February Reviews

February may be the shortest month of the year, but that didn't stop me from reading as many books as I could (and copying my intro from last February). I'm posting my review early this month because I fly to New York tomorrow, so there won't be much time for review posting.

I'm also trying something new this month, where I include a 'similar to' list at the end of each review. I often find myself comparing books, and I find it helpful to know how similar they are to other things I've read. We'll see if it sticks/is helpful, but I figure I'll give it a shot.

That being said, let's jump right in:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

This book was jarring. I finished it last night and spent a long while just thinking about how I was going to write this review. And that word kept popping up in my brain, thinking back to the character thought process and dialogue and organization. The book, the words, the story, all of it was jarring.

ELAIC follows three characters; Oskar Schell, his grandmother, and his grandfather, all processing the death of OSkar's father in 9/11. The book rotates between these three characters as they attempt to cope with different kinds of grief and tragedy. Nine-year-old Oskar finds a key labeled 'Black,' and decides to go through all the Blacks in New York to determine this final puzzle his father left for him to solve. His grandmother is coping with the loss of her son and the sudden reemergence of her husband in her life, a life she is slowly revealing by writing letters to her grandson. Thomas Schell, carrying the same name as his late son, writes letters to explain or to share or to release pieces of himself, all to a son he left behind.

Safran Foer is a phenomenal writer. There are so many creative aspects of this book. The style switches from dialogue to stream of consciousness to pictures. In one place the words bleed together and are unreadable for several pages. In others, we only get a sentence per page. It feels almost experimental, but the organization and presentation of the book add to the overall emotional depth of the story.

I'm gonna go back to the original word I used to describe the book. Oskar is the child narrator of this book, and he's brilliant but also very, very young, and several times his thought process turned in directions I wasn't expecting, jarring experience to follow. But the same could be said for the other two narrators, who's age brought on a different kind of jarring thought process. To exist between these ages, child and grandparent, and to read through their processes in such different stages of life than my own was truly both revealing and, again, jarring.

At the same time as reading this story, though, I was reading the annotations left behind from the coworker I borrowed the book from. There's something that feels very personal about reading other people's notes, because you can see and know exactly what parts of the book stuck out to them, what lines meant something. Some of those lines matched up with the ones I thought were huge, while others didn't, and I always stopped to wonder what he saw in them that made him stop and reflect. Some of the ones I would have underlined or made note of were passed right over. A study of perspective through reading someone else's book.

Overall, this was a powerful book about different kinds of tragedy and what it means to live. I'd quote some of the incredible lines from this book in this review but there were too many to list. This is a strange book to read because of how it's presented and organized, but if you can manage it, I recommend checking it out.

Similar to: unfortunately, this isn't really like any book I've ever read before, so my similar list isn't starting too strong

Pride by Ibi Zoboi

I wavered back a forth a lot on whether I really enjoyed this book or just liked it. Part of that is that I adore Pride and Prejudice, so any adaption of that is going to have a place in my heart. However, this wasn't my favorite adaption of the story, so maybe I'll settle on just liking it.

Zuri Benitez is proud of her block, despite the gentrification knocking on all the doors in her neighborhood. She's proud of her heritage and her big, loud family, of the people who live in her building. She's proud of history and herself, perhaps prideful to the point of arrogance. And when a rich family moves across the street with two cute but very obviously spoiled teenage sons, Zuri's not about to let them or their wealth make her feel bad about her pride. But these new boys, Ainsley and Darius Darcy aren't what they seem, and both Zuri and Darius are making judgments they probably shouldn't. Set against the backdrop of a changing block, these two teenagers realize their world view has to extend beyond their neighborhood experiences or risk being trapped by a world that won't stop moving.

Parts of the plotline in this story moved at a weird pace. Certain interactions were especially callous, and I know that's all part of the Lizzie/Darcy love story, but the jump Zuri and Darius make in some places just felt like a lot. I did love the family dynamic and the sibling relationships within both the Darcy and the Benitez families. I have a pretty small family, so I love stories with big families and all their interesting dynamics, especially one with so many sisters.

Zuri writes poetry throughout the book, and reading that within the context of the story made Zuri's thoughts and decisions even more poignant. Zoboi's style is rhythmic and her characters are larger than life. I enjoyed getting to see the familiar Pride and Prejudice characters and storyline crafted in this new, unique way.

