Review: "The Christmas Swap" by Talia Samuels

The Christmas Swap by Talia Samuels
Published October 2023 via Alcove
★★

It's a classic setup: Ben needs a date for the holidays, and Margot needs a place to go. In public, they'll be together; behind closed doors, it's strictly platonic. But there's a twist...in the form of Ben's sister, Ellie. Who is a lesbian. As is Margot. And when sparks inevitably fly, it's not between the "happy couple".

On the whole this is cute and fluffy, poised to be a fun winter read. There's a fair amount going on—Margot is still reeling from the fallout of her previous (toxic) relationship, Ellie is trying to prove to her parents that she's moved on from her partying days to string lights and picnics, and Ben is sufficiently ashamed of being chronically single that, well, Margot is there for Christmas. I'm on record many times saying that I don't love Evil Villains Who Are Evil, but I do appreciate that the other characters understand, often better than Margot does, why it might be hard to fully disentangle from her ex. And I love the occasional silly plays with language: I'm feeling very strange about the strange thing with the strange stranger. (loc. 187*)

Where I get stuck, though, is with this: When Margot and Ellie get together, it's with a thoughtlessness so extreme that it borders on cruelty. They absolutely don't mean any cruelty—they're both nice women with a side of pumpkin spice. But there's never a point at which they consider that sneaking around to date each other, when Margot is there to play-act as Ben's girlfriend, might hurt anyone. Nobody suggests that they hold off on their attraction for a couple of weeks, or discusses how it's going to feel to Ben to have to either 1) come clean to his family about hiring a girlfriend for a week or 2) not come clean but instead pretend, a month or two down the line, that it's totally fine that his ex-girlfriend is now dating his sister. Margot is looking forward to telling Ben everything, but only so that she has someone to giggle and gossip with, because she's now viewing Ben as her best friend. (There's actually something quite intriguing in Margot's decision to view a relative stranger-come-fake-boyfriend as her best friend—it might be reflective of the shakiness of her other friendships and perhaps the damage that's been done to her sense of what a relationship should be, thanks to the toxic ex. Or it might be something else! In any case, it would have been interesting to see that explored in more detail.)

So I wanted to cheer Margot and Ellie on, but in the end I was mostly just sad for Ben. It works out, of course (not a spoiler! It's a romance novel, so of course it works out—and you can see the shape of things working out coming from quite some distance), but I spent most of the second half of the book trying to figure out what would have made the whole thing sit better with me. Telling Ben earlier, perhaps, or postponing the real dating until the fake dating was over, or at the very least Margot and Ellie acknowledging that the whole thing had the potential to get very messy very quickly...or Ben not so quickly and unreservedly getting over his hurt and humiliation, or them trying to tell Ben, or even the characters all being ten years younger and just a bit more...understandably thoughtless. Again: as characters, they aren't written as bad people, but...with a lesbian romance novel, I don't want my overarching takeaway to be sympathy for the straight, cisgender, "best friend" of a man.

I was very much looking forward to this—it wasn't the book for me, but I hope I'm the outlier here and that it'll work better for other readers.

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

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

Children's books: environment: "Pitter Patty Finds Another Day", "The Power of Snow", and "Coyote's Wild Home"

Pitter Patty Finds Another Day by Andrew Hiller, illustrated by Yvonne Frederick (DreamPunk Press)
The Power of Snow by Bob Raczka, illustrated by Bryony Clarkson (Millbrook Press)
Coyote's Wild Home by Lily Kingsolver and Barbara Kingsolver, illustrated by Paul Mirocha (The Gryphon Press)

Diving into the world of picture books! These three are all designed to teach kids something about nature and the environment...and sometimes a bit more than that.

In Pitter Patty Finds Another Day, Pitter Patty wants acceptance, just like everyone else—but she's a cloud, and when her raindrops start to fall, the people down below start to sing: Rain, rain, go away...

This makes for a fun, playful look at clouds and weather. I read this in June, when my area was expecting the driest summer on record, and I'd welcome Pitter Patty in the skies any day. The illustrations are simple but richly colored, and children will enjoy the occasional rhymes (and of course the 'Rain, rain, go away' song!). If there's a follow-up, I'd like to see Pitter Patty make a friend or two, and maybe some child-friendly explanations of how clouds come to be, since Pitter Patty's rain doesn't come from nowhere!

