December Review

Hello, hello friends! We did it! We survived 2018! And it sure was A Year!

This month was filled with holiday cheer, business at work, and a plague that kept me down and out for almost half the month. Luckily, I still managed to get a little bit of reading done, even if it wasn't as much as I would have liked.

Enough idle chatter, though, let's dive into the reviews!

Gimme A Call by Sarah Mlynowski

I want everyone to know I wrote this review while sick and on the tail end of a nyquil nap, so it's a masterpiece, obviously:

It's not a secret that I'm not find of stories that involve time travel. There are too many things that can be easily messed up, and that kind of anxiety is not a great addition to my pre existing anxiety.

This book was kind of like time travel but with phones. And since I'm not real fond of time travel--too much anxiety!-- so the book was really just annoying and anxious.

The premise of Gimme A Call is that high school senior, Devi, drops her phone in a fountain and is suddenly able to call her freshman year self. With this newfound power, she can convince freshman year Devi that she shouldn't date Brian, that she should focus more on her grades, and maybe prevent a falling out with her friends.

Devi wanted to fix all her problems by having someone else do the work, which wasn't fair to younger Devi. Plus, the original problem was an unhealthy relationship, where she neglected everything else but her boyfriend. So why not just skip the drama and tell past self that she can do whatever, just don't make her life completely revolve around her boyfriend? That was the end result: have other things in life that aren't boyfriend.

It was stressful to go back and forth from between the past and the future, where I wasn't sure what Devi would fuck up, I just knew she inevitably would. Devi was a very selfish character, and she didn't have much of a personality beyond "look at cute boy" and "fix this for me". Younger Devi was less bitter and I liked her better, but still. Not a great character to follow through the story.

Not my favorite, ended up skimming most of the second half just to get to the end.

Thank you, next.

Not Your Sidekick by C. B. Lee

This book was recommended by a lot of online sources who liked similar YA LGBT books that I do. So, I figured I'd give it a shot. And for the most part, I really enjoyed this book. The representation and world building are phenomenal, a new take on post-apocalyptic government conspiracy wrapped up in a superhero WLW love story.

Set in a world where radioactivity has activated a human gene that gives some people superpowers, this post-World War 3 society is advanced tech and barren landscapes in one. Futuristic without being unbelievable, the world building and stories of the collapsing society felt like it reflected the struggles of both past and current world issues. Jess' parents' immigration story especially felt relevant to some of the novels I read in college from Chinese author Yu Hua, and while I'm, you know, a middle class white girl, I felt like I could really appreciate the clear research and thought that went into the world development.

The characters were all fun. Abby got more real as the story progressed, going from a 2D crush to an actual person. Jess, the main character, was brilliant in her mediocrity. The daughter of two superheroes without any powers of her own, she's just trying to get through high school without her little brother exploding everything in his lab and trying to escape her older sister's shadow. The bisexual middle child of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants, Jess is everything I could ever want in a main character. She was funny and anxious and down to clown, all the while trying to figure herself out in a world where everything's a little bit more super.

There were other characters I wish had gotten more page time (and some world building info I wanted to really sink my teeth into), but overall I was pleased with the characters and their development.

There was some "cliche" bits in the overall arc--the villain's kid and the heroes' kid falling in love, but that's part of the fun. M and Abby were kind of obvious, but I can forgive Jess' obliviousness because the rest of her life was busy enough and she didn't have the outside perspective.

The end of the book though, (and a lot of the main plot) happened Super Fast. I think that's my main critique of the book: that the action happened all at once and super quickly. And then it just kind of. Stopped. Like, there was no big concluding factor, everyone just kind of quietly moved on. Or at least that's what it felt like. I know there's a sequel, so there was a lot of build towards that, but it felt like all the hype and action were downplayed by how quickly everyone moved on. So I didn't love the end. I still really liked the characters and the story, but the way the government conspiracy and war stuff was handled made me a little bit less excited about continuing the story. I might not read the sequel, but the characters are super compelling, and the second book changes the main character to transgender Bells, who I really, really liked.