This book didn't hit me as hard as I expected, but I chalk a lot of that up to the fact that I'm white and this book was very much influenced by cultures that are not my own. Bearing that in mind, this book wasn't for me, and that's okay. Pride is creating connections and telling a story for cultures who haven't had the same amount of representation white people have. So I will continue to read and support authors like Zoboi and books like Pride, because the stories aren't for me and I want more of them. Hopefully that makes sense.

Similar to: The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon and First and Then by Emma Mills

Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson

This book was lent to me by a friend at work. It's one of those stories I probably would've read in high school and enjoyed thoroughly without finding anything problematic, but now reading it as an adult it holds up less than I would like. Don't get me wrong, there are aspects of it I very much enjoyed, but some pieces were strange or a little hard to get through.

13 Little Blue Envelopes follows teenage Ginny, who's wild artistic aunt has died and left her thirteen envelopes, each detailing a place she must go and a task she must accomplish across Europe. Ginny follows this trail to London, through Scotland and Amsterdam and Rome, Paris and Greece, seeking whatever mad adventure her aunt has laid out for her, and at the same time battling the grief and denial that her aunt really is gone. With the help of the people she meets along the way, Ginny finds herself finally feeling as though she understands her aunt, and herself, a little better.

Ginny meets a whole host of strange characters, the most prominent being college student Keith, who she quickly becomes enamored with, despite her inability to act like a sane person around him. She had Keith had a weird dynamic, and I think a lot of it was just Ginny being young and wanting to find a boy to like. She has a weird interaction with an Italian guy in Rome that felt like sexual assault but was handled with such disregard that I didn't even really have time to think about it before the story had moved on. She wasn't hurt and he didn't do more than kiss her (she stopped him from taking it further), but the whole thing felt gross. Ginny even said (via her internal monologue) that this felt more like something she had to do than what she wanted to do. I didn't like that one bit, especially because she's 16/17 in this book and this guy was 20. GROSS. Even her age gap with Keith (he was 19) wasn't something I was down with, and while I did appreciate him supporting Ginny when she needed a friend, it was all still a little weird. I liked the Australian backpackers she met in Copenhagen and Richard, the guy her aunt lived with in London, the most. Everyone else was just weird.

And speaking of weird, there were some scenes that I just ??? Had to stop and think a long string of question marks in my head. A pineapple on a train track? A fox by the trash can? I'm one for symbolism and using out environment to interpret our feelings, but some things were just...???

The most fun part of this book was actually getting to read about the places that Ginny went, because with the exception of Copenhagen and Greece, I've been to all of those places to. I could picture the streets and canals and ruins, follow Ginny while retracing my own footsteps and memories through these places. That was what I enjoyed most about this book: getting to remember these places I've seen.

Overall, beyond the travel, what I really liked about this book was a look into what it means to live life on our terms. Ginny spends the whole book traveling and doing exactly what her aunt's letters tell her to do, but in following this messy, convoluted trail, she also has to make decisions for herself and learn to do more than be a passive observer in life. There are lessons she takes from each letter, each interaction, each city, but it takes until the end of the book for her to recognize them for what they are and feel the change in herself because of them. And really, following these envelopes wasn't just about getting to the final task her aunt wanted her to complete, it was also about finally letting her go. Ginny had built her aunt into this huge figure in her mind, but she was just human, and she made mistakes. And she let people down. But she lived her life the way she wanted to live it, and that was what she wanted Ginny to take away from all this. Because her aunt was gone, so it was time for Ginny to find her own path.

Similar to: What A Girl Wants (2003) and just about any contemporary YA novel published in 2008-2010

The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper

This was a book that I was very, very excited to read and I may have pumped up a little too much in my head. And I think that ultimately is what influenced my overall feelings about the book.

Cal Lewis, proud New Yorker and aspiring journalist suddenly finds his entire life uprooted when his dad is chosen by NASA to serve as one of the astronauts that could potentially go to mars. That means moving across the country to Texas, saying goodbye to his best friend and possibly his budding career. It means being thrust into the public eye via a trashy TV show, StarWatch, and falling in love with another astronaut's son. It means facing a future where things are unknown and nothing is easy, but it may also mean the greatest adventure of his life.