In a colder part of the year, The Power of Snow is a sneaky, sneaky math lesson, wrapped up in gorgeous illustrations on a winter day. Snowflakes play and twirl, flurry and swirl through the pages. I love the illustrator's note at the end about how she ensured the right number of snowflakes per page, and I guarantee that many a child will try and try to count them all.

I'm reminded a little of the picture book The Doorbell Rang, which I checked out from the library over and over again as a child and which also (admittedly, a bit more stealthily) slides a math lesson into the pages. Kids who don't want to learn the math, or just aren't ready to think about exponential growth, can still enjoy the illustrations and rhymes, but this might spark a math interest for others.

And finally, Coyote's Wild Home tells two parallel stories—one of a young coyote, just beginning to learn about the world outside its den, and one of a young girl, also learning about the wild that exists outside her usual borders.

This is written for slightly older picture book readers, or to be read by adults who don't mind a longer read—there's a fair amount of text as the book shows readers what a young coyote's day in the woods might look like versus a young camper's. It's a love letter to the wild, and the end of the book provides more facts about coyotes and why they're important to the environment.

The illustrations of the woods and the coyotes are gorgeous and rich. I don't like the illustrations of the humans quite as much (I think something about the girl's depiction reminds me of that eerie quality of AI art), but the level of depth on the trees in particular is fantastic. A good summer read, especially if you're planning to get out into the woods with young kids anytime soon!

Takeaways: Each book serves a slightly different purpose and targets a slightly different audience. The Power of Snow is the one I'd most like to stock kids' bookshelves with, but Coyote's Wild Home would be a great resource when taking kids out into the wild, and I could see Pitter Patty as part of a kindergarten unit on weather.

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

Review: "Becoming Free Indeed" by Jinger Duggar Vuolo

Becoming Free Indeed by Jinger Duggar Vuolo
Published January 2023 via Thomas Nelson
★★★

When Jinger (Duggar) Vuolo was growing up, the rules were clear: follow Bill Gothard's seven principles, don't ever step out from under her parents' (and more to the point, her father's) authority, and her religion would protect her. But step outside the "umbrella of authority" (later rebranded as the "umbrella of protection") and you set yourself up for downfall.

It was in many ways a very sheltered upbringing—but then Jinger* grew up, and for the first time she had conversations about religion that were not held in an echo chamber. And then she got married, and she took another step outside that echo chamber. And then—well, let's come back to that.

As a book, it's...pretty specific. It's not really a memoir: the stories in here are few and pointed, and it's clear that Jinger has carefully selected the parts of her life that she is willing to talk about and brought those out for the book. Considering that she grew up on television with little say in what parts of her life were made public—and then had private details about abuse made public—this is not unreasonable, but it does not making for a particularly exciting book. Rather than a memoir, this is...the current version of Jinger's theological reckoning, I suppose. So much of the book is about 1) what Gothard said, 2) why that's wrong, and 3) why what her current church preaches is right.

Coming back to the and then: the teachings under which Jinger was raised have come under quite a lot of scrutiny, and she freely criticizes them. But...her husband studied for his MDiv (and now I think PhD?) at a seminary connected to a church, John MacArthur's Grace Community Church, that has also been under recent scrutiny (e.g., for kicking a woman out of the church because she left her abusive husband), and it's the communications guy at that seminary who did the ghostwriting on this book. Although Jinger talks a good game about having studied the bible and come to her own conclusions, it's hard to read this as anything other than propaganda for a particular viewpoint and associated church—like a different echo chamber. I'm a liberal heathen and her beliefs aren't likely to ever align with mine, which is fine, but...I suppose I find it sad and frustrating to see these shifting beliefs so much in lockstep with what her husband and her husband's seminary believe.

