Author: Amanda

They Say It’s Your Birthday (Pandemic Edition)

Hello there.

It’s my birthday today. Thirty-seven years of age and what a time to be alive.

For the first time I don’t really want anything for my birthday. The husband got me some things that he had planned to get for Christmas but at the time we didn’t have the money to get them. I even signed up to proctor an SAT this morning for some extra money. At most I want a Moe’s burrito for lunch and to fall asleep in my chair in the middle of playing video games. I’m tired. What I want for my birthday is money and sleep – proctoring the SAT got me the first and only I can make the second happen. This wish brought to you by Zzzquil.

If you are a follower who would like to help me celebrate (which you do not have to) you can buy me a coffee through Ko-Fi (Ko-fi.com/angryangelbooks) or at paypal.me/AngryAngelBooks. At the very least do something you enjoy today and send some good vibes my way. Anything is appreciated.

Our school system is on spring break this week, and has also opted to close the following week due to the current pandemic. If there is any silver lining to this situation it is that I will have a lot more time to read and provide you with more quality reviews. I’m currently reading The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal of Kitchens of the Great Midwest fame. I’m about halfway through so the review should be up shortly. 

Angry Angel Books favorite Samantha Irby is releasing her next collection of essays Wow, No Thank You on March 31st. Her two prior releases: Meaty (which I have never reviewed for some reason?) and We Are Never Meeting in Real Life are amazing and I expect nothing less from this one. Preorder now wherever you get your books normally and have a book to make you laugh while you are distanced socially. It’s coming to me on release day and I can’t wait.

Stay safe out there, angels. Wash those hands and take care of your neighbors. It’s about to be a bit of a bumpy ride.

 

 

Recursion

Recursion

Dark Matter

I have loved writing this blog over the past 4 years because it has helped me to understand the kind of books that I really love, and those that I would be better to pass by and leave on the shelf. Books that tell futuristic stories that are SUPER plausible are some of my favorites. Recently I read Stephen King’s The Institute which was gripping because 99% of it was plausible and it made the prospects of the psychological fantasy elements that much more terrifying.

Recursion felt to me, at first, a strange Matrix-like story. A chair is invented that can chart your memories, store them, and then reload them into your brain later so you can experience them like it was the first time. It was meant to help people with dementia or other degenerative brain conditions. The chair’s inventor, Helena, is working on this chair to help her mother specifically and is about to run out of funding when she is approached by an Elon Musk-like character Marcus Slade who offers her unlimited dollars to join him on his super-villian-esque oil rig that has been refitted as a research facility and finish her work on the chair. This begins a chain of events that seem very tangled at first but as you read become terrifyingly clear.

This story is not a memory story but a time travel story, and the idea is so bold and so well executed that I was awe-struck by Crouch’s ingenuity. Where did he get this idea? This is wild and amazing and captivating. The second half the book, a full 150 pages, I read all in one night because I could not put it down. Then I spent the next week thinking about which memories I would choose to travel back to in order to change my life. And not to leave anything undone, Crouch also weaves in fairly severe consequences for traveling in this way, making me think twice about whether it would be worth it.

If you like sci-fi that keeps your feet on the ground and messes with actual systems and forces that run our lives day to day, you cannot miss Crouch’s works. They are close enough to real that they make you wonder about what is possible, and then freak you out because it might actually happen. Go get you some.

The Shadow Glass (The Bone Witch #3)

The Bone Witch (The Bone Witch #1)

The Heart Forger (The Bone Witch #2)

Something that I truly believe about books is that they have the power to grab hold of you and not let go. When I first read The Bone Witch, I thought it was pretty good and returned it to the library. But then my mind kept coming back to it and thinking about what I had read, and then I decided I might as well find out what happened next. I got my hands on The Heart Forger and cried harder than I have cried in a long while after reading a story. These books were so sneaky! How did I come to care about this cast of characters in such a short span of time?

The Shadow Glass moves a lot slower than the other two parts of the trilogy. Tea is often out of sight, and we’re watching her friends try to guess at what she’s going to do next. They all know that she is trying to make shadowglass so she can give her brother Fox his life back and supposedly end all magic forever. Her love, Kaden, is helping her achieve this goal. It’s all pointing toward a huge confrontation with an unknown Faceless. They once thought it was a person named Druj but the major twist of the book is that it was someone they knew all along! In my opinion, it could have been anyone and the twist isn’t as meaningful as the author might have thought? I’m not sure.

I won’t spoil the events leading up to the ending, but I will say that it ends just how you think it might, but with some interesting “what ifs” sprinkled in for good measure. This book wasn’t as exciting as its sisters, but it was a satisfying conclusion to a unique trilogy. If you haven’t read this series, you should put it on your summer TBR. Its a good’un.