Cal is a very reliable and relatable narrator. He's funny, honest, and cares too much. He's got a little bit of a control issue, a desire to fix everything and everyone around him, but that's part of what drives his character and the story. His relationship with fame and the way the book looks at actual reality vs Reality TV was fascinating, and I loved so much of the behind the scenes producer work that goes into creating content like that. Cal's stubborn nature and knowledge of copyright and media laws was very on parr with his character, and it was fun to see him in action, taking on the bigwigs of trashy celebrity gossip TV.

A lot of things were predictable about this The Gravity of Us. I saw the (SPOILERS) Kiera and StarWatch betrayal coming from a mile away, so much so that I physically said "don't trust this bitch," while reading it alone. The fight with Deb and the fallout issues with Leon from the Kiera betrayal were also pretty obvious, but honestly there's nothing wrong with predictability. In many cases, it just means that the author has built up enough foreshadowing for the following events to feasibly occur. So it was done well, and it's not Stamper's fault I had anxiety over character decisions I could see coming.

Cal's relationship with his parents is fascinating. In so many YA books the adults are pushed aside as simple background characters, but it more and more of them nowadays the parents and other adults get to be seen as multidimensional and flawed beings. They get to be seen as people, and while Cal is able to humanize his mother from the beginning, that has to grow with how he sees his dad. It's a sweet development both for their father-son relationship and for their family unit as a whole.

Leon and Cal's romance was...not my favorite thing? I know, ugh, it's a queer romance and it's sweet and they have these moments that are really good, but (and maybe this is the ace in me sneaking to the surface) their whole get together and process towards 'I love you' felt Hella Rushed. And they say that in the book too, that it feels fast, and while in other works (and a lot of fanfiction, I'll be completely honest) a fast 'I love you' isn't necessarily a bad thing. But in this book it felt like they were so young and knew so little about each other. It was an almost Bachelor-y relationship, except both parties went in already knowing the media persona of the other person and had to build on the reality of who they are. I dunno, maybe I just read the book at the wrong time and it's a brilliant romance, but I guess I wasn't totally feeling it. I'll put that on me, though, not the book.

Similar to: The Wanderers by Meg Howrey and Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson

It's not often that I like a sequel more than the original, but here we are. The same friend who lent me 13 Little Blue Envelopes gave me the sequel The Last Little Blue Envelope, and something about it felt different than the first one. Maybe it was Ginny's raised confidence after her adventure in the first book. Maybe it was the familiarity with the characters. Maybe it was that this book came out six years after the first one. Regardless, I can say with confidence that the sequel is better than the original.

At the end of 13 Little Blue Envelopes, Ginny lost the final letter her late Aunt Peg wrote for her. Now, back home and trying to write her college application, Ginny gets an email from someone claiming to have the final envelope, with Ginny's final task inside it. So Ginny packs up for another whirlwind adventure in Europe, but this time she's accompanied by Oliver, the boy blackmailing her with the letter, and Ellis, Keith the thief's new girlfriend, along with Keith himself. All four of them have to work together to find Aunt Peg's final art piece, along with her final message for Ginny on a trip that will take them all across Europe.

Ginny's a little bit older in this book, aged both by time and her experience from the first book. She's still solidly Ginny, a little unsure, a little too idealistic, but she's learning and growing. I think Johnson's writing also improved from the first book to the second, but she's also been a best selling author for several years, so maybe that's just me reading into things. Regardless, something felt older about this book, a little bit more mature. There were less strange inclusions about pineapples and foxes without losing the whimsical nature of Aunt Peg's friends and path for Ginny.

Keith was back, this time with a girlfriend he didn't tell Ginny about. Which, I mean, I never liked Keith, I stated as much in my first review, so I felt a little vindicated even as I felt bad Ginny. She spent too long being upset about it, though, and I think part of that had to do with her obsession over the idea of being in a relationship. She's eighteen in this book, but she still carries that teenage desire to fall in love with every boy she sees. And Keith, unfortunately, got to her in the first book, but was confirmed by the second to be a, and please pardon my language, fuckboy. His girlfriend, Ellis, on the other hand, was an absolutely delight, and IMO Ginny should have been pursuing her.

