Review: "Our Daughter, Who Art in America" (Mukana Press)

 

Our Daughter, Who Art in America
Published April 2024 via Mukana Press
★★★

My dear, she hung up the phone before I could ask her what happiness had to do with the marriage. (loc. 87, "Our Daughter, Who Art in America")

A mother struggles against the reality of a lonely life with her daughters both gone. A girl learns that she is more like her mother than she thinks. A child is unprepared for her brother to grow up without her, and for her friendship with the family maid to come to a forced end. A swimmer witnesses a horror from the underworld of South Africa. A college student learns that your own perceived identity does not always match the identity perceived by those around you.

Our Daughter, Who Art in America takes its title from the first of the ten stories in this collection. I am only rarely a short-story reader (I read very quickly and find it frustrating for stories to end just as I feel that I am getting into them!), but I couldn't resist picking up this collection of diverse voices from parts of the continent and beyond (as far as I can tell, from the author bios: Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, the US). Per the editors' note at the beginning, the stories are divided in two, with the lighter stories up front and the darker stories in the second half (to allow for a choose-your-own-adventure style of reading). I have to admit that I struggled to find the distinction; though the characters move through with determination, there is more rawness in these stories than there is joy.

As is inevitably the case with collections, some of these stories resonated with me more than others; I particularly enjoyed "Body Parts," in which the narrator stumbles across an organ-harvesting ring (is it odd to say that I enjoyed that story? It startled me, and of course it was well written) and the understated social dynamics of "The Ripening," in which a girl sees her household fall into upheaval and her brother and the maid, previously her allies, become strangers to her. It's nice to see a mix of settings and contexts, and especially to see some stories from writers I might not have found otherwise. (And for the stories lower on my list: well, that's the good thing about short stories going by so quickly!)

I'm very curious about the selection process for the stories in this book; as other reviewers have noted, it's a pretty slim volume, and—while obviously no one writer is representative of a given country!—it surprised me a bit to see that three of the ten writers are from Kenya. (On the other hand, I guess it's safe to assume that the call for stories was loudest in countries where English is more prominent? So perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised not to see any stories from, e.g., parts of Africa where French/Arabic/etc. are more common.) I hope Mukana Press carries on with this sort of anthology, but I'd also love to see some pieces from farther-flung locales next time.

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

Review: "Prince of the Palisades" by Julian Winters

Prince of the Palisades by Julian Winters
Published August 2024 via Viking Books for Young Readers
★★★

At first glance, Jadon has everything he could ever want—he's second in line to the throne of Îles de la Rêverie, he's out and proud, and he wasn't so much born with a silver spoon in his mouth as born with a platinum spoon in his mouth. At second glance, he's stagnating: sent away to live in LA for a year, feeling misunderstood by his family and perhaps and isolated as a Black boy in the US. He doesn't want to make connections in the US; he wants to go home. But there's a pink-haired boy who intrigues him...

I'm a sucker for royalty fiction—something about the wish fulfillment, I think. It's still rare to find that sort of princess-fantasy* book with characters who are not all white and American, or white and British, or white and Generic European, so I was fecking delighted to see that this one features a prince who is Black and from a (fictional) African country. (This literally doubles the number of Fictional African Royalty books I have on my shelves, which—given the sprawl of my shelves—is appalling.) It's also delightful to see a fictional royal who is out and proud without issue; probably helps that Jadon is the spare rather than the heir, but (as important as coming-out books can be) I am well and truly over books where all the conflict boils down to homophobia.

Jadon's a tough nut to crack, though. At one point he describes himself thusly: "I'm kind. I'm angry. I stand up for what I believe. For the people I love. I'm not perfect, but I'm trying." (loc. 3761**) It's a nice moment, and a nice thing to aspire to—but I don't think it's accurate. I think at this point in the book, Jadon has stood up for what he believes once, or one and a half times (the incident with Barnard half counts, because although Jadon refuses to back down, he didn't know he would be on the record when he ranted in the first place). He's figured out some of what he wants to stand for, but it's deep, deep into the book before he even starts to understand that he has not, historically, been a very good friend. And as sweet as Reiss is (he's a great love interest), part of me thinks that if Jadon doesn't know what it is to have a solid two-way friendship, he's probably not in a place to have a solid two-way romantic relationship, either. He's beginning to grow by the end of the book, but this feels very much like the beginning of his journey.