Jinger talks about disentangling rather than deconstructing her faith, because in her view deconstructing involves walking away from faith and she wants to make clear that she's still Christian and has never questioned the validity of the bible or the status of Jesus as her savior. Again, we do not share a belief system, but I've always thought that faith should be able to stand up to such scrutiny. One of the stories Jinger tells in this book to explain why she didn't throw Jesus out with the bathwater is about her husband getting putty stuck in his hair when he was a child, and his mother taking hours and hours to detangle it rather than cutting it out (195). But it feels like an imperfect metaphor (truth by analogy?) to me, because...what would have happened if the hair had been cut off to remove the putty? It would have grown back. Instead I think what she's done is stripped off the wallpaper of her faith to find the paint underneath, but she's not interested in then removing the paint to see what might be under that, and whether she wants whatever's underneath or a fresh coat of the same paint color. (Or new MacArthur-striped wallpaper. Whatever.)

Critical thinking was not important as I was growing up, writes Jinger, because what was there to think critically about? There was a right and a wrong way to do everything (157). I am genuinely glad for her that she can see this as a gap in her education and something that is worth working on, but...those gaps are still there. Take this late-in-the-book look at why she still holds the beliefs that she does: First, I trust the Bible because it has proven again and again to be historically accurate. There are hundreds of prophecies in the Old Testament. Those are predictions people made about what was going to happen in hundreds, if not thousands, of years. All of them came true. Every single one. That includes the prophecy that the Messiah would be born in a small town called Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). And the strange, specific prediction that the Messiah wouldn’t break a single bone when He died on the cross (Numbers 9:12). If you take the time to read what the Bible says, you will discover all kinds of stories that can’t be disproven. (201)

I'm in no way a biblical scholar, and I don't know what events from the bible have been proven or disproven—but as far as I can tell, what Jinger is saying here is that she believes in the bible because the bible says it's true (and she's then citing New Testament plot points as proof that the Old Testament is accurate). That's...not how critical thinking works? It's a great example of circular reasoning, actually. And "can't be disproven" is not the same as "has been proven".

Oh, this makes me tired. Three stars because I imagine that to Jinger this is a wild departure from her upbringing, and wildly different from anything she could have imagined believing for the first two decades or her life. But I can't recommend this as a book, and I hope that she can continue to grow and change and think in ways that haven't been vetted by a given church.

*First names for clarity

Review: "Find Your Frame" by Craig Whitehead

Find Your Frame by Craig Whitehead
Published September 2023 via Frances Lincoln
★★★

In Find Your Frame, Whitehead takes readers through some of the things he looks for when working as a street photographer. You can get a sense just from the cover what sorts of images he's attracted to—bold, tightly framed, making use of angles and built-in borders.

It's a very non-technical book, better suited to lay readers or beginning photographers than to (for lack of a better term) working street photographers. Whitehead's emphasis begins on, and circles back to again and again, finding the shot—not on focus or lighting or color correction or aperture or...I'm not a professional and I've run out of technical terms, so I suppose I'll leave it there, but in any case, if the book wants you to work on anything, it's training your eye to think how you might frame a particular shot, and then having the patience to wait for all the necessary elements in the photo to line up. Less about taking the shots and more about finding them, I suppose.

Whitehead talks quite a bit about shots that don't become the final version of the picture—e.g., when you shoot twenty frames of the same thing, but only one of them ends up being published—and I wish that more of those images had been included in the book; seeing the rejected or second-best shots, or perhaps more of the surrounding area that was cropped out, feels like a lesson in and of itself.

It all sort of begs the question of how much photographic "eye" can/should be trained and how much is more innate—I'd love to send a few beginner photographers out into the world with this book as their inspiration and see whether they gravitate to similar or very different shots—and I can't answer that, but if you enjoy Whitehead's photographic style this makes for an eye-catching coffee-table book.

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

Review: "Not One, Not Even One" by Nancy Christine Edwards

Not One, Not Even One by Nancy Christine Edwards
Published February 2022
★★★

In the late 70s, Edwards left Canada to work as a community health nurse in Sierra Leone. It was never going to be a permanent move, but the impressions those years left—those are permanent.

The decades between the experience and the writing of the book are the book's strength and its weakness both. The benefit of that long time, of course, is that Edwards has had years and years to think on her experiences, understand them in context, and think over what was effective and why—and what was less effective and why.

