CAUTION: This book DESTROYED me + 13 additional reads from April and May
I've read some absolute bangers in the last two months, so today I present to you a book list without much ranting. You're disappointed, I know, I'll make it up to you next time.
The absolute 10/5 banger I read though? Woof. You'll find it at the bottom. It destroyed me. I'm still agonizing over it. Don't the best books do this?
But first! A few points of order before I jump into book reviews.
For you new folks, hi! I'm Charlotte Chambers: mom, lawyer, writer, and I have an unhinged reading habit. This year I should get to 95 books or more, despite all of the other things that eat up my time (the mom part being the big one). How do I do this? Well, I don't have any other hobbies.
The second thing—I have an author website! Squee! Check me out at charlottechamberswriter.com.
Third, I'm on a very exciting trip right now that pertains to my writing skillz. I can't share yet, but to tease you in a rude fashion, here is my view. All to come in the next edition!
Now let's get to it.
Book Reviews
Our Wives Under the Sea, by Julia Armfield
Rating: 5/5
Genre: Speculative, Magical Realism
Vibes: Eerie, tension to the MAX
Super Short Synopsis: A woman's wife comes home from a deep sea dive that went awry. The diver/scientist wife starts acting (and looking) very weird. Both women have difficulty acclimating to the diver's homecoming, and interspersed between this domestic tension we see what happened to the diver when she was trapped in the offending submersible with two others. Shenanigans ensue.
Review: I'm a Julia Armfield fan. She writes in the EXACT genre I love the most: a realistic world with some weird, twisted, speculative element to it. This story is practically a poem it's so beautiful, but don't think that means it's inaccessible. Wait until you find out what happened in that trapped submersible. It's so satisfying, and I promise it is not scary. At the most extreme, it's very eerie, but really the heat of the story is in how the landlubber wife deals with the diver wife slipping into (what we think) is madness, but is it though?
The Third Gilmore Girl, by Kelly Bishop
Rating: 3/5
Genre: Memoir
Vibes: Light, fluffy
Super Short Synopsis: Kelly Bishop was Emily Gilmore, matriarch of the Gilmore Girls. Head's up: I am a GG's super fan, so I'll read anything about it. We get a lot more about Kelly Bishop's life than just her time on GG's, but that's OK because it's pretty fun, and she has a lovely reading voice.
Review: This was fine. It's short, and I listened to it on audiobook. Didn't knock my socks off or anything, but I enjoyed all discussions about my favorite and most formative television show (which I still watch over and over and over again). If you liked the show, you should read this. If you don't want to read about show business, don't read it.
I Was a Teenage Slasher, by Stephen Graham Jones
Rating: 5/5
Genre: Horror
Vibes: Dark Humor, squicky
Super Short Synopsis & Review: Go to my previous post about thievery, and find the review there.
Faebound, by Saara El-Arifi
Rating: 2.5/5
Genre: Romantasy
Vibes: Grand adventuring, world-building, swoon-y
Super Short Synopsis: A baddie general of an army gets banished into what is supposed to be like, wild, barren land. Her sister chases after her, along with another dude who was the general's soldier. There is lore re: humans and faeries and elves. Shenanigans ensue.
Review: I am not dissing this book. It's just not for me. This happens to me sometimes. I read the synopsis of a book, think I'll love it, and it just doesn't hit right. I could very much see this attracting a lot of people--especially fans of Romantasy. That genre has just tired me out, though, and I'm also a little tired of world-building. I'm liking my magical realism and surrealism right now. This book is well-written and everything, it just didn't hold my attention.
Old Soul, by Susan Barker
Rating: 3.5/5
Genre: Horror
Vibes: Spooky, WTF
Super Short Synopsis: An English guy meets a Japanese lady in a chance encounter, and they find out they both know someone, from different parts of the world, who died after going mad for a few weeks. Upon their respective autopsies, they found their organs were all backwards. One very specific woman seems to have lurked around the periphery of these people before their demise, though she seems to go by different aliases. The English dude decides to figure it out. Shenanigans ensue.
Review: In Old Soul, Susan Barker did almost everything right, except the end. It would have gotten five stars from me, but for that. I don't think the ending was the natural conclusion to the story. But: you should still read this, because 3.5/5 is pretty darn good. It's also not scary per se. It's a little freaky, and there are some haunting images, but all-in-all this is an incredibly unique and new set of mysterious facts for you to sleuth around. At the beginning I was absolutely riveted, it does plod a bit in the middle, but there is a lot of action as payment for trudging through in the third act.
Once There Were Wolves, by Charlotte McConaghy
Rating: 5/5
Genre: Literary
Vibes: Mysterious, hints at the speculative, atmospheric
Super Short Synopsis & Review: Go to my previous post about thievery, and find the review there.
But Not Too Bold, Hache Pueyo
Rating: 3.5/5
Genre: Horror
Vibes: Speculative, fantastical
Super Short Synopsis & Review: Go to my previous post about thievery, and find the review there.
Fable for the End of the World, by Ava Reid
Rating: 4/5
Genre: New Adult Dystopian
Vibes: Tense, Us v. The World, "how can they possibly get out of this?"
Super Short Synopsis: In this near-future, climate change has flooded most of the world, and what remains is run by a single corporation. When people go into too much debt, they broadcast what is basically a Running Man/Hunger Games style hunt--but between an elite killer called an Angel and the poor schmuck who has to fight, which is usually the debtor's kid. Shenanigans ensue.
