Fantasy

The Priory of the Orange Tree

April 10, 2021 youwanttoreadthistrustmeLeave a comment

Title: The Priory of the Orange Tree

Author: Samantha Shannon

Page Count: 830

Series: N/A

Publishing Date/Publisher: 2019/ Bloomsbury Publishing

Format: Paperback

Review: Going to start this one off with just ‘wow’. I love fantasy but sometimes high fantasy can be dull and take ages to get anywhere (both in reference to the plot but also they always have to walk everywhere, which annoys me- buy/steal a horse) but this one starts off strong and that carries throughout the whole 800+ pages. Even following the one character I wasn’t super invested in, it was fast and interesting.

The writing was superb, the plot was so engaging, the characters were so well thought out and developed, the magic system was unique, and the relationships? Chef kiss. And dragons. Come on. I would give this book seven stars out of five if I could. Ten maybe. I just really loved it, plain and simple. It was one where I wanted to stay within its pages and world for as long as possible, and since it’s a mammoth book, that was pretty easy.

BRB, I’ve just convinced myself to go re-read it while writing this.

Reader: Kymberly

Rating:

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

April 10, 2021 youwanttoreadthistrustmeLeave a comment

Title: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid

Page Count: 401

Series: N/A

Publishing Date/Publisher: June 13, 2017/Atria Books

Format: eBook

Review:

This book completely broke me. I was crying at two in the morning while I finished the book, it was just so good and beautiful and well written.

It addresses some very important issues: racial prejudice, domestic abuse, homophobia, and what it was like to be an LGBTQ+ person in a historical setting. And from my own perspective, I think it was handled very well.

I typically don’t like books with multiple first person POVs, I think it gets complicated and messy and rarely works well (multiple third person POVs are great, though), however I think this worked really well in The Seven Husbands because it is as if we are reading Monique’s book in the chapters that we are in Evelyn’s perspective, or even just listening to her through the tapes or sitting down to the interview and hearing her story.

It was compelling, heartbreaking, and profound. So when I say ‘it broke me’, I mean that in the best possible way. I highly recommend it, but be sure to have some tissues handy.

Reader: Kymberly

Rating:

Contemporary · Fiction

If I Had Your Face

April 5, 2021April 5, 2021 youwanttoreadthistrustmeLeave a comment

Title: If I Had Your Face

Author: Frances Cha

Performers: Frances Cha, Sue Jean Kim, Ruthie Ann Miles, & Jeena Yi

Length: 8 hr, 10 min

Series: N/A

Publishing Date/Publisher: April 21, 2020 by Random House Audio

Format: eAudiobook

Review: This fascinating glimpse into Korean beauty culture immediately had me searching the internet for more information. It seems unbelievable that it would be commonplace for women, and men, to go to such drastic lengths to achieve beauty, but sadly it seems that it is true. I know very little about K-pop aside from it’s growing popularity among American youth, and it is frightening to see the dark side of this industry and how it influences the rest of Korean society.

Looking back on the length of this audiobook, it is stunning that the author was able to offer glimpses of so many different issues in such a short space of time. She tackles prostitution, high suicide rates, unemployment, and poverty – just to name a few. It is amazing that somehow all these topics seemed to circle back to beauty and the commodification of it. The characters seem to have this idea throughout the book that beautiful people get ahead in life, when in reality, beautiful people are just as susceptible, if not more so, to abuse.

In general, I thought the author did a really good job fleshing out the main characters with backstory, however, in retrospect, highlighting the lives of four characters was a bit ambitious. All the characters lives intersect in some way, but the character of Wonna seems largely disconnected from the rest. I can only assume she was included to show how the cultural expectations placed on women affect the average working class wife. All of the other characters are younger, unmarried, and childless. They have little to no interaction with Wonna at all until the very end. I did enjoy her story, but her vignettes didn’t seem to really fit smoothly with the rest of the character narratives. Even so, I liked how the author used these windows into the the past to illuminate current issues.

Reader: Bekah

Rating:

Contemporary · Fiction · Magical Realism · Young Adult

Home Is Not a Country

April 3, 2021 youwanttoreadthistrustmeLeave a comment

Title: Home Is Not a Country

Author: Safia Elhillo

Page Count: 224

Series: N/A

Publishing Date/Publisher: March 2, 2021 by Make Me a World

Format: Hardcover

Review: I could have never predicted the direction of this story based on the cover or the synopsis. There were many aspects of the story that were beautiful – the title, the emphasis on friendship, and the mother/daughter relationship – but where it started to get a little sloggy for me was when the elements of magical realism were incorporated. There was a turning point about halfway through where the author lost me and never really roped me back. I kept being reminded of A Christmas Carol after this point, and the conclusion was about what I would expect knowing how that story ended.

The style of poetry that this author uses has recently been trendy in the YA sphere. I understand that the spacing, use of symbols, and lowercase letters are all creative choices. I assume they have a purpose, but I don’t know enough about poetry to figure out what that purpose is. Sometimes I found it distracting because I would spend a lot of time trying to glean why these choices were made. Hopefully I will find somebody who can explain it to me, because Google cannot.

Reader: Bekah

Rating:

Fantasy · Fiction · Romance · Young Adult

Dark Shores

April 3, 2021 youwanttoreadthistrustme2 Comments

Title: Dark Shores

Author: Danielle L. Jensen

Performers: Jeanette Illidge & Jeremy Arthur

Length: 12 hr, 21 min

Series: Dark Shores, Book 1

Publishing Date/Publisher: May 7, 2019 by MacMillan Audio

Format: eAudiobook

Review: I didn’t dislike this book, but for some reason I could not fully connect with it. I finished it a couple of months ago and for some reason I have been dragging my feet in reviewing it. Perhaps it is because I have had a hard time pinpointing just what it is that didn’t jive for me. To be honest my memory has already started to erase the finer details of the story. There was nothing particularly memorable that stands out to me about the storyline, but I do remember feeling a sense of anxiety regarding many of the choices that the characters made. I found the villain to be flat, and his motives unclear. One storyline was dropped completely, which I thought was odd until I read the synopsis for the second book in the series and realized this plot point is the basis of a concurrent storyline. I liked the concept of the Rome influenced setting and the Maarin as a seafaring people who act as the go between for the East and West. I don’t regret taking the time to finish this book, but I probably won’t continue with the series.

Reader: Bekah

Rating: