Review: "I Felt Myself Slipping" by Ray Nadine

I Felt Myself Slipping by Ray Nadine
Published September 2024 via Oni Press
★★★

It's the mid-1990s, and there's a new girl at Station Six Gymnastics. Kota is intrigued—and she's even more intrigued when she learns that Riley, the new girl, is Deaf, and that the best way to communicate will be to learn sign language. But Riley, who's struggling with recent loss, isn't so sure that she wants to make new friends, to let new people in.

Despite not even being able to turn a cartwheel (it's on my bucket list, so maybe someday), I have a high level of curiosity about gymnastics, and this was a no-brainer of a read for me. There's a fair amount going on in the story: Kota and Riley are both competitive gymnasts, but they aren't sure if their skill will take them as far as they want to go; Riley is dealing with grief and making new connections; Kota has a fall early on and has a hard time regaining her confidence on a particular apparatus. I wish we saw a bit more of Riley in particular outside gymnastics, as even she doesn't seem to know who she is outside the gym. I love how much Sign we see, though, and how willing Kota is to go outside her comfort zone.

The art is not really my style: the cover image should give you a good idea of what's inside, but the art reads as 'comic' rather than 'graphic novel' to me, and it took me a while to figure out where the characters were supposed to fit in the world because Kota has the visual and emotional energy of a twelve-year-old boy. (I didn't check out any of Nadine's earlier work before reading this, which is probably just as well; although the lines are the same, I think this is likely a rather gentler story than some of their other work.) That said, art style is highly subjective, and I'm guessing that most readers will not have my same specific preferences there!

I'm curious about the choice to set this in the mid-90s: I'm guessing that that's because that's the period of competitive gymnastics that Nadine knows best, but I'm fascinated by the casualness with which Kota's teammates tease her about possibly having a crush on a girl—I mean, in the mid-90s I was still at an age to be working out things like writing all the letters in my name the right way around, and I didn't know what the word 'lesbian' meant (heard it for the first time in about...1999?), but I'm now super curious about how many could-be-queer teens (I Felt Myself Slipping is a friendship book, not a romance) had that sort of cheerful acceptance in that time period.

One to appeal to those interested in gymnastics, obviously; your art-style mileage may vary but it was a fun read.

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

Children's books: Alphabet and more: "The Little i Who Lost His Dot", "The Day Punctuation Came to Town", "The Mighty Silent e!", and "Red Rover, Red Rover, Send a Vowel Over"

The Little i Who Lost His Dot by Kimberlee Gard, illustrated by Sandie Sonke (Familius)
The Day Punctuation Came to Town by Kimberlee Gard, illustrated by Sandie Sonke (Familius)
The Mighty Silent e! by Kimberlee Gard, illustrated by Sandie Sonke (Familius)
Red Rover, Red Rover, Send a Vowel Over by Kimberlee Gard, illustrated by Sandie Sonke (Familius)

In The Little i Who Lost His Dot, a twist on a classic alphabet book, Little i goes off to school...only to find that he's lost his dot! His classmates are ready to leap in and provide solutions: Little a finds an acorn to use as a dot, Little l suggests a light bulb...but nothing seems quite right. What is a lowercase letter to do?

The illustrations are simple but colorful, letting the alphabet letters be the stars of the show. I also really like that there's more story here than just the alphabet—there's a whole alphabet school where little letters learn to make words, and alphabet parents—and that the things the other little letters suggest are largely a departure from things seen in many alphabet books.

Overall, a cute and useful read for little ones who are making it out of ABC and into abc.

There are some new kids in town—what should the alphabet make of them‽ The Day Punctuation Came to Town, the next book of the series, sets out to answer just that...

Now, I don't know how little kids feel about books about punctuation, but I'm all for them. This book keeps it simple: period, comma, exclamation mark, question mark (silent apostrophe hovering about on occasion). You won't see dashes or interrobangs or ellipses; you won't see colons or semicolons (or parentheses). I'd love to have those addressed in a book for slightly more advanced readers. But the playful way these stories play out reminds me of the Schoolhouse Rock videos I sometimes watched in class when I was little, and that can only ever be a good thing. This won't give an early reader a perfect understanding of punctuation, but the characters are distinct/memorable enough to be helpful to kids who are just shaky on the idea of punctuation in general.

Meanwhile, in The Mighty Silent e!, Little e feels a little left out sometimes...but mostly he doesn't mind being on the outskirts. He knows that someday it'll be his turn to shine—and when words that require a silent "e" crop up in class, it's his time to shine.

The Mighty Silent e! (which I may have mentally retitled as The Silent e Saves the Day) introduces early readers to the idea that English requires (you guessed it) a silent "e" in some words to make the word sound right. (Or: som words hav an "e" becaus otherwis they don't mak sens...) Readers might not understand why the word works this way, but the illustrations will give them a chance to practice sounding out words with and without that dastardly—excuse me, heroic—e and maybe come up with some words of their own that might work this way. (Would be a great read for any Kates, Nates, Janes...)

Colorful illustrations personify the letters in a super cute way and might help reluctant learners to feel a little more invested in the plight of the silent e.

In Red Rover, Red Rover, Send a Vowel Over, the classroom vowels aren't quite sure where they fit in...though Little a is a little disgruntled that she's always asked to go first. But a quick game (or rather, reinvention) of Red Rover fixes all that—because you can't do much without vowels!

(Just for fun: n Rd Rvr, Rd Rvr, Snd Vwl v, th clssrm vwls rn't qt sr whr thy ft n...thgh Lttl s lttl dsgrntld tht sh's lwys skd t g frst. Bt qck gm (r rthr, rnvntn) f Rd Rvr fxs ll tht—bcs y cn't d mch wtht vwls!)

Like the other books in this series, this is a very introductory look at a part of language, but I can see it helping early readers remember what's a consonant and what's a vowel...and what one special letter can be either. (I'm glad the book mentions that, because when I saw Little y playing with the consonants I was a little concerned that y would be written off as only a consonant!) A worthy addition to the collection.

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

Review: "Unburdened Eating" by Jeanne Catanzaro

Unburdened Eating by Jeanne Catanzaro
Published September 2024 via Bridge City Books
★★★

Unburdened Eating explores the use of an Internal Family Systems approach to improve one's relationship with food and body. I picked this up partly because I'd never heard of the approach, which—in very, very simplified form—can be described as engaging in neutral dialogue with one's own conflicting thoughts to bring them closer to harmony.

I'm not really sure who the target audience for this is, as it's not a book aimed at professionals, but I don't think it's meant exactly as a self-help book either—I think it would be quite hard to apply an IFS approach without guidance from a therapist, at least initially and especially if you weren't already conversant in some of the language. (Maybe something for people who are trying IFS in therapy and want to know more?)

This ended up not being a very good fit of a book for me—I think I was just expecting something other than it was, plus I don't have any background with IFS (again, had never heard of it). I appreciate a lot of the things Catanzaro talks about (she touches briefly on things like the ways racism plays into the glorification of Thin, for example, and on her politely anti-diet stance), but this self-help-hybrid isn't really my thing. That said, if you're looking for a new way to approach an uneasy relationship with body image, this book (and IFS more generally) might be interesting to explore.

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

Review: "The Doctor Was a Woman" by Chris Enss

The Doctor Was a Woman by Chris Enss
Published February 2024 via TwoDot
★★★

The Doctor Was a Woman takes us through the stories of a number of women who practiced medicine in the American West before women were widely accepted in medicine. The Wild West was not necessarily more accepting—or would not necessarily have been more accepting, save for that services were so limited that anyone with skills could find their way, even if they were (gasp!) a woman. One thing that strikes me is that many of the women profiled here went into medicine later than we'd expect now; i.e., now it's more common for someone in the US to go straight from college to med school, and I imagine that was also more common for men at the time, but women faced so many more barriers, from lack of family support to med schools refusing to admit women.

As a book it's...okay. It's clear that the author is deeply passionate about the topic, but the writing is pretty flat. I suspect that part of that is just that information about these women and their lives is relatively hard to come by; some of them left writings of their own, but, well, we all know that men get more coverage in the history books than women do. The end of each chapter has a bit of writing from the time, either something that the doctor in question wrote in the course of her career or something that would have been relevant; I admit that I skimmed those parts, as they're probably more compelling to those with a specific interest in archaic medicine.

One thing that gave me a lot of pause: the descriptions all lean neutral-positive, even when the things these doctors were doing were...kind of appalling, by modern standards. Take Bethenia Owens-Adair: She studied such controversial topics as the sterilization of the criminally insane. Bethenia's analysis led her to believe that insanity and criminal actions were hereditary. Her famous work on the subject, entitled "Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects," was published in 1922 and brought her instant recognition in the field. Three years after Bethenia presented her findings, a sterilization statue [sic] was adopted as state law in Oregon (67). So...like...yay, eugenics...? I should be clear that 1) I'm not suggesting anything about the author's views and 2) we can't necessarily hold historical figures to today's standards, but I really, really wished there had been some discussion of, like, the difference between being renowned for something at the time and it being something that should still be celebrated or endorsed or tolerated today.

Two and a half stars; it's a pretty short book, but I'd recommend it mostly for people who have a really specific interest in the history of medicine and/or Wild West history.

Review: "The Last Whaler" by Cynthia Reeves

The Last Whaler by Cynthia Reeves
Published September 2024 via Regal House Publishing
★★★★

It's 1937, and Astrid has made the decision to accompany her husband, Tor, to Svalbard for the whaling season. It's the sort of decision one makes in haste and repents at leisure: one made out of grief; one leading to a reality that neither Astrid nor Tor, who has spent many a season in Svalbard before, is prepared for.

I didn't understand then the nature of grief, that it doesn't fade away but loops endlessly. (loc. 3763*)

I picked this up because I recently read Christiane Ritter's A Woman in the Polar Night—a memoir about a year spend on Svalbard in the early 1930s—and I was enthralled; I wanted to see what a contemporary novelist would do with a similar setting. And Reeves is clearly inspired by Ritter, who is a minor off-page character in The Last Whaler, though Astrid's experience and her takeaways are rather different than Ritter's.

We get two points of view here: Tor, looking back later on the time he and Astrid spent in that harsh landscape—first with other whalers and then starkly alone—and Astrid, telling her story through letters to her son. I didn't love the letters: they didn't feel realistic as letters someone would write to a young child, even under the circumstances in the novel, and I would have preferred either a journal or just Astrid's non-epistolary point of view.

What sold it for me, though, is how much research and context there is here. Occasionally I think Tor leans a bit contemporary in his views than is realistic, but what intrigues me is the way in which, although cut off from the outside world, they are always aware on some level that that outside world continues: the world encroaches, whether they want it to or not. Maybe Astrid would have fared better had she stayed back in the outside world, or maybe the barren landscape isolation simply hastened what was to come. In any case, it's a fascinating story.

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

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

Review: "Then Things Went Dark" by Bea Fitzgerald

Then Things Went Dark by Bea Fitzgerald
Published August 2024 via Sourcebooks Landmark
★★★

Six celebrities (after a fashion) land on an isolated island off the coast of Portugal, cameras following their every move. There's a lot of money on the line—and they all have their reasons, financial and otherwise, to be there.

What they can't predict going in: Not all of them will make it out alive.

What they really should have predicted: Everyone, surviving and not, will be pretty miserable by the end.

We all know the basics of this plot—what is a locked-room reality television show but a chance to watch people being forced into uncomfortable situations while we chomp on our popcorn? As a rule, I don't enjoy most reality TV, but...I enjoy reading about a lot of things that I don't enjoy watching, so here we are.

The book shifts back and forth: the days the cast spends on the island, and the aftermath, as they're being interviewed (repeatedly) by Interpol. Interpol has a tougher job than usual—because the whole world, more or less, has seen this death play out and the events that preceded it, and the whole world (again, more or less) has opinions. At its best, the book makes for incisive commentary on reality television and how society views the participants; there's an epic amount of Schadenfreude in the commentary we see from the show's viewers online, yes, but there's also the way the show itself delights in exploiting every raw nerve and doing its utter best to tear the contestants to the ground. Iconic, that's the stated goal—but iconic for what reasons, and at what cost?

Now...to enjoy this book properly, you have to enjoy reading about unpleasant people being unpleasant. I did not take that into consideration when I picked the book up, and that was definitely to my detriment while reading. (My preference is to be hoping with bated breath that the characters won't die rather than hoping with bated breath that they'll all die, and soon...) This is mitigated somewhat by the social-commentary angle, but even then it's hard to find characters to root for. (About the borderline satirical B plot, between the Interpol agents—the less said, the better.) Now, whether finding a character to root for is the point...well, that's another question entirely.

There's a whodunnit angle here, but I'd say that that's also rather besides the point. I guessed at some, but not all, of the details of how things would turn out, but I think this is better read as something much more meta than a simple 'who is guilty, who is innocent, and who might or might not get away with murder'.

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

Review: "I'll Have What He's Having" by Adib Khorram

I'll Have What He's Having by Adib Khorram
Published August 2024 via Forever
★★★★

Farzan has come adrift—his love life is going nowhere, his work life is directionless, and compared to his highly ambitious siblings he feels like a failure. Taking over his parents' restaurant seems like a possible way forward...but although Farzan knows food, knows cooking, he doesn't know running a business. Enter David: training to be a master sommelier, he's too busy for a relationship; he'll have time for that when he's living it up in a major city somewhere. But when a miscommunication leads them to fall into bed together—and they're still laughing about it when they figure out the truth—it occurs to them that there might be a mutually beneficial path forward.

What decided me on reading this was this line in the description, about their early-book miscommunication: Good news—both think the mix-up is hilarious. It's a small thing, but that line says a lot: that the book isn't going to be one that is all about miscommunications that could be cleared up with one conversation; that they're going to be able to laugh at the little things; that there's going to be chemistry beyond banging. And: win! All of that is true in the book. There's lots of communication, even when Farzan and David don't think things will work for them in the long term, and they just genuinely...like each other.

Farzan's family is Iranian, and that's a big part of the book, which is nice—both Farzan and David are well aware of being POC in a city that doesn't always feel very diverse. Food and wine, more generally, are also big themes—Farzan loves to cook Persian food, and David is steadily (but not drunkenly) ensuring that he can recognize any wine placed in front of him. There's quite a lot of sex, and to be perfectly honest I skimmed a fair amount of it (I'm more for f/f romance than for m/m romance), but if you like the heat turned up high, this is a kitchen you'll want to be in.

I read an ARC, and there were still some consistency details to iron out, but the general vibe needs no edits.

Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to read a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "The Slow Road North" by Rosie Schaap

The Slow Road North by Rosie Schaap
Published August 2024 via Mariner Books
★★★★

This is the second book I've read recently by a Rosie with an Ireland connection, which feels like a nice coincidence. Very different stories, but with some other odd coincidences: In A Rosie Life in Italy, the author describes leaving Ireland for Italy in part to escape grief...while in The Slow Road North, the author describes leaving New York for Northern Ireland, in part to escape grief.

He was not one of those people who say they are ready for death. Can those people be serious? There were still too many books Frank wanted to read. (loc. 99*)

I say 'escape grief', but that's not right: Schaap moved to a village in Northern Ireland after her husband got ill and died, far too young, and after her mother too died, but she did not move to escape grief—she needed to be able to fully process her grief in a way that she was unable to do in New York, with its fast pace and all its ghosts. New York was home. But sometimes home is not enough. In Glenarm, she sought a new kind of life: a degree in writing, a new community, people who did not shy away from grief or pain but accepted them as part of life. And she learned a great deal: about the Troubles, and the rifts that remained in Glenarm, even if they were quieter than before; it's fascinating to read about her experience being Jewish in a place that was for so long split between Protestant and Catholic, with little thought given to people who might fall outside those categories.

Schaap talks a little about the choice of the title for the book, but it feels right: it's a fairly understated book, with measured peaks and lows rather than crashing ones, despite the grief and loss that underpin the story. Character-driven, if you will; it's well into the book before Schaap gets into her relationship with her mother and who her mother was as a person, and it's a wise choice, because Schaap's mother was clearly nothing if not a complicated person, but that's allowed to come second to love.

When Frank died and my mother was too unwell to come to the funeral, I asked her to promise me that she wouldn't die that year, too. She made me that promise and she kept it. She died one year and thirteen days after Frank. (2414)

(That line low-key devastated me; there was a while when it looked like I'd lose both my parents within a year—I did not; my mother is back to her extremely energetic self—and while it's absolutely a different scenario, I get how terrifying the prospect of losing two loved ones so close together is. I've already moved away from my parents, but I can well imagine picking up my whole life and restarting after so devastating a loss.)

This is one for readers who are in it for character and rumination and the slow road north through grief. It's a lovely take.

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

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

Review: "Return to Midnight" by Emma Dues

Return to Midnight by Emma Dues
Published August 2024 via Thomas & Mercer
★★★

Almost ten years ago, Margot was a senior in college, living her best life in a big old house with all her closest friends. And almost ten years ago, Margot survived a massacre in that house in which almost all of those friends were killed. A suspect was caught and convicted, and Margot has tried to move on…though mostly that means barely sleeping, barely eating, and barely leaving her mother’s house. Now, as part of the process of writing a book about that massacre, she’s returning to the house she lived in in college for the first time since the massacre. And things aren’t all as they seem…

I couldn’t tell you why, but I’m a sucker for final-girl-revisits-the-scene books. In this case, the cover drew me in (though ballet turns out to be a minor part of the book), but I would have been interested based on the description anyway. Massacres and final girls and old Victorian houses? Yes please.

The result is mixed. I finished the book late at night, and the end gave me some heart-pounding moments, which I appreciated. The dance element is also nice, in places: Margot and her friends were mostly dance minors at university, meaning that they had skill and interest but generally weren’t planning to make careers out of dance. As a rule, they’re as interested in partying and drinking and carb-based food as they are in putting in practice and perfecting pirouettes. This isn’t a side of dance that I see reflected often in fiction—I’m much more likely to see books in which the characters are desperate make it into a professional company, when in reality the experience Margot and her friends have is much more common. (And: I don’t know if this was intentional, but…shades of I Know What You Did Last Summer?)

But I don’t love the voice (first person POV doesn’t help, I think), and Margot’s pretty inconsistent: she goes straight from a reclusive, terrified life to staying at the scene of the crime, telling her secrets to what sounds like a tabloid reporter (bad move for a number of reasons, not least that she’s writing a book about it and should think carefully about what she wants other people to be able to publish before she can), and running around town accusing people of stalking and/or murder. I think I’d have found her more believable if she had been able to move on more in the past nine years, or if she were less willing to throw herself back into it. Meanwhile, as we learn more about the side characters, they tend to get less appealing rather than more.

And…I’m not sure how best to say this, but lord have mercy, Margot is dumb as a box of rocks. Absolutely zero sense of self-preservation: in addition to trusting a stranger she knows nothing about (and inviting him over, and falling asleep while he’s there, and giving him free rein in the house), she contaminates evidence, doesn’t think to contact the police about that evidence or about stalking, routinely confronts people she suspects of violence, goes down into the basement without any sort of backup every time she hears a noise there…so many chances for her to end up even more traumatized, to say nothing of very dead.

