Ling Ling Huang‘s Natural Beauty is bound to become a script at some point. It would be a shame if someone didn’t pick up this original story! It is a remarkable read with so many layers.
The first layer involves family relationships. The main character is a young woman whose parents left China to build a life for themselves and their gifted daughter in the United States. Pianists forbidden to play piano and compose amid the Cultural Revolution in China, they now teach piano lessons in the US to survive. Their aspirations become their daughter’s aspirations, which weigh heavily on her. A gifted pianist beyond her years, the daughter gets accepted to a prestigious music academy. Once there, she is teased and bullied by wealthy, jealous musicians. Then, her world is turned upside down by a tragedy.
The second layer of this book focuses on the desire to remain young at all costs. The daughter finds work in a wellness store, which at first seems like a financial blessing. However, the store and owners’ secrets slowly come to the surface. They reveal a grotesque underbelly of the beauty industry, one not too far off from the current time in which we live.
The last layer is about making friends and finding love in a world that can feel and be so shallow. How does one make it in a world that is, at times, racist, sexist, and elitist? The worlds of beauty and music are infiltrated by these -isms, and the author does a good job of exploring how the character navigates a world pitted against her.
As a parent of a child (now teen) musician, I could relate to a good chunk of this part of the story. The author’s personal experience as a gifted musician was evident in this book, and I enjoyed every single part of the story that involved music. The music world is intensely competitive, frequented by numerous wealthy families who have privilege and use it to buy their way into academies. The story of the sacrifices parents make for their children – children who often do not understand them at the time – was particularly powerful. I loved how music brought together the daughter and her parents, in life and in death.
A marvelous first book by Huang. Highly recommend!
Where to even start with this magnificent book? Sequoia Nagamatsu‘s How High We Go in the Dark is a series of deeply interconnected stories told across thousands of years (maybe a couple million years?!) of time and over numerous generations of families. I will warn you that this is a difficult book to read if you are down or depressed. If you have experienced child loss or any sort of really terrible thing as of late, Chapter 2 is probably not for you. Some of the content may feel all too familiar after surviving a plague of our time.
If you can handle the overwhelming wave of emotions that comes when reading about life and death amid a devastating global plague, then please, please read this book. I was initially drawn in by the character of an archaeologist, who loses his daughter to an odd prehistoric virus found in the remains of an ancient child’s skeletal remains. Each story that follows after this is sort of like Russian nesting dolls; they have overlapping patterns, themes, and people who are all struggling to find meaning in the world. This book isn’t just about darkness and death; it is also about hope, grit, resilience, and longing. It covers the entire range of human emotions.
As someone who loves futuristic dystopian novels, I was immediately sold on this book, as weird and unique as some of its stories are. There is an entire chapter about a genetically modified pig who learns to speak, and you will find yourself never wanting to eat bacon after it. Some chapters make you question the ethics of how we might recall and recreate our loved ones in the not-too-distant technological future. Many chapters make you question what makes us human and what emotions may be unique to our species.
Overall, this was an incredibly powerful book and I cannot wait to see what this author writes in the future.
I’m trying to get through some books over the holidays. I decided to read Jennifer duBois’ The Last Language after discovering it on a “top books” list somewhere out there on an obscure blog. It was published this year, and I was disappointed to see it hasn’t had a ton of traction on the blogosphere. I highly recommend this book and read it in less than 24 hours. I get tired of seeing the same books recommended on mass media websites, which is one of the reasons I became a book blogger.
Currently, this book only has 34 reviews on Goodreads, but they are very strong, with a stellar rating of 4/5. The book clearly draws fromthe real-life case of Dr. Anna Stubblefield, a professor of philosophy and chair of her department at Rutgers. Anna was sentenced to prison for taking advantage of a non-verbal adult male who is disabled. According to court records, Anna got to know the male by attempting to communicate with him using “facilitated communication.” Facilitated communication is no longer considered a reputable method of communicating. Anna developed a sexual relationship with this male, claiming he consented using facilitated communication with her. However, when other people tried to replicate conversations with the man, he was unable to communicate. Anna was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but was recently released after only 2 years.