On the off chance that there is a follow-up book with Jadon's sister Annika, I'd love to see it take place in Îles de la Rêverie—would mean the chance for a lot more world-building, hopefully distinct from the rough (say it with me) princess-fantasy worldbuilding of so many fictional European countries.

*This is a gay YA romance, and while there is a princess in the book and I would very happily read a book from her perspective...this isn't actually a princess-fantasy book. But that's my alternative name for my Goodreads "kings and queens" shelf, so...let's go with it.

**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 End of Tennessee" by Rachel M. Hanson

 

The End of Tennessee by Rachel M. Hanson
Published August 2024 via University of South Carolina Press
★★★★

My mother caught me looking at a photo of her when she was in high school. She had gorgeous thick hair and the most beautiful hands with long fingernails. I was rough, a girl with bitten nails and rashes on my hips from carrying the children she kept having. As I looked at the photo, she pointed out that even after having a child, which she did soon after high school, she was thinner than me. But I wasn't wondering about her looks and why I wasn't delicate; I just wanted to know what it was like to go to school. She wouldn't let me go because she said everything I needed to know was in the home. (loc. 465*)

Hanson's upbringing was not one to envy: she grew up poor in rural Tennessee, uneducated not because the schools were bad but because her mother didn't think she needed to go to school in the first place—Hanson's place was at home. And between abuse and neglect, Hanson was often the best parent her siblings had; between abuse and neglect, there was no respite but to escape for good.

My father tells us he will not abandon his father the way his own father did. Now, as an adult, I know there are different ways of abandonment, different ways of being present and not present. (loc. 1115)

There's a certain flavor to books about rural Appalachia, about the rural South. It is not my world and never has been—I lived in the South, but in the city and outside the mountains; perhaps more to the point, my parents were happy and healthy and stable. I know the humid air of Appalachia and the gory sunsets of the mountains, but I don't know the desperation that Hanson describes.

Hanson does a beautiful job of describing a situation from which there was no good exit: no options that would not either keep her in a situation bordering on unsurvivable or sever her from everything she knew and everyone she loved. It's not an easy story to read, but it's also clear that Hanson has had the time and distance to put measured words and conclusions—as much by way of conclusions as are possible—to the story.

My mother sent that blanket to me a few years after I left home, the one time she actually had my address. In the blanket she had wrapped pictures of my younger siblings, awkwardly posed, dressed in clean clothes, but their hair was uncombed and their feet bare. I imagined those five little faces staring at the camera, their bodies longing to squirm away, annoyed by the forced posing, but curious about the attention our mother gave them in preparing them for their photos. I wondered if she had taken those just to send to me, to remind me of who I abandoned when I ran away from her. I don't need any reminding. Even my dreams are filled with the voices of my little brothers and sister—dreams that are interrupted by memories of the dark, wet mud of southern ground, the patches of drywall inside our farmhouse—dark humidity, a damp stench, a kind of prison from which escape is nearly impossible. (loc. 1588)

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

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

Review: "Windswept" by Patricia Evans

Windswept by Patricia Evans
Published October 2023 via Bold Strokes Books
★★★

Sabine has lived in New Orleans her whole life, and she pretty much expects to die there—with her mother's instability, there's no way she can ever leave. Until, that is, she's given an ultimatum: stay in New Orleans and carry on as she has been...or upend her life, move abroad, and inherit half a million dollars and then some. It doesn't hurt that when she picks the latter option, there are plenty of hot women ready to jump into bed with her...

There's a lot to like here, including the setting and the book's refusal to have the characters fall into a misunderstanding plotline. Also, I was basically sold by the part of the description where Sabine buys an abandoned lighthouse and has to restore it.