The Nickel Boys

The Nickel Boys

I live in Tampa Bay, Florida and I remember when The Dozier School for Boys was closed. I remember when they found the graves, and I remember when the unmarked graves were discovered and had to be explored and dealt with. Even as recently as 2019 they were still working there. My sister-in-law and her husband met each other while they were working there as a psychologist and guard respectively. At the time I was horrified at what I was hearing and seeing on the news, but it’s 2020 now and over the years I have come to understand that this was probably not an isolated occurrence. There are probably similar juvenile detention facilities scattered around the southern states that have graves and atrocities yet to be discovered.

What I really liked about The Nickle Boys, more than The Underground Railroad, was that it was more real to me. The characters were fictionalized, but the circumstances that brought them all to the Nickel School were real ways that black boys and men would get caught up in the system. The main character Elwood is on his way to take a college course in his last year of high school when he accepts a ride from a man who is heading toward the campus. The man has actually stolen the car, and so Elwood is charged with car theft as well for being in it and sent away to Nickel after his conviction. This happens despite the mountains of evidence that would have proved his innocence, but in the 1950s south that was a moot point.

The horrors that Elwood witnesses and experiences for himself you can probably imagine at this point. I don’t need to spell them all out for you. Nickel has a part of the campus for white boys and a part of the campus for black boys and in the middle is the White House where they go for extreme corporal punishment. There’s field work and house work but since it’s for kids it’s not a jail, it’s more like a dorm. Kids try to escape and are never seen again, kids break the rules or refuse to follow directions and are never seen again. Sometimes kids graduate back out into the real world, most of the time they don’t.

Honestly I’m horrified, but I’m not surprised. There was a period of time where as a white woman raised in one of the whitest states in the nation I was shocked and appalled by the things I learned about the racial inequities and history in this country. My education on these topics has been fast and complete and now it’s still horrifying, but I’m not numb to it, but I’m rarely surprised. My reaction now is “of course that happened in this nightmare country.”

It’s a short read, so if you’re curious about the history of the Dozier (Nickel) School, it’s worth it to pick up and bear witness to the story. The more people know that this happened, the lower the chance that these children will be forgotten. I linked to several articles at the beginning of the review if you are interested. It was an excellent read. Go get you some.

The Institute

The InstituteThe Institute was a popular one this past year, and when I first put a hold on it at my library I was number 84 on the list. It finally became available with no renewals, because of course someone else was in line behind me to read it, and so I had 14 days to get through this 600 page thrill ride or else send it back or accept the late fines.

I shouldn’t have worried about it. Once I started I couldn’t stop and I was able to finish it in about 8 days. Children are kidnapped from all over the country and taken to the secluded, northern woodlands of Maine to serve at the institute due to their telekinetic or telepathic abilities. Tests and shots and trauma are inflicted in an attempt to enhance these abilities, and then the children are sent to the back half of the institute, from whence they never return. Not surprisingly when our main character Luke is taken, he’s one of the smartest kids to ever enter the institute. When combined with a later arrival Avery, one of the youngest and most powerful telepaths to ever be brought in, they stage an escape that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

I think my favorite King books are the ones that are 90% reality and 10% fantasy. They are the stories that make you believe in the plausibility of the fantastic existing in a world where the daily and mundane tend to hold sway. This story is especially engaging if you know how many children are taken in the US alone every year and never found again; it’s not so unthinkable that something as wild as the institute might be where they were taken, when reality is that it would probably be something just as traumatizing or worse.

Also knowing what I know about northern Maine, you could hide just about anything up there if you had enough money. People say they love Maine but what they mean is that they love the ocean, or Kittery, or Freeport, or Acadia National Park. They don’t know Maine, and the heart of it comes out in so many of King’s books. The terrifying ruralness that hides a multitude of horrors because no one ever goes there to ask questions.

I strongly recommend that you get on your library’s hold list and read this book. It was a fast read for its length, and the story was 100% airtight the entire way. I loved it, and I’m sure you will too. Go get you some.

The Orchardist

The Orchardist

I had seen this book on quite a few “Best Of ______” lists over the past couple of years, and despite not being super pulled in by the description I decided to take a leap and read something new. Amanda Coplin did not disappoint.

I won’t bore you with the plot. You can look up the book’s description via google, and I can tell you that what you’ll find is very accurate. What’s deceptive is that you think you’re reading one story, then two, then three, and then you realize it was all one story after all.