As someone who is a professor, I was curious to see how duBois would interpret this case. She could have exploited it, or sensationalized it, but I felt as though she was fair in her depiction of how a highly educated person might begin to believe in facilitated communication. Angela, the main character of the book who is presumably modeled after Anna, is an unreliable narrator at best. She is a former doctoral student of linguistics, kicked out of her program for reasons that are at first unclear. She is also a mother and recent widow, though she does not spend much time mourning.
She is hired to work with Sam, a young man who is non-verbal and lives with his mother. Angela begins to spend her night and day with Sam, consumed with what we are told is productive facilitated communication between the two of them. When Sam’s mother tries out the technique, however, Sam cannot communicate with her. It is only through Angela that Sam becomes alive with words, which is suspect to say the least. As you can guess, their relationship progresses, resulting in tragic consequences all around.
I have taken linguistics courses and am an anthropologist, so I really enjoyed Angela’s musings on the nature of cognition and language. duBois did a magnificent job communicating the questions that arise in linguistics. For instance, can a person conceive of a concept without language? How does culture dictate our ability to communicate and give words to concepts and ideas?
“Russian has one word for “light blue” and another for “dark blue”; Russian speakers do not register these as variations of the same color. While the Herero of Namibia have the same word for blue and green; to them, this is a single hue.”
“Saudade (Portuguese): a feeling of melancholic longing for an irretrievable person or place. Has analogues in Welsh (hiraeth) and German (Sehnsucht) and perhaps in some combination of our “nostalgia” and “utopia,” derived from Greek, especially if we consider that utopos originally just meant “nowhere.”
Communication with Sam becomes a way for Angela to push back against her former linguistic colleagues who believe in linguistic determinism: that cognition and thought first required language, and that “there was nothing to discover within people who didn’t have it (language) already.” Or, in other words, “a person cannot conceive of what he cannot name.” If you are looking for answers to why Angela believed facilitated communication worked, or if Sam truly could communicate, you won’t get them. There is a haunting ambiguity to this book just like the real-world case of Anna, who appeared to be two things at the same time: a person who cared deeply and advocated fiercely for disabled people and someone who took things much too far with a vulnerable person who could not verbally consent to a relationship or speak for himself.
A couple things really stood out during my reading of this book. First, duBois is a phenomenal writer. She subtly conveys so much emotion and feeling with analogies and linguistic theories about the relationship between language and cognition. Here’s an example of such writing:
“Language is when someone paints the hoof, and means the deer. But what if the deer just steps in paint, and walks directly onto the wall?”
“One thing all truths have in common: they are only visible from certain distances.”
Secondly, duBois shows that there are subtexts and complexities to human connection. Human relationships are not just words; they are a tilt of one’s head toward another, a finger brushing against a loved one’s face, a nudge of the foot under the table. Non-verbal communication is inherently human and loaded with emotion. Perhaps her intentions were for us to believe the unstable Angela, to buy into her conviction that Sam wanted to be with her and that he could understand her. Whatever the case, this book left me with more questions than answers, which is precisely why I enjoyed it so much.
This review is of Heather B. Armstrong’sThe Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live. Why would you read a book about depression and suicide over the holiday break? I’d been wanting to read this book since it came out, but it felt too close and too personal to read up until this past month. Sadly, the author, Heather Armstrong, committed suicide this past May. She was the first big “mommy” blogger. I knew her name because I followed a number of very early bloggers (Rebecca Blood was my favorite, and I actually got to meet her at a friend’s wedding!), but I did not read Armstrong’s blog, Dooce.