But other things...don't make a lot of sense. Let's start with the book description:

When Sabine Rowan moves home to New Orleans after a family tragedy, she escapes into her theater career as she cares for her mother, a pampered former actress with a flair for the dramatic. Thoughts of finding love start to fade until her favorite aunt passes away and leaves Sabine with the equivalent of a ticking time bomb and a nearly impossible choice—to gain her inheritance she must leave New Orleans within three hours and board a flight across the Atlantic.

This is mostly accurate, though it leaves out the part where Sabine's mother has (not a spoiler; it's apparent within the first pages) severe alcoholism and has pressed Sabine into something of a codependent relationship. But then we get to this:

Everyone in the tiny village of Muir Rothesay, in the Highlands of Scotland, turns to Alden Wallace when they need an expert to help restore their historic homes. Still reeling from her latest romantic disaster, Alden barely notices the most recent American tourist to swan into their village. Until she buys an abandoned lighthouse and Alden is the only one who can save the crumbling disaster from disappearing into the sea.

Uh...Alden barely thinks about her ex. She definitely doesn't 'barely notice' Sabine, who also definitely doesn't 'swan'. After a rocky intro, they're into each other almost from the word go. But more to the point: abandoned? The lighthouse isn't abandoned; it's been meticulously restored and is sold fully furnished and ready to go; the most Sabine has to do is learn to light a fire. Where is the renovation romance I was promised? Where are the fanciful lighthouse details and the vicarious move-into-a-characterful-house experience?

Can the windswept shores of Scotland weave enough magic to bring them together?

Ah...yes. It takes about three minutes before they decide they want to be together. The rest of the book is just window dressing.

But I digress. The description probably wasn't written by the author—it may have been written by someone in the marketing department who skimmed the book? I'm not sure. It's inaccurate, but that's an oversight on the part of the publisher, not the author.

Some of the plot things, though...Sabine is sent off to Scotland for a year with no planning, cool. Except: she's going on a US passport, which means that to stay longer than six months she should need a visa, no? I actually really like the 'off you go to another country with no planning' setup, but I don't love the waving away of legal and logistical matters. (She also buys a piece of property with pretty much zero effort or red tape, which seems sus, but what do I know—I'm a millennial; I'll never be able to afford property.) Sabine has a fling with a woman in Edinburgh, but to what end I don't know; it doesn't seem to serve any plot point, and there's nothing to suggest that Sabine had inhibitions that she had to work through. Later, there's a scene full of sexual violence that is barely ever referenced again and makes zero sense in context—in a village of a few hundred people, nobody is worried about a couple of men running around ready to rape a hypothermic woman? (Which brings me to another point: nobody seems worried about the fact that said hypothermic woman would rather resign herself to dying from hypothermia than, like, ask for help.) Alden doesn't recognize them, and nobody makes an effort to pursue them or bring them to justice or...? The sexual violence blasts onto the page and then fades from the book's memory. Similarly, Alden's sorority-girl ex shows up for two scenes to wreak some havoc...but goes out with neither a whimper nor a bang, just a conversation between Alden and Sabine and then the sorority girl is never seen again. For all that I'm glad to (mostly) avoid the 'oh no, what if she's secretly still in love with her ex' plot, I just don't understand what it added here; I'd much rather have seen a deeper dive into Sabine's family revelations.

So I don't know. The writing was good, I liked both the heroines, but the asphalt of this plot is real full of holes. I hope the next book goes through a few more rounds of editing.

Review (Deutsch/Englisch): "You, with a View" von/by Jessica Joyce

You, with a view von Jessica Joyce, gesprochen von Funda Vanroy
Herausgegeben von HarperAudio, December 2023
★★★

Noelle ist jetzt ziellos: ihre Großmutter ist gestorben, sie ist arbeitslos, und sie wohnt wieder mit ihren Eltern. Sogar ihre Kreativität ist weg. Aber dann lernt Noelle etwas über ihre Grossmutter—sie hatte eine grosse Romanze, als sie jung war. Under der Freund...? Der Grossvater von Theo, einem Mann, den Noelle kennt...und beneidet.

