book reviews
May. 19th, 2024 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenAfter my last post about book reviews, here are some of mine to be going on with. I've picked some of the longer ones, in no order, and linked to the Goodreads pages. I've also tried to add a word or two of context for each - unlike the Goodreads versions, you don't have the blurb for the book in front of you here - but you can click through, of course.
Stars Collide Rachel Lacey
[Contemporary romance, f/f] Love this. Love it, love it, love it. Sweet sapphic romance about Eden, an almost-washed-out, sad pop star and Anna, the next-big-thing pop star she's touring with to give her own ticket sales a boost. Does this gorgeous thing where Eden sees herself as sad, lonely, getting older; Anna sees her as effortlessly cool superstar that she herself idolised as a teen. They fall in love. Eden has a late-in-life coming out story. It is very good. Not brilliantly written, but oozes charm. (NB - this makes it sounds like a May-December romance, which isn't quite right - age gap, but Eden was a child star.)
Hijab Butch Blues, Layla H.
[Memoir, queer Muslim writer] Brilliant book, fascinatingly put together. The author uses the stories of selected prophets from the Quran to weave together a story about queer life while Muslim, foreign and hijabi. I didn't read every single word - the author's descriptions of childhood racism hit quite hard - but I loved it and keep thinking about i.
Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh
[Sort-of military SF, queer; written by friend] The first book I read in 2024 and likely to be the best. It's a fantastic space opera, military SF that overturns every convention of that genre, and is also a meditation on moral responsibility when you are both oppressed and oppressor. Plus it does have some jokes in, and a surprising amount of lovely friendship arcs.
Nobody Told Me, Hollie McNish
[Poetry and memoir of early parenthood] A poet's memoir of unexpected motherhood, written in a combination of journalistic poetry and prose. Perfect, right? A lovely idea. I wish I liked it! The problem with this notion is, I think, twofold. One of them is *whispers* it's not very good. I mean, the poetry isn't. It's... ok, possibly just not to my taste, and I had just read a suite of Kathleen Jamie poetry on the same subject which was a lot better, and we don't need more poets who can write like Kathleen Jamie because we have Kathleen Jamie for that. But. There's a bit in this book where the author mentions taking the baby to an all-day poetry workshop as the only person who is the parent of a small child. And then says that, hey, I don't have time to spend the entire day on individual word choice, I have a small child. Which is a kind of bollocks form of artistic integrity, isn't it, but honestly, my first impulse was just, yeah, love, we've read your poetry, we know.
So there's that. And second of all - "Nobody Told Me". The things nobody told me, that I didn't know, before I became the mother of this child. Again, lovely; a lovely framing. And then they're things like "gendered marketing of clothes and toys is really pernicious, actually" and "my partner, the Black father of our mixed-race child, faces a lot of racism when he's out with her". And you're like... yes, I can see that would come into sharp relief with a baby, but... you didn't know that? No one had told you so you just... didn't know? ok. sure.
Arthur and Teddy Are Coming Out, Ryan Love
[Contemporary fiction with touch of women's fiction] This is a book with a lovely premise. Two men of the same family, a grandfather in his eighties and a young man in his twenties, realise independently that they're gay, and decide that they should navigate their coming-out processes together. I thought that was very sweet and interesting, which makes it a shame that this might be the worst-written traditionally-published book I have read in years. The prose isn't just pedestrian, it's childlike; the characterisation is flat; the plot loosely strung together. It uses heavy themes (conversion therapy; suicide) in a cack-handed, unsubtle way. The author seems very... unaware that Teddy's love interests, both of them, are completely horrible. If it hadn't been the only book I had to hand during several hours in A&E, I don't know if I'd made it past the first few pages; as it is, I do not recommend you do the same.
Maybe Next Time, Cesca Major
[Women's fiction - though see below] This is marketed as romantic women's fiction - not romance, it's a book about a marriage rather than two people falling in love - and it is that, I think? Just about. But it's much, much darker than you typically see and has a harrowing, violent-death-themed section in the middle that will stick with me. And it's very good with it. The premise is straightforwardly Groundhog Day - a woman lives through the same day, over and over, and it always ends with her husband dying - and it doesn't do anything dramatically different with the premise, but it has perfect execution and is really affecting.
