July Reviews

Happy July! Happy summer! Happy birthday to me! Two separate book pictures today because I borrowed some from a friend who's moving soon, so enjoy seeing my arm twice.

This month was a weird array of books, but all of them were absolutely brilliant. With that in mind let's get started!

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

I'd been hearing about this book for months before a friend was kind enough to lend me her copy, and I have to say that it really did not disappoint.

Spanning several decades and two generations, The Vanishing Half tells, first and foremost, the story of twins Stella and Desiree. Raised in a tiny southern town populated by increasingly lighter black people, they ran away at age sixteen, before their lives diverged completely. Desiree married the darkest man she could find, and her daughter Jude inherited that same dark hue. Stella lived as a white woman, marrying and raising her daughter, Kennedy, without a hint of her own "black" history. Stella and Desiree are both running and hiding, and they pass that on to their daughters, who run into each other by chance, and somehow just keep running.

I was constantly amazed by the poetic language Bennett uses in this book. I love a metaphor, and this book is full of tiny sentences with big impact and big feeling. And the time span only made it more so, as we got to see Stella and Desiree at sixteen, struggling to find themselves, all the way to their daughters nearly thirty, building from what they were given.

The history in this book is incredible too. I don't know if a real place like Mallard existed, but to read about two light-skinned black girls growing up in the 60's to their very different daughter's experiences in the 80's was really something. It touches on race, of course, but there's also sexuality and gender. Jude, Desiree's daughter, falls in loves with a transgender man named Reese, and that aspect of their story adds another element of change and, unfortunately, shame. Jude, very dark and raised in a very light town, and Reese, running away from home to become himself, were two of my favorite characters, and watching them grow with one another was very sweet. Kennedy, alternatively, lived in her privilege, and her journey, while tied to Jude's, was completely different. I did love that no matter how far away Stella and Desiree were from one another, their daughters were essential the other person. Stella raised a Desiree and Desiree raised a Stella, to prove that sometimes you can't help but hang onto your family, even if you want to leave them behind.

This book had so much heart in it, and also a lot of hurt. It was beautifully written and told such a unique story, as much a story about sisters as it was about mothers and daughters.

Similar to Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans

This was lent to me by a dear friend, and while normally I'm hesitant to read collections of short stories, I trust her judgment completely. She was right, I did enjoy them immensely.

It's hard to do a summary when it's a series of stories, especially when they're all about vastly different things. They all had themes of race and self-destruction, but the characters were all different people living different lives. My favorites, though, were probably the one about the runaway bride and the baby on the bus.

Evans has a really gifted way of writing the modern and "mundane" as something almost transcendent, without tipping into overly extravagant writing. The things that happen, a baby left on a bus, a girl in a confederate bikini, an artist making his apologies, are things that could be sensationalized, news stories that trend for a week and then vanish. These are snapshots of modernity given meaning.

I'll keep this review short and sweet, so please note that this was a very good collection of stories and I have continued to think about all of them, but the last one specifically since I finished reading it.

TAZ: The Crystal Kingdom by The McElroy Family

We love a dungeons and dragons graphic novel based on a podcast.

This is book four, so, again, a summary and review are difficult to do without spoilers. So, instead I will write a very short semi-coherent set of sentences about how truly incredible Kravitz looks and how I don't remember enough podcasts specifics to know everything they changed. I enjoyed it, regardless, and I think the art is delightful and the story continues to be one that I love.

Crytsal Kingdom is definitely a shift, both in the podcast and the graphic novel. Things get a bit more plot heavy and serious the further we progress, and I'm just so excited to continue to relive this story in book form.

The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer

Oh my god. This book BLEW my mind. I'm not normally a huge sci-fi reader, but I've found that the sci-fi I do read usually includes astronauts on impossible journeys, and this book DELIVERED.