"You, with a View" ist für Leser:innen, die ein bisschen...Biss...zwischen Charaktere mögen. Es dauert natürlich Zeit, vor Noelle und Theo verstehen einander; es dauert noch mehr Zeit, vor sie vertrauen einander. Ich fand den Konflikt manchmal ein bisschen zu viel; nach nur ein paar Wochen glaubt Noelle dass Theo alle seine Geheimnisse (ein Thema!) teilen soll, und...Geduld, Noelle! Geduld! Die Romanze war nicht wirklich mein Ding, aber das ist ganz normal; beide Charaktere sind energetisch, und Theo wird für viele Leser:innen einen perfekten Quasi-Grump sein.

Der grösste Teil des Buches passiert als Noelle und Theo und Theos Grossvater machen einen Roadtrip durch den Westen der USA. Die Idee ist wunderbar; diesen Roadtrip wurde ich gern machen (sogar mit einem Haus mit nicht genug Schlafzimmer!) Die Übersetzung hat mir auch sehr gefallen—am besten war die Übersetzung für "MRS degree." Auf Englisch:

"She wanted her to get her MRS degree." Paul eyes us. "Do you know that phrase?"

I nod. "They wanted her to find a husband."

Und auf Deutsch:

"Sie hatte es eber gehabt, wenn sie ihren MRS-Abschluss gemacht hätte." Paul sieht uns kritisch an. "Kennt ihr den Ausdruck überhaupt?"

Ich nicke. "MRS, wie die Abkürzung für Mistress, also Ehefrau. Sie wollte, dass sie einen Ehemann findet." (Kapitel 5)

Mannomann ich liebe Übersetzung. So viele Entscheidungen!

Das Hörbuch ist von Funda Vanroy gesprochen; die Klangqualität ist super und die Stimmen individuell (einfach zu erkennen). Mehr Hörbücher von ihr wurde ich fröhlich probieren.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley. German quotes are from an ARC and may not be final. Deutsch ist nicht meine Muttersprache, und alle Fehler sind meine eigenen.

You, with a View by Jessica Joyce
Published July 2023 via Berkley
★★★

Noelle is having a hard time of it—jobless, grieving, and back to living in her childhood bedroom. It doesn't help that her high school rival, Theo, seems to be thriving. But when she learns that her late grandmother once dated Theo's grandfather, all bets are off—it's time to take a road trip into the past.

I read this in English in tandem with the German audiobook, because I don't like missing nuance and because parallel reading is fun. The romance isn't really for me—I found Noelle's insistence that she and Theo be on the same trust page within weeks of reconnecting to be off-putting at best, and passively grumpy heroes aren't really my thing. (That's okay; they're a thing for lots of readers; you do you.)

The road trip is fun, though—I've never visited most of the areas they go to, and reading about them very much made me want to take my own road trip. My absolute favorite thing, though, was this big about an MRS degree:

"She wanted to her to get her MRS degree." Paul eyes us. "Do you know that phrase?"

I nod. "They wanted her to find a husband." (56)

And in German:

"Sie hatte es eber gehabt, wenn sie ihren MRS-Abschluss gemacht hätte." Paul sieht uns kritisch an. "Kennt ihr den Ausdruck überhaupt?"

Ich nicke. "MRS, wie die Abkürzung für Mistress, also Ehefrau. Sie wollte, dass sie einen Ehemann findet."

For the uninitiated and/or the non-German-speakers, an MRS degree is marriage (or engagement) before college graduation. I don't know if (or how far) the term has made it out of the US, but the translator definitely didn't think it's made it to Germany—not only is "They wanted her to find a husband" translated, but "MRS" is translated to "mistress" and then clarified that in this case "mistress" means "wife". I love the weird issues that come up in translation. Things like that make it worth it to me to read the entire book twice.

German audiobook was thanks to the publisher via NetGalley; English original was powered by the magic of my local library.

Review: "Seasick" by Kristin Cast and Pintip Dunn

Seasick by Kristin Cast and Pintip Dunn
Published June 2024 via Delacorte Press
★★

Well, this is my second recent stuck-on-a-boat-and-people-keep-dying book. Or, to be even more accurate about it, a stuck-on-a-boat-with-a-bunch-of-extremely-spoiled-and-unpleasant-rich-people-who-keep-dying book. And I think this is...more than enough for me for a while. I love a locked-door mystery, but I'm on record many times as having poor ability to suspend disbelief, and this book requires far more advanced skills than I have.