This is a book about how trauma affects us. How past trauma can color our future relationships, how extreme trauma can damage our minds and decision-making abilities, and how the trauma of others, having seemingly nothing to do with us, can affect our lives nonetheless. As I was reading I thought I would see the end of any of the three main character’s storylines, but really there isn’t a happy ending or an ending at all. It’s a book that reminds us, in case we even needed reminding, that life moves on regardless and we need to do the best we can with the hand we are dealt. And boy does “doing your best” mean vastly different things depending on the type and level of trauma involved.

I knew I wasn’t going to get a happy ending and yet I wanted one anyway. Interwoven with the theme of trauma was the necessity of hope. Hope that people will change or be what we want them to be. Hope that there is a future. Hope that things will turn out differently. Despite the mundane ending, I felt good with the message that in trauma there can be hope. Not always, but maybe and sometimes.

The setting is gorgeous and the writing style kept me hooked. You can almost see the light filtering in through the vast orchard, smell the tilled earth and the ripened apricots. You can hear Caroline Middey coming down the trail on her wagon to visit. So even while you are reading things that will make you melancholy, you are surrounded by beauty and love. Always.

If you’re feeling like you’re in the mood for a deep read that will take you places, The Orchardist is it. Light a fire in the fireplace (or at least call up Fireplace for the Home on Netflix), grab a warm drink, and let this book wash over you. You’ll be glad you did.

Millennial Book Club

I was bored one night earlier this month and decided to scroll through the local library’s event calendar to see if there was anything that was interesting coming up. Besides the usual Friends of the Library Book Sale most of my branch’s events happen during the day for old people and stay-at-home moms with toddlers. I want to play Canasta too, Carol, how about some stuff at 5pm instead of noon, huh?

Then I found something labeled “Millennial Book Club” and clicked into the description. It hadn’t started meeting yet, and it was billed as only for millennials. They even linked to the Pew Research Center to be clear about who was allowed. I was immediately hooked and had to go. I put it on my wall calendar and my Google calendar and every day I said out loud “I am doing this book club” because I am notorious for planning to do something and then the literal day of I flake because I am a millennial.

I did not read the description closely enough and assumed it would be held at the library, but when I checked the event to make sure, I saw it was being held at a local brewery. Oh my god how much more stereotypical and hipster could we be? There would be food trucks, goddamn. Should I wear my fedora and provide avocado toast for everyone? I have never eaten food from a food truck, I do not drink beer, and worrying about not even fitting in with people from my own generation I began to think about not going.

The day came and with encouragement from the husband, I decided what the heck, I would at least go and see what I thought. There probably wouldn’t be that many people there on a Thursday night at 7pm anyway. Boy, was I wrong. I showed up and there were about 10 people already there and waiting, and more were showing up as I walked in. We were sat outside on a large picnic table that was labeled with a poster that screamed Millennial Book Club! The librarians (also millennials) were barely containing their excitement at how many people came – apparently their fellow librarians didn’t think people our age would show up either.

I sat for a while listening to everyone talk. There were a few singletons like me, but others came in friend groups of two or three. Most were in nursing or management and a few were even stay-at-home moms which surprised me. Eventually I went and got a glass of Moscato (thank goodness they had wine), and then we started talking about the books we would vote on.

The Bear and the Nightingale (Fantasy)
10% Happier (Non-Fiction/Memoir)
A Man Called Ove (PopLit)
The Green Mile (Horror)
The Alchemist (I think? – PopLit)

I wished with all my might that the non-fiction wouldn’t be the one chosen, but I also understood that my reading habits aren’t the norm. Self-help and popular fiction are what people read. I also hoped that A Man Called Ove wouldn’t be picked either; I’ve tried and failed to read that book several times because my emotions have me ugly crying by page 40 and I can’t get past it. I would have been okay with the fantasy, The Green Mile (I’ve seen the movie but not read the book) or the other one.

More than half of the group voted for the non-fiction. I’m nothing if not a team player, so I dutifully stood and collected my copy, and then retired for the evening. Honestly I’m just proud of myself for getting out of my routine and trying something different. I’ll be reading it chapter by chapter over the course of the next month, and I’ll post my reactions and review on February 20th, the date of our next meeting.

10 Percent Happier

Goodreads Synopsis: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18505796-10-happier
Dan Harris Books: https://www.tenpercent.com/dan-harris-books (There is a podcast, newsletter, mobile app, and other resources.)

Godsgrave (Nevernight #2)

Godsgrave

Nevernight (Nevernight #1)

If you’ve been a reader of AAB for a long time, you know that I tend to like a revenge story. Survival and revenge – the strength and intelligence it often requires a main character to have in order to achieve their goals is inspiring and makes for a good read. Nevernight also set up that assassin school/competition vibe a la Hogwarts for magic, which only added more tastes that taste great together.