Should we ask women to boil their families’ drinking water? That was a sure-proof way to decrease rates of gastroenteritis, but boiling water required firewood. Firewood had to be carried from farm to village. I consumed almost three litres of drinking water a day, more when I walked to the villages. I did the simple math. A polygamous household of ten adults required at least 30 litres of drinking water daily. That was one and a half jerry cans of water, which had to be carried from water holes to villages or farms. It was beyond unreasonable to expect women to boil that much water on three-stone fires, and in what? They had two communal household pots—one for rice, the other for plassauce. Boiling all drinking water was both the medically right and impossibly wrong message. (128)

Edwards clearly understands the limitations of her work in Sierra Leone, and the book is stronger for it. There are some things that she couldn't answer then and can't answer now, and as much as I love questions with answers...I prefer it when people understand that they don't have all the answers.

Some of the research Edwards did—because she spent time in Sierra Leone not just as a nurse but also as a graduate student doing research—has such unexpectedly sad results. That is...you can expect some sad statistics, given time and place and context (maternal mortality rates, etc.). But there's also this: Paul and I put the completed baseline questionnaires in green garbage bags and locked them in the wooden cupboards of the Bo-Pujehun project office. As far as I know, nobody ever looked at them again. During interviews, families had shared their raw emotions about live births, stillbirths, and deaths of women and children. Responses had been recorded in tick boxes, with a few words of explanation sometimes entered in the margins. Each event had been converted to a single, data-entry keystroke and then anonymously summed and buried in the calculation of health status indicators. Locking the questionnaires in dark cupboards metaphorically silenced the fulsome stories of hope and joy; of sorrow and tragedy. (258)

I so hope that someday such interviews can be done again in similar communities, but with the goal of (with informed consent, obviously!) recording and sharing the full stories rather than just the bare data. No shade to Edwards' research at the time, of course, just that there's so much that can be said in oral histories and personal stories that can't be captured in tick boxes. I said above—and I think this is relevant to this theme about personal stories—that there are upsides and downsides to the long time between Edwards' work in Sierra Leone and the writing of this book—the downside is that it's harder to get full portraits of the people in the story when those memories are decades old. I'd have loved to get a better sense of more of the individuals Edwards lived and worked with, more of a sense of their stories and individual lives. It's a fascinating book regardless, but one to go in looking for more of a broad-strokes, data-driven perspective than one that focuses on individuals.

Review: "Beautiful and Terrible Things" by Amy Butler

Beautiful and Terrible Things by Amy Butler
Published October 2023 via The Dial Press
★★★★

I grew up in a religious tradition in which women warmed casseroles, taught children's Sunday school classes, and sometimes—with the endorsement and supervision of the male pastor—taught women's Bible study classes. It's not that I had ever heard anyone preach or teach about specifically why women couldn't be pastors, it was just that I'd never seen a woman pastor. I honestly didn't even know such a thing could exist. (loc.137*)

Butler was perhaps an unexpected pick for a minister: growing up conservative and evangelical, her understanding was that if she wanted to be involved in ministry, her best bet was to be a preacher's wife. But in college, something shifted: she realized that she had more options than she'd thought—and then, as she sallied forth on the path to ministry, she learned over and over again how hard that would be as a woman in a very conservative tradition.

Beautiful and Terrible Things is a memoir in essays, structured partially around lessons Butler learned—and the people she learned them from—in her years in ministry. I don't live in her world, so I didn't realize until I was midway through the book that she's a prominent figure in the evangelical world—the first woman pastor at more than one historic US church, and one who has been very successful at both growing church membership and (as she describes, and as far as I can confirm from outside sources) bringing the churches she led into a somewhat more modern age.