Overall, decent read, awesome representation and diversity.

Everyone Dies in the End by Brian Katcher

I have to start out by saying that the main character in this book, Sherman, is Inherently Unlikable. Like, Incredibly so. He didn't grow on me at all during the course of the novel, and by the end I didn't really care if the weird evil spirit killed him.

I should probably elaborate. Sherman was an ungrateful white boy who thought he was better than everyone around him. He was judgy and pushy and rude, and convinced that he was going to be the next big reporter. He treated the boys who were trying to be his friends as inferior, and the nice girl who liked him (for some reason) like she should be grateful for his shitty attention just because she was fat. (And he kept bringing it up? Like, my dude, we get it, she's big, there's no need to keep saying how saintly you are for overlooking it despite how much it bugs you. Like, actually fuck off).

His friends and Charlie (our lovely lady friend, who was probably the only likable character in the book and deserved better) should not have helped him with how terribly he treated them. But, they're better people than Sherman, so I wasn't too surprised.

The book's pacing is wild. Nothing happened and then everything happened and then nothing happened again, before all hell broke loose Again. It gave me whiplash, and I was honestly just kind of waiting for the book to end.

It went from historical conspiracy theory book to Actual Demon Involvement wayy too fast, and the crazy cultist shit was maybe a little much for what the characters were planning/how they were handling things? I dunno, I wasn't impressed with how things were handled. There were also a lot of connections the readers were expected to make that were a bit of a stretch.

I'll give the author credit, he writes a decent creepy demon arrival, and the cemetary scene was terrifying, but it was really the best written part of the novel.

The ending felt anticlimactic, and I think I was more pleased to be finally finished reading than with the actual outcome of the story.

Would not recommend.

City of Thieves by David Benioff

This novel was lent to me by a good friend, whose judgment I trust implicitly.

But I have to admit, I'm only about halfway through the book and it isn't my favorite.

Don't get me wrong, it's brilliantly written, and the story itself is incredible. Benioff has a great grasp of language and storytelling, and the way he's presented the characters Lev and Kolya is simultaneously tragic and hilarious.

I think it's maybe the harsh nature of the story itself made it vibe a little wrong with me. I can only handle so much, and while this book didn't quite push through my boundaries, it certainly got close.

Based on a true story, City of Thieves follows Benioff's grandfather, Lev as he traipses across World War 2 Russia with a deserter soldier named Kolya, looking for eggs to try and save both their lives. Along the way, Lev and Kolya meet a host of horrors, where we learn along with them that sometimes death is not the scariest thing out there.

There's a lot of violence, which is to be expected in a novel taking place during war, but the way it's presented is very intimate. The characters are told stories and bear witness to horrors that made my skin crawl. War does that to people, starvation does that to people. It's not the novel's fault if I can't deal with some of that.

Also, Lev and Kolya are kind of sex obsessed? Is that a true thing for people? Like, they're starving in a siege on St. Petersburg, being shelled nightly by Germans and executed by their own government for breaking curfew. Surely there are bigger problems that getting laid? But, I dunno. That might just be me getting hung up on a character choice.

The storyline itself is super interesting, laden with violence and sympathy, but also a study on human survival, and how sometimes surviving can be worse than death.

I still have about half of the book to go, so maybe the last half with change my mind, but for now I'm on the fence about it.

Overall, I was a little bit disappointed with the reading mood for this month. But, it's just as well, since it reflects my opinion on 2018: spots of light in an otherwise disappointing year.

I have high hopes that 2019 will be kinder, brighter, and filled with a little more compassion.

We'll see if my reading habits parallel that as well.

Keep writing, my friends!

Sam

Literary Recommendation: Circe by Madeline Miller

Movie Recommendation: Mary Poppins Returns dir. Rob Marshall (2018)

#review #literaryreview #LGBT #books #list #reading