Godsgrave takes a bit of a turn, which makes sense given the end of Nevernight. The Church is rebuilding its network, and one of the only remaining secret places in the world with a blood walk is, you guessed it, Godsgrave. Mia is assigned to its new watcher, her old trainer Mercurio, and he assigns her to find and kill a marrowborn woman, and intercept the map that she is scheduled to receive. SURPRISE! It’s Ashlinn and they have a good ol’ brawl during which Ashlinn implies that Justice Scaeva, one of the men Mia has sworn to kill to avenge her family, is a patron of the Church an knows about her and everything she’s been up to. She says that Mia has been kept busy to keep her from killing Scaeva because they are bound by honor to keep him alive because money.

We’re left, as Mia is, to figure out if Ashlinn can be trusted, but in the meantime she talks to Mercurio, who basically says that he doesn’t know about it but that logically it makes sense. He agrees to help her extend her search for the map as a ruse for her actually concocting a plan to murder Scaeva in secret so the Church doesn’t know it was her.

Here’s where the story goes a bit off the rails for me. Also spoiler alert, because I’m just gonna list some story details and roll my eyes while a type.

  1. She sells herself to a gladiator collector in an attempt to get entry into the biggest gladiator battle of the season, where if she wins, Scaeva grants her freedom directly as per tradition, and she can slit his throat when he’s close enough. THIS IS A TERRIBLE PLAN WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING.
  2. She is training as a gladiator FOREVER – I’m not going to lie there are like 150 pages that I skimmed because it was just training – cell – escape cell with darkness powers to fuck Ashlinn – cell – training – cell…you get the picture.
  3. SHE HAS SEX WITH ASHLINN – I just…I can’t. SHE MURDERED TRIC AND RUINED YOUR PLANS HOW WHY WHAT?? These kinds of story twists are what remind me that the characters are like 16 and have no fucking common sense. Her shadows Mister Kindly and Eclipse keep telling her she’s being stupid but she won’t listen – again with the teenager bullshit. In Nevernight I kind of forgot how young she was and this book slapped me in the face with it. Good YA, especially YA that Kristoff has repeatedly said is NOT for teenagers, should have characters that can handle their situations as young adults. Don’t give me a 16 year old protagonist that can’t tell her ass from a hole in the ground, especially after a first book that shows her to be cunning and calculating and powerful.

And I’m gonna spoil the ending for you because I don’t want you to get there and be as mad as I was about the dumb ass twist that throws everything off kilter.

  1. Her brother Jonnen is alive and has been given another name by HIS FATHER JUSTICE SCAEVA because he was basically a baby when everything went down.
  2. She’s told by a fellow gladiator (convenient) that her father was gay and her mom slept around with politicians for influence.
  3. Jonnen is also darkin, AND SO IS JUSTICE SCAEVA and so now her revenge for her parents requires her to kill her real father and she has to deal with that knowledge.

Jesus Christ I cannot with this. There weren’t nearly enough breadcrumbs along the way to lead to this twist. It feels really fucking convenient that she just happens to get put in the same cell as someone who worked with her father during the Kingmaker Rebellion that would know these things. And you can’t let us have one delicious moment, now Mia has to reckon with the reality of who her parents were and how that changes her situation and goals now. It’s too hard a left into a final book of a trilogy and I’m not happy about it.

Honestly for me this wouldn’t change anything. Family is who takes care of you, not who contributed sperm to your egg so you could burst into the world. Justice Scaeva still murdered her parents and stole her brother and brainwashed him – knowing he is her biological father changes nothing.

And Ashlinn better get dealt with. This weird romance thing between them doesn’t make any sense and I still want Ashlinn dead for what she did. I’m hoping Mia has other plans and is just fucking her to keep her thinking she’s close so she can deal with her at the right moment.

I was intrigued, then I was mad, then I was bored but hopeful, then I was shocked and mad that Jay Kristoff thinks he could just throw that many twists into the last 50 pages and no one would be like “WTF Jay, this feels too convenient.” I’m going to finish the trilogy because I bought the gorgeous UK edition and got it signed and it’s just waiting for me to crack open. I just hope that Darkdawn is the finale Mia deserves.

2020 Vision

Hello dear readers. As we enter a new decade of this interminable age, where every year is five years long and all we can ask is how it could possibly get worse, and then gape at the events that prove that it can, I think it’s important to remember that all we can do is live our lives and do the best we can.