But it sounds like a hard, hard path at times. In earlier years, Butler was involved in churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, which...does not exactly have a stellar record when it comes to women's welfare. And her family was not ready to see a woman minister either: years later, after I'd been a pastor for more than a decade, I paid him [her grandfather] a visit in his retirement home. When I approached his chair and kissed him hello, he grabbed my hand and pulled me close, looked me straight in the eyes, and said: "You are the biggest disappointment of my life." Love never managed to penetrate that hardness; those were the last words I ever heard him speak. (loc. 293)

The book is not all, or even primarily, about those earliest years, but they're necessary to set the scene for the ups and downs to come. It's worth noting that the book is fundamentally about people rather than about religion—that is, while readers who are shocked by the idea of women in ministry (or women wearing trousers) will probably have a hard time getting beyond the basics, it's written with the explicit understanding that not all of Butler's readers will share her views, and that she does not expect them to. I am a Christian minister, she writes, and in that work, I have a personal conception of God. But I want to leave space for what you imagine God to be, too, if the Divine is a reality in your life at all. Whatever God is for you, I hope that looks like a lavish and unrestricted love (loc. 65).

I could go on (and on), but I'll leave that here. Interesting and timely; I will be recommending especially to some minister friends who have faced similar challenges.

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

Children's books: "I Ship", "Kayaking", and "Brains"

 

I Ship by Kelly Rice Schmitt, illustrated by Jam Dong (Millbrook Press)
Kayaking by Tanya Kornienko (Books to Hook Publishing)
Brains by John Devolle (Pushkin Children's Books)

Back into the world of children's books! This time, a set of books aimed at exploring the world...and the mind.

I Ship is an absolute delight of a picture book that gives children a look at the shipping industry. The simple style of the illustrations belies just how much detail has gone into them—there's so much for kids to examine and explore. The text has some rhymes and alliteration, explaining the complexities that go into a container ship's journey, but it's the illustrations that are really the standout. (More detailed text at the end of the book provides more information for kids—or adults—who want to know a bit more, including a glossary, explanations of some key jobs, and some quick facts.) There's also a nod to the Suez Canal blockage of 2021, which might be of more interest to adults than to child readers (kids of an age to read this are almost certainly too young to remember that particular Internet drama!) but is entertaining nonetheless.

I would have loved this as a kid, and I wasn't even the sort of kid who was into trucks and ships and planes and so on. But I would have spent ages looking at the illustrations, what with the cargo and the land details and the soothing colors. What a great read.

True to its title, Kayaking is an exploration of kayaking—here, on Ukraine's Dnipro River. Part love letter to the water and part love letter to the place, this is both informative and beautifully illustrated. Don't expect a lot of plot here; the book is more about exploration and quiet adventure. It would be useful for kids who are soon to go out on a kayak (or canoe) for the first time, but in 2023 it's also nice to see books that offer a picture of Ukraine other than, well, what's been in the news for the past year and a half.

Quiet and lovely—my favorite illustration is the seagull on pages 6–7.

Did you know that an octopus has a main brain...plus eight mini-brains, one in each tentacle? You do now! Adorable and informative, Brains introduces young kids to the basic science of how brains work. Deceptively simple, full-page illustrations help kids visualise what's going on inside their skulls...just don't try taking off the top of your head at home! (Honestly, I sort of want to see someone take the the illustration of the brain sending messages to muscles to make them move and turn it into a Halloween costume.)

It looks like this is part of a broader series of books about various scientific concepts and facts, and while I haven't read the others, this one looks like a great addition to an early-elementary classroom bookcase—and, if they're anything like this, the other books could be lined up right next to it.

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

Review: "The Blackwoods" by Brandy Colbert

The Blackwoods by Brandy Colbert
Published October 2023 via Balzer + Bray
★★★★

The Blackwoods have been in Hollywood for decades, and acting even before that. Success has always come with a price, but there's no denying that they've made it. But when Blossom, the matriarch of the family, passes away, the family comes up against answers to long-asked questions—and some new questions as well.

Colbert couldn't write a bad book if she tried, and I don't think I even read the description before I shelved this as to-read. She describes the book as her "ode to Black Hollywood", and the book fills a niche that I hadn't given enough thought to before now—I've read my fair share of YA Hollywood books featuring (thin, rich) white heroines, but far, far fewer featuring BIPOC heroines or paying tribute to the ones who paved the way.