Since Armstrong’s passing, so many bloggers and writers have added their opinions to the mix. What caused Armstrong to take her life? Was it the hate she received online? Was it the stress of sharing her family’s most intimate moments for the public to consume? Some folks want to place the blame on Armstrong herself, for not getting enough help, for not stopping her addiction, for not being a better parent, for oversharing…the list goes on and on. This feels like victim-blaming to me as someone who knows what mental illness is like.
As an outsider who did not read her blog (and has since read some of it), it seems as though Armstrong had so many demons. She was a brilliant writer and well-liked in school, achieving the incredibly difficult honor of being her high school valedictorian (hence the name of her book). Her sardonic wit and sarcasm were evident in her book. She loved her children and devoted entire books to them.
But Armstrong struggled with severe depression that refused to go away – it became resistant to the treatments she had used in the past. Armstrong was desperate for help. She ended up trying out a very experimental treatment that involved essentially dying and then being revived by a gifted set of medical professionals. The latter were so committed to helping mentally ill patients that they volunteered their time to this experiment. Armstrong was only the third patient to undergo this trial.
Why read this book, especially knowing about Armstrong’s heartbreaking story? If you want insight into what depression and suicidal ideation are like, the first half of this book captures it. When someone attempts suicide, they are not in their right mind. Armstrong appears to have tried many things – medications, diets, exercise, you name it. She wanted to get well for her kids. That’s what comes through in this book, and that’s what made me so sad for her.
This is a hard read, but it is an honest, frank account of severe psychiatric illness – its impact on Armstrong, of course, but also its impact on her family. The book concludes with hope, as Armstrong feels like the treatment is working. Given what transpired afterward, though, I do wonder if the treatment actually caused more harm than good. Have others involved in the experiment experienced relief or have they continued to struggle with depression? I do know that the book helped me empathize with Armstrong and understand just how much she was hurting before she took drastic measures by enrolling in this experiment.
I’ve been lagging behind in my book reviews this year, so I decided to highlight some of my favorite reads of 2023. I had a very exhausting, busy year, but I made my Goodreads goal of reading 20 books!
Because I struggled with chronic migraines this year, I stuck with some tried and true authors for me. I also relied upon Libby and Audible for audiobooks, as reading on my Kindle sometimes triggered my migraines. I’m on a new injection that has nearly eliminated my migraines, so I am hopeful I will return to Kindle/hard copy reading in 2024.
One of my favorite science fiction authors is Blake Crouch. I decided to read his Wayward Pines trilogy. I listened to it on audiobook, and I could not stop listening. I made it through the entire trilogy in lightning speed – I was listening to it every chance I had – walking, driving, hiking…everywhere. The audiobook’s narrator truly brought the story to life, so much so that I am planning to read other books narrated by him. What I love about this trilogy is precisely what I enjoy about all of Crouch’s books: scientists gone mad, dystopian worlds, time travel, and characters struggling with mortality.
I also nearly finished some book series that I started in 2022. I finished Suzanne Collins‘ prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I rated that book a 4/5 simply primarily it is hard to match the excitement and thrill of the original trilogy. I also felt like this book really could have been two books, which was my reaction to the film as well. It really went on too long and should have been two films. The book focuses on President Snow’s rise as a promising academy student serving as a mentor to one of the Hunger Games’ earliest tributes. What made the book interesting was the depiction of the post-war Capital and its discussion of the origins of the Hunger Games. However, Snow’s turn from an eager, semi-compassionate Capital student to a power-hungry sociopath seemed abrupt in both the book and the film. I think this transition could have been drawn out and explained in more detail if there had been two books/films. I also wanted to know more about Lucy Gray’s (the tribute) backstory.
Some of the best psychological thrillers of the year also came from authors I’ve read in the past. Robyn Harding’sThe Drowning Woman, Jennifer Hillier’sThings We Do in the Dark, J.T. Ellison’sIt’s One of Us, Shari Lapena’sEveryone Here is Lying, and Rachel Hawkin’sThe Villa made my favorite books of 2023 list. All of these books came in at a 4/5 or 5/5 rating for me. A couple of these reads really, really stood out. Riley Sager’sThe Only One Left was one of my top 3 favorite books of 2023. It had a great twist at the end, and I loved the spooky Victorian mansion backdrop. Another favorite was Janelle Brown’s I’ll Be You. I’ve read all of Janelle Brown’s books. Brown’s books feature unreliable narrators (such as Gillian Flynn’s books) who are struggling with what it means to be mothers, daughters, and just plain human beings in a misogynistic world. They have aspirations beyond domesticity, and these desires often come in conflict with what the world and their families want them to become. I rated I’ll Be You5/5 stars.
I also tried out a few new authors this year. I just happened upon Jayne Cowie’sCurfew while perusing Amazon, and I was immediately hooked from the first page. In a world where men are predominantly responsible for violent crimes, the UK government has decided to impose a curfew on them. Women are finally free to enjoy nights without fear of assault. A murder after dark, however, calls into question the curfew’s effectiveness. After sailing through Curfew and rating it 5/5, I purchased Cowie’s One of the Boys. This book feels as though it could be set in the same era or world as Curfew. In this book, boys are genetically profiled at birth to determine if they have a gene that predisposes them to violence. Boys who refuse testing are essentially exiled from society, and boys who have the gene are treated as criminals. This book reminded me of the film Gattaca and both Curfew and One of the Boys are perfect reads for dystopian literature fans. This book has a 4/5 rating on Goodreads (which is excellent because readers are hard to please) and I rated it 5/5.
My other favorite new author isEve Smith. Her books look at the human consequences of medical interventions, some of which involve biotechnology. I read her book Off Target in 2022 and rated it 5/5 stars. This book also reminded me of the film Gattaca, as it explores an underground world where people genetically engineer their infants in the womb. This year I read Smith’s The Waiting Rooms, which examines the very real threat of a world where antibiotics no longer work. This book might be of interest to people who enjoyed the film/book Children of Men, as it wrestles with the difficult choice of who gets to live in a world of limited resources. What happens when childbirth and pregnancy suddenly become life-threatening conditions, for instance? Who gets medication, and who does not? I am currently reading Smith’s latest book, One. All of these books are rated 4.0 or higher on Goodreads (One has a very high rating of 4.31!), so clearly I am not alone in enjoying Smith’s books.
That’s it for my best reads of 2023. I appreciate any book recommendations in the comments!
This is my third Rachel Hawkins’ book, and like the two others, I immediately took to the story. In my book, you can never go wrong with a Rachel Hawkins book! She is on my auto-purchase list and she will stay on this list after this book!
The Villa involves two parallel stories: one that takes place in the present, and the other that takes place in the 1970s. It is the place in which the story takes place – an Italian villa – that is a common variable between the two storylines.
Several of the characters are also writers, and some of their own writing comes into play in this mystery. There are two mysteries taking place – one in the contemporary timeline, and another in the 1970s timeline. While I found this particular plot somewhat predictable, I thought the characters were interesting and I was invested in what was happening until the very last page. I will say I enjoyed the contemporary storyline a bit more and would have liked to have had more backstory with those two characters. I could even see reading a prequel with those characters.
If you are looking for a quick and engaging thriller that has a cast of interesting female characters, this book is definitely for you.
Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and Macmillan Audio for an advanced reader copy of The Villa.
Oh how I wanted to love this book! Aliya Whiteley’s Skein Island had a powerful beginning, but the story got lost along the way. I kept reading until the very last page because the concepts of the book were interesting and captured my interest, but the book fell short of its premise.
What I liked about this book was the originality of the story. The story focuses on an island that is exclusively for women looking to change their lives. Access to the island is by invite only. If accepted, you must share the story of your life with a mysterious woman who is a keeper of the island’s secrets. At first, the island and story seem fairly surface level: women seeking relief from the external world.
However, the story is much more complex than that. The island has a story of its own, one that is dark and macabre. We find that the universe of our characters is not the same as our own, which is part of the novel’s several surprises.