Despite the fact that blogging is essentially dead and everyone has either a podcast or a tinyletter (newsletter) now, I’m going to keep plugging away here at Angry Angel Books. I tried a podcast and it wasn’t in my wheelhouse, and I don’t have enough to say to make a newsletter worthwhile. When I finish a book, I’ll write about it here, and if you’ve subscribed or followed me, you’ll be the first to know.

I am not on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. I left all social media platforms last year and only Goodreads remains, if you can call that a social media platform. Dropping my memberships around the internet has vastly improved my mental health, and while I do miss Twitter sometimes, I don’t think I’ll ever go back. Following my posts takes a little extra effort because of these decisions, and I’m sorry about that, but I don’t make any money doing this so I have to put my own health over reader convenience.

I don’t really have any resolutions for this year. If I had to make one or express something I want to achieve this year it would be to complete the next draft of the novel I’ve been working on. I’m also going to try a book club at my local library that is apparently for millennials only, so we’ll see if that pans out. I don’t really have any in-person friends that aren’t from work so maybe this is a way I could make some? Can’t hurt to try and I can leave whenever.

Upcoming reviews include Godsgrave (Nevernight #2) by Jay Kristoff and Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass #7) by Sarah J. Maas. I’m speeding through the Kristoff but honestly Maas’ writing has become absolutely unreadable so it’s probably going to take me a while to get through the NINE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FOUR pages of the end of this series.

Due to the stalkerish nature of my family and the students I teach, I won’t be making any more personal or opinion posts. I’m tired of having those used as weapons against me in parent teacher conferences and my anxiety can’t take another principal conversation in which I am told I cannot talk about this or that because reasons – Won’t someone think of the CHILDREN?!?! I could lock that kind of stuff behind a subscription newsletter, but nothing is stopping those same people from subscribing to that too – it’s just easier to save it for my google doc that serves as a diary/journal.

Welcome to 2020. Thanks for sticking around. Let’s keep reading.

Angry Angel Books: Top 5 Books of 2019

This year saw my reading slow down a bit as I reshaped my personal time to improve my mental health. Despite this, I managed to read about 60 books, several of which were very exciting. This year’s list includes only books that were published this year too, which is different from years past.

Seven Blades

Seven Blades in Black
Seven Blades in Black was the surprise of 2019. I haven’t read anything by Sam Sykes before this or since, but when they announce the sequel I will preorder it so fast your head will spin. Fallen empires and rogue sorcerers and crazy beasts roaming free PLUS an unreliable narrator on a revenge quest a la Arya Stark and her checklist – you can see me drooling about it, right? It’s a long one but I didn’t want to put it down. If you like fantasy and revenge and kingdoms and you haven’t read Sykes, you should definitely pick this one up.

king of scars

King of Scars
I love Leigh Bardugo and she is on this list TWICE. King of Scars focuses in on Nikolai, the pirate (ahem…privateer!) who becomes king of Ravka. He has a past that he wants to keep covered up and powers that even he doesn’t completely understand, and is chasing dark powers that lead to the re-emergence of [SPOILER ALERT!]. It was one of my favorites this year but it isn’t my favorite Bardugo book, mostly because it just seemed like a long way to bring [SPOILER] back into the universe and I found myself losing interest in a lot of places. But it’s still Bardugo so overall it was fantastic.

 

The Wicked KingThe Queen of Nothing

The Wicked King
The Queen of Nothing
How did both of these books come out this year? Why is Holly Black so amazing? They did and she is so if you haven’t read the Folk of the Air trilogy then now is the time because all 3 books are now in the world and they are all complete masterpieces. The Wicked King won the 2019 Goodreads Choice Award for Best YA Fantasy (I think The Queen of Nothing came out too late in the year to be in contention).
The Cruel Prince is the first installment.

Ninth House

Review: Ninth House
Leigh Bardugo is on my list TWICE because she is a bad bitch and I love her. Ninth House is a twisted tale full of magic, mystery, and finding identity in the midst of desperation. It showcases how dangerous one woman can be when she has nothing to lose, and how much more dangerous she can become when you give her something to fight for. Winner of the 2019 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Fantasy Novel, it is definitely a book that deserves your attention.

Red, White, and Royal Blue

Review: Red, White, and Royal Blue
I could not be happier that this book won the 2019 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance AND Best Debut Novel. There was nothing wrong with this book. It was everything I needed and brought light and joy into a life that seems to always be tinged with darkness and sadness. It made me believe that happiness is possible. It made me believe in the goodness of people in general. The story is funny and smart and modern and the romance is hot and believable. Do you need a spritz of lightheartedness in your life? You must put this book on your TBR right away.