Instead, this book sees Ginny developing an uncanny fondness for her blackmailer, Oliver, who, outside of that shitty blackmailing business, is slowly described as a cute, actually kind of decent person. At least, he gets to that point, as Ginny the narrator slowly changes her mind about him. Now, I have a terrible tendency of falling for Wickhams in literature (Google Pride and Prejudice if you don't understand this reference, it is a Great Shame to me and my book loves), and this Oliver fellow felt like a Wickham. Ergo, I tried to guard my squishy, romantic reader heart and only partially succeeded. By the end, Oliver had redeemed himself for the most part, and I wasn't too upset when Ginny decided to shoot her shot with him. He was at least better than Keith, although at this point I'm doubting Ginny's taste in men.

Ginny, however, did the most growing in this book! Surprise! As the main character, this is actually not a surprise at all, but I'm always pleasantly relieved when a 2000's era YA heroine grows more than just a boyfriend. She makes her own decisions and is forced to create something both with and without her aunt, giving her a good bit of closure for her first trip and her relationship with her volatile aunt. And her decision at the end of the book (no more spoilers) felt right for her character. She and her Uncle Richard make a good familial pair, and it was nice to see him a little bit more, as well as end on that optimistic note.

Okay, I'm done complaining about literary boys instead of writing a Legitimate Literary Review, just know it was fun to read about Europe more and the wild scenarios Ginny found herself in were made no less amusing by the lack of pineapples on train tracks.

Similar to: it's prequel, 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson and, again, What A Girl Wants (2003)

Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller

This book was a bit of a surprise. I wasn't entirely sure what I was getting into, just that it was medieval fantasy with a gender fluid main character auditioning for an assassin position within the queen's court. And while that is, essentially, what this book is, there was also a much larger revenge and political plot than I expected.

Sallot Leon has been waiting for a very long time to take their revenge on the Erlend nobles who let her country (and her family) be slaughtered. A street-fighter and thief, they end up at the palace, one of twenty-three other skilled fighters, auditioning for their chance to join an elite group of assassins. But the trials aren't easy, not when the stakes are this high and everyone's out for blood. But getting this job is Sal's only chance to get close enough to the nobles who let her family die. And that's their focus, at least until Elise, an Erlend noble's daughter, starts to find a place in Sal's heart. But Sal can't afford to lose focus, not when their only chance of surviving this process is to win or be killed.

Sal has a lot of history, and this book kind of jumps right into the thick of things, supplying relevant and important information along the way. Because of that, though, the world building was hard to keep up with in this book. A lot of history was dropped in the midst of important scenes, Sal's reaction to certain phrases or events, which made it feel a little bit rushed. At time I was confused, tripping over the history of this country and it's wars while trying to figure out who Sal was fighting or who had just died or really just generally what was happening.

I'm not bothered too much by violent in books, although that very much depends on the kind of violence. This book wasn't bad, but it was definitely violent. It's all about assassins trying to kill each other, so that much was expected.

I appreciate the way Sal spoke with people who assumed their gender, calling people out and living life as they wanted. Most everyone respected that, asking questions to be respectful in their pronoun use. The only ones who didn't were dicks and bad people, so it was rather vindicating to see such an easy acceptance from most of the characters. Sal went by three different pronouns over the course of the books: he, she, and they, and all were treated as an equal part of who Sal was. Sexuality and gender identity were awesome representations in this book, with several characters hinted at being outside of heteronormative expectations. There was even a conversation with one of the Left Hand assassins, Emerald, that made it seem like she was asexual, so that got a big fist pump from me.

I also really enjoyed all the sneaking around and general spy stuff that happened in this book. I've never played any sort of Assassin's Creed game, but I love heist and thief books, so those scenes were especially fun to read.

The ending of this book was strange, but part of that was because it leaned so heavily on politics I hardly understood. A lot names got confused in my head, so that didn't help, but I was intrigued enough to buy the second book in this duology and find out is Sal gets their happy ending with Lady Elise.

Similar to: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo and The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

That's all I've got for this month, let's see what March brings.

Keep writing, friends!

Sam

Literary Recommendation: The Last True Poets of the Sea by Julia Drake

Media Recommendation: Birds of Prey (2020) dir. Cathy Yan