September Reviews

Happy Fall! Now, I am a self-proclaimed summer bitch, but I will say that actually living in a place that experiences fall has made it not so bad to move away from warmer weather. If it could stay as fall for several months and just not be winter at all that would be ideal, but like healthy seasons and environment and all that, so.

Anyways, it's still been nice and warm here, so I got to prolong some summer reading while just starting to dip my toes into spooky season.

Let's get to it!

Girls Like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko

I remember sitting at my computer 8 years ago, watching the music video, absolutely rapt. And so to see it as a book all these years later is pretty magical.

Coley, fresh of the grief of losing her mom and being forced to move in with a dad she hardly knows, already knows this summer is going to blow. And when she meets Sonya and her friends, it's an explosion no one expected, least of all them. But can they beat the odds and actually let themselves find the love they deserve?

Setting this book in 2006 created such a specific vibe, I can't even explain it. The music mentioned is immersion, and the use of LiveJournal to give us a glimpse into Sonya's thoughts in an otherwise Coley onto POV was creative and compelling.

I liked Coley as a character, and her story line was a coming of age and a queer reckoning all at once, which was awesome. I will admit that I didn't really like Sonya, and close to the end I was actually rooting for Coley to just ignore her and focus on her newfound happiness with her job and her dad. But it's a love story, and Coley's happy ending included Sonya.

The writing was good, which was both expected and unexpected. Kioko is a great song writer, so she's obviously skilled, but songwriting and story writing is so different so I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I was pleased! Kioko crafts a good, compelling story AND a great tune, 10/10, I love you lesbian Jesus.

Overall I had a good time with this book and really enjoyed all the cute little doodles and moments.

Toil and Trouble: 16 Tales of Women and Witchcraft edited by Jessica Spotswood and Tess Sharpe

This was a fun one. 16 short stories by different authors about women and magic. Some of them were astrological, some of them were fantasy, and some were more of a magical realism, but all of them were about empowering women and their magic.

I liked some stories more than others (I think Love Spell by AM McLemore, Daughters of Baba Yaga by Brenna Yovanoff, and Why They Watch Us Burn by Elizabeth May were my top 3) but all of them had something magical and meaningful to say. I did appreciate how queer several of them were, because witches and queerness have gone hand in hand for so long, both because society creates an outcast label and because it's has been reclaimed.

Writing a review for a collection of stories is hard, so I'll keep this short and say it was a good mix of fun magic and deeply hurt and vengeful magic, which is truly the feminine experience, at least in my opinion.

If you like collections and witches and stories about women, give this a read.

Howl's Moving Castle by Dianne Wynne Jones

For those of you that have been following along, this is the third book in my little traveling book club that I'm doing with my friends, and I'm not gonna lie, this was the one I was most excited about.

Sophie Hatter is the eldest of three and destined to live a boring life. That is, until the Witch of the Waste curses her into old age and she must seek out the heartless wizard Howl to help her lift the curse. Tangled into Howl's schemes (and crafting a few of her own) Sophie joins the small crew of the moving castle and learns more about magic (and herself) than she'd ever dreamed possible.

I haven't seen the movie in years (Studio Ghibli ily), but I remember watching it as a kid and being so enthralled by the magic and the animation and how whimsical the story is. And while the book and movie definitely have some big differences, the magic and whimsy is still there. It's a middle grade book, and a fantasy one at that, which I think is truly one of the most magical age ranges to read for that genre.

Jones is an excellent writer with a compelling story. Sophie is such a fun protagonist. She's grouchy and stubborn and probably way too calm about most of the situations she finds herself in, but even that is hilarious and keeps the story moving.

Howl is more...I'll say pathetic (affectionate) in the book than the movie, though he is still very fashionable and powerful. I think it's more Sophie's opinion of him than anything else, but it was delightful to have a pov of someone unimpressed and a little annoyed with the all powerful and handsome wizard. Made the story more fun! It's also a love story, but also one that sort of trips into itself not quite realizing what it is. Howl and Sophie make such a lovely and strange couple in the end, and reading the whole journey of it was delightful.

I really really enjoyed this book and would absolutely check out more of Jones' books. I also desperately need to go rewatch the movie now.

(EDIT: I watched the movie and it was just as delightful as I remembered. I will say, scandalously, that I did like the book better, but with movie Howl looking how he does, I get how Sophie fell in love with him.)

From A Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi

Oops, another anthology. But you should know by now how much I love Star Wars, and that I'm determined to be involved when the inevitable prequel trilogy Certain Point of View books come out, so, this shouldn't be a surprise.

I will say, this was maybe my least favorite of the CPOV series, which is wild because I love this movie. Not as much as Empire Strikes Back, but the Ewoks are charming and the father-son emotional drama is chef kiss, so I was really looking forward to this one.

And it's not that I didn't enjoy it. There were several stories within that I absolutely adored. Dune Sea Songs of Salt and Moonlight by Thea Guanzon was great, Any Work Worth Doing by Amal El-Mohtar was a very strong start, Trooper Trouble by Laura Pohl was Hilarious, and The Impossible Flight of Ash Angels by Marieke Nijkamp (probably my favorite of them all) was beautifully written and altogether wonderful.

Return of the Jedi is sort of a story about desperation. It's a last ditch effort to take down the empire once and for all, and after the harrowing defeats within Empire Strikes Back, it's a testament to the sacrifices made to get this far. Plus it has Leia strangling Jabba the Hutt with his own chains, which there was not nearly enough of in this book.

Overall, this was a decent collection of stories that did follow the course of ROTJ. I am absolutely furious with them for trying to retconn jizz music (Jatz? Do you think we're stupid?? You can pry the hilarity that is jizz music from my cold, dead hands, George Lucas), and I think part of the reason this book wasn't as much of a hit for me is it tried too hard to reference later material and fit future events into the canon of the story that really weren't necessary to mention.

It is still a Star Wars book, and a fun way to read a bunch of authors at once, some of which I will be scoping out for other things they've written.

And that's it! We're heading into October and creeping ever so closer to NANOWRIMO, so I'll catch you on the flip side.

Literary recommendation: Because of Howl's Moving Castle, I remember how much I love MG books, so you should all definitely go read The Tail of Emily Windsnap by Liz Kessler, because I remember being obsessed with that book as a kid and I'm gonna go reread it too, so we can do it together

Media recommendation: I did start the new season of Love is Blind because I am sometimes reality TV trash, and I gotta say, this season is pretty decent so far