and Lila is pinning all her hopes and dreams on her. It would be a very good time for her friends to actually support her, but...they're popular. Can't have any interests between clothes and boys, I guess. And clothes only count if the intent is to look good for boys, not for meeting one's estranged mother.

(Also, racism much? Collecting herself, Jessica put on her brightest cheerleader smile. "Of course," she said lightly. She took up a large forkful of salad. "And I think you're absolutely right. Mexican is too ethnic for someone from Paris. She'll be used to much more elegant food." (31))

Oh, and of course we have Margo, who is making her way across the country to California...and leaving a trail of bodies in her wake.

Review: "Meet Me in Berlin" by Samantha Valentine

Meet Me in Berlin by Samantha Valentine
Published May 2024 via Sapphic Stories Publishing
★★★★

More than a decade ago, Casey and Holly met in Berlin. They had two weeks, and then they fell out of touch—with only a half-serious promise that they could meet again. Same time, same place, same day…however many years in the future. Now, each woman is at a pivotal moment: Holly’s career takes an unexpected turn, and she’s realizing that her three-year relationship with Tom is not what she wants out of romance; Casey is thriving at work but regretting saying ‘yes’ when Eva, her social-media-influencer girlfriend (now fiancée), proposed…and livestreamed it. What Holly and Casey still have in common: they can’t get the other out of their mind. They’ve both done their best to move on, but without real success—and so they both find themselves on flights to Berlin, from opposite ends of the world.

This is one of the better romance novels I’ve read in a while. I always have a bit of trepidation about self-published books (even if an author has hella talent, they might not be willing or able to invest the same level of resources for editing, proofreading, etc., that a traditional publishing house can provide), but the desire to read a romance novel set in Berlin won out, and (o happy day) the book exceeded expectations (and, per the author’s notes at the end, did receive multiple layers of professional editing). Berlin ends up being a relatively minor part of the story and setting, but the character development is really interesting. I sort of love that in their initial relationship, Holly moves way too fast (or, starts talking about moving way too fast), and Casey freaks out. It’s realistic, but also, it’s something where 1) Holly sees that it’s too much and 2) they end up talking about it (…eventually). That’s reflective of the rest of the book, too: the characters sometimes make mistakes, but they talk about them—Holly and Casey talk about things; Casey talks with her family and friends; Holly talks with her family and friends; said family and friends aren’t afraid to deliver a verbal smack on the upside of the head when (vaguesauce to avoid spoilers, but Casey, I’m looking at you) actions don’t align with best practices.

I’m on record many, many times as disliking unredeemable villains, and I was afraid for a while in Meet Me in Berlin that Eva would be one of those villains. Tom hits a nice balance; he’s a good (if uninteresting) guy, and maybe in another context he’d be the right long-term person for Holly…but that’s not the context in which she finds herself. Eva is…less palatable…and gets pretty awful at times, but even she (to say nothing of her family) is given some complexity and room to grow, and that’s always what I want from romance novels’ stock of cartoonishly evil exes.

Two things readers should be aware of (with a spoiler warning): first, if you take a hard line about cheating in romance novels, this might not be the one for you. I prefer my characters to be interesting and realistic rather than squeaky-clean and innocent, so mostly I just found it interesting to watch how it spun out, but…know thyself and thy reading preferences. And second, there ends up being a fair bit more about grief (and declining loved ones) in here than I expected, and it packs a punch, especially if that’s something you’ve spent more time than you’d like thinking about. (I’m curious about the author’s first book now, but I understand that there’s also quite a bit about grief there, so I may pace myself.)

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

Review: "A Fatal Inheritance" by Lawrence Ingrassia

A Fatal Inheritance by Lawrence Ingrassia
Published May 2024 via Henry Holt & Company
★★★★★

In 1968, at the age of 42, Ingrassia's mother died of cancer—a tragic event for any family, but unusual mostly for her young age. Cancer is common enough that all of us will be touched by it in some way or another—oneself, a loved one, etc.—and treatment options had (still have) a long way to go. But then Ingrassia's youngest sister was diagnosed with cancer and died at 24, and his other sister was diagnosed with cancer and died at 32, and his nephew got cancer when he was just 2. It didn't end there. In the United States, writes Ingrassia, life expectancy is nearly eighty years. In my family, not including me, the average life span was forty-five (loc. 3997*). The odds were staggering, but at the time doctors shrugged it off as terrible luck.