Amrbose Cusk wakes up on a spaceship headed for Titan with no recollection of the launch. He knows he's heading into space to save his sister, and that he is not alone aboard the ship. Traveling with him is Kodiak Celius, an astronaut from a rival country, and the two of them will have to learn to work together to save Ambrose's sister. But things are not what they seem aboard the Endeavor, and there's something the operating system isn't telling them.

Every single twist and turn in this book was so exciting. I had no idea what was coming until I was there, the traps and truths laid out perfectly. Ambrose is smart, and it was so fascinating to watch him and Kodiak figure things out, making mistakes and learning as they went. It took a while for me to catch on to what was happening, and it's major spoilers to give away what's going on, but just know that it's So Good.

Ambrose is a great narrator too. He's got a big ego but he's honest about it, so he felt pretty trustworthy, especially since he was the one the OS was keeping secrets from. He was also grappling with a lot of high stressors--his family legacy, his missing sister, his own mortality--and the trust that he built with Kodiak was really, really cool to read.

Kodiak and Ambrose's relationship was in turns beautiful and heartbreaking. It's a love story over and over again, set to the backdrop of unending space and uncertain survival. And I loved where they got. A survival space adventure with a twist, the whole story is very brutal, but ultimately hopeful, and it was such a pleasure to read.

Similar to The Wanderers by Meg Howry, They Both Die in End by Adam Silvera, and The Martian by Andy Weir

If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio

Oh my god. Okay, this will probably be just barely coherent because I finished this book less than ten minutes ago and I just want to scream. It's been on my To Read list forever and I finally got a copy and demolished it in like three days.

Oliver Marks was just released from prison for a murder ten years ago. The police officer who helped put him away has retired, and he wants to know, off the record, what really happened all those years ago. Oliver agrees, spinning a story of Shakespearian tragedy and seven people who knew each other so intimately that they could only become villains and heroes at once. Archetypes in their own lives, until one of them is dead, and the others must decide what role they had to play, lying to themselves and one another, until everything comes crashing down around them.

This book. THIS BOOK. My little Shakespeare loving heart was so delighted by this story and these characters. They speak a sort of pigeon language, using modern English and Shakespeare quotes, and Rio clearly knew enough to bastardize it in the most delightful way. I was absolutely entranced with this setting and the way the characters in this book molded so fully with the characters they played in their performances.

And the characters. My goodness, it's hard to have an ensemble cast this large where everyone is given the space to interact and have relevance. And their dynamics were so unique, the seven of them living on top of one another, close and loving and hating all at once. They looked out for one another even more than they did for themselves, and it was such a simultaneously frustrating and unifying experience.

I had no idea what to expect from this book. It's a murder mystery where you know from the start, in your gut, that Oliver Marks didn't do it. And yet, he was the one who took the fall for the crime, and building up to how everything went down had so many twists and turns. I suspected everyone at one point, and then no one, and then everyone again. I don't know that my body can contain all the feelings I'm having about this book and the ending. Holy shit the ENDING.

Oliver, despite the mystery surrounding him and the fact that he'd just served ten years for murder, was a very reliable narrator. I believed him, his earnestness belaying nothing but honesty, even as the story grew so much bigger than he imagined. His relationship with each of the six actors (Meredith, Wren, James, Fillipa, Alexander, and Richard) was unique and powerful, and his reliability and love for his friends was his ultimate downfall. I loved his complicated relationship with James the most, but I think so did Oliver, in the end.

This story was told powerfully and fantastically, and I would read it again just to find the pieces I missed the first time. It all clicked together in the end, and while I'm usually pretty quick to pick up on clues, this one had me second guessing until the very end, even with all the pieces laid out in the open.

If you're a fan of mystery and Shakespeare (especially the tragedies), this is definitely a book you should read.

Similar to Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

And that's it! I was hardly coherent this month, but it was my birthday and the books were great and this is my corner of the internet to scream in, so. Woo hoo!

Keep writing, friends!

Sam

Book recommendation: The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune

Media recommendation: Exandria Unlimited from Critical Role has been a delight thus far