The Blackwoods slips back and forth between generations of women, from Blossom's mother, Flossie, to Hollis and Ardith, two of the younger generation. What I love most is that many of the climactic moments come relatively early in the book, leaving the characters to handle the fallout throughout the rest of the book. Also, because the book follows multiple characters, the big moments they each have are allowed to be parts of their story (and the family story) rather than taking over the narrative completely. I won't go into detail, but a number of things go down throughout the book that could be a book's main conflict, and I loved the sense that the book wasn't willing to limit the story to any one of those things. Readers may also like Martha Southgate's Third Girl from the Left, which (if I remember correctly; it's been a while) takes a grittier look at Black Hollywood, especially blaxploitation films.

If you struggle with the intro, I'd suggest carrying on to see if the next chapters fit better. I don't love either the intro chapter or the final chapter, neither of which feels as present and natural as the rest of the book.

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

Review: "Brutes" by Dizz Tate

Brutes by Dizz Tate
Published February 2023 via Catapult
★★★

2.5 stars? I don't really know what to make of this. In Brutes, a pack of young girls runs wild through the Florida suburbs. Brutes, their mothers call them, as they tease and taunt and torment, as they use their scorn and their soulless stares to keep each other in line and outsiders uneasy. Brutes, their mothers call them, but I think I would go with feral.

Most of the novel is told in the first person plural: we. The occasional chapter brings us into something closer to the present day, when these feral children have grown up to be marginally less feral but no more happy adults; those adult chapters are told from individual perspectives, but because the girls are so closely enmeshed in their younger years, they are hard to tell apart even as first-person-singular adults. As children, they are obsessed with a somewhat older girl, Sammy, and with the search to find Sammy, who has gone missing from her bedroom and cannot be found. Has she been murdered in the nearby building site, drowned in the lake, abducted by a stranger? If the girls, who aim to see everything while others underestimate them, know anything, they're not saying. They're too busy directing fire ants towards their mothers' sandals and practicing seduction and cutting every single other person they meet down to size.

There's something rotten in the state of Florida, and that rot permeates every part of these girls' lives. Only late in the book do we start to understand what they, too, are starting to understand. I suspect that there's a lot of symbolism and undertone here that I'm missing, and that I would have gotten more from it with a more consistent first-person singular perspective. Even a feral one.

Review: "In Light of All Darkness" by Kim Cross

 

In Light of All Darkness by Kim Cross
Published October 2023 via Grand Central Publishing
★★★★

A parent's worst nightmare: Polly Klaas was safe at home, in her bedroom, having a slumber party no less—and then she was gone, and despite her friends' eyewitness accounts investigators had barely a clue of who had taken her or whether she was still alive. The odds were against them, and against Polly.

Although true crime (in this case a decades-old, solved case) is not Cross's usual material, she had unusual access to information about the case: her father-in-law was the FBI agent who ran the case at the time. While the simple facts of the story are common knowledge, then, Cross had access to research material and interview subjects that most journalists would not. I didn't have much knowledge of the case going in—you know early on in the book how it ends, but I avoided looking things up until I'd finished reading—but I read Cross's earlier book of narrative nonfiction (result: I will never live in Alabama) and was impressed by the blend of research and storytelling. The same holds true here: Cross knows how to build a story and a set of characters, and she knows how to weave in the critical details that bring the case to life.

In some ways what makes this most interesting—since, again, it's not a new or recent case—is the discussion of various changes that came about because of the Polly Klaas case. These ranged from procedural (which agencies worked together, and how) to policy-based (learning to not treat witnesses who were children as, basically, suspects) to legal (California's much-debated "three strikes" law and its many problems). I'm also fascinated by the work done to create sketches of the suspect. Two were released to the public—one done early on, after initial interviews with the friends Polly was with when she was kidnapped, and another later on, by a different sketch artist who had a different approach. I haven't been able to find the first sketch online, but there's a picture in the book, and what's striking to me is that the second one is better, but—maybe it's just my untrained, unartistic eye, they're both actually very good. It's impossible to know, but I'm curious about what the lasting impression of the first sketch would have been had the second one not been done. (Much was made of the possibility that the kidnapper had (or hadn't) been wearing a yellow bandana, and I have to say that I did spend much of the book wondering "But when is somebody going to point out that he could just take the bandana off?")

All told, a gripping—and carefully told—story. I like my true crime meticulous rather than salacious, and Cross hits the mark here.

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