But the brilliance of this book is that it is not only memoir—and I say this as someone who loves memoir—but a meticulously researched, compassionately reported dive into the history of cancer research: more specifically, how scientists came to identify what caused this rare and horrible quirk in some families' histories, and what all that research means for individuals, and families, affected by cancer.

Although Ingrassia opens with his family's story in the first chapter, it's another dozen chapters before he returns to the subject—instead he introduces other families facing staggering counts of cancer diagnoses (and deaths), sets the scene for the scientists who are some of the heroes of the story, and begins to carefully and precisely walk lay readers through the complicated science behind cancer and gene mutations. I thought this might be a book to read in small pieces, but instead I tore through it in two days. Reminiscent of Hidden Valley Road, which explored research into schizophrenia via the lens of one family disproportionately affected by it, A Fatal Inheritance brings to life the drier work of lab science by putting it within the context of families—including his own—for whom cancer after cancer made the future uncertain.

It is at times hard to keep all of the names and dates straight, but Ingrassia is an award-winning journalist, and the skill and care he has put into this work shows. I'd be remiss not to note that although I found tremendous value in the research and science Ingrassia makes accessible to the lay reader, he observes toward the end that while this is a book about scientific discovery begun by two tireless doctors, it is even more a love letter to my family, written to preserve memories for my children, and their children, and the children after them. Because I will be gone someday as well, and I don't want these memories to be gone with me (loc. 3991).

4.5 stars; this will be a must-read for those seeking to better understand cancer and cancer research.

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

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

Review: "Breaking the Code" by Karen Fisher-Alaniz

Breaking the Code by Karen Fisher-Alaniz
Published 2011 via Sourcebooks
★★★

Fisher-Alaniz grew up knowing about her father’s experience in the Navy during World War II—to a point. She knew he had served, she knew he hadn’t been in a combat position, and she knew he told the same sanitized stories over and over again. But on his 81st birthday, that changed: he handed her, without explanation, the notebooks full of letters that his mother had saved, letters that he had written while deployed in Hawaii. And as she dug deeper and deeper into these letters, Fisher-Alaniz started to see just how much more complex his experience had been than she had understood.

The story is told in something of a back-and-forth style: a few of Fisher-Alaniz’s father’s letters from the 1940s, then some of the more contemporary story, with Fisher-Alaniz and her father (whom I’ll refer to as Fisher) having lunch and digging, carefully, into more memories that her father would have preferred not to probe too deeply. It shouldn’t surprise anyone who has read the title that his work involved code-breaking, which was considered such secret and classified work that—to say nothing of the silence born of trauma—he simply locked those memories away for decade after decade.

The letters are fantastic. Letter-writing is rapidly becoming a lost art (someone less than ten years my junior recently told me that they’ve never sent a postcard and aren’t even sure how sending one works—do you need a stamp? etc.—which broke my brain a little), but when Fisher was away at war, he sent long, chatty letters that, well, sound straight out of the 1940s. It is strange to him, decades later, that his mother kept these letters and that his daughter would want to read them, but from my 2024 perspective of course his mother kept them (they’re vivid and full of personality, and when he was writing them she didn’t know if he’d come home alive), and of course his daughter wanted to keep reading once she’d started.

The contemporary sections are quite a lot flatter. They’re important to the story, because the story is not just about what Fisher did during the war but about how the two of them, driven by Fisher-Alaniz, started to uncover and unpack those experiences. The writing is serviceable, but—maybe partly because Fisher found so much of the war so hard to talk about—those sections feel more like scaffolding than like fully engaging story.

This has been on my TBR for years, and I’m very glad to have finally read it, even with reservations about the execution.

Review: "Good Switch, Bad Switch" by David Cody Weiss and Bobbi J.G. Weiss

Good Switch, Bad Switch by David Cody Weiss and Bobbi J.G. Weiss
Published 1997
★★★

A-choo! Our resident ditz-witch, Sabrina, wakes up with a cold...but not just any cold. She has spellfluenza, a witch-specific bug that means that when she sneezes, her powers pop into a mortal, to return only when she next sneezes around them.