Finally, this is a book in which a large amount of the plot hinges on Margot not being honest with the reader. There are some major gaps in her knowledge about what happened—we don’t get her memory of the murders until late in the book, but it could have opened the book without significant spoilers—but about other things she is very, very coy with the reader. I understand why it’s done, but it’s not something I much enjoy in thrillers; I like to be on the same page as the narrator (and, you know, to be afraid they’re going to die). For readers who don’t mind this withholding of information, this won’t be a problem, but…mileage may vary.

So—points for premise and the interesting use of ballet, but the characters are hard to connect with and overall it ended being not what I was hoping for from a thriller.

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

Review: "Thin Deep" by Sarah Mackie

Thin Deep by Sarah Mackie
Published August 2024 via Cherish Editions
★★

As a young adult, Mackie fell headlong into an eating disorder. Anorexia became bulimia became a vicious cycle of eating and not eating that would last years. Thin Deep is her story of disorder and finding her way out of it, largely through yoga and variations on CBT.

If I could read only one genre for the rest of my life it might well be memoir (though the idea of giving up lit fic and general nonfiction and so on gives me shivers). Memoir is learning from experiences that are not my own, and also seeing what people with whom I share experiences did differently, and how they chose to frame those experiences. Mackie's story must have been a difficult one to write, and I'm glad she reached a place where she can explore her experience and put words to it.

Generally speaking, this would have benefitted from a few rounds more editing and a good copy editor. Cherish Edition is a self-publisher, and it's not fair to compare a self-published book to something traditionally published (a traditional publisher will often have more resources than an individual author to apply to a book and will definitely have more incentive than a self-publisher to make a book as polished as it can be). I've read some amazing self-published books, but it's worth bearing the context in mind when reading (or deciding whether or not to read) a self-published book. (Note that I received a review copy, so it's possible that updates have since been made; however, the review copy was offered after the publication date, and in that case I generally assume it's the final version.) I didn't mind the typos so much (I kept a personal dairy, loc. 36—actually, didn't Marie Antoinette keep a private dairy so that she could play at working with her hands?), but there are a couple of things that give me pause and would make me reluctant to recommend this to readers who struggle or have struggled with an eating disorder.

Most eating disorder literature has moved away from including specific numbers and details under the understanding that they can be damaging or triggering to some readers. Mackie doesn't note weight, but she walks a (sorry) thin line of how much detail to include, and I think the calorie counts and occasional BMI and exercise details fall solidly in the "could've edited this out" category. Mackie also says some things in the introduction that put me on my guard for pretty much the rest of the book—insinuating that recovery weight gain beyond a certain (thin) point is unhealthy and unattractive. She doesn't return to this in the main portion of the book, and in fact says of yoga that surrounding myself in an environment that didn't judge, that didn't care if my stomach was flat or if my arse was curvy, was so liberating (loc. 1493), but I think I'd been waiting for the other shoe to fall for so much of the book that I was just left thinking that it wouldn't be a good fit for somebody who picked up the book early in recovery, having gained weight—no matter how much or how little—and feeling uncomfortable with it.

Your mileage might vary. Mackie is passionate about yoga, and I appreciate that she is very clear that you don't have to be a toned Instagram guru who can, I don't know, hold bakasana for twenty minutes at a time and then roll into ganda bherundasana before finishing with ten minutes of astavakrasana (I don't do yoga at all and Googled "hardest yoga poses" to find those, so if that sentence doesn't make sense it is squarely on me); that you can get the mental and physical benefits at any level. It's not a book I'm likely to return to, but it might make a good read for those who trust themselves and their trigger limits and are looking to work some yoga and mindfulness into their routine.

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