I'm not sure if I'll stick to this, but it's nice to see all of these in one place so I'll try to.
Stars Collide Rachel Lacey
[Contemporary romance, f/f] Love this. Love it, love it, love it. Sweet sapphic romance about Eden, an almost-washed-out, sad pop star and Anna, the next-big-thing pop star she's touring with to give her own ticket sales a boost. Does this gorgeous thing where Eden sees herself as sad, lonely, getting older; Anna sees her as effortlessly cool superstar that she herself idolised as a teen. They fall in love. Eden has a late-in-life coming out story. It is very good. Not brilliantly written, but oozes charm. (NB - this makes it sounds like a May-December romance, which isn't quite right - age gap, but Eden was a child star.)
Hijab Butch Blues, Layla H.
[Memoir, queer Muslim writer] Brilliant book, fascinatingly put together. The author uses the stories of selected prophets from the Quran to weave together a story about queer life while Muslim, foreign and hijabi. I didn't read every single word - the author's descriptions of childhood racism hit quite hard - but I loved it and keep thinking about i.
Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh
[Sort-of military SF, queer; written by friend] The first book I read in 2024 and likely to be the best. It's a fantastic space opera, military SF that overturns every convention of that genre, and is also a meditation on moral responsibility when you are both oppressed and oppressor. Plus it does have some jokes in, and a surprising amount of lovely friendship arcs.
Nobody Told Me, Hollie McNish
[Poetry and memoir of early parenthood] A poet's memoir of unexpected motherhood, written in a combination of journalistic poetry and prose. Perfect, right? A lovely idea. I wish I liked it! The problem with this notion is, I think, twofold. One of them is *whispers* it's not very good. I mean, the poetry isn't. It's... ok, possibly just not to my taste, and I had just read a suite of Kathleen Jamie poetry on the same subject which was a lot better, and we don't need more poets who can write like Kathleen Jamie because we have Kathleen Jamie for that. But. There's a bit in this book where the author mentions taking the baby to an all-day poetry workshop as the only person who is the parent of a small child. And then says that, hey, I don't have time to spend the entire day on individual word choice, I have a small child. Which is a kind of bollocks form of artistic integrity, isn't it, but honestly, my first impulse was just, yeah, love, we've read your poetry, we know.
So there's that. And second of all - "Nobody Told Me". The things nobody told me, that I didn't know, before I became the mother of this child. Again, lovely; a lovely framing. And then they're things like "gendered marketing of clothes and toys is really pernicious, actually" and "my partner, the Black father of our mixed-race child, faces a lot of racism when he's out with her". And you're like... yes, I can see that would come into sharp relief with a baby, but... you didn't know that? No one had told you so you just... didn't know? ok. sure.
Arthur and Teddy Are Coming Out, Ryan Love
[Contemporary fiction with touch of women's fiction] This is a book with a lovely premise. Two men of the same family, a grandfather in his eighties and a young man in his twenties, realise independently that they're gay, and decide that they should navigate their coming-out processes together. I thought that was very sweet and interesting, which makes it a shame that this might be the worst-written traditionally-published book I have read in years. The prose isn't just pedestrian, it's childlike; the characterisation is flat; the plot loosely strung together. It uses heavy themes (conversion therapy; suicide) in a cack-handed, unsubtle way. The author seems very... unaware that Teddy's love interests, both of them, are completely horrible. If it hadn't been the only book I had to hand during several hours in A&E, I don't know if I'd made it past the first few pages; as it is, I do not recommend you do the same.
Maybe Next Time, Cesca Major
[Women's fiction - though see below] This is marketed as romantic women's fiction - not romance, it's a book about a marriage rather than two people falling in love - and it is that, I think? Just about. But it's much, much darker than you typically see and has a harrowing, violent-death-themed section in the middle that will stick with me. And it's very good with it. The premise is straightforwardly Groundhog Day - a woman lives through the same day, over and over, and it always ends with her husband dying - and it doesn't do anything dramatically different with the premise, but it has perfect execution and is really affecting.
I'm not sure if I'll stick to this, but it's nice to see all of these in one place so I'll try to.