How does Sabrina know this, you ask? Well, she asks the witch doctor, of course. And the witch doctor tells her that if she sneezes with no mortals around, her powers will pop back into her, and that she should sensibly stay the fuck away from mortals for twenty-four hours...what does Sabrina do?

She goes to school. Where she is the only witch. And she is surrounded by mortals. Because Sabrina is an idiot.

Predictably, things go pear-shaped almost immediately. Also predictably, mean-girl Libby eventually ends up with Sabrina's powers...but maybe less predictably, Libby's actually a little bit creative with what she does with those powers. I read this because I was hoping it would be the one in which Sabrina and her aunts end up trapped in a mall of Libby's creation, and I was correct—though I hadn't remembered just how little of the book they spend trapped in that mall. It's actually kind of too bad (though more on malls in a moment) that they don't spend longer there, because the Escherian style of the mall and the lengths Libby will go to to make the mall a hotbed of her own power are kind of fascinating.

It does seem to say something about the authors (or creators, or publisher), though, that this is only book three of the series...and it's the second book that takes place in the mall. In fact, I read Showdown at the Mall first because I thought it might be this book. Could they really imagine no more interesting location for teenagers to end up?

Also maybe worth noting that when Sabrina asks Harvey what Libby might do with unlimited power, he says this: "Well, she's sixteen," he said, screwing up his face in thought, "so that rules out the White House for a while. I suppose she would want to be a movie star or Donald Trump's new ex-wife. Something where everybody would look up to her and do what she told them to." (82)

First can we acknowledge the creepiness of pointing out that a sixteen-year-old cannot be president but implying that it would be okay for them to be married to someone who was 51 at the time this book was published? And then can we be horrified at the idea that "Trump's new ex-wife" would be on the same plane as being the president? And then...oh, this whole thing is horrifying. I need to go scrub my brain with bleach.

Review: "The Cursed Friend" by Beatrice Salvioni

The Cursed Friend" by Beatrice Salvioni, translated by Elena Pala
English edition published May 2024 via HarperVia
★★★

In 1930s Italy, Francesca is on the cusp of something—though of what, she's not yet sure. But by the time the book opens, she is helping to hide a waterlogged body by the edge of the river.

At the core of the story is a girl Francesca knows initially only as the Cursed One—a girl who, the locals say, was responsible for the death of her brother and the death of her father, a girl whose word or sometimes simply presence can bring about misfortune. Francesca is not so sure, and the more she gets to know the Cursed One the more she wonders whether the norms she thought were set in stone are correct. But this is not a time and place where dissent is encouraged, and the further Francesca strays from what is accepted, the closer she comes to tipping past the point of no return.

I read this largely because the description reminded me of The Unbreakable Heart of Oliva Denaro. It ends up being more of a story about friendship, which I love—I always want more stories about platonic female friendship. Neither Francesca nor Maddalena (the titular cursed friend) was quite as richly characterized as I might have hoped, though Maddalena has a more complicated background—there are, for all that she is something of an outcast, perhaps as many bright spots in her life as in Francesca's.

The placement of the body is also interesting: it opens the story with a bang, at which point we drop back a year or so to see what led up to it—and for crucial details like whose body are they hiding? But part of me wished that the death (and circumstances around it) were able to serve as something to bind the girls together and propel them forward in their friendship rather than as something more climactic.

This is a translation from the Italian, so I'm not always sure whether I'd feel the same way with the original or whether something was lost in translation. Some things feel disconcertingly modern (e.g., a character saying "not gonna lie" (loc. 2556)), and the one needle-scratch thing I found—I'm not sure whether this was a translation choice or an editorial one—was the use of "Mom" and "Dad" rather than whatever a 1930s small-town Italian girl would have been using; "Mom" and "Dad" sound glaringly American and modern, and some creative use of the Google Books Ngram Viewer suggests that it is unlikely that even an American of the 1930s would have been calling her mother "Mom". I like to think that I'm an intelligent enough reader to understand that when a character refers to her "Ma" or her "Mamma" or whatever it would be for the time and place, she means the same thing that I do when I say "Mummy"!

I'd like to read more along these lines, though—dark, heavily anchored in time and place, focused on friendship rather than romance. If there's a book out there that has some version of Maddalena's sister Donatella's story, wherever it goes from here, I'd like to read it.

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