In Seasick, a bunch of teenagers are set loose on a yacht with a full staff and some amount of alcohol and almost zero supervision—the yacht staff are not there to supervise, and it's pretty much minutes before they're out for the count anyway. And from there bodies start piling up, in increasingly gruesome fashion (and with a variety that would take some effort from the most hardened of sociopaths, to say nothing of any of the passengers on this yacht).

I think I mostly just read this too close to The Yacht to have all that much energy for it, but I also struggled quite a lot with the motive and the characters. A lot of the characters (not all, because it's YA and thus there is romance) are written to be actively unlikable, which in some circumstances I appreciate but in mysteries/thrillers I don't love—because I like to be scared that characters will die, not relieved when it happens because I no longer have to give them brain space.

It's really hard to discuss motive without spoilers, so spoiler warning for this paragraph: It comes down to money, and the difference between inheriting two billion dollars and one billion dollars. And I'm sorry, but what can you do with two billion dollars that you can't do with one? A billion dollars isn't worth killing for when you will still end up with a billion dollars if you do nothing.

So not a good fit for me, but again, it was always going to be a hard sell for me given the high suspension of disbelief required; it'll be a better fit for readers who don't have that particular character flaw.

Review: Short story: "The Bookstore Wedding" by Alice Hoffman

The Bookstore Wedding by Alice Hoffman
Published August 2024 via Amazon Original Stories

As the story opens, Isabel is planning her wedding yet again—over and over, fate and circumstance have conspired to keep her from marrying Johnny. The town has gotten used to it by now. Isabel wants to get married, she does...but other priorities come first.

This is the first of Alice Hoffman I've read, though of course I've seen her books around for years and years. It's the second in a short story series following Isabel and her family, and I'm curious about the origin of the story, so to speak—whether one of the stories was originally planned to be a novel. There's a bit more backstory in here than I would have expected in something so short, including some details that appear to be covered in the first story of the series.

All in all, it's a pretty quiet story, one for those who like their romance understated and drama viewed from a distance. I would have liked a deeper dive into the characterization and character development, especially since there is that distance with the events of the story (told in pretty broad strokes), but it's sweet.

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

Review: "Cowgirl Megan" by Trisha Magraw

Cowgirl Megan by Trisha Magraw
Published 1998
★★★

I don't plan to reread a whole lot of this series, so I'm picking and choosing. Cowgirl Megan> has, I think, the strongest nostalgia vibes of any of the series for me—not so much the book itself, but that cover. Or, more accurately, that jacket—I remember so vividly how cool I thought a white leather fringed jacket studded with jewels was. Also, now that I think about it, the version of Megan on the cover is pretty much a dead ringer for the American Girl doll I had around the same time.

Unlike the contents of the other books of this series I've dipped into as an adult, this book also rings some other bells. Here, Megan is feeling slighted by her friends—who are, it must be said, astonishingly quick to cut Megan down to size when she displays the barest amount of ambition (more on that in a moment)—when she heads up into the attic to escape reality for a bit. When she slips through the fabric of reality, she finds herself in the Wild West...with a girl whose dream of showing her prowess in the competition ring is being thwarted by circumstances outside her control. It's up to Megan to help her come up with a plan—and in the process learn to speak up for herself.

Because the girls tend to adventure independently in this series, we actually see very little of their friendship—they're eager to ask each other where the mirror in the attic has taken them, and to sit together at lunch, but the books are short and so their time together is limited. But okay: let's trust that they're the best and most supportive of friends (most of the time). The other girls eventually (it's a feel-good children's/early MG book, after all) apologize to Megan and concede that having dreams makes sense. Good for them, and good for Megan for standing up for herself. What does it say about perceptions of female friendship, though, that they are so quick to encourage Megan to make herself smaller? I wonder what a contemporary book would do with this.

Review: "The Cheesemaker's Daughter" by Kristin Vuković

The Cheesemaker's Daughter by Kristin Vuković
Published August 2024 via Regalo Press
★★★

Marina has lived in the United States for half her life, but when her father asks for help—a first—she drops everything to return to Croatia to help her parents save their struggling cheese factory. Croatia is and isn't as she remembers it; it's been years since Marina was home long enough to sink into the rhythms of Croatian island life, and cheesemaking has never been her future. But now she must decide: stay, or go? What parts of her past and present are destined to stay or become her past, and what parts are destined to become her future?

I've read very little about Croatia—very little fiction set in contemporary southeastern (or eastern, or central) Europe, for that matter; that's less by choice and more because I've found it difficult to find the contemporary, non-noir, non-war fiction I'm after. And on that count, The Cheesemaker's Daughter delivers. Marina's life on Pag is quiet, but it's full—family and old friends and ghosts from her past; tradition sitting alongside modern conveniences (and inconveniences). Plot-wise, this is strong work; Croation relationships and work struggles and personal struggles layer on top of each other, and it's not clear until the end how most things will work out—there are many directions the story could take and still feel realistic.

Writing-wise, I think this could have used an intense round of line editing. The word knew appears 99 times in the book and the word felt 180 times, and although obviously not all of those are directly about Marina (the POV character), the majority are, and I don't want to be told what she knows and feels; I want to experience those things with her. It left me a bit disconnected from Marina and thus from the book even as I kept reading to find out how things would go.

It's a fairly quiet book, all things considered—in a good way, but one for those who don't mind books that unfold in their own sweet time. I'd be interested to read more in similar settings.

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

Review: "A Well-Trained Wife" by Tia Levings

A Well-Trained Wife by Tia Levings
Published August 2024 via St. Martin's Press
★★★★

Levings was still a child when the dominoes began to fall: her family moved from Michigan down south, joined a stricter church, uprooted her expectations of who she should be and what she should want—what she was allowed to want—in life. And so she ended up in a marriage that was abusive from the word go, one in which the only route to a better future she could see was one in which she made herself ever smaller, ever more submissive.

All along, I thought I was protecting the kids. Shielding them from realities behind closed doors. Sacrificing to maintain a two-parent Christian home. Making hard, better choices for their faith, family, and education than I made for myself, trying to safeguard them from pain.

But they saw. That was obvious now. And staying meant raising sons who hit women. Staying meant raising a daughter who stayed with the man who hit her. (loc. 25*)

This was one of my most anticipated books for 2024, and it does not disappoint. Levings was in the Amazon docuseries Shiny Happy People, but her writing has been on my radar for even longer. This is not her processing her childhood and marriage—she's done enough of that that the result here is a clear-eyed, clear-voiced look at not just her toxic marriage but the forces behind it.

Without my parents' help, my next option was church. First Baptist had a reputation of sending the cream of the crop to Liberty, and as a friend of Jerry Falwell, Dr. Vines was well-connected. I scheduled an appointment, confident he'd be proud of my hunger to study the Bible. [...]

I muttered about WOLBI and a partial scholarship, stammering without any of the confidence I'd tried with Dad.

"Well, young lady, we use our precious dollars to assist men called into the ministry. We don't spare that money for girls."

I threw up when I got home. Boys got what they wanted. Girls gave it up for God. (loc. 615)

It's hard for me to sum up just how terrible Leving's marriage ended up being, not least because it's hard to unpick how much of it was the abuse itself and how much of it was the religious culture around them encouraging Levings to take the abuse, take all the blame for everything, submit submit submit and maybe, just maybe, her marriage would get better. (And if it didn't, it would be her fault.)

He wanted me to call him "My lord."

Wear only dresses.

Cover my head with a scarf to show submission and modesty.

And he wanted me to stop showing anyone what I'd written or made, such as a forum post or a scrapbook, unless I'd shown it to him first. (loc. 2011)

It's a lot of story, and quite grim in places—even knowing how things turned out I found the reading stressful at times. That's a good thing, believe it or not (sign of a well-done book), but it's definitely one to pick up with intention. Very glad that Levings is now not just writing her own story but writing her own path forward.

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

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