I like the author’s flair for throwing unexpected wrenches into the storyline, but at times it made the novel jarring and uneven. I found myself truly lost by the end of the novel because of these unusual elements – it’s a shame because I think the author could have edited this and had a much stronger and more sensical ending.
At the end of the day, it is clear the author is a capable writer and this book shows a lot of promise. I definitely plan on reading another book by her.
I happened upon this book on Amazon and thought i sounded interested, so I purchased it because it was not available through my local library. I was surprised to find that the book has very few reviews on Goodreads, but the ones that are there are really positive. I am so glad I took a chance on this book!
This book is similar in many ways to John Rector’s The Ridge, which is one of my favorite reads and thrillers. I haven’t quite found any books similar to Rector’s book, so I was really excited to find a book with a similar premise. Blue Haven begins with a woman – Aloe – winning the lottery, and then opting to use her fortune to buy a condo in a new development – Blue Haven – that promises the utmost privacy and comfort for the wealthy. The condo sits on a beautiful white sand beach that seems to travel for miles on end. Aloe has built in friends – her neighbors – the minute she moves in. She has a personal assistant who will respond to any of her wants and needs 24/7. She has personal shoppers, personal chefs, and even round the clock medical care if need be.
But then Aloe, the main character, discovers there is something deeply wrong with her new residence. There is a mysterious man following her. The residents seem to be hiding something. And her personal assistant, Amir, has lied to her about a woman who once lived at the complex but has now disappeared. Aloe wants out, but she may be stuck in Blue Haven for the rest of her life. What’s wrong with being stuck in paradise, after all?
Nothing is as it seems in Blue Haven, and nearly all the fun in this book is spent trying to figure out what is going on. This constitutes about 65% of the book. The rest of the book is spent diving a bit deeper into the character, Aloe, and her backstory. This book is perfect for readers who love sci-fi, thrillers, and technology. I highly recommend it!
I’m a huge huge fan of Blake Crouch. I think he’s one of the best sci-fi authors out there right now. I was SO excited to see that he has a new release and immediately requested an ARC of it.
This was a rollercoaster of a read. It wasn’t my favorite book of Crouch’s, but it was worth my time for sure. Crouch is not modest with Upgrade’s plot. This book asks some big questions of its readers:
What if you could change the course of humanity for the better? What if we could stop climate change, stop rampant consumerism, and end the selfish individualism that almost seems inherent to humanity at this time in history?
It also places the weight of the world (literally) on the main character’s shoulders. What if you and you alone could be the answer to the world’s many problems? Would you risk everything – your family and even your life – to fix humanity and the planet for the better?
Yes, it all sounds a little cliched and cheesy, but I could easily see this book becoming a wild ride of a screenplay and movie. It’s bold, adventurous, and involves some interesting musings on genetic engineering and CRISPR technology, and I liked it.
It’s not as introspective or reflective as his previous books, but it was a fun read that delivered for a great sci-fi story that I think Crouch’s readers will thoroughly enjoy.
Thank you to Random House Books, Blake Crouch, and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of this book!
What did I just read?! I am normally a fan of Riley Sager’s books, but this was fell really short of my expectations for a good thriller.
I won’t rehash what other bloggers and reviewers have said at length, but I’ll highlight what I personally did and did not like about this book.
What I liked about the book was the format. I like that it took place during a short period of time (this aspect of the book reminded me of Taylor Adams’ No Exit, which I enjoyed) and that the clock was ticking. This made the story more tense and gave it a clear beginning and end. I liked that the main character, Charlie, was a movie fan and referenced movie quotes and scenes throughout the book. I also loved that was it set in the 80s as a child of the 80s. If it had been set in 2021, the story wouldn’t work.
Why? A cell phone and Uber would have prevented most of what happens in this book…but so would common sense, which brings me to what I did not like about the book.