Review: This book rocks. I love Ava Reid. Another of her novels, A Study in Drowning, was gorgeous. Next I'm reading her Macbeth retelling from Lady Macbeth's perspective (which I'm really pumped about). Fable for the End of the World is "New Adult" because the characters are very young adults, but it could be enjoyed by all. Very low on the spice factor, but high on the yearning factor. It is just so exciting, the characters are so multi-dimensional, the conflict and stakes continue to escalate. Look it's just a Damn Good Book, I highly recommend. You'll hear a lol of Hunger Games comparisons from other readers (which really is a Running Man comparison...but that's a rant for another day), but please know this is sufficiently different and very fresh by way of themes, ideas, and world-building.
Legendborn, by Tracy Deonn
Rating: 5/5
Genre: YA Fantasy
Vibes: Discovering powers, hot guys, bad a*s FMC
Super Short Synopsis: A 16-year-old goes to UNC-Chapell Hill as an early admission student (basically finishes high school, but in college), and sees some crazy stuff at a party. She is sucked into a world of white privilege and its secret societies. I'm not going to say anymore because it's all a spoiler and I want you to savor it!
Review: I seriously thought I'd never read another YA book again. At basically 40, it's very difficult for me to relate to the protagonists. Weird, though, I can reread books like Twilight, that came out when I was young lass, but I think that's a nostalgia thing.
Anyway, I decided to pick this up because of the rave reviews I've heard, and the fact those reviews focus on the multi-layered aspect of the story-telling. This book is an onion, folks--lots of layers. Which I love in any genre.
The protagonist is drawn to perfection because, see, she's NOT perfect, she's a 16-year-old girl. But she's strong and smart and tough and resilient, and that is so refreshing. Folks: this is no underfed, illiterate child wandering into the forest and bumping into some 400 year old dude. This girl is real, flesh and blood, just like you. I also love the story's integration of the concept of blackness and how agonizing it must be to live as a Black person in the south around all those monuments to slavery, knowing your walking on your murdered ancestor's bones.
But if you don't go that deep, or do you don't want to (but why?), just the top-level story is so good. It's so fun. It's so exciting! Think: King Arthur of the Round Table except for more inclusive from the gender side of things. SO. GOOD. This one kept me up reading late at night.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things, by Iain Reid
Rating: 4/5
Genre: Literary Horror
Vibes: Terrifying but without squick, atmospheric
Super Short Synopsis: A couple go on a roadtrip to the boyfriend's house. The girlfriend's been getting weird phone calls. The couple arrive to dude's childhood home, and the guy's parents are extremely weird. What's up with these people? Scary, scary shenanigans ensue.
Review: Guys this book is very, very scary, but not squicky. But goodness gracious, it is IN 👏🏻 TENSE 👏🏻. This is not from everybody, I will be very clear about that. Reading it is basically like watching a Darren Arofonsky movie, and yes, the ending is like that as well (which means, wild, surreal, other-worldly and impossible to fully understand). Iain Reid definitely earned the "literary horror" moniker because the prose is gorgeous and the characterization is the real standout here.
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, by Eric LaRocca
Rating: 1/5 (DNF)
Genre: Horror
Vibes: Gross
Super Short Synopsis & Review: Horror short story collection with detailed torture and murder of an infant (for absolutely no reason, it did nothing for the plot). So not OK, I'm even withholding a photo. Don't bother.
Convenience Store Woman, by Sayaka Murata
Rating: 4/5
Genre: ?????
Vibes: Weird in a good way
Super Short Synopsis: A single woman who doesn't fit into an easy category finds herself working in a convenience store in her late 30's (this is generally looked down upon in this story's Japan). She meets another older, single guy who starts working there too, but he's a brat. They have an idea. Shenanigans ensue.
Review: I read Sayaka Murata's Earthlings first, which I couldn't really shake out of my brain for a while. This one was more mild in terms of 'crazy sh*t happening' but the tone was very similar. The main character has an 'Alien from Mars' kind of perspective, which is both fresh and very charming in how she processes information and what's happening to her and others around her.
Murata has something to say about how society puts people into certain pipelines. In this case: Professional Super Worker or Family Person. Is there a middle ground? Boy are we about to find out.
The Dream Hotel, by Laila Lalani
Rating: 4/5
Genre: Realistic Science "Fiction"
Vibes: Skynet and the Minority Report tech in a terrifying bundle
Super Short Synopsis & Review: Read my previous post about AI and knowledge theft for this one.
I Who Have Never Known Men, by Jacqueline Harpman
Rating: 10/5
Genre: Dystopian Literary Fiction
Vibes: WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FU--
Super Short Synopsis: We meet 40 women who are trapped in a large cage, guarded, at all times, by three men who never look at them. 1 of the 40 women is an adolescent, the only child in the group. Shenanigans ensue.
Review: If you read "40 women are trapped in a cage" and immediately think you can't handle it--YOU CAN. There isn't any gore. There isn't any on-screen assault (much less graphic than, say, The Handmaid's Tale). It is, instead, the craziest, most surreal, and most emotional thought experiment ever rendered on the page. Ever. I mean: ever, ever, ever. I Who Have Never Known Men is so haunting. I listened to this on a long drive, and at regular intervals found myself SCREAMING in my car at nobody. The audiobook is a little under 6 hours, and if you pop the speed up to 1.5x you can get it down fast. Which is good. I don't think I could languish in this story, holy moly.
This book could only be written by a woman, and you'll see why. I promise you that this book is worth the read; despite the mind-shattering, soul-shaking impact it will have. It's in a good way. Promise.
That's it for now. My next post will be about the adventure I'm on (and I promise I'll explain why you should care).
Have a good week and read banned books.
LYSM,
Charlotte