What I didn’t like is essentially what ruined the story for me. Charlie lost her parents to a car crash and her roommate and friend to a serial killer who targets women on college campuses. Charlie is leaving campus for good after the latter tragedy, and decides to take a ride from a seemingly innocent guy named Josh. Josh is a complete stranger she just happened to meet while looking at her college’s job board. You might be wondering why the heck someone whose roommate was killed by a serial killer would take a random stranger’s offer for a ride home. Yeah, me too. This is simply the first choice among many Charlie makes that places her in the hands of danger.
Charlie makes SO MANY bad decisions that you will find yourself yelling at her by the first page or two of the book. Despite surviving the deaths of her friend and her parents, she is passive and helpless. She has so many opportunities to get help, but she doesn’t. The ending of the novel is the absolute worst, because she makes yet another terrible life choice that once again puts her in harm’s way.
I don’t know if Sager intentionally set out to write about a helpless, weak, clueless female character, but he did. I found it insulting because it really did not capture the spirit of the times. Women in the 80s and early 90s were writing and singing about challenging the patriarchy. I can’t imagine a character who is so into movies would not be aware of the music scene that is an equally essential part of a movie (aka the soundtrack). There are SO many fantastic soundtracks from this time period….so yeah, this was a disappointing and maddening read for this feminist who grew up during the time period in which this book was supposed to take place.
I did not receive an ARC for this review. I stopped receiving Sager ARCs once he became big 🙂
Let me just start by saying that the characters in this novel – nearly ALL of them – have secrets. Not just the “I stole a cookie out of my mom’s cookie jar when I was 5” kind of secrets. Secrets of the really terrible kind, like I cheated with my best friend’s husband and had a love child secret!
If you can suspend reality for a bit and read this (I suppose this is required for most thrillers and mysteries anyhow), then you will enjoy Sandie Jones’ latest thriller The Guilt Trip. This is the perfect title for the book, because everyone on this disaster of a trip is guilty of something: lying, cheating, stealing….you name it, it’s in this book and the characters have indeed done it.
I listened to the audio version of this book, and I have to admit that I nearly stopped listening because the character of Ali is just so gosh darn obnoxious. Kudos to the actor for making the character true to the author’s depiction of it, but oh wow, Ali is extra, and not in a good way.
There were some parts of this book that felt more drama than thriller, which made for a slow read at times. However, Jones writes really interesting, complex characters, so I kept listening. I wanted to know if the different characters’ secrets were going to be revealed at the end of the book, and they are. Jones did a nice job tying all loose ends at the end of the book – there is a scene that serves as sort of the crescendo of the book, and that was a fantastic way to end it.
Thank you to the author, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of this book!
I received Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen’s The Golden Couple as an advanced reviewer copy. This is the fourth thriller I’ve read from the writing pair, and once again it was a homerun of a read. If I had to pick a favorite book from the coauthors, I’d pick An Anonymous Girl.
This book follows a Avery Chambers, a famed psychologist who has decided to take a non-traditional approach to treating clients. As a result of her unconventional treatments, she has lost her license. She has also lost her husband, and there are some questions regarding the circumstances leading to his death. Needless to say, things aren’t perfect for Avery.
Avery takes on new clients – Marissa and Mathew – who seem perfect in every way. They are beautiful, poised, and seem to have successful careers. Despite outward appearances, there is turmoil in their relationship. Marissa cheated on Mathew, and it is up to Avery to mend things before the couple ends up divorcing.
Both Avery and Marissa begin to experience concerning incidents that lead them to believe they are being stalked or followed. Avery’s former client, who revealed ethical concerns regarding a pharmaceutical company that Avery then reported to the FDA, is angry at her, and the pharmaceutical company is on Avery’s tail.
This was a super quick, thrilling read for me. I found the characters to be engaging with interesting backstories. I did figure out what was going on fairly quickly, but I read a lot of thrillers.
Thank you to the authors, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of this book!
I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again. ~William Penn~
idigbooksanddirt.wordpress.com 